Chapter 7: Ten times zero is still zero.
A hushed atmosphere fell over Littner Village, quelling its typical hustle and bustle as night fell. Its typically sterile, sometimes even apprehensive silence was now infected with chatter, gossip that was barely restrained in its effervescence. Whispers made their presence known in every corner that would contain them, all echoing the same words that were on the tip of every living soul's tongue.
Kamina. Simon. Lagann Gurren. More than just idle chatter, the people had been infected with something far more contagious: hope.
Not that Viral could tell that anything was out of the ordinary.
"Don't these grubby mongrels ever cease their blathering?" He absentmindedly tested the limits of his bonds and the bedrock to which he was tethered, not even bothering to strain his muscles at this point. The blinding rage of Viral's initial imprisonment had subsided, at least for the moment. The emotion simmering within him now more resembled a controlled fire, not the raging inferno of his capture. It was an uneasy détente; despite Viral's calming he felt as if the slightest nudge - almost anything at all - could serve as a sufficient spark to reignite that fury. For the moment, such outbursts would not suit him. Slowly Viral took another breath, taking pains to block out all the external stimuli he could.
"He... hello."
Viral's eyes flew wide open as his brain numbly processed a sound he found himself unable to ignore. Not just a sound, but a voice. Not only a voice, but a voice addressing him. Viral's vision blurred for a few moments as his mind tried to bring the stimuli into focus.
"Viral, right...?"
A short and blue-haired adolescent human was standing in front of Viral. Standing far too close to him. His attire was notably uncommon, draped in an oversized cerulean jacket wearing a set of protective goggles, and not much else. The boy fidgeted nervously - as if he, too, was aware of how terribly, terrifyingly bad of an idea it was of him to disturb this particular prisoner.
A shower of sparks had come to rain down on the tinderbox that was Viral's temper.
"You've really got Leeron wound up, Kamina," Yoko said as she took a seat next to Kamina atop the rocky bluff overlooking Littner Village.
"I know, right?" Kamina answered. He didn't spare a moment to glance in Yoko's direction, fixating instead on the starry night sky with his full attention. "You'd think anybody would be stoked to work on Lagann Gurren. The flagship mecha of the greatest heroes to ever grace the surface!"
"Modest as always, aren't you?"
The young man couldn't help but crack a grin and divert his attention to the girl beside him at that. "A legend being modest is being dishonest, the way I see it. A man sticks to the truth even if he's drowning in a sea of lies, even at the cost of his very life."
"I see," Yoko said, her voice quieting down as she pondered Kamina's words for a bit. "So then...
"Does that mean you're ready to tell the truth about who you really are, Kamina?"
"Give it a rest," Kamina snapped as his smile quickly vanished, replaced with a familiar scowl of irritation.
"I think you're-"
"You don't think anything," Kamina interrupted harshly. "All you've got is a bunch of theories and no evidence. You've got even less than what you're wearing right now - what is that all about, anyway? Body insecurity as well as brain insecurity?"
"Don't change the subject," Yoko said with an air of defiance, but Kamina noticed she was visibly twitching.
"That unrelenting paranoia? Those pestering questions? They're not any more attractive than that big, oversized butt of yours."
Yoko opened her mouth to speak, but made no sound in the wake of Kamina's denigration. It was almost just as well; she no longer had anything left to say. Yoko couldn't remember a time when she had felt more humiliated than this moment. Not only had Kamina callously insulted her intelligence and degraded her as fat and unattractive, he had compounded the sniper girl's shame. For now, Yoko was certain that her shame was obvious and glaring on her face.
Something in the teenage girl told her to brush it off, like she had to so many other insults lobbed her way in the past. Something pleaded for her to show the same defiance she had grown accustomed to wearing on a daily basis, like a second skin. The thick skin that shielded her from the disparaging slights and snide comments. The thick skin that had become an inescapability of her life since her body had started developing. She heard, and knew she should don that thick skin once again.
But unlike so many times before, this time she would not - or could not - listen.
"Isn't it past your bedtime, child?" Viral asked Simon. His mere voicing of the question sent a shudder through the little digger, and it was all Viral could do to refrain from punctuating his terror with a mocking cackle.
"No! I mean, I don't have a bedtime anymore, ever since we left the village..." Simon trailed off with an unsure voice.
"The village?"
"Y, yeah. Bro and I aren't from Littner originally, we're from Giha Village."
The captive Beastman raised his flaxen eyebrow curiously. "By Bro, do you mean...?"
"Oh, s, sorry," Simon apologized, feeling weirdly chastened despite the knowledge that he was speaking to a creature dedicated to exterminating his very race. "Kamina. He's not my brother, um, biologically. Bro's my blood brother."
"And both of you are from 'Giha'?" Heh. This may yield something of value yet.
The initial shame and humiliation of captivity had blinded Viral to any conceivable upside in his current situation. But now, talking with this boy, he was beginning to see the opportunity presented. To not only defeat, but to capture a Commander of the Human Eradication Forces meant that these humans - specifically, their leader - were truly exceptional. Gathering enough pieces of information on what made them so different could very well spell their downfall.
"Yeah, it's another pit, just..." The young boy swallowed as he seemed to hit upon the same realization as Viral. "I... I don't know if I should be talking about this with you."
Damn, Viral thought, masking his disappointment behind a calm predatory stare. Well, I've got time to get him more talkative again.
"So, then. What did you come here to talk about, little human?"
Crap, this is bad. Crap, crap, crap.
Kamina's facade of unimpeachable confidence and bravado was swiftly shattered as he realized he was grappling with the most dangerous foe he had ever faced in his life.
A crying girl.
"H, hey," Kamina said, trying to reassure the teary-eyed Yoko with a painfully obvious fake laugh. "This is just a joke, right? I mean, yeah, it'd have to be. There's no way someone like you would be so weak as to-"
The brash leader of Team Gurren never had the opportunity to finish his sentence. rock-hard clenched fist plowed into his face. Kamina's head ballooned and swelled cartoonishly as a rock-hard punch plowed into his face. His face crumpled under the force of the clenched fist, knocking him off his feet, and sending him skidding away from his still bawling attacker.
"SHUT UP!" Yoko shouted in between choked sobs. With a furious start she ran at the prone Kamina and connected again, this time savagely kicking into his ribs with the points of her high heeled boots.
"YEOOOOOOOOOOOOW!" The sharp kick struck Kamina with such force as to leave him winded in an instant. The young man was barely able to scramble to his feet in time avoid the next rain of blows, and a keen awareness was dawning on him as the next assault closed in: he was in for the fight of his life. A fight on a precipice where the slightest misstep could mean falling to his death.
I'm in serious trouble here, Kamina thought.
I'm in serious trouble here, Simon thought.
Why did he even come to talk with the Beastman, he wondered now? Let alone put himself in such a compromising position? Simon bitterly suspected that even if he were to attempt to leave at this point, his captive would be more than capable of killing him at this range despite his impressive array of restraints.
"I... I just wanna know."
"Know what?" Viral shot back without hesitation, keeping his interrogator on the defensive.
Paralyzed by fear, the only recourse Simon could think up was to simply answer truthfully. "I wanna know why you... why you want us all dead...!"
There was a pregnant pause in the aftermath of Simon's question... but it was soon replaced by bemused cackling.
"Want you all dead? Don't overestimate your importance to us Beastmen, human," Viral said with a menacing grin of shark teeth. "You're little more than vermin, fit only to be exterminated. But were it not for the wishes of the Spiral King? I doubt we would so much as notice you unless you got in the way."
"Spiral King...?"
"You humans really don't know anything, do you?" Viral remarked with disdain, but offered up no further explanation.
"I know enough," Simon said with a look of determination. "So... someone else, your king, wants us dead. So you don't care, then? Beastmen don't think for themselves?"
Viral lunged forward with inhuman ferocity as Simon finished his sentence.
Yoko lunged forward with inhuman ferocity as Kamina regained his balance, barely missing as the older teen ducked her attack and sidestepped to her rear.
"Hey, look, from this angle your ass doesn't really look that fat-"
"You... insulting... pig...!"
His chin took the punishment for his hubris as Yoko's leg snapped behind her, smashing into the loudmouth's jaw and causing him to squeal in a fit of pain as he staggered perilously close to the edge of the bluff.
"Aaaaaagh! That... really... hurts, Thunder Thighs...!"
"You two-faced, lying fraud..." The girl continued to seethe, most of her tears already shed. Kamina suppressed a shudder as Yoko turned around, fixating her bleary amber eyes on his defiant crimson ones with an unstoppable burning rage.
"Now, now," Kamina said with a patronizing wag of his finger. "Sticks and stones may break my bones..."
"YOU'RE NOT EVEN A REAL MAN!"
"..."
A silence like death swept over the landscape as Yoko's scream echoed through the desolate canyons.
A silence like death swept over the center of the village as Viral ended his lunge scant millimeters from Simon's face.
"Do not dare to insult the Beastmen - your superiors," he hissed, each exhale of breath palpable on Simon's face. It was enough for Boota to poke his head out of Simon's jacket and audibly gag from the stench.
Far from being paralyzed by fear, however, if anything the Beastman was prodding Simon to snap out of his inaction.
"Superiors, huh," the digger said, raising his eyes up to lock with Viral's for the first time. "I wonder, then... how you'd explain me and Bro so easily defeating you and your Gunmen?"
Viral tossed back his sweat-matted hair and made a pronounced feline growl. "Watch your tongue, human..."
"I mean, aren't you supposed to be a Commander? Yeesh, if you were this easy, a few humans Gunmen shouldn't have any trouble taking on the Spiral King. I bet we'll could end his reign by winter."
"You shut your filthy mouth!" Viral howled, his mouth wildly erupting spittle in Simon and Boota's faces. "Such blasphemy will not be tolerated - and besides. None but a Beastman Commander may pilot a noble form of Gunmen such as Enki. Remember that, you worthless maggot of a naked ape. Don't even think about it...!"
"Oh, don't worry about that," Simon said with suddenly much less contentiousness. "Bro's just combining that thing with Lagann Gurren. So, we'll probably just take what we need and scrap the rest of it..."
Viral's mouth hung open dumbly as Simon trailed off. "...what?"
"I mean, um. That is, to say..." The young co-pilot of Lagann Gurren stuttered nervously as it dawned on him exactly what he had just said to his Beastman captive. Yet soon he also realized that the prisoner's hostile presence was diminishing. No, not diminishing; it had dissipated entirely.
"Enki..." Viral whispered sadly, fighting back tears.
With a blank, defeated expression on his face, Viral fell down to the ground with a quaking thud.
With a blank, defeated expression on his face, Kamina fell down to the ground with a quaking thud.
The impact was so devastating, and his resistance so nonexistent, that the perpetrator of the assault stopped in her tracks at the sound of it. "What's... the big... idea...?" Yoko huffed, trying to stand upright despite her aching muscles and heaving breasts.
"Not even a real man," Kamina repeated monotonously. The dull pain assailing his body for the moment was all but forgotten, drowned in the shadow of the aching emptiness he was feeling at her words.
Was this the hallmark of a man? To be guided by inexplicable knowledge, to fight with skill unearned and strength not his own? Was it hiding every premonition out of fear or stubbornness, even from those who might be saved by it? Or was it keeping dark secrets? Was it never so much as mentioning the remains of his father, his inspiration that he sought to transfer to others?
Was making girls cry - was that being a man?
"What are you doing?" Yoko demanded to the shell-shocked young man. She stood tall above him with her panting figure, stark rivulets of blood running between all the knuckles of her hands as she barked once more. "Get up!"
With a serene look in his eyes, Kamina laid still in a pose that resembled that of death itself. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, Kamina pressed his hands to the ground as if to stand - and then kicked Yoko's legs out from under her.
"Whaaaaaaa...!"
Her fall was quickly intercepted by the brash man's own strong and secure catch. Firm hands steadied Yoko as she felt herself positioned beneath Kamina, lowering them both to the rocky surface. In the bright moonlight Yoko could see well now the bruises she had inflicted on Kamina's body. The injuries were dark and dull, colors matching that of the tattoos criss-crossing his arms and shoulders.
"You're right." Kamina's voice was as authoritative and powerful as his grip was safe and gentle.
"I'm... huh?" Yoko idly wondered if this was some kind of trick. Against her will, her notice was drawn to her heart audibly thumping a mile a minute in Kamina's arms.
"You're right," Kamina repeated. "I'm sorry.
"For everything."
"I..." The nubile young girl's strength seemed to betray and abandon her as she tried to move in vain. Bereft of strength, she could only hold on weakly as the man grasping her was growing closer and closer with each interminable second.
"I said I'd pay you back ten times over. But..."
Yoko felt her heart catch in her throat as her face was drawn intensely close to Kamina's. A closeness that existed for only one unmistakable reason.
"Ten times zero is still zero. A man who isn't even a man can't hope to pay his debts with nothing."
"Kamina..."
A spark of cathartic ecstasy was shared between the two as firm, ruddy lips met a contrast of unparalleled softness. The tears streamed freely from Yoko again as her eyes squeezed shut, her tongue snaked out hungrily to meet every crevice of Kamina's, and her firm breasts pressed against the sinewy muscles of his torso.
The crimson vixen's taste as she invaded his mouth was pure honey to Kamina, and he felt as if he could almost drown in her sweetness. He craned her neck ever so slightly and pressed his thumb lasciviously at the nape of her neck. His nerves eagerly drank in her pulse, feeling its every throb in time with the rhythm of her kiss. Even her butt - that wonderful, curvaceous, beautiful butt - was fondled and caressed, clenched and squeezed, all with an undeniable appreciation that no amount of Kamina's teasing could possibly belie.
Yoko gasped and mewled slightly as Kamina broke off the kiss, all anger forgotten as she lost herself in the inimitable depths of those crimson eyes.
As for Kamina himself, he refused to have any regret as he savored the moment... even if it had stoked his most ominous premonitions yet.
Damn. The more things change, the more they stay the same...
