Part 50: A Question of Velocity
The new school year started last week, April 1, 20XX. I was assigned to teach five undergrad and two graduate classes, a reduction of one class from last term. Between being hard pressed for time with my teaching duties and responding to the piles of correspondence I was receiving every day regarding my dissertation project from last year, I found myself stretched to the limits. Yet, after school I afforded myself liberal efforts to visit Urd every day during spare moments of free time.
Each visit tore away my soul, piece by piece. I felt like I was a voyeur or a spy sneaking in via the postern, since Urd didn't know I was in the room with her. At times, I questioned whether my sanity had leapt headfirst off a cliffside coign. My heart was bedded solidly in a thin sullenness, my spirit was spare and drained.
My heart was linked to her still form as readily as a sail is tethered to a mast. Ever since I had found out that she was slipped away from life, I seemed to want to embrace every memory even more tightly. I felt like I was chasing after a mirage. I had pored over the Enigma Book, trying to find a cure. Tweezed between trying to save Urd and wanting to see her, just to know that she was alright.
Today, mercifully...she was lying on her back, tucked in her futon. I was grateful for the sleepy stillness in her "Urd's Castle" room. During several earlier visits, I bore witness to the breathnumbing sight of Urd in her futon, contorted with excruciating pain. I felt a heartecho of her pain in my being, one that rooted me to the moment with morose immobility. Freiija had been a constant bedside presence for her daughter; but yesterday Urd's mother had been recalled back to Yggdrasil.
Odeyn had been recalled too; his administration of the Energy Guild presented him with great responsibilities that he could no longer forego. Before leaving, he informed us that he felt strong leanings towards convening a War Council. The Almighty was convinced that Urd had been brutalized by a Demon. I felt a chilly shift drafting up and down my neck when Belldandy informed me of this precipitous turn of events.
Again, I stood in the corner of the room, watching Urd's unique élan de vie disintegrate before my very eyes. Once more, the truest meaning of powerlessness was being driven home with impersonal candidacy.
Life is so unfair...
"I'm dying. This is it!" Urd shouted, interrupting my reverie. She had started to rave during her waking moments a few days ago. Lucid spells were becoming infrequent as the disease ate at her mind like caterpillars greedily gorging on fresh leaves.
"Why in Vanagdrasil are you here?" she said randomly, looking straight at me. I glanced down at my forearm...and realized that it was visible! Skuld's mecha must have 'run out of juice'! I tried to move my arm behind my back, as if I could somehow conceal it from her.
Urd looked at me with eyes brimming ugly with hate.
"I..I wanted to give you this," I said, gulping as the flame of those rue-filled eyes seemed to sear the flesh off of my bones. Which I knew, had Urd the power, she probably wouldn't hesitate to do.
With an uncharacteristic strength, Urd knocked the double CD case out of my hand.
"Get out!" she screamed over and over. I was riveted to the spot by her rage, unable to twitch a muscle towards the door. Suddenly, she started gagging...and then pitched forward into my arms, throwing up blood all over her futon and me. Frightened by how sick she was, I was jolted into panic. Carefully laying down her unconscious form, I turned towards the doorway, ready to split out of the room.
"Belldandy! Peorth! Hurry!"
They were already here...my deep sense of shock and helplessness blinded me to their presence.
"Goddamn it, I'm not going to cry again!" I shouted to myself as Peorth dashed past me...and the tears came.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"If you can tear my skin off, I'll be okay. It isn't as if I have any thoughts to wear any more. I'm only a necropanda in a cellular igloo. Kami-sama is really Isilblius! I...I know the truth now, it's trapped like rats in the New York Times!" Urd babbled euphoniously, staring into blank space.
She had lost her eyesight.
"What?" Freiija said, holding her hand. She had decided to abandon her Yggdrasilian responsibilities to be with her daughter, regardless of what the Almighty could do to her for leaving her post.
Urd was becoming delirious again.
"Yes...the Yggdrasil System is powered by buckwheat noodles. Didn't you know that? Skuld and Belldandy aren't really my sisters...they never were. They're both echotree clones. Are you my sister? And...who am I? That's the question everybody asks...and nobody knows. Will I turn into frosted apple sake when I become a little girl?"
Peorth listened to Urd's word salad with patient concern. Belldandy and Skuld tucked into the room.
"Life is just a garden of dreams that slips along prefab Ixodenum concrete stairways of jelly... Who are you? There was something I was supposed to do, but since everything is going black..."
"Mother, put her in a stasis spell. NOW!" Belldandy shouted, her common sense firing her caution. To her relief, Peorth was already encanting the formula for the spell.
"It's all going dark...where's my World of Elegance? She should be...with...me..." Urd closed her eyes and her head tipped over to her side. A second later, the arm which had been resting on her chest...flopped limply to the floor.
"URD!!" Belldandy and Freiija screamed. Belldandy looked in the corner of the room, only to see the Dark Reaper hovering expectantly.
"Get away from my sister! You can't have her! It isn't her time!" she addressed the spectral figure. Skuld was on her knees crying, a pitiful picture of defeat and brokenhearted despair.
"I..I love you, Big Sister! And..snff..now you're leaving me without me getting even with..snff..you for all those times you teased me!" Skuld shouted, so overwrought that she could only express an instinct of the tragicomic.
"Whew!" Peorth looked exhausted. "I was able to put her in stasis...but I think I managed to catch her right before her Soul escaped to the Reaper."
Then she felt a sudden surge of Goddess power in the room, much more than she could ever muster. She looked over her shoulder to see Freiija, eyes tightly closed in rapt exertions, summoning a huge amount of arcane energy. With a final wave of her hands, Urd's mom created a far stronger stasis shield.
Peorth was once again impressed with the sheer power of a Senior First Class Licensee...along with Freiija's all-out effort to save her daughter.
"Pull yourself together, you two! It's only a matter of time before I cannot power this spell...maybe two or three Earthrealm days at the most! Otherwise, I'll die from lack of energy," Freiija admitted sadly. She had expended almost all of her Goddess powers to strengthen Peorth's stasis spell. Exhausted, she leaned against the wall next to Peorth.
Losing Urd was the ultimate tragedy... Freiija's feelings were haywire with passion. Was this just an exercise in futility...a weak attempt to forestall the inevitable? Then she shuddered as she realized once again that this scene would be repeated with Belldandy and Skuld.
"I have to rest..." Peorth said, unable to admit to the others that she couldn't handle the heartrending scene unfolding before her eyes. She felt that it was best to leave Freiija, Belldandy and Skuld alone with Urd. She turned her head back right before leaving the room. Freiija had tucked Urd's head up on her lap. She saw Belldandy look up at her with gratitude as she caressed Urd's head, while Skuld had curled up next to her oldest sister, resting her head on Urd's chest.
"Peorth...you better call my Father..." Belldandy said in a resigned voice.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"So...this is what the Real Death is like?"
"Yes," said the smiling young boy amidst a soft patter of windchimes.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the Reaper, silly!" he said.
"No way! You're not skeletal...and you don't have a scythe!"
"Of course not! That's just how you see me when you're on the Other Side. But now you're on –this- side...and this is how I really am. Really! No tricks..."
Urd tilted her head slightly as she regarded the boy, who looked like a ten-year old. He was the picture of vigorous childyouth. Long white hair flowed out of his head. His eyes were totally black, with a burning blue glow in the middle, where the pupils should be. Urd was both fascinated and frightened by that glow...its radiance suggesting the image of an ember burning in his eyes.
Then there was the matter of the glowing fog that seemed to be everywhere, surrounding her with gentle colors. What she beheld...reminded her of rainbow hues of light refracted from diamondtrees...only much softer on the eyes.
"What happens next?"
"You'll see. Right now, your body has a slight lifestring of Soul remaining. Yet, it also shades upon the Real Death...and your Soul is almost here, Urd. One of the other Goddesses put a stasis spell on you, which holds the slight bit of you that remains on the Other Side... As for the rest of your Soul, well, let's just say it is 'In Between' at the moment. But shortly, the stasis spell will end...and you'll be free to come with me. Your Soul will be complete."
"Where will we go?"
"You'll see."
"You're such a cute little boy! How old are you?"
"As old as the Everything...what you call the Multiverse."
Urd flinched at that. She looked down at herself to see that she now possessed a glowing translucent body. Its ghost-like outline was cast in the form of her body in its prime...as it was before she got sick.
"Belldandy. Skuld. Mother and Father. My dear loved ones," she thought regretfully. The wind curled her hair around her waist as she let her grief flow outwards...
"What about my sisters?"
"They'll be with you until the end. Right now, they are on the Other Side, giving you their love. Your Mother is with you, and your Father is coming..." the little boy who was Death explained.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
The next day, Urd stopped breathing.
Odeyn looked at his daughter...and his single eye filled with livid rage.
"This...means...WAR! Those damned Demons have crossed the line...snff...killing m..my oldest child! My firstborn! Th..they are going to PAY for this!" he shouted to the sky, casting a figure of profound Sophoclean poignancy.
"Oh my dear, sweet, precious Urd," Freiija sobbed, oddly more composed than her husband. Belldandy and Skuld leaned on each side of their mother, sharing her grief.
In the back of her mind, Belldandy wondered why Hild, Urd's other Mother, wasn't here. Hild was a Demon Queen, who shared maternity with Freiija. Her Mother and Hild had never met, but Hild's absence from this solemn scene struck her as quite odd. Urd's Demonic Mother hadn't even come once to pay a visit. Could it be possible that Hild didn't know about what had happened to Urd? Belldandy reasoned that Hild...if she found out that a Demon had taken her daughter's life...would brook no efforts in seeking vengeance. A Demonic vendetta against another Demon was rumored to be utterly ruthless in execution. Or was her absence conspicuous for other means, such as a Demonic attack on a Goddess?
"It will be over real soon, Mother," Belldandy said quietly, too upset to turn towards her own grief.
Freiija realized that it wouldn't be over anytime soon. She was going to lose all of her children! Her long and wonderful life would transpire its purpose when her little dear Skuld breathed her last...
She would have nothing to live for any more after that.
Nothing...but vengeance.
Vengeance against the unseen agents...who had exacted this horrible atrocity against her family.
She turned to face Odeyn, her beloved companion. Father of her daughters.
"Husband. When our dear little Urd is gone...I want you to go to Urd's Well. I want you to convene a War Council. I want you to call for an Assembly and do whatever it takes. Convince them! P..propose an indefatigable, merciless, vicious arbitrament of havoc upon the Demons for what they've done to my little girl! To avenge our family, my daughters...we must stop at nothing!" she said evenly in a menacing voice, devoid of any compassion.
Belldandy had never seen her Mother so angry.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Keiichi had torn himself away from the deathbed scene, reluctantly choosing to leave the Goddesses alone. Out of respect, he figured that this was a moment best shared within the family. He felt an urgency to comfort his beloved Bell-chan, but he kept his own vigil in the living room. When Belldandy emerged from "Urd's Castle", he realized that the worst had happened.
His girlfriend was looking glumly at the floor.
"H..how long, Bell?"
"Just a more few hours," she answered, looking at him with grief-dazed sapphire eyes.
"I don't want to leave you, Bell-chan. What can I do to help? I hate it! Urd's dying...and all I can do is worry about myself! I'm all wrapped in..snff..what I can do to comfort the people I love. Who's going to tell Cevn? I..I really don't want to be the one that tells him about...you know, about Urd," Keiichi rambled out nervously.
"I will, mon ami. I'll tell him about the tres terrible..." Peorth volunteered. Keiichi felt a momentary gratitude towards Peorth. "Unlike me, Peorth's at least able to help, to do something..." Keiichi thought glumly.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
I couldn't do it anymore. My last visit to Urd a couple of weeks ago had wrenched my heart into a thousand strands of broken realities. When I returned home with her lifeblood all over my shirt and jeans, I felt like I was a nothing. Nothing more than a cat chasing its tail, biting itself, and then crying out at the injury. I just couldn't bear watching her suffer like this anymore.
My life was being dislocated, weakness upon weakness.
Obsessed by doubt, in my desperation I sought conciliation in the Enigma Book, the only possible source I could think of that could elucidate Yggdrasilian and Vanagdrasilian antinomian intellectual quiddities. I would chance it; if I searched long enough, hard enough...I sensed that I would somehow find the answers there.
Every day, as soon as I returned to Sayoko's place after school, I would dash a meal in the microwave, and then bury my attention into the Enigma Book. The book that purportedly possessed the sum knowledge of Yggdrasil and Vanagdrasil.
Every night for the past two weeks, I had cast my thoughts within the spiral realms of the God's and Demon's Languages.
At the moment, I felt that the book that was totally useless, because it lacked any clear instructions about how to cure Urd. I wanted to throw it hard against the walls of the garage. Over and over again...
The more I searched through the Enigma Book, the more I realized that each day only seemed to usher forth another expression of my growing nugacity. A frustration that was less painful than seeing Urd in her languishing, moribund state. But it still sucked critical.
Self-pity seeped in as I tallied my losses.
I had girded myself with a constant grim vigilance; expecting to hear the worst at any moment from the little temple where my heart was left behind. Then I could speed my own soul along the familiar channels of grief.
"Speed...my...soul?" I whispered to the empty garage. Empty except for me, my studio equipment, and a book.
Something about speed that I had read...
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"What's this?" Freiija asked aloud as her knee bumped something hidden under Urd's futon. She reached under the soft cushion and pulled out a grey-metal object in a plastic case, with a yellow note taped on it. She read the note:
"To Urd, I only hope you get to hear this God Demon's music before you move on to whatever is coming. This is my affirmation that love is the filament that links all souls together. I'm grateful that you allowed my soul to share a bond with yours.
Love, Cevn."
"How...utterly contemptible! What a wretched example of mortal cheekiness!" Freiija commented. She looked at her family, her expression disclosing a sovereign affront.
Skuld snatched the plastic case from her Mother and opened it. It was a music pod, just like the one which got lost after the Solar Federation Race. The music pod with the God's Music on it that had caused so much bliss in the house during trying times. Blinking her eyes, she read the note again, and then noticed a "# 1" inked onto the battery casing on the pod's back.
"I...think we should play it," Belldandy suggested, drawing a scowl from her Mother.
Examining the music pod, Skuld remembered how Cevn had asked her and Urd to devise a means to mass-produce the God's Symphony he was planning to create. Could this be it in the music pod she now held in her hand? Urd had gone Richter on him for wanting to give away all the sales proceeds of the music to help the less fortunate. Now, this music pod and the music it contained would never see the light of day, because she and Urd wouldn't be able to fulfill his request.
Freiija was both astonished and insulted by the fact that a mortal male had dared to give her daughter a parting gift. The frank admission of his feelings towards her daughter was nothing less than an insult.
"First Belldandy...than Urd! How could both of my two oldest daughters entrance an Earthrealm mortal man?" she wondered. According to her dear B'dandy, one had returned as much love as he could give. The other one...was valed in a tension of opposites; caught between truth and reality.
"Everyone knew the truth about Urd's attacker...except Urd," Belldandy had explained to her.
Seeing the mysterious music pod, Belldandy held out on a dim flicker of hope. The last time they had played a music pod with Cevn's 'God's Music' on it, a miracle of sorts had happened. Could lightning strike again?
Ignoring her Mother's admonitions, Skuld powered up the music pod. Sure enough, the file was titled "GodDemon's Symphony". Setting aside her curiosity at the strange title, she plugged the pod into its cradle and punched up the God's Music file.
With frank disbelief, Freiija felt her conscious soothed into silken passageways of bliss as the music caressed her being...
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"I have to go now, Keiichi!" Megumi repeated in an insistent voice, a voice that was strong enough to cut steel.
"Well...just go then, Megumi! Just go. Go ahead and leave us all here to deal with Urd dying!" Keiichi replied with icepick harshness, the contempt in his voice chilling Megumi into a standstill.
Chihiro's van was waiting outside, waiting to pick her up and take her to Narita. It was the third week in April, and the trials for the Le Mans were scheduled to take place next weekend. They had to leave right now, or they would miss their flight!
Because Keiichi was indisposed, the club had elected Megumi to be the driver for the trials. There was no way she could skip out of the responsibility!
Keiichi glared at his sister in disbelief as she handled her luggage. Urd was dying...and she was going off to France with the Motor Club! They had argued fervently about her decision late into the night. Keiichi had expected that Megumi would change her mind at the last minute. Or that Urd would have died, forcing his sister to remain behind.
But Urd was stubbornly clinging to life...and Megumi had spent the last couple of days packing two huge pieces of luggage.
"If you go...I'll never talk to you again!" Keiichi threatened. He really didn't mean it, but he was so deeply hurt by his sister's callous betrayal that he couldn't think of anything else to say. What was even more painful was the fact that he needed somebody to lean on...and his little sister was bailing out on him.
Tomohisa was too young, Cevn didn't live at the temple anymore...and from what Belldandy had told him, Cevn was losing his mind. And Genji was going to France for the Le Mans trials with the Motor Club.
Which meant that there was no one for him. To stand alongside him and offer him comfort. Megumi looked back at him with an expression that pivoted between hurt and shock.
"Life goes on," she said weakly, fighting back tears. She knew that this would be the most difficult part...the part of getting out the door while her brother stared her down accusingly.
An inarticulate argument of the heart passed between brother and sister, wordlessly filling the living room with a feud of emotion.
"I hate to do this...but I have to go," Megumi offered, breaking the silence with a note of finality.
"I hate you for doing this, Megumi!" Keiichi spat out in a bitter voice.
The two stared at each other for a grizzled moment, and then Megumi sighed with resignation and walked out the front door.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Urd was comforted by the soft fleshy glow that surrounding her. She could feel World of Elegance within her; her Angel was singing softly in her familiar manner...a lovesong that only Urd could hear.
The little boy that was the Reaper had been very kind, explaining to her in detail about what was going to happen next. She and he would walk along a path that would lead to the Light. Then her consciousness would merge with all the others on this side.
In his childish voice, the Reaper painted their environs with gentle words. He explained that she was in a place...a realm in the midst of the two Multiverse-trees...a non-void where pure Light existed. The price for each surrendered Soul was a loss of individuality. But the resulting Instrumentality of Light was the wellspring of creation. A part of her would be renewed, as she was Norn of the Past. A new Norn of the Past would appoint into existence to assume her role.
Urd sensed a pause in World of Elegance's singing. A moment later, her Angel shed herself away from Urd, forming above her. Urd looked on as World of Elegance flew in a wide circle above them, her lithesome brown and white form seeking the source of the faint sounds, her black and white sweep of hair bobbing in an invisible breeze. A few seconds later, World of Elegance's wings were fluttering, revealing her excitement.
A delicate music was filling the air, causing gentle pulses of color to appear in the cloudlike glow that that was everywhere. Urd felt an impulse to run in the direction of the sound waves.
"Hmmm, it appears that you may have a choice after all..." the little boy observed with a smile. He always smiled, because, as he had explained to her, the Real Death was actually the first step of Renewal...and those Souls released from their bonds on the Other Side deserved to be greeted with joy...
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Urd should have been dead by now. The stasis field had exhausted itself several days ago. But somehow, she was clinging on dearly to life with a characteristic Urd-like stubbornness.
Belldandy had summoned Keiichi into "Urd's Castle" several times to attend on her sister's final moments. She knew that Keiichi was trying to accommodate her family by staying away. But she needed him, notwithstanding of how personal the circumstances were. His heart was very clouded by the fact that Megumi had left with the Motor Club. She could forgive Megumi, even if Keiichi couldn't. Keiichi's sister was just being realistic...and yet Belldandy knew deep inside that Megumi was shattered by Urd's inevitable fate.
But Urd didn't pass on. Belldandy felt her emotions deplete just a little bit more with each narrow call and return to life. Something was keeping Urd alive, as if she was receiving a divine life-sustenance. Yet, an expectant Reaper still hovered in the room...along with something else.
A barely perceptible shadow, always tucked away at the corners of sight.
Once, over a summer vacation to the beaches of Chiba, Keiichi had told her about the folk legend of the moboroshi...an ethereal cosmic spirit that seemed to captivate people and then lead them to their doom. The moboroshi would entrance oceanside villagers to walk off cliffs, or swim out in storm pitched seas to drown. It wasn't real, but it was dangerously seductive. Poised on the edge of reality, the moboroshi misled those persons for whom reality had no longer remained attractive. Often in olden times, the traditional Japanese explained these cases of suicide as "being tricked by the moboroshi."
Yet, she sensed a shadow of the shadow...and she felt a surge of alarm.
It was utterly evil.
She heard a light snoring against her shoulder. Keiichi had fallen asleep against her, drooling on one of the few fets of hair that were still left on her head. At her insistent bequest, he had remained with her during the past few days. He often made trips out to the kitchen to bring food for the mourners. She and her family didn't need to eat mortal food, but his gestures were precious for their own sakes. He supplied Belldandy's family with fresh clothes so that they could dry their tears. In all respects, he was being so much of a support her and her kin.
"I love you so much for who you are, my love," Belldandy said to his sleeping form during a break from the deep sadness that gripped her heart.
This was a living wake.
Yet...everyone but Urd was awaiting her death. Inexplicably, Urd was hanging on to life.
Every 220 minutes, a graceful symphony would fill the room, causing all of those attending on Urd to experience a mist of serenity. The other 220 minutes consisted of a darkly beautiful arrangement of sound themes...the kind of music that would be carved on the icehard surface of Pluto.
Somehow, the music pod had gotten stuck in the player, playing over and over.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
My head hit the Enigma Book with a muffled "whap". I groggily opened my eyes to see the section on Sleipnir.
Again.
My head ached dearly, as the 'metallect' faculty that I possessed was working overtime. Since I had been brought to Japan, the metallect had manifested itself at odd times, seemingly keeping to a schedule that I had no control over. I was never quite able to beckon its capabilities...until now. Suddenly, I was able to comprehend matters which had escaped my notice before.
I was able to ask the right questions.
Time...matrix...axis...metaphysics...Multiverse...Sleipnir...
Earthrealm...dimensions...oceanmind...ascension...spirit...
Threshold...instrumentality...other side...Soul...velocity...
Velocity! Mortal! Sleipnir! Soul!
"SHIT!" I whispered loudly as the muddle crystallized into a cathartic harmony.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
rringg
Belldandy and the rest had ignored the constant activity of the phone since Urd had declined into a coma. Hearing the tone, she looked at Skuld, her eyes beseeching her to answer the phone.
The phone.
Skuld hadn't answered the phone since The Call From the Almighty About Her License Suspension. She was no longer terrified of the phone, because she had simply excised it from her life...deciding to never answer it again. Now, Elder Sister was asking her to answer it.
Gathering her courage, Skuld swallowed hard...and walked out of "Urd's Castle". Leaning against the hallway, she silently breathed a prayer, almost relieved to have a reprieve from the morbid scene in the room.
"All the phone calls left unanswered in the past few days, and all of a sudden, they want me to answer the phone!" she thought with exasperation.
She was frightened at times as her entire family became smothered with expectant grief. It seemed to hit hardest in phases. It struck her in phases as well. The music hovered in the background...one CD seemed to soothe her, the other one filled her with a dark sense of beauty. Then she would look at Urd...and her heart would shrink back.
"I can't stare at it forever..." she paused her paralysis as she stared at the phone.
"Hello!"
"S..Skuld! This is Cevn!..."
"Where are you? Why haven't you come? Big Sister is dying...and you're not here!" she interrupted, livid with anger at his insensitivity.
"S...she's –dying-?! N..no! Not now! She -can't- die!! I didn't know! She can't die yet! Then it's not too late. I'm coming over now! I think there is a way to thwart all this bullshit that has happened to her..."
"Peorth! You didn't tell him?" Skuld yelled down the hallway.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Keiichi asked Cevn to go over it again. It was so simple, yet the manner in which he explained it...was complexity folded upon complexity. Cevn looked solicitously at Odeyn and Freiija, the two oldest Divines present in the living room. They would know if his idea had merit...
Their expressions consisted of a marked confusion.
"Look...there is an axis at the exact center of the two planes of existence that we call Yggdrasil and Vanagdrasil. This point is where all the energies come from, and where all Souls go at the point of death."
"Your unfounded conjecture is totally ridiculous! I'm the head of the Energy Guild, and I know that the energy arises from the Multiverse!" Odeyn commented authoritatively.
"So how can Vanagdrasil exist? Assuming that all energy comes from our Multiverse, how do you explain the energies that power their Multiverse. If energy can only be created in this Multiverse, then doesn't that imply that Yggdrasil is a wellspring of power for the Demons? Aren't you assuming that the Demon's home turf is powered by an energy source located within Yggdrasil?"
"That's so stupid, it's not even worth considering. It's also heresy! The Almighty wouldn't allow that!" Skuld interjected.
"Okay, I'm going to try and make sense of it. Imagine the Multiverse, consisting of all reality. The Everything is even greater than the Multiverse. Vanagdrasil is a Multiverse unto itself. Like the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang; two Multiverses make up the Everything. Y..you cannot disprove this, because most of the contacts between Gods and Demons have always occurred somewhere else...in a place where both realms interweave. Where they overlap. Like the Earthrealm. But never just in Yggdrasil or Vanagdrasil, with the exception of the Doublet System meetings. In some way, I think this explains the Doublet System, incidentally. From what I've gleaned from the Enigma Book, my sense of it is that when the doubles meet in Yggdrasil, they are also meeting in Vanagdrasil at the same time. Existing in both realms just for an instant. But anyway, no one here has seen Vanagdrasil, right? And the Demons have no conception of Yggdrasil, other than that it is "the other place." You don't know if the realm of the Demons is part of what you call the Multiverse. I believe that it isn't!"
"We all know that!" Freiija interjected impatiently. Here her daughter was dying, and this mortal fool was unspooling a complex conjecture that was taking away precious moments of her time...time that she could be spending with her dearest Urd!
"Then answer this question. Where does Love come from? We all experience it, but assume for a moment that it exists in between the Gods and the Demons."
"If this was so, then we wouldn't be considering war with the Demons, would we? Also, my firstborn daughter wouldn't be dying in there!" Odeyn said angrily.
"Not 'in between' in a literal, emotional sense...but 'in between' in a cosmological sense. At the theoretical axis...which I believe exists at the nexus of the Everything; between Yggdrasil and Vanagdrasil. Where no God or Demon has ever been; except after they experience the Real Death. Love, and all energy must come from this mid-point between the Multiverses. An 'in between' place where all Souls go after death. Souls become the energy for Love. There is no entropy, no atrophy. Just a renewal, a regeneration. That's why everything has to die! And everything that lives...is necessarily born out of Love energy."
Belldandy was afraid. Cevn had a familiar glint of madness in his eyes; the same glint that Mara exhibited when she was scheming her evil plots. This idea of his...too farfetched, too improbable!
"Dazed by his own grief, Cevn must be inventing a resolution. He so badly wants all of us, especially Urd, to live. It's so bittersweet..." she thought sadly. His solution obviously made no sense to her Mother, or anyone else in the room.
"So the only way to save Urd...to save Belldandy and Skuld...is to have a mortal ride Sleipnir once around the exact middle of the Everything, at the point where the Multiverses meet. By doing this, the circuitous annularity of the orbit will draw Urd's Soul out, snapping the grip that this filthy disease has on her. It will snap this disease of Time...by removing it from Time. Which means that Belldandy and Skuld would also be released from its grip! And it has to be Keiichi who does it!" he said, pointing dramatically at Keiichi.
Keiichi gulped aloud. He remembered Sleipnir, the eight-legged steed of Norse legend. The bizarre horse that had appeared during Skuld's initial abortive attempts to contain the Bugs, before they figured out that it was Keiichi himself who was drawing them into the Earthrealm reality.
"No one can ride a Sleipnir, except for very limited amounts of time and for short distances! He is a very temperamental beast! They all are!" Freiija stated matter-of-factly.
"You mean there's more than one Sleipnir?" Cevn asked incredulously.
Belldandy almost wanted to slap her forehead in frustration at his obvious mistake.
"And he thinks he has a solution that can cure my daughter! Let's forget this foolishness and attend to more important matters. That's my daughter that is dying in there!" Freiija replied angrily, pointing at the young mortal. This oversight simply confirmed her suspicion that he was beguiled by fantasies of his own design, firmly rooted in nonsense.
"Urd could only ride him a little. And she's a Goddess! What he is proposing is impossible...even for one of us!" Belldandy added.
"Impossible for you...but not for a mortal!" Cevn challenged her.
"Are you telling me, young mortal child-man...that an Earthrealm mortal can actually do something that a God cannot?" Freiija said with cold disdain.
"You can argue with my Mother all you want, Cevn," Belldandy interrupted. "But I will not let my Keiichi risk himself, just because you have concocted some fantastic idea based on the flimsiest of conjectures. I'm going to lose everything anyway...I don't want to lose Keiichi...before the end!" Belldandy said with a note of finality to her voice.
Cevn looked like he was going to explode with frustration.
Keiichi couldn't comprehend the specifics of what Cevn-sensei was trying to explain. And he was definitely in "sensei" mode! But he did understand that Urd's...and Bell and Skuld's fates...depended on him, according to his friend. He was worried for a moment that Cevn was going to punch the nearest wall in a burst of temper. He was taking this really hard. Too hard, for this to simply be some flight of fancy.
"DAMMIT! Why can't you stop this Gods vs. Earthrealm mortals bullshit crap! We're all in this! Look...I know that for some reason, I'm been transformed...all sorts of incredibly weird stuff has happened to me since I came here. I've had to live with myself and face every bit of it! And you know why I think my idea deserves a chance? Because I can read the freakin' God's Language and the Demon's Language! Can any of you do that?"
Odeyn looked at Freiija was a stunned expression as the young mortal continued.
"I trust myself on this, more than I have ever trusted myself about anything before! And I know...deep inside...that your only chance is put this suggestion into action! Urd's only chance depends on whether you listen to me! We need to have a mortal ride Sleipnir!"
"What could you possibly know about what 'we' need?" Freiija spat out, enraged by his presumptuousness.
"Okay...I need Urd to come back! I need to see Belldandy and Skuld freed from this wasting disease! I can't do it, because I don't have the 'need for speed' in my blood. But Keiichi does!"
"N..no!" Belldandy interrupted.
"C'mon...trust me! Please?" Cevn begged.
Odeyn looked at him with arms crossed; shaking his stern face "no". Only Skuld seemed to agree with Cevn's theory. Keiichi's mind was filled with possibilities...and apprehension.
"He keeps saying that I can do something to save Bell-chan and her sisters?" he reflected, astonished at the sudden glimpse of hope...and his vital role in it. He was equally astonished as Cevn got on his hands and knees and bowed deeply in a fairly good imitation of a Japanese kowtow, his forehead firmly touching the tatami. He remained in that posture of unsparing supplication.
"Please. I lost one wife already...I don't want to lose another. I love her...and I love all of you! I don't want to lose any of you to what's coming..."
Peorth almost choked when she heard Cevn's slip of the tongue. She was surprised that no one else had caught what he said about Urd. She smiled, realizing that he had spoken his deepest wish. She floated behind Keiichi and wrapped her arms around his chest.
"GO!" Peorth whispered in Keiichi's ear, drawing a disgruntled look from Belldandy.
"What did you just say to Keiichi?" Belldandy, her deadly serious voice thinly veiling a threat.
"If I were Keiichi...I would go. You know that I love Keiichi, even though he's with you, Belldandy. I love him enough that I wouldn't ask him to risk his life unless I thought he could do it...and that it was possible! Even if he is risking his life for you and your sisters! And you're too afraid to see things clearly!" Peorth answered back in like seriousness, finishing with a spiteful flourish.
"There you go again!" Skuld shouted in exasperation. "When are you ever going to let go of your infatuation with Keiichi, Peorth?"
Skuld was bone-tired and physically sick. This whole triangle thing between Belldandy, Peorth and Keiichi was enough to drive anyone crazy. And here is Peorth, bringing it up again...now, of all the times.
"I'll go. I'll do it," Keiichi said guardedly in a low voice. This was one of the most difficult things he had ever said. He had just gone against the wishes of his dying girlfriend.
"What?!" Belldandy and her parents exclaimed. Skuld smiled to herself as she realized that Keiichi was going to risk his life to save them. To save her. A warm feeling welled up in her belly...she felt like Keiichi had become a lighthouse amidst a raging storm.
She had never loved him more strongly...this Keiichi. Years ago, he had seemed to be nothing more than a spineless mortal when she first encountered him. A pest, a thorn in her side, a leech sucking away at her sister's vitality.
Now he was totally different. He was even standing up against her sister...something neither she nor Urd could do very often! She could see the gears of conflict and confusion spinning in his heart, but yet he had trusted himself enough to make a decision.
"Keiichi, where did you get so strong all of a sudden?" Skuld asked in a private voice.
"Bell-chan...if there is any chance to save Urd...to save you and Skuld...then I gotta try!" he stated, pained by the look of fearful disappointment on his girlfriend's face.
"Keiichi!! Y..you can't! You don't know what you're saying! Sleipnir isn't just some mythical animal modeled on an Earthrealm horse! That's only a cipher, just an iconic manifestation. He is the ultimate manifestation of velocity! He is Speed itself! Sleipnir is the swiftest object in existence! Those who try to ride him too long...go insane because their minds cannot conceive of the absolute velocity Sleipnir creates. His speed...is faster than thought! He's driven Gods insane! Gods who thought they could tame him! That's why they warn us when we're children...not to ride Sleipnir! And you're planning to ride the Sleipnir. THE Sleipnir...the maverick. The fastest steed of the whole herd!!" she argued passionately, desperately trying to dissuade him.
Keiichi found a small voice in himself grinning, captivated by the challenge. Yet, if Cevn's theory were fact, it would be the only way to save Belldandy and her sisters.
"I..don't..want..to..lose..you," Belldandy pleaded.
"I'm sorry, my love. But I'm going, and that's final!" Keiichi said. Belldandy turned her back to him, glanced ruefully at Peorth, and then whirled to face him.
"Well! Just be that way then, Keiichi! If you're going to listen to Peorth instead of me...you can do whatever you want to! But not with me! I won't be there! As far as I'm concerned, you can just count me out of your life!" she yelled in near hysteric anger...and then stormed out of the room in a clenched-fist swathe of resentment.
"Whoa!" Skuld said to herself, punctuating the forest of silence in the room.
"Belldandy! Do you think I could live with myself if I didn't do anything? If I lost you because I didn't try when a solution presented itself? I might as well be dead if that happened!" he shouted down the hallway.
"You just 'be that way'!" he added with a taunt, his normally accommodating nature having been pushed past the limit by his girlfriend's stubbornness.
"Uh-oh, here comes another Jealousy Storm," Skuld grumbled to herself.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
One of Chihiro's old professors at N.I.T. had offered her a part time position teaching a single graduate course in Civic and Environmental Engineering. She was glad to take on the extra work, just to have some variety away from managing Whirlwind and the 'Le Mans Project'. The preparations for the Le Mans race had been tedious and exhausting. So she welcomed the break in the routine.
However, of the forty-plus graduate courses offered at N.I.T., Keiichi just happened be enrolled in her elective course! This created a moment of wide-eyed awkwardness for her on the first day of class, which in hindsight she realized was quite amusing. So typical of their competitive friendship! But then he had disappeared entirely during the second week of instruction. His conspicuous absence at school and at Whirlwind worried her.
Now she was in France.
During the final heats at the Le Mans, Chihiro realized with pride that it was obvious that the Motor Club was at least going to qualify for a chance at position in the 24 hours of Le Mans. Despite her reservations, Megumi had performed with excellence as a racecar driver. In fact, the whole Club had performed like clockwork in almost every aspect!
Yet, Megumi's driving skills were enigmatic. Megumi had raced with confidence during each heat, even winning a few. She even acted like a seasoned pro from the start! Chihiro had at least expected a moment of wide-eyed fear as Megumi climbed into the cockpit of the Nissan GT1 R390-LM hybrid.
Chihiro suspected that, somehow, Megumi had snuck in a few laps of practice sometime in the past. But how? How could she have practiced at all, when access to a Formula One racecar was strictly limited to experienced drivers? She certainly didn't have that much time to drive the Club's racer...only a few hours.
It was a total mystery.
But whenever Chihiro brought up the subject of her seemingly impossible driving skills, Megumi would only mutter "Mara" and "Demon Rally". And whenever Chihiro asked after her brother, Megumi's face would stiffen up with an expression that could mean anything. Anger, fear, disappointment, sadness.
But mostly hurt.
Chihiro could see the pain in Megumi's expression. She never had a brother to look after herself, as she was an only child. Yet, despite the richness of her desire to be with her teammates at the Le Mans trials, Chihiro knew, deep inside, that she was needed somewhere else...even more.
Even more than in France, celebrating with her beloved Motor Club.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
After the qualifying trials were over and done, Chihiro immediately flew back home to Japan. The rest of the Club members were going to spend a couple days celebrating in France before they returned. She had already seen a lot of Europe while she was working on the Krauser racing team, so skipping the sightseeing was no loss on her part. Yet, it made no sense for her to abandon her life's goal in order to fly to the rescue of one of her close friends. But she just wasn't in the mood for celebrating, unlike her teammates.
After landing back home, Chihiro caught a cab from Narita to Makuhari, still pondering the invisible force that was summoning her here. But she felt draw to that little temple in the middle of Makuhari...
"There's that word again. Rescue. How am I going to rescue Keiichi when I don't even know what's wrong?" she mused aloud as the cab pulled over in front of the temple torii.
As she sprightly walked towards the open doorway, Chihiro knew immediately that something was very wrong when Belldandy failed to greet her at the door. Looking inside, Keiichi looked like he was adjusting some mecha in the middle of the living room, while a blanket-wrapped Skuld was shouting instructions. As she entered the house, she saw Cevn was seated lotus style on the couch, rocking back and forth nervously.
A very sickly-looking Skuld was instructing Keiichi...
Keiichi's full attention was focused on the small device in the middle of the room. It looked like a small cylindrical box-cum-trashcan; like the cardboard hatboxes used in fashionable stores in Paris. Wires studded from it at odd angles, tubes pulsed with blue and green fluids, and a haphazard maze of cords ran from its base towards another, much larger machine.
She recognized the machine during her initial observation. It looked like an old turbine pump from a steam freighter; basically a spherical chamber with a series of sealing clamps across its middle.
"Obviously for condensing the steam," Chihiro noted. A turret rose several feet out of its side. Beyond this superficial resemblance, the machine had a weave of intricate piping that looked utterly meaningless. And the whole thing was mounted on a metal platform with rollers.
"That's the Super Energy Infusion Machine Mk. III, Chihiro," Keiichi commented without even looking at her.
"How did you know it was me?"
"Well, you do smell like a mechanic trying to cover her scent with Este Lauder 'Seductress' perfume..."
"Why you!!" Chihiro snorted indignantly while Skuld burst into giggles.
"What is a steam engine pump doing in the middle of your living room, if you care to explain?"
"Well..ah...it's not exactly what it appears to be," he answered, finally turning to face her.
"What is as it appears to be, when it concerns you?" Chihiro shot back. She assumed her attack posture, fists on hip, leaning forward.
"By the way, where have you been? You haven't been to my class since the second week of school! And you haven't shown up once for club meetings or work or..." She suddenly felt her face burst in goosebumps as she realized the obvious.
"B..Belldandy! Is she okay?" she blurted out.
"Bell's pretty sick, but her older sister Urd is going to die any time. That's why I'm out here fixing this machinery of Skuld's."
"Oh my God!" Chihiro shouted, her feathered earrings quivering as the poignant impact of Keiichi's statement stunned her emotions into a corner.
"A Super Energy Infusion Machine controls energy matrices so that it can..." Skuld began to explain. Chihiro listened to Skuld's improbable description of what the machine was and what they were planning to do with it. She said that, once activated, the Super Energy Infusion Machine would pull a singularity out of Keiichi.
Then Keiichi started in, describing how he was going to reverse the setting on something Skuld had called a "Mister Bug Zapper", which would enable it to pop a computer virus into the Earthrealm. Captured by the singularity, the virus would create a dimensional distortion...which would then cause an eight-legged horse to appear.
Then he was going to ride the eight-legged horse around everything...to save Urd, Belldandy and Skuld from certain death...
"Keiichi...have you been taking drugs?" Chihiro asked when he finally wound down his detailed, yet absurd elaboration.
"Of course not! I'm just really involved in this...after all, this is Bell-chan's life we're trying to save by doing this project. I want to get it right the first time!"
"Do you...think you need help?" she offered, worried that he was probably a likely candidate for the nuthouse. If he actually believed in what he had just told her, Keiichi needed much more 'help' than just a scolding for not going to school.
"I think..it's enough that you're here, Chihiro. To give me courage."
"That's not what I meant!" she stammered.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"Belldandy, if Urd was with us, she'd insist that you talk to Keiichi and try to work things out!" Peorth urged.
"I don't need you to tell me that, Peorth! After all, he picked your suggestion over mine!" Belldandy shot back.
That again.
Peorth had watched as Belldandy threw the Mother of All Hissy Fits. She had given Keiichi the silent treatment for over a week. Obviously, the stress of her sister dying had overflown Belldandy's usual sense of restraint, firing off sideways at her mortal boyfriend. Peorth had tried to comfort Keiichi in this midst of this 'cold war of the hearts', but he kindly refused her affections. Which made things more interesting.
"Ah...now I see. Le fou fleur de jalousie continues to blossom its musky bouquet in your heart of hearts, mon ami!" Peorth observed. Obviously, Belldandy had relinquished her focus on the situation at hand, instead she had become entrapped in a fit of envy.
"You have him already, Belldandy, as much as I hate to admit it! Keiichi even refused my 'special service package'! He even rejected me...after I openly admitted that I loved him! Despite this, his deepest wish...was only to have you admit your love for him. Don't you see? I don't pose a threat to you, girl-Goddess! It's all in your sweet little head!" Peorth explained, reaching out and pinching Belldandy on the cheek.
Belldandy looked at Peorth, and then lowered her gaze with a troubled expression.
"But I can't be with him forever. I'm going to die. What happens to Keiichi then? He'll be heartbroken! And the only other woman interested in him...is you! Ergo, Keiichi will wind up with you!" she burst out with rapid-fire gasping words. With that thought, a swirl of suppositions wrinkled Belldandy's common sense, casting her into a realm of paranoia.
"What if he's already decided to make a switch? That's probably the reason why he chose your opinion over my pleas! I'm not exactly beautiful anymore, with most of my hair gone and my skin covered with these...lesions! I'm ugly...and you could easily steal him from me now! How can he love me...when I'm like this?" she said angrily.
Peorth halted her retort when she realized how much this wasting disease had ravaged Belldandy. In another few weeks, she would look like Urd did when Peorth had encountered her at the summer retreat house...
And in a few more weeks...
Peorth clamped her mind shut against that thought!
"He knows that I'm going to be gone, so he's moving away from me...to you. It's a typical mortal behavior when faced with loss of the most terrible kind. My Keiichi is doing this so he doesn't have to feel as much hurt...when my end comes," Belldandy said sadly, unburdening her deepest fears.
This revelation hit Peorth like a small nuclear blast. Belldandy was being nakedly honest with her about how she felt things were going to turn out. And she was so scared of her feelings, she was talking about this with a clinical detachment.
"No wonder she's feeling threatened by me!" Peorth realized. She had felt the gathering of the Jealousy Storm clouds immediately after Belldandy had stormed out the living room a week ago. And they still fogged the house...
Twin shades of gray and gloom.
"Look, I know it isn't my place to say this...but haven't you stopped to consider the possibility that I prompted Keiichi to try riding Sleipnir because I wanted you to live! So you could be with him...and make Keiichi happy for the rest of his life? Didn't that ever occur to you?" Peorth said, getting in Belldandy's face.
"Well...no," Belldandy said timidly.
"And didn't it ever occur to you that Keiichi isn't the kind of man who would simply slink away from the woman he loves with his whole being...just to avoid feeling the pain of losing her? Can't you give him more credit than that? He's trying to save your life, you fool!!"
"Peorth, how can you assume that my darling Keiichi is..."
"Your naiveté disgusts me, Belldandy!" Peorth interrupted, angry that Belldandy had become so transfixed by her dilemma that she couldn't see things clearly.
"But then again, that's one of the things I grudgingly admire about you. You seem to live in a universe of your own, Belldandy. Birds and flowers singing all around you. Pink clouds in the sky. And Keiichi by your side. Now that things aren't so bonheur remarquable...you're losing it. And I'm not going to let you go to pieces!"
"Am I that bad?" Belldandy asked, Peorth's remarks striking her as a foot of truth jammed into the door of her confusion.
"How do you think I feel? I can't have what I want, if you know what I mean. I'll never have mon chérie Keiichi for my own! At the most, all I can do is adore him from a distance! What you take for granted...I can never expect to happen in my life! Doesn't that ever bother you? Don't you ever feel guilty?" Belldandy was almost flinching with every word Peorth spat out.
"No, I don't feel guilty. You're the one who's always so obsessed about my boyfriend! All I did was fall in love with him..."
"Ahhh, so typical of you, Belldandy! Well, I want you to get this through your head," Peorth said, poking Belldandy square on the oval-shaped seal on her forehead.
"I won't whip up on darling Keiichi, whether you're here or not! I don't want to manipulate or force him into something he doesn't want. If Keiichi is to love me, he has to love me for who I am. Not because you were taken away from him. I would never do that...to hurt him! Or to even hurt you! I won't take advantage of him...ever!"
Belldandy recoiled momentarily from Peorth's lecture. She wavered between distrust and acceptance. Peorth had basically admitted that she was giving up on Keiichi, despite the strong love for him dwelled in her kokoro.
They had been sharing kokoros, Peorth and she. No wonder this was so intense, so difficult.
"Peorth...I think I need to be with my sister," Belldandy interjected in a cheerless voice, dismissing the whole conversation.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Chihiro looked on as Keiichi punched a complex sequence out on one of the several button clusters on the large machine. A loud basso humming sounded forth as the Super Energy Infusion Machine Mk. III fired up to power the Zapper.
"Please don't blow out," she heard him mutter prayerfully as the humming became shriller. Eventually the humming faded to an orderly quiet buzz as the indicator showed 100 percent output.
Suddenly, a dark blackbody shot out of Keiichi's chest and hovered above the Bug Zapper. Keiichi pointed a TV remote at it.
His actions reminded Chihiro of the remote-controlled electric racecar she played with when she was a little girl. But to her astonishment, the black mass seemed to obey his gestures. Keiichi was actually controlling the movements of the black fuzzy bowling ball-sized object! He positioned the object to a standstill above Skuld's "Mr. Bug Zapper".
"That's the singularity, Chihiro!" he announced with nervous excitement. He turned to the small Bug Zapper and punched another sequence out on its four 5-button panels. Chihiro was amazed; she mentally tried to calculate the power needed to restrain a singularity.
"W..what are you doing?" she blurted, voicing her stark incredulity. She immediately chided herself...now she was buying into this nonsense that Keiichi and Skuld had been spouting! It was a pure fraud...
"Ha ha! A singularity? In the middle of Keiichi's living room?" she thought, struggling with the otherworldly image floating in front of her. It looked like the opposite of a light bulb...it was glowing dark instead of light!
Her amazement turned to fear as she recalled her high school physics instructor reciting in his thin humorless voice that singularities theoretically possess infinite gravitational power, resulting in a potentially infinite distortion of space and time. The center of a Black Hole...was hovering just a few feet away from her! Then she remembered Penrose's Law of Cosmic Censorship; basically, a singularity must be surrounded by an event horizon...it cannot exist on its own.
Yet, there it was...existing on its own.
"I..I hope you know what you're doing, Keiichi. That little speck of energy has enough power to crush the Earth!" she commented nervously, still having reservations about this whole thing. But this wasn't a speck...it was bigger than a large piston!
She watched Skuld push a sequence on a remote control, and the lid of the Bug Zapper opened. A green cone of light emitted from it, bathing the singularity in its glow. A moment later, a bug-like object appeared.
"Eeep!!" Chihiro gasped out involuntarily when it simply popped into thin air. It looked like a cross between a lop-eared rabbit, a spider, and a pocket monster...
"Gotchya!" Skuld shouted triumphantly. A moment later, the 'bug' was trying to escape with a primal aggressiveness; bouncing around within the bounds of the confining green light like a fly in a jar.
"That's the computer virus?" Chihiro asked incredulously.
"Yep! Now all we do is wait..."
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Hole after hole opened into other dimensions. When one would open, Keiichi would quickly glimpse inside it to see if Sleipnir was on the other side of the interdimensional gateway. Once he ascertained that it wasn't the right passageway, he would use a remote control to extend a portion of the greenlight field. Once he created a tube-like extension of the greenlight field leading to the gateway, he could guide the singularity, making it float over and position itself in front of the open passage. The intense power of the singularity would 'plug' the gateway. A few seconds later, the tunnel-like gateway would collapse on itself and close. Then he would return the controlled singularity to the center of the room, positioning it right next to the rapidly moving Bug...until another doorway opened up.
Plugging the interdimensional holes had to be done quickly, otherwise something from the other side could come here! With the single bug caught by the Bug Zapper, only one portal to another dimension could be opened at a time.
Chihiro was agog as she had peered through the spiral 'tunnels'; windows to places that the mind couldn't even grasp. Other realms, other universes.
Skuld and Keiichi...were telling the truth! Despite her overwhelmed senses, there was no way that her mind could argue against the empirical evidence situated right in front of her!
Finally, a hole opened...and Keiichi saw the familiar outline of an eight-legged steed, telescoped into the distance.
"Here boy," he called, trying to get Sleipnir's attention. He felt ridiculous trying to summon Sleipnir like he used to call for his pet dog, Nihonmaru. All those years ago...and the little grave marker still stood behind his parent's house.
"What do I do? He won't come!" Keiichi said in exasperation.
"Wait," Chihiro said. Thinking quickly, she made a trip to the crisper in the refrigerator. She had owned several horses; as a girl she rode them every Sunday...before she 'graduated' to dirt bikes and teenage crushes on boys.
All of her horses had been killed by Supertyphoon Akira when their barn was smashed flat, she remembered with deep regret.
"Everything else about this is crazy, so why not this?" she thought, fighting down the sad memory of her departed horses...
She handed Keiichi a carrot.
Keiichi looked at her with a "you gotta be kidding!" expression and rolled his eyes. A moment later, the horse cocked its head, and then trotted towards him, emerging from the hole in SpaceTime.
"No way!" Keiichi wailed in humored dismay as the horse ambled up to him, and then started munching on the carrot.
"Cool!" Skuld said, appraising Sleipnir. "No, not Sleipnir...the Sleipnir!" she reminded herself. This steed was the King of the Herd of Sleipnir, readily recognizable by his extra-long mane and large hooves.
"Incredible!" Chihiro commented. "He does have eight legs!"
The 'horse' Keiichi had summoned looked like nothing Chihiro had ever seen before! His was rich with a dun/auburn base, with bay highpoints. A slight bit on the wooly side, he sported a generous mane and forelocks, his noble face highlighted by a white blaze down the middle. Above his Roman nose, his eyes captured a piercing blue color, like those of her pet Siamese cat! Unlike a slender thoroughbred, his build was full of substance; sturdy with a stocky frame that harmonized speed and strength. His body possessed an elongated barrel to accommodate his eight legs, and he was tall...his back must have been at least 40 hands in height! His fetlocks and hooves were disproportionately large, like oversized tennis shoes on a child. Every aspect about him projected a regal bearing.
In a word, Chihiro beheld him with rapt admiration.
Keiichi threw the mecha-saddle Skuld had constructed over Sleipnir's back, expecting the huge horse to immediately buck it off. To his relief, Sleipnir remained still as he nervously fastened the saddle in place.
"Give me a hand, Chihiro," he asked as he tried to climb up into the saddle. Chihiro got behind him and pushed against his hips. Keiichi tried to swing his leg over the saddle...and fell back to the floor.
"Get...your mpph butt out of mmph my face, little Keiichi!" he heard Chihiro's muffled voice. Turning red in the face, he realized that the bump he was sitting on...
"S..Sorry!" he shouted as he sprung to his feet, filled with a flash of embarrassment.
"Let's try again!" Chihiro said. Keiichi was amazed at how quickly she recovered, both physically and emotionally.
"She must have been a hell of a motorcycle rider in her undergrad years!" he mentally admired.
He got on the saddle on the second attempt.
Sleipnir didn't move an inch.
"What do I do now? He isn't budging! Is he a horse or a mule? he said in exasperation. As soon as he said 'mule', Sleipnir reared up, trying to buck him off. Keiichi clung to the unruly horse's neck; the effort causing him to tense up and close his eyes.
"Whoa there!" Chihiro said soothingly to the stallion. "He didn't mean to insult you. He's just ignorant!"
Keiichi scowled at Chihiro's words. Yet he felt the horse stop gallivanting underneath him as Chihiro calmed him down. All this SkuldTech stuff, the singularity, the bug, the greenlight anchor for the opening, an eight-legged mammoth horse…and the strangest of all these in his mind was Chihiro trying to be a horse whisperer. And succeeding.
She was talking to the horse!
"Great! I forgot that he isn't just a horse! He probably understands everything I say," Keiichi thought. He looked down to see Chihiro stroking Sleipnir's nose and face.
"Wow! He seems to like Chihiro. How weird!" he observed to himself. It would definitely be a good thing if the giant steed viewed Chihiro as an ally.
"How do I make you go?" Keiichi spoke in the direction of Sleipnir's ears. The steed responded with a loud snort, pounding the floor with his forehooves.
Chihiro walked alongside Sleipnir, and then suddenly smacked him open-handed on the flank. Sleipnir leapt up in the air and levitated, then flashed through the room...without touching it.
She could've sworn she heard a desperate "Chiiiiihirooo!" as the horse and rider vanished.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Keiichi saw the Earth receding behind him like a thrown baseball. Moments later, stars were streaking by him. He felt a momentary impulse to jump off Sleipnir as he realized that he was in the vacuum of space. But he wasn't suffocating...
He could feel himself being pitched back and forth in the saddle as Sleipnir galloped like a real horse. He gazed out into space...
Nebulae and star clusters passed by him at dizzying speeds...and then he saw a streak of stars forming on either side.
"The Galactic Rim!" he guessed. Another moment, and the Milky Way was visible behind and off to the right side. Sleipnir seemed to be building speed still.
Teeth gritted, Keiichi looked out as, one-by-one, the galaxies swirling by, like bubbles in the bathtub.
Soon there were billions of them.
He glimpsed downwards to see all of Sleipnir's eight legs working furiously.
A few seconds later, he burst out of the Universe...and started screaming...
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Chihiro waited anxiously, chatting with Cevn, who seemed to be gripped with tension. And something else, because he would suddenly start talking to himself as he rocked nervously on the living room floor.
"Megumi must be making up with Genji," she guessed. Either that or Keiichi's younger sister just didn't want to come home right away to a house filled with sick and dying Goddesses...
After a few minutes, Sleipnir suddenly appeared in the living room...and Keiichi fell out of the saddle with a loud thud.
"Keiichi!" she heard a cry from the hallway. Belldandy was on him in an instant, sliding next to him and lifting him up into a sitting position. Keiichi's eyes were rolled back in their sockets.
"Hang in there!" Belldandy shouted as she gently shook Keiichi. Chihiro was so focused on the drama in front of her that she didn't notice the room filling with others.
"I..I'm sorry! I failed all of you!" Keiichi said weakly, then grasped Belldandy and cried into her chest. He didn't want to see the looks of disappointment on Bell-chan's parent's faces. He was utterly crushed with his defeat. He felt a graveled choke of panic as he realized that his failure had cost the life of his beloved; that he had failed in front of her parents. Keiichi figured that Odeyn and Freiija would probably never want to see his face again. Then he realized that he didn't deserve to be with Belldandy.
"I'm such...a loser! I can't even save the life of the Goddess I love! I'm worthless, unworthy of your love, Bell-chan!"
Belldandy felt a pounding hurt deep in her breast, when she heard Keiichi's words of self-degradation. She still didn't believe that this foolhardy attempt to save her would work...but she was saddened by how much Keiichi believed that his failed attempt had doomed her to certain death. All her anger seemed to have fled. In its place, she sensed her own guilt; that she had turned her back on him in a fit of jealousy when he decided to try and ride Sleipnir. She also worried about how he could possibly think that he was undeserving of her love.
"Keiichi...you've never failed me! Not once. Not ever!! When it is my time to pass on, I will be smiling inside...because I know that you loved me from the deepest fountains of your heart. You risked your life for me! What Goddess could ask for more? I'm just glad...that you came back to me alive!" she said with a smile, then hugged him as tight as she could. Which wasn't much, because the disease had sapped her strength.
Chihiro was shaken by his strong sense of failure...and the sight of Belldandy. The Belldandy she knew that accompanied Keiichi while he worked at Whirlwind...wasn't this woman. This woman's auburn locks of hair were almost gone, replaced by wither tangles of blackish oily hair and bald fuzz spots. Her face...was shrunken, withered. Her eyes...
"OhmyGod, that is Belldandy!" Chihiro realized with a shock. Keiichi had told her that Belldandy was ill...but she had no idea that it was like this. This was horrible; to all appearances, she looked like she was dying! Chihiro felt a lump in her throat that she couldn't dislodge no matter how hard she swallowed.
"I..I tried! I gave it my best...I..I just couldn't handle it. T..the wa..wa..wa..." Keiichi muttered, still clenching himself to Belldandy's bosom. He could hear loud sobbing; probably both of Bell-chan's parents.
"W..who are you people?" he heard someone gasp in astonishment.
Skuld tousled his hair, then praised him for trying.
"I've just let Belldandy's life slip through my hands!" Keiichi thought despairingly, angry with himself.
With a loud neighing, Sleipnir disappeared. Keiichi turned desperate eyes to see the last hope of salvation for the Norns vanish.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
