Chapter 26: A File for the Shopkeeper
It was mid-morning in Kyoto. The sun, having fought against the rainy season clouds for hours, finally won a skirmish. A single beam of golden light pierced through the front door of the Urahara Candy Shop, cutting through the gloom of the interior and illuminating millions of dust motes dancing lazily in the air.
The air smelled of an impossible mix: the damp stone and moss of the ancient Gion alley outside, and the sencha tea, burnt sugar, and a faint trace of ozone and cinnamon from inside.
Urahara Kisuke stood in the middle of this sunbeam, absorbed in the most important task of the day.
Sweeping.
Shhh... shhh... shhh...
The sound of the bamboo broom on the tatami floor was the only noise. It wasn't a rushed job. It was a ritual. An exercise in presence. Urahara moved the broom with a slow, practiced fluidity, his movements a form of calligraphy, his eyes half-closed. He was sweeping away the invisible dust of the previous day, but he was also clearing his mind, re-establishing the simple, mundane order he enjoyed so much.
This was his cover, but like all great lies, he had found a profound truth in it. The universe could be collapsing, gods could be at war, but here, in this precise moment, the tatami needed sweeping. It was a comforting certainty.
As he swept, a ghost of a melody found its way into his mind, and his lips curved into an almost imperceptible smile. A faint hum escaped him, a low and surprisingly smooth tone.
'... Am I blue?...'
He paused for a moment, leaning on the broom, and a stifled chuckle shook his shoulders. The satisfaction he felt was deeper and purer than that of solving the Dreaming crisis. The crystal recording of Batman's private concert was safely stored in his laboratory, filed in a lacquered wooden box under the label "Masterpieces of Earth Folklore, Vol. 1". It was, without a doubt, the rarest acquisition of his last thousand years of collecting.
'What a wonderfully contradictory character,' he thought, resuming his sweeping. 'Willing to fight hell itself, but his true terror... is a blues song. This planet definitely has the best stories.'
He was so lost in his pleasant memory that he almost didn't feel the subtle dissonance in the air. It wasn't the front door bell. The bell was meant for mundane customers. This was a much more familiar disturbance.
Click.
The sound came from the back of the shop. Not from the hallway leading to his dimensional lab, but from a simple dark wooden storage closet where he kept paper bags and cleaning rags.
The closet door opened with a click and, without any mystical fanfare, Kara Zor-El stepped out.
It wasn't Supergirl, the Maid of Might. It was Kara, the cosmic office worker who had just had the worst day of her life.
Urahara didn't even turn around. He could smell her. She smelled of burnt ozone, melted asphalt, and a faint, but distinctive, essence of sewer.
She was wearing jeans and a leather jacket, the civilian clothes she had chosen for her Metropolis identity. Or, at least, what was left of them. The shoulder of the jacket was singed and smoking slightly. She had a hand-sized soot smudge on her left cheek. Her usually perfect blonde hair was disheveled and bristling with static electricity, as if she had stuck a finger in a socket.
Her face was a mask of pure, absolute exasperation.
She didn't say "hello."
"I HATE HIM!"
Her voice, a deep, frustrated growl that rattled the candy jars on the shelves, echoed in the quiet shop.
THUD. THUD. She kicked off her combat boots, which were also smoking, and dropped them viciously on the welcome mat. The smell of burnt rubber joined the shop's symphony of aromas.
She crossed the shop in three strides, walked past Urahara without looking at him, and flopped onto her back on a worn green velvet sofa Kisuke had "coincidentally" acquired a few weeks ago and placed in a sunny corner. The fall was so heavy the sofa released a cloud of dust. Kara landed with an OOF! and proceeded to bury her face in the cushions, letting out a second growl, this time muffled, that sounded like a bear being poked.
Urahara didn't flinch. Shhh... shhh... shhh... He kept sweeping, moving slowly around the sofa where she lay.
"Good morning to you too, Kara-san," he said cheerfully, sweeping carefully around her smoking boots. "Rough day at the office, I see. Traffic was bad?"
"Don't mock me!" said Kara's voice, muffled by the sofa fabric. She sounded tired and furious. "It was Livewire! For the third time this week! Third!"
She lifted her head from the cushion just to glare at him. The soot on her cheek made her look like a very angry raccoon. "Do you know how incredibly annoying it is trying to punch electricity? It's like trying to slap lightning! It's useless! 'Hahaha, Supergirl, you can't touch me!' And then ZAP! Right in the back! A billion volts! I smell like burnt hair!"
She flopped back down, exasperated. "And then...!" her voice became muffled again. "Just when I had her cornered at the power plant, guess who shows up out of nowhere! Parasite! Disgusting, purple Parasite! He comes out of a sewer! So now I smell like burnt ozone and him! And of course, he tries to 'hug' me! 'Gimme some of that sunshine, baby!' Ugh! I feel... dirty. And sticky! I hate Metropolis! I hate villains! I want to drop the Fortress of Solitude on top of all of them!"
The monologue ended. The only response was the soft shhh of Urahara's broom.
Kara peeked over the cushion. Urahara was looking at her with an expression of genuine curiosity, his head tilted.
He was listening, not like a mentor, but like a friend listening to particularly juicy gossip. She wasn't complaining about saving the world, but about the annoyances of her job. And he, strangely, was the only being in the universe who seemed to understand.
Urahara finally leaned the broom against the wall. "A complicated day, no doubt."
He went to the small kitchen behind the counter. He opened an old-fashioned refrigerator and took out a frosted glass bottle, filled with a liquid that glowed with a faint bluish luminescence. He poured the liquid into a tall glass and brought it to her.
Kara sat up, accepting the glass. The glass was coldly condensed. "Thanks," she murmured.
She took a long drink. The taste was incredible. It was like drinking fresh snow and mountain air, with a slight hint of mint. She felt the dirty, jittery energy of Livewire's electricity dissipate, the disgusting residue of Parasite fading from her system.
"What is this?" she asked, her voice already calmer, as she drank the rest in one gulp. "It tastes like... clouds."
"Water from a subterranean glacier on Europa, Jupiter's moon," he replied, sitting on his usual cushion across from her. He began his own tea ritual. "The ice cores there have conceptual cleansing properties. Good for replenishing electrolytes. Or so I'm told. And it removes sewer 'residue'."
Kara sighed, the first genuine sigh of relief of the day. The tension left her in a wave. She curled up on the sofa, hugging her knees. The sanctuary had done its job.
"So this 'Parasite'..." began Urahara, his tone purely academic and curious. "...only absorbs your power through touch? Skin-to-skin contact?"
"Yeah," said Kara. "That's his thing. It's gross."
"Hmm," muttered Urahara, pouring hot water over the tea leaves. "How inefficient. What a poor design. He has to be in direct physical contact. So many variables. Messy."
"Poor design?" repeated Kara, incredulous. "He just left half the city without power and almost drained me dry."
"Precisely. He is a brute," said Urahara. "If I wanted to steal a Kryptonian's power, I wouldn't bother touching them. How sticky. I would simply rewrite the wavelength of solar radiation in my own cellular structure, and then stand next to them, absorbing their fuel before it reached them. Or, better yet, create a resonance frequency that inverted their cellular polarity, making them expel solar energy instead of storing it. Much cleaner. And can be done from the comfort of your own porch. No need to touch anyone."
Kara stared at him for a long while, her brain processing the terrifying efficiency of his plan.
"... You're weird, Kisuke. You know that? Truly, deeply weird."
"I get told that often," he smiled, offering her a cup of tea she hadn't asked for, but now accepted.
They sat in silence for a while, drinking. Her, her glacier water; him, his tea. The only sound was the buzz of a solitary fly near the window and the distant tolling of the Kyoto temple bell.
"How is your research going?" she asked, just to fill the silence.
"Progressing," he said. "The Tibet lead is... promising. It seems to be a very old gothic horror story. My favorite genre."
"Cool," she said, having no idea what he was talking about, and not really caring. She just liked the sound of his voice when he talked about his "stories."
They talked for nearly an hour. Not about saving the world. Not about the Dreaming, or Batman, or the League. They talked about trivial things. She complained about her landlord not fixing the hot water. He told her about the new type of candy he was trying to invent, one that tasted like your favorite childhood memory, but still tasted like sour cherry.
The tension left Kara's shoulders completely. The superheroine had dissolved, leaving only the young woman who was home, chatting with her strange friend.
Finally, she sighed, looked at the sunlight on the floor, and stretched with a groan. Her back bones cracked.
"Well," she said, standing up. The soot was still on her cheek, but her eyes were clear again. "I feel better. Thanks for listening."
"Anytime, Kara-san," he said, not looking up from his tea. "The shop is always open for complaining customers. They are my specialty."
She gave him a small, genuine smile, one she hadn't shared with anyone else on Earth. "See you for dinner."
"Bring noodles," he replied. "The spicy ones."
"Done."
She went to the closet door, opened it, and with a final wave, disappeared back into the chaos of her life in Metropolis.
Urahara Kisuke was left alone in his shop, now silent. He took a sip of tea.
'See you for dinner,' he thought, and a small smile pulled at the corner of his lips. 'What a curious creature. She fights gods and monsters all day, and what really rattles her cage... is a bad day at work. How wonderfully human.'
He stood up, picked up the broom, and returned to his ritual, the soft shhh filling the room once more.
Gotham City. 3:17 A.M.
The outside world was a fury of rain and wind. A late autumn storm battered Wayne Manor, thunder rumbling like distant artillery over the sodden grounds. But down here, a hundred meters below the foundation, the only sound was the hum of a power reactor, the constant drip of cavern water, and the soft click of a computer mouse.
Bruce Wayne sat in front of the Batcomputer. He wasn't wearing the cowl, but the rest of the armored suit remained on, a second skin he refused to shed. Exhaustion was etched into the lines of his face, but his eyes were wide open, fixed on the main screen with obsessive, feverish intensity. Beside him, a cup of coffee, which Alfred had left hours ago, sat untouched and cold.
He was in a loop.
He pressed "play" for what must have been the hundredth time.
Urahara's crystal recording, which he had meticulously copied, played on the screen. The image was impossibly clear, high definition of a level his own spy satellites could barely match. It showed the dusty stage of the Iceberg Lounge. And then, the sound...
"... Am I blue?..."
The voice was unmistakable. It was his. A smooth baritone, stripped of his "Batman" growl, and filled with an agony of humiliation that made him clench his jaw until his teeth ached. He saw Zatanna at the piano, face full of resignation. He saw Constantine banging the tambourine with suicidal hatred.
He saw, in the front row, Urahara Kisuke. Smiling. And Kara Zor-El. Laughing.
He was obsessed. Not with the song, but with the file. He had spent the last seventy-two hours trying to corrupt it. Trying to find a digital weakness, a forgery signature, an audio fluctuation, something he could use to discredit it, to erase it, to prove it was a hoax.
But there wasn't one.
His forensic analysis programs, the most advanced on the planet, returned the same result: ERROR. UNKNOWN FORMAT. AUTHENTICITY: ABSOLUTE. The crystal wasn't a recording device. It was a reality capture device. The humiliation was perfect. It was undeniable. And Urahara had it.
With a stifled growl of pure fury, Bruce closed the audio file. Blessed stillness returned to the cave.
He opened a new document.
It wasn't a standard Justice League file. It wasn't a report for the Gotham police. It was a Black File. One of his own. A document stored on an isolated ghost server, encrypted with a key that existed only in his head, a file not even J'onn could find with his telepathy. It was where he kept the monsters, the apocalyptic-level beings, the threats that couldn't be simply "defeated."
The cursor blinked on the blank page.
He began to type.
DESIGNATION: URAHARA, KISUKE.
KNOWN ALIASES: The Shopkeeper (source: Constantine). Hat-Man (source: Klarion the Witch Boy). Kisuke (source: Supergirl).
THREAT CLASSIFICATION:
He stopped.
What to write?
He typed: OMEGA LEVEL (MAGIC).
He deleted it.
'He's not magic,' he thought, fingers hovering over the keyboard. 'Not like Zatanna. Zatanna's magic follows rules. He... he mocks rules. He used Zatanna's magic as a component, not a source.'
He typed: META-HUMAN: REALITY MANIPULATOR.
He deleted it.
'No. Reality manipulators, like Mxyzptlk, are chaotic. They are childish. He is... precise. He is a surgeon. He doesn't break reality. He edits it. He isn't a meta-human. He is something... older.'
He typed: EXTRADIMENSIONAL ENTITY. PRIORITY ALPHA.
He frowned. It was accurate, but it wasn't enough. It didn't capture the true danger. The danger wasn't his power. It was his mind.
His mind went back to the House of Mystery library. To the Censor. He, Batman, had seen the guardian and thought of force. How to break him? Zatanna had thought of magic. How to contain him?
Urahara had beaten him in an argument.
'He didn't fight the Censor,' thought Bruce, fingers still. 'He proved to him that his own existence was a logical paradox. And the Censor... exploded. He used a philosophical argument as if it were a punch. An argument not even I saw.'
His mind jumped to the Dreaming. To the duel between Faust and Klarion.
'He didn't fight Faust. Not directly. And he didn't fight Klarion. He made them fight each other. He manipulated a Lord of Chaos, a being of pure divine anarchy, as if he were an attack dog on a leash. He understood his psychology, his ego, his boredom. And he used him like a scalpel. He saw a hurricane and, instead of building a shelter, he built a wind turbine.'
'He is not a warrior. He is a scholar. And that is the reason he is the most dangerous person I have ever met. Darkseid wants to conquer. Lex wants to control. The Joker wants chaos. They are predictable. But him... he just wants to read. And it seems the entire universe is his private library.'
Finally, he found the classification. He deleted everything previous.
THREAT CLASSIFICATION: CONCEPTUAL EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT. (PRIORITY: ZERO. DO NOT ENGAGE. EVER.)
He continued typing, fingers flying now, offloading the paranoia and analysis of the last week.
ABILITIES (OBSERVED):
Scholar Level Intellect (Possibly the smartest being on this plane. Demonstrates encyclopedic knowledge of magic, extradimensional physics, human and non-human psychology).Conceptual Manipulation (Able to defeat conceptual beings, like the Censor, through pure logic. Able to rewrite narratives, as demonstrated with Destiny's plague).Master Psychological Manipulator (Tricked and controlled a Lord of Chaos. Gained psychological leverage over Batman).Interdimensional Portal Creation (His "shop" is not a physical place, but a nexus that can connect to any point in reality. Seen: Kyoto, Gotham Alley, Louisiana Swamp).Immunity to reality rewriting (Rejected Faust's erasure).Immunity to Psychic/Fear Assaults (Immune to the House of Mystery. Immune to the Dreamstone).Extreme Longevity (Claims to be > 2,000 years old. Verified by Constantine).Master Swordsman (Supergirl testimony, pending confirmation. Carries a sword-cane, Benihime).Nature Unknown (Claims to be a "spiritual being" in a "Gigai". Source: Clark Kent. Implications: Unknown. Can he be physically killed?).
He reached the final section. The most important field.
CONTINGENCY PLAN:
Bruce Wayne stared at the blinking cursor.
The rain lashed against the manor windows, far above his head. The hum of the computer was the only sound.
A plan.
There was always a plan.
Superman: Kryptonite. J'onn: Fire. Flash: Phase vibration. Diana: Deception, a superior opponent, or her own weapons.
But Urahara...
'How do you fight a man who can rewrite the rules of the game?' he thought, his mind running through a thousand simulations and failing in all. 'How do you poison a ghost? How do you blackmail a man who knows everything and wants nothing... except a story? How do you attack someone who sees the attack coming a thousand years in advance and finds it 'interesting'?'
He realized the terrifying truth. For the first time in his life as Batman, he was completely lost. He had no plan. He had no weapon. He had nothing.
Slowly, his fingers typed the four hardest words of his life.
CONTINGENCY: NONE AVAILABLE.
He stared at the words. The failure. The admission of defeat. The taste was like ash in his mouth.
With a growl, he deleted the line.
No. There was always something. He wasn't a warrior you could defeat. He was a scholar. A collector. And all collectors have a favorite piece in their collection.
His fingers typed again, this time with a cold, bitter certainty.
CONTINGENCY: DO NOT ATTACK DIRECTLY. OBSERVE. GATHER INTEL. LEARN HIS "RULES".
He added one last line, the most dangerous of all. A line he hated writing, but knew was the only tactical truth he had found.
POSSIBLE VULNERABILITY / LEVERAGE POINT: SUPERGIRL (KARA ZOR-EL).
He saved the file. Encrypted it. Buried it in the depths of his system, a ghost in his machine.
He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his tired eyes. The storm raged. He knew the man in the hat had a recording of him singing. He knew that Urahara, for all intents and purposes, had won. Of all the threats he had faced, this was the first one that had defeated him not with strength, but with absolute humiliation.
And that made him more dangerous than Darkseid.
The peace Urahara enjoyed in his Kyoto shop was an anomaly. In the rest of the world, for the handful of people who had witnessed or participated in the events of the previous week, the calm was not peace, but a tense silence. The hum of impossible power that had resonated across the planet had faded, but the echo lingered, leaving everyone off-balance, deaf, and wondering what had just happened.
Paris, France. The Louvre Museum.
Diana Prince stood with arms crossed, her gaze, as piercing as an eagle's, fixed on the team of curators. They were in the Greek antiquities wing, attempting to move a two-thousand-year-old terracotta amphora to a new pedestal.
"More carefully, please, Jean-Pierre," she said, her voice a murmur of quiet authority that made the sweating curator almost drop the object. "That piece survived the fall of Athens and two world wars. It would be a tragedy if it didn't survive your Tuesday morning."
The man nodded, pale. Diana sighed and turned to a nearby display case, pretending to examine a collection of gold coins. Her mind wasn't there. It hadn't been there for days.
She was trapped in a dusty, fish-stinking nightclub room, watching the most formidable and disciplined warrior she knew, the man who had fought beside her against gods and armies, standing on a stage... singing.
Her Amazon logic, her warrior ethos, couldn't process it.
She had been summoned to a "Level Alpha emergency." She had arrived expecting Doomsday, or the sky splitting in half. And she had found herself at a humiliating talent show.
But it wasn't Bruce's humiliation that disconcerted her. It was the reason for it.
The payment.
Her world was governed by strength (thumos) and excellence (arete). Battles were won. Valor was demonstrated. Honor was earned. But this... Urahara... he didn't operate by those rules. He had won, yes. He had saved the world, or so Zatanna and an unusually taciturn Bruce had told her. But he had done it with mētis, with cunning, with tricks and manipulation. He had used Chaos to fight Order. And then, instead of claiming a trophy, instead of demanding a tribute of power or territory, he had demanded... that.
A performance. A humiliation. A story.
'He doesn't fight like a warrior,' she thought, frowning as she stared at a statue of Athena. 'There is no honor in his methods. No courage. He hides behind smiles, twisted logic, and childish games.'
She remembered the recording, the smile of pure, absolute, and ecstatic joy on Urahara's face while Batman sang his song of misery. It was the face of a child who had just gotten the rarest toy in the world.
'He didn't want Bruce's power,' she realized, and that was what scared her. 'He didn't want his money or his weapons. He wanted... his dignity. He wanted proof that he could take it. And he did.'
What kind of being considered the Dark Knight's humiliation a fair payment for saving the world? What kind of man was that?
"Princess? Diana?" said Jean-Pierre, snapping her out of her trance. "Is the placement... okay?"
Diana looked at the amphora. It was crooked by half a centimeter. "It's fine," she said, her voice tired. "It's fine. I need to get some air."
She walked out into the Louvre courtyard, the glass pyramid shining under the Paris sun. Her warrior code didn't have a category for Urahara Kisuke. He wasn't an ally. He wasn't an enemy. He was... a wandering philosopher with the power of a god and the sense of humor of a sadist. And for the first time since leaving Themyscira, she felt deeply, deeply off-balance.
Metropolis. Clark and Lois's Apartment.
The smell of fresh coffee filled Clark and Lois's apartment. It was 7 AM. Clark, glasses on and wearing a flannel robe, was in the kitchen making breakfast. Lois was at the dining table, laptop open, surrounded by three different newspapers, her face a mask of pure journalistic frustration.
"There's nothing," she said, her voice a growl. "Absolutely nothing."
"Nothing of what, honey?" asked Clark, bringing her a cup of coffee.
"From last week! The Global Panic! The 'Day of Fear'!" she said, tapping her laptop. "For six hours, the whole world went crazy. Mass hysteria. Hallucinations. The power grid almost went down. And then... poof. It stopped. It evaporated. And there is no follow-up coverage. No government investigations. No 'leaks'. Every media outlet is calling it 'a case of mass stress-induced hysteria'. Garbage! It's the biggest conspiracy since Roswell!"
"People remember... but like a bad dream," said Clark quietly, sitting across from her. "I talked to Batman. He said the threat was... contained."
Lois stared at him. It was her "don't lie to me, Kent" look.
"'Contained'? By whom? Why? I was on the Watchtower when everything went down. I heard Kara."
Clark sighed. "I talked to her last night. She said her friend... 'Kisuke'... helped. She didn't give me details. She said it was... 'above her pay grade'."
Lois went still. Her mind, the mind of the world's best investigative reporter, began connecting dots that were universes apart.
"Kisuke," she repeated, testing the name. "The friend from the farm. The one who is two thousand years old. The one who knows about farming. The one who gave Kara that amulet that opens a closet to another place."
She stood up from the chair and began pacing the kitchen, vibrating with energy. "And he is the 'consultant' Kara recommended to Batman to save the world from a magical fear plague. And a week later, Batman summons the entire League to a 'Level Alpha emergency' at the Iceberg Lounge... for what? To sing the blues! While Kisuke and Kara record!"
Clark shrugged, visibly uncomfortable. "It was... the most painful performance I've ever seen."
"Don't focus on that, Clark!" said Lois, snapping her fingers. "Connect the dots! The payment! That was the payment! The two-thousand-year-old shopkeeper saved the world, and his price... was making Batman sing!"
She stopped, eyes shining with feverish light. "My God. This isn't a story about a crisis. It's a story about him. There is a new player on the board, Clark. A player not even you understand. A player who can scare Batman into performing in a nightclub. I need to find him. I need an interview. Where is that shop in Kyoto? Is it still there?"
"Lois, Kara said he values his privacy..." started Clark, but Lois was already back at her laptop, typing "Urahara Kisuke Kyoto candy" into a search engine.
The story of the century had just found its hunter.
The Oblivion Bar. Interdimensional Nexus.
The Oblivion Bar doesn't follow normal time. It is always 3 AM on a rainy Tuesday night. The air is thick with mystic cigarette smoke and the smell of spilled beer and regret. It is the only safe place for the magical community.
Zatanna Zatara was at the bar, but she wasn't drinking. She had a cup of black coffee, untouched, in front of her. She was staring at a grimoire of her father's, but the pages weren't turning. She had been on the same page for an hour, one on "Conceptual Paradoxes". She wasn't reading. She was remembering.
Her magic had broken.
In the Dreaming, her power, based on order, language, and intention, had failed. It had turned into senseless gibberish. It had been useless.
And Urahara... Urahara had defeated a divine guardian with an argument. With a logic paradox.
'My magic... is noise,' she thought, her confidence shattered. 'It's a parlor trick, pretty words. And him... his mind... his mind is a weapon of mass destruction. How do you learn that? How do you fight against that?'
A drunken growl came from the corner booth.
"I hate him, Z," said a slurring voice. John Constantine was slumped in the booth, playing poker against a minor green-skinned demon and a Civil War ghost. He had just lost a hand that included his watch. He was drunk, but the alcohol wasn't denting the terror he felt.
"I know, John," she replied, without looking up from the book.
"No. You don't know," he insisted, voice cracking slightly. He leaned over the table, face pale and sweaty. "I hate him. You know why? Not because he's an arrogant bastard. Not because he almost got us all killed."
He pointed a trembling finger at his own chest. "It's because I was supposed to be that guy. The con man. The grifter. The bastard who tricks devils and spits in the eye of angels. That's my job! That's my only bloody skill!"
He looked at Zatanna, bloodshot eyes full of existential dread. "And then he walks in. The shopkeeper. And makes me look like a bloody preschooler. He tricked Klarion. A Lord of Chaos! He turned him into his attack dog with a toy and a compliment! He played a child god like a pawn on his board! He saved us, yeah... but he did it to prove he could! He showed us all that we are so, so beneath him!"
"Let's not talk about him, John. Please," she pleaded.
"I can't help it, Z," he whispered, and the real fear came out. "The world has a new monster. And it's not a demon or a mad god. It's a smiling shopkeeper who offers you tea... and then keeps your soul for a song. I don't know how we're going to survive that."
Urahara Candy Shop. Kyoto.
While the world's most powerful heroes struggled with the echo of his presence, Urahara Kisuke had finished his day. Kara had left after dinner, back to her life in Metropolis.
The shop was silent, lit only by the moonlight streaming through the front door.
Urahara was in his laboratory. He stood in front of the wooden shelf where he had placed his two new trophies.
First, he picked up the crystal recording of Batman's concert. He held it up to the light, and the smile on his face was pure, simple joy. He put it away in a lacquered wooden box marked "Folklore Masterpieces".
Then, his gaze landed on the other object. The Dreamstone.
It still rested on its simple wooden stand. Pulsing faintly, like a dying heart. Urahara picked it up. The power it contained was immense. The power of an Endless. The power to rewrite reality.
'What a troublesome object,' he thought, his smile fading, replaced by a slight grimace of distaste. 'Full of power, yes. But so... messy. So full of the angst and drama of its former owner. So... noisy.'
With a sigh, he opened the lowest, dustiest drawer of his desk. It was full of junk: a broken yo-yo, a pen that didn't write, a rubber duck that had lost its squeak, and an alien rock that sang out of tune.
Urahara Kisuke, the man who was now the planet's greatest conceptual threat, tossed the Dreamstone into the junk drawer, next to the rubber duck.
He closed the drawer with a dull thud.
He turned and returned his attention to his real work: the large corkboard on the wall, covered in strings, maps, and blurry images. In the center, a satellite photo of the mountains of Tibet and two words, written in elegant calligraphy:
THE HEART OF SILENCE.
"Now," he muttered to himself, pouring a cup of late-night tea. "Back to the stories that really matter."
- - - - - - - - -
Thanks for reading!
If you want to read advanced chapters and support me, I'd really appreciate it.
Mike.
Patreon / iLikeeMikee