A bit darker

"Finally!" Keith shouted in happiness, letting the whole street know about his elation. "I don't have to wear that stupid mask!"

"You didn't need to in the first place" commented Kafka in her usual smooth voice with a little smile that hid all her thoughts.

From everyone but Keith of course.

"I swear I will have my revenge sooner or later" grumbled Keith, glaring at the smiling woman as he sensed her amusement. "You used the moment I fell unconscious to carve in my cheek 'stalker pedophile', can you even understand the shame I felt every time I looked at the mirror?"

"You should have known better then" replied Kafka, her smile unchanging.

"You still wrote pedophile, which means that you share my view" argued Keith, but failing to elicit a response from the purple-haired girl.

"If admitting it lets me enjoy your enraged face, it's worth it" commented Kafka.

They were walking in the bustling streets of a relatively unknown planet, one they had stopped by to make those denigrating words disappear from Keith's face.

After Keith's talk with Elio he needed 3 days to wake up, and another 4 to recover.

Elio had a talk with Kafka that Keith had not been aware of, but the girl seemed fully on board with Elio's plan to reach the 'ideal future'.

But if there was a part Kafka didn't like was that Keith's existence was an integral part of the plan, so she couldn't harm him, or even let someone do it in her instead.

After her talk with Elio, Kafka understood how much of an irregularity Keith was, he was probably as important as Elio even if the puppet couldn't hold a candle to Elio's ability as a scriptwriter, but like the Slave of Fate, his existence was unique in the whole universe.

This meant that Kafka needed not only to follow Elio's scripts, but also needed to protect him, as he was outside Elio's view, and that meant that he couldn't detect when would Keith be in danger.

She also knew how important she was, even if she didn't know why or how, but Elio wanted her to be with Keith in the same team to 'create a wider fan' as Elio called it.

"What a sad existence" scoffed Keith, taking Kafka out of her reverie. "Willing to suffer only to drag people down."

"The enjoyment I get from your indignant expression surpasses all the 'suffering' I may feel" countered Kafka with a little smirk.

"Excuse me!" a voice made them look at the person approaching, and Kafka knew what this man was going to say before he spoke.

Elio told her after all, and this involved her last task.

Observe how the future would change with Keith's intervention.

"Not interested" Keith immediately said, taking Kafka's wrist and dragging her away.

The man was ready to do some 'convincing', but by the time he recovered from his shock the black-haired man and the girl with purple hair that charmed him had already left.

"Oh, is my knight in shining armour protecting me?" teased Kafka, not expecting Keith to butt in.

"I know that you don't need it, but he was too disgusting to look at" said Keith trying to avoid puking.

Keith was feeling something he had never felt before, utter disgust seeing a person and sensing his feelings.

It was not hate or anger, but the murky feeling inside the man coupled with the blatant lust he was feeling and not even bothering to hide from his eyes revealed that he probably wasn't merely a flirty guy.

Keith knew better than to trust blindly in his ability, as human emotions could be quite contradictory sometimes, but he was absolutely sure he didn't want to stay near this man.

Kafka looked curiously at Keith, wondering what was he feeling, but she had an idea as she already knew who this man was after all.

The future had already changed, as she was supposed to follow him and eliminate his whole group, but now she had left the man behind without harming him.

Elio told her that Keith couldn't know about the future if they wanted the future to change. If Keith was aware of everything Elio saw, he would be 'a train travelling through another person's tracks', or 'riding on someone's Fate'.

The future would still change, but it wouldn't be as effective.

So Kafka was ordered to let Keith do whatever he wanted, as just happened now.

"What an unpleasant existence" grimaced Keith. "I saw plenty of disgusting people in my travels with Himeko, but he is the worst so far."

"He is a slaver" Kafka's words made Keith stop in his tracks.

"What?" asked Keith, praying that he heard wrong or his ability fooled him because he didn't sense any lies in Kafka's sentence.

But Kafka only looked at him with a serious expression. Even one with so little appreciation for other people's lives wouldn't joke about something this abhorrent.

"...dammit" Keith cursed, knowing that he couldn't leave now that he was aware of this. "You knew about it."

Kafka only smiled at Keith's accusation, tacitly admitting it.

"So that's why we took so long to come here" Keith sighed in understanding, as he had waited for a whole month doing absolutely nothing when they could have come earlier. "He is your mission here."

"He is" admitted Kafka with a slight smile. "What are you going to do?"

This was what Elio asked her to do.

Make Keith know about the world, make him clash against it, and force him to make difficult choices. That would make him develop his own path, fortifying his determination and solidifying his ideals.

Elio didn't tell Kafka about Akivili, but he knew what path would the now-resurged Aeon take.

The Aeon of the Trailblaze had always paved a path forward, and that also meant removing the obstacles for those who wanted to travel, and this man was obviously one.

Maybe Elio would have been able to see the different futures Keith's choice may have led him to, but with the UNKNOWN in him, all he saw was black.

"What can I do?" Keith asked himself with a serious expression, as he somehow felt that this was a branching point in his life. "What do I want to do?"

Kafka stood in silence, approving of Keith's seriousness thinking about this.

She had no problem eliminating this scourge from existence, but she felt that Keith cared a lot more about life than her.

This didn't mean Kafka was a psychopath who would go on a rampage just because she wanted to have some fun, but the lives of these kinds of people didn't matter to her.

'If you kill, be ready to be killed. If you steal, prepare for being robbed. If you make others suffer, be ready to suffer', those were her thoughts.

She wasn't an ally of justice that would go rescuing people as she wouldn't be a slave of her power like that, but she had no qualms about being Fate's tool to deliver their just reward to these people.

But Keith was in a conundrum.

He was not going to let this man go, if Elio sent Kafka here because she could stop him, and even further, it was needed.

Stopping Kafka didn't even cross his mind, it would mean letting this man keep doing what he was doing and that wouldn't only make more people suffer, but he would also be an accomplice.

Letting this man go wasn't an option since he heard about what he was, and he didn't believe Elio and Kafka would lie to him about this.

With a sigh, he realized that he was going in circles about a pretty useless thing to avoid facing the real problem.

What to do with this man and possibly his group.

He was not stupid even if he couldn't modify such a complex construct like the Star Rail alone like Himeko could, or have a space station with his name like Herta did.

It was pretty obvious what Kafka was going to do, kill him and those with him.

Was he okay with that?

He felt that the world had turned upside down, as he didn't expect to contemplate someone's death so coldly.

Kafka was attentively looking at Keith's face, which expressed everything he was thinking. For some unknown reason, Elio placed a lot of importance on Keith, and while she would obey the Slave of Fate, she still had her doubts.

She didn't doubt that Keith was special, his ability only showed it and while it wasn't something amazing, she learned that there was something deeper to it, but she wanted Keith to realize what participating in Elio's plans implied, and some things they would need to do.

"Any chance we can put in behind bars?" asked Keith, but Kafka's lack of response told him what would happen.

Probably nothing good in the long term, so there was only one option, make him unable to continue with his operations.

But could he find a way to make sure this piece of shit wouldn't go back to his 'job'?

There were plenty of ways, and the first one he thought of was to make Kafka use her ability.

But was it fair for the purple-haired girl?

He couldn't force her to do anything, and if this situation happened in the future, what would he do? Depend on Kafka again?

What would happen if some day Kafka wasn't around?

Was Kafka's ability enough? Did it expire after a certain time?

And...was it fair to push this task into Kafka's shoulders?

No. That was the answer to every question.

He needed to find way to solve this problem, and he needed to find a solution for this problem that didn't depend on anyone.

The more Keith thought, the less options that remained.

Until only one was left, even if he abhorred it.

"You win" Keith sighed in resignation with a downcast expression, looking at Kafka's pink eyes.

Kafka hummed looking at Keith's grey eyes.

"You will feel better once you see it first hand" said Kafka, who already knew from Elio where this man would be.

"I don't want to feel better" sighed Keith, feeling his world turn a little darker.