Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.
Save Keitaro
Mononoke Within
Narusegawa Naru had spent what felt like hours tearing Urashima Keitaro to pieces and putting him back together just to do it all over again. Urashima Keitaro almost choked on his own thoughts as he realized that he just referred to this creature as Narusegawa.
"No," he reminded himself. "Not Narusegawa, just a Nightmare." He could not help mistaking of her for the genuine article. Since he had developed a near photographic memory of her body from countless accidents, this Nightmare probably resembled Narusegawa in more ways than he wanted to admit.
As she winded up another punch, the Nightmare froze and listened to Keitaro's faint whisper. The words made her laugh. Everything made her laugh. "Pardon me. 'Not Narusegawa, just a Nightmare.' " She lowered her fist. "How do you know I share nothing in common with your precious Narusegawa? How well do you actually know her, Keitaro?"
Keitaro felt thoroughly exhausted. As an embodiment of fear and anxiety in the domain of fears and anxieties, this foul creature made it a point to rattle Keitaro's nerves from time to time. It gave the torture a psychological dimension.
Once again, this Naru had baited him into another argument. "I know her well enough, Naru." Even though she saw straight those his lies and bravado, Keitaro kept fighting the Nightmare as he had always done before, sticking up from Narusegawa's virtues and insuring his fears that a truly kind and gentle person lived deep inside her.
Keitaro remembered what the town council had told him years ago as a child visiting the Hinata-sou. The wisest of the elders told him, "that everything in nature contained its opposite." Following this logic and his own beliefs in the natural goodness of people, he knew that underneath Narusegawa's hatred towards his clumsiness and her own violent outbursts resided the soul of a good person who loved him dearly.
"Narusegawa," the nightmare corrected Keitaro, slapping him across the face for good measure. "You just called me Naru. You always call me Narusegawa, remember?" The nightmare knew he did not remember, that he could not remember.
She, on the other hand, remembered almost everything. This nightmare loved bragging and she thought of her access to his subconscious memories as something to take pride in. Keitaro himself rarely ever noticed that he always called Narusegawa Naru by her last name, but when he thought about it, he knew his reasons. "Only the real Narusegawa ever deserved that kind of respect, Naru."
If Keitaro had ever listened to reason, this nightmare would defeated him in every debate she had ever started with him. Fortunately, he choose to listen to the logic of his heart and that gave him a clear advantage over Naru because she had originally no heart, until she met his dark side. Keitaro looked out of the corner of his eye to see a dark figure approaching. "Speak of the devil."
"Almost," the figure in the darkness replied as he stepped out of the shadows and revealed himself to Keitaro. "Call me Ken." Keitaro always liked the name Ken. Urashima Ken. Sure, it sounded generic, but it sounded a whole lot cooler than Keitaro, he knew that for sure. Dressed in black clothes and a trench coat that floated in the air like a Dracula-inspired cape, the figure sported a passing resemblance to Keitaro, minus the lack of glasses and vertical slit-like scar that ran through his left eye. Of course, in this realm, Keitaro no longer needed glasses to correct his impaired vision, so he looked a lot more like Ken than usual. Yes, without Keitaro's inhibitions, this representation of his repressed dark side had changed his name to Ken a long while ago.
"Hello, honey," Ken said, letting his trench coat fall off him and float away into the darkness. As he turned to give the nightmare Naru a peck on the cheek. "Nice day at work?" Apparently with nothing better to do except torture Urashima Keitaro, they decided to indulge themselves into a deep lustful kiss of animal passion right in front of him.
Needless to say, it repulsed Keitaro to watch two mental images. He hated seeing them like this, one, his devil's advocate in his fight to keep his faith in Narusegawa alive and the other, the manifestation of all his darker impulses, both embracing each other in such a untamed manner. As their hands started to drift into forbidden territory, Naru must have witnessed the scared and panicked look Keitaro could feel emerging on his own face. Naru broke away from Ken's rough embrace. "Oh wait, Ken. We have children present." Naru pointed impishly at Keitaro. "Perhaps, we should do this somewhere else."
Ken turned his head to look at Keitaro, light from the dim lights overhead illuminating the scar along his left eye. "No, dear, I think my inner child needs a chance to grow up. Let him watch, he can take notes." A notepad and a pencil materialized in Ken's right hand and he pitched both at Keitaro.
Keitaro clinched his eyes and looked away. "No fair, Keitaro, can't let you do that. [Turn around.]" Against his will, Keitaro cranked his head back onto Ken and Naru. "[Open your eyes.]" With all the force Keitaro could summon, he could not bring his eyelids to cover his eyes. It felt like a mouse trying to bench press a truck, completely hopeless. "[Pay attention and take notes.]" Keitaro involuntarily reached down for the notepad. As Naru and Ken started at each other, he could feel his hands scribbling down points of interest and various techniques employed by Naru and Ken.
"Fight my will if you wish, but you only will make it stronger." Keitaro did not understand what Ken meant by that. Keitaro tried to ignore him when he talked like that. His dark side had a tendency to babble. Ken had enslaved him to his will by making him listen to his nonstop babbling for seven hours. Sometimes, Ken would get so wrapped up in his current situation that Keitaro gained the ability to blink his eyes or stop writing, but Ken's will and voice always bent Keitaro back in place.
*****
Aoyama Motoko gave this door a death stare as she grasped her sword. Su Kaolla arrived behind her carrying a sensor. "Keitaro's fantasies, behind this door," Kaolla announced to Motoko.
Motoko sniffed at Kaolla's comment. "How could this place have doors?" From the moment Motoko saw the tablets of self-image and the countless symbols and magazine articles floating about, she knew this place obeyed a set of natural laws very different from ones that the real world adhered to. Motoko could take nothing for granted in this zoo of thoughts and mental images, but surely a door did not make any real sense to have in this mental landscape.
"Well, Motoko, this place doesn't have any real doors, of course."
/Of course,/ Motoko agreed. Once again, Kaolla had found a way to patronize her without even meaning to. It made her angry to have someone talking down to her like her older sister always did.
But Kaolla obviously did not mean to patronize and Motoko choose not hold it against her. "It does have symbols though and doors usually symbolize a willingness to keep people out." Kaolla checked the door over. "Your breaking down the door would symbolize how much force it would take to access his fantasies."
Aoyama Motoko smiled greedily at what Su Kaolla had just said. This door represented his will to keep people out. Why would he want to keep people out unless he had something disgusting and perverted to hide from them? Not realizing how she just reduced the concept of personal privacy to an effort to hide perversion, Motoko immediately rose her sword and commanded her succession technique to fill the blade with Ki energy as it came down on the door. In seconds, Motoko watched in utter disbelief as her blade shattered into a thousand pieces and went flying in every direction. Kaolla had ducked behind Motoko just in the knick of time. Motoko tossed the broken stump of her sword to the ground in complete frustration.
As Kaolla almost spoke out to answer, Motoko signaled with her hand for her to stay quiet. She didn't need Kaolla to tell her what happened. Everything in here stemmed from Keitaro's soul in one way or another and violence had no more effect on this door than it did on Keitaro himself in the real world.
"Well," Motoko thought out loud. "If we can't force it open, how do we get in?" Su Kaolla stared at the surface of the door. While her Ki blast had not toppled the door in one blow like she hoped it would, the hurricane winds produced by the Ki blast did wipe away thick layers of dust from the vaulted door's surface. On the door's dust-free surface, Motoko and Kaolla could now see a keyboard composed of the Japanese alphabet underneath four syllable slots. Kaolla spoke up once again, this time to state the obvious.
"Perhaps, we can enter a code." Motoko sighed. Any idiot could have figured that out, but Kaolla probably wanted to sound important. Everyone inside this machine represented the first people to use her interactive environment. If everything succeeded as planned (meaning everyone survived), this device, this interactive environment as she called it, might have serious market value once she secured the patents for it. Until then, Kaolla could do nothing more than marvel and rant about this living proof of her incredible intellect and ingenuity. As she ranted and marveled, Motoko still had to walk around inside it searching for Keitaro's lost soul and undeniable proof of his perversion.
"You first," Kaolla said, stepping aside for Motoko to approach the keyboard. It surprised Motoko that the computer genius had leave her with the task of cracking the code. Motoko figured that all her accusations against Keitaro made Kaolla think she had superior understanding of his mind and could easily determine the four-syllable code he used to keep his fantasies locked away from prying souls.
As she imagined her worst fears of perversion in Keitaro, she entered in syllables. Ma-e-ha-ra, she typed. Maehara as in Maehara Shinobu. The computer with Keitaro's voice replied. "Access denied." Motoko would not let up. As stupid as he might appear, Keitaro could make the most certain act of perversion look like an accident, so she concluded he would not choose such a blatantly obvious code word. She knew one name that she worried most about finding in his fantasies. A-o-ya-ma. Aoyama. The computer Keitaro voice replied once again, "Access denied."
Motoko thought she might enter in Narusegawa Naru's name, but her name did not fit the slots. Naru only had two syllables and Narusegawa had five. Still, if he had not used her name or Shinobu's name as a password, perhaps, he used Naru's name in a less obvious way. Aoyama Motoko needed to think like Urashima Keitaro, a wildly imaginative man with an obsessive love for someone who can't seem make up her mind about him. Na-ru-na-ru, she typed. Naru, Naru. Motoko could feel a new sword materialize into her grip as the Keitaro voice sounded particularly annoying this time as he repeated his message. "Access denied."
"I think I've got it." She reasoned that even Keitaro had a breaking point like everyone else. Perhaps his sights had strayed away from Naru's hard-to-win love to a more safe and assured victory. That Okinawa girl with that horrible creature for a pet would jump in front of a bullet for her Kei-kun. Of course, Otohime Mutsumi would probably faint from the excitement before she had a chance to act on this selfless bravery. Either way, Motoko could tell she would do anything to protect Keitaro from harm if she didn't have to worry about her anemia getting the best of her. O-to-hi-me, she typed. Otohime.
The Keitaro voice gave his "Access denied" speech again and Motoko started to type in whatever came to mind, desperate to find the password. Three dozen "Access denied" speeches later, she had exhausted every possibility in she could think of. She had even typed in, Su-ka-o-ra. Su Kaolla.
Su Kaolla, apparently tired of her constant failure, leapt onto Motoko's neck and whispered something into her ear. "Not a chance," Motoko replied as she peeled Kaolla off of her and set her on the ground. She actually could believe that Keitaro might have used that word to protect his perverted fantasies, but if he did, Motoko knew what she would have to do to him. Her fingers trembled as she entered it the syllables. She feared what she would have to do if this password worked.
Ya-ku-so-ku. Yakusoku. Promise. The computer voice of Keitaro returned to Motoko and Kaolla. This time it had taken an inviting tone in his voice that Motoko had dreaded hearing. "Please come in. The door will shut behind you. Have a nice day."
Su Kaolla probably wanted to accompany Motoko. Su Kaolla must have hesitated when tears rose in Motoko's eyes. She only wanted to expose Keitaro's perversion and arm the other girls with knowledge. Now, that he had misused a sacred word to protect his fantasies, Motoko knew she could never look at Keitaro the same way again. Like her sister Tsuruko, Keitaro had betrayed his life of purity and strength for a life of obscenity and weakness. He would have to receive the ultimate punishment for his crime; she would force Keitaro to leave the Hinata-sou if either of them survived this. Motoko checked her watch. Twenty minutes left.
Motoko choked back the tears. She could not cry. Every tear she had not stopped, brought shame and disgrace to her school and her family. She needed to stay strong. In seconds, she remembered how to bury her suffering under layers and layers of righteous anger, how to funnel all her fears and sadness into a blind storm of rage.
"You cannot hide from me, Urashima." Motoko charged in. "I will find you. I will find you wherever you hide. I will find you wherever you run to, I will find you ..." A bright light engulfed Motoko and she found her face inches away from a cross.
/... in a church?/ Motoko wondered, cutting herself on the blade of her sword as she grabbed on to the sharp edge as if to keep a grip on reality. /Does Urashima have fantasies about joining the priesthood?/ She released her hand from the sharp edge. She realized that thought seemed awfully naive, but Motoko started to suspect she knew less about Keitaro than she pretended to. If Keitaro could use the promise as a password for his vault of fantasies, perhaps he had no real terribly sick fantasies at all.
It seemed like a hard sale for Motoko at first, but years of asking why Keitaro acted like such a nice guy had never given her the chance to ask the opposite question: Why not? Why couldn't she just accept Keitaro the way he appeared, a nice guy with an accident-prone nature and a good heart? Sure, she had done something like that before with her sister's husband and he turned out to have some serious issues about women, but perhaps Motoko had deceived herself. Perhaps, she had deceived herself in believing she could ever find a comparison between Keitaro and Tsuruko's two-faced husband. Keitaro seemed like a good kid, perhaps part of that small percent of the male population even women like herself could put their faith in.
Motoko started to cry as she witnessed why the fantasy had taken her to a church. She still thought tears brought dishonor and shame to her school and her family, but she could not help it. She always cried at weddings.
As she cried, the voice of priest echoed in her ears. "Speak now or forever hold your peace." Motoko had good cause why they should not wed. Keitaro still needed to graduate from Toudai and so did Naru, but she did not speak this objection. Su Kaolla warned her that mental images like the priest can only interact with her if she spoke to them.
Besides, Motoko still felt guilty from the last time she tried to interrupt a wedding. That time, everyone present had laughed her out of the building and continued the service without her.
Any ways, Keitaro certainly had thought through this fantasy with a feverish degree of detail as she looked up the banner that read, "Toudai Alumni Marriage." Aoyama Motoko also caught sight of the other girls and herself. Motoko and Maehara Shinobu in this fantasy looked like they entered their early twenties. This mostly definitely meant that Keitaro dreamed of passing the Toudai exam on his fourth try, of Naru passing on her second, both of them graduating and marrying two years after graduation. All of this would take roughly seven years if it really happened.
The priest cleared his throat. "I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride." As Motoko's tears of joy collected along her half-successful impersonation of smile, Keitaro pulled up the bride's veil and revealed a blushing Narusegawa Naru. As Keitaro and Naru moved in to kiss each other, a bright light erupted from the space between their lips and expanded outward, engulfing the priest and the dream versions of everyone she had ever met since Keitaro had moved into the Hinata-sou.
In moments, the light consumed Motoko and she found herself at the beginning of another one of Keitaro's fantasies. This fantasy had Keitaro serenading Naru with a violin or something like that. Motoko wondered what had happened to the last fantasy.
Moments before Keitaro and Naru got a chance to kiss, the dream just ended and moved on to a new one like nothing happened. To say the least, it made very little sense. Surely even the most non-perverted man on the planet has some fantasies of what to do on the honeymoon.
*****
Su Kaolla hated herself for what she had so thoughtlessly done. Kaolla herself had warned everyone about trying to speak to mental images, especially dangerous-looking ones. And when a Keitaro dressed in black without glasses and a scar over his left eye showed up after Motoko opened the door to his fantasies, she could not contain the urge to say, "Hey, Keitaro, that you?" Able to interact with her now, this Keitaro ran down Kaolla. She tried to run in after Motoko, but the door had shut behind her as the computer promised it would. All the mental resources in the world at her disposal and she still could not grasp simple concepts like "Shut up."
"You just called me Keitaro. People here call me Ken." Kaolla could not take her eyes off of the scar over his left eye. "Explain yourself." Kaolla sweat-dropped at the response and pulled herself free of this Keitaro. Apparently, this version of Keitaro answered to a different name than the original Keitaro did. Kaolla could not think of her next move, but she imagined having her toys with the live ammunitions with her right now. No sooner had Kaolla made this silent wish, the toys with the live ammunitions materialized in her hands.
A glint of fear rose in this shadow Keitaro's eyes, especially the one with the scar over it. "No, you can't. Mental images cannot materialize things outside domains." Kaolla panicked as Ken told her this fact she had already known. According to her theories of psyche display interaction, some of the long-lived mental images can materialize themselves outside their domains and into any domain they pleased, but only a real soul could do what she did. "Where did you come from?"
As the current scoreboard read, Su Kaolla had committed two major mistakes and this Ken character had committed none. She could do nothing to correct the mistake now, she just had to keep this Keitaro reject from getting too close to her. In seconds, she had released every last bit of ammunition inside the toys at Ken.
As she strained her mind to materialize new ammunition, this Ken, uninjured and unmoved by the explosions, leapt at Kaolla, grabbed her around the waist and threw her over his shoulders. Keitaro leveled one of Kaolla's toy with the live ammunition to Kaolla. "You probably know this already, Kaolla," this Keitaro replied nonchalantly, leveling the toy gun to Kaolla's neck. "I can neither kill you nor permanently injure you in any way in this place. But I can hurt you and unless you want to know what having your head blown off feels like, I suggest you tell me where you came from."
Kaolla would never tell this Keitaro clone anything. No amount of pain inflicted on her could bring Kaolla to talk. But Ken had already figured that out. "If your own personal pain will not motivate you to tell me where you came from, I will harm the real Keitaro. I have him imprisoned in the deepest darkest regions of his fears and if you don't speak, I will hurt him."
/Fears,/ Su Kaolla thought as she heard this Keitaro clone refer to the real Keitaro. In all the rush, no one had ever thought to search for him in his fears. But, then again, they probably all knew they would have to search there eventually, they just wanted to search the easier places to prepare themselves for the voyage into Keitaro's fears.
Lost in her own introspection at the possibility of this grotesque oversight, Keitaro must have taken her silence as resistance. "Okay, I guess you don't care what misery befalls Keitaro either. Perhaps, you think Keitaro can handle anything and gladly suffer for you. Well, I can't give you pain or the threat of pain against others to force the truth out of you. I doubt I can give you anything to make you tell me the truth. But I do know one thing I can take away from you. Do you have any idea what?"
Kaolla nodded her head. Besides pain towards herself and others, Ken had few moves available to him. He already made the fatal error of revealing something Kaolla did not know. In her theories, she had not reached a decision about whether attack from a mental image could harm the physical body in some way or not. Ken, like herself, had a shared inability to keep quiet about critical issues and that weakness would help. For once, she felt like she had power over this loathsome Ken character and then he told her something that proved everything Motoko had believed in.
"Your innocence, Su Kaolla," Ken answered, bringing out a wicked smile on his face as Kaolla's eyes widened in panic. "I could tell someone close to you brought you here to help her get inside his fantasy vault and find his dark perverted dreams." Ken smiled. "You wouldn't find them there. He keeps his clean well-washed glorified fantasies in that vault and protects it with a ridiculously obvious password. I keep the goods in a personal library of mine somewhere else. Can you guess where we keep them?"
Su Kaolla finally started to think like Keitaro. Living alongside dangerous and violent women all this time who accuse him of every act of perversion known to man, Keitaro had surely developed a justified fear of discovery when it comes to perverted fantasies. "His fears," Kaolla replied. "He keeps them in his fears."
Ken's curling smile doubled in size as Kaolla gave her answer. "Your genius has finally served you well. Yes, he keeps his dirty little secrets in his fears. He has had quite a few fantasies about you, Kaolla. I guess Keitaro always liked exotic women. But then again, he has quite a few fantasies about all the girls he lives with, all just as bad." Ken paused as Kaolla tried to hide her tears from him. "Afraid, Kaolla? I don't blame you. Half the stuff in my library could cause his own grandmother to keel over."
Kaolla choked down sobs. "No, not afraid, I just don't understand." In these short seconds, Kaolla felt herself growing ancient and sad, the perpetual smile on her face chipped away by the shattering of a delusion. At this moment, Kaolla prayed she would have the strength to smile again someday. "Keitaro treats everyone of us with respect and acts like such a nice guy. Has he lied to us all this time?"
Ken set Kaolla down and looked her in the eyes. "Don't cry, Kaolla. Try to smile. Keitaro has not lied to you. He respects all of you." Then the appearance of sensitivity vanished as quickly as it had came, turning into one of stern seriousness. "Kaolla, do you know much about metaphysics?"
Kaolla nodded. Of all her topics of intellectual pursuit, Kaolla knew little about the hows and why fors of existence. Thankfully, the continuously talkative Ken would gladly explain. "Well, neither do I. But as a kid, I heard a wise man once say 'that everything in nature contained its opposite.' In fact, that opposite inside everyone grows the more they fight against it. Your Keitaro did everything he could to fight against me. Thanks to his stubborn nature, I now have the power of a god." Ken stood up triumphantly, his trench coat lifting him into the air and allowed him to fly around like a bird before setting himself down behind Kaolla.
"He would never mistreat any of you." Kaolla turned to face him. "No, but he would mistreat us." A flash of mixed feelings entered Ken's eyes, a soup of anger, pain and sadness. "He spent his whole life mistreating me. He pushed me away, ignored me, crushed me under the weight of his ideas and morals, blamed all the bad things he did on me and never gave me a chance to prove myself to him."
Tears erupted from Ken's eyes as his voice started to quiver. "But, it doesn't matter." Ken wiped away his tears. "I separated myself from him. It cost me my soul, but I did it. I control him now, not the other way around. He has one last battle to fight against me. And when he defeats me, I will have enough power to destroy him."
Ken focused on Su Kaolla. Even his dark side ran deeper than anyone had originally fathomed. Kaolla's thought roamed back to her native country, back to stories about trouble-making spirits like the mononoke of Japan. Whenever something went wrong, the villagers would blame this mononoke rather than take responsibility for what happened.
Apparently, Keitaro had long since assigned the blame of his failures to control his own perverted thoughts to a part of himself he considered the Other, the mononoke within. But like the mononoke, no one ever cared how the creature reacted to their bad reputation, because no one considered them human enough to care about. This sad unfortunate fate had befell the all-too-human Ken and would risk killing Keitaro and ultimately himself for a chance to earn his acceptance.
No, Kaolla had tried to grow up fast before and she did not like what she had experienced as an adult. Whatever Keitaro had imagined about her, Kaolla knew better than to make him feel guilty about it, but she could not ignore the effects it would have on her. If she saw herself and Keitaro joined in a such a fashion, she would grow up too fast and she did not want that. Kaolla took a deep breath. "Where should I begin?"
Ken smiled. "At the beginning, of course."
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Save Keitaro
Mononoke Within
Narusegawa Naru had spent what felt like hours tearing Urashima Keitaro to pieces and putting him back together just to do it all over again. Urashima Keitaro almost choked on his own thoughts as he realized that he just referred to this creature as Narusegawa.
"No," he reminded himself. "Not Narusegawa, just a Nightmare." He could not help mistaking of her for the genuine article. Since he had developed a near photographic memory of her body from countless accidents, this Nightmare probably resembled Narusegawa in more ways than he wanted to admit.
As she winded up another punch, the Nightmare froze and listened to Keitaro's faint whisper. The words made her laugh. Everything made her laugh. "Pardon me. 'Not Narusegawa, just a Nightmare.' " She lowered her fist. "How do you know I share nothing in common with your precious Narusegawa? How well do you actually know her, Keitaro?"
Keitaro felt thoroughly exhausted. As an embodiment of fear and anxiety in the domain of fears and anxieties, this foul creature made it a point to rattle Keitaro's nerves from time to time. It gave the torture a psychological dimension.
Once again, this Naru had baited him into another argument. "I know her well enough, Naru." Even though she saw straight those his lies and bravado, Keitaro kept fighting the Nightmare as he had always done before, sticking up from Narusegawa's virtues and insuring his fears that a truly kind and gentle person lived deep inside her.
Keitaro remembered what the town council had told him years ago as a child visiting the Hinata-sou. The wisest of the elders told him, "that everything in nature contained its opposite." Following this logic and his own beliefs in the natural goodness of people, he knew that underneath Narusegawa's hatred towards his clumsiness and her own violent outbursts resided the soul of a good person who loved him dearly.
"Narusegawa," the nightmare corrected Keitaro, slapping him across the face for good measure. "You just called me Naru. You always call me Narusegawa, remember?" The nightmare knew he did not remember, that he could not remember.
She, on the other hand, remembered almost everything. This nightmare loved bragging and she thought of her access to his subconscious memories as something to take pride in. Keitaro himself rarely ever noticed that he always called Narusegawa Naru by her last name, but when he thought about it, he knew his reasons. "Only the real Narusegawa ever deserved that kind of respect, Naru."
If Keitaro had ever listened to reason, this nightmare would defeated him in every debate she had ever started with him. Fortunately, he choose to listen to the logic of his heart and that gave him a clear advantage over Naru because she had originally no heart, until she met his dark side. Keitaro looked out of the corner of his eye to see a dark figure approaching. "Speak of the devil."
"Almost," the figure in the darkness replied as he stepped out of the shadows and revealed himself to Keitaro. "Call me Ken." Keitaro always liked the name Ken. Urashima Ken. Sure, it sounded generic, but it sounded a whole lot cooler than Keitaro, he knew that for sure. Dressed in black clothes and a trench coat that floated in the air like a Dracula-inspired cape, the figure sported a passing resemblance to Keitaro, minus the lack of glasses and vertical slit-like scar that ran through his left eye. Of course, in this realm, Keitaro no longer needed glasses to correct his impaired vision, so he looked a lot more like Ken than usual. Yes, without Keitaro's inhibitions, this representation of his repressed dark side had changed his name to Ken a long while ago.
"Hello, honey," Ken said, letting his trench coat fall off him and float away into the darkness. As he turned to give the nightmare Naru a peck on the cheek. "Nice day at work?" Apparently with nothing better to do except torture Urashima Keitaro, they decided to indulge themselves into a deep lustful kiss of animal passion right in front of him.
Needless to say, it repulsed Keitaro to watch two mental images. He hated seeing them like this, one, his devil's advocate in his fight to keep his faith in Narusegawa alive and the other, the manifestation of all his darker impulses, both embracing each other in such a untamed manner. As their hands started to drift into forbidden territory, Naru must have witnessed the scared and panicked look Keitaro could feel emerging on his own face. Naru broke away from Ken's rough embrace. "Oh wait, Ken. We have children present." Naru pointed impishly at Keitaro. "Perhaps, we should do this somewhere else."
Ken turned his head to look at Keitaro, light from the dim lights overhead illuminating the scar along his left eye. "No, dear, I think my inner child needs a chance to grow up. Let him watch, he can take notes." A notepad and a pencil materialized in Ken's right hand and he pitched both at Keitaro.
Keitaro clinched his eyes and looked away. "No fair, Keitaro, can't let you do that. [Turn around.]" Against his will, Keitaro cranked his head back onto Ken and Naru. "[Open your eyes.]" With all the force Keitaro could summon, he could not bring his eyelids to cover his eyes. It felt like a mouse trying to bench press a truck, completely hopeless. "[Pay attention and take notes.]" Keitaro involuntarily reached down for the notepad. As Naru and Ken started at each other, he could feel his hands scribbling down points of interest and various techniques employed by Naru and Ken.
"Fight my will if you wish, but you only will make it stronger." Keitaro did not understand what Ken meant by that. Keitaro tried to ignore him when he talked like that. His dark side had a tendency to babble. Ken had enslaved him to his will by making him listen to his nonstop babbling for seven hours. Sometimes, Ken would get so wrapped up in his current situation that Keitaro gained the ability to blink his eyes or stop writing, but Ken's will and voice always bent Keitaro back in place.
*****
Aoyama Motoko gave this door a death stare as she grasped her sword. Su Kaolla arrived behind her carrying a sensor. "Keitaro's fantasies, behind this door," Kaolla announced to Motoko.
Motoko sniffed at Kaolla's comment. "How could this place have doors?" From the moment Motoko saw the tablets of self-image and the countless symbols and magazine articles floating about, she knew this place obeyed a set of natural laws very different from ones that the real world adhered to. Motoko could take nothing for granted in this zoo of thoughts and mental images, but surely a door did not make any real sense to have in this mental landscape.
"Well, Motoko, this place doesn't have any real doors, of course."
/Of course,/ Motoko agreed. Once again, Kaolla had found a way to patronize her without even meaning to. It made her angry to have someone talking down to her like her older sister always did.
But Kaolla obviously did not mean to patronize and Motoko choose not hold it against her. "It does have symbols though and doors usually symbolize a willingness to keep people out." Kaolla checked the door over. "Your breaking down the door would symbolize how much force it would take to access his fantasies."
Aoyama Motoko smiled greedily at what Su Kaolla had just said. This door represented his will to keep people out. Why would he want to keep people out unless he had something disgusting and perverted to hide from them? Not realizing how she just reduced the concept of personal privacy to an effort to hide perversion, Motoko immediately rose her sword and commanded her succession technique to fill the blade with Ki energy as it came down on the door. In seconds, Motoko watched in utter disbelief as her blade shattered into a thousand pieces and went flying in every direction. Kaolla had ducked behind Motoko just in the knick of time. Motoko tossed the broken stump of her sword to the ground in complete frustration.
As Kaolla almost spoke out to answer, Motoko signaled with her hand for her to stay quiet. She didn't need Kaolla to tell her what happened. Everything in here stemmed from Keitaro's soul in one way or another and violence had no more effect on this door than it did on Keitaro himself in the real world.
"Well," Motoko thought out loud. "If we can't force it open, how do we get in?" Su Kaolla stared at the surface of the door. While her Ki blast had not toppled the door in one blow like she hoped it would, the hurricane winds produced by the Ki blast did wipe away thick layers of dust from the vaulted door's surface. On the door's dust-free surface, Motoko and Kaolla could now see a keyboard composed of the Japanese alphabet underneath four syllable slots. Kaolla spoke up once again, this time to state the obvious.
"Perhaps, we can enter a code." Motoko sighed. Any idiot could have figured that out, but Kaolla probably wanted to sound important. Everyone inside this machine represented the first people to use her interactive environment. If everything succeeded as planned (meaning everyone survived), this device, this interactive environment as she called it, might have serious market value once she secured the patents for it. Until then, Kaolla could do nothing more than marvel and rant about this living proof of her incredible intellect and ingenuity. As she ranted and marveled, Motoko still had to walk around inside it searching for Keitaro's lost soul and undeniable proof of his perversion.
"You first," Kaolla said, stepping aside for Motoko to approach the keyboard. It surprised Motoko that the computer genius had leave her with the task of cracking the code. Motoko figured that all her accusations against Keitaro made Kaolla think she had superior understanding of his mind and could easily determine the four-syllable code he used to keep his fantasies locked away from prying souls.
As she imagined her worst fears of perversion in Keitaro, she entered in syllables. Ma-e-ha-ra, she typed. Maehara as in Maehara Shinobu. The computer with Keitaro's voice replied. "Access denied." Motoko would not let up. As stupid as he might appear, Keitaro could make the most certain act of perversion look like an accident, so she concluded he would not choose such a blatantly obvious code word. She knew one name that she worried most about finding in his fantasies. A-o-ya-ma. Aoyama. The computer Keitaro voice replied once again, "Access denied."
Motoko thought she might enter in Narusegawa Naru's name, but her name did not fit the slots. Naru only had two syllables and Narusegawa had five. Still, if he had not used her name or Shinobu's name as a password, perhaps, he used Naru's name in a less obvious way. Aoyama Motoko needed to think like Urashima Keitaro, a wildly imaginative man with an obsessive love for someone who can't seem make up her mind about him. Na-ru-na-ru, she typed. Naru, Naru. Motoko could feel a new sword materialize into her grip as the Keitaro voice sounded particularly annoying this time as he repeated his message. "Access denied."
"I think I've got it." She reasoned that even Keitaro had a breaking point like everyone else. Perhaps his sights had strayed away from Naru's hard-to-win love to a more safe and assured victory. That Okinawa girl with that horrible creature for a pet would jump in front of a bullet for her Kei-kun. Of course, Otohime Mutsumi would probably faint from the excitement before she had a chance to act on this selfless bravery. Either way, Motoko could tell she would do anything to protect Keitaro from harm if she didn't have to worry about her anemia getting the best of her. O-to-hi-me, she typed. Otohime.
The Keitaro voice gave his "Access denied" speech again and Motoko started to type in whatever came to mind, desperate to find the password. Three dozen "Access denied" speeches later, she had exhausted every possibility in she could think of. She had even typed in, Su-ka-o-ra. Su Kaolla.
Su Kaolla, apparently tired of her constant failure, leapt onto Motoko's neck and whispered something into her ear. "Not a chance," Motoko replied as she peeled Kaolla off of her and set her on the ground. She actually could believe that Keitaro might have used that word to protect his perverted fantasies, but if he did, Motoko knew what she would have to do to him. Her fingers trembled as she entered it the syllables. She feared what she would have to do if this password worked.
Ya-ku-so-ku. Yakusoku. Promise. The computer voice of Keitaro returned to Motoko and Kaolla. This time it had taken an inviting tone in his voice that Motoko had dreaded hearing. "Please come in. The door will shut behind you. Have a nice day."
Su Kaolla probably wanted to accompany Motoko. Su Kaolla must have hesitated when tears rose in Motoko's eyes. She only wanted to expose Keitaro's perversion and arm the other girls with knowledge. Now, that he had misused a sacred word to protect his fantasies, Motoko knew she could never look at Keitaro the same way again. Like her sister Tsuruko, Keitaro had betrayed his life of purity and strength for a life of obscenity and weakness. He would have to receive the ultimate punishment for his crime; she would force Keitaro to leave the Hinata-sou if either of them survived this. Motoko checked her watch. Twenty minutes left.
Motoko choked back the tears. She could not cry. Every tear she had not stopped, brought shame and disgrace to her school and her family. She needed to stay strong. In seconds, she remembered how to bury her suffering under layers and layers of righteous anger, how to funnel all her fears and sadness into a blind storm of rage.
"You cannot hide from me, Urashima." Motoko charged in. "I will find you. I will find you wherever you hide. I will find you wherever you run to, I will find you ..." A bright light engulfed Motoko and she found her face inches away from a cross.
/... in a church?/ Motoko wondered, cutting herself on the blade of her sword as she grabbed on to the sharp edge as if to keep a grip on reality. /Does Urashima have fantasies about joining the priesthood?/ She released her hand from the sharp edge. She realized that thought seemed awfully naive, but Motoko started to suspect she knew less about Keitaro than she pretended to. If Keitaro could use the promise as a password for his vault of fantasies, perhaps he had no real terribly sick fantasies at all.
It seemed like a hard sale for Motoko at first, but years of asking why Keitaro acted like such a nice guy had never given her the chance to ask the opposite question: Why not? Why couldn't she just accept Keitaro the way he appeared, a nice guy with an accident-prone nature and a good heart? Sure, she had done something like that before with her sister's husband and he turned out to have some serious issues about women, but perhaps Motoko had deceived herself. Perhaps, she had deceived herself in believing she could ever find a comparison between Keitaro and Tsuruko's two-faced husband. Keitaro seemed like a good kid, perhaps part of that small percent of the male population even women like herself could put their faith in.
Motoko started to cry as she witnessed why the fantasy had taken her to a church. She still thought tears brought dishonor and shame to her school and her family, but she could not help it. She always cried at weddings.
As she cried, the voice of priest echoed in her ears. "Speak now or forever hold your peace." Motoko had good cause why they should not wed. Keitaro still needed to graduate from Toudai and so did Naru, but she did not speak this objection. Su Kaolla warned her that mental images like the priest can only interact with her if she spoke to them.
Besides, Motoko still felt guilty from the last time she tried to interrupt a wedding. That time, everyone present had laughed her out of the building and continued the service without her.
Any ways, Keitaro certainly had thought through this fantasy with a feverish degree of detail as she looked up the banner that read, "Toudai Alumni Marriage." Aoyama Motoko also caught sight of the other girls and herself. Motoko and Maehara Shinobu in this fantasy looked like they entered their early twenties. This mostly definitely meant that Keitaro dreamed of passing the Toudai exam on his fourth try, of Naru passing on her second, both of them graduating and marrying two years after graduation. All of this would take roughly seven years if it really happened.
The priest cleared his throat. "I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride." As Motoko's tears of joy collected along her half-successful impersonation of smile, Keitaro pulled up the bride's veil and revealed a blushing Narusegawa Naru. As Keitaro and Naru moved in to kiss each other, a bright light erupted from the space between their lips and expanded outward, engulfing the priest and the dream versions of everyone she had ever met since Keitaro had moved into the Hinata-sou.
In moments, the light consumed Motoko and she found herself at the beginning of another one of Keitaro's fantasies. This fantasy had Keitaro serenading Naru with a violin or something like that. Motoko wondered what had happened to the last fantasy.
Moments before Keitaro and Naru got a chance to kiss, the dream just ended and moved on to a new one like nothing happened. To say the least, it made very little sense. Surely even the most non-perverted man on the planet has some fantasies of what to do on the honeymoon.
*****
Su Kaolla hated herself for what she had so thoughtlessly done. Kaolla herself had warned everyone about trying to speak to mental images, especially dangerous-looking ones. And when a Keitaro dressed in black without glasses and a scar over his left eye showed up after Motoko opened the door to his fantasies, she could not contain the urge to say, "Hey, Keitaro, that you?" Able to interact with her now, this Keitaro ran down Kaolla. She tried to run in after Motoko, but the door had shut behind her as the computer promised it would. All the mental resources in the world at her disposal and she still could not grasp simple concepts like "Shut up."
"You just called me Keitaro. People here call me Ken." Kaolla could not take her eyes off of the scar over his left eye. "Explain yourself." Kaolla sweat-dropped at the response and pulled herself free of this Keitaro. Apparently, this version of Keitaro answered to a different name than the original Keitaro did. Kaolla could not think of her next move, but she imagined having her toys with the live ammunitions with her right now. No sooner had Kaolla made this silent wish, the toys with the live ammunitions materialized in her hands.
A glint of fear rose in this shadow Keitaro's eyes, especially the one with the scar over it. "No, you can't. Mental images cannot materialize things outside domains." Kaolla panicked as Ken told her this fact she had already known. According to her theories of psyche display interaction, some of the long-lived mental images can materialize themselves outside their domains and into any domain they pleased, but only a real soul could do what she did. "Where did you come from?"
As the current scoreboard read, Su Kaolla had committed two major mistakes and this Ken character had committed none. She could do nothing to correct the mistake now, she just had to keep this Keitaro reject from getting too close to her. In seconds, she had released every last bit of ammunition inside the toys at Ken.
As she strained her mind to materialize new ammunition, this Ken, uninjured and unmoved by the explosions, leapt at Kaolla, grabbed her around the waist and threw her over his shoulders. Keitaro leveled one of Kaolla's toy with the live ammunition to Kaolla. "You probably know this already, Kaolla," this Keitaro replied nonchalantly, leveling the toy gun to Kaolla's neck. "I can neither kill you nor permanently injure you in any way in this place. But I can hurt you and unless you want to know what having your head blown off feels like, I suggest you tell me where you came from."
Kaolla would never tell this Keitaro clone anything. No amount of pain inflicted on her could bring Kaolla to talk. But Ken had already figured that out. "If your own personal pain will not motivate you to tell me where you came from, I will harm the real Keitaro. I have him imprisoned in the deepest darkest regions of his fears and if you don't speak, I will hurt him."
/Fears,/ Su Kaolla thought as she heard this Keitaro clone refer to the real Keitaro. In all the rush, no one had ever thought to search for him in his fears. But, then again, they probably all knew they would have to search there eventually, they just wanted to search the easier places to prepare themselves for the voyage into Keitaro's fears.
Lost in her own introspection at the possibility of this grotesque oversight, Keitaro must have taken her silence as resistance. "Okay, I guess you don't care what misery befalls Keitaro either. Perhaps, you think Keitaro can handle anything and gladly suffer for you. Well, I can't give you pain or the threat of pain against others to force the truth out of you. I doubt I can give you anything to make you tell me the truth. But I do know one thing I can take away from you. Do you have any idea what?"
Kaolla nodded her head. Besides pain towards herself and others, Ken had few moves available to him. He already made the fatal error of revealing something Kaolla did not know. In her theories, she had not reached a decision about whether attack from a mental image could harm the physical body in some way or not. Ken, like herself, had a shared inability to keep quiet about critical issues and that weakness would help. For once, she felt like she had power over this loathsome Ken character and then he told her something that proved everything Motoko had believed in.
"Your innocence, Su Kaolla," Ken answered, bringing out a wicked smile on his face as Kaolla's eyes widened in panic. "I could tell someone close to you brought you here to help her get inside his fantasy vault and find his dark perverted dreams." Ken smiled. "You wouldn't find them there. He keeps his clean well-washed glorified fantasies in that vault and protects it with a ridiculously obvious password. I keep the goods in a personal library of mine somewhere else. Can you guess where we keep them?"
Su Kaolla finally started to think like Keitaro. Living alongside dangerous and violent women all this time who accuse him of every act of perversion known to man, Keitaro had surely developed a justified fear of discovery when it comes to perverted fantasies. "His fears," Kaolla replied. "He keeps them in his fears."
Ken's curling smile doubled in size as Kaolla gave her answer. "Your genius has finally served you well. Yes, he keeps his dirty little secrets in his fears. He has had quite a few fantasies about you, Kaolla. I guess Keitaro always liked exotic women. But then again, he has quite a few fantasies about all the girls he lives with, all just as bad." Ken paused as Kaolla tried to hide her tears from him. "Afraid, Kaolla? I don't blame you. Half the stuff in my library could cause his own grandmother to keel over."
Kaolla choked down sobs. "No, not afraid, I just don't understand." In these short seconds, Kaolla felt herself growing ancient and sad, the perpetual smile on her face chipped away by the shattering of a delusion. At this moment, Kaolla prayed she would have the strength to smile again someday. "Keitaro treats everyone of us with respect and acts like such a nice guy. Has he lied to us all this time?"
Ken set Kaolla down and looked her in the eyes. "Don't cry, Kaolla. Try to smile. Keitaro has not lied to you. He respects all of you." Then the appearance of sensitivity vanished as quickly as it had came, turning into one of stern seriousness. "Kaolla, do you know much about metaphysics?"
Kaolla nodded. Of all her topics of intellectual pursuit, Kaolla knew little about the hows and why fors of existence. Thankfully, the continuously talkative Ken would gladly explain. "Well, neither do I. But as a kid, I heard a wise man once say 'that everything in nature contained its opposite.' In fact, that opposite inside everyone grows the more they fight against it. Your Keitaro did everything he could to fight against me. Thanks to his stubborn nature, I now have the power of a god." Ken stood up triumphantly, his trench coat lifting him into the air and allowed him to fly around like a bird before setting himself down behind Kaolla.
"He would never mistreat any of you." Kaolla turned to face him. "No, but he would mistreat us." A flash of mixed feelings entered Ken's eyes, a soup of anger, pain and sadness. "He spent his whole life mistreating me. He pushed me away, ignored me, crushed me under the weight of his ideas and morals, blamed all the bad things he did on me and never gave me a chance to prove myself to him."
Tears erupted from Ken's eyes as his voice started to quiver. "But, it doesn't matter." Ken wiped away his tears. "I separated myself from him. It cost me my soul, but I did it. I control him now, not the other way around. He has one last battle to fight against me. And when he defeats me, I will have enough power to destroy him."
Ken focused on Su Kaolla. Even his dark side ran deeper than anyone had originally fathomed. Kaolla's thought roamed back to her native country, back to stories about trouble-making spirits like the mononoke of Japan. Whenever something went wrong, the villagers would blame this mononoke rather than take responsibility for what happened.
Apparently, Keitaro had long since assigned the blame of his failures to control his own perverted thoughts to a part of himself he considered the Other, the mononoke within. But like the mononoke, no one ever cared how the creature reacted to their bad reputation, because no one considered them human enough to care about. This sad unfortunate fate had befell the all-too-human Ken and would risk killing Keitaro and ultimately himself for a chance to earn his acceptance.
No, Kaolla had tried to grow up fast before and she did not like what she had experienced as an adult. Whatever Keitaro had imagined about her, Kaolla knew better than to make him feel guilty about it, but she could not ignore the effects it would have on her. If she saw herself and Keitaro joined in a such a fashion, she would grow up too fast and she did not want that. Kaolla took a deep breath. "Where should I begin?"
Ken smiled. "At the beginning, of course."
TO BE CONTINUED ...