REFERENCE NOTES:

None today! On with the show!

I SO do not own or make money off of FMP, its universe, or its characters. So, no suing, please.


Chapter Three: The Core

"Miss Chidori?" It was a British woman's voice, low, and laced with gentle concern.

Kaname could feel a cool, damp cloth on her forehead. She opened her eyes slowly, feeling disoriented. She had just been…somewhere odd. Odd, with a tinge of familiarity, and a lingering memory of blue-green luminescence. There was a faint sense of forgetting to do something important. She moved her limbs restlessly, feeling the slight weight of a sheet drawn over top of her.

She found herself laid out on her own massive bed, still clad in her jeans and shirt. Slowly, she sat up; catching the chilly cloth in her hand, and placing her other hand gingerly against the back of her head. It was pounding fiercely. One of the doctors from the research facility was sitting in a chair beside the bed, holding a glass of ice water with a slice of lime floating at the bottom. A large glass pitcher full of water sat on Kaname's bedside table, along with a book, a folded stethoscope, and a tray of small tea sandwiches.

"How are you feeling?" the woman asked as Kaname gratefully accepted the glass and drank.

"The back of my head hurts," she replied grumpily, prodding the tender area lightly with the tips of her fingers. For some reason, her throat felt raw and her voice was unsteady as she spoke.

"That's because you hit your head on one of the computer tables earlier today," the woman replied, smiling serenely. "You gave us all quite a fright." Kaname glanced up at her visitor, puzzled by the comment. She didn't remember hitting her head.

The chair's occupant was middle-aged, with blond hair touched gray at the temples and pulled back in a sleek French twist. Kind gray eyes examined her from behind wire-rimmed glasses. The woman was neatly dressed in a crisp white blouse and a tweed pencil skirt, over which she wore the clichéd white lab coat. A laminated ID card clipped to her left breast pocket said 'Dr. Joanne Holt' and 'LD/RAA Division' beside a small profile shot.

"What are you doing here?" Kaname blurted out, nonplussed by the woman's presence and apparent familiarity with her.

"Mr. Silver asked me to look in on you after the incident this morning." Dr. Holt retrieved the empty water glass from Kaname's limp hand and set it carefully on the nightstand beside the pitcher. "Do you…remember what upset you so much?"

"Upset me…?" Kaname repeated inanely, still feeling disoriented. She stared up at the ceiling fan through the gauzy mosquito netting draped over the bed. It turned in lazy circles, throwing a long shadow repetitively across one wall. That meant late afternoon…she turned her head to glance out the bedroom windows and noted the deep amber light pouring across her balcony like honey. Hadn't she stood out there a few hours ago, welcoming the morning? Yes…there had been a rainstorm. Now all the clouds were gone, and the sun was an orange ball dipping towards the horizon through an intensely indigo sky.

"You had a very strong reaction to seeing the core of the ARX-7," said Dr. Holt, with the halting tones of someone delivering bad news. Kaname's head whipped back around to stare at the doctor, unbound black hair swinging out behind her. Her eyes went wide, her slim shoulders began to tremble, and Dr. Holt jumped up from her chair to put a comforting arm abound her. Just as suddenly as the shaking began, it stopped, as Kaname stubbornly clamped down on the flood of anguish coming from deep in her heart.

The scene from this morning re-created itself quickly in her mind's eye – Leonard gesturing for the tarp to be removed from the mysterious hulk in the laboratory, the ghastly decapitated remains of the Arbalest's torso, her voice claiming a will of its own and screaming uncontrollably. She could now recall stumbling backwards, trying to distance herself from the object that had shown up so repetitively in her nightmares. She remembered tripping on a cable and falling backwards, her head cracking painfully against the edge of a table, and the horrified look on Leonard's face as the room suddenly darkened.

"Miss Chidori?" said Dr. Holt, grasping one of the younger girl's wrists and taking her pulse with the ease of long practice. She then placed a finger under Kaname's chin and tilted her head up, looking in each of her eyes and frowning.

"I'll be fine," Kaname said, firmly pushing Dr. Holt's hands aside and swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

Dr. Holt didn't look convinced, but stood and picked up the stethoscope and her book. "You will feel best after you have eaten and rested," she said, as she pushed the borrowed chair back to its original spot beside the bathroom door. "Your maid will be up in a little while with dinner, and a little something to help your headache. I want you to take it just before bed." She smiled kindly at Kaname again, and then took her leave, brown leather pumps clicking smartly on the hard tiles.

Kaname waited a moment, perched on the edge of the bed until she heard the main door close, cutting off the sound of the doctor's retreating footsteps. She wondered if Leonard would have made good on his threat to hurt her friends and family if she had struck her head hard enough to bleed to death. Hot, miserable tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over, melting the iron grip she'd been maintaining on her despair. She buried her face in her palms and gave in to uncontrollable sobbing, fear and shock rolling over her in crushing waves. She hunched over on the bed, gasping for breath between despairing wails, tears streaming down her face.

Eventually, she cried herself out. Still sniffling pitifully, eyelids red and puffy, she caught her reflection in the dresser mirror across from her bed. Her hair was an unruly mess, and her cheeks were blotchy from weeping. She scrubbed at the tear tracks on her face with a handful of the bed sheets, still gulping and snuffling, then stood and strode resolutely to the bathroom.

She ran a bath for herself, adding generous handfuls of bath salts and watching absently as the water foamed and swirled its way towards the rim. She sat in the tub for a long time, still staring vacantly as steam curled in little spirals off the surface of the scented water, and the pads of her fingers turned pruney. A tiny, annoyed corner of her mind shouted furiously for her to get up and do something, anything, as long as it involved shaking loose of the apathy that had gripped her. Ignoring it, she tipped her head back in the water slowly, watching her hair billow around her as if stirred by some languid, unseen hand.

The abrupt arrival of Sabine, her maid, carrying a dinner tray and bearing her bathrobe draped over one arm, finally broke through Kaname's stupor. "Mr. Silver is waiting for you in the sitting room," the maid said, setting the laden tray on the countertop and holding out the bathrobe by the shoulders so Kaname could step out of the tub and into it.

Sabine was a petite woman in her late twenties, with coffee-colored skin and hair that marked her as a descendant of African tribesmen brought to the Caribbean as slaves. Sabine possessed a sweet disposition, but spoke rarely and frequently looked exhausted. Kaname suspected the woman was responsible for the care of a large family in addition to her duties at the villa, but hadn't been able to draw the older woman into a discussion of it. Her silent appearance in Kaname's doorway was not remarkable, but her softly spoken words had chipped a sudden hole in the younger girl's reverie.

"I do not want to see him right now," Kaname scowled from the tub, folding her arms across herself protectively, as if Leonard might materialize in the doorway behind Sabine.

"He said you might say such a thing," Sabine murmured in an apologetic tone, lowering her eyes to the floor. "He said he will come to you, if you will not go to him." The angle of her head cast shadows into the deep hollows beneath her eyes, and Kaname's conscience smote her a vicious blow at the same time as the potential dual meaning in Leonard's words became apparent. She had no right to involve Sabine in the battle of wills between herself and her fellow Whispered.

Gritting her teeth, she rose dripping from the tub and took the thick terry robe from the maid, wrapping it hastily around herself, then squeezing the excess water out of her hair. Wet footprints followed her path across the tiled bedroom and stopped when she reached the knotted rug in her sitting room where Leonard waited patiently for her, perched gracefully on the arm of a sofa and dressed in his ubiquitous black. His silvery eyebrows rose in appreciation as he surveyed the dripping girl before him. Kaname's scowl deepened as she was reminded of the last time he saw her wrapped in a bathrobe, wet hair streaming down her back. This time, she didn't have the added benefit of underwear.

"Ah, beloved. I'm glad to see you have recovered," he said, getting smoothly to his feet and reaching a hand out towards her, but Kaname had suddenly jumped backwards as if burnt. Her scowl had vanished, replaced by a vague look of alarm. "What's wrong?" he asked, an expression of concern crossing his face, hand dropping reluctantly to his side. His words had echoed oddly, not in the room, but in her head.

Kaname opened her mouth to blast him for using his Whispered powers to communicate with her in a totally unnecessary situation – Tessa had made the dangers of repeated contact very clear – but, his puzzled reaction led her to believe that he hadn't done it on purpose. He was definitely speaking aloud as well. Was his control slipping? Was he tired, perhaps? Could this be exploited for her benefit?

"Nothing," she said shortly, sitting down on the sofa across from him and thanking Sabine politely as the maid set her dinner on the low table in front of her, then left. It seemed to be some kind of fish baked with citrus slices, served with rice and a bowl of fried sweet potatoes, green plantains, and breadfruit. Set on the side was a glass dish of nutmeg ice cream, a teapot, and a teacup resting upside down on its saucer. Under the teacup were two white tablets, and a scribbled reminder signed by Dr. Holt: Please take these just before bed.

Kaname picked at the fish with a fork, not feeling terribly hungry. Her bout of wretched sobbing had left a sour feeling in her stomach, and she didn't want to add throwing up in the middle of the night to the list of her day's woes. Leonard watched her play with her food with another inscrutable look on his face. If Kaname had been paying attention, she might have been able to distill it into basic components: curiosity, longing, possessiveness, and frustration. Instead, she stirred the vegetables in their bowl, and then stabbed her fork into the rice repeatedly.

"Really, what did your dinner ever do to you?" Leonard asked lightly, after watching her mutilate the food for several silent minutes. Kaname's head jerked up immediately to stare at him. He'd done it again – that odd echo, the sound of his mental voice resonating at the back of her skull instead of in her ears where it belonged.

"I think…I'm too tired to eat," she said slowly, setting down her fork, trying to hide her uneasiness.

Leonard's face fell almost imperceptibly. "Very well. Your health is very important to me," he said, getting to his feet. "You should go back to bed." Kaname was still staring at him, so her reaction to the continued echo was much subtler this time: a flinch, a flickering of the lashes. She glanced back at the tray, wondering how much damage this continued steam of consciousness was causing. Funny, she still felt like herself. The teacup rattled as Leonard lifted the dinner tray.

"Wait," Kaname said, and plucked the teapot, teacup, and saucer off the tray, white tablets rocking gently against the smooth china surface. "Doctor's orders," she said with the ghost of a smile, as Leonard raised an eyebrow.

"Well, goodnight," he said somewhat sulkily, and swept out of the room. He was gone so quickly that he didn't hear the teacup clatter against the saucer as Kaname's hand trembled. She moved to the main door and locked it behind him, a gesture that made her feel a little foolish. She wouldn't put it past her fellow Whispered not to be carrying the key to her room on a string about his neck. She imagined him sneaking into her room in the middle of the night, and looming creepily over her bed as she slept. She shuddered at the thought.

She picked up the tea things and carried them out to the darkened terrace, ignoring the silent Arastol in the far corner. There was a golden spill of light from the two wrought iron lanterns hanging on either side of the bedroom doors, but it barely reached halfway across the terrace, which was almost big enough to play tennis on. The sun had set sometime during her dinner, and the sky was pitch-black over the mountains behind her. Only a faint smudge of blue on the western horizon remained. She placed the teacup on the weathered wooden table and poured from the pot, wishing she'd kept the sugar bowl. She could smell herbs in the tea – chamomile, mint, and lemongrass. It was a sharp, clean smell that cut through her murky thoughts, as she moved through the darkness to the railing with the cup cradled gently in her hands. It was only slightly warm since she had taken her time poking at her meal, and she sipped at it just to have something in her stomach. Now that her dinner tray was gone, she was starting to feel slightly hungry.

The chilly, cutting wind of the morning was long gone, replaced by a soft breeze that stirred her half-dried hair feebly, and was heavily laden with the rich, warm smells of nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla. It reminded her of holidays in America with her family, long before her mother had died. Those were memories that she didn't need to dust off for comfort much lately…her concept of family had slowly changed over the last year to include a young man with a scarred jawline and haunted eyes, someone who had been steadfast in times of trouble in a way that her father and sister could never have managed, even if they had lived in Japan.

"Oh, Sousuke," she whispered into her cup, the tea rippling as her breath moved across it. A tear rolled down her cheek and dropped onto the collar of her robe. "Come and find me," she breathed. "Come say those words. Tell me it's not a problem." A second tear slowly followed in the path of the first. She tipped her head back to look at the sky above her; an inky cloak studded with brilliant white sparks. The cloudy white banding of the galaxy arched directly overhead, glowing softly; a sight she had never had the opportunity to view in Tokyo, given the ambient light of the city.

Kaname returned to the table and picked up the two white tablets prescribed by Dr. Holt. She rolled them around in her palm for a moment, considering the way the back of her head hurt and the strange way that Leonard's voice had echoed in her mind. She returned to the railing, her teacup in one hand and the pills in her other. She could picture Sousuke's face if she were to tell him she had accepted unknown medication from these people – stoic, as usual, but those eyes would be troubled. He'd be disappointed in her. She should know better. Her decision made, she stretched her arm out in front of her and opened her hand. The little white tablets disappeared instantly into the night, vanishing down the side of the cliff. She would live with her headache. Others had survived worse.

She brought the tea things inside, rinsed her teacup and teapot out in the bathroom sink, then set them on the low table in her sitting room for the maid to find. She stood there for a moment, considering a call downstairs to the kitchens and waking the night cook. Leonard had made it clear that such behavior was acceptable - expected, even - but she couldn't bring herself to disrupt someone who surely had better things to do than make snacks for silly, temperamental-stomached girls.

Sighing, she pulled a nightgown out of her dresser and slipped it over her head, finally shedding her bathrobe and leaving it draped over the side chair that Dr. Holt had been sitting in. She was re-arranging the bed covers when she realized that there was still a plate of sandwiches on her nightstand, along with the now-tepid pitcher of water. She picked one up and sniffed it experimentally. It seemed to be all right, despite the inclusion of cream cheese with the smoked salmon. She ate ravenously, polishing off the entire plate with surprising speed, given her earlier unsettled stomach. Feeling immensely better, she pulled the mosquito netting closed around the bed and burrowed into the pillows, falling asleep almost instantly.


Kaname went from asleep to awake with a wordless shout of terror and a sudden, frantic leap out of bed. She landed in an ungainly crouch, catching her foot in the mosquito netting puddled on the floor, slipped, and went down hard on her tailbone. She moaned in pain and shock, sprawled out at her bedside, tangled up in the thin mesh draped over the canopy rails. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, the fading sensation of her nightmare still strong enough to make her tremble in fright.

The nightmare had been different this time, in a way that had shaken her to the very center of her being. Instead of watching from a distance, she had seen the Tokyo Arm Slave battle through Sousuke's eyes. She heard snatches of thought from him, as if he had suddenly shouted in her ear. She could hear the odd reverberation of Al's internal processes, as well as the normal verbalized interfaces. She had suddenly felt the pain of 40mm bullets tearing though her head, her right arm and leg. She felt the weight of Belial's foot stomping on her chest, felt it rip off the armored chest plate. She'd felt Al's presence fade when Sousuke said goodbye in that stilted, formal way of his. She had been left behind, suspended in the empty hollowness of the Lambda Driver core. There had been a single, silent moment before it had suddenly, terrifyingly, become a gaping black void that tried to suck her in; a vast darkness where something indescribably frightening waited for her return…and then, as she was being dragged down, a hand had reached for her: a hand limned in blue-green light. It was an anchor in the dark, holding her steady as the void tugged brutally at her consciousness like a rabid dog.

"You have to hold on," said a strange boy's voice. "I have a task for you-"

It was at that moment that she found herself awake and sprawled beside the bed, quaking in fear. She wrapped her arms around herself, gasping for breath. In the deep well of her mind where Black Technology hid, something stirred restlessly. She knew on an instinctive level that something was dangerously wrong. Her hands shook as she reached up and pulled herself to her feet by way of the corner bedpost.

She skipped her entire morning ritual, racing out of her suite of rooms as she pulled a sweatshirt over her head, her hair wild and matted from being slept on while still damp. Her sneakers pounded across the Aubusson carpet runner in the hall, then thumped down the main stairs, where she leaped the last four steps and landed with knees bent, startling the guard at the front doors as she all but flew past him on her way down another corridor towards the research labs.

Yesterday in the bath she had silently sworn to herself that nothing could drag her back into the room containing the remains of the Arbalest, yet here she was – not even twelve hours later, with every intention of kicking down the door on the lab and dismantling the Arbalest with her bare hands, if she must. She threaded her way through security stations with her temper barely in check, finally arriving in front of the door she wanted after being thoroughly harassed for charging through the facility at 5 o'clock in the morning.

As she raised her hand to the scanner panel to access the room beyond, her sense of purpose suddenly left her, and a thrill of apprehension ran up her spine, standing the fine hairs on the back of her neck on end.

"Come on, Kaname," she hissed at her reflection. Her face frowned back at her from the small, vertical glass pane set in the door. Through the tint of the privacy film and the grid of the safety wire, she could make out one end of the Arbalest's trunk, once again shrouded in the white tarp. She willed her palm to connect with the cool metal plate, and exhaled the breath she'd been holding as the door grudgingly slid open. She moved into the darkened lab slowly. Her steps were quiet, reverent, as if entering a place of worship.

Kaname had long harbored a vague fondness for the Arbalest, which had always appeared when needed the most; plucking Sousuke and herself out of danger multiple times since its activation in Shun On. It was a terribly sad thing to see what was left of it, laid out on the floor like a carcass. Worse was the knowledge that Leonard had had other people working on it, though what exactly that entailed remained a mystery to her. She suddenly felt a surge of possessiveness towards the ARX-7, and resolved to make it her project, whatever excuses she might have to invent for Leonard. Even if he had assigned her the task, she didn't think he expected her to take to it happily. He had probably intended this to be psychological reinforcement of his defeat of Sousuke, her obligation to work for Amalgam and guarantee the safety of her friends and family. It was a reminder that he possessed her. Showing too much enthusiasm for this would suggest to him that she had an agenda of her own.

She approached the draped form and carefully took hold of a flap of fabric, pausing for a long moment before yanking hard on her handful. It slithered to the floor and huddled there at the base of the headless torso like a shed skin. The remains were a little less than four meters in length, and the chest plate was missing, just like in her dream. There was still blood crusted on the headrest of the pilot's chair. A faint coppery tang hung in the air, along with the smells of gunpowder and burnt plastic.

The sense of purpose that had driven her out of bed at an ungodly hour stirred faintly in the back of her mind, then quieted again. Kaname repressed a surge of frustration – she had a task, but so far she didn't really know what it was. All she was sure of was that it involved the Arbalest and it's A.I., and the Lambda Driver. Mixed in there somewhere was Sousuke, and herself.

"I guess there's no helping it," she sighed, and pulled the long sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands to pad them against the jagged metal composite edges of the Arbalest's armor casing. She climbed slowly over the exposed rib structure and sat on the closed pilot restraint, peering around for a release lever. She understood the technology involved in building the A.S.s, but things like buttons and levers were left up to the individual designer's discretion. "Ah-ha," she mumbled, leaning over to reach for a handle placed high by the shoulder and neck joints. She had to pull hard before the hydraulic system heaved the chest brace open and allowed her to slide into Sousuke's seat. She was now lying on her back in the command chair, gazing up at the acoustical ceiling panels above her. She slid her arms through the embrasures and grasped the multifunction, pistol-grip style control stems, reaching a finger out for the left-hand trackball. It was stuck in its housing, possibly from dust and dirt – or from blood, she thought soberly.

She felt strangely close to Sousuke at this moment. Being encased in the cockpit was almost like being held by him, she thought wistfully. She could faintly catch the smell of his hair on the bolster.

"Sousuke," she whispered.

As she lay in the seat, she began to feel a faint vibration through the spinal power channel. The main heads-up display flickered grudgingly to life, washing the cockpit with a ghostly blue light. She supposed it must be easier on the eyes than constant full spectrum. The screen remained blank until she pressed forward against the right-hand joystick. Immediately it spat out a string of code, filling the screen and scrolling down quickly. She released the control, following the code with her eyes, a frown creasing a line between her brows. This was definitely wrong. Damage to the computer and A.I. components notwithstanding, no pilot had time to decipher this during any phase of Arm Slave operation. She was going to have to recover the A.I. and the operating system before she could make much progress with the Lambda Driver. The symbiotic circuitry made it impossible to just pry open the physical component of the Driver without damaging both systems permanently, and Kaname had a powerful gut feeling that she was going to need both Al and the Lambda Driver intact.


A/N: Updated on 12/14 – Again, the basic grammatical fixes. I often go back and try to correct things like awkward turns of phrase, repetitive descriptions, etc. Feel free to join in.