Forgive me for the relative shortness of this chapter. I recently got married and am now juggling marriage and law school, along with usual day-to-day activities. I'll churn out chapters as soon as I can, working to keep towards my one chapter a month goal. It may only be one story I manage to get to, but I'll work towards it all the same! Enjoy and please review!
Saya felt the sunlight on her skin, filtering in through the thin sheet that she used as a curtain. She also felt Haji's gaze on her and wondered how long he'd been up. A better question would be if he'd even bothered to sleep. With a certain feeling of guilt, she realized she'd never really given him a response to his feelings for her. Knowing Haji, though...well, he wouldn't really care. That was Haji's nature, after all. But that fact also made it that much worse...
She sat up, stretching before she allowed herself to look over at Haji. He deserved some sort of answer, even if it was really no answer at all.
"Haji..."
Almost on cue, the door flew in, Tsukiko standing in front of it on one foot, the other held in the air from when she'd kicked the door in.
"Saya-sama! Wake up! We've gotta whip Hoshi into shape!"
She hoped that Haji could see the apology in her eyes. It seemed that now just was not the time.
Hoshi looked at the van with a certain feeling of trepidation. This would be breaking new ground for her, and she's always been something of a perfectionist. The thought of things not going as she wanted or had planned made her skin tighten, and she shivered once before calming her nerves. Kai tightened the last bit of luggage onto the top of it, stopping for a moment to tell something to the young couple that would be in charge of the restaurant while they were away. They knew the drill, since Kai often took off for one reason or another. Most of the time it was Red Shield related.
"What am I getting myself into," she asked herself, the words leaving her lips as more of a sigh than a statement.
"It won't be as bad as you think," Saya said, tossing the sword she'd used a few nights ago to Kai, who tossed it into the trunk of the car. "Your instincts do most of the fighting for you. It's just a matter of honing those instincts a little more."
The smile Saya gave her eased the worst of her nerves. The best of them, however, still bugged as everyone but Haji piled into the rental van, and Kai took off for their training location.
Hoshi stood in front of the wooden dummy, feeling Saya circle around her. Her eyes were closed, and she felt her breathing slow down, beat by beat, until she could hear the air moving around her and the blades of grass straightening themselves. Saya was surprised at how quickly Hoshi was learning everything. However, a willing spirit was always key to becoming a better warrior. And boy, did she have the spirit.
Drills with the wooden dummy alone had become meaningless before lunchtime. So, after a brief break, while the rest of the group nibbled on rice balls, tempura and sushi, Saya sought to push Hoshi to her breaking point. How far did she have to go before Hoshi hit a wall that needed climbing over rather than barreling through?
Saya lifted the staff she'd decided to use, and in mid step, changed her direction, charging Hoshi from behind her, at an angle in hopes to catch her off guard. Hoshi was to block attacks from Saya while still maintaining the routine that they'd drilled on since morning.
Strike at the left thigh, bring the staff straight up into the dummy's armpit, spin around and strike the right side of the neck, pull back and deliver a double thrust at the stomach and chest, throw down the staff on the right foot and finish off with the staff between the legs.
After easily dodging Saya's attack, then knocking it aside before delivering the first strike to the dummy, Saya realized that she'd have to step up her game.
Tsukiko looked up, feeling the change before she saw it, the tail of a tempura sticking out of her mouth. Saya's eyes were blood red, and Tsukiko actually shivered at the ferocity that she felt. Saya's attack speed doubled...tripled...her eyes struggled to keep up with the thrusts, sweeps and strikes as Saya directed them at Hoshi.
In Hoshi's defense, she put up a good struggle. However, the game was over after Hoshi lost track of her routine. Two strikes at the dummy's neck.
She wondered how long she would last against Saya. The truth of the matter was the thought of sparring with her aunt was almost orgasmic.
Hoshi took a deep breath, growing frustrated at her inability to take off the blindfold with one hand which trembled from exhaustion, mental and physical. She almost swatted away the hand that came up to aid her.
"I'm impressed," came the words of praise.
Saya held the blindfold in her hands as she came around to face Hoshi. A hand extended to take the staff from her, which Hoshi gave up happily. Her body was starting to reach its limits, it seemed.
"Thank you," she said between breaths.
The two headed over to the blanket where everyone else was seated, a basket set aside with food for the two of them. Mostly for Saya. However, before they reached the blanket, Kai stood up, a sword in his hand. Without a word, he tossed it towards them. Shifting the staves to one hand, Saya caught the blade, stopping in her tracks. Passing the staves to Haji, she gently, looked over the blade, pausing to run her thumb over the bright crystal that glinted like the blood it was.
"Father," she murmured to herself.
With a slow, fluid motion, she unsheathed the uniquely shaped sword. It started straight before curving sharply, taking on the appearance of a scythe for a moment. However, from that point on, the blade flowed straight and true. That small point, which was always kept sharper than the rest of the blade itself, was as long as her thumb, existing so she could pierce the digit and let the blood flow from it. Her blood, which was poison to all creatures that were spawned from the blood of her sister. Saya looked over at Kai, putting the sword back in its sheath.
"Thank you."
He nodded, a soft smile on his face. They both knew how much the blade meant to their family. What kind of brother would he had been if he hadn't kept it safe for all these years.
"Can you...umm...how did you and Haji meet?"
The question completely caught Saya off guard, so much so that the piece of fish in her chopsticks didn't make it to her mouth. Still, habit won over and she popped the food in her mouth and swallowed it before she attempted to answer. Even so, Tsukiko, ever blunt as usual, continued her questions.
"I mean...is there a special way to choose one's chevalier?"
"Tsukiko!" Hoshi said, wincing even as she continued to scowl at her sister. Kai had her hand in his, using some balm and bandages to keep her sensitive palms from becoming too calloused after the day's sparring session.
"No...it's ok. I should probably put any fanciful ideas to rest about the whole chevalier thing anyway."
Placing down her chopsticks, Saya glanced over at Haji, who sat a ways away, tuning his cello. Reaching deep into her thoughts and memories, she pulled out the relevant ones that she felt needed to be passed to her nieces.
"Yes, a chevalier is bound by blood and compelled to be loyal to the blood that is given to him. I'm not sure if any female chevaliers exist, but that is a moot point at the moment. I'm sure there was a much better way to choose a chevalier than the ways that I did. When I made Haji my chevalier, it was out of ignorance and necessity, with no knowledge whatsoever of who I was and what he would become. Haji had been brought to be my playmate, and the man who raise me, Joel, hoped that one day we would also...well..."
Saya started blushing and wondered just how ridiculous she looked before going on.
"At any rate, I'd sent Haji to get a flower for Joel's birthday. The flower was high on a cliff, but he went for it all the same. However, he fell and cracked his head. I rushed down to help him, but when I saw that he was losing so much blood, I decided that I had to help him somehow. Joel had given me blood transfusions to keep the anemia from overpowering me...I'm sure you two receive them as well. So I decided to give Haji my blood in hopes to keep him alive the way that Joel gave me blood..."
"You didn't," Tsukiko said, her eyes wide.
"I did, and so I created my first chevalier."
"Then there was another," Hoshi asked, picking up on the wording.
"My...our brother. Your father. He was also my chevalier. But he'd just been turned...he couldn't defend himself..."
"The thing about chevaliers and queens is that they need each other to reproduce," Haji interrupted, taking his place near Saya. "A queen can only give birth by the chevalier of her twin."
"And we've discovered that a chevalier, once turned, can only reproduce with a queen."
The voice came from behind them all, and Kai was not the least surprised to see Joel, a black, slender cane in his hand, making his way towards them.
"So, this was all planned?" Saya asked, looking from Kai to Joel with a certain amount of indignation.
"No, Saya...not really, anyway," Kai started. The location they'd chosen, a remote camp ground that had been closed for the winter months, turned out to be private property of none other than Red Shield through the Goldschmidt Foundation for the Environment. Yet one of several aliases the underground organization had in order to produce a public front.
"However, the truth of the matter is that I'd anticipated all of this happening, and when Kai told me that you were going to train, I figured that now would be as good a time as any to break the news to you all. This information is known only to a select few, the oldest and most loyal of our members."
"Julia-san and David-san know then?" Saya asked.
"They were the ones that told me," the man laughed harshly. "Some time last year, about this time, Red Shield raided an artificial chiropteran manufacturing company. The fools thought to harness all of the creature's power and none of its savagery. Surprise, surprise, though...they failed. The creatures were almost worth our pity at that point. They'd been kept in cages and the researchers used them for experiments, hoping to find some way to reverse the effects of the drug they'd created. When we finally got on the scene, however, most of the chiropterans had been freed or broken free...we're still not sure which it was. All of the scientists and workers were dead.
"So, we took their files, their computers, their logs, and whatever other data we could get our hands on. Quite a bit of it was encrypted, which wasn't the real problem. It was the damaged data that we've been laboring over for so long, and what worried us the most was that it seemed very selective. There was no hard data about this particular experiment, but there was evidence of it once existing. The only files intentionally damaged were those referring to Adam III."
"Adam III?" Tsukiko asked.
"A third Adam," Hoshi said, musing aloud. "The first was the one kicked out of the Garden of Eden. The second usually refers to Jesus Christ. The figure or name of Adam is usually referenced when implying the beginning or ending of an era of mankind."
"I don't like the sound of that," her sister replied.
"Neither did we," Joel said. "But it seems that's exactly what the experiment was aimed at doing. Creating a new species of man, if you would. Finding the appropriate king to go with the existing queens.
"From what data we've salvaged, they pumped one promising test subject full of queen blood. We can only assume that they got it from Diva. She seemed to share that stuff rather freely. They were observing him, and from what we've found, there were no documented negative side effects. However, several days into observation is also when the crew and compound were destroyed and the test subjects were freed."
"So there's a male version of us running around out there?" Tsukiko said, her anger becoming more evident in her voice and body, her hands clenching into fists and her knuckles turning red from the pressure.
"And the timing is about right for when Kei says the first few rumors of some chiropteran kingdom emerged."
"Kei?" Hoshi asked.
"I'd take it as an insult that you didn't remember me, if I didn't know any better."
The group glanced over their shoulders and saw the figure of Kei, stoically cleaning his glasses as he stood next to the person who brought him there.
"David-san!" Saya said
"We didn't get much of a chance to catch up on things at the party, but we'll be spending quite a bit of time together in the coming weeks."
The man had gotten white around the edges, some small streaks of his dirty blond hair still remained in the midst of the tell-tale signs of aging. Other than that, he was the same old David. Her eyes drifted back towards Kei, glasses back on his face, briefcase in hand and gun strapped to his back. His dark brown hair took on a ruddy sheen under full sunlight, bringing out his light-colored eyes that much more. He noticed her gaze and bowed slightly in her direction. She turned away before a blush hit her cheeks, returning to what was left of her food.
"So, where to from here?" Kai asked.
"East," David said, smiling softly. "The factory was in the area known as Silicon Valley in California. Our plane tickets are already paid for and we fly out bright and early tomorrow."
"Are you ready to fight?" Joel asked. "All of you?"
The three queens nodded, some more quickly than others. Blood would be fighting together rather than against each other, for a change.
He looked out the window as they approached the airport, barely managing to control his breathing. There was something about airplanes that reminded him of the cell he'd been kept in for entirely too much of his mortal life. But that had changed once he'd moved beyond mortality...
Dragging his fingers along the case that rested in his lap, he shifted his focus to look at his own reflection in the window. The slight concern in his heart was reflected in his eyes, which had taken on a brown-green tint in the shaded area.
Was this path truly the way he should go? Would it change anything, when it was all said and done? Could these methods even possibly give him happiness?
Still, he didn't know what else to do. Hell, it was what he'd been created to do. For now, there was no other choice.
The guard nodded as he thanked Saya, giving her back the federally issued fake passport that David had given her that morning. It was hard to verify a fake passport when the same government that gave out the official ones also gave out fakes when it suited their needs. She resisted the urge to examine it again, placing it into her small hand purse. Her gaze grazed the front of her outfit, a simple t-shirt, a warm, fleece jacket with a zipper and some jeans. Her age, for the time being, was eighteen - old enough to be considered legal in America, but young enough to actually look the age on the document. Hoshi and Tsukiko's IDs reflected that they were sixteen and had the same birthday. David had noticed that, upon a close inspection, Saya did look slightly older than the twins, so the call was made to make her a little older than making the three triplets. Tsukiko had been rather disappointed, having been the one to look the most forward to acting as though Saya was her sister, even if it was only for a short period of time.
She picked up her carry-on bag, looking back at the rest of their entourage as they came through the security checkpoint. Haji had been behind her, and she watched as the guard looked suspiciously at the hand that he always kept neatly bandaged. Words were exchanged, and whatever excuse Haji gave was good enough to put the guard's mind at east. She saw how it could easily be assumed to just be a nasty burn or something like that. And since he was in his usual suit, appearing more the butler than not...
"Fancy meeting you here. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were stalking us."
Her attention got pulled back towards the terminals, and she blinked upon seeing that the voice addressing her was none other than the brash leader of the band that had helped rebuild Kai's restaurant.
"Sho, wasn't it?" she asked as she took a few steps in his direction.
"I'm flattered you remember me, Saya," he answered, smiling.
It wasn't until she felt the heat rise in her cheeks that she realized she was blushing. His smile was so genuine and warm, it through her a little off guard. Had she so grown to mistrust people, or was it just her long slumber that left her feeling so out of place in this world? Her thoughts raged in her, wanting answers to these questions that only seemed to grow with time. She saw a look of concern cross Sho's face and she took a slight breath, smiling.
"After all the work you did to help restore our restaurant, how could I not?"
"Oh, it was well worth the meal. I see your whole fam is here. Headed to the states?"
"Uh huh. A long overdue family vacation."
"We've got a gig in California," he said, holding up his guitar case. "Where are you headed?"
"California as well," she said, wondering at the coincidence.
Sho fished in his pockets and pulled out an envelope, looking over the group of people gathering behind Saya. His eyes drifted from person to person, and he finally opened up the envelope and counted out seven tickets, handing them to Saya.
"I'd love to have you ladies hear us. Drop by if you can."
With that, he blew her a kiss and turned around, jogging lightly down the hall, making a rather amusing image with one hand on his back pocket to keep the drumsticks there from falling out and the other holding the guitar case.
"I don't like him."
Saya turned towards the voice, seeing Haji finally at her side.
"Are you jealous?" Tsukiko asked, a laugh buried in the words.
To Saya's complete shock, a slight rose color hit his cheeks. Haji, jealous? She was so used to seeing him as his usual stoic self that the thought that he could even be jealous was a foreign notion to her. Was he? She looked up at him, wondering if he would answer. To his credit, he looked her in the eyes as he'd always done.
"What I feel is of no consequence. I speak only out of concern for Saya's feelings and safety. Something about him does not seem...right. That's all I can say until I discover more. I feel the same way about Kei. Both show up out of nowhere and manage to become a part of our existence. I don't like it at all."
He did have a point. Both men had been consistently present since she'd awoken. Few people simply butted themselves into her life like that without reason...
Two men, one with more than his fair share of knowledge about chiropterans and the other seemingly infatuated with her and her nieces. She looked up at Haji, a single thought crossing her mind, wondering if he'd considered the obvious explanation.
One of them had to be the subject of the Adam III project. But which?