Last time: Naru saw that Mai was being raped again and raced off to find her. The rest of the group started searching for her in twos as well, aside from John and Yasu who are at base with the client. Lin and Naru went to the basement and Naru felt like they were getting close when all of a sudden his connection to her went dead, making him fear the worst.
A/n: This chapter is probably our most graphic, but we have done our best to edit it down to the bare minimum...and, just as a heads up, Naru is about to take a turn to the dark side.
Last time we apologized for the shorter chapter and promised a longer one… that note was still on there from when chapter 5 was short. Either way, we kept our promise, this one is a longer chapter!
Also sorry we didn't post this last weekend, but we only had 6 reviews/comments total between the two sites this story is posted on when we hit our usual time to post. We want to give a warm thanks to Chocoholic202 and Joys for leaving wonderful comments and supporting our writing and as a gift (and because our schedules are both a bit busy tomorrow) we decided to post about twelve hours earlier than normal. Better luck next time everyone!
The Disappearance of Mai Taniyama Part 6: The Death of Mai Taniyama
Somewhere in the sub levels…
Lin froze when he saw Naru crumple to the floor almost as if an invisible weight had crushed not just Naru's body, but his spirit too. Concern bit into Lin's mind as he rushed to his ward's side. Worry tinged his words as he gravely questioned, "Noll, are you all right?"
Naru had to wonder how the man didn't know what he was sensing. It had all been disagreeably loud and clear within his mind. Naru found it in him to lift his eyes, but his face remained frozen in shock. When his eyes met Lin's, he explained, "Something just happened to Mai…I've been feeling her emotions since just after we arrived and the whole time we were setting up the base, but, just now, I heard her...it was almost like a whisper in my mind," his voice broke as he realized he'd never hear her voice again. At the realization, his tears spilled over. "She was begging God to kill her," his muttered words came out sounding broken and filled with grief.
Naru looked over to Lin and watched a series of unspoken questions fly across the older man's face and instead of trying to stop his tears, he found himself saying, "But now it's worse. After that…her emotions just…they just stopped. Lin…" he said as his breath hitched in his chest, and his eyes darted around the hallway, unable to settle on anything, including Lin. "What do I do if...if she IS dead? I can't even face the thought of life without her. Her smile, our pointless arguments, her laughter, everything about her was dear to me! How can I live without her!?" Desperation was evident in his voice as he shared his greatest fear with his closest friend. Naru's mind whirled with the pain that filled the void she'd left in the center of his being...This hurts so much worse than when I lost Gene...
Lin clearly saw his young friend's pain and distress. He realized that, to a lesser degree, he'd seen Naru act like this before and it always seemed to involve Mai, but this time the signs were blatantly obvious. He's acting just like a half of a soul bound pair would, but unlike a normal bonded pair, he's acting as if he were the sole survivor. Hopefully that doesn't mean that Mai is dead, but either way it can't be good, he thought. Coming to a decision, Lin laid a hand on each of Naru's shoulders and said, "Noll, even if the worst has happened, I know Mai would want you to keep going, but we can't give up hope until we find her and make sure. She could merely have fallen unconscious, if that's the case she will need you to be there for her. We just need to find her first," he reasoned aloud for his young friend and boss. He hoped his words would help Naru push through and live on-especially if they were bonded and things had, in fact, taken a turn for the worse.
Naru straightened his posture and, taking a deep breath, he ran a hand over his face, clearing away the remnant of his spilled tears and nodded. Returning to his feet, he told Lin "You're right. Let's go. I think we're getting close."
At a point in the hallway, they ran into a section with a large set of double doors. When Naru opened one of the doors, he found that they opened to a storage room, still partially stocked with supplies. He backed out and nearly dismissed the small room until certain details about the room began nagging at his brain. The first detail he questioned was, Why didn't this storage room get emptied when practically everywhere else had been. The second was, Who puts a large set of double doors on a storage closet? Pushing the door back open, he stepped in for a closer look. "Lin, in here."
Lin followed him in and shone his phone's flashlight around. "This is the oddest assortment of supplies I've ever seen."
"I agree, this is not a normal closet. It's like someone went around collecting all the leftover hospital supplies and gift store nick knacks." Stepping further in, Naru knelt down, grabbed an unlabeled box, and pulled it from the shelves. "There are also chip bags in here," he pulled out another box, "and water," he pulled out one more, "These bottom boxes are all food items. No one, at least no human, would store food in a closet like this." His eyes shifted to look at the floor currently gleaming in the light from his phone. He rubbed the floor with his finger then looked at it in the beam of his light. That was something odd, too...the floor was free of dust. How long has it been like this while we've been searching? "Lin, did you notice if there was any dust on the floor of the upper basement?"
"I can't recall; there should have been, shouldn't there? This place has been abandoned so long that there should be a layer of dust all over the building."
"Yeah, there should be, but there isn't any in here," Naru pointed out.
Lin bent to check the fact out for himself and hummed when his hand also came away dust free. "That doesn't make any sense," Lin said, baffled, "Why would it be clean?"
Come to think of it, Naru thought, if they are holding her down here, we should have been seeing their footprints this whole time. To Lin he offered his explanation, "What better way to hide tracks than to have nothing for them to hide in." The two shared a glance. "We're close."
The two ditched their equipment outside the door so they could more easily search the room. It didn't take long before they found a small hole that acted as the handle to push the wall open, revealing another hallway.
They hurried through the opening and down the hallway only to come to a "T" in the hall. The cross shaped hall looked very similar to the one they'd just come from, however, something to the right caught Naru's eye and he turned and started heading down the hall toward it. Partway down the new corridor, he noticed a square of light shining into the hall from seemingly nowhere.
Naru ran forward to investigate, quickly getting several steps ahead of Lin. When he reached the square of light, he found out that it was, in fact, an observation window. What he saw within turned his blood to ice. It was Mai, lying on her back, her head laying slack and nearly on it's side, facing the window, but her eyes appeared dull and empty; dead. The color seemed to leech out of the world around him and he felt his lungs constrict painfully. Mai, he realized, was his life, his new life and with the confirmation of her death...his happiness began to crumble away, and darkness began to eat at the edges of his vision. That is, until he noticed her eyes flicker towards him. With the motion, the drop of a single tear slid down her face. The small movement planted a seed of hope that she wasn't lost yet. The darkness receded, and it was then that he noticed her body being jostled back and forth. Her position was odd-definitely not in the way the brute had had her when Naru had last felt her within his vision. Next he took in the ugly brute himself, rocking and panting above her as he held her knees up near her shoulders, practically forcing her to bend in half in order to accept him.
Seeing the brute dominating her in this new, more demeaning and twisted manner fueled his rage to the burning point. He glared at the brute through the window and could feel his PK reacting to the increasing rage as a pulse of power throbbed out of him.
Lin had gotten to the large observation window not long after Naru. He'd seen what the creep was doing to her, he'd seen her lifeless eyes staring straight back at them, but worst of all was when he'd looked at Naru's face and found it nearly as broken and soulless as hers was. It could only mean one thing: Mai was in fact dead. He allowed himself a moment to grieve Mai's loss alongside his friend until Naru had begun sending out PK pulses in preparation, no doubt, to attack her killer. He knows what it will do to him if he takes this too far, Lin worried before another possibility struck him, Is he trying to kill himself? It's definitely not unheard of in a couple whose link had been severed by death. If he were to die too, the team would lose both their leader and their heart. Everyone would be devastated and fall apart. Luella would be crushed too. Lin knew he couldn't let Naru continue. I have to keep Naru alive.
He only had a small window of opportunity to try to stop Naru before his pulses would become too strong for Lin to be able to even touch him. Latching onto Naru, he all but shouted, "Noll, You can't use your PK! You have to stop!" Lin shook Naru trying to break his almost trance-like focus. "Mai wouldn't want you to kill yourself! We can take care of that guy some other way, any other way!"
"I'm sorry, my friend, I'm not going to let you stop me," Naru said in barely a whisper as he pushed out with his gift. With more force than he intended, Naru pushed his mentor and friend against the wall opposite the window, making sure to pin his hands back so he couldn't call his shiki, and held him there. He barely registered Lin's grunt of pain as he turned to walk purposefully towards the room's door a short distance down the hall they'd come from. His PK continued to build, electrifying the air around him and causing it to begin whistling. As he walked toward the door, Mai's dead expression floated to the front of his mind. Will she ever heal from this? Can she? What if she can't? His mind flashed back to the brute as he'd seen him through the window and his mind burned hot with rage. He'd hurt her, both in mind and body. Naru's eyes narrowed and he vowed to repay the guy in full, starting with destroying the door that had held Mai hostage.
Even before he could reach the door, he reached out with his power, grabbed onto it, and pulled. The sounds of metal screeching and tiles shattering echoed strangely down the abandoned hallway. As the room's hidden door ripped from its hinges the wall was flooded with more light. The door flew into the wall opposite the room. Its bits and pieces scattered out from the point of impact.
The brute that was crouched over Mai barely had time to look up towards the noise when Naru rounded the corner and suddenly Graiven felt his body being pulled on by some invisible force. Instinctively he clamped his fingers onto the objects his hands were already grasping, his long, curving nails biting deep into the flesh on her calves and shins. The sensation of being squeezed and pulled away from his newfound mate only made him grip her legs tighter, causing her blood to flow more freely, out and down her legs and onto the mattress. Graiven felt himself lifted up and off of the mattress, but still he hung onto the girl. She was now his only tether against the unseen force and the further he was pulled the further her legs unfurled.
As he walked closer, Naru didn't miss the fact that the lowlife wasn't letting go of Mai. He also didn't miss the blood dripping from Mai's legs. He stopped moving the brute away and demanded, "Let her go," while he forced his powers to constrict around the ugly, man-like creature's torso.
"No," Graiven gasped out.
Naru squeezed harder and harder until the brute exhaled with a groan. Graiven's grip slowly relaxed on Mai's leg until, eventually, Naru saw the grip of the monster's hand slip in her blood. For fear of hurting her, he didn't want to jerk the brute away too quickly in case the bastard still had some kind of grip on her legs, so, instead, he drew the villain's weakened body away slowly, searching for any signs of issue while keeping him unable to take in another breath-at least not until he was well away from Mai. The creep made one more, last-ditch effort to grab onto Mai, but his blood soaked fingertips failed to grip her fully. Instead, they left behind a four-fingered trail of blood across one of her shins up until the point where the villain lost contact completely.
With her clear, Naru stopped squeezing to allow the lowlife to breath once again. After all, if the ugly brute lost consciousness, he wouldn't be able to extract his revenge. While the guy gasped for breath and coughed within his loosened grip, Naru turned his full attention to Mai. He clenched his jaw as he looked over her wounds and reached out to cup her cheek. "Mai," he coaxed. She hadn't shown any reaction whatsoever to his arrival nor to her new wounds. It pained him that, even now when she was looking directly at him, her eyes didn't seem to recognize that he was there with her. In fact, they lacked any of their normal spark. His unease and worry for her grew.
Graiven gasped out, "Get your hands off her! She's my mate!"
Naru's rage rose and he refocused on Mai's attacker and his audacity to try claiming her as his. "Like Hell she is," he seethed. In his anger, he powerfully jerked the body of her assailant towards what was left of the entrance, not caring when the creep's body slammed against the white tiled wall on the way out, nor when he hit the remains of the door against the wall opposite the large gaping hole that was once a doorway. All he did care about besides revenge was Mai's well being and that meant that, even though she was unresponsive, there was no way he was going to extract his revenge on the man right in front of her. She'd been through enough. He slowly let go of her face and stepped away from her to follow out her assailant, soon to be his victim.
His cold blue eyes glared down upon the brute who'd helped abduct Mai, dared to rape her a first, a second and even a third time, and tried to claim her for his own. Once he was close enough to the hall, he used his PK to throw the brute away from the opening and down onto the floor, between the observation window and door. He made sure the creep landed on his back. Naru let his rage continue to hold the piece of filth in place, with his arms pinned down to the floor.
The creep screamed obscenities at him, but the screams didn't faze Naru as he looked around to find something. Under the observation window, he spied what he wanted, a long and sharp hunk of metal splintered off the remains of the door. A cruel smile curved Naru's lips as he retrieved it and walked back over to the target of all his rage. "I know YOU are the one who is behind Mai's pain. So, I think it's only fair to warn you, I have no problem crushing you right here and now. The world doesn't need vermin like you," his visceral anger coated every word as he glared down into the beast's black eyes. His already cruel smile broadened when he noticed his victim's fear filled eyes looking back, and started in towards him with the almost knife-like hunk of metal.
Lin looked on helplessly as Naru started in on Mai's rapist. He was horrified to watch the blood spurt in graceful arcs through the air, hitting the ceiling and wall of the hallway even as it pooled on the floor between the brute's legs. He couldn't escape the brute's cries of pain or the renewed spurts of blood that came with every new effort Naru took to detach the tool that caused Mai's pain from off it's owner. Lin silently endured the sights and sounds until Naru picked up the object and blocked Lin's view as he did something to the rapist. He had very little time to see the end result when he heard Naru say, "How do you like having it shoved in your hole, you bastard?!" It wasn't long before Naru moved and Lin could see that the rapist couldn't reply. His mouth was effectively gagged by his own body part. The evidence before him gave Lin a sudden insight into his younger friend that he had not considered before: Naru had it within himself to turn into a monster now that Mai had died at the hands of the thing on the floor. Noll, he trembled, looking at the sneering boy in question, You're acting like a demon. Please stop! Don't lose yourself to hate or it will rule you!
Partially satisfied that his first order of business was done, Naru stood and kicked the brute between the legs a few times for good measure before he happened to look down the hall in time to see Aria, Victor, Monk and Ayako all running towards them.
As the group came closer, Naru's smile faltered and faded altogether in time for Aria to ask him, "Where is she, you did find her, right?"
In response, Naru nodded and pointed the way with his chin and looked towards the wall his love lay battered behind not trusting himself enough to speak. Aria and Ayako ducked into the observation room, not giving the squirming, bloody male on the ground a single glance.
Monk and Victor joined Naru on the far side of the still squirming male. Monk commented, "What the heck happened here...?"
When Naru kept silent, wishing he could continue bludgeoning the guy to a pulp without any more witnesses that might interfere, Lin answered, "He's one of Mai's attackers."
Victor bent down and looked almost gleefully into his ancient enemies eyes before he began speaking in a language none of the three other men recognized. "Well, well, well, of all the idiotic things for someone of your species to go and do. I think you've chosen one of the most ignominious deaths of all time. Tell me, did you forget the rules of interaction when dealing with the natives as it applies to all extra-dimensional travelers? Specifically the one that teaches that to engage in sex with a native of any foreign dimension severs your connection to your real body?
"Not only did you have sex with a native, and break that connection, but the one you defiled has a psychically powerful bond-mate who you've angered to the point of wanting to kill you." Graiven stared wide eyed at Naru. He acted like he wanted to say something, but none of it got around his impromptu gag. Ignoring the Khitanii's struggles to speak, Victor looked at the blood pooling near the creature's feet. "You realize that once that body dies, you will truly become a ghost, don't you? After all, you can't make a new body now that the connection to your real one is no more."
Graiven looked back up in horror at the male talking to him in extra-dimensional common, as if this was news to him.
Victor only smiled and continued, "You should have listened to your mate more. I'm sure she would have tried warning you. Oh, and before you go getting any ideas, let me inform you. It would not be wise to flee to the astral plane, if you do, your suffering won't just end here. My Telirosa are waiting for you should you choose to try and escape astrally."
Naru sighed and looked at Victor, annoyance plain on his face. "Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to keep talking in a language that others around you can't understand?"
Victor raised a brow as he looked at the angry, rather blood-thirsty boy out of the corner of his eye. "Oh? So you have a problem with me telling this vermin that he's as good as dead in a language I know he will understand?"
Naru shook his head and looked away, still irritated, "Whatever."
Monk took the opportunity to ask, "So he's not human. What exactly is he?"
"He is one of an extra-dimensional race known as the Khiitani. They are an insectoid race that feed off of negative emotion and baser instincts. They generally end up over reproducing and swarming like locus. My people have been trying to wipe them out for over a thousand years now, but it is a never ending war." Victor replied.
"So crushing him like a bug would be no big deal and maybe even be considered a good thing by the races living in other dimensions?" Naru asked, his face grim and deadly serious, looking for a way to justify crushing the ugly brute who'd stolen Mai's light and innocence in front of the others. If it was to be done, it would have to be soon, since he was beginning to feel the strain of holding both Lin and the Khiitani in place.
"Some would name you a hero if you destroy it." Victor admitted, but when Naru took a step towards his prey, Victor added, "However," and placed a hand on the youth's shoulder, turning him back to look at the older man, "Think carefully before doing something that can not be undone." Victor looked him in the eyes head on. "You have a soul-bound mate in that girl and she will be affected by your actions this day. Besides, if you wait just a little longer, his own mate just might kill him for you."
"His mate," Naru repeated in confusion. The new information engaged his mind and he searched his memory of the visions he'd seen for any female related to what happened to Mai, but found only one-the one who'd helped abduct her. In concern Naru asked, "She's here?" Just then an unearthly scream rent the air and a huge, many-legged monstrosity came barreling down the shadowed hall towards them. The most notable thing about it was its speed and its large praying mantis-like head, but there was no way to miss it's long, mostly green, body glinting in the light from the room's hole and its size. The only other color that showed was a flash of blue down its back. The insect-like creature took up a large portion of the dim hallway.
Monk cried out, "What is that thing!"
Victor grimaced and answered, "She's a Khiitani, too."
The women are defenseless while they're busy taking care of Mai's wounds, Monk thought. Someone needs to try and protect them all from that monstrosity!
When the creature got close and the older man put out his arm to protect the others, but, Monk jumped past and dove into the tiled room Aria and Ayako had ducked into earlier. He automatically gripped his monastic prayer beads tightly and turned his back to the room, determined to guard the women with everything he had left in him. As long as he was alive, the creature wouldn't come in or threaten any of them, especially Mai-his kid-sister-like friend. She'd been through enough.
Victor moved in front of Naru when the female opened a hard wing-like shell and released a second set of arms. These ones were lined with spikes and stained with blood. He hadn't missed seeing the monk dive away through the opening, but he kept his attention on the incoming Khiitani female. He worried at what the reckless female intended with her headlong sprint, especially when she took to the air with a screech, but he needn't have worried. The female, instead of attacking those standing around him, landed on top of her bare, partially mutilated, and squirming mate. The detained Khiitani male's wide eyes were almost comical in how large they were with fear as he shook his still-corked head at her. With him effectively trapped under both Naru's Pk and her sharp, bony legs.
She took in his altered appearance with another scream and some clicking noises, but it wasn't long before all four of her sharp taloned and spike-edged arms flew up into the air and then swiftly came back down, slashing into the sides of her once-mate. Another swift motion from her sliced through his neck, stilling him and ending his desires and fears once and for all. After that, her body seemed to melt and reshape into a more 'human' form, albeit a creepy and unattractive one. She got up off the corpse and turned to her audience.
Her eyes landed on Victor and in guttural English she said, "You are the Veltonia Elder, adoptive Father of the 'Svaligwagys?'" The incomprehensible word made everyone else, save Victor, look at the female with a puzzled expression.
"Indeed I am. And you are the only one from your coupling alive and still following the rules of proper engagement in a foreign dimension." he said, remaining calm.
The female's eyes turned away from Victor only to come to rest on the still angry youth standing next to him. It was obvious, now that she saw him, that the empath they'd taken was tied to this one and she chose to address him. "It is good you did not kill that one," she said as she kicked the corpse of her mutilated mate. "If you had done it, he might have found a way to remain here in spirit form, maybe even taken out revenge on your bond-mate." Naru took in this new information and began to understand, to a degree, what Victor had been talking about and just how close he'd come to seriously messing up.
Meanwhile, Velnia's eyes shifted back to Victor. "Do your Telirosa wait on the astral plane?"
"Two of them are there, the third is here on this material dimension," he answered honestly.
Her eyes narrowed in thought of the empath they were sent to take care of-the girl adopted by the Velatona elder she currently faced-the one she now sensed in the observation room with the younger, now broken empath. Turning a human into a Telirosa was practically unheard of, but possible so she asked. "Your adopted daughter?"
Victor nodded, waiting to see what this Khiitani would do with the information.
She just nodded. After looking at each person in the hall, she switched to extra-dimensional common, "I have lost the will to continue the fight that brought me here. To go home mate-less would bring great hate and shame. And I will forever be alone and spawn-less...unless," a look of hope came to her face as she glanced towards the observation room, "unless you allow me to take my spawn from the girl," she suggested hopefully.
Victor followed suit by changing languages, but the look on his face morphed into one of disgust and anger. "I will allow no such thing and I'm sure, neither will her bond-mate."
Velnia fisted her hands, "It's a small request! Just allow me to impregnate myself with my mate's seed! With the level of emotional drain I sense in the girl, it's obvious he's gone through a pleasure craze and broken her. That said, I know he has surely infested her with his seed; who knows how many times! All I need to do is take some of it from that broken pile of crap!" She emphasized her words by pointing at Mai. "Do you understand what refusing me this will do to me!?"
"Yes. You will be ostracized and considered less than food by your own people. However I refuse to give you what you want from the girl. She still has value to us beyond the 'seed' you want to claim. I know how brutal you would have to be to retrieve it and that would kill her. Plus, you are the enemy of my people, increasing your seed would only bring on a longer war," he stated in an honest matter-of-fact way.
She begrudgingly nodded her understanding and sighed, "You Velatona are so stubborn, there's no use discussing it further." She sighed again, sounding weary, "So much betrayal, disappointment and unwelcome surprises all in one day. Who knew everything would come crashing down in such a short amount of time...I'm tired. If you really won't let me impregnate myself, then there's nothing left for me to live for. I don't want to live just to become a toy for unmated males, but at the same time I don't want to destroy myself." She stood up taller. "I'd rather die in combat, at least that way I'll receive a quick and honorable end at the hands of your Telirosa. I'll go to the astral plane to meet them."
For the first time Victor looked at this Khiitani with something other than disgust. "You have my word that you will receive an honorable end."
The female before them nodded at his words and then laid herself on the floor next to the remains of her dead mate. Closing her eyes, her body slowly stilled and then stopped showing any and all signs of life.
Lin, who had been freed once Mai's rapist died, now stood at Naru's side, anticipating his friend's eventual collapse from over using his gifts even as Naru made his way back towards the hole in the wall. Now that the threat was gone, words of worry began to spill out of Lin's mouth, but, to those around him, it came close to sounding like Lin was berating Naru, "What were you thinking!? Are you trying to kill yourself?! You know you can't just use your PK like that!"
Even as Lin yelled at him, Naru's only concern was for Mai and the only word he could force out was her name. Without a look or any other response to Lin, he fell, suddenly too tired to care about even catching himself, but Lin caught him and muttered a few curses in Chinese.
Victor shook his head. "Such a stubborn child." He reached out and touched Lin's shoulder to reassure the man, "Do not worry. He will not die." With that Victor knelt down next to the duo. Touching the boy squarely on the chest, he went to work stabilizing Naru's chi and chakras, finishing his task within the space of a deep breath. "However, he must be properly trained…It seems I'll need to remain here for a time."
Lin looked at Victor in confusion. "To train him," he asked.
Victor nodded. He went on, "Shibuya-san has the potential to learn to use his power without throwing his body out of whack, especially not like this-to the point where his heart starts failing."
Meanwhile in the observation room:
When Aria got into the room, it was like she passed through some kind of barrier. It was like the ones Victor had mentioned because, all at once, she felt an extreme amount of emotional build up of pain, shock, embarrassment, disgust, fear and despair. It was like an eerie echo since none of it was coming directly from the room's sole occupant. The barrage of emotions forced her to stop in her tracks and nearly double over with how extreme they were mixed all together. The momentary anguish and the distraction it caused Aria allowed Ayako to reach the girl first. When Aria came back to herself a moment later, she noticed an odd pile of seemingly discarded blankets off to the side of the hole in the wall; still between her and Mai. Continuing forward, Aria grabbed one of the blankets as she ran past on her race to Mai's side.
Seeing her adopted sister's abused body and knowing some of the extent of the torment she'd received broke her heart. Seeing Mai's dull, empty eyes caused her guilt to flare. As soon as she got close enough, not caring that she was getting in Ayako's way, Aria covered Mai's exposed body with the blanket, brushing her surprisingly chilled skin as she did. She began softly cooing to the beaten and broken girl and proceeded to wipe away the remaining tears streaking Mai's face. "Come on, Mai, come back to us, sweetheart." She gently stroked Mai's hair away from her face, her own tears blurring her vision.
As Ayako continued examining Mai, Aria's gentle loving touches and murmured words of comfort never ceased. When her eyes landed on the remains of cloth around her heart sister's wrists, it didn't take her long to figure out what the cloth had been used for and she hastily worked to remove the tie's remains from both wrists. After a bit of a struggle with the tight knots, she managed to remove the bindings and she again began gently stroking Mai's hair. "Look, Sweetheart, you're free. You're safe now. We won't let anyone hurt you again. Please come back." Her voice shook with barely concealed emotion. There was no doubt in Aria's mind that this was the exact fate she had been needing and wanting to prevent when she flew to Japan, but the truth was self-evident: She had failed to protect Mai.
Ayako had given thousands if not millions of examinations, but this particular exam on Mai's body seemed harder than any other exam she'd done. She was pleased that Mai's pulse was steady and beating at a good rate, but with each bruise and laceration she cataloged, a new knife plunged into Ayako's heart. She didn't feel like she could express any of her underlying emotions if she wanted to remain clinical, but Mai's dull, empty eyes and the obvious emotions rolling off the older woman beside her quietly broke into the miko's heart. She began wondering if Mai would ever be able to return to them and, if she did, would she ever be anywhere close to the same again?
The two women became distracted when Monk came sliding just past the opening of the room, taking up a protective stance between them and the hallway. When he glanced back at them, it was obvious that the sight pained his heart especially as he took in Mai's empty eyes and what glimpses he caught of her battered body between the blanket, Aria and Ayako's examination. It wasn't long before he resolutely faced forward again, determined to protect all three from the monster now tearing through its own mate just past the opening before him.
After the odd conversations and once the insect-like female had laid down in her human form, Monk turned back to the room and ran to Mai's side calling her name. He looked into Mai's lifeless eyes, and then noted the rise and fall of her blanket-covered chest. She was still alive. He felt the first of his tears fall down his face as he heard one of the three from the hallway enter the room behind him. In a grief-choked whisper he said, "It's like she's dead."
He felt a hand come to rest on his shoulder, as he heard Victor speak, "She is not dead, but rather she has hidden her heart deep within her own mind, where her captors would not be able to reach it. It will take time, but she will heal, especially with the help of Aria and her bond-mate."
Monk turned to look at Victor, "Bond-mate? What the heck is that?"
"She is a newly awoken empath, and, as such, has the ability to bond with one individual so deeply that it's like their lives and souls become intertwined." He paused as Monk tried to digest the information. When he felt the Monk was ready for more, he continued, "Since she has found her life-bonded mate her chance to heal from this will be higher. He has the ability to help her because of this bond. When he learns how, he will be able to wake her and help sooth her mind's wounds. Until then, she must be protected." Victor stated matter of factly.
Monk, his voice thick asked, "Who is it?"
In answer, Victor looked off in the direction of Naru and Lin both of whom were coming in through the hole. Lin was visibly supporting Naru.
Monk followed his gaze and his eyes fell on Naru. Seeming to come to grips with something, he asked the youth, "Once Ayako says it's okay to move her," he paused, his pain obvious on his face and fists clenching at his sides. When he got enough control over his emotions he continued, "Please, let me be the one to carry her out of this place."
Naru fought everything within himself to tell Monk something other than, "Yes," but he was smart enough to know he still wasn't in the best condition and simply didn't have the ability without potentially hurting her once more. Mentally reviewing the males of the group, he could easily see that Monk made the most sense aside from Lin so he gave his permission with a nod.
Monk whispered, "Thank you," but it was loud enough to be heard in the echoey, tiled room,
Aria looked to Victor, once Monk fell silent, and asked, "Are the others still fighting that bitch on the astral plane?"
Victor's eyes narrowed as he cocked his head and looked at his child and Heart. "Yes, they still fight. Why do you ask, dear one?"
"I want to join them in ending her!" Aria spit out vindictively.
Victor shook his head, "You know, as an empath you should not strive for revenge it will only taint you. Remember, it is in their nature to only see black or white. They cannot fathom shades of grey, nor can they understand the sense of right and wrong that we have. You also know she is not the one who actually caused Mai's state and the ones who did are both now dead. Remain here and care for your heart-sister. Allow yourself to let go of your guilt. You did all that you could do to prevent this."
Sorry if you got upset or mad at us for implying that we were killing off Mai. We did it for the drama. I guess that makes us drama queens. We sincerely hope it wasn't too graphic, sorry again if it wasn't clean enough. -Koujinbutsu
If anyone would like to be able to chat with Koujinbutsu and I, (or rant at us) please join us in Writer's Link on Discord, we would love to hear from you! -Spirit_Weaver
Discord invite: /GFcqBtf7rb