Finally… finally he made it, a place where MBI's influence hadn't taken root purely due to the fact that the Government hated them too much to give them any. America, the Home of the Free, a safe haven for him and his new charge. The man pulled down his hood and took a deep, blissful breath, taking in the polluted smell of the Western World.
Free from their confines, his silver hair sprang back up to its normal size, his ahoge finally unsticking from his scalp. The man, better known as (former) Head MBI Researcher Asama Takehito, was more than glad to have escaped the critical eye of his company, for good reason too, if the bundle held firmly in his arms was any indicator of that fact. He looked down to the bundle, a weary, but still happy smile making its way to his face as it began to gurgle and coo, small, pudgy hands "We're here little one… your Father will never be able to hurt you now" He whispered, the bundle, which was no doubt a baby, responding with a happy giggle, as if he understood anything his new guardian was actually saying.
Takehito took a great risk in taking the child out of Japan, but he couldn't stand idly by and allow his Father to turn the boy into a monster. He already let Minaka enslave an alien race for his own agenda, he refused to allow even one more life be subjugated to that farce.
Yes, the child in his arms, was indeed the son of Hiroto Minaka, the CEO of MBI, his mother, the one who alerted Takehito of Minaka's plans, was Sahashi Takami, two people who held immense influence on the planet's politics, much as he does, or did, seeing as he held their child in his arms. Part of him regretted his decision, Minaka may know his son was missing, but he didn't know who took him, and that acknowledged of the unknown would only temper his anger. He would walk on eggshells for the rest of his days, if he lived that long that is.
However, that regret was nowhere near as strong as the guilt he would have held if he abandoned the child. His father was a monster through and through after all, who would even use his own child to further his twisted plans. His mother was much too weak from delivering the new life in the world to combat Minaka's madness, only she was able to put a muzzle on that mad dog.
'Project Sweeper of Souls', the outrageous moniker given to the set of human experimentation that Minaka would have put his unnamed son through, to make him the 'Ultimate Ashikabi', his 'Secret Wild Card', the 'God That Walked Among Men'. The lunatic went on and on about his hundreds of plans to mold someone into his own controllable took of destruction, and he wouldn't have known he was talking his own goddamned son if it wasn't for Takami.
His shook his head, his ahoge swaying back and forth, amusing the small child "I can't think of that now…" he said, chastising himself. He picked up his two bags of carry-on, one which was his clothes, the other being all the crap Takami made him pack for her son, which was understandable for a woman who would never see her only child ever again. Though, she did seem somewhat attached to Minaka despite what he was planning, perhaps there was a chance for another little Sahashi, time could only tell, and he sure didn't care at the moment, he hadn't slept in days and he had so much left to do before he could relax.
He walked down the busy airport hall with his charge held closely to his chest with one arm. His eyes darted left and right, paranoia still fresh in his system despite him being free of MBI surveillance already. His eyes clipped to a man who stood near the door to an employee only exit, staring him down for a few short moments.
The man caught Takehito's stare and nodded, twisting the knob open behind his back and walking off. The scientist allowed himself to slightly smile in relief before he quickly, but very discreetly, pushed his way through the exit. Only then did he begin to run, rushing over to the transport that would take him and Takami's child several hundreds of miles away from New York.
He nearly collapsed onto the seat of the black van, barely remembering to put on his seat belt "I'm glad to see you're safe sir" the driver said with a nod, looking back at Takehito from his rear-view mirror.
The researcher smiled tiredly and nodded back "I'm glad you're safe too Saito-san, it's been sometime since you'd defected" he said warmly to his driver, an old time friend of his from when he was just the Assistant Head-Researcher.
"My family was always before the company, and with what Hiroto was doing, I knew it wasn't long before he decided to purge me and my colleagues" he looked down towards the road as he began to drive, a melancholy look in his brown eyes "I only wish the others listened to reason… but enough about me, you look like you need to rest sir, get some shut eye, we'll be at the first safe house in about ten hours"
Takehito nodded, only half acknowledging the fact that Saito had already shut the divider between them. He looked down to the child in his arms and stared at its striking ocean blue eyes, something that he no doubt inherited from Minaka "We're safe now… your father won't be able to find you now, and… I'll make sure he never does" the baby looked at him strangely as it stuckled it's own fingers. "Now…" he smiled brightly, making his charge do the same, the latter being obviously amused by his guardian's expression "What should I name you?"
Takehito advised strongly to Takami to not name her child when he was born, he didn't want her to be too attached to not let go, especially with how many complications she went through during and before childbirth. With the amount of medication she was on, there was no guarantee she would make a sound decision, and he didn't want her to risk her own son's safety due to her mind being muddled by drugs.
He was very reluctant to do so, but he finally got her to relent, giving him the job, so long as he tell her his name so she may observe him from afar, they couldn't risk sending updates about him, lest Minaka's rats catch wind, but he could give her that much of a solace.
The only problem was, Takehito couldn't name things to save his own life, so he was fairly stumped as to what he should call the curious being he was holding "Hm… Project… Sweeper of…" he hummed allowed, pulling out a notebook out of his luggage "Soul… Sweeper" he wrote in English "No… maybe…" he scribbled another outrageous sounding name "Soul Sweaper… that sounds good" he mused with a grin. Naming Takami's son something so out there would make it impossible for Minaka to even think of where to begin, this plan is foolproof. And besides, it also was a big flaming middle finger to the whole plan Minaka had in store for the child. "How do you like the name Soul? I bet the other kids would be very jealous of a name like that!" He exclaimed.
The baby giggled loudly, swinging his arms around happily, gripping tightly onto Takehito's coat "Then it's settled, from now own, you'll be Soul Sweaper, and I won't let anything hurt a single hair on your hair, alright?" Soul giggles again, making Takehito laugh, maybe things wouldn't be too bad now.
Maybe.
Time went by quickly for Takehito and his adopted son Soul. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, months into years. It wasn't long before six years passed them by, the older of the two leaving and returning constantly from Japan to keep up the image as MBI's loyal researcher.
"I wonder when Dad's gonna get home?" A small child mused as he sat on his father's favorite loveseat, kicking his feet idly "He said he'd be home today… why didn't he tell me he was gonna be late" he pouted. Though, he was quickly pulled out of his thoughts as the kitchen phone began to ring. The boy furrowed his brows, but nonetheless made his way to it to answer "It's one in the morning…" he said, thinking aloud. Pulling the corded phone off the wall, he said meekly into the speaker "Hello?"
A familiar female voice answered back to him in Japanese "Hello Soul-chan" they said quietly, their voice trembling somewhat.
The boy's, who was now no doubt Soul, face lit up "Miya-san! Do you know if Dad's gonna be home soon?" He asked happily. He knew that Takehito was married to Miya, and he also knew that Takehito wasn't his real father, something that he strangely figured out despite being so young. Despite that, he still treated and called the elder scientist his father. He tried the same with Miya, but when he asked her if he could call her Mom, she made that scary mask Takehito sometimes made when he scolded him appear through the phone, needless to say, he never asked that question again. He furrowed his brows when he didn't receive an answer, and furrowed them even further when he began to hear stifled sniffles "Miya-san, are you okay?"
"T-Takehito…" she began, choking back a sob "Takehito isn't coming home Soul…"
"What do you mean? Is he running late? When am I gonna see him?" The boy asked, confusion creeping throughout his body.
"Not for a… long, long time…" she answered vaguely. Soul didn't understand, no, he couldn't understand, literally, he was too young to understand the concept of human mortality. But before he could inquire further, he phone line went dead, along with all of the power in his house. "Soul?" Miya asked in a worried tone "Soul, are you alright?" She was met with the dial tone, something she accepted with a sigh "I'll give him time"
Meanwhile, Soul dropped the phone and let it dangle a foot above the ground, nervously looking around in the dark room "Don't fear the dark Soul…" he whispered to himself, echoing the words his surrogate-father told him "Only fear what's in it" taking a few steps forward, Soul bumped into something that felt like a brick wall "... I'm pretty scared of that"
With a crack, Soul's body collapsed to the ground with a loud thud, his conscience leaving him for the time being. The perpetrator, or perpetrators in this case, merely picked him up and made their way out of his house, not a single word being uttered between them. They placed him in the back of a van, each one of them shuffling inside "Is the target secure?" A voice asked from the front.
"Y-yessir… we secured the kid…" one of the masked men said, looking down at Soul "But… are you sure this is right? He can't be older than like six…"
"That boy is the son of Hiroto Minaka, there's no doubt, and besides, if we're wrong, who cares, it's one kid, what's the worse that can happen? The Media'll just yell at us for a few weeks, everyone will forget about it eventually" he said, waving his hand dismissively "Let's just get him to the facility so those wackjobs can start experimenting on the little fucker"
"If you… say so sir…" the man said, nodding to the driver. They began to drive off into the night, leaving nothing behind but a house that was leaking gas and had several lit candles in the living room.
Seven Years Later
Pain.
That was what summed up the existence of a certain Soul Sweaper.
Every day, every goddamned day for the passed seven years was more and more escalating agony and torture, all of it following some sick, twisted routine.
In the morning, they would douse him with ice water, waking him up from a fitful sleep full of nightmares and screaming. They would look down at him with dispassionate eyes, asking him monotonous questions about how his sleep was and if he had any difficulties while he slept. They didn't even bother writing down the answers anymore, so he he didn't bother answering them.
Following that would be his daily dosage of medicine… in the form of thirty 8-inch needles they would stick into the back of his head in a small one inch space… directly into his brain stem.
The moment those needles stabbed into his brain, it felt like someone was cutting his head open with red-hot iron. But that was the start of it. As it began to make it through his nervous system, he would feel every single one of his muscles begin to tense up until they began to cramp. As the cramps intensified they would tear apart the muscles violently, all from its own friction on itself, eventually stitching back together to create more muscle mass.
There were more like him, hundreds like him, but they all fell one by one like flies. They would all be subjected to the same experimentation, the same torture, the same hell.
Before his captors began to focus solely on his own experimentation, he would see boys and girls, some older than he was, some younger, all go through the same process he lived for so long. He got to watch them break down slowly, sometimes their minds breaking before their body could, other times their body shattering beyond any possible repair.
He wasn't sure if he was lucky to be alive, or unlucky to exist.
They enhanced his body in ways no human could possibly become, changed him through DNA splicing with beings he couldn't comprehend. He could do things no man or woman could dream of doing. They gave him strength that could rival machinery, edited his biological structure to make him heal faster than any medicine or piece of technology could even thesibly do, they enhanced his speed to dodge bullets, they gave him the ability to control the goddamned forces of nature.
But that didn't hold a light to what they believed was their crowning achievement in Soul, something he could barely comprehend. The men around him talked often about his ability to 'unwing' a 'Sekirei', about him being the 'Ultimate Ashikabi', the thing that would foil 'Minaka's Insane Plans'. It all didn't make sense, not even in the slightest. He didn't know what the hell an Ashikabi was, what any of the mantras they drilled into his heads mean, who the hell this Minaka wuy was, or what fucking WAGTAILS had to do with any of the hell they were putting him through.
People could only dream of being so powerful.
All Soul wanted was to see his father and Miya again.
His bloodshot eyes snapped towards the one-way mirror that the scientists that watched him sat in. They had long since convinced themselves that Soul was nothing but an empty husk that they could easily mold to their will, he made sure they thought that. To escape, he tore apart everything that had to do with Soul Sweaper except for those fleeting memories of barely remembered loved ones. All that remained was a heavily delusional, sour teenager who hated everything that had to do with humanity and held onto scraps of thoughts he could barely hold onto.
He stared at the mirror in a haze of hatred and anger, his body having only recently healed from a recent set of experimentation. It was about time for…
Over the intercom the researchers usually left on for no other reason but pure laziness, he could hear the faint shuffling of papers and people as the group ushered their way out of the observation room. He waited a few more moments in deafening silence, waiting for someone to enter the room once more for some forgotten item. He only smiled when he heard no such thing.
He pulled on the steel bindings on his arms, at first just testing their durability, then pulling once more with all his strength.
They grew lax over the years when they thought they had finally broken Soul, neglecting security for comfort and accessibility. Fool they were, lulled into a false sense of comfort with a monster that could level the entire building if they would just give him enough time to gain strength.
His bindings barely budged, but that fact alone meant that escape was a possibility. He kept pulling on the metal, feeling his joints strain under the pressure he putting them under until finally, with a sickening pop and a stifled scream of agony, he dislocated his hands and feet. From there he just snakes his limbs free and rolled off the metal table, falling onto the floor with a loud thump.
Relocating his feet and hands was an incredibly difficult task, mostly involving him pushing his limp hand with his other limp hand against a wall until he could press on it hard enough to pop it in place. He spent way too much valuable time fixing his ruined joints, it would be cutting it close, but…
Pressing his hands against the reinforced wall, he spread heat throughout it, slowly feeling the metal and wood literally melt to the point where he could literally tear through it like wrapping paper. Whoever's idea was it to put his room on the very edge of the facility he was in, he gave them a silent prayer as he ran out into the desert night, sprinting as fast as he could past the spotlights and behind a large rock formation, where he only ran further.
...he could manage.
"Dad… Miya… I swear… I'll see you again soon" he whispered into the wind, hoping to whatever cruel dirty that allowed his existence to continue that they were safe and sound.
Three Years Later: Shinto Teito, Japan
"Hello Takehito…" a purple haired woman whispered to a gravestone, sitting down in front of it with a bundle of lit incense and flowers held firmly in her arms "it's been… ten years since you've passed, to the others it feels like it was so long ago but for me…" she paused, placing the flowers and incense down "For me it feels like you only just left me yesterday…" her voice was faint, but it still held a resilient power behind it "We still haven't found… him yet, I know I promised you I would but… it's like he never existed, Matsu tried searching his name in the foster care records for every thesible country he could've gone to but…" the woman shook her head "I failed you my love… but even so… even with each passing day becoming harder and harder to continue without your warmth… I'll live on, for you, and for him"
The woman pressed her hands together for a moment, sending up a quick prayer to a plethora of gods that she was sure abandoned her long ago before standing back up and walking off, wiping one last tear from her eye.
She needed to be strong, she was the owner of Maison Izumo and the only woman who could continue to carry the name Asama, even if her husband had left her long ago from an accident Minaka could have easily prevented. And she wouldn't give up, now, she couldn't give up now, not while Takehito's legacy was out there, the only person that she held so dearly to her heart, despite having not seen him since her husband's passing.
She was pulled out of her thoughts however, when she approached the entrance to her quaint and cozy inn and saw a dirty young man curled up outside the door "...Sir? Are you alright?" She asked politely, hiding that undertone of suspiciousness in her voice. But despite that suspicion, she still kneeled down and planed her hand lightly on the man's shoulder, noticing quickly the permeating scent of blood that was pouring off his body. Turning him over only slightly, she elicited a pained wince "Oh dear, you're injured!" She exclaimed "Please, allow me to-"
"T…" the man suddenly let out, interrupting her as he tried to speak. His eyes slowly opened, making her own do the same in shock. She could recognize those ocean blue orbs, long ago she had seen the same thing in him, filled with an exuberant happiness and a budding intellect. They now may be clouded with anger, hatred and pain, but she knew who this man was, how important he was to both her and… how important he was to Takehito "Tadaima… Kaa-san" his breath hitched suddenly, his eyes soon rolling upwards into the back of his head as his conscience failed him.
"W-wait!" She sputtered our, wrapping her arms around his body as she shook him "Don't close your eyes! I'll…" she trailed off, her heart beginning to race as panic set in "Kagari! Please, come out here!" She yelled, pulling the man close in desperation, not caring as her clothes were stained with filth and blood "Now! Hurry!"
There was a loud thumping as someone flew down the stairs as fast as they could from within the house, heeding his landlady's cry "Miya!" A feminine looking silver haired man, who can be assumed as this Kagari that Miya was calling for, yelled in worry as he slammed open the sliding door "What?! What's happened?!"
"Go-" She began, pausing to swallow down a sob "Go get Matsu and Uzume! We need to treat him now!" She ordered in a voice she hadn't used since her days in the disciplinary squad, a voice that exuded absolute authority and absolute power.
Kagari froze for a moment before nodding "Y-yes ma'am" he said quickly, turning on his heel and sprinting up the stairs. He knew better to ask questions when the Pillar was like that, she didn't even sound like that when Takehito died, whoever that man she was holding, he must've been important.
Hugging the man closer to her body, she gently caressed his dirty hair "You're safe now…" she cooed softly, sniffling quietly "No one will hurt you any more Soul-chan… your haha will protect your from now on"
You fuckers must've thought I forgot about 'Fire and Steel'! And really, I never did, just, as time passed, while I still wanted to continue it, my writing ability just quickly overshadowed what it once was. If I posted a new chapter from the original one now, after two years of waiting, the jump in quality would be unsightly, at least, in my own eyes.
I still have all of the previous chapters saved too, so not much will be changing in regards to the plot LINE, but there where be several things taken out or added or even put in a different place because, to be honest, I never started a story back then planning it ahead very much, I basically fucked myself into a corner by killing Mikogami so early on in the original (but for continuity's sake, I'm gonna keep that in).
Not much is going to change in the way of characters… maybe. I'm just gonna make everyone more realistic, I'm going to be honest, I dropped the ball with Soul's personality in my earlier fics, he's going to be more congestive and believable now, as in he's going to still be kind and caring, but still have a barely healed and incredibly fractured psyche and sense of morality in a way that makes him more three dimensional.
I have the rest of the plot all written down in my shithole of a mind (the parts I didn't post or get around to writing originally), so I know where everything is going, but feel free to give me better suggestions than whatever crap I'm going to spew out is.
…
By the way, that sequal is still happening, hilariously enough, we're just gonna have to write our way up to it, and you guys are along for the ride. So while you're here, I'd love to hear feedback, suggestions, criticisms and compliments in the review section! I'll be sure to answer anything in the A/Ns at the end of every chapter (which will happen erratically as usual). I'd also appreciate any follows or favorites to either me or this story!
And if you want to read any of my other work, I have a Highschool DxD fan fiction with Soul as the main character as well called Darkness Held Within. He's pretty different than this one, so don't worry about it getting dull… there's also a massive harem, go figure, I'm a disgusting deviant.
See you next chapter