It was 9:00 AM. In the morning light the dead city seemed like the carcass of a titanic beast of long-forgotten times, its concrete ribs and asphalt blood scattered all over the hilly landscape in irregular patterns. For hundreds of years its lifeless existence was only disturbed by the occasional wild animal roaming its dry streets, but even they only did so under duress.

It used to be a bustling place. Once it was filled with the unmistakable noises of life, but as of now it was nothing more than a dead husk. One of the numerous graveyards of a fallen civilization.

On second thought, it couldn’t even be called that. A graveyard had the decency to remember and to remind others of the names of the deceased and honor their memory. The concrete carcass covering the landscape had no name for itself to remember, let alone for the thousands upon thousands of cadavers buried deep under its ruined surface.

Abandoned and all but forgotten, the empty city was a sad memento of the destruction the Devastation wrought more than three centuries years ago.

But the nameless ruins weren’t completely empty this morning. There was movement on the roof of one of the tallest buildings still standing against the hot, dry winds of the land. A man leaned over the unstable railing of the rooftop and turned his gaze towards the streets below with a weary expression.

He was tall and wiry, yet his light gray overcoat made him appear positively huge. After a few minutes of seemingly tense observation he wordlessly swept back his short dark hair, revealing a thin silver headband around his high temple.

After a few more minutes of idling his eyes were drawn to some movement down below. There was a small, rushing shadow taking a sharp turn at the intersection and heading right towards the building he was standing on. When he strained his eyes a little he could finally make out the owner of said shadow skillfully skimming over the rough terrain, navigating around the broken pavement and fallen debris as if it was the easiest thing in the world. She headed for the building straight as an arrow and upon arrival she grabbed hold of the closest windowsill and began scaling the structure with speed implying that she considered Newton's law of universal gravitation to be barely more than a polite suggestion.

It took her only half a minute to work her way up to the roof, finally grabbing hold of the railing the man was holding onto and flinging herself over to his side. For a moment her figure was bathed in the morning sun as she casually hopped to her feet and faced the man with one hand on her hips and the other carefully sweeping back an unruly tuft of her hair from her temple. She appeared to be a girl in her late teens, short but lean with all the pronounced but still developing curves that were expected from her apparent age.

Her long black hair fell unto her shoulders in slightly curly waves, framing a lovely face adorned with emerald eyes. However, as striking as her profile might have been, it was in no way her most obvious characteristic.

That dubious honor belonged to the pair of catlike ears poking out from the top of her head and the equally feline tail on her rear. Both of them seemed to be genuine beyond question. Otherwise she looked just like any normal human girl of her age, easily verified through her light clothes. She was wearing tight bike shorts and a top which left her belly-button in plain sight. On the back of her pants fluttered a short, cape-like cloth fastened to her belt, reaching down to her knees under which she was wearing black knee-socks and a slightly worn leather ankle boot.

After taking a moment to stretch in a very theatrical and slightly mischievous manner she smiled at the man and spoke up in a familiar manner.

?????: "Everything is in order. They are coming this way."

The man slightly narrowed his eyes but didn’t take them off from the distance he seemed to have been staring into for the past few seconds. In response the girl roughly cleared her throat.

?????: "Ahaz?"

Hearing his name, the man finally turned his attention to the girl and gave her a small nod.

Ahazkun: "I see. Thank you."

After the curt answer Ahazkun turned his gaze towards the horizon once again. As he did, the girl frowned and elbowed him in the side. He didn’t even flinch.

?????: "Is that all that you wanted to say?"

Her voice was filled with thorns and was just about to elbow him again when he looked at her one more time with the exact same glassy expression.

Ahazkun: "Nice work."

?????: "That’s all?! Do you even have any idea how hard it was to—"

Her response was cut short by man’s hand softly landing on her head and he slowly started scratching the base of her feline ears. For a moment her eyes opened wide in surprise, seemingly about to object, then a blissful expression spread on her face and she started, for a lack of better word, purring.

The next few moments were filled with an affectionate silence as the girl snuggled herself to the solemn man. He, however, was still gazing into the distance with an expressionless face. In the end it was him who broke the silence, with a low, almost whispering voice.

Ahazkun: "Say, Tiari…"

She glanced up at him while still basking in the afterglow of his caress, but seeing his expression quickly wiped it away and gave way to a more serious response.

Tiari: "Yes?"

Ahazkun: "Do you remember?”

The girl’s lips curved downwards in a small grimace, though she tried to hide it as hard as she could.

Ahazkun: "I do. I remember when this town was filled to the brim with people. Men, women, children..."

The catgirl’s expression slowly clouded as she realized where he was going with his monologue. Needless to say, this wasn’t the first time she heard it.

Ahazkun: "It was so long ago. It feels like as if it was just yesterday… but it’s gone. All of them are gone without as much as a trace. Only steel, concrete and the corruption remains…"

Tiari: "You are doing it again." The girl’s voice felt annoyed but not overtly harsh and slowly trailed off into a soft whisper. "You are still blaming yourself, aren’t you?"

Hearing her question, Ahazkun finally smiled, even if it was the pitiful, self-deriding smile of a burdened man.

Ahazkun: "I can’t really help it. It’s just so… It’s hard to believe that the better tomorrow those people waited for was destroyed so utterly. And it was our fault. All of it."

For a second or two they looked at each other in silence. In the end the man raised his eyes upon the panorama of the abandoned city and the girl’s eyes followed suit by reflex.

It was quite eerie how well preserved the place looked from up above. There were ruins, naturally. It would have been even stranger if three hundred years of desertion didn’t leave a mark upon it. There just weren’t enough of them. Not as many as one would have expected, and even those were only taken by the weather instead of the encroaching flora one would presume.

She knew why. On the surface everything felt empty and eerily quiet, but she knew that underneath the rubble there was still something that could be called ‘life’, albeit only by the loosest definition.

It was the corruption, or at least what remained of it. In the cables, the broken electric appliances, under the collapsed buildings and in the bones of the dead below. It was still there, waiting for something, or someone, to disturb its hibernation so it could attach itself to it.

No, even saying that gave it too much credit. It didn’t wait. It had no will or plan or consciousness. It was a force of nature, an inert potential for destruction that could be unleashed by even the smallest mistake.

Just knowing it was there made her uneasy. She rationally knew that it was probably so sparse after three centuries that it would require a horrible case of bad luck to stumble upon it, but it was still there. It was dangerous. Everything in the nameless dead city was dangerous until proven otherwise.

When she was running through the streets her attention was always preoccupied by other, more apparent matters, but when she looked over the landscape in front of her from above like this, it always made her choke a little.

She wanted to leave. The memories of events that took place in the history books of this day and age came flooding back at her whenever she let her mind wonder about it, and she wanted to get as far away from it all as possible… But she knew she couldn’t.

She wasn’t the only one who felt like that. In fact her feelings of dread and regret couldn’t even compare to the pain the man at her side must have felt. The girl hesitated for a second, wondering whether it was the right moment, but she finally mustered her resolve. She brushed away the hand still resting on her head, stepped closer and gently hugged the man’s waist with her slender arms, burying her head into his chest.

Tiari: "Don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault. No one could see it coming."

Ahazkun looked down at the small figure holding onto him and blinked in surprise, yet his expression only seemed to grow darker by the second.

Ahazkun: "But I should have. It was my job to see it coming."

Tiari: "I said stop blaming yourself! It won’t make things any better! You are just torturing yourself for no reason. It… makes me sad."

The man silently gazed at her for a few moments. For the first time in the past few days his lips were shaped by a warmer emotion and slowly curved into a small but heartfelt smile. He reached for Tiari’s head and held it between his hands, firmly yet with great care, and laid a small, gentle kiss on her forehead.

Ahazkun: "Sorry for making you worry." After a few more affectionate moments he raised his hands and Tiari let go of him as well. The man shook his head and stretched his arms. "You are right. I can’t change the past, so it’s time to start working on the future. Thank you… and sorry for making you remind me of that."

As Ahazkun left her behind, the feline girl’s expression returned to the more carefree one she had when she arrived to the rooftop and crossed her arms in front of her small chest.

Tiari: "Are you going?"

Ahazkun: "It’s time."

Tiari: "Are you sure you don’t need me to come along?"

Her voice quivered a little, obvious hiding a good amount of bottled up worry behind a professional attitude. The man looked back, his face as unreadable as ever and slowly shook his head.

Ahazkun: "No. It’s dangerous."

Tiari: "That’s why I’m asking!"

The tall man looked at her with gentle eyes, his expression softening under her piercing gaze, and spoke with a calm voice.

Ahazkun: "I cannot risk you getting hurt. If something were to happen to you—" His voice suddenly choked, quite unbefitting to his serious expression, and spoke with hushed tone. "… I would probably break."

Tiari looked at him with eyes wide open for a moment, then averted her gaze with a small scowl.

Tiari: "You are so unfair, you know that?"

Ahazkun: "Yes. Sorry."

After forcing one last apologetic smile onto his face the man began walking towards the partially collapsed stairwell on the middle of the roof.

Tiari: "Still… Be careful, you hear me?"

Ahazkun looked back at Tiari. She appeared to be in the middle of trying not to look worried but for some reason she chose a bone-chilling glare to hide it. For a split-second the man didn’t know how to react, but in the end he allowed himself an amused chuckle as he nodded.

Ahazkun: "Don’t worry. This time everything should go according to plan."