LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN BLOODY ROAR OR ANY CHARACTERS THEREOF. DUE TO THE FACT THAT I DON'T FEEL LIKE WRITING THIS EVERY TIME I START A CHAPTER, I WILL MAKE THIS LEGALLY BINDING TO THE FANFIC AS A WHOLE. SO, LET ME REPEAT. I DO NOT OWN BLOODY ROAR OR ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY CONNECTED TO IT- CHARACTERS, TRADEMARKS, NONE OF IT BELONGS TO ME. I'M NOT MAKING ANY PROFITS OFF THIS, UNLESS MY READERS DECIDE TO SEND ME MONETARY DONATIONS FOR THE BEAUTY OF THIS WORK (HINT, HINT), AND SINCE I DO NOT CONTROL GIFT-GIVING, I CANNOT BE HELD LEGALLY BINDING FOR IT, AND HENCE, MY CLAIMS OF MAKING NO PROFITS OFF THIS IS UPHELD. THAT'S FOR ALL THE *MILLIONS* OF LAWYERS (NOTE SARCASM) WHO WILL BE READING THIS.
[]- Indicates thought. This holds for the entire fanfic too.
* *- Indicates italics, word emphasis, foreign language, and anything else I may require. Counts for the whole fanfic.
Well, folks, it's me again. I've gotten just two reviews for this, and I'm blaming all of it on my horrible summary. So, I'm going to make a story out of this... but don't expect many updates. The writing style is very, very different from what I usually do, so updates will occur about half as frequently as my other stories. It's hard to switch, mentally and artistically, from one train of thought to another.
I won't waste any more time on these blasted author's notes, seeing as how there's not much to write about, besides a big thank-you to my two reviewers. And, of course, a " Me stupid!" note to put in, seeing as how Tiger5913 pointed out that it's *ALICE* who's adopted, not Uriko. Sorry about that- I'll fix it in later chapters. Kudos to IODAC and Tiger5913 for reviewing. At least somebody loves me... (sniffle)
With that finished, it is now...
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter 2
Sweet Dreams
Mansion de Leo, Tokyo, Japan. 10:46, Night of the Mark.
It has been a few minutes since we left Stun, and since then we have been watching the city below us. We aren't very high up now, just skimming the rooftops, and so we get the best of both worlds, the bird's-eye view that beggars the mind, and the close-up view that shows us life in the city at it's best and worst. We have seen strange sights tonight, and if they have failed to make us believe that something is wrong in this city, then what lies ahead will definitely convince us. We're heading to the house of Alan Gado, where he lives with his newly-found daughter, Jane Gado, better known as "Shina" by the mercenaries whose world she's inhabited all her life. Just as her father, Alan, is better known as the "Great Mercenary" by them. He prefers to be called Gado by his friends, and though he will never see us, we are his friends; those of us who stand in the rain and fight the coming of the night, we are all friends no matter where we are or whether we ever see each other or not. So we shall call him Gado, in deference to his wishes.
Gado and his daughter are both Zoanthropes (interestingly, both are felines, he a lion and she a leopard) and both have been mercenaries for most of their lives; but that's where the similarities end. Both have lived in the harsh world of mercenaries and money, and have lived (and still do) in the even harsher world of Zoanthropes, but they have drawn entirely different viewpoints on their experiences.
Gado is an honorable man, the consummate soldier, and was known in his mercenary days as a man who would not betray his employer no matter what offer the enemy made. He would die for his friends, stand fast for them in the worst times, and never give up. He has always viewed the world as a harsh place, but finds that in that very harshness, life holds its value. If life was not harsh, if it was easy to be a good and honorable person in this world, then Good and honor would mean nothing. He is a man whose personal motto might be summed up as " Good things are worth fighting for,", and he holds to his ideals no matter what. As a UN Senator, he brings his considerable weight with certain governments (some of which he helped to put into power in the first place) to the issue of Zoanthrope rights. His fellow UN members think he's human, so they have no idea why he's so adamant about the issue. Even those motions which would have a positive effect on other issues are rejected by him if they counter Zoanthrope rights. Currently, only four countries in the world- Spain, England, Russia, and the United States- grant even limited citizenship rights to Zoanthropes, and of those countries, only Spain and America have granted full rights to Zoanthropes. Gado is working as hard as he can to change this bleak outlook for Zoanthropes, and that is a notion that should cheer us all. The work is hard, but that just makes him fight all the harder.
Jane Gado is an entirely different story. Born to an American mercenary Gado had met in South America on a mission there (the pills her mother had been taking had apparently failed to work that weekend), Shina had been raised by her mother's mercenary group, the Cavaliers, in a world where human life had a price and courage was nothing more than a joke. Unlike Gado, who had only offered his services to causes he considered noble (which sometimes left his purse empty, though that was a small price to pay for a clean conscience), the Cavaliers had offered to fight for anyone with the money, and often switched sides when enough cash was offered. Young Jane had no choice but to go with them. Once she'd reached the age of eight, they'd put her to work cleaning up their mobile headquarters (a ship named "Shit Floats" by some wit among the Cavaliers), and at fifteen, she had killed her first enemy soldier. By eighteen, she'd had quite a reputation in the world of mercenaries, and a nickname she'd been tagged with by the other Cavaliers, " Shina", had become her preferred alias.
She'd left the Cavaliers soon after her eighteenth birthday, with few fond goodbyes said on either side, and became a bounty hunter, tracking and capturing (or killing, depending on the mission) public menaces, serial killers, rapists, anyone with a bounty on their head. For two years she'd lived in Japan, and she'd never seen anything but the harsher side of life. The evil she saw everywhere made her both paranoid of others and a loner, and she sought refuge in the bottle, that age old double-edged sword. When she drank, she got careless- but when she drank, she felt the cold inside her melt away for a few precious minutes. For that, a little sloppiness was acceptable. Sometimes, in her darker moments, she almost wished that sloppiness would cost her her life. It was worthless to her, and she saw nothing in the world. She found herself drawn to the ocean, to the beach, and she would sometimes stand on a promontory over the beach near her house in Japan, just watching the waves. Over and over again, never ceasing in their monotonous pounding of the surf, the waves were part of a vast, watery machine which cared not for the life inside itself, which had no sentience or mind of it's own, but simply acted as the inane, idiot forces that ruled it demanded. There was no romance in it, no significance, nothing to indicate that life had any worth, that anything had worth. She believed she'd found out a key truth to life, that, to quote Macbeth, " Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Endless rhythms, meaningless grace. That was life to her. She's never read any of Hemingway's work, but the conclusions we can draw from this brief account of her life lead us to the rather disturbing idea that she and a suicidal madman who wrote his frenzied thoughts in a notebook (before blowing his brains out, anyway) have far too much in common.
A few days after her twenty-first birthday, she checked her mailbox (she only subscribed to a few mercenary magazines, along with a firearms catalog she received twice a year) and found, very much to her surprise, a letter from her mother. Not quite knowing what to expect, she'd opened it and found out why she was getting a letter from her mother after all these years. Shina's mother had been in South America, almost in the same spot where she and Gado had met, and the memory had called forth an image of her daughter, who she had not seen in three years. The realization had been jarring, even shocking, to her mother, and when she'd checked the calendar she'd found that Shina's birthday was a week off. Her mother had spent all that week trying to find out where Shina lived, and when her contacts had finally found her, she'd written this letter and sent it to her. The letter used to occupy a drawer by itself in Shina's work desk when she lived alone, and now that she lives with her real father it stays in a drawer in her nightstand. The contents of the letter go like this:
My daughter,
I have not been any kind of mother to you. I've raised you in my world, and that's not fair to a child, to be thrust suddenly into a world of mercenaries. You've grown cold, your feelings dulled. I never meant for that to happen, and this plea will fall on deaf ears, but I must say it. I was young back then. I knew nothing. I grow old now, and my mind begins to turn back the hands of time, and as it does I see to my horror all I have done wrong. But all that would not matter if I had raised you right. As things stand, I did not, and failed at the most important mission in my life. It means nothing, but I feel the deepest regret I have ever known, a regret that tears me apart. Sorrow is slowly killing me, sorrow over what I've done over the years, to others and to myself, but it is what I've done to you that hurts me most.
I'm sorry.
Those two words are just dust in the wind, I know. The woman who left us three years ago was not a woman who would have cared about them, and though I do not know how much has changed, I suspect and fear that your heart has not. You were a woman who cared about nothing, not even herself, and that is the worst of it. One who cares about nothing is worse than one who hates everything, because at least the hater has something to feel.
It's all my fault.
I can do nothing to help you now, my daughter. You've moved beyond me, and all the life you've lived outside me, a life you lived outside me even when you lived with me, have just made you harder and harder to reach. You were always quiet, Shina, independent, not asking for favors and giving none. Maybe because you knew I wouldn't give you any, nor receive anything you gave.
There is but one thing left to do, and though it does nothing to fulfill the obligation of being a mother, it does make the ache in my heart ease a little. I can tell you who your real father is. I have even found out where he lives, and you are in luck. He is in Japan right now, north of where you currently live.
His name is Alan Gado, also known as the "Great Mercenary". It was bad in Peru, and we both needed someone to hold. I do not possess the words necessary to tell you what it was like, but he does. That's what originally attracted me to him, that very aura of intelligence, of wit.
I'm sorry.
Your mother,
Anneke Roan
The letter had prompted Shina to move out of her comfortable existence and head north, to find her father. Which proved to be her undoing. Her sources allowed her to find her father rather easily, near a dock in Japan, where he was trying to sniff out a renegade scientist named Busuzima. He'd recently met a scientist named Stephen (who we've met, too, though he now calls himself Stun), who happened to know Busuzima. The two had been working together, on a bioengineering project, but Busuzima had recently stolen some research materials from their lab. Stephen had went to Gado for help, and Jane had knocked on the front door while the two were discussing what to do about it. When she'd entered, her first words (words she had neither planned nor rehearsed; she was unprepared for the encounter and knew it, and knew as well that trying to plan would simply make her look foolish when the time came) had been simple, profound, and heartfelt, the first words she'd said in a long time that pulled any kind of emotion from her.
" Father, I'm here."
Gado had stared at her for a moment, then said, " What?" He was quite calm, considering what Shina had just said to him.
" I'm your daughter," she said, and in her head she was running through all she knew about her mother, about the time in Peru. " My mother told me about you two days ago."
" Maybe you'd better come in," Gado had said, clearly confused but gentlemanly nonetheless.
" But what about?.." Stephen had begun.
" Hold on for a minute," Gado had said, not unkindly. " A young woman has just popped up at my door and called me Father. I do believe I'm entitled to at least a few minutes to sort this out."
Stephen had nodded and stepped back. The room and the house itself are very blurry in Shina's mind, and for good reason; she was knocked out soon after entering. Hard raps on the head don't improve memory in the best situations, and she had not been in the house for more than a few minutes before the windows busted in and Busuzima's paid goons assaulted them. We cannot travel through time, but we can assume that the fight didn't last long. Shina had been knocked unconscious, and when she awoke she was strapped to an operating table, nude, with Busuzima grinning down at her, his face a twisted mask of lechery.
But let's leave that memory off for now, shall we? We have reached the mansion, and now is not a time to remember the past. That time will come, and soon- but it will not be tonight.
The house is lit up in two rooms, one a library on the ground floor to our right, the second a bedroom on the second floor to our left. We slip into the bedroom through a convenient crack in the windows, and hear a Japanese newscaster talking about recent Zoanthrope activities in Africa and Europe. Gado's up in his room, watching the late news and amusing himself by abusing a stress ball. He keeps a great deal of them in his house, and scraps of the ones he busts daily fill the trash can beside his bed. He has found, much to his chagrin, that being a UN official is far more stressful than being a mercenary. After all, as a mercenary, he usually ended up killing anyone that annoyed him; in the UN, such activities are frowned upon, so he resorts to stress balls. The poor, beleagured red ball in his right hand isn't going to last much longer; it's already begun to emit a terminal wheeze when he squeezes it, and will soon go out with one last gasp, whereupon Gado will dump it's remains into the trash can and choose another stress ball out of the drawer in his nightstand, where dozens lie in wait, trembling over the idea that the enormous hand may reach in and pick them up next.
We move into the upper hallway through the crack under the door, leaving behind the persecuted stress balls, and glance around at the white walls about us. The pictures on the wall aren't family pictures of any kind, but rather trophy pictures from Gado's exploits. In one picture, he is towering over two small Mexican mercenaries he met in South America, his huge arms thrown over their shoulders, laughing at a dirty joke one of them told. In another, he stands in a mercenary pose, rifle aimed and ready, as six laughing African mercenaries stand nearby, striking poses of their own. Soon after this, four of the six men in the picture died, in a hellish firestorm that completely engulfed the small village they'd been staying in. Gado keeps the photograph as a way of remembering them.
We travel down the stairs, sobering war photos (in which everyone seems to be smiling or laughing; the old police adage that " If we didn't laugh, we'd cry" applies to soldiers as well, it seems) weighing down our mood and making us serious in heart and mind, and notice the fine carpet. It is light purple, a color Gado hates but has never said anything about. He hired a famous interior decorator to fashion the inside of his house, and though he thought the man was insane (who in the world would want to have purple carpets, for God's sake?), he hadn't dared to make any changes to the home after the decorator had finished and went home, for fear of removing his home from the realm of good taste. Gado has no idea how to properly decorate a home, having never had one until now, and so trusts to the strange decorator's designs.
The stairs lead into a great room, the lobby of this mansion. The carpet ends at the bottom of the staircase, as the designer preferred the more elegant touch of marble flooring here in the entry hall. It works; whatever his failures in choosing carpet, the man does know how to make an impressive great hall. Pillars of marble (well, it's really marble coated steel, but it's appearances that count, right?) jut out of the ground, rising upwards, supporting the second and third floors with their considerable strength. Paintings and expensive rugs line the walls, and a great set of double-doors leads to the outside world. But we aren't going out just yet; we need to find Shina first, before we can continue our little journey. Much as Uriko, right now, is just beginning to feel pain in her lower back (right where, later tonight, a Crest will appear), so is Shina feeling pain over her left chest. We need to see just what these things are, and what they are doing to the Zoanthropes we know so well. We glide, ever silent, through the lobby and into a side door, where inside, Shina is trying to work off some of her frustration on something a little bigger than a stress ball. This area is the gym, and from the pounding noises coming from within, we can assume that some poor punching bag is being abused at the moment. Shina and Gado are remarkably alike, sometimes.
We glide in, and get our first good glimpse of the leopard Zoanthrope. She is currently wearing her training gear, which is her own personal attempt to remove clothing out of the equation completely. Shina has a very violent fighting style, and nothing gets on her nerves like having loose clothing flying all over the place. So, instead of a more traditional karate gi, she favors a form-fitting tank top, shorts, and socks. The resultant look is less a woman trying to train than a woman in her undergarments; when her friend Long (who we will meet later on tonight) came to train with her one night, the straight-laced Chinese gentleman blushed so furiously and felt so embarrassed that he couldn't spar with her at all until she slipped into a karate gi. Most people would have found it funny, but Shina's sense of humor (like much else about her) is dead. Dead and buried, in some dark place in her mind, where she has kept so much of herself locked away. Shina is young in body, but old in soul.
At the moment, as we gather about her like silent shadows, we see that something isn't staying dead in Shina's mind, something that's alive and kicking. She's in a great deal of physical pain now, and it shows in the snarl of her mouth, and the unconscious grimace she keeps on her face. It also shows in how hard she's hitting the punching bag; she's pounding it with everything she's got, and the frayed fabric of it's outer lining is starting to go. Before long, like one of the many stress balls Gado has squeezed into oblivion over the years, this canvas will rip open and pour out it's load of sand onto the mat on the floor of the gym.
Before managing this feat of athletics, however, Shina stops and grabs the battered bag with her left hand, chest heaving from both exertion and pain. Her right hand clasps a spot above her left breast, trying to massage away the pain there. Her teeth are bared in a snarl, directed at whatever invisible enemy is causing her this pain, maybe. She tries to calm herself, but the pain in her chest is like nothing she's ever felt before. She better be glad of that; this is not ordinary physical pain, but a spiritual pain, a wound on the soul, the pain only demons can cause. To be more specific, the pain the demon we saw in the graveyard tonight can cause, as it stands on a rooftop far above Tokyo's streets, chanting and gurgling and gnashing and raving with the foul language of it's kind, as a great stone Tabula begins to form from the air...
But that is an issue we will deal with when the time comes. At the moment, we must watch. And as we watch, we move closer to the struggling Zoanthrope, gazing in wonder at the spot her hand clutches, for claw marks are beginning to form there, marks that appear to come from inside the flesh. But, unlike natural claw marks which have a symmetry, these things are ragged, crossing each other at points, marks no natural thing could have made. This is our first sighting of a Crest. It will not be our last.
We begin to drift slowly backwards as Shina struggles to keep control of herself. We have seen here what needed to be seen- we must move on. Time grows short, and there is so very much to see tonight. We exist out a handy window, slipping into and through it's cracks like drops of water, and fly off into the night.
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Park in Tokyo, four blocks from Gado's mansion. 11:13.
We've flown far tonight, and have farther to fly still, so it's refreshing to see trees and greenery in this city of glass and steel. Inside, enjoying himself in his beast form, our next subject has stopped for a rest. We fly down, through the trees in this small, wooded park, and hear panting noises, like a dog makes. By the sound of them, these pants come from a very big dog- or a wolf.
As we pass the canopy and enter the forest proper, we see the source of the pants. Crouching down, one clawed fist on the ground to support his body, happily panting from exertion, Yugo Ohgami rests after finishing his nightly run through the woods. They aren't real woods, of course, not the kind of woods where you can run for miles and see nothing but trees, where the scent of gasoline and technology is far away, but they are a nice break in scenery from the modern constructions everywhere else in Tokyo. Yugo's heart lies here, in woods and forests, and did so even before he became a wolf Zoanthrope. He sometimes wonders if the Zoanthrope's beast forms are actually reflections of their inner selves. With all he's seen, he thinks that maybe that's so.
Yugo pants faster, wanting to rid himself of body heat before moving on. The one problem with being a wolf Zoanthrope was that it took forever to cool down. Wolf Zoanthropes, like their animal counterparts, apparently had no sweat glands, and had to sweat with their tongues to get rid of body heat. Combined with their larger form, that translated into a lot of panting. Sometimes, after a particularly good run when he's not paying attention, Yugo is sometimes struck forcefully by the amount of heat in his body, feeling dizzy, disoriented, weak. It's not a good way to feel.
Of course, the heat he generates does have it's uses. In the middle of battle, making one's fists suddenly light up with flame has quite an effect on whoever you're fighting. But at the moment, it was nothing more than a nuisance.
Feeling the great heat built up around him slack off a little, Yugo turns and begins walking through the woods. As he does, we notice the leather jacket he's wearing, one that says " HARLEY-DAVIDSON" on the back (Yugo is a big fan of the American motorcycle company), and the leather pants he wears. Both are a size too big for Yugo in his human form, but fit him just fine in beast form. He lopes along easily, not going on all fours but going in a crouched over state, unconsciously sniffing the air for interesting scents. He smells something strange in the air to the north, and stops to lift his nose and test for it in a higher and clearer stream of air, but it's gone before he can find it. He snorts- it was not a particularly pleasant smell- and forgets about it. Something dead, he tells himself, though he doesn't quite believe that. He's had the misfortune to smell dead things before, and he only thinks of them because this scent is like that... but it's not quite that smell. It's deeper, somehow, a smell of something that's rotted to the point that death is clean by comparison.
Yugo begins heading for home, hoping that his little brother cooked a late dinner. Kenji is the ultimate night owl, someone who apparently needs no sleep whatsoever, and more often than not Yugo has come home from his nightly runs to find him eating noodles or reading a book on politics and public speaking. Kenji greatly admires Gado for his fierce defense of Zoanthropes to the UN, and is hoping to become a public speaker himself. First, though, he has to get over his shyness in public. His defense is to shut up, to become silent and almost invisible, and much like the mole his beast form is based on, dig himself a convenient hole to hide in. Kenji is trying to get over his shyness, and his new girlfriend is helping, but it's still going to take some work to get him to talk before twenty people, much less the thousands he wants to reach out to.
Thinking of Uriko Nonomura, Yugo grins, the effect more terrifying than endearing in his beast form. Uriko is the exact opposite of Kenji, an outgoing, over-exuberant extrovert who fits into every crowd she ever walks into. The two's first meeting had been, like the first meetings of most of the Tylon Zoanthropes (as those who had been formed by that branch of Bioganics Inc. were known), rather bad; Kenji had been Bakuryu at that time, possessed of extreme cunning and evil, and he'd tried his best to kill Uriko. She'd managed to best him, her odd half-beast form granting her a speed he couldn't match, and she'd knocked him into a handy wall. The stunned mole Zoanthrope had been too dazed to move when a steel girder fell on him, knocking him out, and that had been the point where Yugo had found him. The boy had reverted to his normal state, and Yugo had lifted the girder off him and saved him. He still doesn't know why he did it; he'd just listened to that little voice in his head that told him what was right. He's never regretted saving Kenji, even when Kenji lost his mind for a while when Busuzima figured out how to awaken the sleeping monstrosity named Bakuryu in him. Yugo had fought him in those days, and it had been a hard fight- he hadn't wanted to harm Kenji, but Bakuryu was more than happy to kill him...
He shakes his head, clearing away those thoughts. [ That's all in the past now,] he thinks to himself, [ and Bakuryu is gone. Kenji is just Kenji now.] He knows nothing about the battle raging in his adopted brother's soul at this moment, knows nothing about the fact that Bakuryu is alive and well in Kenji's mind, a hellish counterpart to him, a black tide that threatens to engulf him if he lets his guard down.
Yugo heads home, and we flap our wings to get there ahead of him. We aim for a house a block away, a house where Kenji even now picks up the knife with which he will take his own life...
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Ohgami household, one block from Nonomura's house, 11:30.
We fly fast, my friends, far faster than Yugo is moving now. If he had any idea what was happening in his house at this very moment, he would no doubt put our speed to shame, dropping to all fours, running to beat the devil. Which, in a very real sense, he would be.
The house bears a striking resemblance to the Nonomura household, brick walls and all, but we have no time now to appreciate it- we must watch and record, and what is happening now is of the utmost importance. All Zoanthropes feel the Crest marring their skin, but Kenji feels it marring his soul. Feels it reaching out, stretching, tearing, calling...
To that dark place in him where Bakuryu resides.
We pass through cracks in the door and window, hurrying now, and come inside just in time to watch Kenji take the knife in his right hand and lift it upwards. It gleams dully in the electric gaze of the light in the ceiling, a paring knife, changed in our view from a cooking utensil to a thing of portent. It gleams, and we shiver on our perches, feeling some great weight flowing out from the knife, the great mystery of life and death perched on it's edge. A mystery that Kenji may well finish exploring tonight.
He looks at it, and in his face we see the tortured, conflicting thoughts of someone who has lived far beyond his years. He is a boy on the threshold of being a man, and in him we see some physical traits of the man he would be- short of stature but lengthy of limb, thin but handsome face, hair that would resist the efforts of the greatest hairdressers in the world- but there is nothing in him to indicate the type of man he would become. Some people wear their souls on their sleeves, but Kenji is as unreadable and dark as the tunnels of his mole counterpart.
He gazes at the knife, and we are able (in our ascendant state) to know what he is thinking. And what thoughts they are.
[ Oh, will the little boy take the easy way out?]
A harsh tone, guttural, black as the foulest abyss.
[ Will you simply end it here? Is it because you fear you can't beat me? Or...
Is it because you KNOW it, Kenji Ohgami! Because you know that, in the end, I'm too powerful! That in the end, I'll be back. Yugo doesn't know about me. Alice doesn't know about me. Even sweet, precious Uriko doesn't know about me. But you do, don't you? You KNOW!]
This is Bakuryu, the voice of Kenji's other half, the monster that lives in his soul. Kenji has had a harsh life, and even the greatest minds will crack under enough pressure. A child's mind is even more fragile, and when placed under the hands of Busuzima...
Snap.
[ Maybe I can't stop you from eventually returning,] Kenji thinks, his mental voice a softer, sadder counterpoint to Bakuryu's monstrous syllables, [ but I can kill you now. I can end it here.]
[ You don't have the guts!] Laughter, harsh, barking.
[ Just try me,] Kenji thinks.
Bakuryu responds to this with more laughter, and as he laughs, Kenji looks around the room. He wants to remember this place. It was his home, the only place where love, that oft-spoken of thing in poetry and books, that faraway dream he had never touched, ever graced him with it's presence. He gazes around, each thing bringing up a memory of good times, better times. Tears fill his eyes as he gazes about himself.
On the TV, where he has sometimes helped Yugo in his boxing career by pointing out mistakes to him on replays of his matches, sit two small pictures, each holding their own special significance to him. One is of Yugo, decked out in a tuxedo, grinning as he and Alice pose for a picture. This was shot at a ball Gado held at his mansion a year ago, and is Yugo's favorite picture. He claims it's the only one in which he actually looks like he has more than shit for brains, and so it occupies a proud place on the TV. To Kenji, the smiles of both Alice and Yugo are condemning, almost physically painful to him, and he blinks as he gazes at them, twin tears falling from his eyes.
[ I'm sorry,] he thinks, trying to put everything he feels into the two most profound words in any language, [ I'm so sorry. I didn't want to fail you, Yugo. You always believed in me... but I'm not worth it. I was never worth it.]
His gaze follows the pictures, and in one he sees Uriko Nonomura, waving exuberantly at the camera, grin wide and bright. This one hurts too, almost more than the others do, because in it he sees all he might have done, if he was not so weak.
[ Why, Uriko? What do you see in me... what did you see in me? What is there in me, but darkness and the potential for more darkness... Why did you ever become part of my life? Why? Did you want to drag me upwards, from the depths of my pain, drag me upwards to better things? Thank you, Uriko, for showing me just a little of your light... but I will not burden you anymore. You deserve better.]
He continues looking around the room, gazing at the various objects on the walls, feeling the pain of friends who graced him with their presence- Jenny, noble Gado, Long, even cold Shina- and then stops as he comes to the cross hanging on the wall. Yugo is quietly religious, and has an unshakeable faith in the Lord that lets him be as cheerful as he naturally is. Kenji has tried to emulate his brother, but his sins are far too grevious for even God to forgive. What he has done in the past, the lives he's taken and the pain he's caused, are so much that God has turned His face away from him. For such as he, redemption is an impossible dream, Hell the only possible destination.
[ At least in Hell,] he thinks, his entire life slipping away from him, letting himself fall ever closer to the final moments as the hand with the knife touches his wrist, [ my evil will do no more harm.] Bakuryu screams, finally realizing that Kenji means to go through with it.
The knife flashes down, blade dulling as claret spills over it.
Snap.
- Next chapter soon. Please read and review, my friends.
[]- Indicates thought. This holds for the entire fanfic too.
* *- Indicates italics, word emphasis, foreign language, and anything else I may require. Counts for the whole fanfic.
Well, folks, it's me again. I've gotten just two reviews for this, and I'm blaming all of it on my horrible summary. So, I'm going to make a story out of this... but don't expect many updates. The writing style is very, very different from what I usually do, so updates will occur about half as frequently as my other stories. It's hard to switch, mentally and artistically, from one train of thought to another.
I won't waste any more time on these blasted author's notes, seeing as how there's not much to write about, besides a big thank-you to my two reviewers. And, of course, a " Me stupid!" note to put in, seeing as how Tiger5913 pointed out that it's *ALICE* who's adopted, not Uriko. Sorry about that- I'll fix it in later chapters. Kudos to IODAC and Tiger5913 for reviewing. At least somebody loves me... (sniffle)
With that finished, it is now...
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter 2
Sweet Dreams
Mansion de Leo, Tokyo, Japan. 10:46, Night of the Mark.
It has been a few minutes since we left Stun, and since then we have been watching the city below us. We aren't very high up now, just skimming the rooftops, and so we get the best of both worlds, the bird's-eye view that beggars the mind, and the close-up view that shows us life in the city at it's best and worst. We have seen strange sights tonight, and if they have failed to make us believe that something is wrong in this city, then what lies ahead will definitely convince us. We're heading to the house of Alan Gado, where he lives with his newly-found daughter, Jane Gado, better known as "Shina" by the mercenaries whose world she's inhabited all her life. Just as her father, Alan, is better known as the "Great Mercenary" by them. He prefers to be called Gado by his friends, and though he will never see us, we are his friends; those of us who stand in the rain and fight the coming of the night, we are all friends no matter where we are or whether we ever see each other or not. So we shall call him Gado, in deference to his wishes.
Gado and his daughter are both Zoanthropes (interestingly, both are felines, he a lion and she a leopard) and both have been mercenaries for most of their lives; but that's where the similarities end. Both have lived in the harsh world of mercenaries and money, and have lived (and still do) in the even harsher world of Zoanthropes, but they have drawn entirely different viewpoints on their experiences.
Gado is an honorable man, the consummate soldier, and was known in his mercenary days as a man who would not betray his employer no matter what offer the enemy made. He would die for his friends, stand fast for them in the worst times, and never give up. He has always viewed the world as a harsh place, but finds that in that very harshness, life holds its value. If life was not harsh, if it was easy to be a good and honorable person in this world, then Good and honor would mean nothing. He is a man whose personal motto might be summed up as " Good things are worth fighting for,", and he holds to his ideals no matter what. As a UN Senator, he brings his considerable weight with certain governments (some of which he helped to put into power in the first place) to the issue of Zoanthrope rights. His fellow UN members think he's human, so they have no idea why he's so adamant about the issue. Even those motions which would have a positive effect on other issues are rejected by him if they counter Zoanthrope rights. Currently, only four countries in the world- Spain, England, Russia, and the United States- grant even limited citizenship rights to Zoanthropes, and of those countries, only Spain and America have granted full rights to Zoanthropes. Gado is working as hard as he can to change this bleak outlook for Zoanthropes, and that is a notion that should cheer us all. The work is hard, but that just makes him fight all the harder.
Jane Gado is an entirely different story. Born to an American mercenary Gado had met in South America on a mission there (the pills her mother had been taking had apparently failed to work that weekend), Shina had been raised by her mother's mercenary group, the Cavaliers, in a world where human life had a price and courage was nothing more than a joke. Unlike Gado, who had only offered his services to causes he considered noble (which sometimes left his purse empty, though that was a small price to pay for a clean conscience), the Cavaliers had offered to fight for anyone with the money, and often switched sides when enough cash was offered. Young Jane had no choice but to go with them. Once she'd reached the age of eight, they'd put her to work cleaning up their mobile headquarters (a ship named "Shit Floats" by some wit among the Cavaliers), and at fifteen, she had killed her first enemy soldier. By eighteen, she'd had quite a reputation in the world of mercenaries, and a nickname she'd been tagged with by the other Cavaliers, " Shina", had become her preferred alias.
She'd left the Cavaliers soon after her eighteenth birthday, with few fond goodbyes said on either side, and became a bounty hunter, tracking and capturing (or killing, depending on the mission) public menaces, serial killers, rapists, anyone with a bounty on their head. For two years she'd lived in Japan, and she'd never seen anything but the harsher side of life. The evil she saw everywhere made her both paranoid of others and a loner, and she sought refuge in the bottle, that age old double-edged sword. When she drank, she got careless- but when she drank, she felt the cold inside her melt away for a few precious minutes. For that, a little sloppiness was acceptable. Sometimes, in her darker moments, she almost wished that sloppiness would cost her her life. It was worthless to her, and she saw nothing in the world. She found herself drawn to the ocean, to the beach, and she would sometimes stand on a promontory over the beach near her house in Japan, just watching the waves. Over and over again, never ceasing in their monotonous pounding of the surf, the waves were part of a vast, watery machine which cared not for the life inside itself, which had no sentience or mind of it's own, but simply acted as the inane, idiot forces that ruled it demanded. There was no romance in it, no significance, nothing to indicate that life had any worth, that anything had worth. She believed she'd found out a key truth to life, that, to quote Macbeth, " Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Endless rhythms, meaningless grace. That was life to her. She's never read any of Hemingway's work, but the conclusions we can draw from this brief account of her life lead us to the rather disturbing idea that she and a suicidal madman who wrote his frenzied thoughts in a notebook (before blowing his brains out, anyway) have far too much in common.
A few days after her twenty-first birthday, she checked her mailbox (she only subscribed to a few mercenary magazines, along with a firearms catalog she received twice a year) and found, very much to her surprise, a letter from her mother. Not quite knowing what to expect, she'd opened it and found out why she was getting a letter from her mother after all these years. Shina's mother had been in South America, almost in the same spot where she and Gado had met, and the memory had called forth an image of her daughter, who she had not seen in three years. The realization had been jarring, even shocking, to her mother, and when she'd checked the calendar she'd found that Shina's birthday was a week off. Her mother had spent all that week trying to find out where Shina lived, and when her contacts had finally found her, she'd written this letter and sent it to her. The letter used to occupy a drawer by itself in Shina's work desk when she lived alone, and now that she lives with her real father it stays in a drawer in her nightstand. The contents of the letter go like this:
My daughter,
I have not been any kind of mother to you. I've raised you in my world, and that's not fair to a child, to be thrust suddenly into a world of mercenaries. You've grown cold, your feelings dulled. I never meant for that to happen, and this plea will fall on deaf ears, but I must say it. I was young back then. I knew nothing. I grow old now, and my mind begins to turn back the hands of time, and as it does I see to my horror all I have done wrong. But all that would not matter if I had raised you right. As things stand, I did not, and failed at the most important mission in my life. It means nothing, but I feel the deepest regret I have ever known, a regret that tears me apart. Sorrow is slowly killing me, sorrow over what I've done over the years, to others and to myself, but it is what I've done to you that hurts me most.
I'm sorry.
Those two words are just dust in the wind, I know. The woman who left us three years ago was not a woman who would have cared about them, and though I do not know how much has changed, I suspect and fear that your heart has not. You were a woman who cared about nothing, not even herself, and that is the worst of it. One who cares about nothing is worse than one who hates everything, because at least the hater has something to feel.
It's all my fault.
I can do nothing to help you now, my daughter. You've moved beyond me, and all the life you've lived outside me, a life you lived outside me even when you lived with me, have just made you harder and harder to reach. You were always quiet, Shina, independent, not asking for favors and giving none. Maybe because you knew I wouldn't give you any, nor receive anything you gave.
There is but one thing left to do, and though it does nothing to fulfill the obligation of being a mother, it does make the ache in my heart ease a little. I can tell you who your real father is. I have even found out where he lives, and you are in luck. He is in Japan right now, north of where you currently live.
His name is Alan Gado, also known as the "Great Mercenary". It was bad in Peru, and we both needed someone to hold. I do not possess the words necessary to tell you what it was like, but he does. That's what originally attracted me to him, that very aura of intelligence, of wit.
I'm sorry.
Your mother,
Anneke Roan
The letter had prompted Shina to move out of her comfortable existence and head north, to find her father. Which proved to be her undoing. Her sources allowed her to find her father rather easily, near a dock in Japan, where he was trying to sniff out a renegade scientist named Busuzima. He'd recently met a scientist named Stephen (who we've met, too, though he now calls himself Stun), who happened to know Busuzima. The two had been working together, on a bioengineering project, but Busuzima had recently stolen some research materials from their lab. Stephen had went to Gado for help, and Jane had knocked on the front door while the two were discussing what to do about it. When she'd entered, her first words (words she had neither planned nor rehearsed; she was unprepared for the encounter and knew it, and knew as well that trying to plan would simply make her look foolish when the time came) had been simple, profound, and heartfelt, the first words she'd said in a long time that pulled any kind of emotion from her.
" Father, I'm here."
Gado had stared at her for a moment, then said, " What?" He was quite calm, considering what Shina had just said to him.
" I'm your daughter," she said, and in her head she was running through all she knew about her mother, about the time in Peru. " My mother told me about you two days ago."
" Maybe you'd better come in," Gado had said, clearly confused but gentlemanly nonetheless.
" But what about?.." Stephen had begun.
" Hold on for a minute," Gado had said, not unkindly. " A young woman has just popped up at my door and called me Father. I do believe I'm entitled to at least a few minutes to sort this out."
Stephen had nodded and stepped back. The room and the house itself are very blurry in Shina's mind, and for good reason; she was knocked out soon after entering. Hard raps on the head don't improve memory in the best situations, and she had not been in the house for more than a few minutes before the windows busted in and Busuzima's paid goons assaulted them. We cannot travel through time, but we can assume that the fight didn't last long. Shina had been knocked unconscious, and when she awoke she was strapped to an operating table, nude, with Busuzima grinning down at her, his face a twisted mask of lechery.
But let's leave that memory off for now, shall we? We have reached the mansion, and now is not a time to remember the past. That time will come, and soon- but it will not be tonight.
The house is lit up in two rooms, one a library on the ground floor to our right, the second a bedroom on the second floor to our left. We slip into the bedroom through a convenient crack in the windows, and hear a Japanese newscaster talking about recent Zoanthrope activities in Africa and Europe. Gado's up in his room, watching the late news and amusing himself by abusing a stress ball. He keeps a great deal of them in his house, and scraps of the ones he busts daily fill the trash can beside his bed. He has found, much to his chagrin, that being a UN official is far more stressful than being a mercenary. After all, as a mercenary, he usually ended up killing anyone that annoyed him; in the UN, such activities are frowned upon, so he resorts to stress balls. The poor, beleagured red ball in his right hand isn't going to last much longer; it's already begun to emit a terminal wheeze when he squeezes it, and will soon go out with one last gasp, whereupon Gado will dump it's remains into the trash can and choose another stress ball out of the drawer in his nightstand, where dozens lie in wait, trembling over the idea that the enormous hand may reach in and pick them up next.
We move into the upper hallway through the crack under the door, leaving behind the persecuted stress balls, and glance around at the white walls about us. The pictures on the wall aren't family pictures of any kind, but rather trophy pictures from Gado's exploits. In one picture, he is towering over two small Mexican mercenaries he met in South America, his huge arms thrown over their shoulders, laughing at a dirty joke one of them told. In another, he stands in a mercenary pose, rifle aimed and ready, as six laughing African mercenaries stand nearby, striking poses of their own. Soon after this, four of the six men in the picture died, in a hellish firestorm that completely engulfed the small village they'd been staying in. Gado keeps the photograph as a way of remembering them.
We travel down the stairs, sobering war photos (in which everyone seems to be smiling or laughing; the old police adage that " If we didn't laugh, we'd cry" applies to soldiers as well, it seems) weighing down our mood and making us serious in heart and mind, and notice the fine carpet. It is light purple, a color Gado hates but has never said anything about. He hired a famous interior decorator to fashion the inside of his house, and though he thought the man was insane (who in the world would want to have purple carpets, for God's sake?), he hadn't dared to make any changes to the home after the decorator had finished and went home, for fear of removing his home from the realm of good taste. Gado has no idea how to properly decorate a home, having never had one until now, and so trusts to the strange decorator's designs.
The stairs lead into a great room, the lobby of this mansion. The carpet ends at the bottom of the staircase, as the designer preferred the more elegant touch of marble flooring here in the entry hall. It works; whatever his failures in choosing carpet, the man does know how to make an impressive great hall. Pillars of marble (well, it's really marble coated steel, but it's appearances that count, right?) jut out of the ground, rising upwards, supporting the second and third floors with their considerable strength. Paintings and expensive rugs line the walls, and a great set of double-doors leads to the outside world. But we aren't going out just yet; we need to find Shina first, before we can continue our little journey. Much as Uriko, right now, is just beginning to feel pain in her lower back (right where, later tonight, a Crest will appear), so is Shina feeling pain over her left chest. We need to see just what these things are, and what they are doing to the Zoanthropes we know so well. We glide, ever silent, through the lobby and into a side door, where inside, Shina is trying to work off some of her frustration on something a little bigger than a stress ball. This area is the gym, and from the pounding noises coming from within, we can assume that some poor punching bag is being abused at the moment. Shina and Gado are remarkably alike, sometimes.
We glide in, and get our first good glimpse of the leopard Zoanthrope. She is currently wearing her training gear, which is her own personal attempt to remove clothing out of the equation completely. Shina has a very violent fighting style, and nothing gets on her nerves like having loose clothing flying all over the place. So, instead of a more traditional karate gi, she favors a form-fitting tank top, shorts, and socks. The resultant look is less a woman trying to train than a woman in her undergarments; when her friend Long (who we will meet later on tonight) came to train with her one night, the straight-laced Chinese gentleman blushed so furiously and felt so embarrassed that he couldn't spar with her at all until she slipped into a karate gi. Most people would have found it funny, but Shina's sense of humor (like much else about her) is dead. Dead and buried, in some dark place in her mind, where she has kept so much of herself locked away. Shina is young in body, but old in soul.
At the moment, as we gather about her like silent shadows, we see that something isn't staying dead in Shina's mind, something that's alive and kicking. She's in a great deal of physical pain now, and it shows in the snarl of her mouth, and the unconscious grimace she keeps on her face. It also shows in how hard she's hitting the punching bag; she's pounding it with everything she's got, and the frayed fabric of it's outer lining is starting to go. Before long, like one of the many stress balls Gado has squeezed into oblivion over the years, this canvas will rip open and pour out it's load of sand onto the mat on the floor of the gym.
Before managing this feat of athletics, however, Shina stops and grabs the battered bag with her left hand, chest heaving from both exertion and pain. Her right hand clasps a spot above her left breast, trying to massage away the pain there. Her teeth are bared in a snarl, directed at whatever invisible enemy is causing her this pain, maybe. She tries to calm herself, but the pain in her chest is like nothing she's ever felt before. She better be glad of that; this is not ordinary physical pain, but a spiritual pain, a wound on the soul, the pain only demons can cause. To be more specific, the pain the demon we saw in the graveyard tonight can cause, as it stands on a rooftop far above Tokyo's streets, chanting and gurgling and gnashing and raving with the foul language of it's kind, as a great stone Tabula begins to form from the air...
But that is an issue we will deal with when the time comes. At the moment, we must watch. And as we watch, we move closer to the struggling Zoanthrope, gazing in wonder at the spot her hand clutches, for claw marks are beginning to form there, marks that appear to come from inside the flesh. But, unlike natural claw marks which have a symmetry, these things are ragged, crossing each other at points, marks no natural thing could have made. This is our first sighting of a Crest. It will not be our last.
We begin to drift slowly backwards as Shina struggles to keep control of herself. We have seen here what needed to be seen- we must move on. Time grows short, and there is so very much to see tonight. We exist out a handy window, slipping into and through it's cracks like drops of water, and fly off into the night.
************************************************************************
Park in Tokyo, four blocks from Gado's mansion. 11:13.
We've flown far tonight, and have farther to fly still, so it's refreshing to see trees and greenery in this city of glass and steel. Inside, enjoying himself in his beast form, our next subject has stopped for a rest. We fly down, through the trees in this small, wooded park, and hear panting noises, like a dog makes. By the sound of them, these pants come from a very big dog- or a wolf.
As we pass the canopy and enter the forest proper, we see the source of the pants. Crouching down, one clawed fist on the ground to support his body, happily panting from exertion, Yugo Ohgami rests after finishing his nightly run through the woods. They aren't real woods, of course, not the kind of woods where you can run for miles and see nothing but trees, where the scent of gasoline and technology is far away, but they are a nice break in scenery from the modern constructions everywhere else in Tokyo. Yugo's heart lies here, in woods and forests, and did so even before he became a wolf Zoanthrope. He sometimes wonders if the Zoanthrope's beast forms are actually reflections of their inner selves. With all he's seen, he thinks that maybe that's so.
Yugo pants faster, wanting to rid himself of body heat before moving on. The one problem with being a wolf Zoanthrope was that it took forever to cool down. Wolf Zoanthropes, like their animal counterparts, apparently had no sweat glands, and had to sweat with their tongues to get rid of body heat. Combined with their larger form, that translated into a lot of panting. Sometimes, after a particularly good run when he's not paying attention, Yugo is sometimes struck forcefully by the amount of heat in his body, feeling dizzy, disoriented, weak. It's not a good way to feel.
Of course, the heat he generates does have it's uses. In the middle of battle, making one's fists suddenly light up with flame has quite an effect on whoever you're fighting. But at the moment, it was nothing more than a nuisance.
Feeling the great heat built up around him slack off a little, Yugo turns and begins walking through the woods. As he does, we notice the leather jacket he's wearing, one that says " HARLEY-DAVIDSON" on the back (Yugo is a big fan of the American motorcycle company), and the leather pants he wears. Both are a size too big for Yugo in his human form, but fit him just fine in beast form. He lopes along easily, not going on all fours but going in a crouched over state, unconsciously sniffing the air for interesting scents. He smells something strange in the air to the north, and stops to lift his nose and test for it in a higher and clearer stream of air, but it's gone before he can find it. He snorts- it was not a particularly pleasant smell- and forgets about it. Something dead, he tells himself, though he doesn't quite believe that. He's had the misfortune to smell dead things before, and he only thinks of them because this scent is like that... but it's not quite that smell. It's deeper, somehow, a smell of something that's rotted to the point that death is clean by comparison.
Yugo begins heading for home, hoping that his little brother cooked a late dinner. Kenji is the ultimate night owl, someone who apparently needs no sleep whatsoever, and more often than not Yugo has come home from his nightly runs to find him eating noodles or reading a book on politics and public speaking. Kenji greatly admires Gado for his fierce defense of Zoanthropes to the UN, and is hoping to become a public speaker himself. First, though, he has to get over his shyness in public. His defense is to shut up, to become silent and almost invisible, and much like the mole his beast form is based on, dig himself a convenient hole to hide in. Kenji is trying to get over his shyness, and his new girlfriend is helping, but it's still going to take some work to get him to talk before twenty people, much less the thousands he wants to reach out to.
Thinking of Uriko Nonomura, Yugo grins, the effect more terrifying than endearing in his beast form. Uriko is the exact opposite of Kenji, an outgoing, over-exuberant extrovert who fits into every crowd she ever walks into. The two's first meeting had been, like the first meetings of most of the Tylon Zoanthropes (as those who had been formed by that branch of Bioganics Inc. were known), rather bad; Kenji had been Bakuryu at that time, possessed of extreme cunning and evil, and he'd tried his best to kill Uriko. She'd managed to best him, her odd half-beast form granting her a speed he couldn't match, and she'd knocked him into a handy wall. The stunned mole Zoanthrope had been too dazed to move when a steel girder fell on him, knocking him out, and that had been the point where Yugo had found him. The boy had reverted to his normal state, and Yugo had lifted the girder off him and saved him. He still doesn't know why he did it; he'd just listened to that little voice in his head that told him what was right. He's never regretted saving Kenji, even when Kenji lost his mind for a while when Busuzima figured out how to awaken the sleeping monstrosity named Bakuryu in him. Yugo had fought him in those days, and it had been a hard fight- he hadn't wanted to harm Kenji, but Bakuryu was more than happy to kill him...
He shakes his head, clearing away those thoughts. [ That's all in the past now,] he thinks to himself, [ and Bakuryu is gone. Kenji is just Kenji now.] He knows nothing about the battle raging in his adopted brother's soul at this moment, knows nothing about the fact that Bakuryu is alive and well in Kenji's mind, a hellish counterpart to him, a black tide that threatens to engulf him if he lets his guard down.
Yugo heads home, and we flap our wings to get there ahead of him. We aim for a house a block away, a house where Kenji even now picks up the knife with which he will take his own life...
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Ohgami household, one block from Nonomura's house, 11:30.
We fly fast, my friends, far faster than Yugo is moving now. If he had any idea what was happening in his house at this very moment, he would no doubt put our speed to shame, dropping to all fours, running to beat the devil. Which, in a very real sense, he would be.
The house bears a striking resemblance to the Nonomura household, brick walls and all, but we have no time now to appreciate it- we must watch and record, and what is happening now is of the utmost importance. All Zoanthropes feel the Crest marring their skin, but Kenji feels it marring his soul. Feels it reaching out, stretching, tearing, calling...
To that dark place in him where Bakuryu resides.
We pass through cracks in the door and window, hurrying now, and come inside just in time to watch Kenji take the knife in his right hand and lift it upwards. It gleams dully in the electric gaze of the light in the ceiling, a paring knife, changed in our view from a cooking utensil to a thing of portent. It gleams, and we shiver on our perches, feeling some great weight flowing out from the knife, the great mystery of life and death perched on it's edge. A mystery that Kenji may well finish exploring tonight.
He looks at it, and in his face we see the tortured, conflicting thoughts of someone who has lived far beyond his years. He is a boy on the threshold of being a man, and in him we see some physical traits of the man he would be- short of stature but lengthy of limb, thin but handsome face, hair that would resist the efforts of the greatest hairdressers in the world- but there is nothing in him to indicate the type of man he would become. Some people wear their souls on their sleeves, but Kenji is as unreadable and dark as the tunnels of his mole counterpart.
He gazes at the knife, and we are able (in our ascendant state) to know what he is thinking. And what thoughts they are.
[ Oh, will the little boy take the easy way out?]
A harsh tone, guttural, black as the foulest abyss.
[ Will you simply end it here? Is it because you fear you can't beat me? Or...
Is it because you KNOW it, Kenji Ohgami! Because you know that, in the end, I'm too powerful! That in the end, I'll be back. Yugo doesn't know about me. Alice doesn't know about me. Even sweet, precious Uriko doesn't know about me. But you do, don't you? You KNOW!]
This is Bakuryu, the voice of Kenji's other half, the monster that lives in his soul. Kenji has had a harsh life, and even the greatest minds will crack under enough pressure. A child's mind is even more fragile, and when placed under the hands of Busuzima...
Snap.
[ Maybe I can't stop you from eventually returning,] Kenji thinks, his mental voice a softer, sadder counterpoint to Bakuryu's monstrous syllables, [ but I can kill you now. I can end it here.]
[ You don't have the guts!] Laughter, harsh, barking.
[ Just try me,] Kenji thinks.
Bakuryu responds to this with more laughter, and as he laughs, Kenji looks around the room. He wants to remember this place. It was his home, the only place where love, that oft-spoken of thing in poetry and books, that faraway dream he had never touched, ever graced him with it's presence. He gazes around, each thing bringing up a memory of good times, better times. Tears fill his eyes as he gazes about himself.
On the TV, where he has sometimes helped Yugo in his boxing career by pointing out mistakes to him on replays of his matches, sit two small pictures, each holding their own special significance to him. One is of Yugo, decked out in a tuxedo, grinning as he and Alice pose for a picture. This was shot at a ball Gado held at his mansion a year ago, and is Yugo's favorite picture. He claims it's the only one in which he actually looks like he has more than shit for brains, and so it occupies a proud place on the TV. To Kenji, the smiles of both Alice and Yugo are condemning, almost physically painful to him, and he blinks as he gazes at them, twin tears falling from his eyes.
[ I'm sorry,] he thinks, trying to put everything he feels into the two most profound words in any language, [ I'm so sorry. I didn't want to fail you, Yugo. You always believed in me... but I'm not worth it. I was never worth it.]
His gaze follows the pictures, and in one he sees Uriko Nonomura, waving exuberantly at the camera, grin wide and bright. This one hurts too, almost more than the others do, because in it he sees all he might have done, if he was not so weak.
[ Why, Uriko? What do you see in me... what did you see in me? What is there in me, but darkness and the potential for more darkness... Why did you ever become part of my life? Why? Did you want to drag me upwards, from the depths of my pain, drag me upwards to better things? Thank you, Uriko, for showing me just a little of your light... but I will not burden you anymore. You deserve better.]
He continues looking around the room, gazing at the various objects on the walls, feeling the pain of friends who graced him with their presence- Jenny, noble Gado, Long, even cold Shina- and then stops as he comes to the cross hanging on the wall. Yugo is quietly religious, and has an unshakeable faith in the Lord that lets him be as cheerful as he naturally is. Kenji has tried to emulate his brother, but his sins are far too grevious for even God to forgive. What he has done in the past, the lives he's taken and the pain he's caused, are so much that God has turned His face away from him. For such as he, redemption is an impossible dream, Hell the only possible destination.
[ At least in Hell,] he thinks, his entire life slipping away from him, letting himself fall ever closer to the final moments as the hand with the knife touches his wrist, [ my evil will do no more harm.] Bakuryu screams, finally realizing that Kenji means to go through with it.
The knife flashes down, blade dulling as claret spills over it.
Snap.
- Next chapter soon. Please read and review, my friends.