Episode 5: Here Comes the Sun

Pain. Carried. People all around me with silent minds. The background hum of Kiyoshi's thoughts. Dreams. I awake to the tears of a little girl.

I am set down in the corner. I am in a small cavern. A large boulder blocks the far end. Gogajin are all around. Una and Kiyoshi stand nearby. Kiyoshi's thoughts are muted. Like feeling a vibration through a pane of glass.

The Gogajin lift the boulder and toss it aside.

There, in the cave beyond, stands a little girl with golden skin in a white dress. I meet her gaze, and for a moment, her mind is within me and without me. Her thoughts are brilliant, blinding, blistering and golden, and I am nearly lost in their fierceness.

I stare.

After a moment, I realize that Una is speaking. That she and the girl have been speaking, and I missed the start of their conversation. "Who put you in there?" she asks.

There is a drop of blood rolling slowly down my left arm, and it itches. I want to reach over and wipe it off, but it hurts too much.

Everything hurts.

I nearly miss the girl's reply.

"Susanoo," she says.

"Who is Susanoo?" Una asks.

"He's my brother." She looks up at Una curiously. "Mana?" she asks.

Mana. Where have I heard that word before?

A metal shuffling footstep echoes from further down the cavern, and the little girl brightens. "Mana," she says, and stops crying.

One of the Gogajin moves down the passage to investigate. He calls out once, and then is silent.

The metal shuffling footsteps draw closer, and the enemy is upon us: a vast being of reddish energy flows into the cavern, pulling along behind it a shuffling, eyeless mechified to which it is connected with an umbilical streamer of red light.

I clench my fist. I can not help but want it dead.

A Gogajin charges, and the creature tears strange blueish light out of him with a wave of its hand - he drops, dead.

The others leap into battle, and in the din I catch the little girl's gaze.

She looks hungry.

I feel the killing intent flow out of my body. I look up and see Una screaming.

The mechified body being dragged along behind the energy-beast explodes into bloody chunks.

Kiyoshi's thoughts are razor-sharp now. He leaps into the air and neatly bisects the energy-thing with his sword.

I want one of those.

The little girl smiles hungrily and moves forward to the now shrinking, fading enemy. "Mana," she whispers happily.

I am lifted into the air: one of the surviving Gogajin has picked me up. We climb upwards, and I am set back down near the exit from the shaft. I become aware of the sound of gunfire, and it occurs to me that we had been hearing that for some time.

I am dimly aware of people moving around me, leaving the cavern to join the battle.

Una places her hands on my shoulders and concentrates. I meet her gaze.

Nothing happens.

She was trying to heal me, I realize. Heal me like she healed Kiyoshi.

"I tried," she says. "I'm sorry, Rei."

I wish I could know what she is thinking. It feels strange for someone else to be so... opaque. I wonder if I am dying. Am I dying?

I am afraid.

"Try harder," I say.

Her expression changes. I wish I knew what she was thinking. Then she's gone. Off to join the battle.

Blood drip drip drips from my outstretched hand onto the floor.

Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.

It's cold.

There is a scraping noise. I look towards its source and see that the little girl has climbed up to join me. She glows like a star now. Her brilliant, blinding, blistering thoughts fill my mind once more, and in my state of blood loss induced cold, I am glad of the warmth.

"What's your name?" I manage to ask. It hurts to talk.

"Amaterasu," she replies.

That's a pretty name. I wonder what it means. I don't say so. "Did you enjoy your meal, Amaterasu?"

She nods, smiling a smile of sated hunger. "Very much," she says. She draws near, and her smile grows wider. "You're marked. He's marked. She's marked. You're all three marked. You have the sign."

Marked? Sign? I wonder if she's mad. I wonder if I'm mad. I don't say anything. I don't want her to leave. I want her to stay so I can feel her terrible, wonderful thoughts.

I don't want to be alone.

"You're all three marked," she says, reaching forward. "But you - you belong to me." She puts her hand on my forehead, and light and warmth fills my world.

She's gone. I feel warm. For the first time in days, I don't hurt. I don't hurt!
I look down. The blood is dry. The wounds are gone. The bruises are gone. The three broken ribs no longer trouble me.

I am healed.

The sound of gunfire is everywhere. I rise to my feet, clench and unclench my fists, and smile.

I call down the darkness upon me and stride out into battle.

The Gogajin have broken through Goshi's lines. Chaos reigns in the chamber. The smell of gunpowder mixes with the smell of blood and sweat and death, and I feel as though I have come home.

The thoughts of the wounded, and the dying fill my mind. Biomade thoughts. The thoughts of those still fighting. Moses's thoughts. Kiyoshi's thoughts.

There. Moses fights three Heishi by himself. One looks to be either dead or unconscious. I feel pride. Not a symbol alone, but also effective.

He staggers as a hole blossoms in his metal arm. I look up. A sniper reloads his rifle. There are two sniper nests.

It's only a ten meter jump. I leap up and deal with the fool, planting my psi-knife between his eyes before I kick him off the platform.

He lands face down in the chamber below, his legs bent at unnatural angles. I make a mental note to make sure to kill him later. I scoop up his rifle and take aim at the two snipers across the way.

One. A sniper drops. He is alive, but that's fine. Hopefully, he will die of blood loss. At the very least, he's out of the fight.

The other sniper returns fire, but within the darkness I evade the shot with ease. Two. The second sniper drops. He is also alive. I feel disappointed. At least he's out of the battle. The two crawl towards the door at the rear of the sniper's nest.

The little girl enters the chamber below. The battle continues. A group of Gogajin have reached the exit and are pounding on the six inch steel door. Moses battles on. Kiyoshi and Una cut bloody swathes through the Goshi soldiers.

My heart lifts at the sight. My heart sings for battle and death.

Amaterasu reaches the center of the chamber and begins to levitate.

I hop down from the sniper's nest and walk towards her, firing the sniper rifle from my hip. Recoil is a bitch, but it proves effective enough, downing several soldiers. It is times like this that I understand the way Aimi feels. I feel it, too. Death is like a light, blood is like a rose: you never loved your friends, my friends, as I have loved my foes.

Amaterasu glows brighter and brighter. Bullets whip through her form leaving both her and her white dress unscathed. I stand beneath her, staring up at her as she glows brighter and brighter. It hurts to look. I shut my eyes and I can still see the light through my eyelids. Her thoughts are everywhere now. The light grows, and the darkness I'd cloaked myself in evaporates. Light is everything. I am she and she is we and we are all together.

There is a terrible roar, light pulses around her, and beams of purest golden light flash out from her body, each one cutting a swath of destruction through the Goshi troops.

I watch in awe. Every soldier the light touches burns away like film on a light bulb. They burn. They burn like moths in the path of a torch. Embers float in the air like brilliant red butterflies, and are gone.

It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

The light fades. Vision returns slowly. The Goshi soldiers are gone.
Dead. Amaterasu is gone and a vast hole is opened in the ceiling. The blue sky shines through.

I feel vaguely drunk. I look up and can't help but giggle. "I think I'll keep her," I say.

----------------

The crowds of the city greet Moses like a hero. The others are surprised to see me healed, and seem uncertain when I tell them that Amaterasu restored me. The battle-haze is past, and I wonder if it's right to enjoy the struggle of life and death. Moses seemed deeply disturbed when I called what the girl did, 'beautiful,' and that unease seems intent on burrowing down into my brain.

Sometimes, I wish I couldn't read people's minds.

We are led to a tenament off the beaten path, where we and the Gogajin take shelter for the evening. For the first time in a week, I am able to bathe. Well, clean myself, anyways. The mechified of the tenament have the uniform of what they call 'a Goshi assassin' who was slain by the insurgency, and they offer it to me. I am happy to get out of the heishi uniform.

We settle in for the night, and Moses tells me that he saw Aimi. I ask him not to kill her if they meet again, and he seems disturbed by the news that she is my sister. There's something in his eyes that bothers me. His thoughts are distrustful. I fear what she may have told him, but whatever it is, he neither tells me nor thinks about it.

In the morning, Una and Kiyoshi leave to visit one of Kiyoshi's contacts in order to get us out of the city. The Gogajin need medical attention. I am willing to leave them to die, but do not voice this opinion.

I don't like it when the others look at me as if I were a monster.

There are no doctors who can help them.

I don't want Moses to distrust me. I offer to procure a doctor for the use of the Gogajin.

Moses looks at me distrustfully. "Can you do it without hurting anyone?" he asks.

In his mind, he sees me clubbing the doctor over the head, hefting him over my back, and dragging him back here. It's irritating. I want to tell him not to worry. I want to tell him that I won't hurt anyone. I want to tell him why I haven't killed him. I want to tell him that I've never had friends before. That freedom is more than I could have dared to dream. That if only my siblings could see what I saw...

I don't. "I will refrain from harming the doctor if it is feasible," I say, and then leave with the little boy who lives at the tenemant, Cog, in tow. All the things I wanted to say blow away like autumn leaves.

Damn it.

2 comments:

Joshua M Lee said...

Rei is one screwed up little girl. I love it!

Aric Clark said...

I second the 'screwed up little girl' comment. Nice job Paul. Way to really get this into Rei's perspective. This is a great way for everyone to get to know each other's characters.


Ruins

Cities