The Bonds of Time
Chapter 6
Andrew Joshua Talon, with many thanks to Kanako Urashima
DISCLAIMER: Love Hina is not mine. I'm not making any profit off this fanwork, and the authors used own themselves. "The Love Hina Fan Boy War!" is the property of Kanako Himekazi-Urashima, which she gave me permission a while ago back to write a prequel to.
Therefore...
* * * * * * * * * *
This interlude of "Bonds of Time" is written by Tuxedo Jack of Craptacularly Spignificant Productions in response to the open request from Andrew Talon to the Love Hina authors who were featured in the Love Hina Fanboy War. He takes no responsibility for what I wrote in this, no da. The disclaimers I state in my fics at the beginning apply here.
* * * * *
A short while later, in Talon's office...
* * * * *
"Miss Arney, I take it you read about the Shinobu and Su Alliance?" Talon said, unwrapping another watermelon-flavored Jolly Rancher and popping it in his mouth. Before she could nod, he corrected himself. "Of course you have. You've read so much on the subject, it's like talking to someone who was there."
"But I wasn't, and that's why I'm asking you, Professor," the student replied, leaning forward and flipping her hair back before taking a candy from the offered bag. "Besides, the Alliance was a minor thorn in the side of the Army of Light, weren't they?"
"Not really," Talon said, leaning back in his chair and turning to face the window in his office. "The Alliance was more of a help than a hindrance, to be honest."
"And Lance? A 'depressed knight in shining armor,' to quote you?"
Talon snickered. "It gets better. Remember how Kana said that he was neither Shinobu's right or left hand, but her shadow? Lance was her right hand. Her left hand was someone very... odd, to say the least. He was a technology geek and a teacher, not to mention a prolific writer, before the Cataclysm, and afterwards... well, let me tell you about Jack."
"Tuxedo Jack?" the woman said, leaning closer to Talon. "The air commander of the Alliance?"
"That's him," Talon replied, closing his eyes. "I recently got access to his journal - I must thank Su for preserving his equipment, by the way - and if I can remember it right, it goes something like this..."
* * * * *
2015
Colorado Springs, Colorado... post-settling
* * * * *
I opened my eyes and sighed. "Familiar ceiling." I muttered a quiet "Sorry, Anno, but it's a ritual," after it.
I sat up, then looked around at my room, which was once an office at Cheyenne Mountain... before ten years ago, anyway. Now it served as my home... and _Her_ fortress.
After a quick breakfast of food that came from vending machines over a decade ago (hey, don't knock Twinkies. The goddamn things are like VW Beetles - they last forever, despite my best efforts), a shower, and some clean clothes, I climbed the stairs to the South Portal. With a quick slip of my feet, I seated myself in the lotus position, and thought back...
* * * * *
2004
Thirty minutes before the Cataclysm
* * * * *
"Damn it," the boy said, flipping open the side of his computer and fumbling through the cables that hung inside. "I can't believe I was so _stupid!_"
"Don't worry about it," his boss said. "It happens all the time. How could you have known that that chip was bad?"
Jack blew some dust off the heatsink on the Pentium III machine he was fixing and turned to look his boss straight in the eye. "Roy, it's a memory chip. Yeah, some go bad, but we should have known it wasn't a virus when the user started complaining about completely random restarts when Norton Antivirus and Crashguard were running to protect against them."
"So?" Roy shrugged, his slight paunch rising with him. "Forget about it. We've got better things to do than replace memory chips when Dell can get them a new computer entirely under the district's contract."
"And that's another thing I need to talk to them about, the pricing..." Jack closed the case, lifted the computer and walked towards the door. "I'm taking this back to Garcia. It's working."
Roy waved him on and went back to his work.
"Hell," Jack grumbled, walking along the empty halls of the elementary school. "People ought to have to take a test before they're allowed to use a computer... I've had to fix every damn machine in this school twice this semester..."
He stopped dead in his tracks and grinned. "But that doesn't mean I don't love doing it!"
Once he started again, he smirked and muttered, "Besides, it pays for anime."
* * * * *
I'm not going to pretend I knew it was coming. Heck, before that day, I'd only been able to sense things via a general uneasiness, and then only when it was something really bad. This... this was beyond major, and yet I didn't feel it.
Weird.
Of course, when a shockwave slams into the building you're working in and throws you about fifteen feet to slam into a wall, which you summarily leave a large Jack-shaped dent in, which is then summarily followed with approximately two hours of unconsciousness, you kind of get the feeling that it's going to be a rather bad day. So I left work early, not bothering to report it to my boss, who, when I found what remained of him, seemed to be spread-eagle under a slab of concrete.
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
Whoops, most of my "home" didn't exactly exist any more. It was kind of wiped off the map when the Disaster hit. So were the houses of most of the people I knew. Huge swaths of buildings were missing, and it wasn't in any expected
pattern of destruction. I mean, with a nuke, you can expect a relatively circular shapeof missing buildings, people, and land, but this... this was _weird_. The SASA satellite photos that I got to see a few decades later showed me that Houston had been turned into something straight out of an abstract art painting.
Oh, and did I mention that about ninety-five percent of the population was killed to boot? That kinda sucked, since it'd be a big issue in a few days, what with the rotting corpses and the plague of vermin that was going to follow. Oy.
Suffice it to say, most travel by car or truck was impossible, thanks to the damage to the roads and the freeways, and with most, if not all, of the city out of commission, it didn't look like there was going to be any way I was going to eat well that night either.
For a while, it looked like all I had to whet my appetite was a full dose of dark, sarcastic humor.
That, and sixteen miles to walk on foot to get to the little that remained of my home.
* * * * *
He stumbled over the wreckage of what had once been a McDonald's, groaning and grunting at the exertion.
"Christ, I haven't walked this far in ages," Jack panted, sitting down on what appeared to be a relatively cool chunk of concrete and steel... and then he leapt up, seeing the sprawled body next to him. "JESUS!"
"What in the hell happened here?"
* * * * *
Yare yare, thinking back on it all, I thought of it as a nuke for a while.
Fortunately, when I got back to what remained of my home, one of the four wings still stood. Ironically, that was the one that a foundation repair specialist had worked on a few weeks ago, and then gave me a lifetime warranty on it.
Guess he did the job right.
There wasn't much left of the area nearby. A few piles of rubble, a house here and there, and some office buildings about a quarter-mile away still stood, but that was about it.
There wasn't electricity any more, apparently, and my kitchen was gone too, so I was apparently out of luck, and I'd just _bet_ that whatever supermarkets still stood had been looted like mad.
I didn't have much time before nightfall, I knew that. It had taken me about four hours to cover the distance from former-work to razed-home, and I knew that if I didn't move soon, there were going to be vermin and Serenity-knew-what climbing over the ruins of my house, and if I was still there, me to boot.
Fortunately, the wing of my house that stood held a few useful tools - a box of my manga, which would prove infinitely more useful to me than the DVDs, most of which would be ruined eventually; some snacks, which were mostly junk food, unfortunately - I could have done with some carrots, but hey, when you're up late watching TV, that's what you grab; and, wonder of wonders, my laptop, which appeared to be intact. I grabbed them and started moving. Before leaving, I took one quick look through the closet in the wing's lone bedroom, and I found my now-infamous cane and tuxedo, the latter of which went into my laptop case. The former went into a backpack, and it was separated in order to fit. I grabbed up a staff - well, not really a staff, more like a small, relatively straight tree branch that didn't have too many protrusions and could be used as a weapon in a pinch - from the rubble outside and started walking towards the office building.
As I walked through the wreckage-strewn fields that used to be behind my house, the sun started to set. I didn't have much time, and if I was stuck outside, it was going to be like an RPG with random encounters, plus I didn't exactly have a flashlight. Dammit. I should have taken one and ditched the manga instead. Goddamn priorities were going to get me killed one day.
So I kept moving, my heavy burden resting on my back and on my left arm (hey, I had to carry my laptop case. That little bugger of a computer would prove useful later, no matter how many times the damn thing broke - as long as I could fix it). My right hand held my staff, and as I walked, it left dents in the post-apocalyptic soil.
Right before the sun dipped below the edge of the horizon, I reached the steps of the office building. Unfortunately, the glass doors weren't exactly open to me, since the damn things were closed, and they didn't seem to want to open, no matter how much I tugged.
After a few minutes, I heard something rustle in the grass (what remained of it, anyway) about fifteen feet to the right, and I thought to myself...
* * * * *
"Oh, screw it, I'm dead anyways."
Jack dropped his backpack and laptop case to the ground softly and pushed them aside, then grasped his staff with both hands and drew back. He flashed a feral grin, and then swung it towards said glass doors with a scream of "OYAJI!"
The glass shattered, and an alarm immediately started going off inside the building. Jack leapt back in surprise. "If there's an alarm... there's power, which means... GENERATORS!" He bashed away a little more glass from the top of the door while leaving the top two feet of glass intact, thus creating a kind of barrier to keep out small animals, and then he passed his bags through the hole and climbed in himself.
"It's going to be hard to fix this now, with conditions like they are... maybe I can loot a door or something from somewhere."
* * * * *
Eventually, the alarms shut off. The lights in the building's halls stayed on, though - there was nothing I could do about that without shutting down the generators, which fortunately took up the entire third floor, so they couldn't get flooded out.
On the bad side of things, however, I didn't exactly have a bed or anything proper, and on top of that, every now and again, I saw lights flickering in the night sky. I sure as hell knew that those weren't flashlights, since flashlights didn't hover thirty or forty feet off the ground, but...
I sat numbly in an office on the top floor of an eight-floor building, watching the sky and fingering the small moonstone pendant around my neck. It didn't make sense! The whole city, probably more, wiped out in an instant, and only a few things remain? This went beyond the destruction promised by the Cold War. It went beyond that nutball Bush's statements of terrorist action.
Something _bad_ had happened, and for once I was in the dark.
Eventually, I got the idea to plug my laptop into the wall outlet in order to draw current and keep it charged. I booted it, and began typing the events of the day into my journal. This journal, by the way, which by now is over a gigabyte of pure .txt goodness.
Amazing, isn't it? That much text.
It's not hard to accumulate, really, if you write like I do.
That, and the immortality helps.
Oh, I didn't mention that? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep you in the dark, so to speak. I'll get to it later. Back to the office.
After plugging the laptop in, I connected it to a phone line and picked up a handset. When no dial tone sounded, I figured the wires were out. It figured. No Internet that way to access information, but if other cities were wrecked like Houston, then there wasn't going to _be_ an Internet to dial out to.
After a few minutes of cursing, I began a search of the office. Fortunately, it was after hours, and most employees had checked in their gear before the disaster and had left the office. I'd lay odds they were on I-10, just driving home to their families, and then...
Revolt suddenly overwhelmed my stomach, and I retched. I barely made it to the restroom down the hall before I vomited into a toilet, collapsing to my knees in agony and shock as I shook with fear and nausea.
"It's all gone... everything I knew, everything I trusted..."
After a few dry spasms, the tears started, and eventually even those bled themselves dry.
I used what little running water came out of the faucets to wash my face, and then flushed the vomit down. I returned to the office, which was now likely to become my permanent home, and lay down on a couch in the lobby.
Staring up at the ceiling, I knew that I was in deep shit. The world had gone to hell in a handbasket in less than a day, and I was on my own for now... probably for good.
After a few minutes of staring, I slept.
* * * * *
The next morning, I woke up and felt like hell.
When you've got a crick in your neck the size of a friggin' elephant, that kind of does the trick, ne?
After working it out, I looked around for a minute, then it hit me.
It really had happened. I was on my own, and the world had ended.
For once, I was kind of nonplussed. I'd always secretly hoped that it would happen, and hell, I'd even planned out how to manipulate Bush into starting a Second Impact, but Jesus, this was...
As is, I had tasks to complete. First on my list was food. _Good_ food, vegetables, meat, anything that I could cook instead of getting from a vending machine. Second was clothes. I'd have to change once a day, and figure some way to wash what I could. Finally, communications. If I could find other people, we'd have a chance. We could build a village, get things working, possibly try to rebuild what little of the world we knew how to. Unfortunately, computers and such would become artifacts, and very few, if any, would know how to use them.
Such was the state of the world.
Clothes were no problem; I could return to the wing of my house that still stood and take what was in the closet there. Worse came to worse, I could find and loot ADV Films' headquarters or one of the malls in Houston. (I kind of lucked out in the old days; the fact that they were in Houston made it easy to get ADV's anime.)
I knew that there was a Whole Foods - a natural foods store, and they had stuff there that would last ages if stored properly - about five miles from where I was, so I made preparations to go there.
After searching through the office, I found a rack of cellphones in chargers, and a briefcase plugged into the wall, which turned out to be a satellite phone...
And it had an RJ-11 jack on the side.
For those of you who don't know, RJ-11 is standard phone cable. It's not the four-plug kind, which is ancient and a pain to wire a homemade adapter for (I know from experience, believe it or not. Don't touch the black wire), and it's not RJ-45, which is network cable.
It's the kind for _modems_.
I set those aside and let them charge. I'd need them later.
On my way out of the office, I grabbed a piece of plastic and a Marks-A-Lot and made a sign to cover the one that was previously on the door. The new home of Tuxedo Jack was the former offices of Sysco, Incorporated.
Reconnaisance was critical. If I didn't know what was around me, I was as good as dead.
Admittedly, all I saw for about, oh, half a mile or so was rubble, but hey, at least I saw it. Proves I was alive, ne?
I walked onwards, staff in hand, to the ruined wing, got a bunch of clothes and whatever valuables I could find, loaded them into my bag, and trekked back. After depositing them, I began searching the parking garages nearby (it was an office park, after all) for faster transportation. I found plenty of pickup trucks (Texas is, unfortunately, truck central), a few sedans, and one or two compact cars, but those were useless. They wouldn't be able to make it over the wreckage.
However, the H^2 I found in a garage two blocks (relatively speaking) over worked... after I grabbed the keys out of the hand of the corpse next to it. I got it, started it up, and drove out of the parking garage.
A quick check revealed that the radio stations were gone, every one of them. The entire band - 88.7 to 107.5 - all empty. No music. Damn. The same thing was true on the AM band - nothing. You'd think that the FCC or FEMA would have an emergency channel up, but nothing.
I kept driving. After about forty-five minutes of weaving and driving erratically to avoid the various debris in the streets, I made it to Whole Foods and went in... after locking the H^2.
"Trust in God, but lock your car!" I caroled as I went in.
So sue me, if you don't have humor, you'll lose your sanity.
You may even lose your sanity if you have humor.
I still don't know if I did, though. I guess it's all subjective.
After loading up on food, I carted it out to the H^2... and cursed, as I'd left my staff in the vehicle and there were two people waiting there for me, each with a metal pipe.
"Give us the food, boy," one muttered.
"There's more inside. Just go and get it," I shot back.
"Oh, no. We'd rather you give us yours and go get some more for us."
"Go to hell," I replied angrily. "There's enough in there to last you for a few years."
"Last chance, kid," the taller of the two said, pointing his pipe at me. "Give us the food, or we take it."
Now I've never been too confident of my fighting abilities, and I'm bloody weak physically, but I'm nimble, and speed makes up for strength here thanks to the wreckage of the city. "Come and take it."
With a yell, they charged, and I rolled to one side before a pipe slammed into the ground where I'd been standing a few seconds before. I dodged pipe after pipe, and eventually, it all seemed to blur together. A pipe was a pipe was a pipe, if you get my drift.
Like I said, I wasn't strong. When a pipe hit my palm, I winced, but caught it. Something red - I had _no_ damn clue what - erupted from my hand, and the damn pipe practically melted. I dropped it - hey, you wouldn't want a bloody hot thing like that in your hand, would you?
The guy - I don't mention his weapon, because it was now melted into the flesh of his right hand - leapt back and began rolling on the ground in agony before hissing out "Aaron, beat that bastard around for me!"
Aaron swung. Feeling confident this time, I grabbed the pipe.
Nothing happened. I would have facefaulted, but I don't quite think I could do that then. As is, I think I just let out a sigh and the ever-useful phrase "Oh, _SHIT_."
I let go of the pipe after figuring out that I couldn't exactly pull it out of his hand, since it was kind of melted into it, and I started to run like hell... then I tripped, and well, when you trip, you trip _hard_. After a few seconds of disorientation and the inevitable pain, I looked up, and Aaron had his pipe directly over his head, ready to be brought down on mine noggin.
A random thought shot through my head - "You know, that'd be a perfect lightning rod if only I could use Bolt or something -" and about second later, a thin lightning bolt crashed out of the sky to lance directly into his pipe. The poor bastard fell to the ground and started twitching.
With both opponents incapacitated (or in Hot-Pipe Guy's case, unwilling to fight), I took the time to load the groceries into the H^2 and then drove off.
While in the car, I took the opportunity to think. "The hell was that? Was it dumb luck? Or is someone watching out for me?" I snorted at that. I'd never been a big believer in guardian angels - the Evangelion angels were more my type. Dumb luck? It's possible. Hell, anything's possible, I guess, since the damn city got nuked.
On my way back, I saw a gun store... well, the ruin of one, anyway... and figured that I should stock up just in case. It was a good idea. I loaded the H^2 with a few rifles, some pistols, and all the ammunition I could find. I can't pretend that I knew what went with what, but I'd have to figure it out... and _fast_ if I didn't want to get wasted in this
post-apocalyptic hellhole.
The same thing happened near the crushed hunk of the Westside Command Center of the Houston Police Department. I went inside, grabbed what I could, and hauled. It was a good haul - some flashbangs, a couple of smoke grenades, and a nice suit of Kevlar. Nothing special, but it'd keep me alive a little longer.
After a night of laying in fortifications to the highest floor of the office building that was now my home, I lay down and slept. It wasn't an easy sleep, and my dreams were haunted by visions of two girls - one with blue hair, blue eyes, and a sweet smile, and the other with tan skin, green eyes, and blonde hair who wore a manic grin.
_C'mon, Tux-kun, wake up!_ the blonde said. _And shake well before serving!_
_Aaau... gomen ne about Su,_ the other said. _She's a little hyper._
_Oh, it's no problem,_ I thought. _I'll just go to sleep now and forget that I'm hallucinating._
* * * * *
The present, in Talon's office
* * * * *
"'Shake well before serving?'" Miss Arney looked at Talon with a quizzical expression, and the demigod shrugged.
"Su always was a little odd," he muttered. "That line... I think she pulled it from 'Capcom versus SNK' or something."
"What's that?"
"It's an ancient video game. I don't think that copies survived the Cataclysm, but I guess that Jack's collection remained safe for a while in the wreck that was his house until he went back and got them."
Talon leaned forward, placing his hands in a steeple position so that his fingers interlaced right at the bridge of his nose. The dim light in his office seemed grim as he assumed the Gendo Position, and he sighed wearily. "Miss Arney, the demigods were once human, and we all have our weaknesses. Let me tell you about one of Jack's more interesting evenings alone at his office building..."
* * * * *
A few hours after Tuxy's dream
* * * * *
A few hours later, I awoke. Morning libations ensued, and then... well, I finally got up the courage to try something I'd wanted to do for a while. Ever since I found the satphone, actually.
It was a good thing that my laptop hadn't been blown to bits in the Disaster. I needed it. I hooked the phone cord into the satphone jack, then went to the roof to dial out. After setting up the dish and angling it straight up, I booted up my system, launched Dial-Up Networking, and dialed my ISP.
Not surprisingly, it didn't do anything.
For a while, anyways.
Then, with a screech and hiss of a modem that's found a handshake protocol, the damn thing connected... at 26,400 bytes a second.
Hey, it's better than nothing. Don't knock it.
NASA - or what was left of it - had somehow connected their satellites to the main page of their server, and when I looked at the photos of the carnage that had ensued, my jaw dropped.
North America looked like Jack the Ripper had hit it. Europe... oh, man, it was barely even there. It looked like only Antarctica had escaped major damage, though.
After a while, I decided to try connecting to an instant messenger service, and nothing happened.
_Period._
AOL, MSN, Yahoo... they were all _gone_. There went any hope of finding my friends and family via normal channels. I didn't believe they were alive, anyways. From the satellite photos I'd seen, my sister's college was razed, and the rest of my family was in Houston... at home.
It didn't matter now. The only thing that mattered was survival.
I disconnected and went inside, satphone and laptop in hand. I hadn't even bothered to look around the building, which turned out to be a big mistake. I later learned that some men had been spying on me under the cover of rubble.
That night, the gangs came.
I'm not going to pretend that I even would have had a chance if I hadn't fortified the building and blocked all the stairwells but one with furniture. I'd found the elevator keys in the manager's office when I'd looted the building earlier and had taken the opportunity to lock the bastards at the top floor so no one could use them. It came in handy.
When you've got something people want badly enough, they'll do nearly anything to get it. In this case, it meant shattering the front doors of the building, setting off the alarm again, and scaring the living shit out of me. I rolled off the couch, ran into the hallway outside, and nearly got my head taken off by a sea of bullets, which slammed into the wall next to me and left holes the size of my fist.
"Oh, goddammit," I muttered, running back inside to grab what I could. I had to get to the stairs and hold them as long as I could by any means necessary - guns, knives, furniture, bombs, whatever. They'd made it to the third floor when I dropped the first flashbang, and the screams and moans that echoed off the hallway didn't exactly make me think that I had found a small group. No, there were at least ten there, and if there were ten there, there were twenty more in the lobby.
I slipped on the Kevlar and waited. Sure enough, they kept moving, but slow, and I heard rustling. Did they have grenades? Homemade Molotov Cocktails? I didn't want to find out. Besides, I didn't know if the fire sprinklers were working, and I didn't want to test them.
I threw out a case of ammunition and fired a few times at it, but the movies weren't accurate - the goddamn thing didn't explode and start firing off shells randomly. I cursed in desperation, hoping against hope for some kind of fire - and then a red jet flew from my hands, heating the pistol in my hand to a very high degree, and setting the box on fire.
I blinked, then ran like hell, and a few seconds later, I heard the thumping of boots on the concrete stairs, then more screams, and after that, staccato popping as the ammo in the box overheated and fired itself off. When I got to the fifth floor landing, I stared at my hand. "What the _hell_ is this?"
They kept coming. I fired clip after clip, and nearly every single bullet missed its target or ricocheted off the walls. Come to think of it, the only ones that _did_ hit their targets were the ones that ricocheted. Goddamn luck.
Maybe if they thought I was nuts, they'd go away. I started singing an old song, one I'd learned from a woman who went by the name of Minaku.
"Hate is very, very bad, we should love instead! Open your heart to the yummy light and GURK!"
I didn't exactly add the word "gurk" in there intentionally. Some bastard got lucky and his bullet slammed into the Kevlar that I'd donned before I came out. The blow knocked me back - flat onto it, as a matter of fact. The lone man climbed the stairwell up to my, pointed his gun at my head, and grinned.
"Remember me, punk? You ruined my hand and killed my bro. Now it's my turn."
I would have said something clever, but a bullet to the chest kind of knocks the air out of you, so instead I gasped and wheezed and thought about freezing that cold sonuvabitch into a gigantic block of ice -
- and out of nowhere, a prism of ice formed around him, trapping his gun hand and making him start. He had just enough time to grimace before he was covered, and as I stumbled backwards in fear, I accidentally kicked him down the stairs.
I'd taken a similar involuntary trip down a flight of stairs a few years ago, and it wasn't pretty. I'll put it this way... while I got off with permanent backaches, this bastard wasn't so lucky.
He shattered on impact, his various limbs cracking cleanly off and glistening as the ice slowly melted around his body, which now resembled nothing more to me than a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
With a half-muted sound that resembled the cry of a wounded baby rabbit, I climbed the stairs up to the eighth floor and began blocking the stairwell with furniture. A few minutes later, I heard the thudding of feet, and I threw down one smoke grenade, just to gain time. Coughing and shouts greeted my efforts, and when I shoved the last chair into position, I ran back inside the normal building proper and locked the stairwell behind me.
For better or worse, I was trapped here now.
After a short time of hearing massive amounts of gunfire shattering the glass on my home's ornamental balconies (hey, I'm not the one who built the damn place. It had balconies overlooking the elevators and lobby), I got fed up, and I tossed over a few boxes of ammo, then hoped against hope, looked over the balcony's edge, took careful aim, prayed to God...
And let fly with the weak fire from my hands, which set the boxes alight and triggered the blast effect. That sent most of the thugs scattering, and the few who remained got cut down quickly.
A few minutes later, the lobby was clear, and I sat staring at the corpses of the men and women who'd tried to storm my castle.
"What... what have I done..."
Being a killer isn't easy, even if it's in self defense. Knowing that I'd taken the lives of about twenty people, and most of them due to some goddamned power, some cursed ability from my body...
I passed out.
Visions tormented me - endless visions of the world past, the carefree world that it had been - endless bickering inside the U.N., new computer viruses, the perpetual stream of crap spewing forth from the collective orifices of Hollywood - and I shook in my unconsciousness, screaming and crying.
How do I know, you ask? The answer is simple.
_She_ showed me.
The girl from my first dream showed up - the blue-haired one. With graceful movements, she placed my head in her lap and patted it gently, then started singing some song, some lullaby - and wonder of wonders, I calmed down.
I awoke a few seconds later, and I saw her. She smiled, and then she vanished, leaving my head to fall to the floor. I wondered if I was dreaming again, and she nodded.
"Think of me as a dream. You can see dreams whenever you want, whenever you think of them... but you won't remember them... not in reality, anyway." She waved her hand, and then vanished, and it was only with the greatest efforts a decade later that I remembered that meeting with her in detail.
I stumbled to the bathroom, cleaned myself off, and stared at myself.
I didn't want to think that I was a killer.
Time passed like water - a ripple here and there, but quietly, unnoticed. I hadn't aged a day physically since the cataclysm, but my soul felt old and brittle, like a glove you put on too many times. I have no idea why; perhaps it was a gift from _her_, maybe it was radiation of some kind, maybe it was a curse.
I personally tended to the latter. You know why, right? You live, everyone else dies? All your friends and such die, and you're left alone, alone with only memories? Yes, it's a pain, isn't it? That sweet, delicious ache in your heart, the bittersweet feeling that drives one to drink and death, to lust for life and love?
... Oh, gods, I sound like Kana. Forgive me.
It was 2005 when I realized what I was capable of. I knew that I'd gained some powers already - and so do you, obviously. But what I didn't know was just what they were. You've heard the tales of the Others in the SASA classes - the stories of Kebinu, with his fire mastery; Kana, with his power over the dead, and Talon, with his unholy speed and agility. As for myself, I had an... intriguing... ability.
During the attacks on me at Whole Foods and at my home, I found that I'd gained weak control of three elements - lightning, ice, and fire. I didn't have anything near the levels of Kebinu's powers, or Talon's, and I sure as hell couldn't touch Kana's undead armies (but the fire stunt worked wonders on the grunts), but what I could do was useful.
I hadn't figured on having to use the powers very often. Yes, I did use the ice power to create water for bathing and such, and the fire ability heated it, but the lightning wasn't very useful except when I wanted a light show. Still, though, trained my powers, using targets on the roofs of the parking garages and various tasks to ensure that they weren't just for combat.
After all, if they weren't practical, what was the use of having them?
One other ability defied that law, though, and was very useful on my trips into the outside - I could perform a moderately powerful healing spell. Apparently, that was what I seemed to be best at - not attacks, not defense, but merely restoration. I figured it came from years of technical support and repairing things like there was no tomorrow... which there apparently wasn't.
As I was saying, I trained myself and honed my powers. I still wasn't that physically powerful, but hell, if you can shock someone into unconsciousness, you don't need to be able to knock them out with a fist. Agility was a different matter, and my resilience to damage was abnormally strong. I could take quite a bit of damage, and I tested this quite often by running into walls, jumping down about ten feet or so (gradually increasing the distance until the day I broke my leg... fifty feet, by the way), and testing out the extents of my powers on myself (of course, weak blows at first, then stronger). But it didn't matter if I could dodge the attacks.
The next five years passed quietly. The power in the generators didn't last that long, obviously. Every now and again, I made a trip out to the local gas stations and dug up a new storage tank. They usually lasted me about three months each - three months of heat and light, three months of an electronic diary on my laptop, three months of occasionally dialing out to my ISP via the satellite phone to see if they had anyone else getting through.
Time flowed past me like a river. Most of the locals avoided me, for fear of my powers and the strange lights they saw in my building at night, and some just because they saw me, and they saw that I hadn't aged, and they were afraid.
Hell, so was I. I didn't know what was out there.
Every now and again, a raiding party would come after me. By this time, the ammunition I'd looted was long gone, and the guns ruined, since I didn't know how to take care of them. I was down to what little I had left - some food (mostly that same damn vending machine stuff from years ago, believe it or not), a bit of over-the-counter medicine (expired, but even that was better than nothing), clothing (the tuxedo included. On occasion, I wore it, and tried to think back), my laptop, and the satellite phone. That was it.
Fortunately, most of the raiders fled when they saw me standing on a balcony in a tuxedo with a cane smirking at the poor buggers who tried to steal from me.
Hey, you'd run too if you saw someone who could command weak fire, ice, and lightning holding a cane and laughing like Naga.
The word had gotten around about me being adept with elements, and the bastards ran off scared. Every now and again, one would try to shoot at me, but I'd leap off the balcony, point the cane at him, and bellow out some ludicrous speech about not taking what isn't yours before chanting an attack phrase (the word "tuxedo" followed by "fire brand," "ice storm," or "thunder blast") and either killing or wounding him.
It was more of the latter than the former. I can't take killing, no matter what I do. I _hate it_.
About three years later (2008 or so - when you're immortal, time becomes irrelevant), a particularly determined group of thieves came in. They breached most of my defenses, broke down the walls of the ground floor of the building with vehicles, and got to the fifth floor of my home before I cracked.
When you're seeing people shooting at you, and then summarily destroying what you've built over the years, you'll snap. I snapped, and that day, I learned how to combine the three elements I could use to augment each other. I called it the "Tuxedo Elemental Storm," and I kept it secret.
After that, though, the local people despised me. They knew that I'd killed before to protect my building, and they hated the fact that I had a relatively cushy life in seclusion. I'd heard that they killed adepts out west, and in the east, it was relatively relaxing. You'd think it'd be the other way around - they in California would be used to odd abilities and such, and those on the eastern seaboard would be wasting adepts left and right.
Six years passed without incident.
The seventh did not...
* * * * *
2015
The remains of Houston
* * * * *
"And that's what I need," Jack said, passing a list to the tradesman. "You think you can get it for me?"
The man perused the list, scanning each item briefly before shaking his head. "I can't help you, spawn. You're on your own."
Jack's eyelid twitched for a second. "Excuse me? 'Spawn?' What's with that?"
"You're one of them who can use magic and shit," the merchant said, grabbing his keys and shoving Jack out of his store. "You're not normal, and you don't belong here, so get out!"
The door closed behind Jack, and he sighed. "Goddammit. Now where am I going to get those supplies?"
The gun shoved into the small of his back was enough answer for him.
"Take your stuff and get the hell out of this city, you son of Satan," came the voice from behind him. "Us God-fearing people don't like you here."
"And I thought that only the smart survived," Jack said sarcastically. "It's amazing that you managed to live this long, pastor."
The clergyman pointed his finger at Jack while the small mob near him aimed their weapons. "'And lo, Christ turned to the possessed man, and he cast out the demon in His Father's name.'"
"Your point?" Jack tensed as a knife found its way to his neck. "I see. You're rather sharp, pastor, I'll give you that, but you're sure as hell no Jesuit."
"The priests from the Church will burn for tolerating a demon like you in our presence, boy," the preacher muttered. "Tolerance, civility, decency - all are not to be given to heathen like you."
"To think that I believe in Him," Jack sighed. "And didn't someone once say 'love thy neighbor as thyself?'" he shot back as the knife was removed from his neck.
"We'll love you as we do ourselves, but you'll leave if you wish to enjoy that love," the preacher said, pulling out a pearl-handled pistol. "We shall not tolerate the presence of a devil in our midst." He waved his hand, and the woman with the rifle that was pressed into Jack's spine stepped back and let it relax.
"You've got twelve hours to get what you need and leave Houston. I'll give the order to shoot you on sight if you return. Understand?"
"You do know I could kill you where you stand?" Jack's words were a bluff, and the pastor knew it. "And before you managed to kill me, I'd take a good chunk of your flock along with you."
"A damned wolf to the last," the preacher said, turning around and walking away. "Twelve hours, boy, then you're dead if you're still here."
The mob followed him, and Jack sighed. "Dammit. What am I going to do?"
A few hours later, he was busily packing.
"If they're going to waste me, I might as well leave," he muttered. "I don't know whether this immortality extends to physical damage, and I'm not about to find out."
He shoved his laptop into its case, grabbed the satellite phone and its gear, and then stuffed them into a suitcase. "Screw them. If they want me gone, I'll leave. But where am I going to go?"
He sat down on his bed and thought for a minute. "Let's see... there's Austin. Uncle's ranch... it might still be there. New York, to Yvonne's house? No. Too far. Colorado?"
A second later, a deep-seated feeling of serenity came over him. "Yes, why not? Durango had beautiful views, and Ouray and Silverton might still be standing. Besides, there, there's very few people to harass me... and with any luck, I'll not have to deal with the damn fundy preachers that try to kill me 'in the name of God.' Idiots."
Jack lay there for a minute, thinking, and then rose. "Right, then. It's time to go."
He collected his suitcases, carried them to his H^2, which, amazingly, still ran after ten years, and placed them in on the back seat. He slipped in, ignited the engine, and sighed. "I hate moving."
Jack drove off after inserting a CD into the player. "Colorado, here I come. I hope that the roads aren't as bad as I remember them."
* * * * *
2015, five days later
The outskirts of Denver
* * * * *
"You're sure that I can't find haven here?"
The guards shook their heads. "We've already got enough trouble with people coming in and out. We're closed off until we can do an inventory and budget supplies. Turn around and leave."
"There's nothing nearby?" Jack smacked the dashboard of his car with his right hand, then winced. "I mean, I'd drive five hundred miles if I had to."
One guard started to say something, and the other glared menacingly at him. "The closest settlement is about three hundred miles away. It's called Colorado Springs."
"Thanks."
"You don't need help getting there?" The guard who'd glared was furious now, and the other one was sweating.
"I've a key map. I'll make it there." Jack turned the car around and drove off.
"The hell are you telling him how to get to there?" the angry guard said. "Those mages are better off dead."
"Better they have him than us," the guard replied.
* * * * *
About seven hours later
And three hundred miles away
* * * * *
Jack drove.
He couldn't go fast, for although the state of Colorado drew in millions of dollars in tourism money every year, they'd never made mountain roads well, and Jack wasn't about to tempt fate.
He pulled up to an observation deck on the edge of a mountain... and gasped in shock, then tore open the door of his vehicle and dashed to the railing.
"Masaka!"
A nearby mountain, though covered with snow and pine trees, had roads leading straight up to it, and there, just barely visible, was an arch on it. Jack ran back to the H^2, pulled a pair of binoculars from the glove box, and
focused them on the arch.
"Cheyenne Mountain..."
"Whoa." He lowered the binoculars, and then walked back to the car. "This... This is like 'WarGames'. But... it's so calm here, so peaceful... Could this be the end of the line for me?"
He nodded, and started the car again before driving down the roads off the mountain and into the nearby town of Colorado Springs. Within a few hours, Jack was sipping at a mug of coffee in a local inn next to a slightly frosted
window.
"This... is good," he whispered to himself, quietly blowing on the coffee before tipping the cup and drinking of it. "I could get used to this." His brow furrowed. "If the locals let me."
A few people walked by outside, clad in furs and carrying gift-wrapped boxes. He paid them no mind, but when another group did the same, and then another a few minutes later, he beckoned a nearby waitress over. "You wouldn't happen to know where they're going, would you?"
"Oh, they're going to see the Tenshi," the waitress replied, beaming a little before calming herself. "Lady Shinobu's been healing many, many people lately, and they want to give her gifts for it."
Jack raised his eyebrows in interest. "A healer? Oh, my, that gift's rare."
"Meh, there's another adept around here, too," the waitress said, refilling his coffee. "Lady Su's got some weird power over earth and metals and such."
"My, my," Jack muttered. "Where can I find them?"
"Just follow the crowds, honey," she said, sauntering off.
Jack dropped cash on his table, plus a somewhat nice tip - nowhere near pre-Cataclysm standards, but still notable. He slipped into the restroom, and since the place was deserted, he grabbed his tuxedo from the H^2 and quickly changed into it, then waited until the waitress turned her back, and walked out the door.
He left the H^2 parked where it was, but pulled out his cane and a mask. "Best to remain disguised until I can find out whether they're friend or foe," he muttered before joining in the throng of followers heading towards Cheyenne Mountain.
After a lengthy walk, which only seemed to exacerbate the cold, Jack found himself at the North Portal. He stepped in, and immediately two guards pulled him aside.
"We've heard about you, boy," one said quietly. "The guards at Denver sent us a warning about magic users coming our way."
"Oh? Did they mention me specifically?"
"They said that there was someone who could use dark powers," the second guard said. "Until we're certain it's not you, you're going to the cells below."
Jack thought for a second, then shook his head. "No, I don't think so. If I did, I couldn't see Lady Shinobu or Lady Su, and that's what I came here to do, after all." He flicked his fingers, and a small bolt of flame melted the barrels of the guns the guards held. "Do you mind? I really must go."
He walked off before the guards could protest, and he silently cursed as he did so. _Dammit. I didn't want to have to use those yet. If Su or Shinobu are as powerful as they seem, and they're a threat to me..._
Before he could continue that train of thought, however, he found himself at what once was the control room, and he stared in shock.
It was _Her_.
Her, as in the Woman who healed him that night he slew the gang with the boxes of bullets.
Her, as in the Girl from his dreams.
Her, as in the Lady Shinobu.
The line to see her moved slowly, but eventually, he made it to the front. He stared, entranced... and then she spoke.
"It's been ten years, Tux-kun."
Jack dropped to one knee immediately and bowed his head, then unsheathed the sword at his side and planted the blade into the ground. "It's you. I can't believe it... it's _you_. You're _Her!_"
Shinobu nodded. "So I am."
"Shinobu-sama, kimo no koto wa itsudemo hoshi suru!"
"If that is your wish, I shall be glad to grant it." Shinobu rose from the chair that sat near the lead desk and stepped to him. "So you now work for me, Jack. You will know my ends, and you are the means. Do this well."
Jack nodded. _Perhaps I can find redemption here. Redemption for all I've slain, for all I've lost, for all the agony I've caused... and if I can find it in Her eyes, all the sweeter shall it be._
* * * * *
I broke the trance, and sighed. The crisp, icy air of the South Portal nipped at my flesh, eliciting a soft shiver, and sending me back inside the warmth of the mountain.
And that's it, really. That's how I lost everything, gained a little back, damned myself beyond all hells, and gained the quest, although kicking and screaming, to regain my soul.
* * * * *
Talon's office, the present
* * * * *
The girl leaned back in her chair and tapped a long, manicured finger against her chin. "What did that phrase mean?"
Talon sighed, and the old look in his eyes came back for an instant. "It's Japanese, Miss Arney. It means 'I will always serve you," if he wanted simplicity. However, I believe he meant to say, "I will always come to your aid."
She smiled. "Oh? Is that so?"
"Don't knock it, Miss Arney," Talon replied, wagging a finger at her. "Words like that can be powerful. Just look at history."
"But did anyone else say anything to their goddesses before the War or Reconstruction?"
"That, madame, is what I'm about to tell you."
* * * * * * * * * * *
And that's five authors now… Anyone else want to join in?
NEXT TIME: Kitsune meets her champions, Christopher Magician and Eijentu in Las Vegas, while in Athens, Talon faces the leader of the Bulldogs. Can the Demi-god of the Wingfoot defeat the Demi-Goddess of the Storm?
As always, anyone who wishes to contribute is more than welcome. It is good to see you again, Sadistic Shadow! I look forward to anything you come up with in the future, for this fic or otherwise ^_^
Silver-chan, your interlude is taking shape as we speak. It will appear in chapter 15 at the latest.
And Mint-chan… When are we going to see your Interlude?