Author's Notes: Konyo is no longer of the undead variety! Yay! I realized I placed a bit of a burden on myself; hence the startling amount of deleted stories. Worry not, reviewers (whom I love so very dearly). They shall return with a vengeance! [Strikes a pose] Let's review, shall we? Considering the less-than-substantial length of most chapters, I decided to elongate this one, as I'm a tad disappointed in myself. ^_^
None other than Sora—who isn't just curious—has rudely booted Annako Sakuma, AKA Tsukasa, off the computer. Morganna is the hand that guides the strings of her brand-spanking-new marionette, but even She seems not to realize that she has manifested in the mind of the second coma victim to ever awaken. Helba knows more than she wants to admit… In this chapter, the story takes a temporary shift towards Kite and BlackRose.
Yes, I have dramatically altered the course of the game right up from Sora's release. [Sigh]
Disclaimer: Konyo does not own .hack or any of the concepts related to it. [Sniffle] It's an obsession.
^*^
Chapter 12: The Puppeteer
With one eye tied upon the open road,
I feel your presence and I can't let it go
It moves so slowly as it creeps into my mind…
Steals every breath I have, and leaves my heart behind
Drinking For Eleven – Mad Caddies
^*^
She flinches, a disembodied presence overlooking The World with Her multiple eyes. She is intangible. She is The World. Or some detached back-story of it. But something is missing, aside from a few of Her beloved Phases. (Her tools were being depleted posthaste. Of course She intended to do something about it, but…) She moves Her lipless mouth, and no sound emits.
Something is wrong. Oh, so very wrong.
The first harbinger, that of death, was eliminated, and She knew. Morganna knew. She knew all there was to know. And so was its staff. The harbinger had awakened something, someone She had distinctly remembered toying with in the past.
She is omnipotence, so She has little trouble recalling him.
But She dismisses it, for there are far greater things to worry about.
"Admit it, Kite. We don't know shit."
Kite pursed his lips in thought, legs crossed neatly in front of him. He sat; contemplating all there was to contemplate, on a hill bathed in rainbow foliage. His companion, ever with her effervescent wording—especially that vulgarity, he reminded himself to bother her about it later—sat with him, obviously disinterested in whatever answers could be withdrawn from the corridors of the Twin Blade's mind. Most of the time, the options her opinions presented often led him to unsatisfying conclusions, but sometimes it allowed he, with his tranquil attitude, to make the perfect choice. This was not one of those times.
"Hell, we barely knew Morganna's name until that guy in the skirt told us about it!"
"BlackRose," he interrupted, lightly annoyed but for the most part unfazed, "I'm trying to think."
The aforementioned jutted her lower lip in a pout, and Kite had to bite back a smile. She was often so childish with her temperament; she plucked at a strand of grass, uprooting it.
"So, you brought me here just to think," the Heavy Blade said Kite sighed.
"You and I are the only ones on my member address list, aside from Bear and Tsukasa, who have any idea what's going on." Upon witnessing that BlackRose was not impressed and instead nonplussed by his cryptic explanation, he arced the corners of his thin mouth in a smile. "And besides, having you around is better than sitting around here by myself."
"You could've thought just as well in a Root Town," BlackRose sniffed. "And—and Natsume is online. So is Sanjuro. Why didn't you invite them?" she asked miserably. There was some ulterior motive beneath her questioning. Kite delved into it.
"You're saying that you'd rather be anywhere else but here," the Twin Blade said emphatically.
Often, he found her to be predictable. And she was a complex person, without a doubt, but her pretense bothered him; he carefully worded his inquiries, hoping to draw out an explanation.
BlackRose chewed on her bottom lip, which was inexplicably but nonetheless lightly glossed. "Well…no…" she admitted begrudgingly, suddenly finding the ground rather fascinating. "But why me?" she challenged.
Ah. So she was hoping for a confrontation. Kite frowned, unwilling to oblige the unspoken request—that would require consulting what he felt, and he was usually a very sullen person.
"I don't know," he said at last.
Her shoulders sank slightly, and some part of him tumbled right along with her posture. It became blatantly obvious that he had said the wrong thing.
Suddenly, a shroud of rings alerted Kite to the presence of someone else. Which really was a drag, but there are only so many accommodating keyword combinations per server. He suddenly grabbed his companion's smaller, slender hand, and stood with a jolt, prompting her to as well. He was vaguely aware of the close contact—moreso than vaguely, as he flushed as he did so, but always on the alert, the Twin Blade glowered down at the player. (He sought solitude, perhaps with BlackRose.)
Dark green hair threaded out from the veil of a black bandana, the clump of strands draping over his thin face. Neither bandana nor painfully long bangs shielded a blood-tainted gaze, darting about as an insect alerts itself to food; the gears on his wrists alerted Kite to his class—another Twin Blade.
It took some squinting at first to see. But once Kite saw it, it didn't take him a second to recall the ghastly face from memory.
After all, Sora the Player Killer was a difficult person to forget.
As soon as he materialized, he began bounding around as one bounces on a trampoline. BlackRose blinked, subconscious grip on Kite's gloved hand tightening as she scrutinized the bouncy Twin Blade, with his obscenely large pants and the belts crisscrossing on his shirt. She adamantly watched him for a moment, before a strange sort of intimidation crept into her heart.
"He's coming towards us, you know," she said quietly.
She didn't want to run. After all, why run from something as happy as a clam? She didn't see the potential threat. But…there was something very wrong. His presence was encroaching as shadow chases light on the event of an eclipse…
"It's Sora," Kite said in a hushed tone, stepping backwards.
The .hacker only concluded that his intentions were not the best as, on yet another twittering leap, the katars ejected from his wrists and Sora landed less than four meters away from them.
Sora ground to a halt. And, just as soon as he had begun to dance around like some sort of madman, he began to walk ever so collectedly towards the duo, a bright smile plastered on his expression. His eyes betrayed most of it, and BlackRose felt her breath catch in her throat for a moment. They were red, yes—brighter than hers. They betrayed many things—a swirling maelstrom of something that could only be described as madness. She was dully aware of Kite stepping backwards, pulling her right along.
*shink*
A giggle.
Kite felt the hand he had formerly held with some amount of concealed tenderness slip.
Kite was fast, taking into account his level and class. In his spare time, he worked on building his character—after all, he never knew what would come next. Sora was faster.
Normally, a player death was never a big deal. A Resurrect was usually administered in such cases, and if the player were left to wander as a ghost for more than about 10 minutes, they'd eventually get the customary Game Over screen and be allowed to reload their character data from its status when they last saved. There was no ghost this time around.
Sora nonchalantly twiddled a tarot card in his fingers, as BlackRose, HP left at a single digit—6—sank haphazardly to the ground, unable to control the encroaching weakness and cold. It happened far too fast for Kite to follow—one second, BlackRose was there, ready to leave, and the next, she was on the ground, her character far too sluggish to follow.
He had left her an inch from death.
"No…!"
A single cell, a hexagon comprised of a neon color, flickered on Sora's forehead.
Sora remained there, nonchalant and calloused whilst still nimbly twirling the card. Kite swallowed the short-lived scream that ruptured his throat in the past second and a half, and, almost instantaneously forgetting about Sora, felt the strength leave his knees. A Health Drink materialized in his hand, and he scooted behind her, wrapping an arm around her torso and tilting her backwards to warily tip the liquid into her faintly parted lips.
It's not working—why isn't it working—why can't she stand—what's going on—Her HP gauge remained in the red.
"You know," the sinister Twin Blade drawled lazily, casting a discontent eye at the card in his fingers, "I never liked using these. Such a waste of time and effort…and it makes people look like idiots…"
BlackRose coughed and spluttered out the Health Drink, her HP remaining pitifully below 10 even as she downed most of it.
Kite sank his head into the space between her neck and shoulder, his normally even control over his attitude slipping. He had done something. She was immobile, and Sora had yet to exploit any of his status-changing items; she was limp, aside from her facial expression, crossed with fury and also the same dazed look people often got when they were losing consciousness.
"What…the hell…have you done?"
Sora glanced down at him and flinched—something he had not done in a while. And for a moment, something akin to pity flicked in his eyes. Ignoring it, his foot suddenly slammed into Kite's side; the boot sank into Kite's flank, before the impact prompted Kite to be sent hurtling a generous distance away.
"Kite," BlackRose suddenly choked out. Her blade, large and cumbersome, appeared in her hand, but her wrists simply refused to budge.
He disregarded her despair, but, alarmed, his eyes shifted to some invisible foe over his shoulder. And, just then, Sora's character began to flicker and fade.
He vanished for reasons known only outside of the game. Kite nursed the rip in his side, both of clothing and of skin, before dismissing the loss of HP and scrambling to BlackRose.
Before he could reach her, she left the area, and Kite's member address list alerted him to the fact that she had logged out.
Something was very wrong.
Ryo had been oblivious to the situation, blissfully, until a quick yell resounded throughout—no, not the town. His house. Cautiously, he logged out and lifted the goggles from his face, only to find a very strange scene.
Annako was loudly reprimanding an impartial Sora plopped in the chair beside him. He stared, puzzled for a moment, before finally asking, "What's going on?"
Annako whirled on him, disdain and hardly contained anger flitting across her usually cherubic expression. "The minute he logs in, he kills someone!" she half-screamed, flinging her arms in the air.
"…He logged in?"
A glare the shade of amethyst.
"Sorry," Ryo responded sheepishly before maneuvering to the detached boy in a chair, whose eyes seemed fixated on the ceiling. "Is this true?" he asked, more sternly this time, his fatherly side taking over. Sora snorted derisively and rolled his eyes before nodding his head, apparently unafraid of the consequences and what horrible fate could befall him.
Ryo swallowed, before Annako grabbed his arm and led him to a slightly more obscure corner of the room. Her eyes glinted, displaying something other then her irritation—fear. "Do you know who he logged in as?" she whispered, almost deathly quiet.
"No. I didn't know he had even logged in," Ryo admitted truthfully.
"He logged in as Sora—his old character. He hasn't forgotten," she murmured frantically, suddenly looking very small and insecure as she hugged herself. "Something's wrong, papa. There's something he isn't telling us."
Ryo grimaced, and then smiled, though it was dismal, his entire usual upbeat attitude gone. "What else is new?"
Soundlessly, they watched Sora stand, his stare lingering on the headset that had been torn from his face by Annako, before wordlessly walking to his room.
Annako hated feeling helpless—it was a trait left over from her reclusive attitude as Tsukasa, in which she knew nothing about her situation and didn't care. Tsukasa hadn't had a care in the world, as long as he had his Guardian, and his Aura.
She shivered and rubbed one of her tiny hands along the length of her arm, giving Ryo one last look before heading after Sora.
She was afraid, she realized. Of little Sora, seemingly oblivious, dancing on the thin line separating reality from illusion whilst remaining perfectly synchronized with the world around him.
And maybe it was a little strange, but oftentimes, Annako found herself wondering if his request still stood, even after all these months.
Maybe back then, she didn't understand.
But right now, being friends with Sora was a better option then testing fate again.