Episode 21: The Day Una Died Inside

Rei!? Of course. How else? It all happens whether we want it or not.

***

I think that being a pirate has made me a little crazy. And...I didn't really think about how big the ship was going to be. It's like a huge lizard-Vorax thing. It's...I don't even know how they built it.

Doesn't matter now. We're on a barge carrying a load of blackrock onto the ship. We're going to capture it, and go west, and maybe get some answers.

Or make them up, like we have been.

The taste of salt spray makes me glad, one more time, that I switched out my alloys. The shaped titanium is rust-resistant. And it still stops bullets.

The soldiers guarding the barge when it comes up into the ship aren't a problem. I feel a little bad for them because...it doesn't seem fair. But I know how this works - we'll have more than our share to deal with sometime today. All of Goshi's enemies are meeting in one place. The Vorax are going to...do something to themselves and try to blow up the meeting. Or something. And we're stealing the biggest ship on the oceans.

Someone, or something, pretty nasty will have to notice that.

***

Squeezed into a storage locker, I've got a lot of time to think. The nice thing is, I don't. I doze off. I wouldn't have done that before, but I do now. Whatever is coming for us is going to happen, and we'll deal with it. Oni, Hei-Shi, crazy Vorax...whatever. Everything will work out.

I realize what I'm thinking, and that's when I really get nervous.

I hear the fireworks! It's time.

Swelling, surging up and out, it goes past where I think it will, and suddenly I'm looking down on the ship; the others are like mice swarming around my feet - except for one. He's not Kyoshi's brother, but he looks like he means business. He's fast, but it's like fighting a Zipsum - I'm too dense for most of it to get through.

I notice little bursts of black cloud in the sky, and...my heart leaps. I admit it.

I want them here. The mecha-fighter and I agree - first things first.

I squash and scatter blue-beetle Hei-Shi, and the mecha slices them up. I can't tell, behind his mask, but I know I for one am smiling.

For just a bit, I think - I want to go back to Geneva Prime someday, and do this until there aren't any Hei-Shi left.

***

We clear the deck, but there are something like a million soldiers on their way. But this ship has other ships inside of it, and we head down to one of them. I'm eager to get on our way before we get swarmed, and we're all tired. (Well, not Highdive). We go down into the hold - I'm carrying a huge container of blackrock. We reach the smaller ship, still bigger than anything I've been on but the blackrock barge, but someone's beaten us there. Kyoshi goes down to deal with whoever it is...

Aimi.

I remember when we first met, and I made her a promise.

I keep my promises.

She's tricky - she's going to stab Kyoshi so he can't move, and then probably run when she sees Rei - I don't think she can fight them both. So I hunker down next to the door to grab her when she goes past. I know my one shot is to just smother her and not let go until...

Well. I don't wait long. I time it so before I even see her pink hair I'm on top of her, using my weight and size. Rei is coming up after her. Everything goes red-tinged, and I'm back in the blackrock mine, fighting Goshi, seeing people die, smashing Hei-Shi and eyeless, and here she is, all the way from that past I wanted to leave behind. I can end it here. Kyoshi will be furious, and she's Rei's sister, but Aimi will never learn. Titanium is a lot harder than bone. I -

"Moses, don't hurt her!"

Aimi goes limp under me, and Rei is there, but I don't look up.

And I realize...I don't want to kill her. I just want her to leave us alone.

But she never will.

Rei and Kyoshi and Aimi talk, and I start building a steel cage for her out of the broken container of blackrock. She laughs at the ropes Rei takes out.

Lets see her laugh at being bolted to the deck.

***

Outside, the clear, bright air fills with wonder on wings - a flight of Vorax, the last flight, circling and dancing on the thermals, flitting along the paths of the breezes, turning and falling and climbing, twisting around each other. Una is watching.

She watches as they dance, trying to remember, to save this moment forever.

And then it changes. The dance turns. The Vorax are swooping down and tearing into people down below. But one of them swells and grows. His aged skin splits and his entrails pour out of him, wrapping around, crawling across his swelling form, viscera and tendons and muscle glistening sickly in the sun

His beak unhinges, swells, grows, thickens, his eyes bloat and slide out of their growing sockets, followed by gouts of thick, dark blood.

A voice shakes the air, so that we all hear it, the city hears it, Una hears it as if she is the only one there.

I am Karaku-Oni, The One Who Burns!

Una might try to forget, but she won't.