Kids Will Be Kids
kingfisher's game
Chapter 16: If Not for Idiots Who Walk into Obvious Traps, We Wouldn't Have Horror Movies
…
Notes: I'm back, baby! Sorry for my absence. Please go easy on me for this chapter, haha.
Also, I noticed that some of the chapter numbers are messed up, so I'll go back and fix those at some point.
"It's hot," said Kagura.
"So hot," agreed Sougo.
"Really hot," said Kamui.
In another life, Kamui might have been the outdoorsy type. Hiking, hunting, fighting with bears in the forest—sounded like good times to him. In another life, maybe he would like the wilderness. But in this life? He was a Yato, and Yato just weren't outdoorsy. Well, maybe Kagura was, but she was a freak of nature. Kamui had no idea how Kagura could stand living on a sunny planet like Earth—only a little more than a day had passed since they'd left the clearing where Kagura was revived, and Kamui was already miserable. Whose idea had it been to leave his umbrella back where he'd first landed his escape ship? Oh right, it was my idea.
It was so goddamn bright.
The three of them were hiking through the thinning woods away from the capital in the direction of a mountain range where a Harusame base was supposed to be located. They'd hiked through the night, taking intermittent naps, but they couldn't stay in the forest forever. Besides, the amount of wild game that had been unlucky enough to stumble across their path wasn't nearly sufficient to feed either Yato. For Sougo's part, he'd been wary of drinking too much of the river water. An old pirate base wasn't much in the way of civilization, but it was better than nothing.
Sougo hadn't been a fan of the night travel, knowing the two Yato were infinitely more comfortable in the moonlit dark than he was, but even he had to admit the heat was intolerable as they made their piteously slow hike through the sunshine-soaked woods. Sadaharu led the way, carrying their belongings on his back while the three of them attempted to stick under patches of shade.
"No," said Kagura, "I mean, it's way too hot, uh-huh."
"Can't be helped," Sougo replied, fanning himself with his hand. "This part of Oukoku is in the height of summer."
"The sun in this solar system is stronger than most places," Kamui said as he wiped sweat off his forehead.
"No," said Kagura with barely-restrained annoyance. "I mean, why the hell are you both under MY umbrella!?" Sandwiched between her brother and Sougo under the limited shade of the parasol, she attempted to push both men out of the way only to be held fast by two hands on her shoulders. Those two—! "Get your own shade, uh-huh! Sadist, you're an Earthling—you don't even need to be out of the sun."
Sougo just pressed closer to Kagura's side so his other shoulder wasn't sticking out of the circle of shade. "I sunburn easily. Feel free to kick out the space criminal, though—I'm in the mood for fried rabbit."
On Kagura's other side, Kamui locked his arm around hers so she couldn't push him into the sun. "Sharing is caring, little sister."
"Stop touching me, both of you!" Kagura struggled in vain to dislodge herself from the two last people she wanted to share her umbrella with. "Kamui, use your hood, uh-huh! Don't be so familiar with me!"
"Sorry, but it's too hot for Onii-chan to wear a cape," Kamui laughed, ignoring Kagura's indignant yowl as he tugged her away from Sougo in hopes of securing more shade on his side.
Undeterred, Sougo put his arm around Kagura's shoulders and pulled her back toward him, re-centering the umbrella. Kagura jabbed at his ribs. "What're you doing? Trying to to cop a feel, uh-huh?"
"As if," Sougo drawled. "I like girls with big tits. Look at yourself. You're not 19 anymore, China, and you've got nothing that interests me."
Kagura stomped on Sougo's foot, earning a loud curse from him and another laugh from Kamui. "Shut up, you do-S bastard! Gin-chan says only men with big Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannons get girls with big boobs. I bet you're a virgin at 19, uh-huh."
"Don't put me in the same category as that walking pair of glasses you hang around with," Sougo said, not removing his arm from Kagura's shoulders. Instead, he flicked her, aiming for her eye, but missed and hit the spot between her eyebrows instead. "Never mind."
Kagura pushed Sougo's hand away and rubbed the sore spot. She tried again to get him out of the umbrella's shade, but he held her securely. "You… Stop clinging to me already, uh-huh! You're only making it more hot under here!" She tried to step on his foot again, but he moved out of the way. That sadist…always teasing her…although he was usually more aggressive than this. But whatever. She could be the aggressive one. She aimed her elbow at his side and snapped it toward him, only to miss when Kamui yanked her in the opposite direction.
"Kagura said 'stop clinging', Sougo," Kamui said cheerfully. "So stop clinging to my little sister, or I'll make you."
"You too, stupid— baka Aniki!" Kagura's target changed from Sougo to Kamui, but the Yato dodged her blows effortlessly.
"Calm down," Kamui said, ducking away from Kagura's hands with a smile. "Look, we're here."
Kamui had never been to this particular location, but he'd seen the standard pattern for non-urban Harusame bases enough that he could predict what this one would look like. The foot entrance would be hidden behind a mine shaft opening in the base of the mountain they'd come to, a nonchalant pair of doors braced with a wooden frame and locked with both a visible set of chains and a hidden high-tech keypad entry.
Well… There were the doors, rusted green steel, firmly planted in the side of the mountain. There was the frame, splintered and yellowed to give the illusion of age. But the lock…the chains were slack and trailing to the dirt, and one of the doors hung ajar to the blackness within. Strange.
Sougo could feel the tension saturating the air along with the humidity of the summery forest as the space criminal scanned the mine shaft entrance. "Let me guess, space criminal…it's not supposed to be open like this."
"Hmm…who knows," Kamui mused, approaching the door and running his fingers over the patch of discolored moss where the keypad was hidden. The screen was broken, and it buzzed and flashed feebly in response to his touch. "It's been a few years since this base was used. Maybe that woman destroyed it on her way out?…"
He stepped inside, knowing the other two would follow. The screens on the inside of the tunnel were little better off than the one outside, but whatever motion detection remained intact was at least enough to trigger some of the lighting. With the passage dimly lit with flickering blue lights, Kamui could make out the warped growth of tree roots and vines wrapping around the lighting panels and braiding with the wires. The exposure to the outside world had allowed nature to intrude on the entry to the base, and it made an eerie scene.
Kagura stepped over a root. "What woman, uh-huh?"
"What?"
"You just said 'that woman destroyed it on her way out'," Kagura repeated. "What woman?"
"The old Shinra Harusame commander who owned this base, Kujaku Hime Kada."
"Why is there even a base on this planet?" Sougo drawled. "It's not exactly a trading hub, and we're nowhere near civilization."
"You're asking pretty confidently about criminal activities, policeman. What makes you think I'm willing to tell?" Kamui brushed aside a curtain of trailing vines to reveal a doorway, the door lying prone on the ground.
"Relax," said Sougo. "I'm just curious about how you plan to get us off this planet. Looks to me like everything in this base is broken."
"This was a maintenance bay. The Harusame used to send ships here for repairs and upgrades. Oukoku is a neutral planet—fairly lenient penal code, no extradition treaties with other governments. It's a good location for this kind of work. And as for why it's way out in the country…"
Kamui slipped through the doorway, followed closely by Kagura and Sougo. At their entrance, a light snapped on far above. Then another. Then fifty— sixty— one hundred—
"…Well, we couldn't exactly fit this in the city, could we?"
As Sougo stared up, he had to agree with Kamui. It would probably be easier to fit a city inside the massive chamber they'd entered. It was a aircraft hangar, but at least ten times larger than any hangar he'd seen before, its immense height and depth criss-crossed by a dozen levels of floating catwalks that provided access to the hundreds of damaged ships. Only the bottom center of the hangar remained mostly bare. With the spectacular variety of spacecraft assorted throughout the chamber, it looked more like an air and space museum than a maintenance garage.
It wasn't just Harusame ships, either—among those he could recognize were dozens (probably hundreds) of ships from various planets across the galaxy. Suspended directly above them by wires was a sleek shuttle in the style of an Earth leisure craft, its gleaming blue and white paint marred by black scorch marks. The shuttle's wings were detached from the main cabin and held at different levels in the air, attached to their origins only by fat ribbons of multicolored wire. Each damaged section was accompanied by a hanging observation platform.
The three of them ventured slowly out onto the empty floor of the hangar, the only section free of ships. Well, almost free, Sougo amended wordlessly. Whatever had vandalized the entry tunnel had also damaged the hangar—some of the silver wires that kept the ships off the ground had been severed, and the cement floor was cracked in several places where the ships had fallen to the ground. Some of the observation decks had also fallen. Bull in a china shop, Sougo thought, except that the bull would have to be the size of a cruise ship.
No, not a cruise ship…an aircraft carrier.
"Hey baka aniki, you said that Kada did this, right?" Kagura's voice echoed over the walls.
"Probably," Kamui answered. What was the alternative? Something else? What was big enough to do this kind of damage?
And what were the chances that it was still inside?
Kagura squinted into the shadows of the hangar. Most of the overhead lights remained unharmed by whatever combination of physical damage and natural erosion had affected the lights in the tunnel, but plenty of the hangar was still bathed in dark. Kamui and Sougo ventured deeper into the center, but Kagura hung back, feeling an animalistic instinct to dart back into the tunnel that led to the exit, back where there was at least a whiff of sunshine and fresh grass in the air. The floor of the hangar was too bare, too exposed—from the center, she'd have to run for at least a minute to reach cover if attacked.
"What's with you?" Sougo's voice called down from an observation desk somewhere above her head. He was closer than she'd been expecting, and she the shock of his voice sent a jolt through her. He snickered as she jumped half a foot in the air. "Oops, did I scare you?"
"Shut up," she hissed. "This doesn't creep you out a little bit, uh-huh? Feels like a trap."
"I guess," Sougo replied, gazing down at her with a leisurely half-smile. "But who cares? Whoever was supposed to be caught is clearly long gone."
He was probably right, reluctant as she was to admit it. The air smelled like jet fuel and oil and the same earth mixture of light-deprived plant life and fungus that had flourished in the tunnel. There was nothing sinister that she could concretely sense, just the wild and the familiar stink of the three of them, less than pleasant after their hours of walking through the sunny forest. "Yeah, whatever. It's still creepy."
"There's nothing here but us. Take a look around if you don't believe me."
"That's a good idea," Kamui's voice echoed from somewhere across the hangar. "We should split up and get a sense of where things are in this base. There should be a kitchen and sleeping quarters not far from the main hangar. It's built into a natural cave system, so don't go too far into the tunnels."
He paused, and a mocking tone entered his voice. "Kagura, if you're scared, you can go outside and try to hunt. I'm starving."
"Shut up," Kagura muttered. She wasn't scared. She was cautious. There was a difference. What was so wrong with a healthy bit of caution, especially in enemy territory?
…
Hours later, a thorough exploration of the central chambers of the base had proven Sougo right. There was nothing in the base aside from them. And yet…Kagura could swear she kept hearing something breathing.
Maybe she was imagining it. Sougo and Kamui certainly seemed to believe so. But in all honesty, those two morons not believing her just made her believe herself more. There was something breathing in the dark recesses of the hangar and the tunnels where the broken lights didn't reach. She'd seen things moving in the shadows in the corner of her vision.
Sadaharu saw it too. He'd heard a rustling noise in a crevasse and pounced on it, only to drag out a dead rat. But if what Kagura was hearing was real, then the thing living in the tunnels of the old Harusame base was much, much bigger than a rat.
A lesser being would probably balk at the thought of inhabiting the same space as a huge alien creature, especially considering that the space was an abandoned pirate base that had been taken over by the forest. It was the perfect setting for a horror show, and if Kagura were here with Gin-chan and Shinpachi, she'd probably make try to make them leave. Unfortunately, Kagura's idiot brother and the sadist tended to be less receptive to her whims, and for now staying at the pirate base was the only lead they had to getting off the planet. Plus, between the three of them, they were more likely to be the perpetrators of violent crime than the victims.
Not to mention—fighting a huge alien would at least be something to do. It had only been two days (wait, seriously? Only two days?) since her fight with Kamui on the cliffs, but Kagura was getting antsy. It was hard to relax around her two worst enemies, even if they weren't constantly at each others' throats like they'd been a few weeks ago. As weird as it was, the three of them were planning their survival around one another. They'd even split up duties—while Kamui tinkered with one of the old ships to try to power it up, Sougo had been tasked with preparing an unholy amount of rice that they'd found bags of in the kitchen and Kagura had volunteered to go out hunting with Sadaharu. Because she was bored. Not because she was scared.
Those two and me…what a weird combo. Kagura crouched next to the base of a tree, umbrella ready, waiting for Sadaharu to flush something out into the clearing so she could shoot it. For a domesticated animal, Sadaharu had really taken to the great outdoors, catching and eating his own meals until he was better fed than the rest of them.
…Not that the rest of them were all that good at taking care of themselves in the best of circumstances. Kagura, Kamui, and Sougo were powerhouses on the battlefield, but they each typically left the planning to someone else. Depending on each other was going to be an ordeal.
The leaves of a nearby bush shook violently and Kagura leapt to her feet at Sadaharu's growl of warning. For a second, nothing—then, in a millisecond, a thick poison-green serpent slithered out of the bush and toward Kagura. Surprised, Kagura jumped backward and the snake reared up to strike, fangs bared.
"Sadaharu!"
The dog burst through the bushes and pinned down the spine of the snake before it could reach her. Kagura seized its neck and slashed her umbrella through the air to decapitate it. Even with its head gone, it jerked and thrashed on the ground until it gave one final twitch and was still. It was one of the bigger snakes she'd ever seen, incredibly long and as thick around as her thigh.
"Snakes are edible, right Sadaharu?"
Sadaharu barked.
…
"You sure we can eat this, China?" Sougo asked as he eyed the enormous snake she'd wrangled from the forest. At first glance, it almost looked like no different than a garden-variety (jungle-variety) Earth snake, but the alien shimmer of its belly scales and the purple color of its blood told a different story.
"Don't worry," Kamui smiled. "We'll cook the poison out."
The Yato was the only one of the three of them confident in his snake-preparation knowledge (figures, thought Sougo), so he'd taken it upon himself to skin and clean the animal. Now that it had been cut into dozens of wide steaks, coated in flour, and set to fry on the stove in hot oil, even Sougo had to admit it smelled good. But still… "Isn't eating random creatures found in the forest what got us into this mess in the first place?"
"What do you think we should eat, then? Rice is fine, but Kagura and I need protein to keep our strength up. Go ahead and starve if you don't want it."
"Yeah, sadist. Leave more for the rest of us," Kagura chimed in. She grabbed an aluminum tray from a stack in one of the kitchen cabinets and shoveled rice and half a dozen fried snake rounds onto it, then hopped up on a counter to tuck in.
"Whatever." Sougo fished a piece of meat out of the sizzling oil and poked it with his chopsticks. The purple color wasn't exactly appetizing, but it tasted…okay. Somewhere between chicken and river fish, but extremely gamey. On the other hand, he hadn't eaten in over a day, and at this point anything would taste good. Even the plain rice he'd cooked was delicious. The Yato duo seemed to think so as well, considering the sheer quantity of food they were consuming.
Predictably, by the time Sougo was finished eating the two Yato were still going at it with vigor. Sougo rinsed his tray and dropped it in the sink (what? Sadists can't have manners? Mitsuba raised him right). "So what now?"
"Whatcha mean?" Kagura asked between bites.
Sougo turned toward Kamui. "Did you fix up one of those ships for us? Or are we going to be stuck here until the royal guard finds us?"
Kamui put down his chopsticks. "Any vessel that we could fix with the limited spare parts in this base would be too small to take us out of the atmosphere without going through the terminal, and it's not like we can get there in our current state. Plus, this base would usually be run by a team of skilled mechanics—do either of you have those skills? I don't."
"So what are you saying? Every ship in this bay is damaged beyond repair?"
Kamui shrugged. "The Harusame wouldn't have left good ships here when the base was abandoned."
"Oi, baka Aniki— why the hell did you bring us here, uh-huh?"
"There are a few ships that are intact enough for me to use the radio to try and get in contact with Abuto. I can give him the location and he'll come pick me up. But…"
Sougo could see where this was going; the flaw in this plan. "Let me guess, there are risks."
"Risks? Like what, uh-huh?" Kagura asked.
Kamui leaned back on the floor where he was sitting, looking uncharacteristically pensive. "None of the Harusame fleet ships in the hangar can be repaired with what we have, so we'll have to use one of the stolen ships. Obviously none of those will be able to communicate with my ship directly, so the best we can do is broadcast the signal to all receiving ships in the area. It's primitive technology, but it's the only form of communication that we'll be able to salvage."
"Every ship in the sky, plus the government stations in the capital will be able to hear the signal and find our location. You think your pirates will be able to get to us before the guard does?" Sougo asked.
"Probably. But if the guard gets here first, I think we can hold them off, yes?" Kamui grinned. "That's not the only thing, though. This base is running on low power since some of the solar panels that generate energy are cracked. We're going have to divert the power from the base to charge the ship. The base will go into lockdown a while after it loses power, so whoever's in the hangar area will have to stay there until we get a response from Abuto."
"Oh, is that it?" Sougo narrowed his eyes.
"No… If I had to guess, I'd say that with the power in this base already low from damage, it could take a few hours to recharge and end the lockdown, and that's if we cut the power to the spaceship. We won't be able to contact my battleship further if we do that."
"Don't make things so complicated," Kagura said. "Why can't you just call Abuto? Isn't there an easier way of doing things?"
"Not without my escape pod, and you can thank Sougo-kun for destroying it. The only alternative is to wait for Abuto to come here on his own. We're at least 50 miles from the capital where I came down in the escape pod, so he'd have to guess that we came to the base. They might come if they need to refuel, but it'll probably be weeks before that's necessary. Maybe months."
Months!? Kagura gulped. Sure, there hadn't been any murder threats in last five minutes, but she was pretty sure they weren't going to be able to keep up that momentum for weeks, much less months.
Not to mention what she'd be missing. It was hard to keep track of the days she'd spent as a child, but it had been like a week and a half since she left Earth. And she missed it. She wanted to get back to sleeping in a cozy bed, she wanted to take a bath that wasn't in a freezing cold stream…and you know what? She wanted to see Gin-chan! And Shinpachi! Those guys were probably out of their minds with worry without her. What was the Yorozuya without its adorable heroine? Gin-chan must miss arguing with Kagura about her nonexistent salary and Shinpachi must miss cooking obscene amounts of food for her…'cause she sure missed it.
Being away from them even for just a few days felt lonely. Months was too long. She was going to miss everything, all summer! The fireworks festival, the warm nights, the lazy luxury of sitting on her porch with her umbrella and saying "it's hot" while sucking on a 50 yen popsicle. Summer might be the worst season for the Yato, but it was the best season for young people. Kagura didn't think she could stand it if she left Earth in May and didn't come back until August.
Apparently Sougo felt the same way. "There's no way in hell I'm eating fried snake for months. If the radio plan is the only one we have, let's do it."
Kamui cocked his head to the side, waiting for Kagura's approval.
Kagura bit her lip. "Isn't it weird that you know so much about the lockdown procedure? You didn't ever work in one of these bases, yes?"
"No… I never worked in one, but the seventh division ransacked a base once. Once we turned off the power, it was easy. All of the workers were were trapped in individual sections with nowhere to run. It was like hunting rats in cages."
"So lemme get this straight—we're going to tell everyone in the vicinity where we are, including your bloodthirsty pirate crew and the government that thinks we're terrorists? And to do that, we have to trap ourselves in a pirate base like rats in cages, uh-huh?"
"Scared again, little sister?"
Kagura met her brother's gaze and grinned. "Bring it on."
…
Sougo's bed in the barracks chamber was thin and the blankets were stiff and scratchy, but it was a bed, and that was better than anything he'd had in a while. Plus, he'd been able to get clean—moldy pirate base shower be damned—and after the past few days, he'd needed it. It was insane to think about how much had changed in less than 48 hours.
Kagura, who should have been the most affected by this, seemed unfazed. Sougo could hear her even, steady breathing from the bunk above his. She was already asleep. But that was typical for her, wasn't it? That she could be on the brink of death and then be totally recovered, both mentally and physically, two days later. That she could forgive the person who nearly killed her.
Sougo was surprised she didn't flinch every time her brother looked in her direction. Kagura was strong, yes, but betrayal like that from a sibling would come at a deeper cost. Or so Sougo had thought… But Kagura didn't seem to harbor any ill-will toward Kamui, not beyond the level of sibling rivalry.
Sougo was having trouble being so forgiving.
She had almost died. That was unbelievable. There had almost been a world that existed without Kagura in it. The image of her lying still in the bed of flowers with a wound in her side that no one could survive was stuck fast in his memory. Now, in the darkness, whenever she exhaled, Sougo found himself on edge waiting for her to breathe back in.
On the bunk across from Sougo's, Kamui opened his eyes to stare upward. "You too, huh," he said quietly, speaking to Sougo with his attention trained on Kagura. Sougo nodded.
And so the two murderers let the rhythm of her breathing lull them into uneasy dreams.
…
Sougo dreamed of wolves and rabbits and a girl.
He was a wolf, of course. Even when he was awake. But in his dream he was a beast, with teeth and claws and hunger like humans don't want to admit they have. He was chasing down a rabbit, and Kagura was the rabbit, although she was really just Kagura with bunny ears and a fluffy little tail (how the hell does that make sense, he asked himself; because she's a Yato, and Yato is spelled 'night rabbit', he answered himself, but apparently that was not enough of an explanation even for his dreaming mind because the dream changed—)
He was a wolf, again, the big bad wolf (yes, the big bad), and she was little red riding hood, little red China dress redheaded riding hood, the little girl she'd been ten years or a week ago, stopping to pick flowers on the way to Granny's house. And he really did have a soft spot for kids, because if he was going to eat Kagura whole, he'd much rather it be the adult one.
He hardly had to think about it and there she was, 19-year-old Kagura, fierce blue eyes vibrating with heat, and little red riding hood had become a huntsman, fearsome in her own right. She was a hunter and he was a wolf, and she drew back her bow, and he could feel his teeth sink into her flesh and the bite of her arrows. And then he wasn't a wolf, and she wasn't a huntress, and it wasn't his teeth but his mouth on her neck and the arrows in his back were her fingernails gripping into his bare skin. Her sweat tasted like salt… Her body was the 19-year-old body, the one he knew but didn't. Will I still know her in four years? he wondered. How well will I know her by then, and by then can I please have known her like this, in the Biblical sense? She was so warm, warm everywhere, he could taste her voice in his mouth, and dear god he really needed to fucking get laid—
And then she turned into the 15-year-old Kagura, the one he really knew, and she wasn't a rabbit or a huntress or little red riding hood, just Kagura, just China, sitting on a park bench swinging her legs back and forth, waiting for him. Waiting to fight him. And so they fought, like usual, and he felt the odd sensation of wanting to watch her face as it switched from anger to pain to anticipation to thrill. And he pinned her and she didn't move out of his hold, and he stared at her expression as it changed into something he'd never seen before.
She was small, not as small as she'd been when they first met, but small. He could hold down both her wrists with one hand, though she could break his grip the instant she felt like it. What do you want, China? he asked her.
That's a stupid question, uh-huh, she replied.
Kagura was waiting for something. Waiting for his next move, like always.
Then what do I want? Sougo asked.
You should already know what you want, Kagura said. And then she snapped her hands away from his and kicked him in the stomach.
…
Kamui dreamed of a battlefield.
It started out as one of his most common dreams. A thousand faceless opponents, and he hacked his way through each one, dodging, kicking, alone in the world but for the bodies that gathered all around him. The smell of blood everywhere.
A good dream.
Umibouzu… Where was he? In this dream, Umibouzu usually showed up about now… Once Kamui killed his father, he could be with his mother. It was a fantasy his waking self wouldn't indulge, but here, in dreams, he allowed himself to want to be with her. He'd had this dream enough times that he knew he'd be free to see her once he defeated the greatest obstacle between him and the title of 'strongest'. So where was he? Usually, by the time the pile of corpses got this high, Umibouzu would appear.
A lone ray of sunlight shone over the horizon. Then another. Why was the sun rising? That wasn't supposed to happen in this dream. Kamui held up his hand to his eyes. A high, pure voice broke the silence as suddenly as that first ray of light. "Still afraid of the dawn, baka Aniki?"
Kamui's blood went cold. "You."
The corpse-littered battlefield was gone. Instead, it was the mountainside where he'd fought Kagura days ago. And just like then, the older Kagura was standing on a high beam sticking out of the rock with the dawning sun at her back. Her long hair fluttered in the wind (like tongues of flame, he could remember thinking). She studied him with those eyes that were so like his and still so different. "You're not fighting the baldy this time. I'm your opponent."
"Get out of here," said the part of Kamui that had forgotten that this was a dream. "Get out of my way."
"No," she said simply, and jumped down to fight.
Kamui did not dream about fighting Kagura. He dreamed about beating her. It was no longer imagined to him—this was real, and Kagura had already beat him once. She was in his way. He needed to finish her if he wanted to be the strongest. It was like he was watching himself as they fought. He could see his every movement from an outsider's perspective. He couldn't feel her blood smearing across his clothing. It was easy this time. She was down in seconds.
Kamui watched himself walk up to Kagura, who was on her hands and knees coughing; watched himself pin her down with a single foot and grind the heel of his boot into her back; watched himself lift her up with a hand around her throat.
"Kill me," he heard himself say. "Kill me, or I'll kill you."
She looked at him. And despite the blood dripping down her face, despite her broken bones, her eyes still burned with conviction. "I'm going to save you, Kamui."
"You can't," he said, and then he punched into her stomach so hard that his hand shoved through it, up to the elbow. Again.
Kagura slumped forward onto Kamui's chest, again.
She threw up blood onto his back, again.
And now, with his hand impaled in the side of her stomach, Kamui was no longer an outside observer to his dream self's actions. He could hear her gasping breaths, smell the rancid scent of bile and blood, feel the disgusting warmth on his arm. Again.
He crumpled to his knees, taking his sister with him. "Kagura. Kagura. I…" Not again. Kagura's head rolled to the side and then backward in reaction to his movement.
Her eyes were wide open, vacant.
Not again.
Then he was standing at her bedside while she looked blindly at the ceiling. Or maybe it was his mother's form dying in that bed. It was hard to tell. With Kagura in her older body, they looked so alike.
There was a hole in her stomach.
"Why?" Kamui asked. Her hand was cold in his. "Why did you do it?"
"You wouldn't understand," Kagura said in a voice that was both hers and her mother's.
"I don't. I don't understand how it's worth it," he whispered.
Kagura—Kouka—turned her head toward him. Her face was already dead. "It wasn't," she said.
Kamui drew back as if she'd slapped him. "What?"
"Dying to save my family. It wasn't worth it."
Kamui watched, useless, as blood dripped out of her mouth.
"I'll admit now I was a fool to have loved you." The specter that was both his sister and his mother reached her hands out to wrap around his throat and squeeze with the little strength left in her dying body.
"You—" He reached up, but before he could dislodge her hands the skin of his arms hissed and went hot, as if being burned to ash by the imaginary acid of Kagura's blood that he couldn't seem to wash off. The specter's choking tightened, and Kamui found himself transfixed by the lifeless pits of blue her eyes had become.
"Kamui, there is nothing in you worth loving."
He already knew that.
He already knew that, but hearing it from her mouth—Kouka, who had loved her family, no matter their faults, until the end; and Kagura, who had seen firsthand the monster he'd shaped himself into and still tried to bring him out of the darkness—felt sickening.
A child, nine years old and uncomfortably familiar, patted Kagura's empty face. "Go away. I have no use—"
"—For weaklings," Kamui was saying. The unsettling scene of Kagura's dead body was gone, and now he'd returned to a memory. He looked up at the young Kagura's crying face with a cold smile. She was standing at the top of the stairs, watching him walk away. He'd left soon after that, he could remember… He could barely recall the look on her face as she watched him leave. Now, in his dream, he waited an extra moment under his umbrella to observe her.
5-year-old Kagura cried and cried.
But then—when she knew, when she admitted to herself that her big brother wasn't going to come back—she clenched her fists and stood up as straight as she could. One last sniffle escaped her before she wiped away her tears and glared ahead, resolute. And she turned around to go back home, to the family that was waiting for her.
Kamui almost laughed in surprise at how maturely the little girl had acted in his absence. So that's where the defiance in her eyes comes from. Whether it had actually happened or this little scenario was just his imagination, he knew somewhere in his unconscious mind that this moment was exactly when the younger Kagura had realized the incredible burden weighing down on her and had resolved herself to become strong enough to shoulder it.
Ah, well. This is a dream, after all. Instead of continuing off to the pirate ship like he did when this scene actually occurred, Kamui turned around and walked back up the stairs to follow after her. Because hell, if his little sister could deal with their messed-up family without running away, he had to at least try.
Even if it was just a dream.
…
And Kagura? Kagura dreamed of darkness. Something huge and ancient and leviathan, churning in the black, just out of her line of vision. Something with a ribcage so large that the vibrations of its breath echoed in a slow, foreboding rhythm throughout the base.
Something that was just beginning to wake up.