Mr. Setsuna was sweeping out the front of his shop as Luke walked up the man, waving as he did so. He waved Luke inside and they sat down at a small table in his house, which was connected to the supermarket that the old man ran. It was a small little home, but Setsuna usually called the entire supermarket his mansion. He served Luke some tea as they began to talk.

“So what brings ya here Luke?”

“Oh, about that, I was wondering if you’d be opposed to telling me a little bit more about your family.”

Suddenly the man’s face grew a little greyer, his smile turning around.

“My family. How do you know anything about them?”

Shit, he hadn’t gotten to that point yet. Setsuna didn’t show him the photo.

“Oh well… I saw that picture of you with a woman and little girl a few days ago and it’s been bugging me ever since.”

“Ah. I see. Well Luke, I spose ya can deal with a bit of a sad story. Maybe it’ll get ya off yours.”

“You’re just going to tell me everything?”

“What d’you mean?”

Luke was still counting the seconds in his head, and this was going to be too slow if he couldn’t find a way to hurry things up. He decided to bring out his trump card.

“Myon Sayuri. That is your real name, isn’t it?”

At that moment the old man’s eyes opened wide and he looked around, visibly shivering.

“How do you know that name Luke?”

“That isn’t important. What is important is you telling me everything. I’m not going to turn you in or anything. In fact, I want to help you. I need to help you.”

“Help me? How do you plan on doing that?”

“What is it that you want the most Myon.”

“To see my family again…”

“Well… what do you want second most.”

“To escape the prying eyes of the government.”

“Then I may know of a way to help you.”

“What, how?”

“I’ve got an… acquaintance that works at the identity distribution center. I can you a new identity, and you can escape this. Now, tell me everything.”

Luke smiled in spite of himself and looked across the small table at the old man. He’d thought up this plan long ago, back when he’d tried to get Lexa out of the city. There wasn’t much else to do, and thinking of ways to help Mr. Setsuna came naturally after seeing all that had happened. The man had been his friend after all.

“Everything… Then where to start…”

It also appeared that his accent was fake as well as he slipped back into his natural voice. It sounded like a normal voice instead of a Kingsley accent like he’d had before. The gruff voice was replaced by a soft and tender one that he’d hidden for months, perhaps years.

The old man sat down in front of him and stretched his neck, interlacing his fingers in a way that reminded Luke of his past. A scientist, and a damned good one at that. The things he was about to hear wouldn’t be good for him nor Luke.

“Let’s see… Ah, I suppose it is only logical to start at the beginning of my career. Back in the day I was a navy man, the government used my expertise in a wide range of study, including missile travel and… bombs. I was married with children living in upper Kingsley, one of the best times of my life. Oddly, I was one day expelled from the navy and men in black suits approached me. The next I knew they had me in the back of a car and had brought me to a smelly noodle shop in the middle of one of the poorest parts of the city. I was greeted by a tall white haired man and a pristine bot named Z-mo, and showed to a laboratory, which was underneath the shop oddly enough. There, we conducted many experiments. Dr. Thickton, the advisor, was oddly involved in the study of time itself, while I and another of my colleagues were focused on the military department. We created chemical bombs to be used against the enemy, which worked very well. This bliss did not last very long however. One day, Thickton found something. A hole in time he called it, many of us laughed, though through my knowledge I saw the anomaly. Before we could research it any further though, me and the other scientists were taken back to the city center and thrown in a laboratory that was supervised around the clock by the army. I was angry about the sudden move obviously, and attempted to slow down production of my newest weapon, called the T-125. But they were angry… it seemed that Thickton’s research had been a thorn in the side of the government for a long time, but they couldn’t get rid of him. When we-”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Suddenly Setsuna heard a noise from outside and stood up quickly, scanning the room with intelligent and intuitive eyes. A few seconds later a meow could be heard and a small cat ran across the front of the shop, causing his shoulders to slump once again.

“Ah, I’m sorry… was I going too fast?”

“No, it’s alright. That was a great speed.”

“Hmm… let me get you some tea. I’ll need it as well to keep going.”

The older man walked into the other room, leaving Luke to peer around for a few minutes. The room was certainly old, but it had a very Mr. Setsuna feel to it. It felt like a home. On the walls were pictures of old friends and family, though as far as Luke could see there were no pictures of his wife and child besides the one from before. It was like an old memory he couldn’t stop. There was also nothing around that made Luke believe that Setsuna was some sort of scientist. Perhaps a collector of seashells instead. Once Luke heard the whistling sound of a kettle Luke’s head whipped around back to the entrance. A few seconds later, Setsuna walked through it with a bit of a sad smile on his face and poured their drinks.

“Ah, get it while it’s hot, you know?”

“Thanks.”

The old man sat back on the ground and took a long swig of the tea, readying himself.

“Alright… now where were we… Ah, right Thickton had been a government annoyance for some time. When we were expelled from the lab he went off on his own and conducted the research himself, attempting to share the data with me. Unsurprisingly the government got ahold of the files and Thickton was taken… God knows where… Meanwhile, I was punished. Through a weapons test. One of the planes I had designed dropped a bomb I had designed onto my neighborhood… an accident they said. Everyone died… terribly… it was one of the worst scenes I had ever seen. After this, I fled, coming back to the only place any bum in the city can blend in. One of my old colleagues gathered a fake identity for me, and here we are.”

“Do you… do you blame Thickton?”

Setsuna reeled back a bit as if it was the strangest question in the world.

“Do I blame a good concerned man for the government’s lack of veracity? No, no I do not. I blame myself for getting wound up with weapons research. I created the very weapons that killed my family. It was all my fault, and I accept the blame. Though now I simply am trying to live out the rest of my life. It is quite peaceful here after all.”

Luke thought to himself. What was the old man’s problem? If he simply wanted to live out his days in peace, what could it be?

“Don’t you have any regrets besides that? Unfinished business?”

“Not especially… though there is one thing I had always wished.”

“What?”

“I was never able to see the contents of Thickton’s file. I had desperately wished to see what information he had sent me about the rip in time.”

“Do you have any ideas of where it could be?”

“Well, a few but that is utter nonsense…”

“Of course it isn’t.”

Luke looked into the old man’s eyes with vigor, renewed by his talk with Z-mo. At this, Setsuna chuckled, and put a hand on his shoulder. When Luke didn’t budge, his eyes drew from Luke’s vigor and he leaned in closer.

“There had to be a file at his house, and nobody has been there for years. After Thickton was taken it was pronounced government probably and nobody is allowed on the property.”

Luke smiled.

“Well then old man, are you ready to go on one last adventure?”

Setsuna put his fingers to the corners of his eyes, but smiled all the same.

“Heh, son I was born ready.”

He pulled Luke up from the floor and they begun to plan. The old man took out a few pieces of paper and pencils used to draw up a crude map of the surroundings. There were shops all around the house, however it stood alone on a small grassy knoll. It was a popular place for miners to go after a day searching for minerals, and they could be used as well in their drunken state. Luke assured Setsuna that he would be able to convince any of the miners to step on the property and set off the automatic alarm that was around the entire house. It was simply an alarm whenever something entered the space around the house however, and it was unknown when or where the entry happened. Luke would leave the drunken men to stand there and talk with the police, but this was the interesting part. Since the alarm couldn’t detect where or more importantly how many objects entered the space around the house Setsuna would enter at the exact same time, watching from a nearby bench. There, he would fade into the darkness and get to the house, giving Luke a signal from nearby when the alarm had been disabled. After that they would search for the file and find it, then leave without triggering the alarm as it would be disabled. It was a damn good plan if Luke had to be honest, and he could see the gears turning in the old scientist’s head as he thought it through. This was not a man to be taken lightly. Setsuna winked at him.

“All in the pursuit of knowledge, eh?”

“Hopefully this doesn’t lead us to the pursuit of freedom.”

“Oh please, we won’t be sent to jail.”

He packed up his notepad and paper and stuck a hand outside, feeling the weather. Looking back at Luke’s ratty old jacket Setsuna put up one finger as a sign to wait a minute and went into his walk in closet. Coming back out, he had two coats in hand, and gave one to Luke.

“We can’t have you breaking and entering in something like that. You’d like like a criminal after all!”

“I’m pretty sure this sky blue jacket is criminal in and of itself Mr. Setsuna.”

He chuckled. He looked more and more like the father that Luke was always missing. Though it wasn’t all that different from how Setsuna normally acted around him.

“Aha, better than that ratty old thing, isn’t it? Well then, shall we get going?”

“Get going? Now?”

“Of course! Seize the day!”

Perhaps Setsuna had been more into the plan than Luke had previously thought, and dragged him outside towards their destination. He really acted like a dad. Luke wished that Setsuna had been his father, instead of the farming bumpkin that got rid of him as soon as he could. It was strange, he might have said it in his head before, but he really did care more about Setsuna as a parental figure than he ever had about his parents. There was no comparison. Now here he was getting dragged toward another parental figure’s house. Perhaps he would be able to get insight on the man that he had heard so much about.

Luke braced himself as Setsuna dragged him towards the one place he didn’t expect to go in a lifetime, the house of Lexa’s father, the man that started this entire mess. Or at least discovered it.