At night the city was a forbidden place. Families and friends stayed indoors behind heavily padlocked windows and houses. Unseen enemies and old wives tales spinning effortlessly in each citizen's imagination. Stories of rape and murder, of degradation and shame. The streets were desolate after the great clock tower in the center of town struck midnight.
Exactly one minute after the twelve mourning chimes of the father clock rang out on the 17th of February, Kaoru awoke. Her alarm shrilled in the silence and she reached out spindly thin fingers to grasp at it's mouth and silence it's tongue. She stretched fluidly, her body curling around itself and then bursting outwards as if being ripped apart from the outside in. She sighed contentedly beneath the many layers of her collected assortment of torn and tattered blankets and furs. She was wrapped beneath the covers in her old worn and stolen military issue jacket and still dressed from the previous day. A gaping maw stared at her from the shadows of her tiny room, the only thing to her name other than the clothes on her back and the ten dollars tucked away in the lining of her sleeve. She stood swaying in the frigid cold of her room. Her head felt too heavy and her limbs felt as if they were about to fall from her torso. Then she snapped her head up and reached into her deep pockets. Her steel lined boots clicked softly on the rotting and dusty wood floors as she pulled out a hand rolled cigarette and lighter, that had been smuggled in from out of the country, she had pick pocketed the little blessing from a textile merchant boldly making his way down third street one morning, gloved in the finest silk and furs merely to show off his small insignificant wealth to the majority of the population that were poorer than surfs.
Kaoru sneered as she stepped out of her window and down the side of the eight story building in which she lived with almost a hundred and fifty other families and assorted individuals. She gratefully only lived on the second floor right beside a window. She had been extremely lucky when she got secured into the single room of a seven room apartment on that floor. Three other families occupied the apartment along with her now. Her room was directly down the hallway to the front door of the apartment and the other three families including a government worker and her five children, there was also an old clerk and his crazy heretic wife that had two rooms and often the families living around them could smell fried fish and practically taste the burning of the primus that cooked the meals. The other resident of the apartment #33 was an old communist with a haughty air and a chilling smile. He was tall and handsome with white hair and empty blue eyes. Kaoru found him fascinating to study when they found themselves in a room together. He never noticed her, she knew he didn't because she knew that the people he did notice were black bagged and dragged away from society in the middle of the night to an unknown fate.
As she walked down the snow buried street, the oil lamps barely giving view to anything beyond their little circle of relief, Kaoru's stomach roiled in familiar protest at the memory of the last time she had eaten anything, but she just grinned at nothing in particular.
Unbeknownst to her, the white haired communist had in fact noticed her. He watched her from his window as she traipsed illegally he noted down the street and into the night. He pictured her before him for a moment recalling her features. Her appearance was at best described as dirty. Standing just shy of five feet three inches he saw she was too thin and extremely pale. Her hair was tangled and thick, hanging dead and matted down her back to brush the tops of a pair of slender bony hips. She had legs like a grasshopper and could walk forever without tiring he guessed. She had spindly arms attached to even spindlier fingers that had dirty chipped unpainted nails that were more claw than fingernail. Her teeth amazingly he knew when she smiled were still clean and white and her canines were sharper than razors. She had brilliant old blue eyes, far too old to be in the face of such a young girl. No family, no citizenship standing, no union group she had proclaimed loyalty to, and no spoken opinion of in which party she resided with. Was she a red lion or a white deer? No one knew and no one was around her long enough or alive long enough to ask such questions. She was the lonesome of the new united Metropolis and no one dared pay attention. The white haired neighbor watched her disappear into the darkness never voicing his thoughts about her. He wasn't interested in her enough to report and bag her. She was a curious little thing indeed.
Kaoru had secrets she knew, many she would never care to give away. She found caring only hurt life and above all Kaoru lived. She refused to do anything else, wether it was to take part in the communistic society that had been thrust upon Metropolis in the recent years. She was a hardened heart and she followed whatever was going on in her own mind. She had studied under the best tutors and professors, she could speak over sixteen languages including her native tongue and the common tongue of trade. She could read and write in twenty three more languages and hieroglyphics and was a major in political warfare at the local university. People who had been in contact with her, described her as a machine never quitting, never tiring. She was supreme above most and she knew it easily and took it all in with a cold cynical smirk on her fresh porcelain face.
Misao hummed happily as she cleaned glasses with a rag behind her bar counter. Her hidden joint was pretty busy and the music was loud in her temples tonight. Dancers were all over the hardwood floor, worn down from alcohol and abuse and from years of use, and the lights were going crazy. She hummed her soft song to herself, even softer then, as she watched a slinky shadowy figure walk into the club. Misao smiled and waved slightly, just enough to catch the shadow's attention. Putting the glass and rag down she flipped out a shot glass and filled it with a bourbon that could melt human flesh. The shadow stepped out into the light and Misao chirped happily.
"Kaoru really, you should use your skills for something other than to scare skanks off my dance floor."
"Sorry Misao, you know I can't resist the skanks." She joked dryly and Misao giggled.
Kaoru drank the liquor and Misao refilled it twice more before they spoke again.
'You know Kaoru, you need to get out more. Do you realize I haven't seen you in over twelve days?"
"I know Misao, I am sorry. The university is going through cuts again. I had to keep low for a spell."
"Oh that all?" Misao said dully.
"Well, I need my position Misao. I'm not a citizen, not since three centuries ago. You're only secure because you own a joint like this. You're not on the radar. I'm always getting into tight situations."
"Yeah and dragging me in with you." Misao laughed.
Kaoru smiled brightly as she sat at the bar and chatted with Misao, and watched her best friend of four hundred years go about domestically, serving drinks and making flirt-y small talk with the locals.
"Misao, do you what tomorrow is?"
"No what is it?"
"I was hoping to go up to the Rue De Sanratain."
"Oh is it that time of the year again?"
"Yes. I bought a bouquet of saffron and lilies this time. Will you come with me?"
"Of course lovey." Misao smiled reassuringly at Kaoru's darkening face.
"Don't worry, nothing will happen. We'll get the papers in order and slip out for a bit."
Misao sounded so assured of herself that Kaoru brightened quickly and they whisked away the night comfortably. Tomorrow would be chaos as they boarded the train in the baggage car and sneak their way into Paris. The cemetery would be empty.
It was Kaoru's day, the 18th of February, once a year, she had picked it especially for that date, it being her birthday. The dead knew to sleep elsewhere when she came calling for her memorial. The graves to visit a list burned into Kaoru's psyche for eternity. Graves of her father, and mother, brothers, sister...and herself. Lined perfectly secure, in the Kamiya mausoleum. Misao's grave would be on the opposite side of the cemetery in a private plot, Kaoru had purchased it herself twenty years ago. A gag on Misao for her 111 birthday. They would visit the sites and celebrate life anew. It was in ways for them, a new year. A whole fresh slate waiting to be debauched and betrayed, killers, hunters, traders, smugglers. They did it all and tomorrow's refresher was what they needed every once in a while. Kaoru especially.
Misao smiled at her best friend and poured one last round for the two of them.
"To baggage car #15, Brougreyn Metropolis, Russia to Paris, France. Round trip."
The clinked glasses. Kaoru sighed, Misao grinned and they both finished cleaning bar glasses together.