Takada strode up the walkway to his house, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his keys. As he reached down to unlock the front door he paused, suddenly aware of someone speaking inside. He leaned in, listening, before realizing that it was coming from the television and made a move to unlock the door again before realizing that he had turned it off before he left. A quick check of the doorknob revealed that it was unlocked, and he cautiously pushed it open to find Satsuki seated on the floor in front of the television staring back at him.
He blinked. "When did you get back?"
"Last night," she replied. "I snuck in because I didn't want to wake you."
"You were here the entire time?"
Satsuki looked up at him guiltily. "Sorry."
"You were gone for two days! I was worried about you!"
"Sorry."
Takada sighed wearily, closing the door behind him. "You're okay, though, right? What happened?"
"It's..." She paused, searching for the right words. "...complicated."
He set his schoolbag down on the table and pulled out a chair before taking a seat. "Did it have anything to do with the building that collapsed the day you disappeared?"
"A little," she said hesitantly. "I think I killed the man that was with the vampire."
"Did he give you any clues? Where she was, what she looked like, anything?"
Satsuki shook her head. A few seconds later she asked, "Katsuya and Nanashi weren't at school today, were they?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
She drew her legs in, resting her elbows on her knees. "I think that they're gonna be gone for a while."
"Why? Did something happen to them?"
"Kind of, yeah," Satsuki said, before hurriedly adding, "they're not hurt or anything, it's just..."
"Complicated?"
"Yeah."
Silence lingered for a few moments. Takada stood up and headed into the kitchen, picking up a pen and a piece of paper off the counter before going through the cabinets, making a list as he did so.
"Hey, Takada?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think there's anything weird about my parents?"
He looked over his shoulder at her questioningly. "Weird how?"
She shrugged. "I don't know, just in general."
"Not really. They seem normal to me."
"Oh."
Opening the refrigerator, he pulled out a nearly-empty container of milk. Frowning, he glanced at Satsuki's back before replacing it and making another note. "Why? You don't think that they're normal?"
"I know that they're not normal."
"Why do you say that?"
"Just... things I've heard." She picked up the remote and turned off the television. "I didn't really think about it before, but there's a lot of stuff that I've just taken for granted."
"That's normal for a lot of people, isn't it? I know I was like that when mom left."
"Maybe, but..." She slowly shook her head. "I'm sorry, I don't know how to put it. I shouldn't have brought this up, anyway."
Takada gave her worried look before looking down at the list in his hand. "Are you going to be alright by yourself for a bit?"
"Where are you going?" she asked, looking over her shoulder.
He held up the list. "There's a few things I need to pick up from the store."
"Oh, I can get those for you."
"Are you sure?"
She pushed herself up to a standing position. "Yeah, it's fine," she replied, stretching. "I was thinking of going out and checking on my house to see if it's still okay, anyway."
"Do you need money?" Takada asked, passing the list to Satsuki.
"Yeah, I-" She paused before reaching into her pocket and feeling what was left of the bills Nanashi gave her. "Actually, I probably have enough. I'll be back before sundown."
Satsuki's house was exactly as it was when she left it, save for the small pile of mail outside and the spoiled food inside her refrigerator, the latter coming to mind a half-second before she opened the door to check. As she began to search the rooms to ensure that nothing had been broken or stolen in her absence, she couldn't help but feel vulnerable, knowing that the vampire had entered her home and could do so again at a moment's notice.
On her way past the phone in the kitchen she noticed the message light flashing on the answering machine and pressed "play," leaving it to run in the background as she continued her sweep. Most of them were from her father's co-workers, curt requests for him to call them back, with a few hang-ups, solicitors and pre-recorded messages about investment deals between them. It was background noise more than anything else for Satsuki, until it gave way to a more cheerful and familiar voice. "Hey Shiki, hey Satsuki."
She perked up, scrambling back into the kitchen.
"You're probably wondering where I disappeared to for so long," Arcueid said. "Weeeeeell... I got dragged off on business with an old friend. Don't worry, we're fine. I'm on my way back now; I'll tell you all the details when I get home, okay? Love ya! Bye!"
Satsuki let out a relieved laugh. At least mom's okay, she thought. Although she would be okay, wouldn't she? After all, she was... well, Satsuki didn't know what she was, short of being close enough to human to pass for one. She wasn't sure how to bring up that she found out, though; she should probably just come out and tell her.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a fierce, demanding pull in her mind. She winced as a sudden tightness spread through her skull, and she rubbed her eye in an attempt to relieve the pressure.
"-Beppu Hospital," a female voice said, "calling for Arcueid Arima to inform you that your husband, Shiki, is conscious and-"
The force of the pull intensified, and Satsuki leaned on the counter to support herself as the pain in her head rose to crushing levels. She staggered out of the kitchen, clutching her head in one hand as she tried to figure out where the pull was trying to lead her.
Stepping outside she winced as the light hit her eyes, making her sudden migraine even worse. She slowly turned to and fro, trying to get her bearings on which way to go before a knot of pain welled up in the side of her head, smothering her thoughts as it angrily demanded her attention. She pulled the door shut behind her and headed down to the street, being lead along by the insistent tugging in her head, not sure of where she was going and too in pain to care.
Satsuki groaned as she came to, face down in the grass. She slowly pushed herself up onto one knee, trying to remember what happened after she left her house and failing miserably. Wherever she was, she arrived under her own power; that much she knew, or at least she thought she did.
Rising to her feet she took a quick look around, finding herself on a low, broad hill overlooking the old train platform where she found the first cadaver. Judging from the setting sun, it had to have been at least two or three hours since she left home. The force that led her here had disappeared, along with her crushing headache, and with nothing else in sight she found herself at a loss over what to do next.
With little else to go on, she turned her attention to the platform and descended the hill to investigate. Even at a distance she could tell that the cadaver was gone, and as she drew closer she scanned the ground near where it fell for any traces of it or its passing, in vain. A similar search of the platform itself turned up little but rust-colored stains in the few areas still protected from the elements.
Dismayed, she returned to the crest of the hill for a second look around. Cadavers weren't that agile, she reasoned, so it probably didn't climb the fence and head towards the town. It may have wandered into the field behind her, but if that were the case, why did she end up here instead of closer to it? She could walk across the field and look for it, but considering how directionless and possibly futile the search would be she thought it a last resort.
Or it was dead - dead dead - and someone else found it. The platform didn't look like the police had been there, though, and she didn't see any news reports about bodies anywhere... and she was lead here recently, wasn't she? So what was she supposed to do?
"Hopeless. Completely hopeless."
Satsuki turned, twisting her body to the side at the last moment to evade the thrust aimed at her heart. She leaned to avoid the second swing as it whipped past her eyes, and jumped back to avoid the third. As a second thrust came towards her she pushed her assailant's arm to the side, catching a knee to the gut for her efforts. Stumbling, she reached into her pocket and drew her knife, snapping it open and parrying her foe's weapon away in one motion. She tore off her eyepatch, stepping back to get some distance between her and her foe.
It - she - was girl her height, her entire body obscured by nothing; not matte black but utterly devoid of color or cracks, with a thin, hazy outline separating her from the rest of the world. In her right hand she held a flat, rusty nail about the length of her forearm with sharpened edges, and would turn it between her fingers every so often as she calmly watched Satsuki with her featureless, empty face. "You thought that something that weak survived what you did to it, and that it was that demanding of your notice? You really are a disgrace."
"Who...?" Her eyes narrowed. "It was you! You killed them!"
Satsuki's blade swept up, glancing off the edge of the girl's own. She pressed the attack with two quick swipes aimed at her throat; the girl wove out of the way of the strikes, hopping out of range of the thrust that followed.
"Yes," the girl said calmly. "Thirteen people." Raising her arm, she blocked a high kick, and her nail raked through the space Satsuki's leg occupied a moment before. "I killed them and drank their blood." She brought her arm back, deflecting another blow before catching the follow-up on the edge of her weapon, sweeping her arm to the side to force Satsuki away. "Then you killed the ones that came back."
"Why did you kill them?"
"To gain the strength I needed to save Satsuki Arima." The girl lunged, lashing out with a wide cut; Satsuki threw herself backwards to avoid it, the nail nicking the front of her jacket. Before she could recover the girl pivoted in a blur of motion and drove her foot into Satsuki's stomach, knocking her to the ground.
She rolled to the side as the girl's weapon sank into the earth beside her, sweeping her knife up towards the girl's face as she returned to her feet. Satsuki felt the tip pull as it grazed her cheek, and the girl flinched ever so slightly as the nothing covering the cut parted to reveal a thin line of skin. She rolled to her feet as the girl backed away, dabbing at her cheek with her index finger.
"Save me?" Satsuki shouted. "You're trying to kill me!"
"I wouldn't let Satsuki Arima die. Not by that man's hands, or by Hideto Toyowara's, and never by my own, if I could help it."
Their blades met again as Satsuki charged her, weapons locking. "Are you even listening to yourself?" There was the sound of metal scraping against metal as her knife was forced away. A quick jab caught her in the jaw, followed by a high kick, and she stumbled back onto one knee. "You're not..." She paused to blink away the cobwebs. "You're not making any sense."
"What are you?" the girl asked, staring down at Satsuki.
"What?"
"What are you?" she repeated, more insistently. "You know you're not completely human, but aside from that you're clueless. You've lived your entire life in willful ignorance of who and what your parents really are, and what you're capable of. Only now do you even have the smallest idea of what you've inherited."
Satsuki sprang forward, thrusting her knife at the girl's stomach. The girl leaned back and she swung it up, the tip passing by her foe's chin. Turning it between her fingers, she brought it around for a underhanded cut across the girl's throat only to have her block it mid-swing with the back of her arm, moving her hand around to tightly grasp Satsuki's wrist. As the girl's nail swung out towards her she twisted to the side, grabbing the girl's wrist in kind. There they struggled, each attempting to overpower or break free of the other.
"Satsuki Arima is the child of Shiki Nanaya and Arcueid Brunestud," the girl said, anger creeping into her voice. "I was there when she was born." Her arm jerked downward an inch as she attempted to drive her nail into Satsuki. "I knew she was capable of greater things, but I watched as you chose to take everything you were given for granted."
With an inarticulate cry of fury Satsuki dug her sneakers into the ground and shoved, attempting to force the girl back. She gave only slightly, but it was enough for her to hop into the air, plant her foot on the girl's chest and shove off, freeing her from her grip and sending them both flying to the ground, Satsuki's landing being slightly more graceful than the girl's. She pushed herself up as the girl returned to her feet with a kippup, prepared to continue the attack when she noticed the smudged, oval-shaped hole in the nothing on her chest where her foot had made contact, black cloth and thin cracks barely visible through the haze.
Before she could capitalize on this the girl was upon her again, putting her on the defensive as she avoided what she could and blocked the all-too-numerous attacks that she couldn't, the girl shouting at her all the while. "Tell me: What have you done to earn your name?" She spun, the heel of her foot sweeping past Satsuki's field of vision. "Can you list even one thing? Were you even planning on making something of yourself once you became an adult?" The girl brought her fist forward as Satsuki swayed out of the way out of one of her attacks, catching her square in the face and sending her reeling again. "Have you even bothered thinking that far ahead, or were you intentionally doing it just to spite your mother and father?"
Satsuki wiped at the blood trickling from her nose with the back of her hand. "What makes you think that you can talk about my father like that after what you did to him?"
"He would have killed me before I could save her, but I would never murder him."
She swung her arm down, red droplets falling onto the grass. "You liar! You attacked him! I saw it!"
"...and you saw me try to kill you in the hotel, didn't you?"
"How-"
"You confused dreams for reality," pointing her nail at her, "and when you ran off to save him you put me in a position to make them reality. Even that man's appearance was an opportunity I couldn't pass up on."
Enraged, Satsuki charged and dropped to the ground, attempting to sweep the girl's legs out from underneath her. The girl evaded it with a quick hop and swung her nail down as Satsuki rose up again, catching it on the edge of her own weapon as she stood up. Forcing it away, she stepped towards the girl and drove her elbow into her face. As the girl flinched, Satsuki thrust her knife towards the girl's chest, feeling it slide into her. She looked down only to see that the girl caught the blade in her own arm, the tip still clean as it poked out the other side.
Satsuki pulled back, withdrawing her knife before she felt something cold and jagged tear into her flesh. Letting out a cry of pain she stumbled away, the girl seemingly content with watching her. She looked down as she touched her side with her free hand, coming up with a smear of blood from a wide, shallow cut in her left side.
"Who is Satsuki Arima?" the girl asked.
"Shut up!"
"Is it a name? A body? Memories? How they act?" She slowly turned the nail between her fingers. "If I had all of them, would I be Satsuki Arima? Could I save her from the fate she brought on herself, and her own apathy and ignorance?"
"So you want to kill me and take my place, is that it? You think people won't find out?"
The shade paused, relaxing her stance as she straightened up, and two hazy points of light appeared where her eyes would have been: The right a bright red, the left a deep blue. "Will they?"
Satsuki froze.
"What will they see? A brave child of hunters, finding and killing a rogue vampire, or a girl who lost her mind and went on a rampage?" The points of light seemed to narrow. "What did you see? A stranger who nearly killed you, or a scapegoat for your wounds?"
the flesh of her arm parted as the edge of the knife slid through it, the knife raised and moved up her arm, sinking into it again, parting her flesh yet another time, the tip raising and hovering over her eye, piercing the lens, sinking in, vision going black
The scars across Satsuki's body ached as the memory of that night returned to her. "You attacked my father!" she shouted. "Even if you kill me he's going to know it was you!"
"Is he?" She slowly and deliberately tapped her right temple near her eye. "Are you so sure that he didn't see some no-name vampire with something to prove? Father taught me how to fight, but you never realized how much you could learn from mother, did you? I'll be able to do something more permanent now that he's awake. He should not have to live with knowledge of what had to be done to save her daughter."
The girl's attack came without warning; unprepared, Satsuki raised her knife to block a split-second too late and was thrown off-balance from the force of the blow. She stumbled before a side kick connected with her fresh wound, sending a lance of pain shooting through her. "I kept hoping," the girl said, "that you would prove me wrong and you would show some promise, but no." She parried another of Satsuki's swings, her arm twisting to leave another cut on Satsuki's right shoulder. "Our family hunted demons and the undead and you couldn't even find them on your own without me telling you."
Satsuki lashed out with a wild overhead stab, but the girl caught the blade with her hand, staring at her with familiar mismatched eyes. "Why are you fighting now, of all times? Don't you know that there's no point in winning?" She shoved her away. "Do you want to go back to a life full of murders where all the evidence points directly to you?"
She lunged again with a stab aimed at the girl's chest. The girl deflected it away, and Satsuki ducked as the girl turned, her leg whipping overhead. The back-and-forth struggle continued with the girl bobbing and weaving past Satsuki's attacks, her own strikes coming closer to hitting home again.
"How could you prove your innocence?" As if to punctuate her question, the girl's nail raked across Satsuki's chest just above her heart. "You don't know, do you?" Two more swings followed as Satsuki backstepped out of their way, weaving to the side of another lunge, the girl seemingly overextending herself. As Satsuki turned to face her again, however, the girl crooked her arm, smashing her in the face with her elbow and sending her toppling to the ground. Turning the nail around in her fingers, the girl pounced, missing Satsuki by a hair's breadth as she rolled out of the way. "You should have given in when you had the chance. Satsuki Arima will live on, even if you don't."
"As what?" she demanded, unsteadily rising to her feet. "A murderer and a liar?"
"Killing to live is the nature of all life. How many lives do you think your father has taken? Or your mother, for that matter?" Their weapons met again and locked, the girl looming over Satsuki as she slowly forced her down. "...and what about Katsuya? If his sister had been elsewhere, how many of his servants would you have killed to ensure your safety?" Satsuki buckled, falling to one knee as her legs trembled beneath her. "Even your very body is a tool of destruction. This is what Satsuki Arima is, and you are too weak to accept it."
With one final shove the girl forced Satsuki onto her back, pinning her to the ground with her free hand as the nail shot towards her. Satsuki reached out to try and stop the girl as the nail came down, impaling her hand; she wrenched her arm to the side, pushing the nail away from her chest and letting out a strangled cry as it sank into her right shoulder, pinning her hand to her own body. Fighting through the throbbing pain, Satsuki raised her knife one last time, screaming in agony as she felt the flesh around the nail twist and rip, aiming for the girl's chest. Before she could react the knife hit home, and the girl shrieked as the blade pierced one of the cracks.
"If she can't be anything more than a murderer-" Satsuki dragged the knife along the cracks, blood oozing out of the cut and down her arm. "If that's all she is, then maybe she deserves to die!"
The girl shuddered, slumping forward as the colorless haze began to fade. She went to reach for the nail in Satsuki's shoulder to pull it free, only for her fingers to cleanly fall away. Straightening up and pulling free of Satsuki's knife, she stared emptily at the stump of her hand until her arm slid off with a wet, raw dripping sound. The last of the haze around her head parted, and Satsuki found herself staring at back at her. "They'll kill you..." the girl mumbled, as a thin seam of blood appeared diagonally across her face. "They'll ki..." Her expression froze and she pitched forward onto Satsuki, falling apart into a heap of flesh, organs and blood-soaked cloth.
Satsuki spasmed as she was hit with a wave of pure agony, flesh twisting beneath her skin and brain burning. She writhed on the ground, soaked in gore, too in pain to even scream until finally, mercifully, she passed into unconsciousness.
Her eyes fluttered open, and the first thing she saw was the starless night sky. The pain was gone; in its place was a dampness across her body where her scars were. As she slowly brought her hand up to her face she felt her sleeve peel away from her arm, leaving behind a thick, discolored line.
Her hand was unharmed; no wound, no scar. She let it fall back by her side, staring emptily into the darkness. It was over, and yet...
"I..."