<Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed.

It's like matter and antimatter where the infinite barrage of the fully realized power of hope collides with the infinite expanse of the ultimate, final witch. Again the reaction seems to consume... everything, creating the inescapable event horizon of a black hole, except -- it's a supermassive white hole, instead.

This time, it isn't a star that's born.

This time, it's the whole universe...

...every universe...

                                   l e t
                                 t h e r e
                                    b e
                                  h o p e

---

<SoundTracker> You Are The New Day - The King's Singers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeuVBc76jas

This time, when your eyes clear, it's late afternoon, and you're right in the middle of something.

Maybe you're playing sports, and you've got the ball.
Maybe you're in club, playing your instrument or baking your cake.
Maybe you're in the middle of a date.
Maybe you're just taking a walk down by the river.
Maybe you're already home, doing your homework -- or procrastinating.

But you're living your life -- your ordinary life -- an ordinary life that should be impossible. You haven't had time. You've been too focused on other duties. You've been too miserable.

And, even if none of those things were true: it should be impossible because Tokyo was destroyed. You saw it happen. Blow by blow, the city wielded as a weapon to pulverize itself.

Only... it wasn't.

Check the date and it's the same: June 2, 2015.

But nothing is as it was left.

Tokyo is whole -- WHOLE -- whole in a way that makes your heart whole, too.

The city is tall and shining and lovely, except for the parts that are short and green and lovely. The streets are clean and clear... except for the part where they're full of throngs of people. Busy people. Busy, mostly happy people.

Just like you, people out and about, doing what they love.

It's like Walpurgisnacht never existed in the first place.

There was no evacuation; no superstorm, real or fake; no rain even, the last week has been nothing but sun, perfect for the switch to summer uniforms.

There was, you gradually realize, thanks to a variety of little clues, no /war/.

Your grades are better, for starters, whether you find a paper buried in your bookbag or pinned to your fridge by a proud parent. So too is your attendance at school, club, work, and every other obligation in your life. That part-time job you lost because you kept missing shifts? You've got a recent paycheck.

Maybe you're in a group chat on your phone with someone you thought was your enemy.
Maybe you have a selfie with them from a recent trip to the amusement park.
Maybe you have a recent voice mail from someone who should be dead.
Maybe YOU should be dead, and the last thing you remember, after dying, is being suffused in a warm pink light, before waking up, just like everyone else, inside your own bodies, inside your own lives.

There's also the easily-spotted matter of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, wholly intact, towering on the skyline; nor are large sections of Haneda Airport closed for repairs.

It's a beautiful day.

It's the first day of the rest of your life.

---

You could spend it scouring your belongings for more clues, or the internet, or the newspaper. You won't find many. There are no conveniently detailed secret diaries; there's little to glean from paging through personal planners in either direction, past or future, other than evidence of a life -- your life -- lived in a way consistent to who you are. Lived the way you would have if you'd had the chance.

Now you do have that chance -- what are you going to do with it?

It bothers you less than you might have expected, not knowing EXACTLY the sequence of events, in this world, precisely as they transpired, up until you blinked your eyes and suddenly remembered that just a second ago you were in the middle of the cosmos watching the universe be destroyed and recreated... by... someone. A girl. A wholly unremarkable girl, a sort of civilian hanger-on to the magical community, who was, somehow, involved in endless trouble. You can't quite recall her face. And what was her name again? This bothers you less than it might've, too.

It helps that most things are the same as they ever were.

Friends and family in your life still are perfectly and entirely themselves, and your relationships with them are the same. With seamlessness that is less remarkable than it is simply intuitive, both remember the same conversations, the same activities, that let you pick up pretty much where you left off.

Recent supernatural events are also essentially identical. The World Tree bloomed last month and left a blizzard of petals on everyone and everything for weeks. There have been a lot of UFO sightings lately. Right now, a monster of the day is menacing the grocery store in Clover Town Street, and magical girls are mobilizing to stop it.

Suicide rates are down, though, especially in hospitals, construction sites, derelict buildings and, collectively, on Southern Cross Island. It's obvious why, to those in the know. Walpurgisnacht never happened...

...because Witches never existed.

<Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed.

---

You /could/ spend your new day investigating mysteries, but then your eyes catch on a rainbow.

*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+ Rainbow Bridge +*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
  Despite its name, the Rainbow Bridge spends most of its time bone-white,
  like an angel's harp carved of driftwood in the dark water of the bay.
  Periodically it crosses beneath an island every bit as man-made and
  geometrical as the bridge itself, planting pillars to claim it and then
  traversing water again. It's visible from a wide variety of angles from the
  coastline, forming a hypoteneuse that crosses the bay via Odaiba and, with
  the aid of less iconic bridges, permits quick travel from Yamanote to
  Shitamachi.

  Foot traffic is possible across the bridge, and many visitors dare the long
  walk to get a good view of the city on one side, and the sea on the other.
  Walking atop a bridge is a poor way to see the bridge itself, of course, but
  that is what the Yurikamome elevated train line is for. Slung beneath the
  bridge for much of its journey, the fully automated, driverless train gives
  a great view of the Rainbow Bridge on its way to Odaiba.

  For a few hours every night, this expensive landmark truly lives up to its
  name, glowing with different hues depending on the season or holiday.
  Rarely, a combination of floodlights makes a genuine rainbow of the bridge,
  with deep reds at its foot and violet at its peak. Small, colorfully lit
  tugboats and civilian craft float beneath the gleaming bridge, buoyant on
  the liquid dream of a starry sky.
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*

The sun is sunk deeply into Tokyo Bay --

-- and, across Tokyo, the lights are coming on.

And you realize: if anyone else knows what you know, if anyone else remembers what you remember...

...that's where they're going to go.

Because of course they are.  Of course you are.

It's where it all began.