Title: Lesser Evil
Fandom: Mai HiME
Rating: PG13-Rish.
Length: ~2200 words
Warnings: Some violent images.
Summary: Selling her daughter like chattel was horrifying, but what other choice is Saeko have? Nothing could be worse than First District.
Saeko Kuga was distinctly uncomfortable. She had pretty high security access within First District, but she knew she had somehow bypassed a security checkpoint through which she would not have passed. She was used to the smaller facility down by the sea; that was where her office was and where First District offered a day care center for its employees. (Her husband was out of town again, and the commute to Natsuki's normal daycare was too far to make it worthwhile, especially with a daycare offered here.)
She'd had to make the drive to the main headquarters to pick up a file in storage there only to find the file they'd pulled was the wrong one. So she'd taken it upon herself to find the correct paperwork. And now she was a little lost in the winding bowels of First District's basements. She'd stumbled upon a whitewashed hallway in the depths of the record department and took it, assuming the next room carried another set of files. She'd been wrong.
Instead, Saeko stepped out into a larger hallway, one that had a hospital-starkness to it. It was eerie, and she got the prickling feeling she wasn't supposed to be down here.
Heavy footsteps echoed behind her, and Saeko quickly readjusted her employee badge. She turned nervously, and then expelled a sigh of relief at the sight of stout Sakomizu Kaiji. He looked as surprised as she was relieved. "Saeko-chan? What are you doing down here?"
"The file storage department is a mess. Somehow I found myself here. Is there anyway you can get me out of this maze, Kaiji-kun?"
He laughed and scratched his belly. "You really aren't supposed to be here. Hell, I'm not entirely supposed to be here." He had a familiar twinkle in his eye, one that had gotten Saeko into more than her fair share of trouble in college. "Follow me."
And, as in the past, she followed him purely out of curiosity. "What is this area?"
"This is the more...hands on section of First District." He jerked his head when he unlocked a room, motioning her inside.
"Hands on?"
They were in some sort of observation room, looking out a wall of one-way mirror. Saeko pushed her glasses up to the bridge of her nose and squinted past her own faint reflection. It was a huge, stark room, and there were several men standing at attention around the square walls. In the middle sat a young, foreign girl. She had Western features—the tall nose, heavy brow, and light brown, nearly blonde hair—but she was in a cute child's kimono. It reminded Saeko that she needed to buy a new kimono and obi for Natsuki soon for Children's Day this year. This girl looked about the same age as Natsuki, she mused.
"Fujino Shizuru," Sakomizu said quietly. "Take a guess at why she's here."
"Is she a HiME?"
He laughed from his belly. "Prophesied to be Kagutsuchi's caller, too."
Saeko wasn't entirely sure if that was a joke. "Prophesied?" she echoed.
Sakomizu grinned at her and shuffled his feet. "I forget you're in the nitty-gritty science end, Saeko-chan. You see, First District likes the idea of controlling the Carnival completely. To do that, they have to find and influence as many HiME as soon as possible. Apparently the custom has always been for a set group of women to prophecy the characteristics, birth, parentage, and so on of the coming HiME."
"Certain women?" Saeko did not hide her incredulity. It sounded about as unscientific as it could get. Next thing, Sakomizu would tell her that they'd divined the time and place of the next staff meeting from the guts of a pig.
"Rumored to be winners of the Carnival themselves many centuries ago. I haven't seen them; I have no idea. But, well, Saeko-chan, you're here, aren't you?"
It raised a flag of unease within her. "Well, yes, but I applied to work here. That was when Natsuki was just a baby too."
"Why do you think they hired you? Furthermore, how do you think they knew to tell you Natsuki-chan is a HiME?" A chill passed down her spine. Sakomizu smiled gently. "It could be coincidence that you're employed here and that your daughter is a HiME. But a lot of coincidences like that seem to happen around here." His voice was a little to deprecating to be reassuring.
"And her?" Saeko asked, nodding to the girl sitting in seiza in the middle of the room across the mirror.
"Given special attention and training. With the assumption she'd call up Kagutsuchi, First District knew she would easily be the most powerful HiME. So they've been culturing her to be a good one and to follow orders."
"What of the other HiME?" Saeko asked, thinking of her own daughter. She had the urge to find a pay-phone and call the daycare to be sure Natsuki was alright. She realized that no one had ever really told her what happened to the HiME that lost in the Carnival. No need to think of that now, she told herself, trying to force away the cold fear that sat in her throat.
"They'll be trained like this too, of course. First District wants no chances of not controlling the HiME who ultimately wins the Carnival."
"Fujino Shizuru." Someone spoke behind the glass. The voice belonged to an old woman, but it had a metallic quality so it probably came from a speaker system in the room. Saeko darted her eyes to the room again, watching the little girl, Shizuru, rise into steady stand. "Yes?" the girl asked sweetly. She had a rather dumb look about her, not dirt stupid just rather dull. Her smile was honest but empty. As if sensing her thoughts, Sakomizu said, "She's very intelligent, despite her looks. Her IQ is over 140."
"Summon your element, Shizuru-HiME."
There was a flash of light, and just like that, Shizuru held onto a crimson naginata. It was truly wicked looking, but Saeko knew enough about Kagutsuchi's caller to know there was no variation in the fire rings Elements. "I thought you said she commanded Kagutsuchi."
"Well, sometimes First District gets the details wrong." Sakomizu smiled, though now he had a slightly strained look on his face. "We should go."
"Summon your Child, Shizuru-HiME."
"No," Saeko replied. She had never seen a Child summoned, and the scientist in her needed to document the process. "I want to watch."
Shizuru's dumb smile slipped and settled into something sinister. "Kiyohime," she whispered, and Saeko caught a startling hint of Kyoto-ben on her voice. Behind Shizuru, the room warped and slipped, and out came a massive squid hydra. It seemed to melt upwards from the floor, gaining matter and shape with altitude. It was grotesque, doubtlessly powerful. Each of those tentacles, Saeko saw, ended in a snake head. "Dear god," she gasped in horror.
"Kill them."
Two men were dragged forward by the suited men in the room. The taller of them let out a shriek and backpedalled from the Child in terror. One of those snake mouths opened and spit acid. The man—and one of those suited men who stood a little too close—screamed all the louder as he was burned alive. Saeko put a hand over her mouth to retch, but she couldn't stop watching. Shizuru, probably no older than Natsuki, stepped forward and flicked her naginata at the man now charging her. She eviscerated him, then promptly cut off his head.
A splash of blood arched out and sprayed across Shizuru's face. Shizuru lifted her head and looked at the mirror; she seemed to meet Saeko's eyes. Mesmerized and horrified, Saeko realized that the girl's irises were crimson, not brown. "Oh, god," Saeko said before she retched again. Sakomizu had her by the arm, and he dragged her out of that room and back down the corridor that they'd entered in.
"I didn't realize they were going to do that today," he said in some discomfort.
"Do what? Let her kill those innocent men?" Oh, my god, Saeko realized. Natsuki will have to fight that girl one day.
Sakomizu shoved them into a small supply office where he closed and locked the door. He slanted her a harsh glance. "Shizuru-san is not the way she is now naturally."
"It seems pretty unnatural to me that a girl that age can kill like that! She has to be a psychopath." Saeko recalled the blood on her face, the coil of those naked intestines, sliced free by that wicked Element, and she leaned forward as her body attempted to bring up what little there was in her stomach.
"Maybe," Sakomizu replied, dragging a trash can under her. "When she first arrived for training not a year ago, she was as normal and sweet and innocent as your daughter." Saeko wanted to slap him for comparing that monster to Natsuki. "But First District trained her how to kill. They had some awful measures which they used in the end. They started with small animals and worked up, and somewhere around the live pigs she began to truly resist killing."
"How did they make her kill?" Saeko gasped.
"You don't want to know." Sakomizu was uncharacteristically serious when he said this. "They've been training her to mask her intellect, to gain people's trust. I'm sure the lessons aren't difficult now, but in ten years..." Sakomizu shrugged. "No doubt she'll be terrifying. Not the least of which is because she's stopped remembering doing bad things."
"I don't understand," Saeko whispered.
"I listened to a recording after a training session. She had no idea what had happened between her going into the room and her coming out of it. Just a blank spot in her memory."
"So she makes herself forget. That doesn't seem at all strange given when they make her do!"
"I have a theory." Sakomizu pulled out a chair and sat. He was heavier than he used to be, and he'd started to grow facial hair. It occurred to Saeko that he looked far older than in his early thirties. "Multiple personality disorder—or perhaps just a well manifested Dissociative disorder."
"What, like Sybil?" Saeko was surprised at her own incredulity. "You think she reverts to another personality when she goes into that room?"
"Well, why not? It's thought to be related to the ability to innately dissociate from memories."
"Even if it were true, that can't be good, not from First District's standpoint. They want to control her, don't they?"
Sakomizu shrugged. "The higher-ups don't seem worried at this point in time. It'll probably bite them in the ass, but who knows."
Out of nowhere, Saeko retched again. Sakomizu's strong arms wrapped around her shoulders, and he rubbed her back. That had always been the best part of being his lover: his hands were so expressive.
"She isn't even Kagutsuchi's caller, and they're doing this?" Saeko asked weakly when the spasm passed.
"They've invested too much into her to let her go despite her calling another Child. Kagutsuchi's caller still hasn't been found yet. I'd imagine First District wants to make sure the Fujino girl is stronger. It would be the first time a non-Kagutsuchi caller would win the Carnival in over two-thousand years, but... Stranger things have happened." Sakomizu kept rubbing her shoulders. "I'm sorry you saw that. I thought it was just a general session to measure her Child's power."
"Well, I'm enlightened," Saeko whispered softly.
Sakomizu smiled at her a little sadly. "I'll escort you up."
When they parted ways, Saeko made it to her car before she threw up in the parking lot. I can't let them do that Natsuki-chan, she realized. But how could she ever protect Natsuki from them? Natsuki had not yet called her Child or even summoned her Elements, but that day was sure to come sooner rather than later. Saeko had a vision of them torturing her daughter, forcing her to kill, to be a murderer, to have no feelings—forcing her to fight that monster Fujino girl. She pressed her face against the steering wheel and took a deep breath, trying to ward off her nausea.
I have to get her out. No matter how... Nothing's worse than that.
Shaking, pale, and nauseated, Saeko made the drive back to her office. She realized later that she'd forgotten her file but had no heart to ever return to that building. She'd have someone else get it later. Saeko sat for a long time and just stared at the spread sheet on her computer screen. She shook herself out of her trance and decided, in the very least, to check her messages. The first voicemail was from someone at the filing department, saying they'd found the correct file and it was ready for her to pick up at any time.
She nearly deleted the next message without listening to it. The person who had left it was a John Smith. Surely a fake name, probably an advert that somehow slipped past the company safeware. Her finger paused over the delete button, but a shudder racked her frame as she saw the Fujino child splitting that man apart. She realized for the first time that the girl, Shizuru, had been smiling. Fighting down another retch yet holding the image of those childish soft brown eyes shifting to match the crimson blood on the baby-fat cheeks, she chose to playback the message.
-end-