Reflections
Juuhachigou opened her eyes and found herself lying in bed with a flood of sunlight pouring through the windows. While others would have blinked and squinted in the morning sun, the cyborg girl simply sat up in bed and looked at the empty space next to her. The sheets were smooth, and the pillow fluffed--as if Juunanagou had never made it to bed last night.
But it wasn't like they needed to sleep anyway; the eternal energy generators installed inside each of them prevented them from ever tiring physically. Yet an occasional hour of sleep refreshed the human mind that still managed to control her once-human body.
Juuhachigou slid her bare legs out from beneath the worn evergreen comforter, listening for sounds of her brother. Unable to detect anything in the house besides the dripping of a faucet and the gnawing of termites in the wall, she stood up and walked across the smooth wooden floor to stop at the full-length mirror between a heavy wooden dresser and an old-fashioned vanity table. She gazed at her reflection in the mirror; a young girl wearing only an oversized T-shirt stared back at her. Juuhachigou raked her fingers back through her hair, undoing the tangles, watching as her mirror counterpart did the same.
Every day, I hope--
Juuhachigou took the bottom of her nightshirt in her hands.
Every day, I wish--
She pulled the shirt over her head.
Every day--I'm disappointed.
The shirt dropped soundlessly to the floor; unreal blue eyes stared at Juuhachigou from the mirror.
Juuhachigou stared back, eyes fixated on the scar on the girl in the mirror. She put a hand flat to her chest, feeling a heart pulsing beneath her perfect skin--and Juuhachigou felt as if she were only a reflection, copying the movements of someone else on the other side of the mirror.
Her fingertips trailed lower, tracing the scar along her breastbone and over her flat stomach to just above her navel.
Gero had taken away so much from her, claiming every part of her for his selfish purposes. Her body, her mind, her life, her soul--he wanted to control them all.
She could never reclaim her body completely; the scar was only further proof of that.
She could never regain her mind completely; the scar reminded her of a painful past she couldn't remember.
She knew behind the scar lay the source of her unnatural life, the source of her inexhaustible energy. Gero had given it to her, and yet Gero couldn't allow her to possess even this. He had placed a bomb inside her, nestling it against that technological life source so he could destroy it at the touch of a button.
So anyone could destroy her at the touch of a button, provided they had the right information.
Kuririn could have killed me.
I could have killed myself.
Her hand clenched as the bald man's words echoed in her head: "I think it's sad to have to live with a bomb inside you!"
As if he could know.
She glared defiantly at the girl in the mirror, who existed only as long as the original stood in front of the mirror, only as long as there was a mirror…
Kuririn's wish had taken away the bomb.
Juuhachigou was filled with a sudden necessity to kill.
Kuririn's wish--
The mirror shattered into a thousand silver shards as her fist smashed through it.
Kuririn's wish had taken away her last chance at mortality.
The immortal girl in the mirror laughed at Juuhachigou a thousand times from the scattered pieces of broken glass.
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The ax blade bit into the tree trunk with a solid thunk. Juunanagou yanked it out and wiped a droplet of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand before preparing for another swing.
Thunk!
He had been out in the forest for hours now. A huge pyramid of logs and several scattered tree stumps behind him proved that Juunanagou and his ax were a force to be reckoned with. Juunanagou hacked away at his current sylvan victim, brows narrowed with fierce concentration.
I could blow this whole mountain to dust without even trying, he thought. I don't need an ax to chop down a flimsy tree!
But that was his goal, to cut down a tree using only his basic strength--using only his rough estimate of the power in a normal human. Still, the physical effort was nominal; the toughest part of the job was controlling himself so he wouldn't slice through the whole tree--or several trees--at once.
Almost on cue, he swung the ax too hard, chopping clear through the wood. The trunk tilted dangerously to one side, seemingly hanging in the air, then crashed to the ground in a massive explosion of pine needles and splintering wood.
Juunanagou dropped the ax and sat down on the new tree stump, resting his head on one hand, while the other idly twirled a long green pine needle. I'm never going to get the hang of this! he thought dejectedly. Maybe it was impossible for him to fell a tree in an ordinary manner; maybe he was just too strong to be ordinary. He looked out at the forest, counting the number of trees he could see ahead of him.
He smirked and let the pine needle fall from his hand to join the countless other dead needles on the forest floor. He had plenty of trees left to cut down--he would get it right eventually, and reduce the entire forest to stumps using only the strength of an ordinary man.
Then he would have won this round of the game.
His entire life since Gero had become a game to him. Driving a car instead of flying under his own power, shooting a gun instead of blasting energy, using an ax instead of incinerating the entire mountainside at once--it was all just a game he played to divert his mind from the truth. By using mundane means to complete his tasks--even unusual ones like killing Son Goku or leveling an entire forest--he could pretend that he, too, was plain and ordinary.
But games of make-believe are best played alone…
"Juunanagou!"
He lifted his head at the sound of his sister's voice. It came from the direction of the cabin. He resented the fact that his sister had intruded upon his solitude. She subtly reminded him every day that they were different. She didn't eat, because it wasn't necessary for them. She slept only a little, because they didn't need more than a few hours a week.
Although Juunanagou himself hadn't slept last night. He'd been up all night sharpening the ax. He had found it stuck in a stump in the forest on the day Juuhachigou had found him. He only came up with the idea for this game yesterday, though. He was proud of himself; this game would last him a while.
"WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?" Juuhachigou yelled from somewhere above him. She was probably floating in the sky, trying to spot him through the impenetrable canopy of the pines. He grinned, but made no move to reveal himself, certain that Juuhachigou was too far away for the locator in her brain to detect him since his own hadn't alerted him of her presence. Juuhachigou didn't understand his games, describing them as idiotic and calling him a "very human male." She didn't realize that that was exactly what he wanted to hear.
So now he stayed silent, testing the edge of his ax with his fingertips as his sister called his name a few more times. Finally, he heard the whooshing sound of someone blasting into high-speed flight.
She was gone--for the moment.
Juunanagou stood up, dusted off his jeans, and picked out the next tree that would get a taste of his ax.
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Idiot. Idiot. Idiot!
Juuhachigou zoomed through the air, heading southeast, unconsciously retracing the trail she had followed in her first search for her brother two months ago.
Juunanagou, you are an idiot!
In the past weeks, they had settled into a routine, saying little but thinking too much as the days rolled on meaninglessly. He would leave the cabin for a few hours each day, to find something "fun", he said. She would sit in the kitchen, or on the bed, or even on the roof, alone with her thoughts while she waited for his return.
Juuhachigou did not like to be alone with her thoughts.
Especially the ones that crept into her mind unexpectedly.
Once, she had been sitting at the kitchen table, when a black bird had flown against the closed window, unable to distinguish the clear glass from air. The creature flopped onto the outside window ledge, so she stood up to open the window, briefly recalling Juurokugou's strange fascination with these animals. She leaned out only to see it frantically flap its fragile wings in a spreading pool of blood as dark as its own feathers.
--blood, dark black blood--
The image had sprung unbidden into her mind then--as it did now. It summoned memories of pain, of fear, of terrible helplessness. It was then that she began to fear herself.
--blood, splattering onto a concrete floor--
She had watched the bird's tiny chest heave for the last time. It died with its dark eyes wide, beak opened as if it was screaming and nobody could hear its pain.
--violent screaming, then dreadful silence--
Juuhachigou hated the silence. Silence meant pain.
Silence meant she was alone with her pain.
Juunanagou had left her alone in the cabin, alone in the silent torture inside her mind. She wanted to talk to him, yell at him, just to know he was nearby. Contrary to the popular belief that twins had a psychic bond, she could never sense Juunanagou's thoughts or instinctively know his whereabouts. She needed to see him to know where he was--and she needed to see him now so she could reassure herself that she wasn't alone in the world, that she wasn't the only one with scars too deep to heal. That's why she had tracked him down after the ordeal with Cell and the dragonballs was over.
But Juunanagou wasn't with her right now; he never needed her company. So now she needed to find something else to comfort her, to distract her from her thoughts.
She looked down at the land speeding past below her. There were more roads in this area than further north--more houses, too. The dome-shaped homes were scattered about like mushrooms in a field. Juuhachigou flew on with no real destination in mind, absently noting that the roads became more packed with traffic, and the houses seemed to become larger and closer together. She grew bored with sightseeing, however, and picked up speed to fly back to the cabin.
Juuhachigou's eyes widened with shock as she looked up and saw she was flying straight into a mirror.
She banked steeply, zooming up along the reflective wall until it ended. She came to a stop, looked back, and realized that the mirror was only the window-covered side of a high rise building. She relaxed and dropped down to land on the roof of a similar building next to it. She stood among the skyscrapers in the center of the city. Glass and metal shattered the sunlight into a million brilliant points, and the wind carried the fumes of cars and machinery up to the clouds. An endless river of people flowed along the sidewalks, while steadfast trees claimed part of the cement world for themselves. Everywhere she looked, the artificial intertwined with the natural. Juuhachigou immediately felt attracted to this city.
Without a second thought, Juuhachigou leaped off the edge of the building.