Part II: Of Dreams and Waking
Close your eyes and surrender to your darkest dreams!
Purge your thoughts of the life you knew before!
Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar!
And you'll live as you've never lived before . . .
~Music of the Night: Phantom of the Opera
"Why didn't you tell me?" the night runner, faster, leaner, stronger than she was at their last meeting exclaimed.
Kaioushin's eyes widened and his mouth dropped. "Babidi! Is this another of your enchantments?" he yelled at the sky. Blazing wind laden with humidity swept across his skin. Summer thunder rumbled above him. Buzzing of countless insects filled the air. However, pearly pink twilight hung heavily in the sky. Beside the infant pink of the sky, the moon was the washed out, white face of an old woman. How like Buu, the Kai mused. I wonder if this is one of Babidi's preposterous jokes.
"You've stayed away long enough for me to figure it out." Meghann smiled as if she had uncovered a treasure chest laden with jewels. "You are the guardian of the eastern balance.!"
Kaioushin, stopped in his tracks, ravaged with suspicion at the sudden change of surroundings. Her voice was the long forgotten medley of storm-blown winds on a summer afternoon. His eyes watered as if the sound was as sharp and ear-splitting as it was pleasant. "How long has it been?" he asked, dazed.
"Months! It was November the last time I saw you. Now it's almost July." Suddenly her eyes narrowed. "What has happened to you?"
"Happened?" he stalled, backing away cautiously. Sweat trickled behind his ears as they strained for the slightest whistle of Majin Buu.
"You're not supposed to be intimidated when a mortal girl pulls a face at you." She crossed her arms indignantly. "Walk with me," she invited. "It will clear your mind."
Almost without thinking, Kaioushin complied. Suddenly suspicion made him start back. Everything is somehow different here…yet all is the same. Meghann is still saying the same things, still feeding the void inside her… As he pondered the possibility of Buu springing from her form, it took great effort to steady his hands. Her face remained as it had been the sun and wind blown flesh of a mortal girl.
Without realizing it, Kaioushin allowed his feet to hover several inches above the roadside as he pondered what could have happened. He vaguely remembered Gohan's incredible kamehameha ki attack - two in a row for that matter. Both of these had failed to so much as pierce the leathery, old flesh of Majin Buu's ball. It had taken several additional terrawatts of energy on the part of the arrogant Saiyan prince and Gohan's father to fully rupture the seal. Once the ball had opened, with a stench like a thousand corpse lying in the hot sun, Buu had proved his nature just as peculiar and incomprehensible as the destruction he sought to deal out. After considerable cajoling and threats from his new master, Buu had finally chased after him and Gohan, the latter whom he had felled with one punch. Kaioushin groaned. His futile attacks had sparked the wicked gleam that emitted from the cracks beneath Buu's flabby forehead; eyes, if you call them that.
Try as he might, Kaioushin could not recall any of Buu's attacks. Upon his mind was melded a single picture, tiny as a stamp yet larger than life, two eyes mad beyond measure, within them, chaos swirling. As the Kai stared into this bottomless maelstrom, his body experienced blinding pain. Each blow Buu had rained on him had reverberated throughout his entire being, immobilizing his limbs. So much as touching Buu, the avatar of chaos and emptiness, had threatened to shatter the Kai's sanity completely, proof of the eternal conflict between a keeper of order and a sower of chaos.
Before the memory could take hold of him completely, Kaioushin banished it with rationality, albeit logic tainted with abstract reasoning. For this, he could derive no explanation, save intuition, for which he harbored tremendous contempt. This must be a dream of sorts…a coma. I could die at Buu's hands while I'm still here! I suppose the only help for it is to wake up. But how in the name of all creation am I going to do that?
"What would have happened any differently if you had known of this curse?" Kaioushin bitterly demanded at last.
Meghann sighed and stopped beneath a yellow street lamp, a single lonely island in danger of being swallowed anew by the turbulent sea. "I would have understood your hatred of nothingness, I suppose."
"No mortal being will ever fully comprehend it or this hellacious mountain of responsibility!" Kaioushin snapped vehemently.
Meghann, shocked at the normally reserved god's outburst, listened spellbound to the tirade that he could no longer contain.
"The enormity of a guardian's responsibility is beyond the understanding of those beneath us, feeble beings who find sleep in the hours of night, those who, after death, find a realm of joy and restoration that heals all wounds. It is not so for we keepers of the balance! We are constantly on the alert, watching, waiting, skulking, and suspecting…every living thing! Trust is not considered, even in the dreams of the maddest!"
Incensed, Kaioushin began to pace back and forth within the confines of the circle of light. "Can you even imagine what it is like to have witnessed thousands dying in your place because you are too important to lose?" His voice trembled as the emotions, a raw embodiment of the chaos he hoped to prevent, clashed within his body. Unable to escape the agony he'd denied for millennia, a thousand ragged shards of fury, humiliation, and lately, a cavernous vault of inferiority, the Kai admitted to the travesty that had encompassed nearly his entire existence.
"I watched them die…north and west kaioushin… Kibito wouldn't let me confront Buu on my own… We started to look for south Kai… However, Buu found him first. I huddled blindly in the darkness, listening to their clash. Their fight seemed an endless repetition, Bibidi shouting encouragement in his fanatical, tottering hiss, Buu's piercing whistle..." Kaioushin leaned against the pole, his whisper ragged with sorrow. "I only heard south kaioushin's screams toward the end. Finally, when the sun rose, Buu struck the final blow and absorbed him. Then he set off to earth to satiate his gluttony. In one night, I had inherited the burdens of all of them. I made a vow on the planet to bring honor to their realms and to be the best caretaker possible after Buu was destroyed. However, every one of my plans unraveled. Bibidi passed on the secret of breaking open Buu's ball to his son Babidi without my knowledge. The Potara earrings that could have combated the wizard and his creation are still hanging from my ears, unused. True, the Saiyans might have used them. Yet…" As he hung his head with a tremulous sigh, one of the fiery, delicate orbs flashed silver. "Their arrogance! Damn them!" Shadows concealed his agony but little.
"One in particular, Vegita… Once prince of all the Saiyans, he fell from power when Frieza destroyed his planet. Later he met Son Goku who saved his life and defeated Frieza. However, I believe that Goku's ultimate transgression in Vegita's eyes was that he harnessed the power of the super Saiyan before he could. Vegita gave himself over to Babidi so that he could fight Son Goku…another fight had killed Son Goku and he had only one day to spend on the earth. Vegita could not see past his own pride for the benefit of others, the selfish, overconfident…!" He trailed off, unable to meet her eyes.
"I know," she whispered.
Kaioushin shivered. An inexplicable current of power surrounded her, though if he analyzed it, he found only a distorted collection of recollections…his memories and fragments. This peculiar non-ki - what else could he call it? - set her hair billowing though no wind broke the stillness of the sticky June dusk.
"You and he were very alike." Her eyes, though fixed on him, seemed to look far beyond the dim culdesac. "He gave himself over to death against Frieza when the golden power eluded him, yet when it seemed within his grasp, his boasts shook the hills."
"In what way is that similar to me?" Kaioushin, able to focus now that he had drained off a measure of his sorrow and regret, demanded.
"Similarly, you too are confident and don't look before you leap, so to speak. Then after realizing what has happened, you allow panic and zealous caution to override your true potential." Her luminous gray eyes arrested his and the clear-water music of her explanation suggested that she believed much potential to be locked away within him. "I believe-" At once it seemed that Meghann and not the non-ki who addressed him. "That if you only believe in yourself, you will go farther, maybe even overcome that part of you that hangs any hope with ropes woven with conceived mediocrity.
"Forgive me my dark outlook." Kaioushin smiled bitterly. "Do you know what it is to have countless people stretching your hands to you, screaming for mercy, deliverance, and the like and being unable to do a damned thing more than you already are?"
Meghann tried to tear free of the agony that seemed chiseled into the very bones of his visage. However, his bottomless eyes were inescapable.
"I count their faces. There are the angry ones that refuse to believe in the gods. It is they who plant and germinate seeds of distrust, aiding Buu in their own way. Those who weep for an unavoidable fate are an inescapable chorus at the rare times I find to spend by myself… However, those that most unsettle me are those who have lost all their energy and will to believe. Their faces are streaked with blood and dirt. They wear the filthy chains of captivity, war, others' greed… There are so many like that, so many like me who did not choose their fetters, yet are forced to drag them along, day after day. The suffering peoples, I call them. I long, more than anything, to aid them! It is undeniably cruel, this admission: a people that fall under Buu's shadow will not endure pain for long. Vengeance stays my hand from the path for which I long, that is true. However, if I cannot keep Buu at bay, even my charges and the work I did among them would be of no avail… The worst of this responsibility is that I cannot walk away from it. There is no one else to aid or replace me." Though Kaioushin had barely broached the torment of heart, soul, and mind he had endured, he could continue no longer. Meghann's arms went around him, crushing the very life from his body as he imagined. Overcome, Kaioushin made no move to dislodge her. If this is Buu's doing, I hope he's quick about it! Such shameful weakness I just exhibited… How Babidi would laugh! However, several minutes passed with none of his bones snapping, no triumphant grin splitting the night runner's face. Kaioushin opened his eyes slowly. "What are you doing?" he asked tiredly.
"How do you stand it?" Meghann, normally so composed, sounded on the verge of tears. "I never understood before…" Her hair brushing against his cheek was silken, a gentle caress. She drew back. Kaioushin gasped. Shiny tracks that she made no effort to hide glinted from eyelash to chin.
I did not mean to make her cry…
"Do you mean that no one has ever given you a hug before?" Suddenly the night runner, whom he had feared in the days before Majin Buu's release, seemed as the other mortals in need of his protection. Oddly her tears made her more vulnerable. Belying this delicacy, her fury-ladden words resounded through his heart like the peals of church bells. In this inescapable din, his task took on new angles, some sharper than before.
"I believe it would be considered sacrilege," Kaioushin remarked wryly.
"I'm…I'm sorry," she apologized huskily.
He gently reached to her flushed cheeks. Upon his fingers, the tears vanished. "Of course, these are hardly ordinary times. Had they been, I might have spoken of the wonders of the universe. You are right," he admitted at last. "I do overlook things. Too long have I focused only on prevention. Perhaps I should fuel my determination with preservation… Even if this is a dream, I am glad to have had it. If I ever awaken, I think I will be able to find a way to prevail against Majin Buu."
Meghann strode into the darkness and beckoned for him to follow. They followed the road to the shores of one of the still lakes that dotted the golf course. When she knelt in the dry grass, Kaioushin sat beside her. For several minutes they watched the moon's opaque banner billow across the heavens. "Do you still think this is a dream?" she whispered at last.
"Why shouldn't it be?"
"Why should it be? In dreams, do you so much as notice the sweet grasses of summer? Here, their stalks have absorbed the night wind until they seem perfumed with the blood of the gods! Is the wind off the water so moist? Does the air teem with the music of life hidden while the sun surveys the land?" When he did not answer, she lay back, musing aloud. "A dream is filled with marvels, yes, but none of the natural, hidden wonders that people overlook so easily in their own concerns. If this was a dream, you could not experience the magic of summer night… Not all darkness is perverted from evil."
"You have nearly convinced me." Though he had never done anything quite so strange as lie on the ground, Kaioushin followed her example. Blades of grass tickled his face, with a soft hoarse laughter that even his sensitive ears could barely make out. "Yet…why tell me these things?"
"It cuts deeply to be taken for a mere phantasm, even one that help you understand yourself. I should pinch you to show that I am real." Pale golden spirals lazily drifted from her hair as she sat up and swung her hair behind her shoulder. In the dim illumination of the silver moon, her gray eyes twinkled as moonstones. Suddenly Kaioushin was conscious of her nearness, and with it, a purity more painfully sweet than the blood that coursed through his veins. His cheeks blazed so that the humid evening seemed as the soul of black winter on a dismal shore. He pulled her back down beside him, savoring the sensations that surely could not be spun of dream thread. Their lips just brushed, the gentle sweep of wind upon water, stirring infinite ripples across an otherwise deceptively still mirror-like surface. Before he could catch her, she tugged away. Hardly daring to reflect on what had passed between them, Kaioushin stared after her, perplexed. He had barely glimpsed the fleeting, shine of alarm in her eyes before the unfettered emissaries of hell itself took command of the night.