Part V: Coda

Wishing you were somehow here again . . .

Wishing you were somehow near . . .

Sometimes it seemed,

If I just dreamed,

Somehow you would be here . . .

Wishing I could hear your voice again . . .

Knowing that I never would . . .

Dreaming of you

Won't help me to do

All that you dreamed I could . . .

~Wishing you were Somehow here Again: Phantom of the Opera

Kaioushin must have dozed off while considering the possibilities, for the sky of All Saint's Day had begun to gleam with a bloody hue. As if sillhouted in the blaze of distant fire, Meghann staggered along. Her dragging feet shuffled along the loose pebbles. Kaioushin could still make out a shadow of her former ability in the loping stride and the proud way she held her head. However, from her arm, bereft of one gray sleeve, trailed slender red threads. Occasionally Meghann would clasp a hand tenderly over the spot and then withdraw quickly as if the spot was sensitive and sore. Her breathing too, was out of sync with the normal way, the frantic gasping of one who has narrowly escaped a terrible fate. As he judged the desperation in her eyes, Kaioushin determined that there would be many miles before she considered herself free of her pursuers. Brokeness filled her face with misery. Suddenly Kaioushin understood that this was no mere circuit survey of the culdesacs. She was running - for real this time - for another horizon.

Without taking further time to think on what he would say - for what could he - Kaioushin stepped off of the lamppost. It took pitifully little time for him to catch her. Even when his shadow fell across her, she did not look back, proof of the troubles surrounding her heart. Kaioushin quickly surpassed the night runner and hovered in front of her. As she approached him, he could make out the rasping sobs that shook her chest. Her eyes were blind, both to him and her beloved twilight. Bloodstains upon both cheeks marked her efforts to wipe the tears away. Kaioushin reached out with both hands and caught her by the shoulders. Her bones felt eerily fragile beneath his sensitive fingers. Beneath her paper-thin flesh fever fire raged.

"What are you doing? What happened?" The Kai's emotions overwhelmed him so completely that he forgot the peril of Majin Buu.

For many heartbeats, she did not answer him. "Kaioushin," she at last whispered. Her voice was that of a weary soldier. "They were going to help him, Kaioushin! They said they were going to help me, but I saw it upon their brows: the mark of Majin!"

Could she be raving? Kaioushin wondered. So many emotions tangled in her voice that it was impossible to distinguish madness, fear, sorrow, joy, or weariness.

Exhausted, she looped her arms together behind the deity's neck. "I can feel him wanting to emerge, Kaioushin. I had such high hopes that I would meet you again on this night, as pure as I was back then, when you first knew me and took me for the taint itself." She laughed bitterly. "However, it would seem that we mortals are subject to the same frustrations as you gods are." Her breath against his ears and neck was as chill as winter's core.

Regarding her in horror, Kaioushin landed soundlessly upon the cool road. "Meghann, please! I cannot lose you too! You are the one mortal who was able to look past…" He broke off as memories of the beautiful dream assailed him. "Don't let that monster win!" He stared deep into her eyes. Of the girl charmed by the wiles of night, free from temptation by any glamour it could have offered her, few traces remained. Kaioushin'sface became drawn with dismay and suffering. I must seek deeper… Sweat and tears mingled upon his chiseled face, a glittering rain of stars.

"They …just buried a needle in my flesh and passed the raw powe - nutrients they called them - to him. His power is greater than it has been in many weeks." Despair set her jaw quavering in rage.

"The power over twilight was yours before it was ever his!" Kaioushin shouted, breaking the silence of the deathwatch hour. "Claim it and it will empower you! Drive him away!"

Tears shone upon the smears of blood upon her cheeks. A cascade of memories, of hospitals, questions, condescending faces, confident smirks, grim resolves, and lies coated in a pretense of friendship played before Kaioushin in the fathomless circles of her eyes. He stumbled backward, blinded by the pain so different from his own. She reached for him in desperation and their hands met. The contact sent her reeling to the sidewalk. Kaioushin gasped in astonishment. Majin Buu, little more than a transparent apparition, had at last emerged from the shell of her body. Meghann heaved a strangled gasp and stared at the creature in revulsion. Majin Buu turned his back on her contemptuously. "Me tired wait! You die now!" Buu hissed at the Kai. Kaioushin met his challenge with a surge of relief crackling through his veins.

Suddenly it was as if the fallen Kaioushins had augmented his power with their own. He fought with greater strength and speed than he had ever known before, dealing blows seemingly upon the instant that his brain conceived of them. The exact length of the battle faded in his mind as the clouds closed in on that icy November day. Like avenging spirits, the breath of both the Kai and Majin Buu trailed around them, each choking the other. From weedy meadow, to glassy waters, to thick cloud, the battle progressed. Though Buu appeared as intangible as his own breath, every one of Kaioushin's blows sent him reeling. At long last, drenched in sweat, the due circled one another in a deadly face-off. Clearly the Kai had the advantage. The clouds above him burst, bringing with them streamers of icy rain. Kaioushin launched himself at Buu with a fierce battle scream. Distracted by the torrents, the monster made no move to stop him. Kaioushin's initial energy blast struck Buu head on. The deity followed up with a fatal rain of blows. He registered no sensation; his feet might as well have passed right through the apparition. However, Buu gave a terrible scream and dissolved like morning mist from the ground.

With Majin Buu's disappearance, a flash of clairvoyance shot the length of Kaioushin's mind. Babidi's fanatical screech, he realized, at first with considerable mirth. The wizard's words quickly drained any peace Kaioushin found in victory.

"Well met, Higashi no Kaioushin. It appears that you have solved the riddle of my spell. Alas, there are some things dear to you yet. How easily you fools exploit your weaknesses! So long as such mortal tendencies lie within your race, there is no hope of your avenging the others! With as little as one death, I am capable of crushing all of your hope! Finally and forever it shall be!" An insane cackle joined in with the howl of the wind in the weeds and pines.

"What do you mean, Babidi?" Kaioushin demanded. Silence, save for the pattering rain and the echoes of laughter, was his only answer. Could this have something to do with Meghann? He knew before he reached her side that Babidi, in forfeiting the dream, had taken her life in return.

She lay as she had fallen, with one hand tangled in a web of blood trailing in a river of rainwater. Her hair, already sodden, lay against the golden, wet grass. From her sallow lips, there issued no sound or breath.

"NO!" Kaioushin mourned, seizing her lifeless hand in his own. There would be little sense in questioning an already clear reason. Numbly, mercilessly his mind resounded with her words, those that had distinguished her from all other mortals until they filled his head and drowned out one another's sense. "…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 'mediocrity.'"

"I have defeated Buu with my own hands…and thereby avenged Kaioushinkai. What could be more fitting than to pass on now?" He gently pillowed his head on her shoulder. Each raindrop echoed her words, lulling him to another place where murky figures glided through thick fog. Before long, even these figures passed from him and the fog rolled away, leaving him alone to brave the darkness.