The Cost of Loyalty
DISCLAIMER: Me no own any more of Legend of Legaia than a copy of the game. Nopes. Reiko's human form is a creation of this one's imagination, so only use it with my permission, kay?
The three human children and their Ra-Seru guides had only left the ruin of the Absolute Fortress an hour ago when there was movement once again in the supposedly deserted structure.
The surface of the spring that lay half-sealed by a giant stone rippled, and with only that vague warning, its silver surface shattered as the heads of two men broke into the air.
"Shimatta!" With that half-strangled outburst, the one who had spoken gasped, kicked over to the edge of the water, and levered himself out with one arm, then proceeding to pull out his companion, who was unconscious.
He was a young man with peculiar silver eyes and long, tangled black hair, dressed simply in twill blue breeches, leather boots, and a black sleeveless shirt trimmed in silver thread. In fact, the only thing that marked him as inhuman was the fact that he had a pair of long, slightly curved horns protruding from his head, a few inches past his brow, with his hair fluffed around them. He looked to be about 25 or so, and had an honest face with slightly Western features. He was clearly powerful, as shown from the way the muscles in his arms had enough definition that his veins would stand out against them just slightly when they were tensed--which they were. There were a few bruises and scrapes on his shoulders, hands, and face, and he hovered anxiously at his companion's side.
The man he'd hauled out of the water was about the same age as him, with long, thick hair that would have been fine silver if it were dry--as it was wet, it was more the color of dull lead--and firmly closed eyes. His face had a similar set of slightly Western features, and was longer, with a more melancholy set to it. He was dressed in the fine gray clothes of an aristocrat who had respect for practicality, but his attire was torn and bloody, and his skin was pale, nearly white. He wasn't moving or breathing.
"Say something," murmured the black-haired man, kneeling at his friend's side and shaking his shoulder. "Don't die! Breathe, curse you, breathe!" He laid a hand beneath the gray-clad young man's diaphragm, and shoved down and forward, forcing his unconscious companion to reel to the side, coughing out what looked like several gallons of bloody water. He then took several shallow breaths, interrupted several times by coughing, and briefly opened almond-shaped eyes of crimson and sapphire.
"Reiko?" he said in an uncertain voice choked by weakness.
"I'm here," the black-haired, not-quite-human man replied. "Right here. As always. You aren't well... you have to rest, okay? I'll bring you to somewhere safe, and you can get your strength back..."
"Sorry, Reiko..." came the faint murmur. "That was... the last one... I know you... needed it... sorry..."
Reiko cursed. "I can deal with Mist withdrawal, dammit! I've done it before, and I can do it now! The important thing is taking care of your wounds! Losing the last source of Mist is nothing compared to losing you!"
There was no response. The human had faded back into a comatose state; Reiko might as well have been alone.
"Oh, bloody--" Running a hand through his still-damp hair, Reiko growled a curse of frustration and worry. His human partner was fragile, as humans often were, and had just lost a fight badly, trying to protect the last source of Mist from the three equally human upstarts who had wanted to destroy it. Those three humans, however, had been under the guidance and protection of three certain Ra-Seru...
Like all Seru, Reiko could not keep his body from absorbing the toxic vapor Mist, but he could withstand it--his mind would never be turned by it as the basic elemental creatures' were and a Ra-Seru's would be if he or she didn't actively resist it. However, it still bound him, and though absorbing too much of it would make him as sick as a human with a hangover, he needed it, blood and bone. The long exposure had made him a slave to what he despised, and so he and his human had defended their pure and impure Mist generators in order to feed his accursed addiction. The generators had also served the secondary function of keeping the lands they had conquered under control.
But those three brats had slowly unraveled the fine tapestry of protection and binding, and as the people of the country awoke from their decade-long sleep, Reiko's condition worsened. He had welcomed the end to Rogue's curse, but all the same, withdrawal was setting in, and being so weak, how could he possibly protect his human companion?
"Even now, Rogue, you've got me tied too tightly to fight against you," Reiko cursed. "Me... the blessing intended for the Ra-Seru... you've got me wound around your damn little finger, even after all these years. Your vengeance will never run short, will it?"
"Talking to yourself?" a sardonic voice behind Reiko inquired. The black-haired man jumped up and whirled, his human fingernails lengthening into six-inch silver claws and his teeth sharpening out of instinct.
"You bastard," Reiko growled, seeing who it was. Even his voice had grown rougher, less humanlike and truer to his real form. "Always have to have the last laugh, don't you, Songi?"
The human who stood behind him smirked. From what Reiko knew, he was some kind of martial artist, and dressed even now in the red-and-black training clothes of his former life. His Ra-Seru partner, a dark child named Jedo, was fused to his right arm in jewel form, and had crawled all the way up to his shoulder, with little tendrils of darkness spreading across his flesh. On his left arm, he'd purposely bonded some kind of genetically engineered creature, one of the wretched beasts known as Sim-Seru. He had flaming red hair, dark, mocking eyes, and a nasty smirk. At one time, he'd been a good enough person, but Reiko suspected that the Sim-Seru he'd attached to himself was affecting his judgement. Such creatures had an abhorrently low toleration for Mist, and went crazy in contact with the tiniest wisp of it.
"So our dear Cort failed, I see," Songi said in an offhand manner, gesturing to the human who lay unconscious behind Reiko's solid protective body.
"You want a pounding? I'd be happy to give you one," Reiko threatened, bristles crawling over his back. "Do the words 'go away' have no meaning to you?" After everything that had happened, Reiko really didn't feel like holding back the change that was screaming through his blood. If Songi really wanted to die that badly, he'd be more than glad to oblige.
"Relax, you little mutt." Songi waved a hand and headed a few feet forward. "He's going to die, you know. What are you going to do about it?"
"What!" Reiko was so shocked that he dropped his fighting stance. "What do you...!" He looked back at Cort's body and fell silent, muted by indecision.
"I said, what are you going to do about it?" Songi repeated. "You've only got a few choices, you know. You can let him croak, take him to the Mother Genesis Tree for healing, or..." The redhead quirked an eyebrow. "You can do your little heart-eating thing."
Reiko growled warningly.
"You know, give him your own strength," Songi continued as if he hadn't even registered Reiko's displeasure. "How do you think all of us get our power?" He raised the arm with Jedo on it demonstratively.
"Why are you doing this?" Reiko asked with a growl.
Songi shrugged. "It's done out of the charity of my loving, giving heart," he breezed. Reiko glowered. He'd never trust a human like this one, who reeked of self-importance and greed. "Though, I warn you, even I doubt that just taking him into yourself is going to save him now. He'll need power from a Genesis Tree. The one that would work best, you know, is the first one that awakened... the one in that little hick town at the southern edge of Drake's Kingdom."
Reiko kept glowering. Songi was right and both of them knew it, but Reiko wasn't satisfied with the human's glib reply as to why he'd offered the information. Songi had some alterior motive, and Reiko was sure of it. He didn't know exactly what the human would gain in the events that would unfold if he took the proffered option, but there had to be something. It was Songi's basic nature (or at least, now it was) that he'd never do anything he wouldn't benefit from.
"The three-member kindergarten class is there right now," Songi said almost boredly. "They'll be protected from you, of course, but I'll distract them. You'll have all the time in the world to take care of that poor, tragic, sentimental bag of bones behind you." Reiko gave an audible snarl at the detraction to Cort, and as he bared silver teeth, his left canine extended another half inch to prick his lower lip with a razor-sharp point.
"Distract them with what?"
"Something they won't like," Songi replied with a smug little smirk. Reiko flexed his left hand, drawing satisfying cracks from his knuckles and extending his claws another inch. His skin tone was beginning to darken, and he'd gotten taller, but even so far into a transformation, Songi didn't seem to be concerned. And that bothered Reiko for some reason.
The human shrugged and started to head off. "Your choice, friend. But you'd better think of something very quickly, or else your dear little partner is going to die..."
Reiko watched Songi leave, boring holes in the redhead's back all the way. Once the human was out of sight, he sighed, lashed the tail he'd grown in those moments of agitation, and knelt next to Cort's pale, broken, bloodied body.
"He's up to something, but there's no other way..." He shook his head, pain in his silver eyes. "Please, please, please, let this not be too stupid of a mistake..."
With that, he closed his eyes and pressed both hands to his human's chest. Sable and silver crawled beneath his skin, and two thin strands of red spun from the bristles on his back to touch at Cort's wrists. As contact was made, Reiko gasped in sudden pain, but refused to stop. This had to be done. It was the only way...
He didn't mean to make the change. It just ripped out of him in the moment that Cort's physical form dissolved and reformed at the center of his seven-chambered heart. With a cry that was half-roar and half-sob, he dug heavy black-and-silver claws deep into the ground, baring his death-bladed fangs in an unconscious hiss, lashing the heavy tail in distress, his midnight-colored body curled and tensed and aching against the ruined backdrop of what had been the Absolute Fortress.
There was no going back. He would never take human form again. Not until he had restored his human to health, and to a body of his own.
Feeling strangely vulnerable even in his true form, Reiko painfully got up, rowled, shook his dark body in a reflexive spasm, and broke into a run.
This had to be done quickly.
---
Songi, who had stopped while out of sight but still in earshot, let out a sardonic, triumphant laugh. "Seru are so easy to manipulate." Tilting his head back, he cackled to the heavens. "The ultimate power will soon be mine. With the last guardian of the Sanctuary out of my way, there's nothing holding me back!
"Better beware, Gala... you and your idiot friends... because Juggernaut is coming..."