Oni.
Always the Oni, pressing our defensive lines. I can feel the after-echoes of a thousand panicked soldiers. Moses's thoughts shine like a beacon, and Kiyoshi's are, as ever, veiled behind the void.
The Oni are attacking en masse.
We have no choice but to face them. We're the only ones who can.
We go.
There they are, striding across the battlefield like demons. Karaku-Oni lays a dozen bunkers to waste with molten light. Asamu-Oni flows over a division and it ages to death even as it fights. Suraisu-Oni sends piledriver after piledriver blow towards a mecha edged in silver flames, and I realize at once that this is Ichirou, fighting at the side of his men. Before we move, I drape a telepathic sensory net around the minds of each of my companions, and a window-within-window field of their own perceptions snaps into being in my sight.
We are as prepared as we will ever be.
We leap from the Sennin and descend on the battle, katas whirling. I get a brief glimpse of Suraisu-Oni sending a bludgeon my way. Then something hits me, and my thoughts are scattered. I land on my feet, barely. There is heat, and a bright light, and I look up just in time to see Karaku-Oni's molten beams converging on... me.
There is heat, and pain, and a bright green light, and then darkness for the instant between the destruction of my optic nerves and the cooking of my brain inside my skull. ... For an instant, it seems to take forever. I have time. Time to realize that I'm about to die. Time to realize that I've failed. Time to feel the heat searing through my face and my body. Time ... reverses.
There is pain, and then a glorious burst of vision, and I can see the world again. Karaku-Oni's beams flow back into his wingtips, and I ascend. The damage caused by Suraisu-Oni is undone, and I ascend. Back... back... back into the Sennin, and suddenly we are not yet upon the battle, and High Dive is panting for breath.
I stare.
"High Dive," I manage after a moment. "... Thank you."
The others are determined to stop the Oni, and I cannot let them go alone, but I will not suffer the same fate again. I refuse to die such a meaningless death.
We leap from the Sennin, and I head straight for Suraisu-Oni. With one hand I call up a hundred black tentacles, each one seeking out a target in the horde of eyeless below, each one sustaining me, filling me with power. My mind expands, and I focus it all into my right hand. My psychic knife crackles with energy as I descend towards Suraisu-Oni, and all at once I see Mokuzai, mangled and dead, beneath those pistons, and my vision goes red.
I plant the blade in the Oni's chest and hiss, "This is for Mokuzai, you bastard," releasing a massive pulse of psychic energy directly into whatever it is that passes for the creature's nervous system.
It looks down at the blade for a moment, almost nonplussed, and then falls over, paralyzed.
I feel... satisfaction.
I have no time to dwell on the minor victory. Kiyoshi, Una, and the others are already in motion. High Dive dashes to the front of the battle and does... something. There is a green pulse of light, and every Oni and every Eyeless on the battlefield immediately turns its attention to her.
In an instant, she's gone, dashing off towards the horizon with the Oni and the Eyeless army in pursuit.
Moses and I exchange incredulous looks. Then he and Ichirou pin the paralyzed Suraisu-Oni and lop off his head with Ichirou's mecha-sized katana.
I watch for a long moment as my friends rush into battle. Moses striding forward, glowing like a coal, Kiyoshi carried in Una's talons as she carries him from location to location, High Dive leading the entire enemy army by the nose, and I'm at a loss.
What can I do to help here? Even with my katas, I'm not much of a fighter. There's nothing I can do here that will equal their efforts.
The whispers of a thousand panicked thoughts catch my attention, and I realize abruptly that there is something I can do after all. I sit atop the bunker even as Ichirou descends to direct his army, and I reach out with my mind, brimming with power.
I am Ichirou.
I am Lightning.
I am Matthew.
I am a soldier drowning in his own blood.
I am an artillery operator, determined to do her job.
I am an officer, frantically directing his men and hoping desperately that they don't realize how fucking terrified I am.
I am a Heishi, watching the battle with jaw dropped open and horrified beyond all measure.
My mind expands. More. More. More.
This soldier. That soldier. A dozen over here. Fifty officers across the battlefield. Sixty artillery operators. More.
I am Allskin, Biomade, Mechified all united within one mind:
I am Cheldrun. A thousand minds united, until 'I' is a term which scarcely holds meaning.
I see the battle from a thousand viewpoints at once, and the intensity of the experience nearly overwhelms me.
Then I begin to exert my will. To direct myself, and through me, our army.
Moses grapples with Asamu-Oni. Una and High Dive do battle with the great rotting beast. High Dive flashes across my perceptions in the blink of an eye.
The battle rages, and my joy is infectious.
I can see. Everything.
All one and one all. Kiyoshi and Una have destroyed the great beast and seek out their next target. I spare a moment's attention to telekinetically extract Moses from Asamu-Oni's body, and another to send a blast of black energy into the horde of Eyeless that had surrounded High Dive at last.
I gesture, and she floats towards me.
Una snatches her up a moment later, and I release her, returning my attention to... everything.
A moment later, she deposits High-Dive in my lap. I absently rub the Zipsum's belly as we wait for her to recover from having exerted herself far too much.
Kiyoshi can't get close to the thing that had been Katashi Blade. I send out the telepathic call: "Concentrate all artillery fire on this point." This point? The Oni.
He ignores the first volley, his shield absorbing the majority of it.
... He is not so lucky with the second. The Oni vanishes in a storm of smoke and flame.
The battle rages on. High Dive returns to the fight, and brings death everywhere she goes. Asamu-Oni is dead: Moses killed him. Garandu-Oni is dispatched a moment later, and then all at once, it is only Karaku-Oni who remains.
Una fights him like a mad thing, and I do not understand her actions: she is nearly killed, but she does allow Kiyoshi and High Dive the time they need to close.
Karaku-Oni sees me. Rei-me. I am almost unaware of the danger. What does it matter if a part of me falls away? What is one part next to this... this... magnificence?
A molten beam strikes me in the chest, and I know pain, fear, and darkness. The gestalt shatters, and I am only Rei again. Minds whip about every which way for an instant... and then I come back to my senses, staring up at the figures of Kiyoshi and High Dive and Una as they tear Karaku-Oni to pieces.
It is done. The battle is over. I look down at my chest and see the flesh knitting over the exposed bone, pain receding, muscle and tissue actively regenerating.
Una's influence.
As soon as my lungs are functional again, I let out a long, slow breath.
We've won. For now. And yet I can't shake the feeling that something is about to change. ... I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. As Una helps me to my feet, I briefly wonder where Nero is in all this.
---------------
Elder Moon wants to speak with us: we return to Jin-Kalys' sanctum, and we there hear her make her case.
She thinks he knows how to solve the riddle of peace. I am ready to dismiss her at once, but something stops me. A feeling. A strange thought, bubbling up from my memories of the gestalt, and for a moment I'm not sure if I'm Rei, Ichirou, Matthew, or something else entirely.
I hear her speaking as if from far away, but much closer is the old, familiar whisper of Inase Spark, drowning out even Amaterasu's insistence that I must not do whatever it is that Elder Moon is suggesting.
Thoughts of fear. Thoughts of relief.
I rise to my feet.
Moses can sense Zippora's pain and horror, and I wonder how that's possible: he's no telepath. Aimi knows. She can sense it immediately, even on the other side of Stardown. Kiyoshi hasn't given enough thought to the psychic consequences of having been intimate with a telepath. She knows.
Elder Moon is speaking, and I'm trying to think of a way to overcome the Oni by force of arms, and all I hear is my father's voice.
"Obsessed with death, with pain, with suffering. If death is all you can see, then death is all you deserve."
I look up, startled.
There he is, with the void all around. There he is, looking older now, as he did when I saw him in the wreck of the Bosphorous.
Inase Spark.
"I don't want to die," I say.
"Is that really true?" he asks.
... No. No, it's not. You can't feel the joy of battle and not wish to taste it.
"You're not alone, Mikomi," he says. "You have long held things worth fighting for. Do you have anything worth dying for?"
I stare at him for a long moment.
All at once, I'm standing with the others in Jin Kalys' sanctum, and Elder Moon is echoing my own words back to me even as Amaterasu shrieks to drown her out: "We must be willing to sacrifice ourselves by the thousands - by the millions - for one another. Wasn't it you who said that, Rei?"
...
Sacrifice.
She wants us to use the machine. The machine and Moses's machine combined. Sacrifice.
Purpose.
I nod. I understand. Amaterasu disagrees, but for once, I ignore her.
I think I finally understand Purpose.
And that's when everything goes to hell.
Showing posts with label Rei. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rei. Show all posts
Falling
I'm falling. Falling towards the massive Oni. The stench is everywhere, and I can feel my flesh writhing beneath its influence. Una's power fights its influence, but only just.
It's different this time.
Black tentacles pulse from the bodies of a hundred twisted, bloated, cancerous Goshi soldiers, drawing... something out of them. I devour their minds. Their psychic potential gutters out like a candle in a hurricane, and my mind expands. Power rushes through me, and the hunger that's been my companion ever since I first used this power is sated. For the moment.
It feels different. Channels of power. Before, I'd had all this power in me but no way to use it. Now...
My mind expands. First Minds, but it expands. The walls come down, and I can feel them all. So many minds. So very many minds. This Goshi soldier, that Goshi soldier, Ichirou, Kiyoshi, Moses, the half-Cheldrun child within Zippora, Aimi, this refugee, that refugee, Biomades, Allskins, Mechified, on and on and on, a flood of sensation both familiar and utterly alien that defies description.
I lose myself in the flood. I is no longer a relevant term. Over a thousand minds are united in this body, and for one glorious moment, I am.
... I come back to awareness. I'm not sure how much time has passed, but I know that I am Rei, and the sense of individual identity seems like a loss. They're still there, the minds of a thousand others, but I'm filtering the sensations more... efficiently.
I'm still falling. The entire experience took but a few seconds.
The Oni is dead. Cut down by Kiyoshi, Una, Moses, and High Dive. It's exploded into slime, and raining down on the battlefield. We're two hundred meters up.
Kiyoshi is falling.
Moses is falling.
Normally, I'd reach for Kiyoshi, but it feels different this time.
I feel... powerful.
I reach out with my mind, and Moses, weighing half a ton as he does, floats to the ground as gently as a feather.
I put him on the foremost tank in the column.
Shuddering and filled with power, I descend. And below me, Kiyoshi, Una, and High Dive slice their way through an entire Goshi division like the gods they are.
It's different this time.
Black tentacles pulse from the bodies of a hundred twisted, bloated, cancerous Goshi soldiers, drawing... something out of them. I devour their minds. Their psychic potential gutters out like a candle in a hurricane, and my mind expands. Power rushes through me, and the hunger that's been my companion ever since I first used this power is sated. For the moment.
It feels different. Channels of power. Before, I'd had all this power in me but no way to use it. Now...
My mind expands. First Minds, but it expands. The walls come down, and I can feel them all. So many minds. So very many minds. This Goshi soldier, that Goshi soldier, Ichirou, Kiyoshi, Moses, the half-Cheldrun child within Zippora, Aimi, this refugee, that refugee, Biomades, Allskins, Mechified, on and on and on, a flood of sensation both familiar and utterly alien that defies description.
I lose myself in the flood. I is no longer a relevant term. Over a thousand minds are united in this body, and for one glorious moment, I am.
... I come back to awareness. I'm not sure how much time has passed, but I know that I am Rei, and the sense of individual identity seems like a loss. They're still there, the minds of a thousand others, but I'm filtering the sensations more... efficiently.
I'm still falling. The entire experience took but a few seconds.
The Oni is dead. Cut down by Kiyoshi, Una, Moses, and High Dive. It's exploded into slime, and raining down on the battlefield. We're two hundred meters up.
Kiyoshi is falling.
Moses is falling.
Normally, I'd reach for Kiyoshi, but it feels different this time.
I feel... powerful.
I reach out with my mind, and Moses, weighing half a ton as he does, floats to the ground as gently as a feather.
I put him on the foremost tank in the column.
Shuddering and filled with power, I descend. And below me, Kiyoshi, Una, and High Dive slice their way through an entire Goshi division like the gods they are.
Episode 34: The Place Where Stars Fall
It's not enough to want to change. It's not enough to regret the things gone by. Not really. Not after looking at the world through the mask of the Dusk Sage. There's never enough time for anything. Nothing ever seems to live out its real potential. Potential is invariably cut short. Snuffed out. Murdered.
By people like me.
As the Sennin lifts off from the clearing where Inari's grandmother once stood, with the tribute to the Vorax glowing down below us, it occurs to me for the first time just how alien the existence of a Dusk Sage must be. I look down at the mask in my hands. That's how it saw the universe. Every waking second, it could see what is, what was, what could be, what must not.
The sacrifice of the Vorax. An entire species put to the flame for one last chance to strike back at Malice. At the Cheldrun. Is there anything left of them within Karaku-Oni, I wonder? When we finally extinguish him, will we be destroying the last testament of the Vorax?
Revenge.
The potential existence of everything in the room with me is frighteningly short. The Sennin is not likely to last beyond another few months. Neither am I. I can't tell if that's what will be, what could be, or what is.
I take off the Dusk Sage mask and toss it lightly onto my bed.
Stardown. The place where stars fall. The person who named that place must have been a prophet.
We go.
----------------------
Stardown.
It stretches on for miles around the lake. Used to be a resort town, back before all this. Now it's a refugee camp.
Our arrival does not go unnoticed: there is a crowd there at the docks to meet us. Aimi is happy to be back in civilization. I'm not so sure. There's something about the Grand Chantry that's weirdly appealing, even for all that it lacks force and energy.
Here we are. Stardown.
Eventually, we're shown to a restaurant where we can get something to eat, and there's a humanoid lizard thing there. Una says that he's called an Anakarix. Ama-chan says that he'd have all sorts of tasty mana inside of him, and would I let her out for a second, please?
I think about it.
No. That's a bad idea.
I become lost in my thoughts for a time.
Stardown.
After dinner, we receive a tour. It's mostly dull, and as we walk, my thoughts wander again. It's easy to lose myself in a crowd like this. To become everyone around me. It's hard to concentrate with this many people, but I do. I find myself looking over the landscape with an eye for defensibility. That rise would make a serviceable firing position in a pinch. The buildings behind us would be good places to position snipers. That pass to the north would make...
The world dissolves into fractals.
Numbers. Lines. Points. Connections. Equations in the shape of Una smile at High Dive's antics. Equations in the shape of Kiyoshi look stern. Equations in the shape of Moses look horrified. I look upon my surroundings, and I see potential. Not how a Dusk Sage would see it, but how a strategist would see it. I see a line of dominoes rolling down towards us from the north, and another from above, intersecting with the northern line at multifaceted points.
I see a great hand reaching out of the sky.
I see millions of people calling my name. Calling Moses's name. Kiyoshi's. Una's. High Dive's.
Our victims.
I see all of Stardown drenched in the blood of Goshi soldiers, and I see millions dead at our feet.
I grin.
"Rei?" Una asks.
I look up.
I can't tell what she's thinking. She tells me that High Dive has agreed to... something. Something dangerous. Something about an inertial dampener in the center of the city? But when is anything High Dive does not dangerous?
We walk to the front of the street that leads to the main laboratory in Stardown, and as we walk, my grin doesn't fade, even as the conflicting horror at what I intend rises up in my heart to war with my delight.
Goshi is coming. I know what I have to do.
By people like me.
As the Sennin lifts off from the clearing where Inari's grandmother once stood, with the tribute to the Vorax glowing down below us, it occurs to me for the first time just how alien the existence of a Dusk Sage must be. I look down at the mask in my hands. That's how it saw the universe. Every waking second, it could see what is, what was, what could be, what must not.
The sacrifice of the Vorax. An entire species put to the flame for one last chance to strike back at Malice. At the Cheldrun. Is there anything left of them within Karaku-Oni, I wonder? When we finally extinguish him, will we be destroying the last testament of the Vorax?
Revenge.
The potential existence of everything in the room with me is frighteningly short. The Sennin is not likely to last beyond another few months. Neither am I. I can't tell if that's what will be, what could be, or what is.
I take off the Dusk Sage mask and toss it lightly onto my bed.
Stardown. The place where stars fall. The person who named that place must have been a prophet.
We go.
----------------------
Stardown.
It stretches on for miles around the lake. Used to be a resort town, back before all this. Now it's a refugee camp.
Our arrival does not go unnoticed: there is a crowd there at the docks to meet us. Aimi is happy to be back in civilization. I'm not so sure. There's something about the Grand Chantry that's weirdly appealing, even for all that it lacks force and energy.
Here we are. Stardown.
Eventually, we're shown to a restaurant where we can get something to eat, and there's a humanoid lizard thing there. Una says that he's called an Anakarix. Ama-chan says that he'd have all sorts of tasty mana inside of him, and would I let her out for a second, please?
I think about it.
No. That's a bad idea.
I become lost in my thoughts for a time.
Stardown.
After dinner, we receive a tour. It's mostly dull, and as we walk, my thoughts wander again. It's easy to lose myself in a crowd like this. To become everyone around me. It's hard to concentrate with this many people, but I do. I find myself looking over the landscape with an eye for defensibility. That rise would make a serviceable firing position in a pinch. The buildings behind us would be good places to position snipers. That pass to the north would make...
The world dissolves into fractals.
Numbers. Lines. Points. Connections. Equations in the shape of Una smile at High Dive's antics. Equations in the shape of Kiyoshi look stern. Equations in the shape of Moses look horrified. I look upon my surroundings, and I see potential. Not how a Dusk Sage would see it, but how a strategist would see it. I see a line of dominoes rolling down towards us from the north, and another from above, intersecting with the northern line at multifaceted points.
I see a great hand reaching out of the sky.
I see millions of people calling my name. Calling Moses's name. Kiyoshi's. Una's. High Dive's.
Our victims.
I see all of Stardown drenched in the blood of Goshi soldiers, and I see millions dead at our feet.
I grin.
"Rei?" Una asks.
I look up.
I can't tell what she's thinking. She tells me that High Dive has agreed to... something. Something dangerous. Something about an inertial dampener in the center of the city? But when is anything High Dive does not dangerous?
We walk to the front of the street that leads to the main laboratory in Stardown, and as we walk, my grin doesn't fade, even as the conflicting horror at what I intend rises up in my heart to war with my delight.
Goshi is coming. I know what I have to do.
Training an Army
"Let's make one thing perfectly clear," I say, looking out over the assembled officers. There's at least a hundred of them in this group, waiting to for us to finish. Ichirou has already said his piece, and it's typical Allskin rhetoric about fighting and dying with honour.
He should know better.
"The job of this army is not to die for the people of Stardown. If any of you have thoughts of dying honourably in the defense of millions, you're going to forget it, and forget it immediately." They give me strange looks at that, but I'm not done. "Your job is not to die for Stardown. Your job, and the job of all your men is to make the enemy die for Goshi. We are going to kill every single one of those bastards. We are going to hit our enemy from every conceivable direction, make his life a living hell, harass him at every turn, and not grant him a single inch of ground before he's paid for it with the blood of thousands. Thousands of Goshi soldiers. You, and the men you'll lead are not allowed to die until you are ordered to do so. Is that clear?"
"Yes, ma'am!" they shout. A good quarter of them have never led anything larger than a hunting party before, but NOW they're standing like soldiers.
Not that I would know anything about how to be a soldier. ... But I do know how to kill, and how to kill very effectively. Such gifts as I have, I share.
"I know that some of you are new to this. Well, we're going to show you how to lead a unit. Consider this your crash course in small unit tactics. You're either going to learn it and learn it well in the weeks before Goshi arrives, or you and your squad will all die. Your choice."
Silence. I have their full and undivided attention.
'Think of how much mana I could harvest from nine million deaths, Oneechan...' Amaterasu whispers.
I ignore her.
And so it begins. I won't be here for every session, but I do what I can. And Ichirou does what he can. All of those with some level of military experience do the same. And as the weeks pass, they will definitely improve. Not as much as I would like, but they will improve: the threat of impending death has a way of focusing the mind. At least a quarter of their planned training will happen when they're already in position on the forward defensive line: we can't actually afford to wait before deploying the army, but if we don't give them at least some training, they'll never be able to fight as a coordinated army.
As the assembled officers salute me, I almost giggle. How strange to be here, helping to command an army. I've always worked in the shadows before. A knife in the dark. A well placed blast of psychic energy removing a potential threat before it has time to fester. A scalpel, cutting cancerous growths out of society.
It all looks so very different from here.
Still, we've got our spies and assassins as well. If all goes well, they'll wreck havoc on Goshi before they arrive here. The goal of our army is to destroy theirs, but the goal of our assassinations and infiltrations is quite different: those operatives are to spread something far more powerful than guns or effective squad tactics; those operatives are to spread terror, and fear. To demoralize the enemy before he even reaches us.
... 128 field operatives.
It should be enough to make a decent showing. I have no illusions. Our chances are slim. But I aim to maximize them as much as possible. If I did anything less, I'd never be able to forgive myself.
I nod to Ichirou, and he to me, and the training begins.
He should know better.
"The job of this army is not to die for the people of Stardown. If any of you have thoughts of dying honourably in the defense of millions, you're going to forget it, and forget it immediately." They give me strange looks at that, but I'm not done. "Your job is not to die for Stardown. Your job, and the job of all your men is to make the enemy die for Goshi. We are going to kill every single one of those bastards. We are going to hit our enemy from every conceivable direction, make his life a living hell, harass him at every turn, and not grant him a single inch of ground before he's paid for it with the blood of thousands. Thousands of Goshi soldiers. You, and the men you'll lead are not allowed to die until you are ordered to do so. Is that clear?"
"Yes, ma'am!" they shout. A good quarter of them have never led anything larger than a hunting party before, but NOW they're standing like soldiers.
Not that I would know anything about how to be a soldier. ... But I do know how to kill, and how to kill very effectively. Such gifts as I have, I share.
"I know that some of you are new to this. Well, we're going to show you how to lead a unit. Consider this your crash course in small unit tactics. You're either going to learn it and learn it well in the weeks before Goshi arrives, or you and your squad will all die. Your choice."
Silence. I have their full and undivided attention.
'Think of how much mana I could harvest from nine million deaths, Oneechan...' Amaterasu whispers.
I ignore her.
And so it begins. I won't be here for every session, but I do what I can. And Ichirou does what he can. All of those with some level of military experience do the same. And as the weeks pass, they will definitely improve. Not as much as I would like, but they will improve: the threat of impending death has a way of focusing the mind. At least a quarter of their planned training will happen when they're already in position on the forward defensive line: we can't actually afford to wait before deploying the army, but if we don't give them at least some training, they'll never be able to fight as a coordinated army.
As the assembled officers salute me, I almost giggle. How strange to be here, helping to command an army. I've always worked in the shadows before. A knife in the dark. A well placed blast of psychic energy removing a potential threat before it has time to fester. A scalpel, cutting cancerous growths out of society.
It all looks so very different from here.
Still, we've got our spies and assassins as well. If all goes well, they'll wreck havoc on Goshi before they arrive here. The goal of our army is to destroy theirs, but the goal of our assassinations and infiltrations is quite different: those operatives are to spread something far more powerful than guns or effective squad tactics; those operatives are to spread terror, and fear. To demoralize the enemy before he even reaches us.
... 128 field operatives.
It should be enough to make a decent showing. I have no illusions. Our chances are slim. But I aim to maximize them as much as possible. If I did anything less, I'd never be able to forgive myself.
I nod to Ichirou, and he to me, and the training begins.
Conversations with the Cold-Blooded
"No. Absolutely not. If I were to accept such a postulate, it would undermine the very foundational principles of nine-branch-formal logic." The lizard looks irritated again. I have that effect on him, and there's something vaguely satisfying about it.
"It still works," I say. "You just have to expand the parameters. It loses some of its predictive ability, but I think it will create a much more accurate representation of..."
-----------------
It's dark, and I'm sitting around a table with a handful of Biomade. Operatives, all of them.
... Well, former operatives. The old networks are shot to hell these days, and hardly anyone knows anything, but we're as close to the heart of Stardown's military intelligence as anyone's going to get.
I wish there was someone else to do this sort of thing, but our list of candidates is a bit on the slim side. There's me, me, and ... me.
Three men, three women, and me.
"What do you have for me?" I ask.
Lightning - one of the women, pulls out a notepad. A notepad. Once, this would have been projected for all of us on a holo-screen, but now, notepads will have to do. "Unfortunately, most of our personnel have maintained their ties with Goshi, and many of those who have not remain loyal to the Oversight Council in Marina, which makes them Goshi's by default." I know all that, but I nod anyways. It's comfortingly silent in here: nobody in the room is foolish enough to allow their thoughts to leak. She goes on. "All told, we've located a hundred and twenty eight former operatives who are willing to participate in our new program.
A hundred and twenty eight. That's not great, but it's not bad, either. A hundred and twenty eight people in the right place at the right time might be all we need.
"You've explained what we expect of them?" A man off to my left asks.
Lightning nods. "They understand that they may not return alive."
And so it goes. A hundred and twenty eight operatives. 'Operative.' That's the civilized term for what we are.
Spies. Assassins. Thieves and murderers. I feel guilt again, but I quash it ruthlessly. I'm not going to feel guilty here. It's funny. The bulk of our work actually goes towards preventing assassination attempts on Moses, Kiyoshi, and Ichiro. I almost giggle at the thought that we've already stopped twelve such attempts before they managed to get off the ground. For a would-be world dominator, Goshi is surprisingly sloppy.
Well, no. That's not really true. That's what they want us to think. Wheels within wheels is the way of this world. Each enemy operative that we capture allows us a view into, not what Goshi is actually planning, but what Goshi wants us to believe that they are planning. Most of their assassins are fed deliberate misinformation for the event of their capture, though their handlers are careful enough to never let them know that, or even to suspect it. How much is bluff and how much isn't, well, that's the game.
"Rei, what about the Ikari report?" another of them asks.
My heart sinks. That happens a lot around these people. "Has it been confirmed?" I ask. If what's in that report is true, then a hell of a lot of innocent people are going to die. We could do something about it, but if we did, a hell of a lot more innocent people would die later.
Lightning nods. "It's been confirmed. ... Ikari has successfully broken the Executor code."
We all let out a breath that none of us had realized we were holding. ... suddenly, things are infinitely more complicated. We've already got three devices on the table designed to nullify the effects of microphones and transmitters in a localized area, and two more designed to block telepathic signals, but I add another one just to be on the safe side.
"So they're going to hit the tunnels," I murmur. "Sick bastards." It's an ingenious plan, really. Specifically designed to undermine morale and spread terror in our population: nerve gas canisters smuggled into the refugee tunnels by a team of Goshi operatives.
"We definitely shouldn't tell Moses," Lightning says. "He'll stop the operatives, and they'll know that we cracked the code, and there's no guarantee that we'll be able to crack whatever they come up with to replace it. Not in a short enough time to matter."
I feel sick to my stomach, but it doesn't show on my face. The others aren't quite as good at hiding their reactions. Still, I say what has to be said. "When this is over, I want Rain's head on a pike."
The others all nod their agreement.
I produce a folder marked 'Ikari,' and pull a handful of papers out of it.
The plans for Goshi's first major assault.
A million people are going to die to make an effective response possible.
Karia, but it had better be worth it...
-------------
Jin-Kalys's dewlap flares, and I try very hard not to grin. "A stochastic reading of the Nine Branches is altogether unnecessary. It already accounts for individual choice as a function of the polyvalent..."
He goes on, and I don't quite grasp the entirety of his argument, but I don't show him that. I understand him well enough to get the general sense of what he means. "If you'd accounted for individual choice, you would not be making predictions about the future," I say. "Every choice affects every other. Every action nudges the whole model towards a different outcome. Freedom, Jin-Kalys."
"I will not revise the nine-branches to cater to your personal desire for greater autonomy in the universe, Rei," Jin-Kalys says, and his gaze is oddly piercing. "I had thought that you of all people would take some comfort in knowing that there really are very view possible choices at this juncture, considering what you are about to allow to happen."
Shock. Surprise. Anger. Fear. "... I don't know what you mean," I say.
He looks at me, silently, unblinkingly.
I sink into myself. "... do you think Karia will forgive me?" I ask.
"No." His voice is full of a terrible sense of finality, and I feel that cold, creeping dread again.
'But you don't want to be forgiven, do you, Onee-chan?' Amaterasu whispers in my thoughts. 'You don't want to be forgiven at all. You want to pay for your sins. You want to earn your redemption. I'm right, aren't I? If you give me mana, I can show you how to do it...'
"... There's no other choice," I murmur.
He looks me directly in the eye, then, his unblinking lizard-eyes peering right into mine. "Do you believe that?" he asks.
...
"It still works," I say. "You just have to expand the parameters. It loses some of its predictive ability, but I think it will create a much more accurate representation of..."
-----------------
It's dark, and I'm sitting around a table with a handful of Biomade. Operatives, all of them.
... Well, former operatives. The old networks are shot to hell these days, and hardly anyone knows anything, but we're as close to the heart of Stardown's military intelligence as anyone's going to get.
I wish there was someone else to do this sort of thing, but our list of candidates is a bit on the slim side. There's me, me, and ... me.
Three men, three women, and me.
"What do you have for me?" I ask.
Lightning - one of the women, pulls out a notepad. A notepad. Once, this would have been projected for all of us on a holo-screen, but now, notepads will have to do. "Unfortunately, most of our personnel have maintained their ties with Goshi, and many of those who have not remain loyal to the Oversight Council in Marina, which makes them Goshi's by default." I know all that, but I nod anyways. It's comfortingly silent in here: nobody in the room is foolish enough to allow their thoughts to leak. She goes on. "All told, we've located a hundred and twenty eight former operatives who are willing to participate in our new program.
A hundred and twenty eight. That's not great, but it's not bad, either. A hundred and twenty eight people in the right place at the right time might be all we need.
"You've explained what we expect of them?" A man off to my left asks.
Lightning nods. "They understand that they may not return alive."
And so it goes. A hundred and twenty eight operatives. 'Operative.' That's the civilized term for what we are.
Spies. Assassins. Thieves and murderers. I feel guilt again, but I quash it ruthlessly. I'm not going to feel guilty here. It's funny. The bulk of our work actually goes towards preventing assassination attempts on Moses, Kiyoshi, and Ichiro. I almost giggle at the thought that we've already stopped twelve such attempts before they managed to get off the ground. For a would-be world dominator, Goshi is surprisingly sloppy.
Well, no. That's not really true. That's what they want us to think. Wheels within wheels is the way of this world. Each enemy operative that we capture allows us a view into, not what Goshi is actually planning, but what Goshi wants us to believe that they are planning. Most of their assassins are fed deliberate misinformation for the event of their capture, though their handlers are careful enough to never let them know that, or even to suspect it. How much is bluff and how much isn't, well, that's the game.
"Rei, what about the Ikari report?" another of them asks.
My heart sinks. That happens a lot around these people. "Has it been confirmed?" I ask. If what's in that report is true, then a hell of a lot of innocent people are going to die. We could do something about it, but if we did, a hell of a lot more innocent people would die later.
Lightning nods. "It's been confirmed. ... Ikari has successfully broken the Executor code."
We all let out a breath that none of us had realized we were holding. ... suddenly, things are infinitely more complicated. We've already got three devices on the table designed to nullify the effects of microphones and transmitters in a localized area, and two more designed to block telepathic signals, but I add another one just to be on the safe side.
"So they're going to hit the tunnels," I murmur. "Sick bastards." It's an ingenious plan, really. Specifically designed to undermine morale and spread terror in our population: nerve gas canisters smuggled into the refugee tunnels by a team of Goshi operatives.
"We definitely shouldn't tell Moses," Lightning says. "He'll stop the operatives, and they'll know that we cracked the code, and there's no guarantee that we'll be able to crack whatever they come up with to replace it. Not in a short enough time to matter."
I feel sick to my stomach, but it doesn't show on my face. The others aren't quite as good at hiding their reactions. Still, I say what has to be said. "When this is over, I want Rain's head on a pike."
The others all nod their agreement.
I produce a folder marked 'Ikari,' and pull a handful of papers out of it.
The plans for Goshi's first major assault.
A million people are going to die to make an effective response possible.
Karia, but it had better be worth it...
-------------
Jin-Kalys's dewlap flares, and I try very hard not to grin. "A stochastic reading of the Nine Branches is altogether unnecessary. It already accounts for individual choice as a function of the polyvalent..."
He goes on, and I don't quite grasp the entirety of his argument, but I don't show him that. I understand him well enough to get the general sense of what he means. "If you'd accounted for individual choice, you would not be making predictions about the future," I say. "Every choice affects every other. Every action nudges the whole model towards a different outcome. Freedom, Jin-Kalys."
"I will not revise the nine-branches to cater to your personal desire for greater autonomy in the universe, Rei," Jin-Kalys says, and his gaze is oddly piercing. "I had thought that you of all people would take some comfort in knowing that there really are very view possible choices at this juncture, considering what you are about to allow to happen."
Shock. Surprise. Anger. Fear. "... I don't know what you mean," I say.
He looks at me, silently, unblinkingly.
I sink into myself. "... do you think Karia will forgive me?" I ask.
"No." His voice is full of a terrible sense of finality, and I feel that cold, creeping dread again.
'But you don't want to be forgiven, do you, Onee-chan?' Amaterasu whispers in my thoughts. 'You don't want to be forgiven at all. You want to pay for your sins. You want to earn your redemption. I'm right, aren't I? If you give me mana, I can show you how to do it...'
"... There's no other choice," I murmur.
He looks me directly in the eye, then, his unblinking lizard-eyes peering right into mine. "Do you believe that?" he asks.
...
Hope Enough (Rei's Lament)
I sink into my bed on the Sennin, utterly exhausted. Emotionally spent. The cabin is dark around me, and the hum of the ship's engine is the only noise I hear, save my own breathing. Just once, for a moment, I shut out all the noise of Moses's thoughts, of Kiyoshi's thoughts, of Aimi's thoughts, even Ama-chan's thoughts: I shut out everyone else, and I am just myself.
Just Rei. I am alone with my thoughts.
I am alone with the Question.
The Question.
'You're a hero, Rei.' The words come back to me unbidden.
There is blood on my hands, Moses. ...So much blood. I've killed so many people I've lost count, and not all of them were guilty. Men, women, children. Executives, workers, students. I've made death with my hands since I was twelve years old... I've done terrible, terrible things, and I did them with a song in my heart. I still do. I felt the suffering of all of Karia, and I laughed.
I know that you meant what you said, but I don't believe you. I don't believe you for a moment. A hero? No.
How often I've tried to change. How completely I've failed. Time after time, I try, I try, I try again, but I've never really changed. Not where it matters.
Not inside.
Purpose. I thought I knew what that was, once. Then it all went away, and I had to figure out who I was and what I wanted all over again. I thought that if I knew the answers to those questions, I'd know what my Purpose was again.
... but who I am isn't what I want.
I am not a good person, Moses. I never have been. I never will be. I prove that every day. With every word. With every action. ... is it enough that I want to be?
Aimi wouldn't understand, either. She's never wanted to be anything other than what she is. Who she is. She's Aimi, and you either take her or leave her. Kiyoshi hasn't learned that. He thinks he can change her. If a person can't even change their own self, how can they change someone else?
... Purpose. What Purpose can there be? Is there even such a thing? ... On the Wandering Star, I thought I knew what my Purpose was, but I'm no First Mind. Half breed. Hybrid. Project Scion. Can there really be no understanding? Is there really no peace?
...
I am The One Who Hopes.
The words are true, but is that it? Is that enough? Is Hope the source of Purpose? Are they the same thing? ... I don't understand now as much as I did before.
What do you think, First Minds? ... Oh hell, you don't care. You just want me dead. Me, and all the Cheldrun on the face of the planet. What about you, Karia? You're supposed to be alive, aren't you? Are you watching me? Do you hear me? Is there even anybody out there at all? And is there Hope enough, is there grace enough, to forgive someone like me?
...
Just Rei. I am alone with my thoughts.
I am alone with the Question.
The Question.
'You're a hero, Rei.' The words come back to me unbidden.
There is blood on my hands, Moses. ...So much blood. I've killed so many people I've lost count, and not all of them were guilty. Men, women, children. Executives, workers, students. I've made death with my hands since I was twelve years old... I've done terrible, terrible things, and I did them with a song in my heart. I still do. I felt the suffering of all of Karia, and I laughed.
I know that you meant what you said, but I don't believe you. I don't believe you for a moment. A hero? No.
How often I've tried to change. How completely I've failed. Time after time, I try, I try, I try again, but I've never really changed. Not where it matters.
Not inside.
Purpose. I thought I knew what that was, once. Then it all went away, and I had to figure out who I was and what I wanted all over again. I thought that if I knew the answers to those questions, I'd know what my Purpose was again.
... but who I am isn't what I want.
I am not a good person, Moses. I never have been. I never will be. I prove that every day. With every word. With every action. ... is it enough that I want to be?
Aimi wouldn't understand, either. She's never wanted to be anything other than what she is. Who she is. She's Aimi, and you either take her or leave her. Kiyoshi hasn't learned that. He thinks he can change her. If a person can't even change their own self, how can they change someone else?
... Purpose. What Purpose can there be? Is there even such a thing? ... On the Wandering Star, I thought I knew what my Purpose was, but I'm no First Mind. Half breed. Hybrid. Project Scion. Can there really be no understanding? Is there really no peace?
...
I am The One Who Hopes.
The words are true, but is that it? Is that enough? Is Hope the source of Purpose? Are they the same thing? ... I don't understand now as much as I did before.
What do you think, First Minds? ... Oh hell, you don't care. You just want me dead. Me, and all the Cheldrun on the face of the planet. What about you, Karia? You're supposed to be alive, aren't you? Are you watching me? Do you hear me? Is there even anybody out there at all? And is there Hope enough, is there grace enough, to forgive someone like me?
...
Episode 30: Bringing Down the House
Pain. My hands go to my throat.
Torn. Blood seeping out.
"Hello, sister."
Sever. Stitch.
Zippora, Raul, Terra, Julian, and Trencher are free, but their thoughts are like little fragments of pain and anger, refracting wildly across the room. Ama-chan's thoughts shine like the sun. Warm. Comforting.
I am bound in cables. Stitch's cables. Arms and legs and throat.
It hurts.
I can feel their thoughts brushing against my mental defenses, but for all the pain and all the blood, I am glad to see them.
"So you're both alive," I say, and it hurts to talk, and there my voice is at least half bloody gurgle. "I'm glad. I was worried."
They exchange glances, and I'm not sure if the troubled look I see there is real or just my own wishful thinking.
I briefly consider the possibility of grabbing Zippora and teleporting away: she's important to Moses.
"Before we kill you, sister, we need to know something from you," Sever says. "Think carefully. Do you know where Aimi went after she killed Amuro Nami?"
My thoughts race. Amuro Nami. I have no idea whatever, but I'm not about to tell them that. "I have an idea," I say, "But why would I give you the one piece of information that's preventing you from killing me?"
Their minds press against my mental defenses again, skittering across the surface like ice on a grill. Stitch looks frustrated, and he gestures.
The chains begin to pull at me, pulling me apart. He means to tear my arms and legs off.
We can't have that.
I vanish.
I reappear next to Stitch, and he whirls around, and his chains whirl with him. In an instant, I am bound again, but with one critical difference: my right arm is free.
"The first mistake you made," I say, "Is assuming that you had a chance in hell of beating me." I strike, aiming for a nerve cluster at the base of Stitch's neck. My aim is true, and he collapses, coughing and choking.
Sever flicks his hand upward in a sweeping motion, and I feel a horrible sense of tearing, and I look down just in time to see a terrible gash open across my body from my navel to my collarbone. There is pain, and blood, so much blood, and I can see my own ribs, and lungs, and something - the ground, maybe - smashes into the back of my head, and everything goes dark.
---------------
The empty void.
First Mind eyes.
Voices. Voices in the dark. Whispers. The Enemy whispers.
"One Who Hopes, will you fulfill your part in the conjunction that is to come?"
Of course I will. It is preordained. Who can escape their purpose?
Ama-chan whispers.
Mikomi, Mikomi, Reikomi, Mikorei...
The Void...
*FLASH*
Two little boys playing in the park.
It had only happened once. Once, when Mama Pain was away on business, and Doctor Soren said that children should play. I was fourteen. I didn't understand what 'play' meant, but Sever and Stitch did, and Aimi, and Malicious.
I sat at a park bench with Doctor Soren and Nero.
Four children playing in the park on a golden day in Geneva Prime.
Ash-gray buildings rose up all around the park, pulsing with spectacular displays of force and energy. All of the playground structures did the same, and all around it was green, green grass that was curiously empty and silent. No force. No energy. Just grass.
There were other children there, too. Other young Biomade, here for recreation. A few Allskin adults accompanying their young. An Allskin child told me my eyes looked funny, and when my mind touched his, I didn't know him. I didn't understand any of the things I saw in his mind. It was like trying to read the mind of the Zipsum that Mama Pain had brought in for us to try to scan. The Zipsum thought in triangles and mirrors. The little boy thought in joy and sunlight and play and family and petty self-will.
I didn't understand.
I watched while the four of them play, with Malicious supervising the games, and for the first time in my life, I felt envy: my own envy, and not someone else's.
Sever and Stitch, laughing, and their laughter wasn't cruel but joyful.
Aimi dashing away from Malicious and shouting at the top of her lungs, "You're it! You're it!"
Malicious racing after Aimi, then darting to the side at the last second to tag Sever. "Sever's it!" she shouted.
"Are you sure you don't want to go play with them, Rei?" Doctor Soren asked.
I looked up at him, and my mind brushed against the surface of his mental defenses. "Play?" I asked.
Nero shot me a sidelong glance, and then said with the savage honesty of a child, "Rei doesn't like tag. She always thinks that she's it whenever anyone gets tagged, because she's defective and can't tell the difference between herself and everyone else."
My cheeks burned, and I sank into myself.
The laughter of children echoed around the park.
--------------
I awake in Una's arms, coughing and spluttering as if I had just been resuscitated after drowning. The pain is gone, and the wound is gone, but the blood is not. My surroundings have changed. We are in the courtyard outside of the inn. Battle rages all around us. Sennin descends towards us, and Heishi are dying everywhere.
I look up at Una. "Sever? Stitch?" I ask.
Her eyes flicker. "Did this to you," she says.
I feel a lump in my throat, and a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. "Where are they?"
She continues walking towards the Sennin, carrying me. "... They're dead, Rei. High Dive was too fast."
The world falls out from under me. I push myself out of Una's arms, and she watches me for a moment, alarmed, but I'm not paying attention to her anymore.
There is an explosion near the Sennin, and Una looks torn for a moment, and then rushes over to help the wounded.
Sever and Stitch are dead.
Dead.
Dead, and dead.
What kind of word is that, dead?
A word of endings, darkness, and terror: a horrible, smothering sort of word, and filled with other horrible words like a corpse over-ripe in its corruption, overflowing the measure, and spilling its putrid excess into the terrified mind. A word for we know not what. A word for the descent of the Named into nonentity, and the jury still deliberating over whether any reascent is even possible. A word for all the piles of rotting leaves warming the gutters of the world.
Sever and Stitch are dead.
I'm screaming. I beat my fists against the earth, against the corpse of a dead Heishi.
The question...
And then Ama-chan is with me.
"Amaterasu-chan," I whisper. "... Feed. Take all the mana you can find."
She goes to work, devouring the White-Rock in the DisLocators, and I rise to my feet. I don't see the combat around me. Bullets whiz by my head, and I don't notice.
I open the basement doors and I descend.
There they are, Sever and Stitch, the blood all over the floor, their red eyes staring up at the sky.
Dead.
I stare at them for a long, long time.
"You're not ever going to leave me, are you Ama-chan?" I ask, and my voice is a small, broken thing.
Leave you? I can't leave you. Never ever ever, unless you die. I'm bound to you, remember?
It is a comforting thought. ... I don't want to be alone.
Then I'm back on Sennin. I don't remember DisLocating, but I must have. Kiyoshi is saying something, but I don't hear him. Una takes me by the hand and leads me down to a cabin. Mine, maybe.
It hurts. It hurts more than anything. My brothers are dead.
I cry in Una's arms, and she holds me, and murmurs words of comfort.
My brothers are dead, and it hurts.
Life?
------------
I don't remember much of the rest of the day. I do remember that I told Kiyoshi that I don't blame High Dive for killing my brothers. I was lying to him, of course. But part of what I said was true. You don't blame a soldier for killing an enemy in the course of a battle. You blame the people that sent the soldiers into that situation in the first place.
Katashi Blade.
The name is like acid on my tongue. It's taken me a long time to get here, and many people have died, but I'm here, and I know what has to be done. Katashi Blade sent my brothers on a suicide mission. He couldn't have expected them to survive. At best, he expected them to kill one or two of us before they were themselves killed.
There's something in me now, an emotional state I've never really felt before. It's not anger. It's not hate. It's not fear. It's not grief, though I feel that, too.
It's wrath.
Wrath enough to burn the whole world. I will kill Katashi Blade. I will always remember the broken bodies of Sever and Stitch in that basement: revenge be mine. Even if he is a First Mind, I am at least half First Mind. That has to count for something. He will know fear, he will know pain, and then he will die.
Truth might be changed by victory...
I realize suddenly that my fists are clenched so tightly that I have drawn blood. I am standing on the open-air bridge of Sennin. Moses is looking out at Geneva Prime in the distance. He means to call down another... plague, I suppose. He calls it deliverance. Part of me wants to stop him. Part of me thinks he's going to destroy Cheldrun civilization, but right now, a larger part of me doesn't care. What Moses is doing will draw Katashi Blade to us.
Kiyoshi stands close at hand, Keibatsu drawn. He's been very quiet since he learned what Aimi may have done to Amuro Nami. For a moment, worry for Aimi breaks through the haze of wrath, and I hope that there is enough of the Information Broker organization left intact to tell me what I want to know when this is over.
... I never should have drunk all that sake. But I needed something to make me forget the world, for a little while. I knew that drinking would break down the barriers in my mind that keep me separate from everyone until I'd sobered, but I did it anyways, and now Kiyoshi knows about Aimi and Nami.
Una asked me if I'd be able to resist the control of the First Minds. I told her it was more like being Home than like mental control, but that's not entirely true.
It's both.
Not for the first time, I wonder if I'll really be able to resist them if they ask me to do something.
They're firing on us. Heishi. Teleporting aboard. We've prepared a place to fall back to. A place to destroy all that come after us. Ama-chan laughs delightedly at the thought of eating so much mana in all those dead Heishi. I smile. Battle is joined, and for the first time since Marina, I lose myself to the joy of the slaughter.
Even as Moses calls down his plague, even as a horrible black cloud descends on the city, and the buildings begin to crumble, even as the Goshi Tower tumbles down into ruin, I smile.
Wrath.
Katashi Blade, we are coming for you, and I no longer fear your mental influence: I will take part in your damned fate.
... Life?
Torn. Blood seeping out.
"Hello, sister."
Sever. Stitch.
Zippora, Raul, Terra, Julian, and Trencher are free, but their thoughts are like little fragments of pain and anger, refracting wildly across the room. Ama-chan's thoughts shine like the sun. Warm. Comforting.
I am bound in cables. Stitch's cables. Arms and legs and throat.
It hurts.
I can feel their thoughts brushing against my mental defenses, but for all the pain and all the blood, I am glad to see them.
"So you're both alive," I say, and it hurts to talk, and there my voice is at least half bloody gurgle. "I'm glad. I was worried."
They exchange glances, and I'm not sure if the troubled look I see there is real or just my own wishful thinking.
I briefly consider the possibility of grabbing Zippora and teleporting away: she's important to Moses.
"Before we kill you, sister, we need to know something from you," Sever says. "Think carefully. Do you know where Aimi went after she killed Amuro Nami?"
My thoughts race. Amuro Nami. I have no idea whatever, but I'm not about to tell them that. "I have an idea," I say, "But why would I give you the one piece of information that's preventing you from killing me?"
Their minds press against my mental defenses again, skittering across the surface like ice on a grill. Stitch looks frustrated, and he gestures.
The chains begin to pull at me, pulling me apart. He means to tear my arms and legs off.
We can't have that.
I vanish.
I reappear next to Stitch, and he whirls around, and his chains whirl with him. In an instant, I am bound again, but with one critical difference: my right arm is free.
"The first mistake you made," I say, "Is assuming that you had a chance in hell of beating me." I strike, aiming for a nerve cluster at the base of Stitch's neck. My aim is true, and he collapses, coughing and choking.
Sever flicks his hand upward in a sweeping motion, and I feel a horrible sense of tearing, and I look down just in time to see a terrible gash open across my body from my navel to my collarbone. There is pain, and blood, so much blood, and I can see my own ribs, and lungs, and something - the ground, maybe - smashes into the back of my head, and everything goes dark.
---------------
The empty void.
First Mind eyes.
Voices. Voices in the dark. Whispers. The Enemy whispers.
"One Who Hopes, will you fulfill your part in the conjunction that is to come?"
Of course I will. It is preordained. Who can escape their purpose?
Ama-chan whispers.
Mikomi, Mikomi, Reikomi, Mikorei...
The Void...
*FLASH*
Two little boys playing in the park.
It had only happened once. Once, when Mama Pain was away on business, and Doctor Soren said that children should play. I was fourteen. I didn't understand what 'play' meant, but Sever and Stitch did, and Aimi, and Malicious.
I sat at a park bench with Doctor Soren and Nero.
Four children playing in the park on a golden day in Geneva Prime.
Ash-gray buildings rose up all around the park, pulsing with spectacular displays of force and energy. All of the playground structures did the same, and all around it was green, green grass that was curiously empty and silent. No force. No energy. Just grass.
There were other children there, too. Other young Biomade, here for recreation. A few Allskin adults accompanying their young. An Allskin child told me my eyes looked funny, and when my mind touched his, I didn't know him. I didn't understand any of the things I saw in his mind. It was like trying to read the mind of the Zipsum that Mama Pain had brought in for us to try to scan. The Zipsum thought in triangles and mirrors. The little boy thought in joy and sunlight and play and family and petty self-will.
I didn't understand.
I watched while the four of them play, with Malicious supervising the games, and for the first time in my life, I felt envy: my own envy, and not someone else's.
Sever and Stitch, laughing, and their laughter wasn't cruel but joyful.
Aimi dashing away from Malicious and shouting at the top of her lungs, "You're it! You're it!"
Malicious racing after Aimi, then darting to the side at the last second to tag Sever. "Sever's it!" she shouted.
"Are you sure you don't want to go play with them, Rei?" Doctor Soren asked.
I looked up at him, and my mind brushed against the surface of his mental defenses. "Play?" I asked.
Nero shot me a sidelong glance, and then said with the savage honesty of a child, "Rei doesn't like tag. She always thinks that she's it whenever anyone gets tagged, because she's defective and can't tell the difference between herself and everyone else."
My cheeks burned, and I sank into myself.
The laughter of children echoed around the park.
--------------
I awake in Una's arms, coughing and spluttering as if I had just been resuscitated after drowning. The pain is gone, and the wound is gone, but the blood is not. My surroundings have changed. We are in the courtyard outside of the inn. Battle rages all around us. Sennin descends towards us, and Heishi are dying everywhere.
I look up at Una. "Sever? Stitch?" I ask.
Her eyes flicker. "Did this to you," she says.
I feel a lump in my throat, and a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. "Where are they?"
She continues walking towards the Sennin, carrying me. "... They're dead, Rei. High Dive was too fast."
The world falls out from under me. I push myself out of Una's arms, and she watches me for a moment, alarmed, but I'm not paying attention to her anymore.
There is an explosion near the Sennin, and Una looks torn for a moment, and then rushes over to help the wounded.
Sever and Stitch are dead.
Dead.
Dead, and dead.
What kind of word is that, dead?
A word of endings, darkness, and terror: a horrible, smothering sort of word, and filled with other horrible words like a corpse over-ripe in its corruption, overflowing the measure, and spilling its putrid excess into the terrified mind. A word for we know not what. A word for the descent of the Named into nonentity, and the jury still deliberating over whether any reascent is even possible. A word for all the piles of rotting leaves warming the gutters of the world.
Sever and Stitch are dead.
I'm screaming. I beat my fists against the earth, against the corpse of a dead Heishi.
The question...
And then Ama-chan is with me.
"Amaterasu-chan," I whisper. "... Feed. Take all the mana you can find."
She goes to work, devouring the White-Rock in the DisLocators, and I rise to my feet. I don't see the combat around me. Bullets whiz by my head, and I don't notice.
I open the basement doors and I descend.
There they are, Sever and Stitch, the blood all over the floor, their red eyes staring up at the sky.
Dead.
I stare at them for a long, long time.
"You're not ever going to leave me, are you Ama-chan?" I ask, and my voice is a small, broken thing.
Leave you? I can't leave you. Never ever ever, unless you die. I'm bound to you, remember?
It is a comforting thought. ... I don't want to be alone.
Then I'm back on Sennin. I don't remember DisLocating, but I must have. Kiyoshi is saying something, but I don't hear him. Una takes me by the hand and leads me down to a cabin. Mine, maybe.
It hurts. It hurts more than anything. My brothers are dead.
I cry in Una's arms, and she holds me, and murmurs words of comfort.
My brothers are dead, and it hurts.
Life?
------------
I don't remember much of the rest of the day. I do remember that I told Kiyoshi that I don't blame High Dive for killing my brothers. I was lying to him, of course. But part of what I said was true. You don't blame a soldier for killing an enemy in the course of a battle. You blame the people that sent the soldiers into that situation in the first place.
Katashi Blade.
The name is like acid on my tongue. It's taken me a long time to get here, and many people have died, but I'm here, and I know what has to be done. Katashi Blade sent my brothers on a suicide mission. He couldn't have expected them to survive. At best, he expected them to kill one or two of us before they were themselves killed.
There's something in me now, an emotional state I've never really felt before. It's not anger. It's not hate. It's not fear. It's not grief, though I feel that, too.
It's wrath.
Wrath enough to burn the whole world. I will kill Katashi Blade. I will always remember the broken bodies of Sever and Stitch in that basement: revenge be mine. Even if he is a First Mind, I am at least half First Mind. That has to count for something. He will know fear, he will know pain, and then he will die.
Truth might be changed by victory...
I realize suddenly that my fists are clenched so tightly that I have drawn blood. I am standing on the open-air bridge of Sennin. Moses is looking out at Geneva Prime in the distance. He means to call down another... plague, I suppose. He calls it deliverance. Part of me wants to stop him. Part of me thinks he's going to destroy Cheldrun civilization, but right now, a larger part of me doesn't care. What Moses is doing will draw Katashi Blade to us.
Kiyoshi stands close at hand, Keibatsu drawn. He's been very quiet since he learned what Aimi may have done to Amuro Nami. For a moment, worry for Aimi breaks through the haze of wrath, and I hope that there is enough of the Information Broker organization left intact to tell me what I want to know when this is over.
... I never should have drunk all that sake. But I needed something to make me forget the world, for a little while. I knew that drinking would break down the barriers in my mind that keep me separate from everyone until I'd sobered, but I did it anyways, and now Kiyoshi knows about Aimi and Nami.
Una asked me if I'd be able to resist the control of the First Minds. I told her it was more like being Home than like mental control, but that's not entirely true.
It's both.
Not for the first time, I wonder if I'll really be able to resist them if they ask me to do something.
They're firing on us. Heishi. Teleporting aboard. We've prepared a place to fall back to. A place to destroy all that come after us. Ama-chan laughs delightedly at the thought of eating so much mana in all those dead Heishi. I smile. Battle is joined, and for the first time since Marina, I lose myself to the joy of the slaughter.
Even as Moses calls down his plague, even as a horrible black cloud descends on the city, and the buildings begin to crumble, even as the Goshi Tower tumbles down into ruin, I smile.
Wrath.
Katashi Blade, we are coming for you, and I no longer fear your mental influence: I will take part in your damned fate.
... Life?
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."
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."
Narrator's Best Friend: The Girl With First Mind Eyes
The Narrator's Best Friend Award goes to the character who most players agree consistently added great stuff to the story be it with NPC's or character choices through the entire season. This prestigious award is accompanied not only by the trophy emblem (right), but by 5, count them 5, of the coveted blue Never Gems. For the first time in history we have a draw in the voting, meaning this award will go to two characters. The first of the two honored recipients of the third ever Narrator's Best Friend Award is Rei, the psionic scion.The red-eyed, leather-clad assassin easily belongs in this category because of the degree to which her backstory has always been out front. From the very first episode of the first season, clashes with Rei's family have provided interest and drama to the storyline, but in this season Rei really popped out. She met her creator, Inase Spark, with whom she'd been interacting via his journal during the second season. Her sister Aimi provided some of the most intense party conflicts of the season, and Rei herself heightened the party drama with her lies to Kiyoshi and eventual apparent betrayal of the party to the First Minds. I was thrilled to get to chat with Rei behind-the-scenes about her effect on the plot.
"I figure that every party has to have its 'troubled' character," she confided to me while sampling some of the vegetarian finger food our caterers provided. "What could be more troubled than a girl with a tenuous psychological hold on her sense of self who was a former assassin with nebulous ties to our enemies? If that isn't bad enough I make a point of defending my family even when they do things that are pretty horrible, and of course there is the fact that I am made with genetic material taken from the cosmic Enemy themselves. You'd have to try pretty hard to come up with someone more messed up than me."
Undoubtedly. But for all her unique qualities Rei can be remarkably humble.
"I don't really like my psychoses, however grand, to take center stage in the campaign too often. I mean, I'm quite happy just to make my amoral judgments in silence and get things done quietly - that's the way we assassins do things."
Unfortunately for Rei, her morality keeps getting dragged out into the spotlight by her party members who seem to think it's a big deal who she does and doesn't kill, and how. Moses in particular makes an issue of it.
"Rei is sometimes too much like her Kyo Tee Shee," he said. "Fortunately she is a little easier to dissuade from doing really horrible things, but you have to keep a lookout."
"Indeed," Kiyoshi readily agreed, "I have been worried for some time now about her reliability. Keibatsu hungers after her like the Enemy, she can teleport like the Hei-Shi, and she apparently is capable of masquerading as a First Mind. There are some heavy questions she will have to answer soon."
It may make some of her friends uncomfortable, but in terms of adding to the excitement of the story there can be no question that the ambiguities surrounding Rei are an asset.
"It's not like she's the only one in our group who has her dark moments," Una said by way of explanation.
I thought that summed it up well. The dark moments are the reason that Rei is one of our Narrator's Best Friends, and why everyone pays attention to the girl with First Mind eyes.
The One Who Hopes
When I meet his gaze, I know.
The One Who Bridges the Gap. His eyes are my eyes. I can see the... familial resemblance. I see it in a way that it wasn't present even in Aimi, or Sever, or Stitch, or Malicious. I see in his eyes what I see in my own, and in Nero's, and I know.
I know what I have to do.
"Who are you?" he asks, echoing back my own question. The question. One of the two questions that are truly important.
"My name is Rei," I reply.
He cocks his head to the side in a motion that is less Cheldrun than it is birdlike. "Rei? That doesn't make any sense."
"People keep saying that," I murmur. I think for a moment. "I'm... Mikomi?" I offer. It feels strange to use that name, but it feels close to the truth. Closer than 'Rei,' anyways. Zero. ... I no longer want to be the Empty Void, but I doubt I will ever really be able to change my nature.
"Your real name," he says.
Moses and Una and High Dive are watching now, and Moses's worried thoughts are like a distant buzzing in the back of my awareness. Amaterasu hungers. I don't want to be the empty void. Emptiness. Hallow. Cold. Dark. The question. Life? The inevitable heat death of the universe. Maximum entropy. An eternity of nothingness. There must be something more than that. Against all evidence to the contrary, that can't be all there is. I consider my answer for a long moment, and when I speak, I know before I even open my mouth that I am about to say something true on a level I have never uttered before: "I am The One Who Hopes."
The One Who Bridges the Gap nods. "Ah yes. That makes sense. Don't worry, The One Who Hopes. It will be over soon. But how did you get out here?"
"I came from the planet," I say. His eyes are hypnotic. So very like my own. The sense of kinship is almost painful in its intensity.
"Sent out in advance?" it asks. "The others will want to meet you."
I move forward and take his hand, feeling now more sure of the rightness of this course of action than I have ever before in my life. All the justifications I had been making for it seem to fade into the background: that I must learn about my enemy if we are to defeat it, that I am gathering information, that it would be irresponsible to let any more of my friends die because of our ignorance. All fades behind a great singular fact: this is what I was born for. This is why my father created me.
The One Who Bridges the Gap looks towards my companions. "Malice must be resolved," he says, and with a gesture of his hand, Garandu-Oni and Suraisu-Oni step through the wall.
The distant buzz of Moses' thoughts crescendos, and I am distantly aware of making telepathic contact with his mind. Then High Dive cries out, "Rei, what are you doing!?"
I meet her gaze and smile. "It's my purpose," I say. And then, hand in hand with The One Who Bridges the Gap, I walk through the bulkhead, and then through another, and another, and another. The sounds of combat are quickly muted, and then fade altogether.
We emerge into a vast open chamber, and my eyes are immediately drawn to the center, where floating in midair, strange metallic rings circle the largest quantity of White-Rock I have ever seen in my life: here is the heart of the ship, and Amaterasu's whispers rise up like a tide, urging me to let her out, to let her feed, and even here where I am able to distinguish between her thoughts and mine, I want to do as she asks. This amphitheatre-sized chamber is the Wandering Star's FTL drive, full of catwalks and strange technological devices and readouts and instrumentation so alien that I can't even begin to hope to understand it. But then, I don't need to, because what I see next stills even the hungry murmurs of Amaterasu within my mind.
There, all around the white rock engine, are strange, familiar figures. Each of them like the One Who Bridges the Gap, each of them different. Each of them like an idealized Cheldrun figure, and each of them with vibrant, otherworldly eyes. Some blue, some yellow, some red, some other colours, but each of them like mine; each of them like Nero's.
"I'm home," I whisper.
welcome home
The One Who Bridges the Gap. His eyes are my eyes. I can see the... familial resemblance. I see it in a way that it wasn't present even in Aimi, or Sever, or Stitch, or Malicious. I see in his eyes what I see in my own, and in Nero's, and I know.
I know what I have to do.
"Who are you?" he asks, echoing back my own question. The question. One of the two questions that are truly important.
"My name is Rei," I reply.
He cocks his head to the side in a motion that is less Cheldrun than it is birdlike. "Rei? That doesn't make any sense."
"People keep saying that," I murmur. I think for a moment. "I'm... Mikomi?" I offer. It feels strange to use that name, but it feels close to the truth. Closer than 'Rei,' anyways. Zero. ... I no longer want to be the Empty Void, but I doubt I will ever really be able to change my nature.
"Your real name," he says.
Moses and Una and High Dive are watching now, and Moses's worried thoughts are like a distant buzzing in the back of my awareness. Amaterasu hungers. I don't want to be the empty void. Emptiness. Hallow. Cold. Dark. The question. Life? The inevitable heat death of the universe. Maximum entropy. An eternity of nothingness. There must be something more than that. Against all evidence to the contrary, that can't be all there is. I consider my answer for a long moment, and when I speak, I know before I even open my mouth that I am about to say something true on a level I have never uttered before: "I am The One Who Hopes."
The One Who Bridges the Gap nods. "Ah yes. That makes sense. Don't worry, The One Who Hopes. It will be over soon. But how did you get out here?"
"I came from the planet," I say. His eyes are hypnotic. So very like my own. The sense of kinship is almost painful in its intensity.
"Sent out in advance?" it asks. "The others will want to meet you."
I move forward and take his hand, feeling now more sure of the rightness of this course of action than I have ever before in my life. All the justifications I had been making for it seem to fade into the background: that I must learn about my enemy if we are to defeat it, that I am gathering information, that it would be irresponsible to let any more of my friends die because of our ignorance. All fades behind a great singular fact: this is what I was born for. This is why my father created me.
The One Who Bridges the Gap looks towards my companions. "Malice must be resolved," he says, and with a gesture of his hand, Garandu-Oni and Suraisu-Oni step through the wall.
The distant buzz of Moses' thoughts crescendos, and I am distantly aware of making telepathic contact with his mind. Then High Dive cries out, "Rei, what are you doing!?"
I meet her gaze and smile. "It's my purpose," I say. And then, hand in hand with The One Who Bridges the Gap, I walk through the bulkhead, and then through another, and another, and another. The sounds of combat are quickly muted, and then fade altogether.
We emerge into a vast open chamber, and my eyes are immediately drawn to the center, where floating in midair, strange metallic rings circle the largest quantity of White-Rock I have ever seen in my life: here is the heart of the ship, and Amaterasu's whispers rise up like a tide, urging me to let her out, to let her feed, and even here where I am able to distinguish between her thoughts and mine, I want to do as she asks. This amphitheatre-sized chamber is the Wandering Star's FTL drive, full of catwalks and strange technological devices and readouts and instrumentation so alien that I can't even begin to hope to understand it. But then, I don't need to, because what I see next stills even the hungry murmurs of Amaterasu within my mind.
There, all around the white rock engine, are strange, familiar figures. Each of them like the One Who Bridges the Gap, each of them different. Each of them like an idealized Cheldrun figure, and each of them with vibrant, otherworldly eyes. Some blue, some yellow, some red, some other colours, but each of them like mine; each of them like Nero's.
"I'm home," I whisper.
welcome home
Bits and Pieces
Bits and pieces of Mokuzai were still dripping off the wall and floating about in the zero gravity environment that was the old First Mind temple when Rei finally made her way over towards what was left of the old Prill. Suraisu-Oni was devoured, and Asamu-Oni as well. Asamu-Oni's mana tasted faintly of decay, but in a way that Rei associated more with grilled mushrooms than with any kind of putrescence. Suraisu-Oni, on the other hand, tasted more like gears and grease and pistons. Smoky, maybe. Rei could still feel the fire of the mana her other self had gathered, burning in her chest.
It tickled a little bit.
... When had she started thinking of Amaterasu as her other self? They'd only been joined for a little while now. It seemed strange to her that she would think that about the little girl, eagle, or whatever she was. Kyo-TeeShee. My Kyo-TeeShee and Me. Heehee. Rei tried not to giggle out l0ud, since she thought it wouldn't be appropriate with Mokuzai all in bits and pieces floating around the room and on the wall.
High Dive had made a little pile of bloodied ground meaty bits in a corner, and it wasn't funny at all. Not even a little bit. Well, maybe a little. Especially the shock in Suraisu-Oni's face as she had leapt onto him and begun to devour his spicy anti-soul... Rei shook her head. No. That had been Amaterasu, not her self.
Kiyoshi was moving around somewhere behind her, talking to Mokuzai's Kyo-TeeShee, but all of that seemed very uninteresting to Rei just then. She knew that she needed more than anything to understand the Oni, especially after what she had just learned of their nature. First Minds, First Minds, Firsty-Firsty-Mindy-Minds...
Rei grimaced slightly as she concentrated, and the flow of her own thoughts separated from Amaterasu's, and she understood the difference between the two. For the moment. Amaterasu kept in singing her song about Firsty-Minds, and Rei snatched Mokuzai's head from where it was spinning in the air and set it down to float gently above the pile of bloody bits and pieces.
It was a strange contrast, the peaceful look on that face and the bloody giblets that floated there all in a pile. "Some must be sacrificed if all are to be saved," she murmured to Mokuzai's floating head.
Mokuzai didn't reply.
"I think I'm starting to understand, old man," she said. "What it is we have to do. What it's all about. To sacrifice everything, even our lives, by the thousands, by the millions, for one another..." she trailed off. A last spurt of blood had come out of the bottom of Mokuzai's severed head, and it had provided enough force to send it spiraling towards the upper corner of the First Mind shrine, where two walls met the ceiling.
Clunk.
Clunk.
Clunk.
Once, twice, three times it bounced, and then began to sink back down towards the pile of bits and pieces as the last of the bloodflow ceased, and the kinetic energy imparted to it by impacting the ceiling took over. Down it went, until it finally landed upside down on the pile, and its eyelids fell open.
Rei looked into Mokuzai's sightless gaze for a long, long moment.
"Huh," she said.
It tickled a little bit.
... When had she started thinking of Amaterasu as her other self? They'd only been joined for a little while now. It seemed strange to her that she would think that about the little girl, eagle, or whatever she was. Kyo-TeeShee. My Kyo-TeeShee and Me. Heehee. Rei tried not to giggle out l0ud, since she thought it wouldn't be appropriate with Mokuzai all in bits and pieces floating around the room and on the wall.
High Dive had made a little pile of bloodied ground meaty bits in a corner, and it wasn't funny at all. Not even a little bit. Well, maybe a little. Especially the shock in Suraisu-Oni's face as she had leapt onto him and begun to devour his spicy anti-soul... Rei shook her head. No. That had been Amaterasu, not her self.
Kiyoshi was moving around somewhere behind her, talking to Mokuzai's Kyo-TeeShee, but all of that seemed very uninteresting to Rei just then. She knew that she needed more than anything to understand the Oni, especially after what she had just learned of their nature. First Minds, First Minds, Firsty-Firsty-Mindy-Minds...
Rei grimaced slightly as she concentrated, and the flow of her own thoughts separated from Amaterasu's, and she understood the difference between the two. For the moment. Amaterasu kept in singing her song about Firsty-Minds, and Rei snatched Mokuzai's head from where it was spinning in the air and set it down to float gently above the pile of bloody bits and pieces.
It was a strange contrast, the peaceful look on that face and the bloody giblets that floated there all in a pile. "Some must be sacrificed if all are to be saved," she murmured to Mokuzai's floating head.
Mokuzai didn't reply.
"I think I'm starting to understand, old man," she said. "What it is we have to do. What it's all about. To sacrifice everything, even our lives, by the thousands, by the millions, for one another..." she trailed off. A last spurt of blood had come out of the bottom of Mokuzai's severed head, and it had provided enough force to send it spiraling towards the upper corner of the First Mind shrine, where two walls met the ceiling.
Clunk.
Clunk.
Clunk.
Once, twice, three times it bounced, and then began to sink back down towards the pile of bits and pieces as the last of the bloodflow ceased, and the kinetic energy imparted to it by impacting the ceiling took over. Down it went, until it finally landed upside down on the pile, and its eyelids fell open.
Rei looked into Mokuzai's sightless gaze for a long, long moment.
"Huh," she said.
Perchance to Dream
I dive behind the desk just before a hail of bullets flies through the space I had just evacuated, and efficiently somersault to my feet. There is a gun in my hand, and it is warm from constant use. I do not think this strange. Even as I somersault to my feet, I am firing at my targets once, twice, three times, knowing that I cannot miss. Exactly 2.4 seconds later, the bodies of my three targets hit the floor, shot through the eye. I permit myself the luxury of an appropriate physical response to such an efficient execution: I smile.
Tara rises to her feet, unharmed throughout the barrage and smiles adoringly. "My hero!" she says winsomely, and kisses me.
A biochemical reaction I cannot quantify is initiated by my body, and it is discomforting. Before the scenario can progress any further, I notice a mirror on the far wall.
The reflection belongs to Julian.
"Have I ever let you down before?" I hear my - no, Julian's voice ask. It moves without my accord. I am...
This is not my dream. The annoyance I feel does not register on Julian's face. I concentrate for a moment, and...
FLASH
It is different. I am different. My body feels heavier, and each step I take clanks loudly. Less responsive. My eyesight is less acute. I am walking through a vast, empty wilderness. It is hot. Unbearably hot. I am walking up an unremarkable brown rocky slope. Tiny shrubs grow in it, and they are ugly, and have many prickles.
Though it is day, I can see a bright light on the horizon, like a forest fire viewed from a distance at night. I walk and I walk and I walk, but I never seem to get any closer to the horizon, or to the distant light. The heat beats down on me, and I raise a mechanical arm to wipe the sweat from my brow.
But I am not Moses. I know that much. I am not Moses, and I am not Julian.
At least I'm not experiencing Raul's dreams again.
Presently, I realize that the distant fire is, at last, getting closer. I am almost to the top of the slope. I feel a strange sense of anticipation, and my body initiates the physiological responses appropriate a heightened state of anticipation. Excitement. Nervousness. Soon, I will see what I have sought for so...
"This is not for your eyes."
Moses does not react. I do not recognize the voice, but it is powerful, and deep, mechanical, and I am not altogether sure that it is a voice after all and not a series of strange, mechanical clicks...
I am elsewhere. It is dark, and it is empty. After a moment, I realize I am within my own dream again: the empty void. Every night, the empty void. Every night, I stand on a tiny lit platform in an ocean of nothingness.
I sigh.
That happens more often than not of late when I wind up in Moses's one of dreams, but dream-jumping is better than the alternative: being stuck here. Here, with the Void.
I stare out into the vast emptiness, and my body initiates a physiological response: chills run up and down my spine. I am being watched, though I know not by what.
That's when the whispers begin.
It starts softly at first, and I cannot be certain that I did not imagine it. Then there is another, and another, and whatever is out there in the Void, its language fills me with dread. It sounds like... the end of everything. It sounds like the Enemy.
I will not be afraid of them. There's nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. Nothing in my own dreamscape which can hurt me. I will not be afraid. I won't.
My emotional response does not appear to care, or at least does not appear to hear my declarations. Cold terrors bubble in the pit of my stomach.
The whispering grows more intense. There must be dozens of them out there in the darkness, whispering back and forth, watching me. Presently I begin to perceive eyes glowing in the dark. Red eyes. I know that if I summon the light, I can chase them away. But summoning the light will also reveal their forms to me, and I can't stand to do that. I will not be afraid.
The language is... disconcerting. It grows moreso the longer I hear it. What's worse is how strangely familiar it seems, as if I should know and understand its words... as if the meaning is there, waiting to be grasped.
Then one of them steps into the pillar of light, and my heart nearly stops.
My face. My eyes.
Me.
The other me grins wickedly, and even as it does so, I feel a sick sense of writhing in the palms of my own hands. I hold them up just in time to see them split open ... mouths. Many-jawed, long-tongued mouths. I look up, and the other me has been replaced by Something Else. She was grotesquely fat, and upon her shoulders rested no head. Her bloated, corpulent body was tapeworm-pale, and on the palms of her hands were the same grotesque many-jawed mouths full of terrible, drooling, seeking tongues.
"Who are you?" I ask in spite of my revulsion. "What do you want?"
The questions. Always the questions. There are none more important.
A tiny whisper in my own voice issued from my right hand in answer: "We are you, Mikomi."
I grit my teeth and force myself not to shudder at the feeling of my hands inhaling and exhaling, and of the drooling, seeking tongues that wet my fingers. "Why are you here?" I ask.
The creature in front of me spoke, and its voice was still my own: "We have always been here."
I cannot say why, but that statement fills me with fear like no other before it. My pulse begins to race, and my breathing becomes strained, and...
I wake up with a start.
It is morning. My body is soaked with sweat. I let out a long, slow breath of relief, and sit up.
And faintly, I can hear one of the Rusty Nail Rogues shouting, "Land ho!"
...
I scratch the palms of my hands, shudder deeply, and head for the wash room to get cleaned up.
Tara rises to her feet, unharmed throughout the barrage and smiles adoringly. "My hero!" she says winsomely, and kisses me.
A biochemical reaction I cannot quantify is initiated by my body, and it is discomforting. Before the scenario can progress any further, I notice a mirror on the far wall.
The reflection belongs to Julian.
"Have I ever let you down before?" I hear my - no, Julian's voice ask. It moves without my accord. I am...
This is not my dream. The annoyance I feel does not register on Julian's face. I concentrate for a moment, and...
FLASH
It is different. I am different. My body feels heavier, and each step I take clanks loudly. Less responsive. My eyesight is less acute. I am walking through a vast, empty wilderness. It is hot. Unbearably hot. I am walking up an unremarkable brown rocky slope. Tiny shrubs grow in it, and they are ugly, and have many prickles.
Though it is day, I can see a bright light on the horizon, like a forest fire viewed from a distance at night. I walk and I walk and I walk, but I never seem to get any closer to the horizon, or to the distant light. The heat beats down on me, and I raise a mechanical arm to wipe the sweat from my brow.
But I am not Moses. I know that much. I am not Moses, and I am not Julian.
At least I'm not experiencing Raul's dreams again.
Presently, I realize that the distant fire is, at last, getting closer. I am almost to the top of the slope. I feel a strange sense of anticipation, and my body initiates the physiological responses appropriate a heightened state of anticipation. Excitement. Nervousness. Soon, I will see what I have sought for so...
"This is not for your eyes."
Moses does not react. I do not recognize the voice, but it is powerful, and deep, mechanical, and I am not altogether sure that it is a voice after all and not a series of strange, mechanical clicks...
I am elsewhere. It is dark, and it is empty. After a moment, I realize I am within my own dream again: the empty void. Every night, the empty void. Every night, I stand on a tiny lit platform in an ocean of nothingness.
I sigh.
That happens more often than not of late when I wind up in Moses's one of dreams, but dream-jumping is better than the alternative: being stuck here. Here, with the Void.
I stare out into the vast emptiness, and my body initiates a physiological response: chills run up and down my spine. I am being watched, though I know not by what.
That's when the whispers begin.
It starts softly at first, and I cannot be certain that I did not imagine it. Then there is another, and another, and whatever is out there in the Void, its language fills me with dread. It sounds like... the end of everything. It sounds like the Enemy.
I will not be afraid of them. There's nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. Nothing in my own dreamscape which can hurt me. I will not be afraid. I won't.
My emotional response does not appear to care, or at least does not appear to hear my declarations. Cold terrors bubble in the pit of my stomach.
The whispering grows more intense. There must be dozens of them out there in the darkness, whispering back and forth, watching me. Presently I begin to perceive eyes glowing in the dark. Red eyes. I know that if I summon the light, I can chase them away. But summoning the light will also reveal their forms to me, and I can't stand to do that. I will not be afraid.
The language is... disconcerting. It grows moreso the longer I hear it. What's worse is how strangely familiar it seems, as if I should know and understand its words... as if the meaning is there, waiting to be grasped.
Then one of them steps into the pillar of light, and my heart nearly stops.
My face. My eyes.
Me.
The other me grins wickedly, and even as it does so, I feel a sick sense of writhing in the palms of my own hands. I hold them up just in time to see them split open ... mouths. Many-jawed, long-tongued mouths. I look up, and the other me has been replaced by Something Else. She was grotesquely fat, and upon her shoulders rested no head. Her bloated, corpulent body was tapeworm-pale, and on the palms of her hands were the same grotesque many-jawed mouths full of terrible, drooling, seeking tongues.
"Who are you?" I ask in spite of my revulsion. "What do you want?"
The questions. Always the questions. There are none more important.
A tiny whisper in my own voice issued from my right hand in answer: "We are you, Mikomi."
I grit my teeth and force myself not to shudder at the feeling of my hands inhaling and exhaling, and of the drooling, seeking tongues that wet my fingers. "Why are you here?" I ask.
The creature in front of me spoke, and its voice was still my own: "We have always been here."
I cannot say why, but that statement fills me with fear like no other before it. My pulse begins to race, and my breathing becomes strained, and...
I wake up with a start.
It is morning. My body is soaked with sweat. I let out a long, slow breath of relief, and sit up.
And faintly, I can hear one of the Rusty Nail Rogues shouting, "Land ho!"
...
I scratch the palms of my hands, shudder deeply, and head for the wash room to get cleaned up.
To Set a Course
At some point during our sea voyage, at night, Rei speaks up to the rest of the group. She looks thoughtful, and somewhat troubled. What she says is as follows:
"I think we need to talk. All of us. We've gone too long without explaining anything about what we're doing or where we're going. I know we're heading west, but why? Because the Dusk Sages live there? These 'Dusk Sages' haven't been helpful to us so far. They're extremely dangerous at best, and they may be actively hostile towards us. Why are we going to their retreat? Do we want their assistance? Are they likely to give it? Are we going there to kill them if what we saw is correct and they really are causing this Cataclysm?"
"Are we just following an arrow in the sky? But who put it there, and why? Are arrows in the sky trustworthy forms of guidance? And then there's the Enemy to think about. Almost every place we've visited has been attacked by the Oni. Does it advance our cause to bring the same fate down on the Dusk Sages?"
"I don't know how traveling west will help us deal with Katashi Blade and his DisLocators. He's summoning Oni, using the Enemy to gain power, isn't he? Provoking war between the Cheldrun cities? There's Nero to think about, too. He's out there, planning something. I think of the two he's the more dangerous." Rei looks at Una. "And he hasn't forgotten what you did to his arm." She waits a beat. "... Before we met up again, I gained access to the computer core of the Bosphorous. I used the ship's sensors to scan the planet and its immediate surroundings for Enemy signatures. There are now Enemy signatures in most of the Cheldrun cities, some scattered across the wilderness, some in the wilderness surrounding the Grand Chantry. But those aren't what worry me. What worries me is the source of Enemy signatures in orbit of the planet, where they're clustered so thickly that the ship's sensors could not distinguish individual signatures."
Rei looks up at the sky and points to the wandering star. "There they are now," she murmurs.
"And if they're sitting there in orbit, what are they waiting for? If I had a position in orbit of a world capable of resisting my invasion, and my goal was the destruction of everything, I would bombard the planet with asteroids until it had suffered so many Extinction Level Events that there was no chance of anything surviving. Why haven't they done that? What do they want if not our deaths?"
"The point is, we're flying blind, unless one of you knows far more about the situation than I do. We have to deal with the Enemy somehow. How are we going to do that? We aren't exactly an army ourselves. I'd like our odds a lot better if we had more people under our command, but we can't do anything about that right now. What are we doing? Why are we sailing west? What do we intend to do when we get there?"
Rei looks at each party member in turn, waiting for an answer.
"I think we need to talk. All of us. We've gone too long without explaining anything about what we're doing or where we're going. I know we're heading west, but why? Because the Dusk Sages live there? These 'Dusk Sages' haven't been helpful to us so far. They're extremely dangerous at best, and they may be actively hostile towards us. Why are we going to their retreat? Do we want their assistance? Are they likely to give it? Are we going there to kill them if what we saw is correct and they really are causing this Cataclysm?"
"Are we just following an arrow in the sky? But who put it there, and why? Are arrows in the sky trustworthy forms of guidance? And then there's the Enemy to think about. Almost every place we've visited has been attacked by the Oni. Does it advance our cause to bring the same fate down on the Dusk Sages?"
"I don't know how traveling west will help us deal with Katashi Blade and his DisLocators. He's summoning Oni, using the Enemy to gain power, isn't he? Provoking war between the Cheldrun cities? There's Nero to think about, too. He's out there, planning something. I think of the two he's the more dangerous." Rei looks at Una. "And he hasn't forgotten what you did to his arm." She waits a beat. "... Before we met up again, I gained access to the computer core of the Bosphorous. I used the ship's sensors to scan the planet and its immediate surroundings for Enemy signatures. There are now Enemy signatures in most of the Cheldrun cities, some scattered across the wilderness, some in the wilderness surrounding the Grand Chantry. But those aren't what worry me. What worries me is the source of Enemy signatures in orbit of the planet, where they're clustered so thickly that the ship's sensors could not distinguish individual signatures."
Rei looks up at the sky and points to the wandering star. "There they are now," she murmurs.
"And if they're sitting there in orbit, what are they waiting for? If I had a position in orbit of a world capable of resisting my invasion, and my goal was the destruction of everything, I would bombard the planet with asteroids until it had suffered so many Extinction Level Events that there was no chance of anything surviving. Why haven't they done that? What do they want if not our deaths?"
"The point is, we're flying blind, unless one of you knows far more about the situation than I do. We have to deal with the Enemy somehow. How are we going to do that? We aren't exactly an army ourselves. I'd like our odds a lot better if we had more people under our command, but we can't do anything about that right now. What are we doing? Why are we sailing west? What do we intend to do when we get there?"
Rei looks at each party member in turn, waiting for an answer.
Uncomfortable Conversations
It is early morning; the sun has not yet risen, and the Sennin's running lights do little to illuminate the gloom. The salty smell of the sea is all-pervading, and the deck is wet with the spray. The moon sinks behind the clouds, and all around the ship, the waters fade from silver to pitch black. Rei's red eyes seem faintly luminous in the darkness. She stands at the top of the stairs, waiting for Kiyoshi to notice her.
Well, 'notice' is the wrong word. Her senses skitter off of the surface of the Void, and she knows that he knows she's there. 'Acknowledge' is a better term. More accurate.
He's practicing with Keibatsu. Sword forms. Flowing smoothly from one to the other with the skill of a master. Rei watches with an analytical eye, and is quickly forced to conclude that so long as he held Keibatsu, Kiyoshi could dispatch her without much trouble if he put his mind to it.
Not a pleasant thought, but then, not many of Rei's thoughts were pleasant. When Kiyoshi's exercises finally wind to a close, she steps out onto the deck and speaks. "So," she says, and that is all. She waits, then, watching for his response. Waiting for the beginning of an uncomfortable conversation. And her hand aches where Keibatsu cut into her.
Well, 'notice' is the wrong word. Her senses skitter off of the surface of the Void, and she knows that he knows she's there. 'Acknowledge' is a better term. More accurate.
He's practicing with Keibatsu. Sword forms. Flowing smoothly from one to the other with the skill of a master. Rei watches with an analytical eye, and is quickly forced to conclude that so long as he held Keibatsu, Kiyoshi could dispatch her without much trouble if he put his mind to it.
Not a pleasant thought, but then, not many of Rei's thoughts were pleasant. When Kiyoshi's exercises finally wind to a close, she steps out onto the deck and speaks. "So," she says, and that is all. She waits, then, watching for his response. Waiting for the beginning of an uncomfortable conversation. And her hand aches where Keibatsu cut into her.
Fractals Revisited
Fractals unfold before her eyes as Rei finally completes the repairs to her computer. It is nearly two weeks since the journey began, and much has happened, and very little has happened. Sea voyages are like that. Two weeks in, and she finally fixes the computer, boots it up, and observes the spinning Stochastic fractal imagery.
And there it is. The eye-watering, stomach-wrenching visual language of the journal of Inase Spark. An angle. An intersection. A pair of sweeping lines.
The command prompt.
Her hands fly across the keyboard accompanied by the sound of rapid typing. On the screen, the message appears, though not in words: Father, we need to talk.
The Sound of Silence. Icy, Icy Silence.
It was too much to hope that Una and Moses would be able to accept Aimi's presence here. I know that. They hate her. The only person Una hates more than Aimi is Sever. And Moses - every time he looks at Aimi, his thoughts are full of blood and rage. Kiyoshi? ... I never expected that Kiyoshi would be an ally in this, but then I guess I should have seen it coming. But the one to watch for is High Dive.
High Dive is capable of anything.
Maybe that's why I fixed Aimi's gauntlet. It doesn't seem right to leave her without a weapon like that.
The thoughts of the Rusty Nail Rogues are silent. Shock. This is shock. It is a strange thing to look into the minds of everyone around me and see the same stunned silence in every one. They did better than I expected them to. I'd thought that they'd all be cut down within thirty seconds of beginning the attack. That any of them survived is more than I'd planned for. No matter.
Aimi.
I open the door and step within. It's really not more than a storage closet, and the mattress on the floor takes up most of it. The floors and the wall here are smooth, acrylic surfaces. I can see force and energy moving through them in pleasing patterns. The designers of this ship spared no expense. They must have hired some real artists when they were installing the power conduits.
She's there. Not meditating, not exactly. I remember those exercises. Mama Pa... Doctor Pain and Doctor Soren taught us how to shield ourselves against the outside world. I was never able to learn the trick. But Aimi did. And Sever, and Stitch, and Nero, and Malicious. Half an hour of the exercise every day to maintain the training. To keep the walls strong.
I shut the door, sit down just in front of the mattress, and wait. I'm surprised that she doesn't break the exercise when I come in. Is it because she doesn't think I'm a serious threat to her, or does she trust me? ... The former, I suppose. Her thoughts are muffled behind her mental shields, like a faint buzz of conversation in another room that is just too indistinct to be made out.
Twelve minutes later, she opens her eyes and looks at me like I'm an annoying insect that's crawled into her room through the floor. "What do you want?" she says.
I stare into her eyes, and for a moment, I see myself in them. Strip off the excess makeup, change the colour of the hair, age her four years, and we could be twins. We are, I guess. Six variations on the same DNA. And there she is, asking one of the Questions. "... That's a complicated question," I say. "It's one of the things that defines us, isn't it? Nero asked the same question. I've been asking the Questions for a long time now. 'Who are you? What do you want?'"
She's looking at me like I'm crazy. Maybe I am. I continue.
"I know I'm not very good at expressing..." I trail off. Why is this so difficult? Damnit. "I'm not very good at this. We've never been much of a family. Our people don't really have that. But family is important, and..." I trail off. Her eyes are unreadable, her thoughts a dim, muted hum.
"I know what you're thinking," I say. Instantly, her shield contracts, and the sound of her thoughts fades to barely more than a whisper. I shake my head. "Not like that. You're probably thinking that if family is so important, maybe I shouldn't have brought my friends Home with me and let them kill Mama Pain, right? ... I guess I can't really answer that. It probably doesn't help to know that we were all scheduled for liquidation anyways." I shake my head. This isn't going well. "What I'm trying to say is..."
She glares at me impatiently, and I sigh and move on.
"I guess by now you know that Doctor Pain and Doctor Soren didn't make me. I was... residual biological mass, salvaged from an earlier project. Project Scion. You and the others were an attempt to recreate the project. To use Silex Niveus to usher in a whole new era for our people. ... You saw it, didn't you? The memories I gave you? ... Nero. First in the Blackrock Mine. Then again beneath the manor of Lord Tsuchinaga. Then in the wreck of the Bosphorous. He's gone mad. He knows what we are. Him. Me. More white-rock was used in his creation than in any of you. I don't know if you and Sever and Stitch are the same, but I hope not. He says that the Enemy can be so much more than just the Oni, and I think he's determined to be that."
"I can't deny what I am any longer. It's been proven to me. I didn't believe Nero, but after what the ship's sensors showed, and then Keibatsu..." I smile faintly, feeling vaguely lost. "And you saw what happened today."
"I saw," Aimi said. She gave me a speculative look. "You hate Goshi, but you make free use of their technology. I never pegged you for such a hypocrite. Keep that up and those red eyes of yours..." The corners of her lips turned upwards in a nasty smirk. "Well, they'll still be red, at least. Your friends will probably say that it isn't quite the same thing."
I open the sheath on the pant leg of my leathers and produce the device in question: the DisLocator. "But I haven't," I say. "I haven't put it in. Haven't used it."
She looks at me disbelievingly.
It does sound weak. I rise to my feet. "I just... needed to tell you. Everything. You deserved to know. It affects you too. And since Nero killed Inase Spark..." I look at her, and my resolve grows strong within my heart. "Don't die, Aimi. If you died, it would bother me."
She continues to watch me silently, saying nothing, her eyes unreadable.
I produce her gauntlet and toss it to her. She looks surprised. "I couldn't fix it completely. I didn't have the parts. But I repaired everything that I could. It won't work very well, but it shouldn't be too hard to fix it yourself once you find usable parts." Silence for a beat. "You should hide it," I say. "If anyone finds it on you, they'll probably destroy it."
Silence. Icy, icy silence.
After a moment, I shake my head, step out, and shut the door behind me.
That went well.
High Dive is capable of anything.
Maybe that's why I fixed Aimi's gauntlet. It doesn't seem right to leave her without a weapon like that.
The thoughts of the Rusty Nail Rogues are silent. Shock. This is shock. It is a strange thing to look into the minds of everyone around me and see the same stunned silence in every one. They did better than I expected them to. I'd thought that they'd all be cut down within thirty seconds of beginning the attack. That any of them survived is more than I'd planned for. No matter.
Aimi.
I open the door and step within. It's really not more than a storage closet, and the mattress on the floor takes up most of it. The floors and the wall here are smooth, acrylic surfaces. I can see force and energy moving through them in pleasing patterns. The designers of this ship spared no expense. They must have hired some real artists when they were installing the power conduits.
She's there. Not meditating, not exactly. I remember those exercises. Mama Pa... Doctor Pain and Doctor Soren taught us how to shield ourselves against the outside world. I was never able to learn the trick. But Aimi did. And Sever, and Stitch, and Nero, and Malicious. Half an hour of the exercise every day to maintain the training. To keep the walls strong.
I shut the door, sit down just in front of the mattress, and wait. I'm surprised that she doesn't break the exercise when I come in. Is it because she doesn't think I'm a serious threat to her, or does she trust me? ... The former, I suppose. Her thoughts are muffled behind her mental shields, like a faint buzz of conversation in another room that is just too indistinct to be made out.
Twelve minutes later, she opens her eyes and looks at me like I'm an annoying insect that's crawled into her room through the floor. "What do you want?" she says.
I stare into her eyes, and for a moment, I see myself in them. Strip off the excess makeup, change the colour of the hair, age her four years, and we could be twins. We are, I guess. Six variations on the same DNA. And there she is, asking one of the Questions. "... That's a complicated question," I say. "It's one of the things that defines us, isn't it? Nero asked the same question. I've been asking the Questions for a long time now. 'Who are you? What do you want?'"
She's looking at me like I'm crazy. Maybe I am. I continue.
"I know I'm not very good at expressing..." I trail off. Why is this so difficult? Damnit. "I'm not very good at this. We've never been much of a family. Our people don't really have that. But family is important, and..." I trail off. Her eyes are unreadable, her thoughts a dim, muted hum.
"I know what you're thinking," I say. Instantly, her shield contracts, and the sound of her thoughts fades to barely more than a whisper. I shake my head. "Not like that. You're probably thinking that if family is so important, maybe I shouldn't have brought my friends Home with me and let them kill Mama Pain, right? ... I guess I can't really answer that. It probably doesn't help to know that we were all scheduled for liquidation anyways." I shake my head. This isn't going well. "What I'm trying to say is..."
She glares at me impatiently, and I sigh and move on.
"I guess by now you know that Doctor Pain and Doctor Soren didn't make me. I was... residual biological mass, salvaged from an earlier project. Project Scion. You and the others were an attempt to recreate the project. To use Silex Niveus to usher in a whole new era for our people. ... You saw it, didn't you? The memories I gave you? ... Nero. First in the Blackrock Mine. Then again beneath the manor of Lord Tsuchinaga. Then in the wreck of the Bosphorous. He's gone mad. He knows what we are. Him. Me. More white-rock was used in his creation than in any of you. I don't know if you and Sever and Stitch are the same, but I hope not. He says that the Enemy can be so much more than just the Oni, and I think he's determined to be that."
"I can't deny what I am any longer. It's been proven to me. I didn't believe Nero, but after what the ship's sensors showed, and then Keibatsu..." I smile faintly, feeling vaguely lost. "And you saw what happened today."
"I saw," Aimi said. She gave me a speculative look. "You hate Goshi, but you make free use of their technology. I never pegged you for such a hypocrite. Keep that up and those red eyes of yours..." The corners of her lips turned upwards in a nasty smirk. "Well, they'll still be red, at least. Your friends will probably say that it isn't quite the same thing."
I open the sheath on the pant leg of my leathers and produce the device in question: the DisLocator. "But I haven't," I say. "I haven't put it in. Haven't used it."
She looks at me disbelievingly.
It does sound weak. I rise to my feet. "I just... needed to tell you. Everything. You deserved to know. It affects you too. And since Nero killed Inase Spark..." I look at her, and my resolve grows strong within my heart. "Don't die, Aimi. If you died, it would bother me."
She continues to watch me silently, saying nothing, her eyes unreadable.
I produce her gauntlet and toss it to her. She looks surprised. "I couldn't fix it completely. I didn't have the parts. But I repaired everything that I could. It won't work very well, but it shouldn't be too hard to fix it yourself once you find usable parts." Silence for a beat. "You should hide it," I say. "If anyone finds it on you, they'll probably destroy it."
Silence. Icy, icy silence.
After a moment, I shake my head, step out, and shut the door behind me.
That went well.
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