Chapter 18 – Epilogue

(Waiii! It's the last chapter! Okay. Koji Rokkaku's first name is © NoiseTank13, his last © Sega, but his character is mine and my brother's. Kell is also mine. The quotes at the end of this chapter are all by the people Kell says they are, none of them are mine. Please r+r!)

"Miss Fuyutsuri?"

No one had called me that for years.

"Are you awake?"

I tried to speak, but my mouth felt broken.

"Don't worry. You've had a bad accident, but everything will be okay. Everything will be okay."

"Laani, please…come on, you can make it…"

That voice. I know that voice.

"Come on…"

Move towards it. Yes, that's good. Funny, I don't feel tired or anything. What happened? An accident, he said. Where am I?

"Laani, quickly!" Urgency. I move faster.

Someone's catching at my foot, pulling me back. I struggle to break free, but they're holding on, and I can't…

"Laani! You have to try!"

I split, I fall, I'm being dragged back, but someone, some part of me is going on…

…they're happy, I can feel, warmth flooding over them, they've found what they were looking for…I look up, see the warmth and light, yes, that's good, but what about me?…

…No…

It's moving away from me. I'm going down, down, down, and suddenly there's pain, blurred, numb, but there nevertheless…

And then the light is gone.

I opened my eyes.

Above me was a plain white ceiling, with a shiny fluorescent light on it. There was no dust on the light. The edge of the ceiling joined a white wall.

The ceiling was not all white. The light turned it yellow, and near the edges it was almost grey. For some reason, I felt very proud that I could notice this. I didn't seem to have noticed things for ages.

Footsteps. I tried to move, sit up, see who it was, but I couldn't. I didn't seem to have a body any more.

"Miss Fuyutsuri, you're awake at last."

"Who are you?" I said. My voice was painfully dry, and there was an odd feeling over one half of my mouth – a bit like a huge cold sore, but not itchy, just icy, numb.

"My name is Koji Rokkaku." He came into my view. Tall guy, with the whole tiger-like grace thing going. Dark hair, a neat moustache, warm, tanned skin.

"Rokkaku? Your dad…" I stopped. I'd watched his dad try and destroy the world. From where? With whom? I knew, I just didn't want to touch.

"Yes, my father had some regrettable tendencies," Koji said. "But I am confident I have not inherited them. Now, I expect you're wondering what's going on."

"I guess."

"What's the last thing you remember?"

I closed my eyes, and tried to put the pictures in my head into chronological order. It didn't work.

"I don't know…I remember lots of things, but I don't know which one comes first."

"That's only to be expected, I suppose. Well, you had an accident, as you may or may not recall…you fell off a roof, plummeting several stories. I had been monitoring you for some time for reasons of my own, and so when you fell I immediately had you picked up."

"Wasn't I dead?"

"Technically, yes. However, the Rokkaku conglomerate has access to the finest scientists this world has to offer, and one of the skills we can call upon is that of resurrection. If the body has only recently died…well, you yourself can see you are alive and well."

"But I can't remember," I said.

"You will. You have only just been – reanimated, let's say – so it is natural that your brain is a little confused."

I closed my eyes again, trying to make sense of all this. It wasn't easy. Who was I? What had happened? I knew – I knew so much – I just couldn't get my brain to co-operate.

"Why did you do this to me?" I asked.

Koji shrugged. "Let's just say I enjoy chess, and you could make an excellent queen."

I toyed with the sentence, but couldn't see its meaning.

"I think I'd like to sleep now," I said. "If that's all right."

"Certainly, Miss Fuyutsuri. I hope to speak to you again soon."

I awoke again.

And now I remembered it all.

I'd fallen off the Love Shocker HQ roof, because the GGs, my main rivals, had been chasing me, trying to tag me ten times, because they were trying to stop me being a rudie. I hated the GGs, especially Cube, because she stole Coin from me when we were in Grind City, on the coast of America, Garam, because he helped kill a girl I liked…whatever her name was, I'd work on that…Piranha, who had once been a Love Shocker and quit because she ran someone over, and Gum because she was a bitch. Now I was in the Rokkaku building in Shibuya-cho, in Tokyo-to, Japan, Asia, Earth, and I was alive again.

Cool.

I sat up, and right away I knew something was very, very wrong.

I felt like a tank.

I looked down at my hands. They weren't flesh. Oh, my god. They were – they were metal – no fingernails, no peeling cuticles, no fortune-teller lines, no fingerprints – just these shiny steel things that were nothing to do with me.

"Miss Fuyutsuri?"

I turned. Koji was watching me.

"I think there's something you need to know."

"Damn right there is," I snarled. "What the fuck have you done to me?"

"You fell a great distance," he said. "You were severely damaged by that. We had to rebuild you the only way we can, at the present – cyborg technology."

"You're making this up," I said. "You're having me on."

"I assure you I am not."

He clicked his fingers, and someone wheeled in a full-length mirror.

"Miss Fuyutsuri, please take a look."

"No." I didn't want to see. If I did, I'd have to admit I'd turned into – into something horrible.

"Please. You have no other option."

Nervously, I opened my eyes, and turned to stare into the mirror.

And screamed.

So, I'd better give you another update. I am Kellaani Fuyutsuri, also known as Kelly, also known as Laani, also known as Lana, also known as Kell. I have pink, spiked hair which isn't mine, made out of the same stuff that Barbie's hair is. I have one brown eye and one bionic eye. My skin varies between tanned, and metal-plated. I have two regular arms, and four laden with weaponry. My fingers are bladed. My skates are rocket-powered. I am definitely no longer pretty.

I have hatred. I have envy. I have lust. I have strength. No fear. No happiness. No kindness. No love. I seem to have forgotten those ones.

And I have been promised revenge.

Koji says he'll put me in stasis for the moment. He says when the time's right, he'll let me out, and I can go and kill all the GGs and everyone, just the way I want.

That will be fun.

I didn't enjoy writing this. It was annoying, raking up all the pain. I don't think I should be feeling that stuff any more. I have to concentrate on revenge.

Revenge triumphs over death, love slights it, honour aspireth to it, grief flieth to it. That's Francis Bacon, some English writer. Oh, yeah. Culture freak Koji practically fed a whole dictionary of quotations into my head. That I don't like. But then, my brain's been messed around with pretty much anyway. I can't quite remember what it was like to be the person I was before, so vulnerable…so loving…so dumb.

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see/ the pretty follies that themselves commit.

That's Shakespeare.

Most of these quotes are pretty annoying, but sometimes they suit my mood.

Like this one. It's from another English guy, some children's poet. Alhberg, I think his name is.

Oh, children, don't be crueller than you need.

The faces that you spit on or ignore

Will get you in the end.

Oh, yes.

THE END

(Gasp…finally I've posted the last chapter of this…gasp! Well, first of all thank you to everyone who reviewed. Thank you thank you thank you! You all said lots of cool stuff, and that was really…uh, cool. Okay. Thanks also to Disk GIR for being helpful. Thanks to Noisetank13 for letting me borrow a bunch of names, and to JW for letting me borrow Kell's full name. Thanks to Nik for saying way back when I was starting DaO 'I think it would be cooler to make Kell not on Cube's side.'

Also, anyone who's read Cyber GGs, the fic I'm co-writing with Nik (under his name) will know what's happened to Kell. Anyone who hasn't – go! Read! Review!

So I think that's everything…so…that's all, folks!)