Finally an update! I had been playing around with the edit on this and future chapters before Irma steamed her way through and disrupted everything from my work to my domestic responsibilities. :| But now that she's gone and cleanup has been done, I've finally found time to sit down and continue working on this bad boy! Hooray! Again I have attached a copy of a glossary but unfortunately the only way you can see the image Aomine views as well as the Apparition World map is through my AO3 page (my username is the same, kotaou) because links are dead on this site (seriously it's grinding my last nerve...) My sincerest apologies for the inconvenience...
As always I will be happy to answer any questions you may have if there is any confusion.
::XXXVI::
NEUTRAL CAMP
Aomine retraced the passages he'd read—one week ago—in Goryokaku's repository. He and Kagami sat on a felled tree trunk in the swooping bend of the camp's picnic area. More logs, organized in two columns, provided more seating with an aisle cleaving a path to the service tables. A bowl of stewed beans, sausage, and what he assumed were mountain vegetables of some kind sat beside him, half-eaten along with a wedge of untouched bread. His last meal had been yesterday morning, after the emotional exchange with Satsuki about his burn, and had not since returned. From stress, he knew, when food was the last thing on his mind.
Kagami held onto his empty dishware, why Aomine wasn't sure, and passively observed the crowd of diners, loiterers, and workers. While helpings of steaming food, a variety of nuts, fruits, and berries, and bread had passed hands, they had hung back with their tiny minders and surveyed the community Kise had amassed. By Aomine's estimation, around fifty members, including Kise, comprised the caravan. Individuals ranged from infant to middle-aged. No elderly he'd noticed, which was not hard to figure out. Mortality of Neutrals far exceeded the normal average with more than 65 percent unable to reach sexual maturity and adulthood.
Another thing he had noticed was the presence of Apparition breeds apart from their host's stock. Four by his count. Two Earth, one Fire, the last Shadow. He'd spotted them filtering through the picnic area accompanied by various familiars, busying themselves with chores. If Kagami had seen them, he'd so far kept it to himself.
He appreciated that Kagami had left him to his thoughts. He still couldn't wrap his head around all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. For one-third of his life he was a proclaimed defective Ice Apparition, supported by few and denounced by most to be a fraudulent Neutral protected by a pious and compassionate relative. Now, as simple as an epiphany, he was a realized Lightning Apparition. Heir to the Lightning's empirical seat and a tool which his uncle had labored and conspired to capitalize as a bargaining chip against political adversaries. After murdering his parents and staging the assassination of the Kaizer to refocus him as the perpetrator.
All that complication just to crush the Lightning monarchy?
How could an infant possibly play into such a convoluted and lengthy scheme?
He knew there had to be a larger picture Imayoshi was envisioning. There always was. He just could not see it.
Familiar words tattooed the page opened in front of him. Ones he had read in another book of the exact same title in the temple, explaining the elusive study of genetic inheritance and a shot in the dark of Neutral creation.
Displayed above is the lineage of a documented family. The grandfather, pictured as yellow, and the grandmother, pictured as red, were pureblood and produced a hybrid son of Fire and Lightning. Reports detailed that despite his half-blood nature, the son's genetic prowess was affiliated with that of the Fire. Genealogists confirmed that the Lightning genetics remained dormant, to be passed on to future offspring. Mating with an Ice woman complicated the genetic process of heredity. As aforementioned, Fire and Lightning are dominant genes, which the son possesses. Ice is recessive in comparison. Genealogists theorize that during fertilization and embryonic growth, dominant genes contend for succession. This, scientists agree, is what is responsible for the creation of Neutrals.
His fingers balked to turn the page and he was thrust back to the library. What if he continued on and there were no answers to satisfy him? If there truly was no basis for Neutral copulation, no evidence to support their vitality, it would only justify the advocacy of violence, injustice, and widespread animosity condoned by the governments of the Apparition world against Neutralkind. Ones he and Kagami, among many others, had partaken in.
He lifted the chunk of bread and chomped down a thick bite as he revealed the next page.
From a cursory sweep he identified text unseen in the temple's doctored edition. Bread still clamped in his teeth, he hunched into the book and read.
It was with remarkable serendipity that I met the Hiwatari-Akari family. Their desire to be properly documented and understood marked the perfect opportunity to thoroughly examine the definitions of Neutrality that fostered their unique family. Four adults—two pairs of bonded individuals—and three children made up the unit. The matriarch, Kaila, was a pureblood of Hi-Sokoku-descending Fire Apparitions while the patriarch, Luka, hailed as an unmixed Pervobytnyy Les-descending Lightning Apparition. Gou, their hybrid offspring, shared their physical traits—from his father: superior height, dense body features, and an angular face; and from his mother: a blunt nose, gentle red eyes, and warm-toned skin, the features a clear suggestion to her Asiatic ancestry—with an inclination to Fire. As I interviewed the son's spouse, an Ice woman by the name of Kota, she confessed that her mother had actually been a Neutral woman. Which I confirmed when, during a survey of her lineage beforehand—she mentioned her mother's "pearly black eyes," a trait exclusive to Neutrals.
Gou's spouse was a descendant of the Shi Tudi, decidedly the ancestral line of Ice Apparitions, and a child of a Neutral woman, yet she possessed peculiar heterochromia that yielded one eye blue, the other green. She further divulged to me that her maternal grandfather was the carrier of the green eyes she later inherited through a genetic mutation coupled with the common blue archetype of ocular pigmentation among Ice Apparitions. By and far, I had surmised my theory was on the right path. But I required further analysis as I was unable to interview the deceased. With gentle persuasion the family allowed me access to examine and question Gou and Kota's three children. All of whom, the dear lady reported to me, were actually triplets.
Alone, the turnout of triplets is not so farfetched among hybrids, with statistics of multiple births occurring in moderate numbers. Again the good lady Kota astounded me as she expounded the trials of her labor. All three children had been born sequentially. My doubts quickly dissipated as I observed the children. Two boys, who looked like mirror images of each other, and one girl, who sat apart with gripping black eyes. How, I wondered, could these children be considered triplets if not only their biological sex was not proportionate but the mother's heterochromia only reached the boys?
Luka, the patriarch, informed me of yet another surprising fact. One boy possessed an affinity of Fire while the other wielded Ice. But the girl. She was a Neutral.
As I looked amongst the members of the Hiwatari-Akari clan, I wondered how only Fire and Ice presented when Gou expressed two dominant traits—fire and lightning. After speaking with the children for hours, conducting a brief physical, and manifestation experiments and demonstrations, I took several weeks to condense my findings and have thus considered the following scenario to have occurred in-utero:
Aomine squinted at the hand-penned chart below, finally savoring the bite of bread that had turned spongy between his teeth.
He absorbed the image, ignoring the foreign script, and thought back to the previous pages explaining the separation of dominant and submissive natures. Even if a pureblood inferior Apparition mated with a hybrid, so long as they boasted dominant traits, weaker genes could always be overwritten or shelved for future generations. Yet this account threw a wrench into the cogs of conventional Apparition eugenics. Like two superpowers warring for supremacy, Fire and Lightning clashed, and only one could be victorious. The loser was benched.
The battle laid out in his lap seemed to play out a little differently. Rather than being filtered out and allowing dominant and recessive genes to transfer normally, the secondary dominant nature persisted in the creation of three gametes. One to inherit the superior nature, another to accept the inferior nature, and a blank slate who was denied the leftover secondary dominant nature. On paper it sounded like a curse. A realization hit him as his eyes trailed the lines.
Neutrals were created and devalued by the very Apparitions who most rallied for their destruction. How ironic.
Words from an earlier passage rang out. A paradox of discrepancies for centuries.
He couldn't agree more.
Aomine tore another bite and continued reading.
It seems clear to me that Neutrals are a vital keystone in the reproductive success of Apparitions across the species. The circumstances of their inheritances are far from pitiable.
No.
They're fortuitous. Like stem cells, they are able to resurrect that which is decaying: the convolution of incompatible genes.
Neutrals are a precious reservoir of hereditary potential. A blank slate to strengthen future generations so that we may all continue to cohabitate, intermingle, and expand our borders.
The limit of their potential is, in fact, limitless.
Those final words echoed in his mind. He recalled similar platitudes from Imayoshi growing up. At the time they meant everything to him. Now they served as a reminder of just how far his uncle's deceit reached.
He studied the illustration of the Hiwatari-Akari family pedigree and he considered what the revelation meant for his own children. How his and Satsuki's genes would have shaped their existences. Before, when he'd foolishly believed that Neutrals only beget more Neutrals, he'd lamented the torment his children would endure in a world where their kind—his kind—would be ruthlessly persecuted. Imayoshi's brazen admission to erasing all specks of evidence correlating to his crimes had served to confirm something for him. His three departed children were not Neutrals at all. If they had been, snuffing out their lives prematurely would have achieved nothing. Three perfectly healthy newborns don't suffer a sudden, rapid decline of health out of the blue. The math wasn't impossible to figure out. As he'd learned in the Water Room. The combination of his hybridism and Satsuki's affinity meant that regardless of whether the child represented as Lightning- or Ice-inclined, they would represent.
Which would untangle Imayoshi's conspiracy down to its roots. Exactly why his uncle abducted him was still unclear. But the fact remained that once he fell into the Dan's custody, all traces of his inherent abilities absolutely could not be exposed.
To achieve that end, three innocent tiny lives were sacrificed. Their mother irreparably bereaved. And their father haunted with guilt that his incompetent genetics were to blame.
He stared at the black circle at the bottom center of the tree, caressing the mark with his thumb. What of the Neutral girl, he wondered.
He spotted a line break followed by a caption.
The above source, contributed from the surviving journals of renowned interspecies diagnostician Alphonse Ybarra, were publically authenticated and published in 1966. Government backlash from the Rus-Ainu has eradicated all but the aforementioned account. The doctor, as it would so happen, has similarly been removed from public awareness.
What a shame. Clearly this doctor was onto something monumental. Of course the largest profiteers of Neutral genocide would want to silence the dissenter and disavow his findings as heresy. For a moment he explored his memory, back to the mid-sixties when he and Satsuki had finally overcome the grief of losing their second child. Neutral animosities were flaring then, hunts becoming vigorous and competitive. Of which, Aomine was a popular victim.
In the four years lapsing the heretic doctor's disappearance and the turn of the seventies, he had been targeted by assassins Haizaki Shougo and Moriyama Yoshitaka and his third child stilled after a meek three days of life. And the threats only skyrocketed thereafter.
He heaved a sigh, his head still sloshing with a persistent ache, and pinched the book's spine. A hand dove into the closing pages. Aomine fumbled it open again. Glossy black eyes gleamed up at him beneath a thatch of wiry curls. One of the children who'd escorted him before.
He'd been so absorbed in the text he hadn't noticed. Anxiety clutched his chest as Curly wiggled onto the log beside him. His bowl was set further away.
Curly jabbed a finger at the words, bouncing an inquisitive look between them and Aomine.
His jaw slackened but no words came.
"What are you reading?"
Some of the panic subsided as he intercepted the dialect. One spoken by Apparitions of a dependency sandwiched between Bokoku—the homeland that the Fire and Ice have spent several millennia squabbling over—and Zhestokiy that distended throughout Nise some 300 years ago. Did this child come from such a family? No outward markers would indicate so, leaving language as a more reliable giveaway.
A thought occurred. When he and Kagami were guided here, their chaperones stuck around long enough to provide them a meal then scurried off. Leading Aomine to believe they would not be approached again. The other refugees hadn't exactly ignored them, reacting little to their presence apart from furtive glances, mumbled words, and acknowledging gestures. For being such a marginalized group, they doled out such unanticipated hospitality.
But why was this kid here?
Aomine reared back as Curly leaned over his lap, flailing their wrist as if trying to draw attention. He looked over. Kagami was being swarmed by the other minders from earlier, clamoring around him like subordinate wolves greeting their alpha. Words left Curly quicker this time in a language Aomine did not recognize. Then Curly slid back, sitting tighter against him and their stark eyes bore into him. Strange how such darkness could beam so bright, he thought.
A finger poked the page again.
He shot Kagami a helpless look. The prince threw his hands up in apology and one of the busybodies crowding him leapt into his open lap. What help.
He dragged a breath before regarding Curly.
"I'm not gonna read this to you. It's too complicated," he said, sticking to the same dialect the child used before.
It's not even a children's book, he thought.
"Not all of us like kid books," Curly said.
"Look, not to sound ruder—"
"You're capable?" Kagami scoffed.
Aomine turned a scowl on him. A grin crinkled the man's eyes in a mask of amusement as he aided another child onto his shoulders with the ease of flinging a sack.
Prick.
He decided to ignore the heckler and focused on Curly again. "Do you always ask strangers to read you stories? You don't know who I am." He paused. "I could be a bad guy."
Again Kagami chimed in, this time with a derisive snort, and Aomine pinched his arm.
Curly replied, unfazed, "Kise wouldn't bring bad guys here."
Valid point.
"Are you an Ice Apparition?"
"What makes you think that?"
Curly's head cocked, gaze raking him a moment, then shrugged. As if that explained anything.
"You look like other Ice Apparitions we saw on our way here through the mountains. Dark skin, hair, and blue eyes. I heard you speaking their language with your friend and Kise, too."
He overlooked the allusion of a friendship between him and Kagami as the innocent examination was starting to bother him, kicking the panic that had taken a backseat into anxious overdrive. The kid wasn't wrong, though. Like his mother, he hailed from the land of Ice, bestowed with similar distinguishing characteristics. He was reared as one of them, tutored by their educators, employed by their government, and versed in their customs, etiquettes, and mannerisms.
But he wasn't an Ice Apparition. Or even a Neutral.
Aomine looked away from Curly's probing stare and his throat tightened.
"Looks don't explain everything," he said.
"So, you're not an Ice Apparition?"
A cold spike pierced his chest. It wasn't an accusation, he knew. For much of his life it had been the only identity he'd been comfortable acknowledging. Even if he'd have to wedge defective into every defense. With all that had happened in the last week he hadn't an opportunity to reflect and ask himself.
What was he?
As Aomine started to speak, Kagami cut in, "He's a Lightning Apparition."
He whipped his head. Kagami's straight face stared back, the furrow of his brow that usually bolded agitation instead translated certainty. As if he was reaffirming Aomine's fragile indecision.
The little monkeys erupted into an emphatic chatter. The child straddling the prince's shoulders lurched sideways, toward him. Aomine recoiled as lanky, sun-speckled arms looped around his head and neck. His hands shot out to stabilize which the kid took as an invitation and swooped down onto him. The book thudded to the floor, pages seaming neatly closed as the youngsters flooded him.
Curly jostled his leg. Thing One clung to his arm and his head remained clutched in a tight embrace by Thing Two as he climbed onto his back.
"I didn't know Lightning Apparitions could be this dark," Curly exclaimed.
Thing Two piped in, "Are you mixed?"
"You're super tall, too," said Thing One.
The monkey on his back craned close enough that Aomine noticed scars interspersed like lights in the night sky blanketing a freckled face. "Your eyes are blue like Ice Apparitions, though."
"Shadows have blue eyes sometimes, too," Curly said.
"And darker skin."
"But they don't get this tall, right?" Thing Two said, palming Aomine's skull.
Curly shook his arm. "Tell us. What are you?"
Aomine hesitated, meeting each of their attentive gazes, faces alight with intrigue. He was feeling smothered. His mouth refused to work.
Then he felt a tug at his neck. The arms encasing his head slid away. He peered back. Kagami was planting Thing Two into a space on the log between them. The prince mumbled a few words that seemed to take. Instead of sitting obediently, the little monkey draped across Kagami's back, attention locked on Aomine.
Knowing he wouldn't be able to dodge the interrogation, Aomine took a moment to collect himself. So long as Kagami was present he must choose his words carefully. He remembered the dossier found in the prince's home and wasn't about to divulge any unmentioned details. Especially considering their alliance was both temporary and fickle.
He rose a warning finger for the youngsters to see.
"One at a time."
. . . . .
Aomine still sat on the hewn log. Breakfast wrapped up around ten minutes ago. In remarkable uniformity, the diners dispersed from the area and threaded into the tents. Serving staffed had tidied the tables, toting barrels, bins, and buckets of leftover food away. Bustling could now be heard among the dark canvas peaks.
His head was bowed, fingers netted over the back of his skull as he tried to revive the energy drained from the children's fervent inquiries. Social exhaustion, as he'd now learned, was more taxing than any sort of physical test he'd endured.
Footsteps neared and a familiar presence settled beside him on the log. He did not look up but unlocked his fingers to scratch at his scalp. The volume lay balanced across his thighs, scooped from the dirt.
"That bad?" Kagami asked. He had left to usher the kids back to their awaiting guardians. Their dishware had disappeared along with him.
"I forgot how much kids talk," he said, hands running down his face.
"Kids don't sweat the small stuff the way adults do. Differences are cool, not threatening."
Aomine peeked a skeptical eye through his fingers. Kagami smirked then gestured to the book. "What'd the Oracle say?"
More than he expected, truth be told. He'd read the very same account in Goryokaku's repository. But with the missing page intact suddenly the book's message adopted a whole new view. Erasing stigma that spanned millennia by simply taking the time to talk to someone. Aomine, or even Kagami, could have managed that given the sheer volume of targets they'd slain over the decades. And yet they hadn't.
Because of public stereotype.
That Neutrals were defective. That they were nothing like Apparitions. That they were worth more dead than alive.
And he and Kagami had fallen into the trap like so many other able-bodied hunters.
How many lives had he claimed? How many had Kagami?
Earlier when Kise herded them through the encampment he'd felt the immense pressure of scrutiny squeezing him. A nauseating whirlwind of guilt, unease, and vulnerability. He wondered if Kagami felt it, too. Whether it was obvious they were hunters or not didn't matter. What's more, these people didn't seem to care. Something that became evident when those children so haplessly entered the personal space of two complete strangers. Then when Aomine's nature was revealed. They had surprised him with astonishment rather than repugnance, showing that popular conceptions of character were not definitive. Lightning Apparitions trademarked aggression, cruelty, and elitism with such arrogance that they commanded a potent threat in the Apparition world to even their allies.
Despite knowing that, those children disregarded caution because they realized Aomine intended no harm.
He lifted the book, flipping from cover to cover, then exposed the spine.
"That we're the biggest club of assholes there is." He dropped his arm and looked at Kagami. "We were wrong. Every single one of us."
"We couldn't have known that."
"Ignorance doesn't excuse wrongdoing."
Kagami said nothing and his gaze did not submit to the rebuke.
"All this doctor did,"—he jiggled the book—"was talk to someone. And Neutrals alone aren't the only ones affected by the sterility myth. Their families are equally ostracized for protecting them."
He told Kagami about the doctor's exposition.
"Imagine that," he said. "A family of fully realized Apparitions sacrificing their freedom for the sake of a single Neutral child's chance at life. A sheltered existence of maximized protection. Consumed by paranoia. Dragging fallen branches to mask your every step. Checking twice over your shoulder. Second guessing everyone you see as a possible enemy lying in wait."
Kagami's eyes fell, as if considering.
Aomine shook his head. "All these people have ever done was try to live in a world chock full of ignorant bastards who didn't want to accept that their life had value."
"Like you."
He thought he heard a spat of insult and snapped a glare that quickly thawed at the sincerity holding Kagami's eyes. He was finding it difficult to process commiseration from an unconfirmed ally. One that had twice come within a hair's breadth of killing him for the same misguided preconception just one week ago. He tipped his head to the sky. The soupy pewter clouds scooted along, thickening as they headed over the distant peaks, suggesting that rain may finally fall.
He was grateful to know the truth. At the expense of innumerable lives too late to matter. Nothing he nor Kagami nor any other serial offender could do or say would be adequate recompense.
And with Hyuuga's murder still fresh in everyone's minds he possessed little favor with the Rus-Ainu, anyway. Though he'd had next to none before the incident at the fort.
Kagami stretched, groaning with exertion as he asked, "So, what's next?"
He lowered his gaze to sweep the picnic grounds. He tucked the book to his belly and opened his palm. A mild thrum nipped below the surface. He remembered what it felt like back in the bathhouse when those first jagged lines shot free and the angry tingling they left behind. It brought with it a weight he had never known before. Scrunching his fingers amplified the sensation. Relaxing the muscles discharged whitish-purple threads.
He'd acted on emotion in the Water Room when he targeted Imayoshi and was disappointed that his aim was so easily thwarted. And surprised at himself that he assaulted his uncle. Apart from episodes of hormone-driven defiance in his youth he had never so boldly accosted Imayoshi. In that moment his thoughts were consumed with provocative images of that monster's cold hands taking the lives of his parents and swiping him away. The same hands that had woven the convoluted web of lies that governed his entire existence. That had terminated his children. Poisoned Momoi's maternal confidence. Then extensively blackmailed and later killed Tetsu.
Static rioted in his upright palm. Tightening his fist quashed the protest.
He knew exactly what his next move was.
But he had to ask himself.
Could he really do it?
[Again REALLY sorry I could not hyperlink or upload images for you to view!]
Glossary of Apparition terms:
NEUTRAL: the offspring of a hybrid and purebred that possesses a normal Apparition's lifespan and biology but has no nature affinity (i.e., Fire, Lightning, Ice, etc.)
[BLANK]-INCLINED: a term used to indicate the nature of a hybrid, because they carry two natures instead of one (i.e., Aomine is a Lightning-Ice hybrid but he is only able to use Lightning, therefore he is a Lightning-inclined hybrid Apparition)
ATARAXIA(N): the name of the Wind Apparition country and a demonym of Apparitions who hail from there (i.e., Kise is a Wind Apparition, therefore he is an Ataraxian)
ARMADURA(N): the name of the Earth Apparition country and a demonym of Apparitions who hail from there
GORYŌKAKU: the capital of the Ice state of Shi Tudi; Aomine, Momoi, and Imayoshi live here
HIROSAWA: the capital of the Fire state of Bokoku; Akashi and Kagami live here
CASIMIR: the capital of the Lightning state of Pervobytnyy Les; Hyuuga and Aomine's father hail from here
FRINGE APPARITIONS: Apparitions of one state/country that regularly and illegally trespass the boundaries of neighboring states/countries
RUS-AINU EMPIRE (or RUS-AINU): the partnership of the Fire and Lightning, originally forged in 1000 CE
XIA UNION (or XIA): the past partnership of the Fire and Ice, starting in 2000 BCE and ending in 1000 CE (3,000 years)
MOTHER'S MERGER: the partnership of the Wind and Earth, starting in 3000 BCE and ending in 1945 CE (4,945 years)
WOLF PACK PACT: a punitive arrangement between the Fire, Lightning, and Ice enacted in 1990 CE that forbids the three powers from launching attacks on one another; it also deconstructed the Ice's military and defined present-day boundary lines