Episode 28: Go Down Moses

First Minds.

First Minds, all watching me with those eyes so much like mine, so much like Nero's. I want to rush forward and embrace them all. I want to tell them everything. I want this moment, this culmination to last forever. I want to hold them still while Amaterasu devours them, and laugh while they die.

Rei, tasty-tasty-tasty white-rock ooooh let me out mana mana manamanamana tasty mana-beings and I will share with you, oh yes, if you let me out to feed I am generous and will give you lovely bits of mana...

I sometimes wonder how I ever got by without Amaterasu-chan. They're all watching me now. "You went on ahead," The One Who Bridges The Gap says. "Tell us of your time on the planet. How long have you been here? Did you come of your own free will, or were you called?"

"Many, many years," I reply. "I was called to this place by the meddling of a man named Inase Spark. A man who meddled overmuch with the Stone That Shines to the Stars."

One of the First Minds looks to the One Who Bridges The Gap, and I know that I have been discovered.

"Inase Spark," The One Who Bridges the Gap replies, "That makes sense. And you are aware of our decision? About the question?"

He knows. He knows. He knows. I don't care. I stand my ground. "Decision?"

"Yes. Made after great deliberation by the conclave."

He explains. He explains that they sought a way to halt the unraveling by controlled consumption, but it was not enough. It delayed the process of the unraveling, but did not halt it. He explains that the conclave decided that if they were to cease to be, then they would not cease before the Question had come to a satisfactory answer, and the only satisfactory answer would be one of their own choosing: 'No.'

Mikomi, Mikomi, Reikomi, Mikorei... it looks so tasty, all that white-rock, all that mana, oh please let me out. I'll give you a present! Mana! You like mana, don't you Rei? I know you do. You like it just as much as I do, and look at all of it sitting there in that whiterock and in those scrumptious, scrumptious Firsty-Minds, oh let me out, please, please, please...

Is this what it feels like to go mad? No. Moses and Kiyoshi think I'm crazy, but I'm not. Ama-chan keeps me sane. That's her gift to me. Her thoughts shine like the sun, and now, so do mine. Wonderful, burning thoughts like sunbeams searing through meat and bone...

"Some of us opposed the answering of the question on our own. They called it self-indulgent. We have... silenced them. Destroyed them. There are none of us who are not Resistors, now. No tools of the All who are not Resistors can be allowed to exist. But you know this."

I nod, playing along, although both of us know that it's only that. I wonder why he hasn't tried to kill me, and I can only suppose that he's curious about... me. About a hybrid. Half Cheldrun, half First Mind? ... I don't know what to think of that. I don't feel divided into halves. I feel like me.

I feel like you, too.

Thanks, Ama-chan.

"I have encountered the tools of the All native to this world. The Dusk Sages," I say.

"Ah, then you have destroyed them?"

I nod. "That is a fair assessment."

He looks at me for a long moment. "... Good. If that's so, then the DisLocators should stop working, but perhaps they have outlived their usefulness."

It is only sheer force of will that prevents me from visibly reacting to that statement. My thoughts race. I had no idea. No idea. But looking back at it now, it's so obvious, so very obvious...

What's obvious is that you should let me out, Rei-chan. Rei-chan Rei-chan Mikomikomiko-chan, Rei-chan Rei-chan Mik0mikomiko-chan... Deliciousness, deliciousness...

I swallow once before I trust my voice to continue. "And what of the Kyo-TeeShee?" At his confused look, I explain: "The Oni of the Dusk Sages."

"Irrelevant. Ultimately, they will serve our ends, whether they know it or not."

"I see."

He looks at me with a horribly seeing sort of gaze, then, and he says, "One Who Hopes, you will fulfill your part in the conjunction that is to come, yes?"

I feel a peculiar sense of crawling within my skin, and I barely repress a shudder. "What would you have me do?" I ask.

"The life of Karia will attempt a meeting: a misguided meeting. You have lived among them. They think you one of them. You must ensure that the Answers to the Question fizzle out before the grand conjunction can occur."

"... I'll see what I can do," I say. My eyes stray to the White-Rock.

Tasty, tasty, and I promise to share!

He nods, and the others seem satisfied.

"If the kyo-teeshee will ultimately serve your goals regardless of what they will," I say, summoning forth Ama-chan as a primal fire, "Then maybe we should let them get to it."

Ama-chan, feed.

I attempt to teleport.

Nothing.

Amaterasu surges towards the White-Rock, but even as she moves, the Dusk Sages simply reach up their hands, and chunks of her break off and flow into them, and she shrieks in agony. For a long tortured moment I see her, my other self, writhing in agony being torn to pieces as the First Minds feed on her. In a panic, I draw her back to me, and she flows into a corner of my mind and into my arms, gibbering and weeping, and her pain staggers me.

"You should go now," The One Who Bridges the Gap tells me, looking at me disapprovingly.

I nod, barely containing my wrath, my anger, my hatred for these beings. THEY HURT AMA-CHAN. "You'll have to forgive her. She's a bit... impetuous." I meet The One Who Bridges the Gap's gaze. "I'll see you again," I say.

"Perhaps. If you are not unraveled before then."

I teleport, and for a moment it catches... and then I slip through, as though I had only left because they allowed it.

It rankles. First Minds, how it rankles... hah! I can't swear by them anymore. My destination... my destination is the only place I know of where they might be able to help Ama-chan:
The Grand Chantry.

Even as I vanish in a puff of smoke, I wonder how deep their influence goes, how much is my will and how much theirs, and whether my connection to them might be the doom of us all.

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

*Teleport*

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

It's briefly disorienting, suddenly being elsewhere. All at once, I am in the central plaza of the Grand Chantry, nevergems gleaming brilliantly all around, the noises of the Prill city ring loudly in my ears. They do not react well to the sight of someone appearing in a whirl of smoke. The alarm is sounded almost immediately. Songs of alarm, songs of warning, songs of protection, songs of destruction. The latter are aimed at me, I suppose.

Amaterasu's pain snaps me out of my daze, and I call out, "I mean no harm! I need help! I need to see Elder Moon!"

After a few tense moments, a confused voice calls out. "Rei?"

I look up, and familiarity hits me like a physical blow. For a moment I don't understand what I'm seeing, and then... "Ramora?" I ask.

People are staring, and Amaterasu is bleeding a thin rainbow coloured liquid. Her right arm is gone, and there are large chunks missing from her abdomen. My heart clenches.

"Rei, what are you doing here? We heard that you had all died!"

I look up. For the briefest of moments I see Mokuzai all in bits and pieces before me. "We're alive. We were on the Wandering Star."

Ramora breathes a sigh of relief. "Thank the Sages for that. You have to tell Elder Moon. She's been in a panic for days, saying that Elder Mokuzai is dead!"

Pain. For a moment I'm not sure if it's mine or Amaterasu's. Maybe it doesn't matter. I look away. "... Mokuzai is dead," I reply.

He staggers visibly, going absolutely pale.

"I need to see Elder Moon," I say.

The meeting doesn't go well. I try, but Moon is full of grief and pain. Her mate is dead, and it is a strange word. The strangeness of the word does not make him less dead. She will not help Amaterasu. She says that the war will never end, that there is no peace.

I try to explain. I try to tell her about how even if the war will never end, it's still worthwhile to fight to preserve today, and the next day. That it's still worth fighting, for one another.

She tells me not to return unless it's with Mokuzai's body.

I leave her to her grief.

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

*Teleport*

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

The world lurches, and all at once I am in the glade outside of the Grand Chantry where Inari's Grandmother once stood. The glade still shows signs of Asamu-Oni's influence. Grass grows only from those few patches of ground that avoided his touch, and the fallen tree which still dominates much of the glade is a chalky gray colour, like ashes. I smell decay.

Amaterasu's pain still hovers in the back of my mind, and I will need to teleport again today. A deer trail runs across the edge of the glade, and I notice fresh droppings alongside it. I examine the area for a few moments, and then set out westward. Five minutes later, I come across a sickly hart lying on its side and panting for breath, it antlers digging deep furrows in the earth.

My psychic knife flickers to life.

It only takes two strikes. Two strikes, and I am full of energy again. It feels good, and I feel vaguely unsettled about that.

As I walk back towards the clearing, I offer Ama-chan some mana, which she eats greedily. It seems to go a long way towards healing her. Then I try to teleport back to the Sennin... and nothing happens. There's a hollow sense in my head, and I can't account for it.

I sit down and think for a moment. If they're no longer on the Wandering Star, then where would they be?

Una... probably wouldn't care where they went. The psychological stress factors caused by a continuous depressed state seem to have drained her volition.

High Dive... probably wouldn't care where they went, since she's happy as long as she has candy and things to kill.

Kiyoshi... maybe to visit his family in Matamos?

Moses...

My eyes widen, and I distinctly recall him having said that he needed to go to Geneva Prime and speak with Katashi Blade. "He wouldn't..." I whisper.

He would. That sounds like exactly the sort of thing he would do.

I rise to my feet and reabsorb Amaterasu for the journey, and then I teleport.
Home.

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

*Teleport*

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

Home.

My room materializes around me, and for a moment it is just as I left it, shielded bed in the center, a desk off to the side, a dresser with two week's worth of clothing it it in the far corner, cameras lining the walls.

But it's not real. It's less than a memory. An echo of what was. The distant past, and not even compelling enough to seem like more than the memory of an unpleasant dream. My knife flickers to life on my hand, and its pink glow displays the truth of the room. The desk is gone. The dresser is gone. The bed is gone. The cameras are gone. Dust covers the bare floor, and not even force or energy flow through the walls, floor, and ceiling.

Empty. Less than a memory.

I open a panel next to the door and hit the manual release for the door's magnetic clamp. It pops open with a faint hiss, and I slip out into the greater complex.

Empty. Dark. Dusty. Nothing except for me and my psychic knife.

And then Ama-chan is with me, shining, illuminating the hallway, and I'm no longer alone. It's a strange thing to have company here. It's like... having another Aimi, maybe. Ama-chan isn't very much like Aimi, though. Though I suppose they do both kill people spectacularly. I find myself wondering where Malicious is in all this, whether she's working for Katashi Blade as well, or escaped, or dead, or... I don't know why that would bother me. I hate her.

I walk past the corridor where Malicious mind-blasted me for 'being difficult,' and I can almost feel the pain of it all over again.

"I'm hungry," Amaterasu says as we walk.

I roll my eyes. "You're always hungry."

"Mana?" she asks, a hopeful look on her face. And then there is a flicker of... I don't know. Something. I don't know what she's thinking. "Onee-san, please?"

I stop in my tracks and stare at the little girl walking next to me. Onee-san.
Older sister.

It makes me... happy?

"Maybe later," I say fondly. "When we find Moses, I might need you to shine for me, Ama-chan. If I give you some mana, can you do that?"

She nods enthusiastically. "Mana mana mana-mana-mana," she sing-songs, and initiates a series of movements which I do not immediately recognize. A moment later, I realize that she is dancing. Dancing and... singing? I don't catch all of the lyrics, but it's a nonsense song about how tasty mana is, and how 'her Onee-san' gives her mana when she's hungry.'

I raise an eyebrow. Singing and dancing. I've heard of this, even seen the Gogajin do it during our stay with them, but it seems oddly out of place to see Ama-chan doing it. I find myself wondering exactly how much is left of the Dusk Sage that she was before she became a Kyo-TeeShee.

It is then that I notice a door ajar close at hand - the only door in the whole complex that I've found ajar. I turn.

Nero's room. My eyes widen ever so slightly, and I feel that old familiar mixture of emotional responses. Fear. Hatred. Familial affection. Rage. I see the boogeyman - the Enemy - hiding under my bed. I see the monster in the closet. I see the Jevuum Cheldrun-Eater that Sever and Stitch used to tell frightening stories about when we were younger. And all of these figures share one thing in common: They all have Nero's eyes.

I push the door fully open, and it clanks loudly against the blank wall within.

Empty. Sterilized. Nothing, except...
Except for the First Mind runes carved into the blank, empty walls, ceiling, and floor.

How long has this been going on, I wonder? How long has Nero known about this? He'd always seemed wrong, but when did it really begin for him? I wonder...

I turn away from his room and head for the exit, and Ama-chan follows just behind me.

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

I step into the tunnel system beneath Geneva Prime, and it is silent. At first.

It begins as whispers in the back of my skull. Just whispers. Whisperwhisperwhisper. I put a hand to my forehead, and Ama-chan looks at me questioningly.

"It's nothing," I say.

She nods. "Let's go somewhere where there's mana," she says.

I shake my head and call her back into me. She vanishes in a swirl of fire.

Her own thoughts like the sun join the whispers in my mind. I continue moving forward, and all at once the whispers crescendo into a roar that drowns out everything.

Everything.

I... I is a category mistake. We are the underground market. We are Samophlange Jack, and Ishmael, and Yamamoto Eiko of the Jade Falcon clan, and Tamaguchi Unryu of the Ruby Hawk clan, and the beggar on the street who lost everything when Goshi deposed the government, and the purveyor of knick-knacks who hates his job, and the courtesan living in luxury when her whole family fell into ruin now accompanying a minor Goshi executive to a hotel on the other side of the city, and the message boy whose mother warned him to be very careful in the underground, and the father showing his chidren the underground market, and the nobleman pretending to be a biomade buying a rifle from a gun shop, and the pregnant Allskin woman - Aiko - making her way home after a long day working as a barmaid, and the young thief whose hand was even now coming near the being that bore the function of the underground market, but he sees that she is in pain, and falls to her knees, and she has a psychic gauntlet, and that's bad news so he draws back and goes the other way... and... and... and... and...
‘God that woman is hot. I would do her again and again.’
‘I wish he wouldn’t look at me like that.’
‘I want an ice cream cone.’
‘I hate this job.’
‘I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU HATE YOU HATE YOU!’
‘Maybe I should just tell him off.’
‘Here’s how to...’
‘I will always love you.’
'Why did I ever decide it was a good idea to have a baby?'
‘I want...’
‘I wonder what would happen if I cut my finger off. I guess I wouldn't have a finger.’
‘That’s a big...’
'Don't talk to strangers. Don't talk to strangers. Don't talk to strangers.'
‘It’s the thing you hate the most.’
‘I’m getting old. Old and fat. Fat and bald and old. I hate my life. I hate my job. I hate my stupid, fat, bald, old face.’
‘Looks like you gained a few pounds, you cow.’
'Mama said be careful. I mustn't talk to strangers.'
‘Do you often sing or whistle just for fun? What does that mean?’
‘It’s the thing you hate the most.’

‘I want...’
‘I HATE YOU HATE YOU HATE YOU HATE YOU...’
‘I should tell her how I feel. Even if she doesn’t like me, she might still be willing to do me.’
‘Old, fat, bald, stupid... Age is against me. The world is against me. The children here are lucky. They’re young. Not like me.'
‘Oh God. I knew this was going to happen.’
'Why won't daddy buy me an ice cream? I WANT AN ICE CREAM!'
and...
and...
and...
and...
and...
and I come to my senses with a shocking kind of suddenness.

I am standing at the entrance to the underground market, and the long missed background hum of the minds of everyone around me buzzes comfortably in the back of my awareness. I realize with a start that it has been months since I had been in the presence of more than seventeen Cheldrun minds simultaneously, and I brush my hair out of my eyes and move on.

'Oh shit, isn't that Rei?'

The thought is faint but clear, and I immediately turn towards the mind from whence it came.

There.

I follow the figure around the corner, and...
I blink. She looks familiar, somehow.

... "Terry?" I ask. Terry the Canary. The mechified who was with the UMA... so long ago.

She stares at me in horror, and I am her. Oh First Minds this is bad I can't be seen with her with Rei I already told them everything and they'll think I'm with the UMA! Oh, First minds this is bad, oh fuck, I can't be seen with her...!

No. I know who I am and what I want, at least for now. I am Rei, and I want to save Moses from his own bad judgment, his own poor strategic planning.

"I'll let you be on your way on two conditions, Terry. First, answer my questions. Second, forget you ever saw me. Is this an acceptable arrangement?"

She nods. "What are you doing here, Rei?" she asks, and in her head, she is screaming.

"Following Moses," I say. "Here to be a hero."

At the mention of Moses, her thoughts go into overdrive panic-mode. "You're way, way too late," she says. "Where were you when Goshi was taking over? You ran away. You and the others. You left us here."

"It's never too late, Terry," I say. "The time to be a hero is always 'now.'"

Her thoughts turn bitter. 'Yeah right, bitch. If you were really a hero, you'd do something about Mickey and the Surgeon.' And I see them both. Mickey, driven nearly mad by Nero's psychic thumb print. The Surgeon, black-listed and destitute.

I consider the two alternatives. The Surgeon would be more tactically useful, and I might actually be able to help him: I don't know if I can do anything for Mickey. "Where's the Surgeon?" I ask.

She holds up a brown paper bag and thinks of his address. "I was just on my way to take him some lunch before I ran into you," she says. She doesn't think of me as 'Rei' in her mind. She thinks of me as 'Assassin bitch.'

I hold out my hand. "Give me the lunch, and I'll take it to him," I say.

She looks at me incredulously for a moment, but she does hand me the lunch.

"Goodbye," I say. I vanish, and I have just enough time to see her eyes widen in surprise before the Dislocation takes me to a small, dirty tenement in the middle of the Mechified slums. Goshi Tower looms large in the distance, and I hear the faint sound of explosions echoing off from somewhere, and smoke rising from... is that a rail line? I shake my head and enter the tenament.
He's at the bottom floor, and he is surprised to see me. His skills are being wasted here, and I tell him so, but he says that he's out of luck: he's been blacklisted. I think about the situation for a moment, and then I tell him the tactical situation: Moses is here.

He nearly chokes on the water he's drinking.

"He's here to kill Katashi Blade, but he's walking into an ambush. I will not allow Moses to die, Surgeon. It will not happen. In exchange for your assistance in saving him, we will take you with us. We can use a good medic, and we have both the means and the will to put your skills to good use."

He thinks it over for a moment, and then gives his mental assent. "What do you need?" he asks.

"Explosives. Lots of explosives."

He looks around at his run down, empty shop, then glances at me. "Well, I don't have that, but I do have something that might be helpful." He moves over to a curtain covering a hole in the wall at the back of the shop and pulls it aside. "Meet the Bronze god."

He steps out from behind the curtain, a... gogajin... mechified? His skin is puckered and horrifically scarred, and his mechanical parts are made out of bronze, but I still recognize the figure that steps forward.

It's not explosives, but it will do.

"Hello, Balder," I say in his own language.

He raises an eyebrow, looking me up and down. "Well, fuck me!" he says incredulously.

"No."

He laughs.

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

*Teleport*

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

Ten minutes later, after I've sent the Surgeon to the rendevous point outside the city and explained the situation to Balder and successfully enlisted his aid in mounting a rescue operation for Moses, we appear two floors short of the topmost floor of Goshi tower, and Balder immediately looks around for enemies. There are none. There is only the voice of an office lady assuring her lover over a comm-device that she's perfectly safe this high up.

Kiyoshi. Kiyoshi's thoughts. Kiyoshi's mind. In the elevator. Going up. Kiyoshi and Moses and... someone I don't recognize. Someone whose thoughts are cold and harsh and unwelcoming. Hurricane? No, she's dead. Rain. Going to see the Executor...

Oh hell.

The office lady notices us just as we are boarding the elevator. I tell her to get out of the building as fast as she can, and don't wait to see if she does it. The elevator only goes up one more floor. Damn. Not the right lift. We go up.

The doors open, and...

Una?

High Dive?

There they are, Una pacing back and forth in front of the lift, High Dive sitting in a corner in squirrel-form eating a whole bowl of candy.

For a moment, we all just stare at each other. Then Una asks, "Rei?"

There is a note of distrust in her voice that was not there before. It it... disconcerting.

"I brought Balder," I say as I step out of the elevator. "Why are you here, Una? Why aren't you up there with Kiyoshi and Moses?"

She looks suspicious. Is she... angry at me? Maybe. I can't tell. Karians are hard to read. "We're the backup," Una says. "We're supposed to go in if things get bad."

"Things are bad," I tell her. Things are very, very bad. I will not allow Moses to die. Not like this. Not at the hands of one of THEM.

"What do you mean?" Una asks.

" Katashi Blade is a First Mind."


1 comment:

Aric Clark said...

Awesome. Way to finish the post up, at last!


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