Identity

Chapter 7: Revelations

Fuuko scowled as she eyed the other girl. There was no doubt that both of them were tiring, but it felt as though she was back at square one. Sai was breathing irregularly and had slowed down, but then so had Fuuko. And even though she bled profusely from the gash in her side, she moved as though it wasn't there.

I can't keep this up, she thought. Have to try something different.

The only chance she had, Fuuko decided, was to get in close. Close combat was, after all, her specialty. And it would restrict the movement of Sai's daggers.

She dashed forward suddenly, catching the other girl off guard. She destroyed the two daggers flying towards her with two flicks of the wrist and lashed out with her Fuujin.

Sai flipped over the deadly blast of wind rushing towards her and landed to find the Fuujin calmly pointed at her face, a little spiral of wind hovering from its end.

"I suggest that you don't move," Fuuko said, as the spiral of wind extended into a small blade. "It might not look it, but I'll bet that this is as sharp as one of your daggers." She frowned when a small smile formed on Sai's face. She couldn't form any more of her daggers without Fuuko reacting first, so why was she…

Fuuko jerk to the side instinctively as a blade came from behind her, whistling past where her head had been one second earlier. It opened a small cut on her cheek.

Sai took this opportunity to land a kick on Fuuko's jaw and create some distance between them. "It was a nice try," she said. "But I know that you excel in close combat, Fuuko-san. I won't give you a chance like that again."

Fuuko silently cursed herself as she flexed her jaw. She brought a hand up to wipe the blood trickling down her face. She'd forgotten that there was a third dagger – and the fact that Sai could control any of them at will. Now she'll conjure up more of the damned things, she thought angrily.

Conjure up more of them…

Fuuko frowned. She was missing something. There was something about the way Sai held out her hand and –

She exhaled slowly as it dawned on her what it was. I could be wrong, she thought. But I can't beat her unless I try. I have to get close to her again. But how do I do it? She's too fast, and that dagger is proving to be more than annoying.

Sai, meanwhile, was feeling a dull ache at her side. It wasn't the wound that was worrying her though; it was a different kind of pain – a pain she felt inside.

So it was starting, she thought. It was a little sooner than she had thought, but no matter. It'll be over soon anyway. She watched curiously as the other girl frown then smile excitedly. "Are you ready?" she asked.

"Sure," Fuuko replied.

Sai followed as she took off to the side once again. She planned to finish this now, before the wound could affect her any further. She was just about to summon more daggers when Fuuko did an odd thing. She placed one hand – the hand with the Fuujin – behind her back and generated a powerful blast of wind that propelled her forward through the air at an incredible speed.

She's using the Fuujin to… fly? Sai thought, watching in disbelief as the wind-wielder flipped though the air and over her head to land right behind her. It happened so quickly that to the normal eye, Fuuko would have disappeared in a blur to reappear behind the other girl the next instant.

The wind-wielder wrapped one arm around Sai's neck in a strange-hold and firmly locked the fingers of her left hand with her free hand. She turned slightly and winced as a blade buried itself into the back of her shoulder.

Sai half-turned her head in surprise. "You knew my dagger was coming, but why you didn't dodge it?"

"Are you kidding?" Fuuko said, "If I had, I would've had to let you go and then I'd have to think of another way to catch you again – which was what you wanted, right?"

Sai didn't bother to struggle. "You caught me out," she said, smiling.

"'kay then," Fuuko said, grinning through gritted teeth, "I guess you'd better give up now."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, you don't have any more daggers you can let fly at me, am I right?"

"You're forgetting that I can create as many daggers as I like. Do you think it's wise to be so close because of this?"

"Then do it. Pull some more of those daggers out of your hand." When Sai remained silent, she added, "You can't, can you?"

"I think you know the answer to that."

Fuuko let out a long breath, somewhat relieved. "Man, it took a while for it to come to me, but even when it did I wasn't sure if I was right. You talked about tricks earlier – I believe you've been using one of your own. Before you create your dagger, you put out your hand, so your opponent's eyes naturally focus on it. And while their attention is fixed on that hand, you do something with the other – something you need to do to be able to create your dagger. I figure with a dangerous ability like yours, you'd have to activate it – kind of like Recca, who has to write his dragons' names to summon them."

"Heh, exactly right," Sai said brightly. "I knew that if anyone could figure it out, it would be you."

"Thanks," said Fuuko, "Not many people appreciate a smart girl nowadays."

"You are so right," Sai said. Her laugh cut off as she sagged back against the other girl.

"Asagi?"

 "It's nothing," she said, although she still leaned on Fuuko for support. "I… I think I just laughed too much."

"Don't tell me that it's nothing." Fuuko had caught sight of her ashen face before she could turn away. She frowned at the spreading red stain at Sai's side. "You've lost a lot of blood."

"It was a good hit."

"It was a lucky hit," Fuuko corrected as she helped the other girl sit down on the grass. She swiftly tore a long strip from her shirt and made to help Sai.

"I'll do it," the assassin said, taking the strip from her hands and proceeding to wrap it around her own waist as a makeshift bandage.

"But…"

"Don't worry. I've still got hands you know?"

"Well it won't hold for long, but it'll do for now." Even as Fuuko spoke, blood began seeping through the thin bandage. She frowned. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yes."

"Can you stand?"

"Yes."

She helped the Sai up slowly and they made their way to where her earlier discarded bag lay on the ground a few metres away. "I might be able to find something here," Fuuko said as she rummaged through it.

"I'm fine," Sai said. "I'm not afraid of dying."

"Dying?" Fuuko repeated angrily, "No-one is going to die." Then she added softly, "I won't let anyone die in my sight anymore."

Sai looked at her in silence. Then she smiled. "Well, it looks like I've lost."

"Don't say that, we both know that you could've easily beaten me anytime…" Fuuko growled in frustration, "Damn! There's nothing here we can use to stop the blood flow." She stood up and looked around. "We have to get you out of here. Isn't your partner going to like, beam you back to our dimension?"

Sai didn't reply.

"You're kidding. She's just going to leave you here?"

"I was the one who decided to fight you. I knew the consequences – one of them being that I would be defeated and left behind."

"That is just a really scummy thing to do," Fuuko said indignantly. "Well, it looks like I'll just have to find a way out."

"Make no mistake. Narumi has …"

"I know, you told me this before. But every madougu has a weakness, right? So all I have to do is find it."

You've hit it on the head, Fuuko. Sai thought in surprise. Then she smiled. But this is one of the reasons why I've wanted to fight you. Because you're a person with that type of outlook – which makes you the incredible fighter you are.

The train of thought slipped away as a new wave of pain hit her. Sai turned her face away, concealing the expression on her face from the other girl.

"Hang in there okay? We're going to make it out of here," Fuuko said as she continued to inspect their surroundings. "Hey, I'm gonna go look around, see if I can find anything. Are you going to be okay?"

Sai gritted her teeth in pain, but she still managed a smile. "Yes," she said, but she knew in her heart that it was a lie. The pain inside was growing, which, as Sai knew very well, meant only one thing.

However, that was not the only issue. She looked sadly at the other girl, who was looking around as she walked. It's no use. You won't find a way out, because Narumi's madougu's weakness isn't in here. It's…

******

Narumi watched as the two girls finally ended their battle. The outcome was a surprise. The girl was definitely a strong fighter, but it was clear that Sai should have won. Narumi didn't understand why her partner had chosen to toy with the girl instead of finishing her quickly, because now Sai faced the consequence of her loss – not coming back. And it certainly didn't make Narumi feel better about it.

In any case, orders were orders and he had especially emphasised that if Sai failed in eliminating the target she would not be brought back, at least not for a while. However small the chance of the target being caught in the transference wave and end up being brought back alive along with Sai, it was a risk he would not take. It was regrettable, Narumi sincerely thought. But she herself would not accept that risk to him either. After all, she owed everything to him. And at the moment, there was another that she had to take care of.

The glass orb under her hands emanated a pulsing blue glow as she focussed her thoughts on her other prey. The image of the green field on her madougu disappeared and one of the inside of the warehouse took its place. She looked at the brown-haired youth standing with his sword held out in front of him and smiled. So he was still there. This made her job a lot easier, but it also made her feel reluctant admiration for the boy. He obviously cared a great deal for the girl.

Anyhow, it looked like his time was up. It was a shame, but this was business. "It's nothing personal," she said aloud. "Don't worry, I'll send you right where your partner is."

"No, actually you won't," a voice said as the cold, sharp-edge of a blade pressed against her neck.

Narumi blinked as she glanced down at the blue blade against her skin. She quickly looked back up at the image of the boy in her madougu. "That's impossible," she gasped.

"Not really. You just fell for the old 'ice-statue substitute' trick." Mikagami said coldly. "And before you try anything, including using your madougu, consider this: l can and will slit your throat if I see you doing anything out of the ordinary. And I mean anything. If you don't believe I'm quick enough, try me. Now that we've cleared that up, take your hands slowly off your madougu."

Narumi felt a warm trickle of blood down her neck as the pressure of the blade against her skin grew. "Alright," she said, and did as she was told. "But you know that you took a big risk using that substitute trick, don't you?"

"I know," Mikagami replied simply. "But I wasn't going to do anything just by sitting there and listening."

"How did you know that I wasn't watching you?"

"It hit me after a while that I could only sense you presence on and off, as if you were watching me one minute and then watching something else the next. I suspected that that was actually what was happening – that your madougu not only allowed you to shift people to other dimensions, it allowed you to look into them as if you were in the dimension yourself – so when I couldn't sense your presence, I figured that you weren't watching me anymore. So I quickly created my water double and slipped out."

Narumi smiled. "I thought that letting you listen to that fight between the girl and Sai would distract you from noticing that, but you're more perceptive than I thought. How did you know that I wasn't controlling things in another dimension?"

"Actually, I didn't." This time, Mikagami sounded a little humbled. "I just allowed myself to assume that possibility and hence the belief that I could do something to bring Fuuko back instead of sitting and hoping. When I got out of the warehouse, I thought that if you were in this dimension, you'd want to be close in case something went wrong. So I scouted around, found this small shed at the back and saw you sitting inside. The shed's pretty well hidden. I almost missed it in the dark." He paused then asked, "Your madougu is related to the Jigen Kaigyoku, isn't it?"

Narumi frowned at the name. "My madougu is nothing like that incompetent Magensha's," she snapped.

Mikagami frowned in surprise. "You knew Magensha?" he asked. The woman fell silent then, but Mikagami could see from the stiffness of her back that she was angry.

It was then that he thought of Kai, who had used the double of his Ensui, the Hyoumaen. Kai had hated Mikagami after being compared to him and declared the inferior. Despite this, Kai had been a good man. It was the constant jealousy, the unyielding need to prove himself, that had led to his destruction. The result of the creation of double madougu was that the worst could be brought out in a user, no matter how good they were.

Mikagami didn't doubt that this was the case for the woman in front of him, but he didn't say so aloud. It was a sensitive subject for her and it wasn't in his interest to anger her further.

"It's Narumi, isn't it?"

The brown-haired woman started, as if she had been jerked back to the present at his words.

"We both know what I came here for, so let's not waste any more time, shall we?"

There was a short pause before Narumi replied. "What if I don't do what you want?"

"I think you know what will happen."

And she did. She could see it in the reflection of the globe – his cold, hard blue eyes. "If you kill me, there will be no way for you to get her back."

"You refusing to do it won't get Fuuko back either, so in that case there's no point in keeping you alive either."

"And what makes you think that I wouldn't rather die?" Narumi asked bitterly. "My life hasn't exactly been a fairytale."

"No," Mikagami's eyes looked directly at hers through the glass. "But you don't have that look of someone who desires death. In other words," he smiled faintly – a smile that wasn't triumphant or cold, Narumi noticed with surprise, but one that had a degree of warmness to it. "You still have something to live for."

******

The memory of their faces had gradually faded away, but the sound of their voices hadn't. What the voices said were indistinct, irrelevant. All that mattered was that she remembered the voices had been full of kindness and love. The only physical proof that she had ever had a family was a middle-sized, translucent globe left in her care. It wasn't a perfect glass sphere – it had a small, cylindrical stand as its base, on which two characters were etched: kyomei (resonance/sympathy).

She had been young when her parents died, but old enough to understand how important the object that had been left in her care was. So when she was sent to live with a foster family, she was never apart from it.

By the time she was seven years old, she could concentrate enough to open a channel to communicate and listen in to many different dimensions. It was weird, listening to all the sounds that the different dimensions offered. There were a few that gave out a loud bustle not unlike the human world. Some gave out eerie, high pitched sounds; some, none at all. She used to like listening in to the sounds of her own dimension, such as the off-tune singing of her unsuspecting foster father in the shower, but she stopped after hearing her foster parents in their room, complaining about how much trouble she was.

By nine years of age, she was living with her third foster family. She could also now look in to the various dimensions with her madougu. Some of the dimensions made her shiver at their expanse of nothingness, some of them weren't unlike the normal world and some of them were beyond description. Only one became her favourite though, and eventually the only dimension that she looked or listened in to. The rustling of the green grass in the wind and the never-ending sight of colourful flowers unfelled by human feet gave her a place to take refuge in – refuge from the fact that she was in a home that did not want her.

Two years later, she mastered sending objects to another dimension and bringing them back. She also discovered that the madougu had its limitations. One of them being that she couldn't use it on herself – that she couldn't send herself to the one place she had very much wanted to escape to.

She was living out on the streets when her ability was noticed by one of Mori Kouran's scouts and hence she was given the opportunity to work with others who had talents like hers.

For the first time in her life, Narumi felt as though she was a part of something. Her skills with the jigen madougu were recognised to be unique and she was promoted to being one of the elite – ones who answered to Mori Kouran, and him only.

This, however, all changed when he appeared. He was a brute of a man, not to mention ugly, impertinent and power hungry. Narumi could have put up with working alongside someone like that were it not for the fact that Houmashin Magensha was also a jigen user.

His Jigen Kaigyoku, however, was not plagued with the limitations of Narumi's madougu and therefore hers was relegated to second-best.

"We do not need more than one jigen manipulator," she was told, and that was that. And because she had originally been chosen by Mori Kouran, she was not trusted by Kurei, the son, or those under his command. So in one moment, she became unwanted once again.

She couldn't understand it. Why did they choose the Jigen Kaigyoku, an ugly graceless madougu, over her Jigen Kyomei?

It was this way that she met him.

He understood her confusion and not only that – he shared it. "You have a unique ability, Narumi, one that those fools do not see. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

Even though he didn't ask for it, from then on, Narumi offered her services to him and nobody else.

That was how she met his shadow. "Hi, I'm Sai. Looks like we'll be on the same team from now on."

And from there, she never looked back.