Disclaimer: The game Okami and all characters mentioned herein belong to Clover Studios and Capcom.
The Sun Always Rises
Blood oozed from her wounds, and stained her snowy white pelt crimson and pink. Her tail had been broken in at least two places, and she was panting heavily. She noticed none of this.
How many times had they played this game? A hundred times? A thousand? She didn't know anymore. Her opponent and she had always existed, and they had always fought. Time was meaningless.
Despite the eternal battle, despite her injuries and despite her exhaustion, she stood, defiant. Game or no, she would not give in to something as simple as a little pain. There was too much at stake. But what? Her consciousness asked. She ignored it.
Presently, she dodged a swipe from her opponent's amorphous, tentacle-like appendage. He had chosen a particularly strange form this time—a giant, modular black ball, inscribed with glowing lines and runes. He had a seemingly limitless number of configurations—she had seen several so far. The current iteration stood on two "feet" made of extensions of the main ball, and had two noodle-like yellow appendages for arms. She thought the "arms" looked (and felt) like lightning made solid.
Her opponent reshaped one of his "arms" and held it up, preparing to charge it with electricity from a gathering storm cloud. Thinking quickly, she flicked her tail, and "painted" a line from the storm cloud to the arm. Instead of the small charge he expected, a huge bolt of lightning arced from the cloud, trailing blue sparks, and grounded itself in her enemy's "arm". He jerked, and thrashed as the electricity rocked his frame. Suddenly the huge, legged sphere froze, and toppled over. As it did, a tiny ball dropped out of a previously hidden compartment. Familiar with this pattern, she pounced upon the ball and tore at it with everything she had—tooth and claw, the circular divine Reflector upon her back, the holy rosary beads circling her neck—and saw the dark thing inside recoil in terror. Under her assault, the ball shuddered and tiny chips of the material protecting the nameless creature inside began to flake off.
She heard a buzzing hum to her left, and threw herself backward just in time to avoid a swipe from an electrified "arm". The ball containing the dark creature flew back up into the huge black shell that had attacked her. She snarled with frustration.
Forever. That was how long the two of them had been fighting. Since the beginning of time, to the present moment, the two of them had always been at odds. Their battle was the proverbial battle of good versus evil, light versus dark. That was what Waka did not understand. She hadn't done as he said because she had trusted him (though she had, despite his mistakes) but because she knew it was the only way. She had foreseen the events of the past one hundred years, and they had played out exactly as she had predicted. Not because she had any powers of divination, but because it was all so typical of her enemy.
Yami. He had many names, many titles—The Lord of Darkness, the Emperor of Eternal Darkness—but to her, he was simply Yami. Her counterpart, her opposite.
Yami raised his arm and reshaped it, preparing to charge himself once more. She laughed to herself—he never did learn. Not in any of their previous battles, nor had he learned from his countless defeats. Pattern recognition; that was what he lacked.
It suited her. With another flick of her tail, she overloaded Yami's shell with a gout of electricity. She leapt forward in anticipation of the ball containing her enemy's appearance.
Nothing happened. Surprised, she looked at her enemy's battle-shell. It was immobile, and grey. Lifeless. She took an experimental swing with her Reflector. Nothing. It appeared she had won.
To her shock, a familiar green figure appeared on her muzzle and laughed at her.
"Not bad, furball! Well, you know the drill. Let's have one of those famous howls of yours!" exclaimed Issun.
Issun…after he had been forced to part ways with her at the door to the Ark of Yamato, she felt as though a part of her had been missing. She had not realizd how much she had become attached to the little Poncle until she had to do battle without him. And now, impossibly, here he was!
She splayed her legs wide and prepared to howl her triumph…and stopped. Something was amiss. Issun…wasn't moving. She had never known him to be still. Before her eyes, the little green sprite faded into oblivion, and there was no evidence he had ever been there at all.
That was it, then. After countless centuries of nothing but her eternal battle and the crushing grip of loneliness, she had begun to hallucinate. She stood straight, blood and burns coloring her fur, and howled her loneliness, her sorrow and her loss. It was a haunting melody, and would have chilled the blood of any who heard it.
But there was no one.
She hardly felt it when Yami sprang up and grabbed her with those horrible arms. She scarcely noticed that her powers were evaporating, and she was becoming weaker by the moment. She barely noticed that she was dying.
It didn't matter anymore.
When her opponent threw her to the ground as if she was nothing more than a ragdoll, she lay still, and closed her eyes. She had been fighting for so long…she was so tired. It would be so easy to simply close her eyes and never open them again. She would never have to fight again, never have to see her friends age and die, never have the fate of the world resting upon her haunches…it would be so easy to just give up.
"Bah... That furball's always spacing out like that. Ammy can't get anything done without my help!"
Issun...?
After last time, she wasn't sure whether or not to believe it. She wanted to, with every fiber of her being but…
And then, she heard the voices of everyone she had helped or met in her journey. The inhabitants of Kamiki Village, Ponc'tan, the undersea palace…and then, she heard Issun's voice again.
"OK, everyone! I know it's kinda hard to see in this darkness, but get a load of my latest work! Issun the wandering artist presents his interpretation of the great god Amaterasu! Can you hear me, Ammy? You're not floundering about without me, are ya? You gotta pull yourself together! I finally chose my path. And I have the resolve to see it through! I've started to roam the land as your missionary. But you gotta take care of things on your end, too! Don't look so sad. Just psych yourself up like we always did, remember?"
Issun continued his speech, explaining the importance of their prayer, and her desperate need. As she heard his voice, she felt herself getting stronger. She opened her eyes and froze. All around her, was a storm of prayer, of belief. It was protecting her from Yami's hateful, sightless gaze, and then, in the space of an eyeblink, it rushed into her. Pure white light blinded her enemy and she felt all her wounds heal, her fur regrow, her senses sharpen. But it didn't stop there—the power kept coming. It rushed into her, filling her veins and her thoughts with a clarity of mind she hadn't felt in decades. She was appalled at what she had nearly done, and was filled with a righteous fury at her opponent. How dare he try to fill the world with darkness? This was her world, and she would defend it with every ounce of strength she possessed.
The light faded to tolerable levels and revealed a transformed being. Gone were her injuries, her hurts and her pains. Tendrils of energy trailed from her, and her reflector blazed with a rainbow of energy. The red markings on her face and sides shone with a crimson intensity. She lowered her head and stared at Yami and snarled. The force of the sound shook the platform, and Yami shrank back. She was no longer a simple white wolf with a few brush powers, she was now truly who she was; Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. She did not need the brush gods to empower her—she knew all the techniques by heart. As she prepared to attack Yami once more and finish him, something a mortal philosopher had once told suddenly rose to the forefront of her mind.
"The night is always darkest just before dawn." He had said.
She grinned a wolfish grin at this, and laughed at her enemy's foolishness. Remember, she thought, the sun always rises.