Gaiden One: Knocking On Heaven's Door
From the journals of Toadiko Kinoko Mimosa…
I feel like I'm beginning to forget it all, so I want to write it down before it all leaves my mind for good. I always heard it was a nice idea to keep record of your life, keeping track of everything that happens, but I never did follow that. I regret it now— I have to hurry and try to mark down everything from the last sixty years, before it's all gone.
I'm just an old toad woman now— I can't remember everything that happened when I was young, but there are the things I remember most, the things that leave tremors in my soul, and call to me across the waters of time.
My brother was born evil. I know a lot of people these days don't believe in evil no more, believe in people as shades of gray and whatnot, but that just means you ain't ever met evil before. My brother was it— I knew it from the very first time we was ever together. From my very earliest memory, when I was four, mayhaps, I was acting carefully around him, already fearful of my sibling from some previous, lost experience. Allowing him to take the blocks, to do what he liked, to take what I had, all that and more to appease him. I don't even remember what exactly would happen if I displeased him back then… it must have been quite scary if a youngling like me was already so apprehensive.
It's not quite that he was dangerous, in the physical sense, but that he could hurt you through any number of plots. If you made him angry, he would frame you for some crime and bring the wrath of the caretaker down upon your head. If you simply made him unhappy, he'd enact psychological warfare on you, subtle and indistinct enough to make you question your own sanity, to wonder if you were just imagining things, if your brother was really so insidiously genius that he could hide behind a wall and wage active, painful war on you, before either of you were even ten. Take for example in one instance— every night, he'd wake up and move things around the room, move them in ways that scared me, things moved very slightly, so that at first I didn't notice it, but eventually began to feel a cold fear in my soul, something psychologically ingenious that was nearly impossible to bring about, but that my brother could. I couldn't believe it, and for years, I doubted that he could really be so careful, so precise.
But, as time went, I could tell you for certain, yes, he could. It seemed he could manipulate anyone in any way. He was the cruelest, greatest genius I ever knew.
Mom and Dad had died before we were ever aware, so I never had any defense from someone that could love like family. Our parents, as Maria at the orphanage liked to remind us, were wild criminals, thieves on the run that had eventually been cornered one low summer evening and pierced full of the bullet holes so common to our wild atmosphere. It was a story that our "caretaker" would tell us many, many times, in an attempt to shame us into becoming upstanding people.
It was that and other well-meaning abuses at the hands of the orphanage that would only accomplish cultivating my solitude and stark independence, while also creating my brother's special brand of hatred for the world.
We both tried to escape our prison, the orphanage, each on our own, through separate attempts, but only my brother succeeded, only my brother was brave enough to make the leap in the end. At the age of seventeen, with no possessions he cared of in the world beside himself, he crawled out of the small window in our room in the orphanage into a dark rain, not saying a single goodbye to me before he was gone, and out, for good.
That didn't hurt me none. By that point we were quite different people, and I hated him quite enough. I had my way, and he had his, and neither of us cared terribly what happened to the other, so I thought. I worried about him a little, cause' he was still family, and there's some things you just can't stop yourself from. I wondered what had happened out there, out in the wild world. What I didn't get yet was that with a mind as twisted an' as sharp as his, it didn't matter what kind of a body his soul was born into. He could reach the goddamn stars.
As for me, I was left to live in the hellhole for another six or so years. I was ten, then, and still a scared little girl. I didn't think I could survive on my own, especially after the disaster of my previous escape attempt when I was nine. I still had the scars, though they faded in the decades that followed, any scars I have now I got living in this city. I don't remember the details, and I think I'm glad I don't.
So, back to the orphanage. If a child wasn't "adopted" (as was the innocent term used for our peers that vanished) it was the policy of the orphanage to kick out the children at the age of seventeen, when they could reasonably get a job themselves, or, end up in a street gang— the latter situation far more likely. Really, back then what I knew about the outside world I could fit in a single small paragraph.
This little cramped home existed in the wild wilderness known commonly as the Southern Kingdom. It was a hot place, in spots humid or dry, with sand, jungles, and bright colors spotted all over the place. Though a castle officially ruled us from far, far in the north, we didn't have any real law around here. Gangs and other violent organizations ruled, constantly competing with each other for rule of territory.
As an ignorant young girl who knew little of the outside world, it never occurred to me just what kind of a position I and the other children were in as young creatures growing up in our land of chaos. It wasn't until I was sixteen that we were finally, fully reaped, as the obvious resource that we were. In the middle of the night, we were all moved, en masse, out of what we'd known as our home and prison our entire lives, and onto a large boat that was waiting on a nearby river.
It was every one of us, from the infants to those of age on the very cusp of leaving, myself included. They told us older children that there was an attack aimed for our little home, but I and the others who could understand didn't believe it. We didn't trust that damn nun, but we got into the boat just the same, for all the big body guards that sometimes patrolled the orphanage were here, walking us along our route, making sure we got onto that big, shadowy boat, without a fight. There was no way out, and I was finally cursing myself for being a coward to this point and not running for it like my brother had.
We children began to organize ourselves by age groups, and thus, by how much we understood of the situation. Though I was normally a loner, I was just as scared as everyone else, so I burrowed myself with the others of my age, wondering scared what was happening.
Only one of us seemed to know what was happening. He was handsome even then, just a seventeen-year-old toad pup, but he had that light shining in his eyes. Kaspar, he knew more than any of us, for one good reason: he had only recently been brought into the orphanage, and he had a lot of experience on the outside. That's what he told us, anyway. I'd find out the truth later: that he purposefully infiltrated our little orphanage.
It was obviously suspicious from the start that he seemed to know so much, anyway. During our time on the boat, a three-day-ride stuck in a cramped compartment, Kaspar told us that we were being taken south, along the Midas River, to the headquarters of a syndicate located in the far Southern Kingdom. Our orphanage only existed to facilitate this syndicate, which Kaspar called UNITY, by supplying young soldiers for UNITY to use to fight against other gangs and syndicates, their main rival being the massive organization CIPHRA. Recently, CIPHRA had begun a constant stream of vicious attacks against UNITY, apparently intent on destroying them once and for all. We, the children of the orphanage, were being 'harvested' early in order to counter this disaster…no matter how young, it seems that we were all being put on the fast track to fight for UNITY.
This scared the hell out of alla' us. We began trying to discuss an escape. Kaspar claimed that simply trying to overpower our captors (as they were known now) would never work, that we had to wait for a certain time— three days after we had left on our boat ride, there would be a stop for the night at a riverside town. Kaspar said if we broke out then, when the owners of the boat were at a certain meeting, we could make it to a secret, safe place that he knew of, that would be right nearby.
Sounded like a good, tootin' deal to us innocents, and we all— an' I mean all the children, besides the infants— agreed. We would've made it off that boat too, if some of the little ones hadn't gotten scared and had wept and warned our captors first. We were stopped and forced back with weapons. One fool jumped into the river; the guard who was forcing us back under the boat just stood there and watched. I heard the boy landed on some rocks and broke his whole body. No need to think of what happened next.
The little ones may have ratted out our escape, but they weren't going to betray that Kaspar was the one behind the plot. None of us would. He was the oldest among us and we found him awful inspiring. For some of us it was more— some of us loved him. Even the girls who weren't toads couldn't resist his handsome looks… Again, I can only shake my head at us innocents.
Well, the time came that we were boarded off the boat. UNITY's headquarters was a measly little stone building above sandy land, but this was only a guise for a whole series of underground caverns. Deep, deep we were lead, through numerous passages. At the end we met three more boats worth of orphans in one big meeting room, making about three hundred of us all packed together in that carved lair.
We were met by a plain-lookin' toad who explained our situation: that we were to be working for their syndicate from now on, and that if we obeyed, we could look forward to a pleasant life, and fast promotions. A lotta bull, I shouldn't have to say, especially after what we all had heard from Kaspar. We knew we were going to be marched to our deaths soon, be it one-by-one or as a small army.
"If ya'll aren't thinking of obeying, however," The toad looked around at us, slowly pulling something rectangular from his pocket, "We'll be happy to hand out penalties." He flicked a trigger and a decent sized blade shot out, something that'd leave a real hole in ya. Well, god, that wasn't no good…
Course', some of us didn't take that warning too seriously. A lot of us were sheltered, for orphans, having lived so far north before. One group tried to escape a few days after that, despite Kaspar's warnings that the time weren't right— the five of them were caught, the ringleader quickly identified. Four lost a hand, the ringleader lost his head. —Nobody was disobeying after that.
As fate would have it, I wasn't trapped in UNITY terribly long. About a month after we had come to the headquarters, a month that consisted of basic training and education, Kaspar secretly planned a real escape with us; one that he swore would get us out of there. Only five of us could make it, however, and he was choosing. I was one of the chosen.
"Why me?" I had asked all stupid-like.
"Why wouldn't I take a pretty little thing like you?" Kaspar caught my chin softly and looked into my eyes with that look of his. Spirits, how's a young girl supposed to reply to that?
I know different now, of course, but I thought that right there was true love. Ha! It was my first time feeling such a powerful feeling… I was just as innocent and in danger as I was being in the dangerous far reaches of the Southern Kingdom for the first time. A matter of death and love… what they say's true. The two are different sides of the same coin.
Well, I really was blinded. Three of us in this little escape group were girls, and the fourth was Kaspar's most trusted friend, from our orphanage. We were all gushing over Kaspar, and all thought of his love as our own. We all felt like we were competing with each other, and didn't seem to ever get the sense that Kaspar was feasting his eyes on alla' us. Strange, it's this of all that makes me feel awful embarrassed…
So we made our escape out of those underground chambers, out into the cold night sky, hanging high above that barren sandy land. The moment we were out there were the sounds of that frightening gunfire behind us… Spirits! But there was a thing waiting for us out there— a big, funny mechanical thing I later learned to be called a "steam wagon", a strange thing that only existed down in these parts and far up in the Sarasaland.
We jumped in that thing and zoomed away, faster than anything I'd ever seen before, far away from UNITY. I could hear that strange gunfire behind us, but none of it caught us! The driver, some fellow I never saw again after the ride, pressed a button beside the funny "tiller steer" that brought up a little overhang behind our seats! We could hear the plings of the bullets hitting the backs of that metal wall… I'd never had such an exciting moment in my whole life. It think—I hope—this moment I never forget, all of our hair flying fast in the wind, death right after us. I remember, looking at Kaspar, that that was the first time I really thought I was in love with that boy. —No, he was already a man then. A real hero, even with what happened later on.
We drove all the night, and we girls all fell asleep fast. We'd never been through anything like what we'd been through before… we were exhausted. Kaspar and his friend talked all the night through, though. This wasn't no big deal for them at all, as I'd learn later.
Late the next day we arrived somewhere unbelievable— it seemed like a sprawling palace to me and the other gals. It was some miles inside a jungle, with small ponds all about, a tall, beautiful, stone thing that seemed to extend past the trees and touch the sun. It was a grand palace, the kind you only saw in picture books. I had never felt such a confliction of emotions as I stepped out of that steam wagon and saw who stepped out of that palace to greet us but who else— my brother.
I felt sick, with all the memories I still had of him… I didn't know if I should be happy or not, if I should still be scared of him or not… had he organized all of this? What did it all mean? Of course, it only took a single cold hug from my brother to have all the answers.
"It's so good to see you again," He whispered, "Tread carefully."
He sounded somewhat happy, despite his threatening words. He had organized this, somehow. Whether or not Kaspar had any real interest in me, my dear brother had set things up so that we'd be reunited, and I would be under his control again. Spirits, it all made my skin crawl. Still— I was grateful for the rescue, as I should've been.
After that, when I was within the palace, well… I'm afraid I've forgotten most of that. The time wasn't particularly interesting, and I spent most of it languishing about… my brother wasn't around so much, but because of him, I was allowed to wander here and there, and to live safely within. As I soon learned, it was the headquarters of the main counter-syndicate to UNITY… that of the group called CIPHRA. CIPHRA and UNITY were the two largest syndicates in the Southern Kingdom, competing endlessly for control of the drug trade, control of slave provision for the far southern Lychee Kingdom, and of particular importance, territorial control of the land.
It was to CIPHRA that my brother had journeyed to, becoming a soldier and then using his supernatural intellect to worm his way up. He had somehow convinced them to allow him access to books and technology, and through those two outputs was able to begin work on a number of sinister inventions, mainly weapons.
I was not allowed to see them, and I hardly even saw my brother again after when he had greeted me at the palace gates. That didn't bother me none for a long time.
Well, I wasn't a lazy gal. The years of being penned up were finally catching up to me, as well as that hidden desire I had tried to ignore back in the UNITY headquarters— that I wanted to fight, wanted to serve, work as a member of something. I wanted to be.
So, what else was gonna happen? I became an active member of CIPHRA. I made an excuse that I just wanted to help the rescue of the other orphans, still trapped in UNITY's underground prison, and began to plan and work at it despite knowing full well what kind of fate would await those I rescued: recruitment at CIPHRA. Perhaps my unnaturally cushy position blinded me— I thought that all those poor children could have the same kind of life I had then. I was willfully ignorant.
So it was always my goal, working with CIPHRA to "liberate" those poor children. But, the years passed and passed and the original goal left my mind completely. A lot of things happened, and I became wrapped up in the whole war. It's hard to think about now, everything that happened to me over the next twenty years— a lot happened.
Kaspar and I fell in deep love…or, at least, I did. I was young, and stupid, and still didn't realize he was with others. When I did, it struck like nothing ever had, and I felt broken for a long time after. I swore I'd never talk to that man again.
My brother remained reclusive, something I was fine with. I regret such feelings now, but things are different when you're young. You never think about what you'll regret later…you just do what you feel. And I felt that I hated my brother, the sinister, crawling thing that he was. I felt justified then, but terrible now. I did talk to him a few more times, and he did allow me to see his greatest, and most terrible work of art.
It had been seventeen years since I'd come to CIPHRA and became a full-fledged member. Not terribly much had changed, in the grand scheme of things. We were still at war with UNITY, the slave trade had only grown in robustness, and our land, the southern Mushroom Kingdom— as I found was truly its name— remained a land of endless strife. A lot of things had happened to me, but I feel that a lot of them ultimately did not matter. My many desires remained unsated, and what contributions I made to CIPHRA's cause would stand as absolutely nothing compared to what my brother would achieve.
Thirty-seven years ago was the last time I ever saw him. Coming down into his deep, underground lair, seeing where he had spent his last seventeen years, fighting his own manipulative and scientific battles. CIPHRA had the power and money of a government, and it seemed that my brother was the head scientist, primary weapon creator that received those many funds. He'd made many terrifying things over the years, things I'd seen and even sometimes worked with without even knowing it'd come from his crafting fingers. It was like he'd been born to create weapons— artillery, biological, chemical… his ultimate work would be of the physical. It was for this he had called me down to his secret place.
"This will be my greatest work." He said bluntly. He had a terrible look in his eyes, I don't think anything else will ever stick in my mind quite as much as that look he had: a joy, a threat, a careful solemn look still, fear there too, and underlying it all a guilt.
"What is it?" I said suspiciously, waiting on edge for some kind of psychological trap.
"This here, this," He laid a hand down on a small metallic box, "Nothing can compare."
I didn't say nothing. I was still a-waiting for some verbal trap.
"Aren't you proud?" He asked scathingly, his tone vile.
It didn't catch me off guard; I knew it was all some trick. "What is it?" I asked flatly.
He sneered and swiped it off his table, pointing it at a far corner of the room. A very wrong corner. Looking at it, I suddenly realized that no, there was something horribly wrong with the whole damn room— its structure was abstracted, vague, wrong in a way I couldn't hardly say. Something was missing. Something…I couldn't say what, like it was all crunching in to some space I could not comprehend. I would understand in a moment, however.
He pressed the button the little box and stood in threatening, gloating glory as nothing seemed to happen. The corner of the room, bent out of shape and Wrong as it was did not seem to change at all. Seven seconds of some outward change followed before a feeling entered my stomach. An awful feeling, something uniquely terrifying and cold that makes you never forget a moment. Spirits, I want to cry out now, just thinking about it.
I was young and made of tougher stuff then, so I didn't show too much of what I was feeling on the inside, I just gritted my teeth and waited for whatever was going to happen. —Oh, did it happen! I began to hear a tremendous sucking sound, like the water in a tub being sucked down the drain, and then suddenly, I and my brother were closer to the corner of the room, and things felt even worse than before. It was like we had teleported into another dimension, where the dark cramped room we stood in was even darker than moments earlier, more cramped than before.
My brother turned to me then, and even with his obscuring glasses on, I could tell from the thick-set grimace on his face that even he was feeling it, that feeling of just Wrong. Though it sickened him as it did me, he was also able to revel in it— that's how far he was.
"I call it Heaven's Door." He said solemnly. "Do you understand?"
I shook my head slightly.
"It destroys physical space," His lips twitched slightly, like he was trying to smile, "It…it removes it, puts it elsewhere."
I said nothing but frowned. I remembered clearly that you could never admit to Elvin that you didn't understand— he'd drag you into a world of mocking.
"I know you don't understand," He turned back to the corner, "I don't either. But it's…it is and it will be my greatest achievement."
"Elvin," I swallowed, "Yer speaking nonsense. You can't destroy space. That doesn't make no sense."
"It's math," He replied quietly, still ringing with that tone of infinite contempt, "I calculated, and…"
"What the hell did you calculate?" I almost shouted. It must've been that stuffiness in the room that was driving me to hysteria… "How do you destroy space, Elvin? That ain't right!"
"It's an adaptation of an old formula. But most of the work is mine." I just then noticed his hands trembling. "It's my greatest…"
"Elvin," I grabbed his hands and caught his attention and tried to pretend it wasn't my brother I was speaking to but some fool scientist that could be reasoned with. "You can't let this thing get out, Elvin. You can't use it. It ain't right. That thing…I don't understand, and you don't either, but I feel like it's…it's Wrong. It's devastation. Pure and simple. "
"This is not about feelings, Toadiko."
It was the first time he had actually said my name as far as I could remember. It might've shocked me more than his damned weapon.
He looked on the edge of crying at that point. He knew what he was doing was not right. He knew it, but he just wouldn't stop what he was doing.
"If this ain't about feelings, then what the hell is this about?" I almost shouted. "What do you want, Elvin? You already made so many weapons… we've already decimated UNITY! It don't matter that they still have an equal amount of territory as us— it's just cause' they're forced to run all the time, take places we don't even want! Do you really care that much? Why do you have to make…make that thing? Will you even be satisfied now?"
Oh, no.
"I am far from done. It's not yet feasible as a weapon. Too small scale." He grimaced. "It took me years to reach this point…and it'll take me years more… but I will perfect Heaven's Door. It's my purpose."
Your purpose? I wanted to scream.
"As I lived, I was always questioning my purpose, Toadiko," He was speaking softly now, no longer in his usual cutting tone, "I had found that life was essentially…meaningless. People live only to reproduce, and they satisfy themselves with their made-up goals, things such as worship, or fake ideals like honor or love. But, I, Elvin Mimosa, apparently alone in this world… feel none of that. I feel nothing but hate. You know I hate you, don't you?"
I nodded and restrained myself from leaving right then, knowing that this moment would be the closest I would ever come to understanding my brother.
"I don't hate you completely, of course, but I do hate you in general. I hate the way you speak, the way you think (in your little closeminded ways), and I hate that we are related by blood. I hate everyone in the world, for existing as irritations, for doing nothing but standing in my way. I hate, and it's all I feel." He looked down at a gloved hand and took on a dazed expression. "That is all I am, hate. If I am to exist as a soul, if souls really exist, the only thing that my soul is is hate. That is who I am, if I must exist."
"And what my hate tells me to do is to create weapons, to perfect tools of mass destruction, to cut down the useless people that I hate, the useless people who exist for nothing but to gorge food and wallow ineffectually in their messes. It has been my life purpose to create the ultimate weapon, the ultimate work of art… and now, I believe I've come close. So, so close. Once I'm done," That dazed, dazed look of his was nothing good, "I'll have found my purpose."
Well, I had nothing to say after that. I didn't need to, he sure as hell knew what I thought about all of this. I turned and went to walk right out of there, and that woulda been the end of it, but he wasn't done yet.
"He got you pregnant, didn't he?" Elvin called. "You're going to have a child, aren't you?"
I ignored him and kept walking up those steps.
"I wonder how long she'll live?"
I still don't know how the hell he knew I was gonna have a girl.
"Goodbye Toadiko."
Well, and I don't know how he knew that was goodbye, either. He was right though— I was getting the hell outta there. I was indeed with child and I had decided after a short amount of thought that I wasn't bringing no child up into the eternal war going on in the land. I was gonna escape— flee north, to that prosperous place known as the Mushroom Kingdom common. I woulda done it immediately, but there were a lot of complications to deal with, and I was forced to flee west first cause' of some nasty activity in the northern part of our wild lands that later became known as the Kremean War.
Well, in the end, my daughter and I made it. My baby Toadette was born on the same day as the very end of the Kremean War, no lie, and I took it as a sign— no doubt, it was time to leave, just as Toadette's father had years back.
I would've joined him up in the fancy town he founded in the Mushroom Kingdom, but he'd already moved on to another woman— a real jewel who failed to stop him from moving on again, and again, until he died in some obscurity. I felt awful mad about it back then, but it don't mean so much to me now. We all get our dues in the end, one way or another.
Can't say for sure what happened to my brother. I never talked to him again after he emptied his horrible little heart out to me… I heard that he continued to work hard within CIPHRA, and I heard some fractured reports of people being consumed by the air itself. I guess he probably continued to work on that…that thing.
It makes me real uncomfortable to think about, but I feel like he's still down there, openin' Heaven's Door wider and wider. Things have been real quiet, but it might just be me. I'm old, and I don't look out for stressful thoughts like those too much. All I can do is pray for my daughter, and hope she never learn about her god-awful family legacy.
—Toadiko Kinoko Mimosa, September 21st, 1494
/A/N/: A number of complications have entered my life, some internal, some external, which are making finishing the story a bit more difficult. If you really want to know, feel free to PM me. I'm about ~70,000 words into Part 2— and I believe I'm past the half-way point for it now. I won't quit, no matter how long this takes.
"Gaiden", by the way, is a term that means side-story.
