Seven \\ Faith -信心- At the End of Days
A/N: Crap crap crap I noticed I've been having Ryuuko switch between saying 'Nee-chan' and 'Nee-san' :o ...And I'm... not sure which one I want to stick with, actually... Hm...
W-well, thanks, everyone, for reading and reviewing! XD
Apologies in advance if anyone finds some of the themes in this one offensive.
Disclaimer: I don't own Kill la Kill.
Faith at the End of Days
Sweat stung her eyes; she bit her lip as the moisture flecked from her nose. Her extended fingers barely brushed the handle in their next flailing pass.
It was a medkit. By the logo on the half-shattered glass casing about it, it had to be. On scavenging trips, Ryuuko would scour an empty building room by room, drawer by drawer, box by box, thoroughly for as far as it was accessible; people often stored useful treasures – lighters, dental supplies, medicine – in odd places. Whatever they hadn't taken or destroyed amid the frenzy of the early days of apocalypse, Ryuuko would find. The work was slow, but occasionally rewarding, for the experienced forager.
But the telltale cross emblazoned on a fragment of glass – a case fallen from a wall – promised that the bounty below would be no haphazard check among dozens of cupboards to be rifled through. It posed a certain reward: a treasure chest beside the chance quarter on the sidewalk that was the reward of random searching. You could scour sidewalks all day and not find one goddamned coin. But one box with that little logo…
Her nail tried to flick the folded handle upright. It wouldn't budge. She stretched a bit further with an annoyed grunt, unblinking.
She could hack, slice and dice Life Fiber clusters all day long, but in some ways, she knew she was powerless. Hell if she knew where to find a hospital or refugee clinic she could guarantee would be operational the next time they swung by, or even, reliably, where to find other people. She herself knew almost nothing of medicinal herbs or other remedies.
So if Satsuki got sick, Satsuki could easily die. Ryuuko couldn't fight something like illness off her sister; such a killer could claim Satsuki, and laugh at the fool left behind.
And some of the medicines in their stockpile were past expiration. It would only take one time Satsuki really needed it for weakened medicine to not do the job.
So, for such a promising box, Ryuuko was quite willing to go out on a limb – or rather, clamber down across the crackled, sharply drooped remains of this floor to reach for a box resting on the floor below. She was in the basement levels, the bowels of a rickety Western church. What little cracked, worn carpet remained she dug her feet and hand into, upon flooring curved into a downward slant sharp enough to reach almost the next level down. That next level, however, had caved more entirely; Ryuuko could see the box sitting on a barely-intact chunk of floor at the corner, but aside from that – blackness. She had little desire to test how far down it went.
Ryuuko pulled back her hand, scowling. She nipped her thumb.
Her eyes grew.
She reached down again, hesitating for just a moment. Satsuki would probably have scolded her for this… or worse, remained silent, while that unnerved look showed through her cold eyes.
But the tips of Ryuuko's fingers reddened and protruded, poking into the form of claws.
Little more… She hooked the handle and tugged. The box rose but slipped from her reach, beginning to tip from the ledge supporting it.
Crimson claws split at the tips, splaying desperately into a web of threads that leapt clumsily to snag and encircle the falling box.
Ryuuko gave a shout, as much in surprise as with the effort of pulling back to sling the box safely up to her side. Her steadying foot slipped on the incline, and she swore and slammed her other hand, now sporting its own claws, into the slanted length of flooring to catch herself again, flopping to a halt.
"HA!" she laughed in triumph. Now, time to scram–
Crack.
A small sound, and terse silence.
Then the slanted floor lurched down and gave out, as weight tore it from its remaining support.
Ryuuko seized the medical kit tightly, and shot a few Life Fiber strands upwards. The glowing threads arced toward an intact piece of flooring and caught, jolting her, before the support crumbled down, and Ryuuko plummeted with it.
Curse her – curse the god-forsaken little monster pipsqueak of a sister who grew so alarmed to hear that Satsuki had a headache. A headache! It was probably the water from yesterday; it had tasted odd.
When Ryuuko had heard that same dismissive remark from Satsuki earlier today, her eyes had gone round in panic.
Was it so difficult to comprehend that Kiryuuin Satsuki would be felled by neither headcold nor minor infection? Yet however much she insisted this, Ryuuko would spare no caution for her. If Satsuki could only get her to show such zeal for preparedness as she rushed into battle, scissor blades swinging…
When they'd split up for a routine scavenging trip, Satsuki had expressly warned Ryuuko not to do anything foolish. Her stern glare had been met with the typical uninterested, casual "Yeah, yeah" and a wave.
Satsuki eyed the scissor blades jammed into the ground before her. It was outside what looked to have once been a church. Ryuuko had probably detected no danger, and thus left the weapon to avoid being encumbered or risk losing it.
She had also marked her location.
Ryuuko was going to be hella' late getting back to the meeting spot and Satsuki.
But the Life Fiber signature faintly resonating with her own was too curious to pass by.
The fall hadn't done her much damage, aside from landing her a bruised tailbone. She'd emerged from a pileup of rubble in a thrash, swearing irately, blinking in the near darkness. The floor there was earthen; the space grew cramped as she ventured out. Tunnels, then…? Had the floor collapsed into some kind of mine?
She now passed a larger cavern by, following the tunnel's course toward the pulses. Satsuki would call her a fool among fools for winding up here, let alone progressing weaponless; indeed, she'd gone far enough that she couldn't be beneath the church anymore – and was that fresh air she smelled? Either way, Ryuuko knew there was a system to her Life Fiber senses. Pulses this faint and subdued meant a presently dormant cluster, and a distant one, at that. That was why…
That was why she almost jumped, when she heard the sound from just ahead.
A human! she realized in that typical, lip-wrinkling twinge of anxiety crossed with relief, making out a voice as she crept nearer. And there was light ahead… Ryuuko listened, following her ears and eyes, satisfied that the pulses were still distant and unmoving.
"…'The God that holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider, or some loathsome Insect, over the Fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked.' So dreadfully provoked…"
The voice was calm, dully reflective. Ryuuko's brow furrowed. As her eyes adjusted to the light up ahead, she spotted the back of a figure in a cloak, seated beside a tree. Dark hair, short but messy.
"…'So the Bow of His Wrath is bent, and the Arrow made ready on the String, and Justice bends the Arrow at your Heart, and strains the Bow. It is nothing but the meer pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any Promise or Obligation at all, that keeps the Arrow one Moment from being made drunk with your Blood.'"
Ryuuko stopped at his side and considered him warily – this rambling kid with the light, subdued tone. He blinked, turning his head idly from the sunset; his eyes were wide and earnest in a pale face, and he started when he saw her. Even his expression of startlement was subdued.
He tilted his head. "They said a new world needed a new religion. So they gave God a new face, you see."
Ryuuko's frown deepened. She walked to one side of him, then the other, arms crossed in suspicion. The pulses were still so weak, now that she tuned into them again. But their direction as she moved about, double- and triple-checked…
"You're… like me," she breathed, stunned.
He stood up, and Ryuuko hardly began to take a stance before noting the slackness in his posture. He wasn't much younger than her, she realized; he was a bit taller, but lanky and reedlike – malnourished.
"We're the same?" he inquired. He studied Ryuuko, a brow raised. She raised a brow right back, scowling. Then he grinned, softly fierce. Shakingly proud. "We're the same. That's what she says, huh… Then were you also rejected by the Harvest?"
Ryuuko wasn't sure how to respond to that one.
Before she had to, he swayed, slumping against the tree as his wavering intensity evaporated. He was murmuring.
"What?" Ryuuko asked. "Dude, snap out of it!"
"Scars," he repeated, bespectacled eyes peering up at her face in confusion. "You have scars. But ordinary injuries don't scar us, I found. Even fatal injuries don't. So… No, you…? You fight the Creator?"
She felt a chill as he spoke, turning his pinched gaze toward the sunset as he covered his mouth with a hand, appalled, then looked at her again. There were people in the world who babbled shit like this? He had to be too young to be one of them. But… the ones she fought… creators?
He gripped her shoulders, more supporting his wobbling frame than restraining her, and gave an airy laugh. "'What are we,' they'd say, 'that we should think to stand before Him at whose Rebuke the Earth trembles?' Yet you fight! Alas, the Sword of divine Justice is every Moment brandished over our Heads, and 'tis nothing but the Hand of arbitrary Mercy, and God's meer Will, that holds it back. Tell me, warrior, what think you of that passage?"
"I think…"
That voice was as steel. The gangly youth didn't flinch as the Bakuzan Kouryuu pierced the air before his neck, poising its sharp edge at his throat. Or rather, it took him quite a few moments to notice Satsuki's – and her blade's – arrival. He started somewhat when he did.
Satsuki's voice was a growl, each word cold enough to singe. "The only sword you need to fear brandished over your head is mine."
He released Ryuuko's shoulders as Satsuki coaxed him back a few steps, the tip of her blade leveled at his throat. "Wait, wait… who…?"
"This here's Onee-chan," Ryuuko provided.
"Oh. Hello, Oneechan," the boy greeted with a smile, as if taking a cue from Ryuuko's calm.
"No, she's my – agh," Ryuuko groaned, running a hand through her hair. "Sis, I don't think he's a threat."
"I think you're a terrible judge," she snapped back. To the boy: "Identify yourself."
"Oh, I'm Yoriyoshi. Shin'yuu Yoriyoshi. Well met!" he said, and promptly tipped backwards, keeling, until his shoulders and head conked into the dirt.
親友自由
(しんゆうよりよし)
[SHIN'YUU YORIYOSHI]
A firm eyebrow rose at the youth sprawled on the ground.
"What the hell!" Ryuuko complained, reaching into the pack on Satsuki's back. "You know normal people can't handle your intensity at close range!"
"What are you doing–?" Satsuki asked, turning abruptly to get Ryuuko's hands out of the backpack.
Ryuuko went for it again. "He's starving–,"
"Ryuuko!"
The next the younger woman knew she was against the tree with a thud, a hand tight on her wrist having twisted her arm upward behind her back. The flat of the Kouryuu rested at her throat. "What are you thinking, Ryuuko? The town was almost uncannily well cleared out. Unless you found a stockpile, we don't have food to spare."
Satsuki saw it flash in her eye, and braced herself. They both knew Satsuki wasn't actually strong enough to keep her pinned, if Ryuuko was determined.
But Ryuuko looked away. Her words were soft and clear. "He's like me, you know?"
She heard Satsuki's intake of breath, and pulled her hand free without resistance.
"You remember that week last winter, when we were short on food? I started acting weird. I felt different – like I wasn't a human, but some… thing, attached to a human body. Like I was just drifting around… I thought I was going nuts."
Satsuki nodded grudgingly. Ryuuko continued.
"We hypothesized–,"
"We did, did we?"
"You hypothesized," Ryuuko corrected with a look, "that the more the human part of me is jeopardizing my chances of survival – through the undersatisfied need for food, for instance – the more active the Life Fibers get." She hung her head. "It was scary, sis. This guy's probably only alive right now because the Life Fibers in him are keeping him functioning. That's why he's loony – you'll see. Once he's eaten, he'll probably turn back to normal like I did."
Once he'd eaten, he was still rather loony. Or at least, his story was.
He'd woken and downed two cans of soup ("Four servings," Satsuki noted stonily). But he was up on his feet, walking without swaying, and Ryuuko considered it a good sign. That he was also Japanese, and hadn't seemed to understand Ryuuko's use of 'Onee-chan' earlier, just went to show how much more out of it he'd been.
She still decided that Shin'yuu Yoriyoshi – his given name spelled with the same characters as 'freedom' – had a smile entirely too steady for the story he offered.
Ryuuko sat down on the weathered stone wall she'd been walking along, gazing down the grassy hill below. This area was rural; cities meant places where there had been more humans, and more chaos, at the onset of the end. Humans all but gone now, but leaving behind more destruction, more hazards, more to rot and fester with disease. Plenty had killed each other looting and fighting for provisions before the Life Fibers had come for them. The countryside – small villages like this one – was usually ideal for scavenging.
And apparently, this particular village had been essentially devoid of REVOCS clothing at the time of the fall. Ryuuko couldn't figure how often it happened, and couldn't imagine there were many entire towns that had been like this, but she guessed it had to happen somewhere. Even REVOCS's radar had to miss some spots…
As Ryuuko sat, she heard the Yoshi kid stop where he'd been walking in the long grass a few paces uphill from her perch, but even knowing he kept a dagger on his person, she didn't feel uneasy at having him out of view. She could feel the calm pulse of his Life Fibers, a hum of resonance with hers.
Moreover, she also knew that though out of earshot, Satsuki's militaristic gaze was trained on them from the top of the hill – the ideal scouting location of the area, naturally – at least one sword no doubt drawn in excessive precaution. The pointedly disinterested Kiryuuin could be upon them within two seconds at a full dash.
Ryuuko rested her chin in her hands. "…So your whole village?"
"Every last man, woman, and child," Yoshi reiterated.
"No one ran?"
"Not a one."
"No one fought? No one hid, no one prepared?" Some time ago, Ryuuko's voice might have cracked under the weight of the words. At this point, she had seen in a few years so much death and decay – so many shriveled, skeletal bodies clinging to each other with despair etched into the lines of their bones – that she spoke glumly. Even her disbelief at the unique circumstances was a flattened phantom of shock. "They just went on about their lives, until…?"
Yoshi rested his elbows on the wall beside her, and nodded.
Ryuuko scowled. "Practically a mass suicide, huh…"
The boy shrugged. "My father was the head – of the old church, and then the… new. You know what he said, with ma's hand in his, and my sister at his side, when it was reported that a roaming Life Fiber cluster was finally spotted a day from town, heading this way?"
"Did he call for a celebration?" Ryuuko asked sarcastically.
Yoshi gave her a blank look, and quirked a brow.
"Holy hell!" Ryuuko swore.
"People need hope. When conventional hope is drawn from reach, and a group gets fixated on a replacement… well, odd things can emerge."
"But the people here… made a religion of submission to the Life Fibers?"
"Certainly, they deified and worshiped them. Is it truly so surprising? Consider this. For so long, so many humans regarded our existence as a dominant species in this world so conveniently as proof of some creator's divine favor. They decided to believe we were special, sculpted in the lord's own image."
He gazed idly into the twilight clouds. "Then humans learned of pesky things like evolution, and felt so tragically deprived of this lofty self-importance; we were apparently products of a mindless, aimless mechanism of natural selection, of adaptation to a dynamic environment, and however momentous the time it took, we ended up this particular way by chance. Apparently, we were not fundamentally different from common beasts! The mere thought proved offensive. But at long last, a new answer emerged in the wake of more than a century of despair."
"…The Life Fibers," Ryuuko muttered.
He nodded. "It had been well-substantiated as theory: evolutionary natural selection is an algorithm and produced us, but is not an algorithm for producing us. Within our knowledge, it couldn't have been; thus humans couldn't name themselves the preordained apex of all life. But just imagine… if Darwin, in his studies, had caught wind of the Life Fibers' hidden design, what shape would human vanity have given the discovery?"
A chuckle escaped him. "We see in this era of apocalypse the ultimate paradigm shift. Humans are special again – there was a will behind our creation, after all, and not for some murky purpose, but a plain one. Telos. The beasts now called 'humans' were selected in an ancestral state and then refined, created as we are for the express purpose of being consumed by Life Fibers. We have been optimized for their nourishment. It's only natural, then, that some of the more zealous-minded would submit to the will of our newly-discovered creator, perceiving a sacred duty – and not the sort of glorious missions reserved for a few chosen elites, but a genetic responsibility unifying all humans, equally achievable and inevitable to each and every one of us. Taken from this angle, a grim fate becomes a cause for celebration… I can understand the appeal, at least."
Ryuuko scoffed. She was naturally distrustful of any words that came out of a braniac's mouth; that someone could even admit as happily as Yoriyoshi had earlier that he'd spent most of his young life voluntarily cooped up in libraries had made her cringe enough. But with this twerp – well, she might've just wanted to test how he'd respond. "So they cultivated us for their use. And? That gives them divinity? People never considered themselves the gods of cattle."
"Ah, but if cattle comprehended their origins?" he countered. "We owe the Life Fibers our existence, and our ability to reflect upon it. If anything is sacred…"
Ryuuko frowned as his expression clouded, troubled. But ultimately he simply shook his head, chuckling again.
"Don't worry. I might have memorized the doctrines like the rest of them, but I hate the Life Fibers for this reality. I'm not a fighter; I didn't try to resist or anything. But I daresay I should prefer to have been born a beast, than a thinking creature resigned to such a 'purpose.'"
He sighed. "It's a curious thing, human faith. Generations of thinking humans have come and gone without the 'privilege' of serving their purpose. Now with the Life Fibers' harvest of us comes the notion that we've crested our full potency as a species – we, the humans of today, standing at an otherwise indistinguishable zenith. There is an endpoint, given a creator to define one – there is 'perfection,' and we've evidently reached it. The awe and wonder of this revelation… that's what spurred the advent of a new religion."
"You talk about humans like you've forgotten you're one of us, Yoshi-chan."
He smiled. "And I envy you, Matoi-san, for being able to say so confidently that you are one." His gaze flicked back to clouds now edged in starlight. "Humans seek superiority – obsess with it, even. Superiority over other species, superiority of beliefs, superiority of race, of gender, of nation. And they… we, humans, seek our gods' acceptance, favor, and love."
"It just so happens," Ryuuko said carefully, "that the Life Fibers' acceptance comes in the form of sucking the life out of us."
"Yes. So to the believers – to the people of my village, and perhaps others like them – their fatal embrace says that we are great and fine beings, worthy of becoming one with the Creator. It's so simple…"
His fist clenched and unclenched. "Yet I wasn't taken by the Purpose. I came to, surrounded by what was left of everyone, with Life Fibers infusing my body. Should this say I am unloved by the Creator? Deficient, flawed – a defect they couldn't properly ingest? Or could they sense the treachery in my heart, shivering amid the hordes of avid believers so eager to submit?" He snorted, though he was pale. "As if they could be so discriminating…"
Left surrounded by the corpses of people you cared about… or in my case, of people who sneak their way into your heart before you notice it… We have one more thing in common, don't we now. Ryuuko sat straighter, stretching. "You're not sorry they all died without you…? But you sound like you realize all this 'purpose' and 'creator' talk doesn't add up somewhere." Her lip quivered a moment, and she hugged her knees, gaze listing aside as she kept from ducking her head. "Me and Nee-chan know a thing or two – well, Satsuki knows it more than me – about having a 'parent' who doesn't deserve the name."
She paused, looking forward again, and her jaw tensed. "Last I checked, human society didn't generally take to condoning child abuse. Why should an abusive 'creator,' who only wants to exploit us for its own designs, be one bit different? The Life Fibers don't have any more of a 'divine right' to us than humans try to give them. And gods that let shit like this happen…"
A bubbly smile, a soft brown bowlcut head, darted through the back of her mind, and was gone. The face, but not the eyes. Never the eyes. There was no getting herself to try to remember the light in those.
She swallowed down the bile threatening to rise in her throat, getting a hold of herself as she shivered with rage. "There are no gods in a world like this one. If there are, I can't forgive them. Not the Life Fibers, and none of those good gods, either. So, no – we ain't rolling over for them."
He smiled that placid, sad smile again. "But whether we can abide by a god's manner or not, power is power. And the Life Fibers certainly have that much. Even one of the texts that was adapted into our doctrine – that which cautions of our Creator's might, and our own powerlessness before it – was hardly employed to depict the Life Fibers as benevolent or charitable. We taught of dire and severe consequences for resisting the Creator's will. Condemnation, for questioning the teachings… well, that at least is not so unusual…"
The voice that lilted out of him had a shadow of a melody; it was somehow whimsical, as it spouted from this curious creature's smiling lips.
"…How about this?" he was musing, a sudden twinkle in his eyes – or perhaps it was a reflection of the stars. "If the Life Fibers are gods, does that make you and I demigods of a sort – or messiahs, or prophets perhaps?"
Ryuuko couldn't hold back her bark of laughter. "Bakayarou – this is the kind of crap that keeps you up at night? 'Demigod,' huh… That woulda' been a nice rep to have on my side in the gang days…"
"You joke, but I think I'd be terrified, you know? If being a demigod came with some sort of responsibility…"
"Only if you actually buy into that divinity stuff, I'd say. Anyways, I've always just gone my own way. I don't feel any more particularly responsible, so there can't be anything too special about me, yeah?"
"That's… one way of looking at things, I guess. You know – you're quite refreshing to be around, Matoi-san."
"…Why do I get the feeling that you say that while looking at me like I'm some kind of simpleton?"
"H-huh? N-not at all–!"
"One too many stutters there, bastard!" she snapped, springing up on the wall again as he backed up and waved his hands sheepishly, never losing his disarming smile.
Ryuuko lowered her fist, laughing. Laughter… it felt strange just now, but then again, this whole discussion had been strange. "Forget it. I can't stay mad at you, lucky punk."
"Phew! That's good to know, Matoi-san."
"But drop the 'Matoi-san,' would you?"
"I could… try?"
"You're irritatingly well-mannered for being at the end of the world, you know that?"
She eyed him despite her teasing, watching his closed-eye chuckle.
"Yoshi."
"Hm?" It was a lyrical sound.
"Join us. You may not have been a warrior, but you're infused with Life Fibers now. I bet you can fight."
His eyes were open now; she held them with a serious look, and stretched out her hand.
"Let's stand together, as humans, and fight them!"
He smirked, but shook his head. "'Though Hand join in Hand, and vast Multitudes of God's Enemies combine and associate themselves, they are easily broken in Pieces: They are as great Heaps of light Chaff before the Whirlwind, or large quantities of dry Stubble before devouring Flames.'"
"…So, I'm getting the distinct impression you ain't taking my hand."
He rubbed his neck, looking appreciatively up at the deflated Ryuuko. "It's a chilling thing. I can't quite say I believe the Life Fibers are to be trifled with. I saw the drained corpses of everyone I can say I ever really cared about–,"
"Stop smiling," Ryuuko breathed. "You don't have to keep smiling – not while you're saying that. If you're sad–,"
"We can't beat that. I can't beat that," he went on, beaming, though his eyes were shut. "But I refuse to worship and love them; as you said, to do so would be to indulge in twisted love for an abusive parent. So all I can do is be resigned to go, when I do, cursing their existence, and hope they comprehend the hatred and resentment burning in every fiber of my being."
He had opened watery eyes above his smile. He gave a broken laugh, climbing up on the wall and turning to glare into the expansive night sky. "You hear me? I hope my soiled life force is the most disgusting, rancid meal you ever take!"
Ryuuko watched in the silence following the proclamation. His fists shook; he panted as liquid fell, sparkling, from his sharp chin. "You're a coward," she said.
"I never claimed to be more–,"
"But you're also not a coward."
"H-huh?"
The kid had hope in those watery, trembling dark eyes that had seen too much. Hope – something Ryuuko and Satsuki rarely dwelled on any longer.
"You don't believe, like your folks did," Ryuuko observed, "but you still have hope. Your own hope. Why do you…?"
The waifish youth glowed, with something certain. He slipped down from the wall, and his shivering abated with his grin. "I hope, if just to spite it. I'll smile and laugh and hope in this world for the rest of my days, to show how human – how real – I am. I'm not going to merely survive, like an animal. Even simple philosophizing can only take me so far… It's hope that truly makes me something more, but… it's also hate, I guess."
He looked up at her, nodding to himself. "If I alone decide it's my purpose to curse the Life Fibers with ten thousand times more resentment than the devoutest believer had love… that's something, isn't it? It has to be… That's what I believe."
Ryuuko leapt down from the wall, and hugged him.
世界の果てに
-Faith-
End
A/N: Alternate titles considered: Believers -教徒- At the end of Days; Evolution -進化- At the End of Days.
Fire-and-brimstone quotes from Jonathan Edwards' sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
A bit of a different chapter, huh? But I promise we're going somewhere! Also note that there's a bit of a hidden meaning to the new guy's full name. I'll say that it's a bit of a roundabout/hard to trace connection, so if anyone figures it out, hats off to you. If not, I'll reveal it in a later A/N, probably XD
-Kurouga