He spares a moment to be grateful for the unnecessarily showy technique he'd been performing just a second earlier, for having thrown him up and out of the water, and another moment to be grateful for the slowly falling metal beam he's holding onto. Tōkan is not sure he's going to survive the night, but he has a much better chance of doing that if he's not in the over thirty thousand tonnes of water as it stops being able to hold its weight.

One final moment to be grateful for his own upper body strength as he pulls himself up onto said falling beam, and he's running.

In retrospect it is perhaps not the best idea for him to run along an unstable metal beam that used to hold the half-ceiling of the blitzball stadium as it collapses, he thinks to himself as he jumps off it and onto a piece of said half-ceiling with a desperate dash. He is really really not sure he'll find a way... down...

No use worrying about it. He runs, away from the giant whatever-it-is that's inside the water bubble, and keeps his eyes peeled for any further structures he can jump onto as the ceiling slowly curves down into becoming a wall.

He really, really should have thought this through a little bit better.

On the other hand, the antigrav effect is now here, too, and there are pieces of debris lazily floating up from where they used to be pieces of the street leading out of the stadium. Once again, no use worrying about it, and he jumps.

(Of course, the antigrav effect also affects him and so he feels much more courageous about such jumps, and there's a small—well, okay, not that small—part of him that's thrilled by this. Antigrav obstacle runs should have been invented as a sport, this is really cool.)

Somehow, by some miracle, he manages to find enough handholds and floating landings that he makes his way to ground level, and despite his excitement he's happy to be on firm ground again. Now all he has to do is keep running and...

...is... is that...

...what the fuck is Auron doing here?

"I see you're still alive, boy," says the man, who'd just been... standing there... leaning against a half-destroyed statue, ignoring the panicked people running past him. Almost like he'd been waiting for Tōkan.

"What the fuck," Tōkan breathes, stopping his mad dash to stare at the man and...

...well, stopping is not great because even though he's still rather high adrenaline this gives him time to notice the burn in his muscles and his lungs from the unfamiliar exercise.

"This way," says Auron, ignoring the question and starting to walk... towards the ruins of the stadium.

"Are you fucking mad? I'm not going after the monster."

Auron grabs a one-handed sword out of a hidden bag inside his coat. Its blade is made of some sort of crystal, light blue coloured and shimmering in the twilight of the emergency lights being activated all over the place and the glare of the electronic billboards. "Take this," he says, pressing the sword onto Tōkan and letting go of it so that the boy has no choice but to accept it. "And follow me."

"I... I've never used a—why do you have a sword—" But too late, Auron is already walking, and Tōkan feels a moment of spite trying to tug him towards the... probably safer direction of away from the monster.

On the other hand, Auron is acting mightily suspicious and goddamnit this is the most exciting thing that's happened to him in his life and he might die anyway even if he flees so he might as well die while trying to figure out what the hell is happening.

He runs after the red-coated man.

He continues walking, almost leisurely. At this point, most of the people who would flee have fled, and whatever tragedy the thirty thousand tonnes of falling water from the broken blitzball stadium would cause has already happened. He doesn't go directly into the stadium itself, but rather takes a detour around it, vaulting over debris with agility that belies his age.

Or apparent age, anyway, it's not like Tōkan really knows how old Auron is.

He follows, eyes darting between his environment for safety and the floating monster for curiosity. It's stopped actively shooting, now, and seems to just be letting its passive antigrav effect completely wreck the surrounding city.

"You're keeping up," Auron observes with a disdainful tone that suggests he expected to be disappointed. Which is not the same as being positively surprised, of course. He's very good at that tone. "Maybe you won't die after all."

"Going after the kaiju means I won't die? You realise that makes no sense."

"I won't kill you. It would defeat the point."

"...how does that engage with literally anything I said."

Rather than replying, Auron uses a series of increasingly tall pieces of destruction to jump up to a broken elevated highway. Or at least it used to be elevated, now it's basically a ramp.

Tōkan is fit enough to easily follow him.

No, that's a lie, he's fit enough to be able to follow Auron at all, but it's not easy, and by the time they reach the top of the highway-ramp as it connects to a more intact part of itself he's panting heavily. Auron, the bastard, seems completely unaffected by the exertion.

Auron offers no help, but the weakened gravity should be enough for Tōkan to be able to get up onto the actual highway on his own.

If not, well, Auron was wrong about the boy, and it's better to find out earlier rather than later.

He does in fact succeed, but when he gets there he leans forward onto his knees to breathe and says, "You bastard, how the hell are you even—" He pauses.

Something... changed.

Something's different.

Oh. It's quiet. The sounds of destruction and screaming and sirens have stopped. He looks around and—

—everything's stopped. Everyone, the people running in the distance, frozen in mid-air as they flee. Auron himself, frozen, his coat paralysed in between the seconds.

And between him and Auron is... a small boy. Can't be older than twelve, by his height, wearing a sleeveless hooded robe of some kind that goes from a purple hood covering his head and obscuring most of his face down to a black frayed skirt that doesn't quite reach his bare feet.

"It begins," he says.

Tōkan sloooowly raises a very sceptical eyebrow. "Very ominous. Am I the protagonist?"

The apparition doesn't smile. He merely shakes his head, then says, "Don't be scared."

And then he's gone, and time is passing again.

He staggers in place at the sudden reassertion of normality and Auron is still walking, so he rushes ahead to follow.

Auron stops in the middle of the highway and looks in the direction of the kaiju. The place they find themselves at has an especially clear view of it, no buildings blocking the sight, but it still looks like just a giant bubble of water with some ill-defined black-grey silhouette in it.

"Sin," he says, once Tōkan catches up. "We called it Sin."

"Who's 'we'? Wait, you were already familiar with the—" It's suddenly hitting Tōkan that he met Auron when he was very small and never once thought to question where Auron came from. No one else knew him, but Tōkan kind of just... assumed... he was from the other side of the island or some such.

And the confusion at not having thought about this earlier reemerges. Why... didn't he...?