6/11/10-(This story is a mix of four animes,but does not include all the characters: Yami no Matsuei, Le Portrait de la Petite Cossette, Wolf's Rain, and Kurozuka(later). If you only know one or two of the animes, I still suggest you read it...or watch the other animes to find out who they are, though I do try and explain the basics...If you do read this story, please review.)
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Muraki Kazutaka stands alone in the dim-lit lab room, staring at one of two giant, clearish-green-liquid-filled containers, one with a person or body part floating inside. his red stud-earrings glistening in the light. The container he stares at has a human head of a man, named Saki. Muraki knew this man personally in a bitter relationship of betrayal and dishonesty. In their childhood, Saki had shot Muraki in the face, and Muraki was forced to use a mechanical eye in replace of his right. (This eye was larger than normal, colored a soft amethyst that drew attention to itself- which benefited Muraki greatly, for the eye had the power to hypnotize people, at his own will.) When Saki himself was murdered by another man, Muraki cut off Saki's head and preserved it. He wanted to re-build Saki, using a man's body which would never die, so that Muraki could kill Saki over and over again- earning the justice he felt he deserved.
The man standing alone draws his fingers through his white hair, a smile sliding over his face. His fingers traced a halo around his purple eye, fingernails tapping his glasses. "How unsightly..." he said softly, his voice humming in the empty lab, white cloak trembling as his legs scooted closer to each other.
The other two containers each held a full body: A young woman with pink hair, eyes closed. Glancing at her, Muraki did not know why one of his companions brought her along, but- smiling again- he knew that they must have a very important meaning, and he would, in time, figure it out.
With a sudden ding, followed by a low grind of metal, the lab doors were open, and a man began walking into the quiet room. His dark blue hair trails down past his shoulders, and a scrap of black cloth covers his left eye- hiding his past. This man wears a long black cloak- his face mirroring the darkness; his face is hard, emotionless, yet suggestively romantic. His black shoes clatter in a march-man's tune as he approaches the other container, dismissing Muraki as if he were not standing with him.
This container held the life of what was called a "Flower Maiden," straight from the legend of wolves. The man with dark-blue hair believed that this Maiden was the key to finding Paradise- which would only be found by the path of the chosen wolf. It was said that once Paradise was found, the world would be reborn- healing times' scars and man's destruction on the planet. But to this man, he believed it was also the only cure to save his beloved, Harmona, who was in fatal condiction with "Paradise sickness." He had created the Maiden himself by using a sub-human specimen and a lunar flower- giving the girl the name Cheza. But she was not human; she could not speak in a voice humans could hear- only the wolves were said to be able to hear her, and the Maiden would forever sleep until then. But this had not yet happened. Wolves were said to have been extinct for over 200 years. So Chezawaited- lifelessly inside her green liquid.
His white cloak swirling around him, Muraki turns to the other man and watches his face. "You're up early." says the man with white hair.
The man inclines his head slightly at the container holding the Flower. "I couldn't sleep." he admitted. "I had a dream that she was taken from me."
"She?" asks Muraki. He could tell from his tone that he was talking about someone else.
"Harmona." answered the other man.
"You worry too much, Darcia." said Muraki, looking ahead at Saki's ever-floating head, eyes half-closed. He traces the air with a lazy sweap of his hand, continuing; "Dreams are only real if you allow them to be..."
Darcia's eye narrows and he flicks his gaze to Muraki. "You have nothing to lose but honor; if Cheza dies, I will have also lost my soul."
"The soul is a delicate thing." replysthe other man. "It can be buried under the weight of negativity, and beg for sunlight...but if you do not save it, your soul will eventually shatter like glass- each piece like a knife inside your conscience." Muraki closes his eyes, a smile twitches onto his face. "I should know..." he added.
Darcia looks back to the container, then leaves the lab, saying, "We depart shortly. Be sure that all is in order."
Muraki looks over his shoulder as the dark-blue-haired man leaves. "You don't need to worry about a thing." he says quietly, almost to himself. The lab door begins to close behind Darcia. "This race will leave only one winner..." He looks back at the head of Saki. "...the one who needs immortality the most." Muraki's expression drops into a wincing snarl, and he bangs a tightly closed fist into the glass of the container. He watches his hand uncurl slowly, then act as if stroking the head within the liquid. "Damn you..." he says, voice pained.
...
The artist ran his fingers through the wooden ends of the paintbrushes, which all were placed neatly in a water-filled cup on the table. Finding the one he wants, the man plucks it out of the lot as one plucks feathers off of a bleeding hen. He passes his hand upwards to the simple, white canvas on the wooden stand, but casts his gaze downwards at the paint-slate. As he tries to decide which color to use first, a girl enters the room, opening the wooden door slowly. Turning on his feet, the artist glares at the intruder. "What is it?" he asks sharply, his eyebrows knitting together.
Standing in the doorway is a young woman, seemingly no older than thirteen, with long blonde hair, which is curled delicately at the ends. She wears a black dress, cut along the bottom, above her youthly knees, and her clean face is sweet and vulnerable. Black-gloved hands clasp neatly infront of her with a slow grace.
The artist's face falls as he realizes who it is. "Cossette!" he says, crossing the room to meet her. He takes her hands into his, his eyes meeting her own- an ocean of vivid blue. "What are you doing here?"
Smiling, the girl slips her right hand free and puts it inside her front pocket.
The man watches her with a sudden interest, expectingly, his heart racing.
The girl, Cossette, offers the man a letter, saying in a soft tone, "A letter was delivered to you a moment ago, so i brought it to you."
The man takes the letter, reading the imprint of his name: Marchello Orlando. He looks up at the girl sharply, sayig, "Did you open this?"
The girl shakes her head. "No, Marchello..." she says quietly.
A clear fingernail slides across the white paper, cutting the freshly sealed envelope open. Hands pull the letter out, and Marchello'seyes begin to take in every written word inside.
Cossette watches, rubbing down her dress, then twisting her black-gloved hands together.
"This letter is from Lord Darcia." Marchello says at last, folding the letter on to itself. "It is time for us to leave; did you finish packing as I asked?"
"Yes, Marchello!" Cossette's face brightens. "Are we really going?"
The artist nods, then smiles. "Yes, my love." he says gently, he puts the letter in his own pocket and kisses the young girl on the cheek, slipping his hands into hers, intwining their fingers. "We are going to Transylvania."
...
He leaves the room in a hurry, his black cloak sweeping the dusty walls of the castle, touching the tasperiesof wolves. Insidehis heart is an ache, a worry that needs to be settled. He walks upstairs and into a high-ceiling hallway, lit with stain-glass windows on one side. At the end of the hall is a door; reaching it, the man turns the knob and enters.
In the room is a bed adorned with pillows and blankets, where a woman lays sleeping. Her skin is pale as the first snow of winter, her hair a lovely lime-green. Her purple eyes are shadowed by her closed lids.
The man, Darcia, approaches the woman, speaking her name.
The woman stirrs in her sleep, a touch of a smile on her lips at the man's voice.
He goes to her side and takes her hand, checking the pulse. As he checks it, the hand twists around gently and takes hold on his own. Darcia's breath catches in his throat.
"Darcia..." says the woman in a purr-like voice. Her lids tremble, straining to open against the sickness.
"Shh, don't move," the man wants to tell her. But he is at a loss for words.
Her eyes flicker open, and set their gaze fixely into the man's.
"Harmona..." Darcia says at last.
But the woman's eyes then close, and her head falls sideways in a dead-like position. She will not wake up again until she has the strength.
Darcia stood up straighter and looked down at his beloved. "I wont let you die." he tells her, face tensing up. "When the last man arrives, we will set off to the castle of Romania. There, I will make you forever immortal." He leans down to her face and kisses her lips. "You will never have to feel pain again."
...
An hour later.
...
Muraki hangs his white cloak up, revealing his dark-gray shirt and black tie, all nestled under a white buttoned up jacket- with white pants to match. He turns to the mirror in the guest-room, and smiles slightly at his reflection before turning to the suitecase in his foor. He picks it up, along with a much larger suitecase on wheels. He pulls these out into the hallway and follows the hall of wolves, glancing at them with slight interest. He meets Darcia in the mainroom, where his own lugage and Harmona's stand neatly against the staircase.
"Has Mr. Orlando arrived?" asks Muraki.
Darica inclines his head, saying, "No. We are picking them up on my ship."
Muraki looks up at the ceiling. "It is odd how I never knew such ships really exsisted- till i met you, they were all myths." He looks back at the dark-cloaked man.
"Nothing is myth." replys Darcia, touching his consealed left-eye subconsiently. "It can all be truth if you only allow your mind to grasp it as such."
"Love, in a way, is much like truth, then..." Muraki adds, eyes half-closing. "Some people are blind to it simply because they do not know it is really there...until it is too late."
"Nonsense." Darcia frowned. "You are talking about the value of life, not love."
The other man's small smile spreads. "Mm..." he mutters. Muraki raises a hand to tuck his white hair neatly behind his ear. "Maybe I am..."
Frowning still, Darcia took up the luggage and told Murakito "get your things." Together, the men went outsidethe castle to the small Nobel ship that awaited them, and they loaded their luggage inside.
Setting his smaller suitecase down, Muraki looks around and notices that there are the two large liquid-filled containers in the back of the ship, set up perfectly in two different slots. "When did you put those in there?" he asks.
"While you were packing." answers Darcia, almost moodily. He takes Muraki's luggage from the floor and puts it into a closet with the others. "Do you have anything else you wish to bring with you? It will be a long trip."
Muraki nodded. "I left my cloak in my room."
Darcia pushed past Muraki, saying, "I'll get it; I'm going back for Harmona. Stay here."
Once Darcia left, the white-haired man began observing his surroundings.
The ship was made of a metalic-blue steel, with two captain seats in the front, and large open space in the rear. Four glass windows stretched from each corner of the ship, each moving upwards to the ceiling. The roof itself seemed thicker than the walls.
Moving to the controls, Muraki saw a few levers and buttons and mini-screens that held no real meaning to him. He did not know how any of this even worked. A noise causes the man to look up, and through the window he sees Darcia carrying the sleeping woman in his arms, the white cloak draped over his shoulder.
As the dark-blue-haired man walks into the ship, Muraki takes his cloak, saying, "Where is she going to be? There isn't any room."
Darcia's eyes narrow and he walks past Muraki, bending down to the floor. He opens a latch in the metal and pulls it. A moment later, the floor rises and opens up into a bed- complete with bedsheets. Darcia lays the sleeping woman onto the bed, his fingertips brushing against her face.
"How interesting..." says Muraki, touching his glasses lightly, watching the man turn and go sit down at the controls. "It's almost as if you've been preparing for this trip your whole life."
Darcia says nothing.
...
Marchello wastes no time in running the dozens of suitecases and bags from upstairs to the mainroom of the mansion, piling them in the center of the rug. Cossette watches him from the top of the stairs, giggling, occasionally running to her room to make sure all of her things have been packed.
She did this as Marchello walked towards her, going to check the bathroom one last time; Cossette cried out in a series of laughter and ran to her room as if the man were chasing her. In her room, the girl picks up her handmirror from her desk and checks her hair. Seeing movement behind her in the reflection, the girl turns and looks toward the hallway, and watches as Marchello closes the bathroom door.
"Is that everything?" asks Cossette, calling out in a high pitch.
Marchello glances towards the stairway that leads to his studio, reflecting on all he brought down. He then looks back at Cossette. "Yes, I believe that's everything." he walks towards the downstairs.
"Are-" the girl sets the handmirror face-down on the desk. "Are you sure, Marchello?"
The man hesitates, then strides over quickly to the girl and picks her up like a doll, which causes the girl to giggle and squirm in his arms. He adjusted her into a craddling position, and walked down the stairs, saying, "Now I have everything." he answers with a smile. The girl response by kissing the man on the cheek.
The man let the girl slip off onto her feet when they reached the bottom, and they began loading the horse-carriage outside until Marchelloinsisted she stop working and sit and wait inside the carriage until he was done. He did not want the girl to wear herself out- wearing out is the expression for stress, which ages people... To stop aging- stop dying- was Marchello's only goal for Cossette and her youthly beauty; it was the only reason he sought out Darcia in the first place.
He had heard rumors that Darcia knew how and where to obtain immortality. And Marchello craved it selfishly for Cossette, not wanting her to become ugly, though she looked forward to growing up into an adult. He wanted her to stay as the young girl she was in his paintings.
He also heard about the giant air-ship- something he had read about only in books- myths, and nothing more. But if he were going to trust this lord Darcia in getting them to immortality, then he would have to be willing to accept anything he saw, or he would go insane.
To himself, Marchello believed he was a very sane man- he was slightly on-high in finding a "cure" to Cossette's fading beauty, and so he lied to the girl, telling her they were going on a honeymoon trip- though they were not yet married. He planned it out for weeks the day after he heard about Darcia, only able to contact him after a nearly a month.
But the time had come.
Once the last bag was tucked in the back of the carriage, Marchello walks over to the driver seat and climbs up. He looks down at his two gray horses, gathering the reigns in his hands. "Are you ready, Miss d'Auvergne?"
"Yes." came the girl's immediate response.
With a flick of his hands, Muraki's tightly-held reigns beat upon the horses backs, and the carriage moves forward, leaving the mansion in the past.
...