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Chapter one, Part one:
Whistling in the Wind, I hear his voice…
And once I thought the flood of tears were enough to bring him back to Osaka, Japan. From where the land ends, to that naked eye, a figure walking on water dragged something across his arm as if it compelled him from approaching any faster than his own tread could take. Was it a mirage? The water had become dirt when these legs raced for him. He subsists as the finish line that progressed much further. A hundred wings have fluttered past its chance and all but one lay hovering in the breeze. He exceeded such a lifeless feather, the survivor of Busuzima's men whom has returned to his pet after those countless years.
"Give this back to me when I return from the war." He said to me before setting off into the tempest of feathery manes. The reminiscences raced in the back of my head. His scarf... that's what he gave me. His treasure became my own until he carried only lines of blood.
"Never forget me, little one." I hear him from the past. Ruffling my hair with one, masculine hand and holding the machete with the other, he rests it across his shoulder.
My legs stuttered like the words of hesitance as my impetus thrives the feet forward. Those so called dawdling and licking steps craved my hunger, my mouth washed dry for it. I could tell with my eyes bunged that he must have been laughing in his eradicated mind like he always do when I make foolish attempts to please him. How long has it been? We both would ponder before reaching an inch between each other. I wanted to scurry faster, to see his war scars, his smile, and his eyes! Those barren carmine eyes that blare, ignite, and burn more life and energy than the souls that levitate from the puddle of corpses surrounding us. My feet were threadbare and dyed with dirt, mud gathered under the hard-to-reach places of my nails, and my paws were already posed for a hug.
Sincere as he would aid my fallen feet, I found it amusing that he left me pounding to my knees. He chuckled, trying to hide his laugh but I thought differently. "I haven't seen you for almost an entire decade and you laugh at me?" I whispered half-heartedly. At that, he stopped immediately, looking down with a sigh escaping his parted lips. He reached out a bloody hand and ruffled my hair, the caress that I could feel shudder down my spine and burst with warmth in my sweating palms and lively heart. I grin, knowing just what he was thinking at the time and said with a soft voice, "Yes…I forgive your absence."
And once I thought the flood of tears were enough to calm my nerves and set me free from misery, I found it a fraud. It wept with plea but I knew that it wasn't all that I wanted, it was not the kind of plea a human or little infant would ask for when the mother refuses to give up and let the child have what it wants. It was something more than that. More than my heart can bear to speak if it could or more than my mind can take, noticing I can't explain it as simple as my thoughts could turn me. "You say these things as if I have done something wrong," Bakuryu the mole said when he saw my hot tears paint a line down my cheeks, "Be happy that I have returned undead and unharmed. We both have made it safely and there's no one, anymore, to change this."
I laughed and replied with a reflecting look in my eyes, "You kept me waiting almost forever. If I was alone for one more day, I would have lost it completely." My face suddenly twisted and my head started to react all on its own. It began beating like a drum, like my own pulse that kept me alive. Trying to shake it away made it more worst than before, but I couldn't let my master see me like this. Not a Zoanthrope such as myself.
"Your face is pale," he whispered with worry, "Have you been fighting, too, while I was in departure?" His words were getting to me already. And to think that I was strong enough to withhold anything of an ailment, this sort of nauseated pain proved me false. "Uriko…hear me. Explain to me why you are not standing before me, now?" He asks me once more, this time his worrying grew into a strong and concerned look through my structure. My heart pounds in my head louder than it can beat. If this keeps going, I may be in the dilemma of suffering unconsciousness FOREVER. I told my conscience. He looked at me a little closer than I thought he was. My pulse didn't have a sign of a steady pace and with that; it was easy to encounter my weakness from his view. His eyes told me not to lie to him, that I had to tell him why my legs wouldn't stand up for themselves. Too much blood that had flowed from my crimson structure, too much to count by a gallon that my slaughters from our hometown left me with someone else's blood in between my claws. He was looking hard at me. My soul was down to half a percent and descending as I look up on him, as if my lids were weighing me down more than the muscles trying to reach for his bleeding tears and twilight night hair. I smiled at him half conscientiously and returned to my once happy thoughts in somnambulism. And once I thought my blood of years yielding by in my hidden ingenuity was enough to bring him back from the graveyard of war, my laughter in my dreams proved me false upon those waiting days. I could repeat myself with these words but it wouldn't mean that it would change how I think of it. Not that it was all I had to say to him when I would finally reach to my feet and stand parallel to his masculine edifice. My eyes would tell more than that, of course I know. He calls through his kiss and I approach to him with pride. I stand to my heels and flow toward him only with one step facing the air. Where my heart sinks deep and my embrace around his waist was without memory, my trance, his voice still summons. "That's my little Uri," says he when I felt his chin lay upon my head, streak of hot water soaking my hair, "You've come to your master without hesitation and now we bond for this moment." That moment felt like a thousand hours of the wind's whisper through our quintessence. I wish of it to last longer.
Fragile as though the mind would be in a sense of miasma, let one alone send affection to thee who needs it. We come in many places to seek hospitality for our kind, the Zoanthrope Creatures, and deliver pleas from river to nations but already find the earthy treasure of soil lying below our feet. Look at me! My lexis mutters such rigmarole at this moment and yet some people understand my feelings through no words needed. They speak for me. My handsome gestures lay down on one stool alone and preach my life in words unknown. I line my words to guide my affection and settle to let it be not miasma. There had to be a silencer-lance (mute) in my family who could not speak words through their mouths but their fingers, arms and hand. To this, I must have inherited it with my own self-discipline, how my fingers randomly flew about behind me as these lips and chest rose with altitude to touch those softened lips with my own. Thy pride of my soul and his lay stiff and hesitant like a row of fragile glass bowls ready to be shattered by the trembling hands. Our minds can't stand so peacefully like the soul. We want to do this but what amiss can part us from this kiss? Is it his war that we are between at the moment? Is this the cause? It is what obliges the life in me and hopes that we, one day, accommodate those souls, leading me to the heavens to resent the evil in many ways. But I can't let that abide me, not the war, not my passion. After all, he's my master and he rules have to be obeyed: "Humans and HALF-BREEDS do not mix." I say peanut butter and jelly are not the same and they still go together. So what such existence stops he and I from binding? My heart burns my lonely thoughts into ashes so that I will never be alone again and the rules burn with it. He, Bakuryu, parts his embrace with a low and steady rate of knots though I feel not to let him go from my arms. "Don't leave me again, Bakuryu The mole. Hear me plea!" I muffled within his netted ninja gi; however, his stance seemed a little out of place form my own. I called forth his surname to see if his excessive walk from a week's mile did not overcome him. He responded, "Leave alone the worries that bathe your mind, my life here will slither down the narrow inlet of sovereignty. Don't try to spot it, Uri."
"Oye! This is just exhaustion speaking for you. The excessively torturing walk, of course! With a restless mind, you can't be thinking the right death, I mean, the right hell. Ummmm… the right way," I heaved with joy though knowing the truth will fly from my lips when I could heave no more, "You will … urm … 'kick the bucket' for only two minutes like you did last time, right?"
"You shouldn't worry yourself is what I meant, Uriko." He snickers as we, now, had little space to breath between each other and says softly to me, "But I seem to misconstrue that you are already in a silent sober." He chuckles again with a smirk and endorses me far enough for us to see eye to eye. His hands held the sides of my arms. Compared to his size, I was none but a stick figurine; even within him I could see something a bother. I couldn't find the core to him. Something tickled my spine over and harder than ever yet, still, I couldn't find the essence or the core. His gaze was much weaker and showing no bold soul anymore. I murmur without tears, "Just a little rest, none more than a little rest…" He twinges upon a spot and I look with a glance from his back: My fingers were covered in his blood, the blood that came from his back, the back which he hid from me. Such wet, sticky, and out of shape texture grudged around his sides. And he was holding it in all this time. I stammer in search of my words, "Lacking bravery to tell me, no? Master, I'll be more hurt if you hide it than for me to figure it out on my own."
"But that is the way life rolls. You must figure things out on your own."
That took me to a limit. Life doesn't roll off your shoulders like dusts from the desert; neither does it help make the living much better than now. This couldn't have been him, the way his words flew with a croak. Neither wind nor light of the heavenly clouds whispered so fluently of the voice. Bakuryu The mole, sliding happily away form my quavering finger tips, held out one hand that foolishly masquerades my entire cheek and pulled me forward to his lips. My eyes weighed on me yet, again, knowing that I felt faint before reaching him seemed lovingly. His warm, pursed lip gently pressed against mine before I was able to remind him: We are like peanut butter and jelly that don't mix though we still stick together; tighter than one of million threads.
The crackling explosion bombard around us with specks of dirt and tears of fire shooting inward and ricocheting off the gore ground. They, the iron eagles with exploding eggs and a shrilling cry, whistled in out ears, but this war known to men parts themselves from this identical realism. To this, it reminds me of the incorrigible soul of a planet, Euripus, hanging by a violin thread. It was so close to it singing demise. And with every throbbing stroke, it would vibrate beneath our feet. Many of what my kind may be wane too early in years, always living between terror and courage. Which were we to choose at such an instant? Such a sorrow melody that played our fate: lying in the graveyard unburied and decaying. He and I, for so much time, we lie together in a bundle. Our tangled arms did not want to separate but tangle closer, tighter and more lovingly than before. I find myself in a bundle of wires with him, though soon I know that someone or something would unwind our solitude together so prudently. I wish of his death to pass yet he shall lay here with me. He will stay on this earth and not move form any other realm of neither heaven nor hell. As it is said, "Wherever he goes, I come along," and it will not change to this any longer, for I keep my duties intact and nothing else. If it changed dramatically due to our tampering with the forces between humans and Zoanthropes then there is no choice but to render it helpless to this closure: I don't give a fanny. When he released from my grip, all was left of this field was me. Not a single segment of either life or death that I could hem in my paws. Some would flee about if I possessed life or death. But it wasn't thy master that was in possession of my paws but I that was spared his time to last enough for me to come forward and tell him, "Thank you." Though when I tried plenty of times, it came out in my words: "How dare you" and "You could have come earlier. I was worried sick!" Thinking brutally at this and gently rest Bakuryu on his homeland. He seemed quieter that way. The blood from his back didn't gather long enough to drip from my arms when I glanced at it. It just gleamed there, reflecting my glassy eyes and running tears. They drip from my cheeks where the red washed away.
"You can't weep now." Said a voice. I hesitantly look about myself, though seeing nothing, catching their scent. This voice I heard couldn't have been my master or the voices of heaven. It was manly high and wind-soft, not girlish in a way but soothing with strength and hope mixed into one.
"You can put him down. We must hurry on to our land." It said again.
"Why must I hurry so quickly when there is one devotee to be mind? I am so close for this moment. Why now and not tomorrow?" The words speak no more for they had dispersed from the wind and left me alone once again. So huddled in the chilling heat was I; me, by the side of all who had not defeated death, I lay here. Curled into a ball, I lay on his breathless chest for many hours. Only until then will I join Bakuryu, my words will finally flow to him and I will not be afraid to say this: "You are the veins that give my heart blood, the sun that shine on my earth, and the jelly that stick to me, a peanut butter. You are my lover and I am here to say this in front of you." I ought not to fear him or death that will sleep with me. With the moonlight glistening across my pale face, my heart raced with such an excitement for I knew what was to come of this time: Tylons, also known as shadow enemies only because they imitate any living beings features even if they were dead from years on. The ball of my fists were dreaded and drenched in the misty heat and my eyes, though deeply blue when in high spirit, were as pale as the moonlit orb but as bronze as the blood painted on my hands. These figures collaborated and had figured which imitation to take for I have seen many of these dead faces before. "You may not fool me with such trickery" growled I, "When the only trickery I've seen is surviving death!" And for these words, my anger rose alongside my voice. There was no intention to stop when my legs were already vulnerable to the quaver of my fear and my claws were long-drawn-out and arched to hook the Tylons as long as my paws would let me drag their ridiculous faces across the blood of every victim that had forever more plead with their children's mercy not to be killed. Were they, these over-grown excuses of cockroach imitations, ever to listen to a child?
"I think not of it," said I when those actions were taken not by my thoughts but my threadbare paws. Already were more of them to return. Some were to be born from the shadows of the victims; others were from some I have deteriorated against the broken boulders. Behind me, beside me, in front of me, were they all to be but the hatred adrenaline rushing through every of my blood cells intravenously? I was able to see straight through their deceit with but a surveillance of my heated eyes. Each of which were spotlighted randomly, cautiously. It had to be from behind. A little one advanced of me and whimpered these words: "Save the child's teddy, thy soul that makes me who I am." My cat-like tail only twitched with famine like a house cat ready to strike the first squeaking mouse at a corner. And when I behold this rodent, it will squeal with it watery eyes bulging from its sockets. Already my paws imagined such a delight. The phase of the moonlit shadow dispersed and there was only me once again. Within every breeze, I was to feel the shift of each shadow wanting to kiss the flowing vibrancy of my hidden fear. The smoky clouds shift once more and breathing chests surrounds me; chests of which heave no more once the hoodwinking lungs stop at their precious time. The Tylons' arms were highly posed for a falling fist attack. The little one had emerged once more with a more highly repentance of such voices like a spell wishing me to obey. But I decline. And for that decision, my prince was dearly high for the space between death and me were so close; it shriveled at the sight of my eyes. Was I to hear that merciless cry and forgive that little one for so much of its sin? The deed of death becomes me and, with the Tylons drawing closer, I curled in a ball for a prance. I lay on all fours, my pales eyes surveying so slowly from one side to the glairing other.
They draw one step closer all at once, the little one repeating robotically fast but I was still to hear her words. There were man of them and one of me so fighting became unfairly challenging. But, still, I charge head on, my left claw horizontally in front of the deceiving child and me. She stands emotionless with her teddy bear but such little words; "Awaken child" sent plenty of other Tylons alongside her. With my uproar inkling along with my shuddering momentum, they were to only disappear before me and strike me from behind. At an instant my spine had bent further forward into my vulnerable appendages and left me choking for just the little of seconds I had to recover. Again my paw reaches forward of me to scrape the blood-clogged dirt and moving onward across it grounds. With such a weightless structure of me only my paw was gliding across the ground. A Tylon had already approached in the highest of its speed yet so slowly to my eyes. And so I twist my waist only feeling my ankle solidly connecting with a Tylon's neck. It may have only been one hit but it was surely victory to me. Now many more were to come. Yet, even with the triumph in my hands, my ankle was never to move from the kick. Had I deeply engraved my ankle into the thickened skin? I glanced aside my risen posture to find my master smirking, side glancing before me. Was he real or was he a Tylon? I wanted to know quickly before he was to do anything to me. I cried forth his name when really I wanted him to let me go, "Bakuryu!" I made sure my wail traveled from ear to ear of each Tylon and dead person. He only smiled at me, removing a gleaming sword from each f his wrist: one of light, the other of darkness. And with the sword in his free hand heightening and I declining, he swung me through the ocean of heartless figurines while he, with dark-feathered wings reaching the skies, stand in the midst of the Tylons that were drawing closer. Only seeing him highlighted in the moonlight, it was no doubt he was truly my master. And so I reach out to him only, now, mouthing the words of his name and alongside with the voiceless words: I love you. He vanished from the shadows of the Tylons as I Soar far, far way into the deepest of the distance. A cold chill traveled my spine in a way I could have stayed that way almost forever. How was I to save him now while I helplessly soar downward of the declining ground and oncoming lake.
It was but a few seconds before I knew that I had already dived within the cooling water. I lay motionless but still gliding underneath the surface so slowly. My willingness was yet to come for me but I have waited too long for this moment. Everything seemed so unnatural for just those three hours: the deceiving, the blood, and the hidden ingenuity. I couldn't tell what was real and what was not anymore. Was it really Twilight or a Tylon who wanted to switch sides for once? They all bugle my mind, jumbling, distorting, shaping words I have not seen. My eyes tighten beneath the water. I'll be there, just wait for me. It was calling, deepening through the little vortex of my thoughts. This is my day. Don't you dare miss it. Miss what? Where was this coming from? Awaken, child. You are drenched in many tears. Let it be the last of these childish dialogues, if this is but a dream. So soon was I to feel the anxiety rushing from my feet, in between my fingertips where my claws once whitewashed the plenty of bloods, and across my neck to where the utmost energy had flood upon me. Deceivers…all of them. Everything was a lie, none of which were truths. It was a test and I was the subject for every action, every sight of demise, and every cause of demise. They wanted this to happen. That was why they had come to me. There was never a fight in Busuzima's men nor were there anyone who had met their ending. Come…I don't think she's breathing. Many questions were to be unanswered and when they come to such a conclusion, it would just lead to more questions. What made me who I am does not answer why they would want to do this me. Had I hidden anything from them, I would have given it to them. But there was nothing else to give. I lay here, captured by the breathless water. Smear of blood rocket across me, for I lay still in a trance, a thought to my timing. Bakuryu had the upper-hand. Whoever he may be, real or a Tylon, I would think to be captured by him whilst I would be his guidance. He takes this figure and in return, gives me his scarf to protect it from the chill of loneliness. Never will I get him. How is she drowning? Her baptism ended hour ago. "Give this back to me when I return," I hear him from my past. When will he get here? He's the only one to save her. You mean she's the only he's got. "Never forget me, little one." Awaken my child.
"Stand here before me." You can do it. "Awaken!" Wake up, Uriko! Where no one else but I to find these things appear before me, I am captured, stuck in between what I think is the past and possibly the present and future. But they jumble, and so I may unscrew them to where they meet cleanly. And where they shall meet, I shall capture, CAPTURE the truth that has tested me for years on. I will; I must. And when I do, I'll be ready. What was to protect me was a protection no more for my figure keeled in the deepest of uncomfortable tingles. Desperately without anyway to reach a breathing space, something clutched alongside the rim of my collar. A very firm grip it was, shaken and red-streaked. "You're alright now. Just keep breathing." Said the soft-spoken voice. It's not him. I thought at the tone. I was like a helpless fish moving my lips up down as if wanting to speak but no wards flew. My eyes were blinded by both the darkness and water droplets. He chuckled in my ears and continue to drag me across the thicken soil. When my back had finally hit the dirt and none other than the soft breeze cooling my skin, this person muttered slowly to me, "Sorry 'bout that, Uriko. I forgot you can't swim." Though he tried to hold it in, he dearly wanted to burst into laughter. "But you know," his echo shuddered my spine to a chilling heat. "Once I capture your heart, your master will be the one to destroy the earth next time." My heart completely dropped beneath my ribs for they sunk deeper and deeper into the boundaries of both Mother Earth and hell. To once think it couldn't engrave any lower, it felt as though my spine reversed its gravitational pull and left me breathing new born air. What I was beneath my eyes did not surprise me of what I could bare to begin with: God's hand, surround by the light, reaching down to us. My tongue swelled in my throat before I could caterwaul and when once I thought all the threads of life were to be snapped by the hands of God, needless to know, I discovered something darker than my soul…