Content Warning: Blood and violence.
Kyoko shielded her eyes. Between the slits of her fingers –between blinks–three silhouettes materialized like creatures from a heavy fog. Another blink and her eyes were adjusted, fixated on the man in the center. The too-familiar man with coal-black eyes that seemed to glow under the bright LED lights.
She felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise, heard a pained curse from across the way, but didn't dare take her eyes off the approaching men.
Gone was the cordial businessman save for the plastic smile still affixed to the handsome face. A smile that seized onto the man's cheekbones, refusing that final miniscule climb to his eyes. The Fuwa elder was lavishly garbed in a modernized black silk kimono style suit with slacks in place of the traditional floor length form-fitting nagagi bottoms. A matching ornately patterned thigh-length haori rested over the kimono-suit fusion; five golden five-clawed dragons savagely wove their way through glimmering silver stars, announcing their supremacy among the cosmos.
No, it was not Hayate Fuwa the CEO who stood before them in shadowy glory; it was the Mikado.
His eyes scanned the room, smile shifting from faux pleasant to one that sang of mockery and hubris. One that finally reached the full height of his dark eyes.
And then time seemed to speed up–or slow down.
In the time it took Kuon to take two steps closer to Kyoko the Fuwa elder lazily reached behind his back and produced a .45 caliber 1911 pistol that looked as though it had been carved from the depths of the earth. Or perhaps hell. Kyoko's mind had an idle millisecond to think, Grandfather must have an elevator that descends to his secondary residence for his convenience, before a loud pop!, like a needle against a balloon, split the air anda large hand snatched the collar of her jacket.
She saw Akemi somehow deflect the first bullet with her sword, heard the clang of metal against metal as she was thrust behind the nearest pallet, saw Akemi's legs taken out as the second and third tore into her thighs, heard the woman's pained cry as the fourth punched into her gut, saw Akemi crumple to the concrete oozing hot blood. Her fingers snaked into her pocket and then she moved no more.
Kyoko's horror and shock was mirrored on her stepbrother's face. He'd gone ashen and fallen to his knees beside the woman, black pants soaking up her ebbing life force like a sponge.
Kyoko sneaked a glance around the corner. Ojii-san was alone and drawing nearer. Where did the other two go? she gulped. All they'd had was knives in a gun fight and one of those knives was down.
"Some tasks must be accomplished by one's own hand," came the deep cultured tones of Hayate Fuwa. "And some are a pleasure to accomplish."
Kuon lifted her bodily and rounded the corner of their box tower as the Mikado advanced towards his grandson.
"But–" Kyoko began to protest.
Kuon shook his head and raised a finger to his lips. "Hayate won't permanently harm his heir," he whispered confidently. She considered that for a moment and then nodded.
Sho's heartbeat sounded abnormally loud in his ears, like the pounding of a war drum. His hands balled into fists and body shook with rage. Something primal took hold of him then. He picked up Akemi's fallen sword and–attacked, launching into a forward thrust that Ojii-san nimbly dodged. He dropped the handle into his other hand in a reversal and finished with an upward slice that skimmed off the edge of the elder's haori.
The two regarded each other over a single breath, Hayate's lip curling in disgust as Sho attempted another strike, this time from a neutral stance to nullify any broadcast of his movements. But it didn't matter. The grandfather swept his grandson's feet from beneath him and brought his hand down in a chop on the young man's neck, knocking him out.
He stared at his grandson with cold, flat eyes. "You never fail to disappoint me boy." He stepped over the body. A clap of his hands brought one of the missing kuroi inazuma to his side. The subordinate began to drag Sho's limp body towards the back entrance. "And then there were two," he said absently, almost like he was speaking to himself.
Kyoko felt Kuon tense at her side and he motioned for her to follow. They crept along the row of cardboard cubes, trying to put as much distance between Hayate and themselves. A flash of metal turning end over end caught Kyoko's eye and she dove beneath the projectile, a throwing star that lodged into the plastic behind her, and rolled to her feet just as the cloaked purveyor of sharp objects landed in front of her.
A voice buried in her subconscious noted today as a record breaker for firsts: first B&E, first gun fight, first ninja star chucked at her head, first fight with Kuon (well not with Kuon, but with him). It was not, however, the first time she'd watched someone die.
Not that.
Kuon and Kyoko moved together, launching a join assault on their assailant, Kuon intrinsically taking high and Kyoko striking low. The man was good, blocking and deflecting blows while countering with swift brutality, but the couple's bodies fell into natural graceful rhythm that Kyoko would have a hard time believing later though she'd certainly experienced it. It almost felt like magic. Fairy magic. Finally, Kyoko heard a crunch as her foot connected with the man's knee which left him wide open for Kuon's swinging fist. It collided right with the man's temple and he dropped like a stone.
Suddenly, another loud pop sounded and Kyoko heard something whizz past her left ear. Kuon made a foothold for Kyoko and sent her up an over the crest of clothes before scrambling to the other side himself. They sprinted down the line, cutting across a couple additional rows to give themselves some time. A chance to plan. To survive.
Kuon could see the still conscious minion poised by the back entrance. The Fuwa elder blocked the front. "Shit!" he exclaimed. It was like a game of paintball, except only one team got to have blasters. And people died.
Kyoko could see Ojii-san moving unhurriedly through the warehouse in the narrow gap between cardboard columns. He's not even considering the possibility that he might lose. For some reason that knowledge, more than anything else, made her furious.
It also gave her an idea. Sometimes the oldest tricks were the best.
"If you're going to kill me, again, then surely you can afford to be generous," Kyoko snarked loudly. "Why did you murder my mother?" The words hung in the air, dropping slowly to the ground like ashes in the silence.
"I did not kill her, though you will undoubtedly lay blame at my feet. Circumstances were as simple as Saena stumbling upon one of my men enforcing my will." His voice was casual, a senpai addressing a kohai over an ochoko of sake and a bowl of ramen. "He was aware that the lawyer had inadvertently stumbled upon a great many secrets over the years and her recent hesitancy to play ball, as the Americans say, led to her demise. A pity, such beauty wasted."
His expression contorted into a sneer, contempt transforming his face into something foreign. Something ugly that she could now remember seeing before, though through a child's eyes. "You clearly favor your father's bloodline."
She ignored his insult. "I'm surprised you told me."
"As you so eloquently announced, you will soon be dead."
Her eyes narrowed. "I wouldn't be so sure Grandfather."
Hayate Fuwa continued following her voice, but where she should have been was blank space. He looked closer, spotted a phone wedged between boxes, gave a chuckle and whirled, firing as he spun.
A bullet to the chest.
A throwing star to the throat.
Kuon took a step and collapsed heavily to the floor.
"Well done," the Mikado uttered or tried to at least, but all the came out was a wheeze and a sticky red gurgle as the man, the monster responsible for so much misery on the earth, passed out this realm and into the next.
The front warehouse door burst open. Footsteps rushing. Rain and thunder.
The voice in her subconscious added another first: first time watching her fiancé bleed to death. Watching him die.
Her legs turned to lead and she stumbled. She vaguely heard a high, keening sound. A horror, she realized a moment later, that spewed from the depths of her wounded soul, passing through her larynx where it gained its terrible voice before finally crossing the threshold of flesh. She rose again and–
–opened her eyes.
Disoriented, she reached up and found her face soaked with tears that continued to stream down while snatches and moments and eerily reminiscent words, already half faded, continued to ebb away like a low tide at sea.
Kyoko glanced at the clock. 2:00 AM.
A book lay flipped open next to her futon. She picked up the novel, glancing at the last lines she remembered reading before falling asleep.
There are parallel universes in which different events have happened to the same people. An alternate choice has been made, or an accident has turned out differently. Everyone has duplicates of themselves in these other worlds. Different selves with different lives, different luck. Variations.
Kyoko blinked. Surely not...right? She went to the small safe in her room and pulled out the pendant necklace Kuon (though she'd known him as Ren then) had given her, seeking reassurance in the heavy, solid weight of it in her still trembling hands. Whether dream or glimpse into another world, one thing remained perfectly clear– her gratitude to the fates for her circumstances, the circumstances that had brought her back to Kuon. All the hardships, all the heartache that had led her to where she was today.
She clutched the necklace to her chest and offered a silent prayer for the other self, if she existed at all and as she drifted back into the world of dreams, she became more certain that's all it was; the product of her overactive imagination. Or perhaps, a little fairy magic.
Yes, later she would wake, remembering nothing at all.
Epilogue:
In that alternate place:
Sho had stirred to life as Hayate Fuwa had followed Kyoko's voice speaking through the phone, slit his guards Achilles tendon and then his throat. He'd arrived just in time to watch his best friend and his grandfather do their best to kill each other. Just before the doors blew open and FBI agents rushed in, Rick Schnee leading the fray. One of their own was dragged along in handcuffs.
The gods had favored Kuon. A centimeter in any direction would have proven fatal, but Kuon was resting in the hospital, his fiance at his side. They'd both wanted to attend the funeral for Akemi Adams who wasn't Akemi Adams at all, but Kuon was unable to leave the hospital yet and Kyoko was unwilling to leave him.
Sho laid a bouquet of yellow roses on her fresh grave, resting his hand on the headstone with tender care, a hollow ache in his chest. She had been bright and beautiful indeed, this Shoko Aki woman he'd never met and yet knew intimately. He looked into the fading swirl of pink skies remembering her words. And his own. Yes, to honor her he would do, would be better.
A/N Thanks to you readers who stuck with me to the end! Especially miss Parkerbear who was, indisputably, my biggest encourager.
The book excerpt is from We Were Liars.
Haori- traditional jacket worn over a kimono.
