“Do you think I can become a black trigger?”
“Kura.” Akari frowns. “Let's not talk about that. We're in the middle of a patrol.”
But Kura just smiles and continues talking to Akari through their communication device, restricting the conversation to only them and leaving the rest of their squad oblivious to their chatting.
“I really hope I can, honestly.” Kura put her Casuarius over her left shoulder. “I mean, I have quite an amount of Trion, right?”
Akari shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to answer that. She’s right, of course. She has almost enough Trion to have a side effect, and with her determination… he thinks she’ll make it just fine if that's what she wants.
Akari looks at Mikan and Hanzou who are busy talking about something else far in front of them. The sound of their talk and footsteps are drowned out by his thoughts.
To him, a black trigger is a morbid, scary thing.
He never tells anyone about it, but holding someone's Trion—an important organ to Border agents as a whole—as a weapon is a terrifying concept. It's like holding a dead body and controlling it however you like with the person having no say in anything.
Some say it's an important legacy and a powerful weapon one should use in honor of the creator, but Akari fails to see it. All he sees is the potential guilt he will be consumed by every time he holds it.
He still remembers when they tried to see his compatibility with Fuujin.
The sleek trigger fits right in his hand. His move with it is as natural as it can be. He even managed to cast a few of those ribbon blades even with his limited Trion. But throughout the testing, one thought echoed in his head:
This person is dead.
Jin-san's mentor is dead and you're holding him in your hand.
It's not his fault. It's not Akari's fault Jin's mentor died to manifest a black trigger which he can use perfectly fine, but the taste of fear starts mixing in with guilt in the back of his mouth, and he steps away from the testing as early as he can.
He doesn't know what scares him. Maybe it's the concept of black trigger. Maybe it's how he knows he'll never manifest one with his amount of Trion. Maybe it's how they're so powerful and he can't stand a chance alone against one of them.
Akari sighs.
Or maybe it's because Kura has the opposite mindset of him. The engineering curiosity to rush in where angels fear to tread, as he calls it.
“Why now, anyway?” he asks, “why are you talking about it now?”
“It just kinda sprung into mind,” Kura answers. “Anyway, what do you think I will be?”
He pauses, thinking about a lot more things than he's asked about. He glances at the empty houses they pass before looking back at his childhood friend.
“A sniper rifle, because you lean more into sniping.”
“Aah, nice one,” says Kura. She misses the hesitation in Akari's voice, as she always does with emotional details. “I might be content if I become as strong as my Casuarius.” She lifts her sniper rifle and chuckles at its details. “Now that is a worthy legacy for me.”
Stop saying it like that, Akari wants to protest. But he keeps his mouth shut.
It’s unlike him to keep a secret from her, but just for this one thing… he doesn’t want her to know about his fear of black triggers.
Kura pauses her blabbering for a second and looks at Akari.
“But if I become a sniper rifle, you wouldn't be able to use me, being an attacker and all.”
Those words struck Akari deep. He almost stops walking, but he drags his feet forwards and keeps his pace up so Kura can’t see how shocked he is.
He doesn’t want her to die. Of course not. So he never imagined himself holding a black trigger made by her.
But now, he can picture it.
He can picture Kura crumbling away into a trigger. He can picture himself dropping down his weapons and running to whatever is left of her, clawing through the debris of buildings to search for the black trigger.
He can picture the trigger turning into her beloved Casuarius as soon as he fishes it out.
And he can picture his hand that never touches a sniper trigger freezes as he doesn't know what to do.
This is the last legacy of his best friend, and he can't even do anything with it.
Akari clenches his fist.
If Kura ever manifests a black trigger and he can't use it, he'll never see the last remnants of her again. Because there will be no grave to visit. No body to be mourned.
Every breath Akari takes is sharp and chilling.
He doesn't want that. He doesn't want Kura to disappear.
“You never know.” Akari forces a playful tone onto his answer. “I might pick up sniping just to use your black trigger.”
Kura laughs. “Ooh~ How romantic~ We have a future perfect all-rounder right here!”
“Like you’re not going to be one anyway.”
“I almost forgot about that,” she answers with a chuckle. “Well, we can both be a perfect all-rounder, at least until I move to engineering!”
Then the conversation died out for a few minutes, their silence filled in with Hanzou complaining about the mochi served at a party he attended yesterday and Mikan answering with short nods.
But there's still a question bothering Akari.
He glances at Kura who's now busy inspecting her trigger and turns on the communication channel between them again.
“Why do you want to create a black trigger so bad?”
Without missing a beat, Kura smiles and looks up to Akari. Even with how dim the moon is tonight, Akari can still see the glimmer in Kura's gray eyes.
“I wanna be useful even after I'm gone.”
Akari can only sigh at that smile.
Sure she's his childhood friend and they're quite inseparable, but he never understands her fully. They're a bit too different on a few fronts, and their approach to battle can't be more different.
There's always a sort of dissonance between them, but Kura always handwaves them as 'humanly'—whatever her definition of that is.
But he hates that dissonance. He hates how Kura acts as if that dissonance means he couldn't care more about her, or that he couldn't see that Kura likes to throw herself away for others.
She's his best friend, and Akari wants her to know that it means he wants to care for and understand her fully, even if he can't.
“I understand that,” says Akari, his voice almost trembling, “but please don't try to die on me, Kura.” His maroon eyes are more serious than usual, catching Kura off guard. “I beg you.”
Kura stands agape, words escaping her.
It takes Juuzou scolding her for stopping walking in the middle of a patrol through the comm and Kura uttering a small apology before she finally continues walking.
It never dawns on her that Akari is worried about her.
To Kura, being able to manifest herself as a black trigger will be an achievement. The last part of her bucket list, so to say.
But she's always dumb when it comes to the matter of the heart. So of course she forgets that turning into a black trigger means she must die in the process, right in front of Akari's eyes.
“Sorry. I let myself get away too far,” Kura mumbles, walking closer to Akari. Then, with a smile, she nudges the black-haired man. “But don't worry, I will still fight as much as I can. I won't let myself turn into a black trigger that easily.”
Akari laughs. “I sure hope you won't,” he answers, putting his hand on Kura's reddish-brown hair and messing it up, earning him a complaint.
Maybe this is fine, he thinks. Maybe he doesn't have to understand Kura fully.
Maybe communicating what he wants and Kura acknowledging it is enough for now. She should understand what she needs to do. Because hey, they're friends, aren't they?