Part Nine: Shinzui's sister has a problem. The world of narcotics
The moonlight glinted off the smooth
black surface of the now-familiar dark monument. Suspended above, a drop
of the shiny black goo was gathering at the edges of the tear in space. After
a moment, it fell, striking the cold stone with a hiss. The blackness swelled
and grew, shifting and growing, and taking on shape. The jaki that formed
was another ugly creature, possessing a trio of what could only be called
freckles, arranged in a triangular pattern on its chest. They didn't look
like ordinary freckles by any means; they were white, not brown, and perfectly
round. Still, as the creature had a glistening black skin, there was really
no other word for the small spots. They were freckles.
The jaki looked up at the
hole it had fallen from a bit apprehensively, and listened. No, it was all
right. The master was still asleep, and hadn't noticed its departure. The
monster frowned as its stomach growled. It was hungry, and right now there
was only one clear thought in its brain: Human juice. It wanted human juice,
and soon.
The creature knew it was
forbidden to leave the Gate without being summoned, but it was so hungry
it just couldn't wait any longer. It reasoned that if it went and found the
Silver Dagger for Lord Narcissus, maybe the master would forgive it for breaking
the law. So the evil spirit, after listening a few more seconds to be sure
it was safe, leaped from the black monument.
It rolled into a ball before
it hit the ground, and performed its three bounces silently. Then the shining
black ball flew into the star-filled sky, disappearing into the darkness
above. The stars began to wink out and then reappear a few at a time as the
black spirit made its curving trail through the night, on its way to the
city in search of humans. The field was empty and quiet once more.
"All right, everyone. I brought
each of you a tape of some listening exercises." Shinzui held up the box
of audio cassettes she'd brought in for the music class. "I want you to take
these home and listen to the short musical pieces, then write me a few sentences
describing how each one made you feel." The young blind teacher slid off
the desk, which she preferred to sit on rather than the chair that the university
had provided. She held Centauri's harness as he led her to the first student's
desk, to whom she handed the box.
The young man took the
box, removed a cassette for himself, and passed the box down the row.
In the back of the classroom,
Michiru turned back to face her partner with concern written all over her
pretty features. "How are you doing, Haruka?" she asked quietly.
Haruka's expression was
grim. "I'm still here, aren't I?"
Michiru shook her head.
"I don't understand. If this is so uncomfortable for you, then why did you
insist on coming with me today? You could have stayed home, or gone driving.
Why are you doing this to yourself?"
The gray eyes narrowed
with determination. "Because I don't hate people for no reason. That's not
the kind of person I want to be. And I may never like Giseino Shinzui, but
I am going to learn to tolerate her. If it means I have to come to
this class three days a week for the rest of my life, I am going to learn
to tolerate her."
Michiru took Haruka's hand
sympathetically. "I wish there was something I could do."
"There isn't." Haruka's
face softened, though, as she looked at her friend, and she squeezed the
delicate fingers in her own. "I can do this," she told her firmly. "I know
I can."
The teal-haired musician
nodded. "I know you can, too. I believe you."
Haruka gave her a
half-smile.
Shinzui listened for a
moment to make sure the tapes were being distributed, and then nodded with
satisfaction and turned around to return to her desk. All of a sudden, the
classroom door burst open. The students in the classroom looked up curiously
as someone new entered the class.
"Zui-chan!" The singsong
voice belonged to another young woman, also very tall, with pale blond hair
and soft gray eyes. This newcomer lurched into Shinzui's arms unexpectedly
and grinned up at her with a vacant expression. "I. Am. Happy."
"Sachiko?" Shinzui gasped,
supporting the frail form of her older sister as best she could. "What on
earth?"
The class had stopped passing
the tapes around and everyone was now staring with interest at the girl in
their teacher's arms. She was related to Giseino-san, that much was obvious
just from her appearance. She was pretty, and obviously not blind, but there
was something very, very odd about the way she was behaving.
Shinzui tried to help her
sister stand, as two uniformed security officers entered the classroom.
"There you are, miss,"
one of them said, spying Sachiko. Then he noticed the blind girl supporting
her. "Oh, Giseino-san. I'm sorry she interrupted your class. We can take
her." The two guards moved forward.
Shinzui shook her head.
"It's all right, officers. I'll take it from here." Her voice was quiet as
she ran her fingers lightly over her sister's face. The guards were confused
for a moment, until they took a good look at the two girls and finally noticed
the resemblance.
Sachiko waved her hand
in the air and grinned at the youngest of the guards with a brazen expression.
"Hi, cutie. Wanna come play with me?" She flung one arm out towards him.
"We can be happy forever." She pushed Shinzui's arms away and began to twirl
around in the center of the classroom, repeating over and over, "forever
and ever and ever and ever"
"She's stoned," one of the
students in the front row whispered to his neighbor, who giggled back.
Shinzui reached out and
took hold of her older sister's arm, pulling her towards herself and wrapping
her arms around the drugged girl to stop her spinning. "It's all right,"
she repeated to the officers gently. "I can handle it now."
The younger guard, blushing
furiously at Sachiko's forwardness, nodded and muttered something that even
Shinzui's heightened sense of hearing could not pick up. He and the other
security officer turned and left the room. Shinzui could hear some of her
students beginning to snicker as Sachiko squirmed uncomfortably in Shinzui's
arms. She looked down at her sister.
"Sachiko, you went back
to Hell's Mouth again, didn't you?" she accused gently, already knowing the
answer. Her sister just stared up at the ceiling with starry eyes.
"Hey, look, Zui-chan. Spiders.
It's a spider ceiling." Sachiko then remembered that she was terrified of
spiders. This was a very unfortunate thing, for her narcotic-induced illusions
had always had the tendency to feed from her fear. She started to scream.
"Zui-chan, it's spiders! They're everywhere!" The horrified young woman struggled
out of Shinzui's grip, stumbling into the middle of the classroom, and began
to claw at her own arms frantically as the illusions spread to her body.
"Get off me! Get off! Spiders so many Zui-chan, help me, oh please
help!" Sachiko dug into her skin with her fingernails, scratching her arms
so hard they started to bleed, and all the while screaming in terror.
The students weren't snickering
any more. This was no longer funny. A few of them stood up to help Shinzui
restrain the panicking girl, but Shinzui waved them away.
She walked behind her sister,
with a calmness born of experience. She couldn't even count how many times
she'd had to do this in the last few years. Shinzui took the flailing, bleeding
arms and wrapped them, crisscrossed, across her chest. Then she threw the
both of them to the floor, still holding Sachiko's arms, and locked her sister's
legs firmly between her own, so that the frantic young woman could not get
away. She held her still for several seconds, whispering comfortingly into
her ear.
"It's all right now, Chiko-chan.
Zui-chan's here. The spiders are gone. I made them go away. You're safe now.
It's all right." Shinzui rocked gently, soothingly, until her sister's sobs
had subsided. Carefully she disentangled their legs, and, keeping Sachiko's
arms crossed, sat up and wrapped her arms around the weeping girl. Again
she rocked, back and forth, to an insistent, comforting rhythm. After a moment,
Sachiko stopped crying.
The class was now staring
in horrified fascination, hardly able to believe what they had just seen.
It wasn't every day that a classroom got interrupted by a hysterical young
woman on hallucinogenic drugs. No one said a word, as Shinzui brushed the
pale hair from her older sister's face.
"You did go back to Hell's
Mouth." It was a statement, not a question.
Sachiko frowned petulantly.
"I I needed" she twisted back to look up into her blind sister's
face. "I was dark. I needed happy. I" she sighed, as her eyes lost
focus. "I am happy."
"No," Shinzui responded,
her bell-like voice, quiet though it was, echoing through the silent classroom.
"You're high. There's a big difference." Shaking her head, she finally released
Sachiko's arms and reached down into her sister's jeans' pocket. She pulled
out a bag of white powder, and rolled it around in her fingers. "Who did
you get it from?"
Sachiko giggled as she tried
to take the bag back, but Shinzui held it out of her reach.
"Who, Sachiko?" she repeated
firmly.
Sachiko pouted, still trying
to take the drugs from her taller sister, but her blurred vision made that
difficult. "Hey, gimme that."
"I don't think so. I think
you've had plenty." Shinzui lifted her sister's weight from her lap, and
stood to address the class. "I'm truly sorry, everyone," she apologized,
"but as you can see, a personal emergency has come up and I have to get Sachiko
to the hospital. I won't assign the tapes as homework for tonight, but please
do take them home and listen through them at least once before Friday's class,
all right? Class is dismissed for today."
The students began to gather
their things and exit silently, each one casting curious glances at the
drugged-out girl still lying on the floor as they passed. A few of them that
hadn't received tapes yet started to pass the box around. Michiru and Haruka
both took cassettes from the box, and started to get their books together.
Shinzui sighed and rubbed
her temples. She stuffed the bag of powder into her briefcase, and went over
to her sister. "Come on, Chiko-chan." She put her hands under the girl's
arms and after a bit of a struggle, lifted the limp form off of the floor.
Sachiko put her arms around
Shinzui's neck, and regarded her with fuzzy gray eyes. "But I don't wanna
go to the hos" she protested weakly, and passed out.
Shinzui sighed. How on earth
was she going to carry Sachiko by herself? Sachiko was only two inches shorter
than Shinzui, and quite a bit heavier. Shinzui was still not quite fully
recovered from Narcissus' repeated attacks at the daycare center, and even
if she had all of her strength, it would have been nearly impossible for
her to handle her sister's weight all on her own. Still, she had to try,
or else go call one of the security officers back in to help her. The blind
girl lifted her sister off the floor, grunting with the weight.
"Let me do it."
Shinzui was so surprised
she almost dropped Sachiko on the floor. That deep female voice could only
belong to one person. Uranus. Numbly she allowed Haruka to take Sachiko's
unconscious body from her arms, and for a moment Shinzui was unable to speak
from astonishment.
Haruka took the girl from
the blind teacher. I can at least offer to help her, she told herself, carrying
the extra weight easily. I am stronger, after all, and there's no way that
fragile little thing could carry this girl. I don't care if she is taller
than me. Shinzui was standing, frozen, as if she'd been stunned, and Haruka
felt that spite welling up in her again as she looked at the blind girl.
"Well, come on," she said,
sounding much more snappish than she'd intended. "You going to stand there
all day?" Michiru looked up curiously at her friend's face. What on earth
was going on? First Haruka offers to help, then she's upset again It
didn't make any sense. What could her partner be thinking? Michiru turned
her attention to Shinzui then, as the blind girl now seemed a bit disoriented.
She helped guide Shinzui to the edge of the desk, where Shinzui quickly located
her briefcase, stuffed some papers into it, and took hold of Centauri's
harness.
"Thank you," she said gratefully
to Michiru, and then was silent as Haruka brushed past them, carrying Sachiko
out the door.
Michiru shook her head at
Shinzui's puzzled expression. "I have no idea, either," she said with a sigh.
"But we'd better follow her, or she may just drive off without us."
Shinzui nodded, and allowed
Centauri and Michiru to lead her outside.
Haruka pulled up to the curb outside
the hospital's emergency room. She got out of the car and walked around to
where Sachiko was laying in the back seat, her head in Shinzui's lap. Haruka
waved Shinzui's hands away as the blind girl attempted to lift her sister.
"I'll bring her," Haruka
said gruffly, sliding her arms underneath the pale-haired, unconscious woman.
"Go in and tell them she's coming."
Shinzui nodded and took
Centauri's harness. She opened the convertible's door and got out of the
car. Listening for a moment, she made sure that Haruka didn't need any more
help with Sachiko, and then she entered the hospital's emergency waiting
room.
The red-haired woman at
the desk was smacking her gum enthusiastically as Shinzui approached. She
grabbed the pencil from behind her ear and pulled out some papers as soon
as she saw the young blind woman coming towards her.
"Back again, eh?" she commented
in a sympathetic, nasal voice.
Shinzui's smile was sad.
"I'm afraid so."
The secretary nodded. "I'll
buzz the doctor, and start this paperwork for you. I'm going to need your
sister's medical records you know the drill."
"All too well," Shinzui
responded with regret. She reached into her briefcase for the copy of her
sister's records that she always carried in case of an emergency.
"Shinzui-chan!"
The sound of the familiar
voice was almost too much for Shinzui, and she felt tears springing to her
sightless eyes as she turned to face the sapphire-eyed doctor coming towards
her. "Demetrius," she greeted him, her voice breaking a bit.
The white-haired young man
took one look at Shinzui's face, and knew exactly what was wrong. He held
out his arms. Shinzui fell into them, and he held her for a moment as she
cried silently. Demetrius felt his heart twist inside of him as he looked
down at her, this beautiful girl he had known for millennia. She's had
to bear so much pain already, he thought to himself. It's not fair
that she should have to face this too. His arms tightened protectively
around her. Shinzui did not make any noise as she cried; she never did.
But she stayed in his arms and trembled, silent sobs that were somehow
more terrible and more heartbreaking than any wailing could be.
"Shinzui-chan. It's going
to be all right. We'll take care of Sachiko now."
After a long, shaky breath,
the blind woman pulled back and smiled tremulously at him. Demetrius was
exactly six feet tall, just like Shinzui, and so they were eye-to-eye (though
of course, Shinzui couldn't see him.) She nodded at her old friend.
"I know, Demetrius. It's
just that she went through all that counseling, and was doing so
well I never saw it coming."
Demetrius looked up as Haruka
and Michiru came through the sliding glass doors, with Sachiko carried in
Haruka's arms. He turned to one of the white-clad nurses on his right.
"We need a gurney in here,
stat. We'll take her to poison control," he ordered. The little nurse bobbed
her head and scurried away. Demetrius moved forward to take Sachiko from
the masculine blonde's arms. "Thank you, sir, for your help" Suddenly
his hands made contact with Haruka's arm, and he froze for a moment as
recognition swept over him. His sapphire eyes met the tomboy's gray ones
with surprise. It's It's her! I don't believe it! The Child is right.
She must be changing.
"I-I apologize, miss," he
corrected himself. "For a moment there, I mistook you for a man."
Haruka raised an eyebrow,
wondering how on earth this white-haired doctor had known she wasn't a man.
Most people never caught their mistake. "Uh don't worry about it,"
she responded with a small chuckle. "Happens all the time."
Haruka turned to look at
Shinzui, who was running her sensitive fingertips over her sister's face
with concern. Again that inexplicable revulsion washed over her, and she
dug her fingernails into her palms to keep her concentration. It was all
she could do not to just turn around right there and leave without saying
a word. I will not be that person. I will be polite to her, if it kills me.
"Gotta go," she said, doing her best to keep the acid from her voice. "See
you later." She spun on her heel, needing to get out of there before her
strange feelings got out of control.
"Haruka?"
Haruka froze at the sound of the
delicate, tinkling voice, but she did not turn around.
Shinzui's tones were gentle,
and overflowing with gratitude. "Thank you."
Haruka turned her head,
only slightly, and nodded, then stalked out the doors. Michiru watched her
partner go, then turned back to Shinzui and the sapphire-eyed doctor with
an apologetic smile. "I hope your sister will be all right," she said to
Shinzui sweetly. "Please, let me know if there's anything I can do."
Shinzui nodded, and laid
her hand briefly on the aqua-haired girl's shoulder. "Thank you, Michiru-san.
For everything."
Michiru blushed, feeling
somewhat disconcerted by the naked sincerity in the taller girl's voice.
"See you Friday, Shinzui-san," she replied, and turned, following her best
friend out the doors.
Shinzui turned back as Demetrius
laid her sister on the gurney that had been brought. Professionally he checked
her pulse, and flashed a small light at her pupils. Shaking his head, Demetrius
put the little flashlight back in the pocket of his lab coat.
"Well, she outdid herself
this time. It's a good thing you brought her in, Shinzui-chan. We're going
to have to keep our eye on her for tonight."
Shinzui nodded. "All right.
I'll be back in a couple of hours then, and I'll stay here with her."
Demetrius looked up at Shinzui,
his blue eyes piercing. "Shinzui. Where are you going?"
Shinzui's grip on Centauri's harness
tightened as her face became suddenly, disturbingly, hard. She reached out
to touch Sachiko's limp, pale fingers. "I warned him, Demetrius. I warned
him what would happen if he ever came near her again."
Demetrius regarded her with mild surprise. "You warned him all right. Shinzui,
if I remember correctly, last time he was brought in here with two broken
ribs, a punctured lung, and internal bleeding everywhere. It was a mess and
it took me forever to fix it up."
Shinzui's expression remained
unimpressed. "He deserved every bit of it, Demetrius, and you know it." Her
knuckles were beginning to turn white as she gripped Centauri's harness.
Demetrius shook his head.
"Shinzui, if I'm going to let you leave, you will have to promise me that
he's not going to end up on my operating table again." He put both hands
on the young woman's shoulders. "Promise me."
Shinzui sighed. "All right
then, Demetrius. I promise." She turned away, heading for the door.
"Shinzui-chan"
She turned around to face
him again. Demetrius surveyed her critically, perceptively. "He'd better
not end up on the morgue's table, either."
The blind girl was still
for a moment, then nodded. Her expression was still cold. So cold. Like it
used to be, such a long time ago Demetrius watched as the tall young
woman and her retriever exited the building, and he sighed, running a hand
through his snow-white hair. She had come so far since that time, she had
changed so much but old habits do indeed die hard, he mused. He felt
sorry for the unfortunate man that Shinzui was going to confront. This was
not going to be pretty. With a sigh, he turned his attention back to the
girl on the gurney, and wheeled her down the hall towards poison
control.
"Shinzui-san!"
Oh, no. Not the Princess.
Not now. Shinzui shook her head. She adored every moment she was able
to spend in the Princess' presence, but today, there was something she had
to do and she didn't want Usagi involved in it. Shinzui stood up from
her seat on the wooden bench of the bus stop as the blond girl and her four
friends came running towards her. Usagi paused to catch her breath, her blue
eyes sparkling.
"Hi, Shinzui-san." Usagi
eyed the bus stop sign above them. "Where are you going?"
Shinzui smiled tenderly
down at the exuberant girl. "I'm sorry, Usagi-chan, but I really can't talk
to you right now. I have a very important appointment to keep."
Minako giggled. "Oooh, I'll
bet Shinzui-san has a date," she teased.
Rei's eyes lit up at that.
"Yeah! Who is he, Shinzui-san? Tell us!"
Shinzui shook her head,
with a small, amused smile. "Not now."
The city bus pulled up in
front of them just at that moment, and the doors opened with a hiss. Shinzui
turned to her young friends.
"I have to go, girls," she
said quietly. "But I'll talk to all of you a little later, all right?" With
another smile, she beckoned to Centauri, and the golden retriever led her
to the steps that took her onto the bus. The doors closed behind her, hissing
again, and the bus groaned as it started to move.
Makoto was the first to
speak. "Let's follow her," she suggested, green eyes sparkling mischievously.
"I want to see this guy she's meeting."
"Yeah!!" Usagi, Minako and
Rei all responded in unison, jumping up and down.
"I don't think that's such
a good idea, Mako-chan," Ami responded with hesitation. "Shinzui-san is an
adult, and she deserves her privacy. Don't you think it's a little impudent
of us to be spying on her?"
"It's not spying, Ami-chan.
It's observing," Usagi pouted. Ami rolled her eyes.
"Oh, come on, Ami-chan.
It'll be fun, and besides, I don't think Shinzui-san will really mind." This
remark came from Minako, as the vivacious blond took her studious friend's
arm.
"I wonder what kind of man
a woman like Shinzui-san would be in love with," Rei mused starrily as she
took Ami's other arm.
"But we don't know where
she was going," Ami pointed out in her scholastic way. "The bus could make
any number of stops."
"All the more reason to
get going right now," Makoto pointed out, and the five girls started down
the sidewalk in the direction that the bus had taken.
They followed the bus route
for a half an hour, with no sign of Shinzui anywhere. Usagi was beginning
to get tired of the fast pace, and Minako, too, was quickly becoming
disillusioned with the prospect of chasing a bus all over Tokyo. Rei was
getting blisters on her heels from the stylish pumps she was wearing. Ami
was on the verge of convincing them all to turn back, when Makoto, still
determined to succeed in their mission of romantic espionage, spoke up.
"Come on, guys. I know a
shortcut to the next bus stop. If we don't see her there, then we'll go back,
all right? Come on, don't give up yet." Grumbling a bit, the other four agreed
to humor her. They followed Makoto as she confidently led them all through
a dark alleyway, between some bushes, over a chain-link fence (that Rei had
to remove her shoes to climb) and finally squeeze through a foot-wide gap
between two buildings that had been designed for rainwater run-off.
"Mako-chan this
had better be worth it," Usagi gasped indignantly as she disentangled
one of her ponytails from the low-hanging branches of a tree that blocked
their way out of the narrow passage.
"There she is!" Minako
exclaimed, pointing.
Sure enough, as Usagi and
the others looked up, the bus was just pulling away from the stop at the
corner, and there in front of it stood a very tall, fair-haired blind woman
and her familiar animal escort. For a moment, Shinzui froze, and turned her
vacant gaze in their direction. With surprise, the girls shrank back against
the bricks of the buildings they had just squeezed between, forgetting for
the moment that Shinzui would not be able to see them anyway.
Shinzui did not have to
see them. She knew they were there. She could sense the Princess' presence,
like a shimmering silver thread running through her conscious mind, and she
knew right away that the girls had followed her. Shinzui sighed to herself.
I don't want them involved but it's too late now. I suppose I'll just
have to do this with an audience. She was grateful that at least all five
were together. Hell's Mouth could be a very dangerous place, but she could
always defend them if necessary. Straightening her shoulders and setting
her face, Shinzui gripped Centauri's harness and began to march down the
street.
Rei sighed with relief as
the tall girl turned and began to walk away from them. "I thought for a minute
there" she gasped.
"Me too," Minako added.
"Guys? I don't think that
Shinzui-san is here to meet a man." The other girls turned to Ami in surprise.
She was following Shinzui with her eyes, a curiously pensive look on her
face.
"What are you talking about,
Ami-chan?" Minako demanded.
Ami shook her short blue
locks. "Did anybody bother to notice where we are?"
Makoto's eyes clouded as
she realized what Ami was saying. "Yeah, I know this place. The kids at my
old school used to call it 'Hell's Mouth'." Her crystal green gaze flickered
over their surroundings, taking it all in seriously for the first time. The
buildings nearby appeared as though they'd been abandoned for years. The
front windows were broken, or boarded up, and graffiti in a myriad of colors
decorated the bricks and stone. Nearby, a public trash receptacle was surrounded
by a small army of cracked glass syringes and blackened spoons, grimy plastic
tubing and empty cigarette lighters. They were laying on the ground rather
than in the can, as though their former owners had not attempted or cared
to ensure that they were properly disposed of. The remnants of a number of
shattered bottles glittered darkly along the sidewalks. And then there were
the people a scattered, tattered handful of unwashed, unshaven men
interspersed here and there along the walls of the dilapidated old buildings.
At one corner, a little beyond the bus stop sign, stood a young woman who
was probably only about twenty-three but somehow appeared decades older.
She was dressed in a garish, revealing short skirt and a bustiere that looked
suspiciously like a worn, threadbare lace bra with a few plastic rhinestones
glued onto it. Makoto observed all of this in one sweep of the territory,
and turned back to her friends. "This place is dangerous," she declared in
a low voice.
"No kidding," Usagi responded,
half sarcastic, half fearful, as she too took a look around.
"Maybe we should just go,"
Rei suggested, and Minako and Ami both nodded.
"No!!" The four girls turned
to stare at Usagi with surprise. She shook her head as she spoke. "We can't
go. Shinzui is here, in this neighborhood, all by herself. I don't know why
she'd come to a place like this, but we can't just leave her here alone.
She could get hurt."
Makoto nodded slowly.
"Usagi-chan is right," she agreed. "We have to make sure she's all right."
The group of girls, after casting a few more apprehensive looks around them,
began to follow the blind girl down the sidewalk.
Centauri led his mistress
right to him. The fat little man had his back to them, playing some sort
of solitaire game with a stained, shabby deck of playing cards that were
spread out on the pavement before him. Shinzui could smell the dealer's sweat
and stink from several feet away, and she could feel the chill creeping up
within her already. She reached out one long, delicate finger and tapped
lightly on the fleshy shoulder.
"Yeah, yeah. Be with you
in a minute," came the raspy response as he waved her away.
Shinzui's face hardened.
She would not wait any longer. She seized the man's shoulder, and there was
nothing light or delicate about this touch. He turned around in surprise,
and her other arm came up, smashing solidly into the thick planes of his
jaw. The rotund dealer went down, cussing in pain and then whimpering with
recognition as he caught sight of the towering, pale-haired woman standing
over him.
She spoke, her voice like
needles. "I warned you, Bulldog. I distinctly remember telling you to stay
the hell away from my sister." The uncharacteristic swear word seemed
to hang in the air between them, a dark, heavy shadow that spoke of a fury
that was scarcely being contained.
The Bulldog's eyes grew
wide with fear. He was not an easily intimidated man, but he had learned
the hard way not to underestimate this girl and her temper, like black ice,
that shimmered dangerously beneath the surface of that fragile exterior.
He curled into a ball defensively as he looked up at her. "I haven't
Giseino-san, I swear, I haven't been anywhere near her. I swear!!" The raspy
voice had raised about an octave in pitch.
She was dangling a bag of
the stuff in front of him now, her tones frostily menacing. "Then where,
may I ask, did she get this?" A little of the white powder spilled from the
bag and dusted his nose.
The dealer shook his head
energetically. "Not from me I swear on the soul of my dead mother,
I didn't give to her." Shinzui's expression remained frigid, and he wisely
chose to tell her everything up front. "She was here this morning. She asked
me for some stuff you know how it goes and offered me about three
times what it's worth for it too. But I didn't sell to her. I didn't."
Shinzui regarded him coldly,
with stony, sightless eyes. "Who?" The question was low, deadly.
Bulldog took a deep breath.
"The new guy, Hitoshi. Two blocks down." He peered up at her apprehensively,
praying that this crazy woman would believe him, and refrain from hitting
him again. She seemed to be considering his words carefully, and after a
moment, gave a slight nod. It was only then that he remembered to let out
the breath he was holding.
She spun around to go, and
the Bulldog spoke up, hesitantly. "You're not going to Giseino-san,
he's just a kid. You can't." The blind woman turned back and froze him into
silence with her vacant gaze.
"I'm going to have a little
talk with him. That's all." She strode away with her dog by her side, leaving
the Bulldog to sit up and examine his jaw in the reflective, broken planes
of the store window behind him. It was already beginning to turn purple.
Shinzui sensed the dark
presence from a block away. Oh, wonderful. Just what we need. She
slipped silently into a nearby alley. Centauri looked up at his mistress
with concern, and she smiled grimly down at him. "Jaki," she explained
with a bitter grin. "But it's all right I'm in the mood for a little
head-bashing right now."
Hitoshi looked up as the dark creature
came towards him, and his bleary eyes widened. "Whoa cool," the boy
slurred, rolling his head to one side. "This is some really good stuff."
His voice sounded sleepy or sluggish and it would have been obvious
to any casual observer that he was strung out on narcotics. Hitoshi gazed
at the black, oily looking monster, his mind too fuzzy to determine if it
was real or an illusion. But he'd had lots of 'trips' before, and he knew
what to expect from the illusions. So the boy grinned at the oncoming jaki.
"Hey there, mister ugly monster." He waved at it.
The jaki looked down at
the small human lying sprawled out on the ground, and its stomach began to
rumble again. It was so hungry! "Human juice," the thing hissed excitedly
as it shuffled quickly over to the drugged child. It seized the boy in its
long, slick arms, and the boy laughed. The evil spirit was confused for a
moment. Didn't most humans make lots of loud noise when it drank their juice?
This one was smiling, and didn't seem disturbed at all. At least he wasn't
fighting, the jaki decided, and sank its fangs into the boy's shoulder.
"Hey," Hitoshi protested at
the sudden pain, and tried to wiggle away. The monster just held tighter,
and Hitoshi felt some very strange sensations as his body gradually got colder
and his head began to feel very light. "This is some trip, man" he
mumbled as the black creature took the last of his blood, and he passed out
cold.Dark and cold. Everything was dark and cold. He was floating in it,
a sea of black, frigid water, and his shoulder was throbbing painfully. His
whole body hurt, as a matter of fact, but it was his head that felt like
it was about to explode. Hitoshi moaned as he tried to move his fingers,
and then felt panic grip his heart as he realized he couldn't. He couldn't
move anything, not his arms, or his legs he couldn't even open his
eyes. It was like he'd lost control of his own body, completely, and the
boy was filled with terror. Everyone will think I'm dead, if I can't move.
They'll come and haul me away and bury me in a box in the ground and I'll
still be alive but I won't be able to tell them! Hitoshi tried to scream,
but could not make his mouth open. Then he was struck by another thought.
What if I am dead? What if this is what death is like? He didn't find
this thought very encouraging. I don't want to be dead. I'm not old enough
to die yet.
"How old are you?"
Hitoshi heard the voice, somewhere
above him, but he couldn't look up to see who it was. The voice sounded like
little silver bells, cold and furious and somehow also full of pity. A girl's
voice. Hitoshi couldn't move his lips, but he suddenly found he didn't need
to.
"I'm ten." Hitoshi heard his
own voice speaking, but he'd never opened his mouth. He waited for a moment,
a little hopeful that the girl's voice would come back. When it did, it was
full of sorrow, and a little anger, and another emotion that the boy couldn't
even define.
"What is a ten-year-old boy
doing selling drugs on the streets?" the tinkling voice asked quietly. "Where
are your parents?"
"Dead." There was his voice
again, responding without his control or consent. Hitoshi would have frowned
if he'd been able. "They stuck me in an orphanage. I ran away. Even life
on the streets is better than living in that awful place."
The silvery voice turned a
bit frosty. "You think that using and selling drugs is a better life?"
Hitoshi got defensive. "Look,
you don't know anything, all right? It's money, that's all. Gotta make a
living somehow, you know."
"Oh, is that what you call
it?" The bells tinkled sarcastically at him. "A little ironic, don't you
think, that you make your 'living' by spreading death to others."
"I never killed anybody,"
Hitoshi heard his voice respond angrily. The girl's tone did not change.
"Yes, you have. Because every
time a person puts that poison into their bodies, they die a little inside.
You might as well take a gun, put it to their heads, and pull the trigger.
It's the exact same thing." The tinkling voice sounded inexpressibly sad
now, and Hitoshi could not think of an appropriate response.
Instead, he heard himself
ask, "Am I dead?" His voice sounded very small and frightened, even to himself.
For a long moment there was silence. He thought maybe the girl, or whoever
it was, had left.
"Do you want to be?" Her response,
when it finally came, was very soft.
Hitoshi thought about it.
There were a lot of times when he'd figured it didn't matter whether he lived
or not. No one seemed to care about him, anyway. But still, there were things
that he enjoyed about his life. And people he liked. He didn't really want
to die not yet, anyway. Not while there was still some hope for a better
future. Hitoshi would have shook his head, but his body still would not respond.
Instead, he heard his own disembodied voice respond quietly. "No."
There was another long pause,
and then he heard the girl's voice as she took deep breath. "Then you don't
have to be. At least, not today. Open your heart, now, and listen." There
came another pause, and suddenly he heard her voice again, carrying a completely
different tone. "Heavenly Symphony!" A wave of the most beautiful, compelling
music washed through the cold darkness that enveloped him. And then, the
girl began to sing, in a crystalline, silvery voice. The words struck right
to Hitoshi's heart, melting away the coldness there, and restoring his life
to him from the inside out.
"You're flying high, little
man
Seeing things no one else can
Feet are floating off the ground
Touch the colors swirling round
Kiss the smoke, run away
Only flights in mind today
Have you found it yet?
"Where'd you go, pretty boy?
Looks like you've found a brand new toy
Magic powder in a bag
Liquid numbness on a rag
Brings the darkness, wipes out care
All the world shines bright and fair
Have you found it yet?
"What's the matter, silly guy?
Having problems getting high?
Glowing needle, chains of glass
Poisoned smoke of burning grass
Eyelids heavy, tortured peace
You've just put your life on lease
Have you found it yet?
"Awfully quiet, foolish knave
They're tossing dirt into your grave
Looks like you've found the silence now
Time to take your final bow
Is the tranquil calm you sought
Inside the box addiction bought?
Have you found it yet?"
As she sang, Hitoshi
could feel the warmth spreading through his veins, purging the influence
of the drugs, and clearing his fuzzy mind. Slowly, ever so slowly, the control
of his muscles was returned to him. By the last verse of her song, he was
able to open his eyes, very carefully, and see for the first time the face
of the girl who was holding him. She greeted his dark brown gaze with her
own silvery one, and smiled as she finished the last verse. Her pale hair,
held back from her face in two black clips, fluttered gently against his
face. She was wearing a tiara of some sort with a peach stone in it, and
a black and peach sailor collar. As Orion sang the last note, her voice faded
away quietly, and a serene expression appeared as she helped the ten-year-old
boy sit up. Hitoshi was staring at her in astonishment.
"You're one of the Sailor
Scouts!" he exclaimed. Then, looking up, he caught sight of Sailor Moon,
and Sailors Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter, who had arrived on the scene
right after Sailor Orion had, and dispatched the jaki so that Orion could
concentrate her attention on the drugged and drained boy. Hitoshi shook his
head as he realized that all these Sailor Senshi had shown up just to save
his life, and was suddenly very, very glad that he had chosen to live. The
boy gazed up into Sailor Orion's face. "Who are you?" he asked quietly.
Sailor Orion cocked an eyebrow.
"I am Orion," she said, and he recognized the tinkling voice. "And if I ever
catch you selling or using drugs again, I'm going to have to punish you.
Severely." Hitoshi's chocolate eyes widened a bit. Then the senshi's features
softened. "But you don't have to live this way, you know. I have a friend
named Shinzui who works at the Banpuku Youth Center."
Hitoshi tilted his head.
"I've heard of that place," he said thoughtfully. "But I never
thought"
"it was a place for
someone like you?" Orion finished for him. Hitoshi nodded, a bit sheepishly.
Sailor Orion's eyes shone softly with understanding. "But it is for you,
and for all children who feel like they have nowhere else to go. I know that
Shinzui and the others would love to be able to meet you and get to know
you. I want you to go."
The boy seemed to consider
this for a moment, and then he nodded. "All right." He got up from where
he had been lying, and pulled his blanket out of the cardboard box he'd been
sleeping in. Then he turned back to the bell-voiced senshi. "You think they
might let me stay there a while?"
Orion nodded, with another
small smile. "I know they will."
"What do you want?"
Lord Narcissus' voice was angry. "Why don't you just leave me alone and let
me do my job, Lady Slipper?"
The mocking feminine laugh
could be heard echoing across the deserted plain, as the dark gap in space
seemed to swell a little. Lady Slipper's voice responded, saccharine and
patronizing. "My dear Narcissus, you don't seem to be doing your job very
well. That's why I'm here. I'm only trying to help. You lost another jaki
today, didn't you?"
"That wasn't my fault," Narcissus
grumbled. "It was a disfunctional one, that deployed without my consent."
"The Avatar doesn't want to
hear excuses, Narcissus." There was a mocking smile in her tone "He wants
results. How much longer do you think he's going to put up with you and your
failures?"
Lord Narcissus was beginning
to get annoyed. "Why don't you just go back and play with your little flowers,
and leave this to me?" he suggested bitterly.
"Be careful, Narcissus." A
dangerous note entered her voice, one that would have sent chills down the
spine of their listeners, had there been anyone in the vast empty field to
overhear them. "I am much, much older than you can even begin to imagine.
Compared to the Avatar and myself, you're nothing but a mewling infant. And
you have no idea what you're dealing with here. If I were you, I'd be very
careful."
Narcissus snorted in derision.
"Get to the point, Lady Slipper. What do you want?"
"Nothing at all, my dear admiral.
I came here to give you a bit of very important information about that Sailor
Soldier you despise so much. But, of course, if you don't want my
help"
"What 'important information'
are you talking about?" Again, Narcissus' tone was suspicious.
Lady Slipper's menacing smile
could be heard in her next few words. "I'm talking about who that pesky Sailor
Orion really is. Wouldn't you like to know?"
Lord Narcissus was suspicious.
"How do I know you're going to tell me the truth?" he demanded. "I've got
no reasons to trust you. What's in this for you, Lady Slipper?"
"Oh, there's plenty in it
for me, my dear admiral. The word 'revenge' comes to mind." Her voice was
dripping with scorn. "But I'm not going to discuss that now. Do you want
to know who she is or not?"
"Tell me."
There was another bitter laugh.
"I'll do better than that. I'll show you." There was a pause, as she held
out something for him to take a look at. Narcissus looked, then began to
laugh.
"What is this, a joke? Come
on, Lady Slipper, you don't really expect me to believe"
"I don't care if you believe
it or not," Lady Slipper snapped at him. "It doesn't change the fact that
this picture is of Orion."
There was another pause as
Lord Narcissus took a second look. "Are you sure?" he questioned dubiously.
"This human doesn't look very"
"I'm sure." Lady Slipper's
tones were certain. "I know Orion, Narcissus. I've known her longer than
you've been alive. And I am telling you that this is her."
Narcissus' voice took on a
wickedly amused sound. "Well, I guess there's only one way to find out, huh?"
The black monument beneath the rift in space began to quake as the Negaverse
admiral's laughter pealed out over the grassy, vacant plains.
Back
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