Chapter 7: "…if they really wanted to"
And for a handful of instants things gelled that way. The blooder above me trying to decide whether to kill me right then or drag me within; the strange men inside only now reacting to what she had told him a second ago; and I myself just then realizing that I had the Rose in my right hand, and my right wrist was free to move…
The slash had almost no force behind it, but was still enough of a shock that she leapt off of me to avoid it. The tiny corner of my mind that wasn't screaming at the rest of me to get the hell off of the ground congratulated myself on using the blooder's unnatural reflexes to my advantage.
I flipped up to my feet in an instant, scanning the alleyway in both directions to make sure no one had yet come out to help kill me.
The good news was, no one else had.
The bad news was, the good news didn't matter.
The blooder (what was the name? Shigan, right, sounded familiar-) was standing still as a statue, not five feet away. I was surprised to see that I had actually got her with that one weak slash. Just above her right eye there was a long, shallow gash that leaked a fluid only vaguely reddish - mostly translucent - in color. Even as I watched, pale skin knit back together and she was as good as new.
At least as good as a person who's technically dead can be. But then I guess that's pretty damn good in any blooder's case…
She felt above her eye with one hand, where the cut had been a second ago. "Hmm…" She purred softly in that wicked-smooth voice. "It's been a long time since anyone has managed to catch me by surprise." I thought she was about to say something else but she didn't, pausing to look at me expectantly instead.
"Umm…" I replied. Captain Wit to the rescue, as always.
She took a step forward. I kept the tip of the Rose aimed at her face, tracking every move. It didn't seem to bother her at all. Screw defense, if there's one thing she won't be expecting-
I lunged forwards, my entire body uncoiling like a high-tension spring. The tip of the Rose moved through the air so fast that it whistled audibly. (Now there was something new. I'd never heard the Rose whistle before. Must have had something to do with my bloodstream being sixty percent adrenaline by that point.)
It was perhaps the fastest I had ever moved in my entire life. It didn't matter very much. Reflexes born of black magic will trump adrenaline any day of the week. She deflected the Rose by slapping the flat of the blade aside with her palm. Oh well, I had half expected that to happen. While she was thus distracted, I brought my fist up and into her gut.
"That wasn't very nice." She said, utterly indifferent to a blow that would have reduced most people to a choking wreck.
Before I could recover she seized my outstretched arms in grips like a pair of steel manacles and threw me into the wooden wall beside her. It was unbelievable; she couldn't possibly have been one-half my weight (and I'm not a big guy) yet I was being manhandled like a little kid.
I grunted at the spine-bruising impact, but landed on my feet. I aimed to cut her arm off at the elbow where she was holding onto my wrist. Again, I wasn't fast enough. She pulled back and punched me in the chest so hard I could feel shockwaves moving up and down my torso. Again my spine slammed into the wall. I thought I could feel the beginnings of a hole in it this time. (The wall, not my back, thankfully.)
I brought the Rose around in front of me and she faded back as if made of smoke. Through the bruising-induced haze I did manage one useful thought: She has no skill at all. Sure, she was inhumanly fast and strong, but she had no real technique. My very next thought (not nearly as useful) was: Not that that's going to help me when she punches my spine through this fucking wall….
BANG!
Shigan blinked, then looked down. I looked down with her. I wondered which of us was more astonished to see the gaping entry wound of a bullet below her left arm. My money's on her.
Still perfectly synchronized, we both looked up towards the end of the alleyway (the end that was near the front of the building, hillwards) where stood my two saviors. The Soul Hunter and the Shadow Walker.
BANG!
Walker pulled the trigger of his rifle again. This time his aim was off. He was going for her skull but missed cleanly. To her credit, the blooder realized she was in real danger now, and did the smartest thing possible. With a heave and a twist, I was sent sailing along through the air, elegant as a sack of bricks, directly towards my two rescuers.
Good thing she wasn't quite strong enough to get me all the way there. I might have broken an arm or something really serious. As it was, I merely landed with quite a few new bruises.
I groaned and dragged myself to a sitting position, thinking of how nice it would be if I could get some kind of a special dispensation on the effects of gravity. No more falling for me then…
"Sindai, catch!" Walker yelled. I just barely snagged the waterskin out of the air in time. With elation, I realized it was more of that watered-down healing potion the two bounty hunters carried around with them. Damn, was I ever glad to see it.
Refreshed and rejuvenated, I got up just in time to duck down again as I realized there was still a very pissed off blooder behind me.
BANG!
I didn't see if Walker hit or missed that time, or what Shigan had been busy doing while I was rejoining the ranks of the healthy. I was too busy watching a shadowy figure come out from around the front of the building and kick Hunter's ass. Walker caught it out of the corner of his eye and turned to shoot - but not fast enough. The figure snatched the gun out of Walker's hands and smashed him in the side of the head with the stock.
Then it produced something from its clothes, something that hissed like the Rose as it grew a long, razor-sharp blade, and cut the rifle in half.
Little white mice with icy-cold feet ran up and down my spine.
The figure turned to regard me, and, at exactly that moment, a particularly large chunk of Meteor lit the sky as bright as day directly overhead. I saw raggedy clothes, a sword that could have been the Rose's twin, and eyes which held equal parts mirth, maliciousness, and madness. The light faded, and he became a shadow once more.
"Shigan!" He called out. Then his voice seemed to change pitch, strangely, as he continued. "Deal with those two, will ya?" There was a change again. "This one has something I want."
The blooder bitch made no reply. As she slipped by me, I saw why. That bullet of Walker's that had hit her had punctured both lungs, causing them to fill with that strange, transparent fluid. Doubtless she'd be fine in the long run, but for a while she wasn't going to be saying much to anyone.
And I was left alone again, facing a living legend. My eyes readjusted to the dim moonlight and I could see more clearly. The man continued walking closer, slowly, measuredly, as the executioner walks.
My vision became sharp enough to pierce the shadows around my approaching adversary at last. I locked gazes with him, then realized I'd made a very big mistake…
Pits of nothing. Gaps in the face… Those were his eyes. They could not be described as "black" because…black is a color.
Until that instant I had thought the expression "eyes that look through you" could not possibly be literal.
And I fell…
All at once, the full force of the situation swept over me. Fear, debilitating, creeping terror threatened to pull me under and drown me within the tales I had heard of the Five's terrible tyrannies across the Western Continent. Roughly, I pulled my mind up through the torrent. Focus! Those are exaggerations, rumors! This is real and now! There had to be a way, had to be a way to keep me from killing myself and only knowing it when he ran me through on his own malleable blade…
"You're…the Many?" I choked out. Yes, yes that was it. He is human. He will answer. Then he wouldn't be a phantasm, a bogeyman, any longer. Yes, yes…
He grinned slightly, rattling me (impossibly) still further. "Personally I prefer the name 'Rifts,' but I believe I'm known by that which you have just spoken by far more people." I blinked. What in the Planet? His words didn't fit with the Eyes.
I blinked again, looked again. The Eyes were gone completely. In their places sat normal eyes, eyes of blue. He continued. "It's a sort of a description as well, you see? Like 'the Many'? The Rifts are in my mind, the name is in the air." He smiled again, evidently quite pleased with himself. I was beyond thinking at that point.
His eyes changed again. Reptile green, now. His voice became rougher, more businesslike, less dreamy. "You have something I want." He stated flatly. I knew that already. "The sword. Give it to me, and-" He was cut off in mid sentence by…himself? I shuddered at these new eyes. They were white as…white as…nothing I could imagine. The polar opposite of the Eyes. Not as disconcerting, though they looked through me in that same way.
"Mmm…" The Many made a thinking noise to himself. "What is its name?" He nodded downwards, looking to where my right hand hung limp by my side, my weapon grasped, nearly forgotten, in its fingers.
"The Steel Rose." I answered before I could think. He reminded me of Hunter now, with that way of staring at nothing with absolute intensity.
"Ah…Steel Rose, meet the Iron Lily." He held up his own weapon, a mirror image of my own. No, wait, there were differences…the Rose was tinted red, while the Lily was blue…perhaps because they were modeled after different flowers? Yeah, that made sense. All of a sudden, his eyes went red as blood. Red as mine. "Now it's time for the killing part."
Still drained from my moments within the Eyes, I was caught totally unprepared. The razor tip of the Lily came at my chest. It was a killing thrust, one that I couldn't possibly avoid. Still, I brought the Rose up, just barely tapping the midsection of the Lily with the tip before it penetrated my chest, skewering my heart and-
No, wait.
CRACK-BOOM!
There was thunder without lightning.
Only twenty years of conditioning in the harshest age the Planet had ever known kept me from being blown head over heels by the sheer sound. As it was, I was driven a good ten feet backwards, digging furrows in the trash that made up the alleyway floor. The sound faded. I brought my arms down from where instinct had placed them to shield my head and looked at the Many.
He was muttering to himself. Looking down at the sword in his hand, then at me, then back. The mutters changed tone constantly, as if it was not a single person but an entire crowd muttering among themselves. (then again, from a certain point of view, it was.) His eyes shifted color so rapidly I could barely pick out individual shades.
But my mind was working again. Something in that sound (whatever the hell it had been) was more clarifying and reinvigorating than any amount of watered-down potion. I was capable of acting for myself now, thinking my own thoughts. And my thoughts were screaming: Kill that multi-eyed bastard and get the hell out of here! Well, it seemed to make sense at the time.
So I made my move, snatching a knife from my coat and hurling it at his face as I ran forwards. It didn't even startle him. Smooth as ice he reached up with the flat of the Lily and knocked the projectile away. I threw another, same result. Then a third, same again. And then I was on him and it was a pure sword duel, one of the most uneven I'd ever been engaged in. I had no edges over him; he was faster, stronger, and far more skilled. The multifaceted character of his eyes extended into his fighting style, causing radical shifts in technique and tactics - even in mid-move. It was only this unpredictable self-contradiction that saved me from a very rapid death. As soon as he gained an advantage, his personality shifted and he moved in a totally different direction. It was a dead stalemate.
Seconds stretched into minutes. Had I the time to spare, I would have been shocked. I was matching one of the Five! But then, matching wasn't good enough. Sooner or later he wasn't going to cut himself off when he gained an advantage, and then I would lose.
Then, more sudden than any other shift, Rifts' eyes went polar-white and he shoved me away so hard the breath was knocked out of me when I hit the wall. He clutched at his head with his hands, obviously in unbelievable pain. His mouth opened, but no sounds came out. I was still gasping on the ground, trying to get my breath back so I could finish him before whatever-the-hell-was-happening wore off.
Just as I began to recover, his writhing stopped. The Eyes were back.
With them, the Many seemed to regain control over himself…but not entirely. His knuckles were white on the hilt of the Lily and every vein and muscle stood out rigidly against his skin.
Slowly, deliberately, he turned away from me and towards the entrance to the alley…where stood Hunter. Their eyes locked, both were as still as statues. Featureless pits against expressionless orbs. I did my level best to become a part of the alley's wall.
It didn't help. Something as massive as mountain pressed against my mind, crushing, constricting, strangling. I took the only escape route still available.
I blacked out.
* * *
For the second time that evening I was woken up while trying to mimic a fish and breath water. For the second time that evening I was unsuccessful. I hacked, I coughed, I spluttered. When at last I regained full awareness I saw that the source of the rather unsubtle liquid awakening had been Walker.
I had been lying down, now I bolted upright, scanning my surroundings. We were still in that same alleyway, only now there was a complete lack (I was happy to note) of beautiful vampire she-devils and psychotic schizophrenic swordsmen. Hunter leaned against the wall at the mouth of the alley, presumably on lookout duty.
"What the hell happened?" I asked my reviver. "How long was I out?"
He shook his head, looking very beat up and tired. "I was about to ask you the same thing. Hunter won't say a word about it and I didn't get here until the Many was gone."
I frowned, then remembered something and looked down. Yes, the Rose was still grasped in my hand. But…what? It was still a sword. That was strange, it shouldn't have held a weapon's shape if I was unconscious… "I don't remember that well. My head…feels like someone took a sledgehammer to my mind."
"I was afraid of that." Walker glanced at Hunter, then back to me. "What in Holy's name were you doing out here anyways?"
"Oh…yeah." I dragged my feet back underneath myself and got up shakily, supporting myself on the wall. "That's…kind of a weird story…"
"Try me."
"If you say so…" It took me another moment to piece everything back together. My memory was coming back, but slowly. As quickly and concisely as I could - which wasn't very - I related everything that'd happened from the moment Hunter had left us at Red's to when I'd blacked out. He didn't react visibly to any of it.
When I'd finished, he entered the house where I'd listened in on the pair talking, where Cabutler had last gone. A few seconds later he returned. "The Eastern Continent doesn't have anything more to fear from the Don of Kalm." He reported grimly. "He's in there all right, minus a good chunk of his throat and most of his blood."
I suppose I should have reacted to that, but I was still preoccupied, still remembering, trying to figure out… Wait a minute. "Walker, I want you to answer a question, and I swear to Holy I'm not taking 'Go ask him.' as an answer this time. What is it, exactly, that Hunter…" I searched for the right words, unsuccessfully. "Does?"
"Oh." He said blandly. "He's deaf."
"Huh?" I blinked, the incongruity of the statement stopping me cold. "But he's not-"
"Yes, he is." Said the bounty hunter firmly. "He was born without the ability to hear, at least in the way we think of it. Instead he…there was a word for it, back before the Draining…he's an empath."
I recognized the word, but only vaguely. "You can't possibly be serious. You mean empathy as in…mind-reading?"
"Yes. What's so hard to believe about that? You've already experienced it directly, I think. The Many has his own brand of it; those 'Eyes' you kept muttering about while you were out."
I gaped. It had to be true, of course, everything fit, but… "But the Many used to be in SOLDIER, so he was injected with Mako All of the Five were. That's why the Draining twisted them so badly." I gestured at Hunter. "He's even younger than I am, he couldn't possibly have been in SOLDIER."
Walker shrugged. "You think I haven't asked him that? I have, and it was useless. He's never talked about his past to anyone. Ever."
Somehow I wasn't surprised. "So was he the one who drove those two off?"
He laughed caustically. "No. No one 'drove them off.' Hells, either could have killed all three of us without much inconvenience if they really wanted to. We're only alive because they want us alive."
"Why?"
The older man kept laughing that cynical laugh. "If I knew the answer to that one, kid, I wouldn't have bothered waking you up." I bristled at that. He relented slightly. "I can only guess it has something to do with that sword of yours, and this 'thunder' you say you heard-"
Huh? "What do you mean 'I say I heard'? It was so damned loud it threw both of us backwards. You couldn't possibly have not heard it."
"No, I didn't hear a thing."
My thoughts repeated themselves. Huh?
* * *
A level down and a hundred yards over, a certain pair slipped through the shadows of Brinktown, moving invisibly towards…somewhere else.
The man (or men, depending on how you look at it) who called himself Rifts broke the silence which had reigned for several minutes. "Did you tell that fool bounty hunter what I told you to?"
The woman, Shigan, looked at him. She tried to speak, but only choked on fluid. That damned bounty hunter and his damned gun…she spit out as much of it as she could, soon regaining the power of speech. "Of course…I did…" She said haltingly. Perhaps her lungs hadn't entirely healed yet after all.
She considered the color of the Many's eyes…green…good. Green was the sly one, the thinker, always businesslike, probably the sanest of the whole bunch, and the one that Shigan found most pleasant to talk to overall. "Why do you want them to follow us?"
The Green was annoyed with her. "You don't need to know that, yet. I-" This time he was not interrupted by himself but instead by a new addition to their group.
A dark-haired man who seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be absolutely normal stepped out of the shadows beside them. "It's done."
Not at all startled, Rifts nodded and said. "Good." Abruptly his eyes went yellow and he chuckled to himself. "The idiot, I wonder what he ever thought he could gain by working for-" The Green reasserted control with equal abruptness. "We must leave now, before the entire city is alerted to our presence."
Shigan complained. "We can't leave now! I haven't eaten in ages." She gestured at her pale skin, then at the unnamed man's more normal complexion. "He's already gorged himself. I'm not going to last long unless I can feed before we go, too."
The Green studied them both a moment, considering. "You have one hour, then I'm leaving with or without you. We have an army to catch up to."
The blooder nodded. "Great. Come on, Kyo. We have some hunting to do."