Hey people. It's been forever, hasn't it? Sorry 'bout that... Tiger probably wants to kill me now :). But, it's here! Chapter 3 of "Night of the Mark!" Kudos to my reviewers- you guys rule.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's...
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter 3
And It All Falls Down
Ohgami household. 11:33 p.m.
For the last three minutes we have been sitting here in this house, shuddering and shaking, flapping our wings and tapping our fingers, waiting for Yugo to come home. We notice, to our growing anxiety, that the pool of blood under Kenji's wrist is quickly growing bigger. He now sits on the floor, legs buckled under him, holding the now-scarlet knife in his left hand, trying to slit his right wrist. But he can't; his hand won't obey his commands anymore. Bakuryu is in him, and the assassin is not going to go down without a fight. Strangely, Bakuryu's ferocious efforts to save himself may well come out all right. Because Kenji's Zoanthrope nature is even now working against him, the wound slowly healing. Had he been in his Beast form, it would be entirely gone by now; in his human form, it is healing, but slowly. Kenji believed, before he picked up the knife, that if he could slit both his wrists, then the blood loss would counter his own natural healing powers. And, of course, he had thought at the time that he could suppress them. Bakuryu has decided otherwise, and the madman is actually performing an act of Good- he is keeping Kenji from killing himself. But all his efforts will be in vain if Kenji can cut his right wrist as well. Even now, Kenji is beginning to feel weak, to feel faint. Maybe it will take just one wrist to kill him.
As we flap our wings and find ourselves reluctantly siding with Bakuryu on this issue, we hear a noise outside. We shift our gaze, and who is this opening the door? Yugo? He has traveled faster than we thought he would. We raise a silent cheer, as Yugo walks in, in human form now, a greeting already forming on his lips. It dies just as quickly as his cheerful mood, his face growing slack with horror. On the floor, Kenji notices him come in, and the bleak look on his young face is almost more than we can bear. It is a look that has in it all the sadness of a much older man. Kenji had not wanted Yugo to see this, to see him in his weakness. Sadness overwhelming him, Kenji loses his grip on consciousness and passes out from blood loss. Bakuryu, shrieking his defiance, goes with him.
Yugo stares for a second longer as Kenji's bleeding form, in a strange and sickening slow-motion tumble, hits the floor. Then, reacting on instinct, his mind completely blank save for one thought ([Kenji!]), he clears the distance between himself and his adopted younger brother with a running leap, diving onto Kenji. His fear and panic granting him strength beyond even his extraordinary limits, he picks Kenji up like a rag doll and cradles him to his chest. Turning in the same motion, he begins running out the door, his mind disoriented, the few thoughts floating back into his conscious disordered, incoherent. He has a vague feeling that Alice will know what to do. It's a thought that is not without basis- she is a nurse, after all- but Yugo knows some very light first aid and has a small kit in his house (a birthday present from Alice). So why does he run to her? As we take wing and slip out of the house with him, these are questions we cannot answer. Yugo himself does not know the answer.
We follow him, flapping our wings as fast as we can, following the Zoanthrope as he runs down the streets towards Alice's house, yelling at the top of his lungs. Lights flicker on, in the houses nearby; a young man running and screaming in the streets is not a common sight in this peaceful neighborhood. A voice yells for "those damn kids" to "shut up"; a second voice wonders what is going on. Yugo ignores them, and so do we. They might as well be on another planet, for all that they affect us.
Yugo runs, hurls himself down the street, and reaches Alice's house far sooner than expected. Kenji has been bleeding the whole way, and droplets of his blood fall like scarlet tears to the pavement below. Kenji moans softly, his tortured subconscious stretching out towards him again. Even to us, his mind is closed; it is impossible to tell, in the storm of thunder and lightning that is his mind, what he is thinking. And that may be for the better. Who knows what memories are his, what lives he's taken? Though we do not share his belief that he is a monster, we can full well understand why he thinks of himself that way.
Yugo rushes up Alice's driveway, and in one fluid motion moves his right hand from Kenji, lifts it, and begins pounding on the door. The same strength that is letting him carry Kenji as if he ways no more than a pound is causing his fist to strike far harder than intended; three blows, like rapidfire shots, pound the wood of the door, leaving indentions and knocking it off it's hinges. Yugo is more than willing to break it down if he must; he has to get to Alice. Before he does so, Uriko jerks the door open, having heard something outside but, being in bed and in that peacefully blurry haze that comes before sleep, she had not recognized it as Yugo. She jerks the door open, and as she opens her mouth to say something, stops dead. She sees Kenji, and clasps a hand to her mouth in horror. She does not realize that Kenji is alive; she sees the blood and his limp form, and in that instant believes he is dead. And it is more than she can bear. She shrieks, and her voice carries far into the night, where it is heard by the being flying above the city on leathern wings, by a long-limbed nightmare who has just finished robbing and killing several drunks in an alley, by a Kenpo master who looks up sharply from the book he has been reading. But those are stories for later on tonight. At the moment, this is what we must watch, what we must record.
Her shriek cuts through the haze and pain in Alice's head. She is coming now, running down the stairs, and upon hearing her sister's cry she shoves the dull pain in the back of her head aside. It still aches, but Alice, through sheer force of will, relegates it to a dark corner of her mind. She clears the bannister of the stairs with a smooth leap.
" Yugo?" she says, and then sees Kenji. " Oh my God," she says, and her eyes widen in surprise and fear. Her nurse training taking over, she runs to Yugo. Yugo looks at her, hoping and praying that Alice knows what to do.
" His wrist..." Yugo chokes out, fear pulsating in his mind. [Oh God,] he thinks. [What are we going to do? He's lost so much blood...]
" Bring him to the table," Alice says, and her voice is completely different now. It is business-like, orderly, the voice of those trained to heal. She runs to the table, and in one swift move knocks off the decorative basket she had placed there. It spins into the floor with a crash. No one notices it. Yugo places Kenji on the table, where he moans and shifts briefly before laying still. Uriko, her mind registering that Kenji is alive, immediately runs for the first aid kit the family keeps in the kitchen. Alice has beaten her to it, however, and so Uriko goes back to the bottom of the table, where she stares at Kenji, her mind a racing whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. Oddly, the thought that occurs to her is how much she never told him. She had never realized until now that she cared for him so much, that her feelings ran so deep. Now she prays that she has not realized what she had just to lose it. We gather about the table, to watch as they try to save this tortured soul's life, and we pray with her.
Alice brings out a tourniquet, and wraps it about Kenji's upper arm. She knows that a tourniquet is really one of the last things you want to do- if held on too long, it will kill the limb it's attached too- but at the moment, she needs to stop the bleeding. She tells Uriko, in her nurse's voice, to call the Japanese equivalent of 911, then returns her attention to the wounded boy before her. It strikes her forcefully how sad he looks, and she wonders why, in all the visits he has paid to their house, she always failed to notice it. She'd known him well, she'd thought; she'd believed that Kenji had healed, that his past held no power over him. Now, in the agonizing clarity of hindsight, she realizes how many times Kenji tried to tell her, to call out to them all.
[ And we never heard him,] she thinks, berating herself internally. [ We never listened.]
But now is not the time for such thoughts. She quickly returns to the nearby first aid kit, bringing out bandages and wraps. The bleeding has slowed greatly, but that is not enough. She must try to stop it fully. She wraps up his wrist as fast and neat as possible, making them with the calm and perfect precision of a nurse who has healed all her life. Perhaps coming here was not merely madness on Yugo's part; someone less well-trained and calm, say, a panicking big brother with only basic first aid skills, may not have been able to do this without losing their cool. We sit anxiously on our perches, awaiting the sirens that will herald the arrival of the hospital men.
And soon, within minutes of Uriko's call, they come. Alice lives near the hospital where she works, and is one of the most well-liked people on the staff. As soon as the operator heard Uriko's frantic, desperate call, the hospital put it's best team out. And now their sirens, those high-pitched calls of healing, are audible, and the flashing lights that herald ambulances the world over can be seen flashing in the windows. Before the ambulance even stops, the medical team is already out and moving. They are coming in, with a stretcher and blood transfusions ready to be put into use. Kenji, though he had taken a step over the abyss, has been allowed to draw his foot back.
And with his life now in good hands and soon to recover (but one must ask oneself: when, if ever, will his soul heal?), our part here is done. This is not our last visit to the respective families of Nonomura and Ohgami, but when we see them again it will be closer to the strange morn that will herald the change of so much in this world. Far closer.
We take wing and, with the flashing lights of the ambulance brightening our way, we fly.
************************************************************************
Bar in Tokyo. Two blocks away. 11:40 p.m.
We fly over the streets, and soon we find ourselves over a small bar, where Japanese men and women slake their thirsts with sake or, more commonly, beer. Tonight, however, a far more dangerous customer than the usual miscreants that inhabit this place has just fulfilled his thirst. His happens to be a rare taste. For this being hungers for blood.
The horror wipes his chin, where one of the drunks he has just killed managed to get in a lucky strike before going down under a rain of brutal blows. The punch didn't really hurt, but the principle of the thing gets to him. A master scientist and fighter like himself should be able to beat on any number of drunks without getting struck. He shakes his head slowly, long tongue lolling out like some strange tourist leaning out the window of a bus to take in the sights. It hangs there, saliva dribbling down it slowly, as he pants and thinks. The strains of a song (and what is it but "One Headlight", by the Wallflowers, the self-same American song that Xion was just so lately thinking about) float in the air around us from the bar. The figure ignores it.
The lanky creature before us is Busuzima. He is, in his own way, a figure of respect, for he helped invent the Zoanthrope process, and that act, for good or ill, changed the world. And yet what he is- what he *really* is- is so dark and horrendous that few men would grant him a place of honor in their hearts. Yugo, in those few moments when he feels thoughtful and reflective, wonders often why Busuzima is this way. What must be in his past, to make him the way he is. As we flap down into the alley to study this monster, we peer into his mind, to answer that question Yugo asks himself.
And what we see profoundly disturbs us. For there is nothing. Nothing at all. No rape, no abuse, no broken home, no draconian parents to rebel against, nothing. Not even the idle selfishness born of riches, for Busuzima's parents were middle class, and they were Buddhists, ruling out a dark religion. There is not even the smallest hint of the sadistic animal he would become, and the worst part of all is that Busuzima fondly recalls all of his childhood. He sees it as a peaceful time before his "rising", as he terms it (that nightmare period when he subjected so many innocent souls to his experiments), and recalls no great trauma at all. Peering deeper than even he can go, into the depths of the subconscious where all memory and past life stands suspended in a moment, we still see nothing. No animal torture, no "problems" in school, nothing and nada.
And that may be the most terrifying fact of all. That Busuzima, who by all natural law should be a normal, stable Buddhist scientist, could willfully choose to be a monster. All souls are allowed to choose what path they shall travel, but there is almost always something that makes them choose the road they do. But in Busuzima's life, nothing. His love of torture and evil is not a random quirk or twitch of some previously unknown disease, but rather a willful choice he made. He recalls that moment with special fondness. He was barely a year into college when he made his choice, when he killed a fellow student for a pitifully small amount of money (barely 50 yen) and dumped the body into a river. And he has never looked back since.
And maybe that is why Busuzima, more than any other villain we can think of, is terrifying. Because he made a conscious choice. No madness marks him (for the insane act he puts on in public and in combat is but another deception by him, a skillful and cunning trick made to fool others) and so he has no internal weakness, no slipped gears that will eventually collide and bring him down. If nothing brings him down from the outside, he will quite cheerfully keep on ticking until his death, which will probably come in his slumber. His beast form is that of a Chameleon, and it is more than fitting- it is just. Busuzima has done nothing but deceive others his whole life past that hellish choice, tricking his college buddies into thinking he was just another one of the guys when in reality he was far from it; tricking his parents into sending him more money than he needed so he could buy from the drug dealers about his school; deceiving the drug dealers into thinking he was a junkie when he was turning around and selling the opium and hash for far more money than he'd spent to get them. Deceit, deception, lies. And so his beast form is all trickery and illusion.
As we watch, he hunkers down on his long legs and swiftly rifles through the contents of the drunk's pockets. Nabbing a little yen to take with him, he quickly moves over and performs the same search on the other two drunks he has killed tonight. The search comes up with no interesting items other than yen, so Busuzima quickly throws them into a nearby Dumpster. He isn't worried about fingerprints, for he has none (a strange side-effect of his change into a Zoanthrope), and what few clues DNA might provide will be useless. The Tokyo Police have no records of his DNA, and in fact have no records of his existence at all. In addition to his formidable skills in the area of bioengineering, he is a master hacker.
He stalks off, heading along the city, scratching at a strangely itchy place on the back of his left hand. Later tonight, as he continues to walk the city streets in search of easy targets to rob and slay, this itchy feeling will fully flesh out into a Crest, a perfect set of three jagged slashes. Unlike the other Zoanthropes, it causes him no pain, but a sort of delirious pleasure. A servant of evil like himself does not fear the demon powers of the Tabula. Why should he? They are one and the same.
And so, completely unknowing, Busuzima is drafted into the service of the creature possessing Xion. And the service of that creature's master.
We begin to lift off as Busuzima walks out into the streets of cold, dark Tokyo, and the wind whips through the alley as if in mockery of the murders committed here. And though we are immune to the effects of this wind, we shiver nonetheless.
Let us take wing and fly.
************************************************************************
Night Sky over Tokyo. 11:53 p.m.
It has taken us a little time to find our next subject, but that is all right. There is a long way to go before tonight is over, and we have time to kill. The creature above us is flying as well, though her flight is more jerky and physically demanding than ours. After all, a far greater force than the mere pressure of air on wing surface is lifting us up.
The figure is one that would not look out of place on one of the great stone cathedrals of Western Europe. Large ears, sharp fangs, wings and talons all make this flying figure a being out of nightmare, a gargoyle come to life. It is not a very bright night, or the creature before us would never have attempted this flight. Still, she wonders if she could have restrained herself even if she wanted to.
Jenny flies above us, a former spy turned into stalwart defender of Zoanthropes the world over. Or so she likes to think. In truth, she is less a defender herself and more a supporter, a crutch that Gado leans on when the old man feels lost or lonely or tired. Jenny is greatly attracted to Gado, but does not know whether it is love or not. She has never really believed in love, but never thought it did not exist either. It was in an "open" file, one she can neither prove or disprove based on what information she has. Not that there's much evidence for either case in her files.
Jenny once worked as a spy, not belonging to any one organization but hiring herself out as time and needs dictated. Her most fateful mission as a spy had come close to being her last, for Busuzima had almost killed her when he had found out who she was working for and why. Bioganics Inc., the company that had supported the Zoanthrope projects all throughout the world, had hired her to spy on Busuzima and see what he was doing in Japan. When Busuzima found out, he'd restrained his initial urge to kill her and instead decided to exact an even more terrible tribute from her. He'd changed her DNA around, spliced her genes, and made her a Zoanthrope. A gift that was part blessing, part curse. Jenny often jokes with Stun (her best friend) that it depended on one's state of mind. If happy, a blessing. If sad, a curse.
At the moment it is a blessing, for though flying is one of the most physically demanding things she does as a Zoanthrope, it is also the most rewarding. The feeling of flying over the city, high above it all, is a feeling so far beyond anything she has ever known (better than any food or sex or experience she has ever had in her human life) that she is always at a loss for words when trying to describe it. Stun, who can fly as well (although only for short distances and heights) understands part of it, but no one could possibly understand all of it. It is this very feeling of freedom, of solemn things and great things, of expectation, that she has searched for her entire life. It was in search of this feeling that she had became a freelance spy, and she did feel some of this excitement back then, but only in flight does it become pure and free, dancing alone and independent of her. In flight, nothing else matters, and she feels herself close to some great mystery. What it is, and whether she wants to understand it or not, are questions she will not allow herself to ask. It just was. Any questioning of it might lead to a lessening of that great mystery. For that's the thrill of mysteries, isn't it? The ability to write your own tales and stories, to dream...
We pull up even with her, floating alongside her, more silent than ghosts and watchful as we must always be. We feel part of the mystery of flying, of the aura this act gives off, and for a few moments we leave her thoughts alone. We peer below us, to see what the city we have been flying through looks like from this vantage point. It seems to be made of light and dark, placed together like the squares of a chessboard, and for some reason this imagery sticks. It takes everything we have seen and learned tonight, even the things that were just suggested, and binds them all together.
We fly over darkness.
Kenji's attempted suicide.
We fly over light.
Alice's skill in crisis.
Darkness.
Busuzima's murders.
Light.
Stun's heroism.
Darkness.
Xion.
Light.
Yugo.
Maybe this place is just a chessboard, and the pieces are beginning to fall in place. Everything we have seen has shown itself on opposite sides. One stands against another. And maybe that's what all this night is really about: taking sides.
Down below us, further reinforcing the idea of a chess board, Stun stands in a square of light. Around him, all is darkness, but where he stands, the faint glow of a street lamp illuminates his form on the rooftops. He is crouched down on the edge of the rooftop, gazing into the almost entirely empty street below. A few humans pass, mostly couples out for a nightly stroll, and none glance up and notice their strange protector watching over them. From this high up, the most identifiable feature on him is his scarf, billowing out behind him and flapping in the wind.
Jenny lets out a high-pitched cry, a sound far too high for human ears, but Stun can hear her, and he glances up at his friend. Standing up and strolling into the middle of the rooftop, he watches Jenny float down slowly and land near him. There is little danger of being seen; this area is part of a block of industrial buildings, and none of the buildings about this one have easy access to their rooftops that might lead unsuspecting humans to happen upon them. Still, just to be safe, they step out of the light and into the more comfortable darkness of night. We fly down and perch so that we may listen to what these two old friends have to say.
" Hey, Vampirella. Nice night for flying?"
Jenny snorts at Stun's affectionate nickname for her and nods her head. She says, in a voice slightly muffled by her two large front fangs (Busuzima gave her the DNA of a vampire bat just to see a "real" vampire for once), " Yes. Wind's just right- it's only blowing down here, in the lower atmosphere. Up there, it's still and quiet." She tilts her head back, looking up into the sky and thinking. Unconsciously, she has crossed her wings in front of her. In her beast form, she has very little fur, and she has always felt rather immodest when in beast form. Stun, who thinks she looks like she's wearing a fur bikini in beast form, has politely never said anything about it.
" Good." Stun thinks for a moment, then says, " Did you hear something a few moments ago? I thought I heard a scream, but I was busy at the time and couldn't go investigate." The two would-be bank robbers Stun had been beating on when Stun heard Uriko's scream are now in two trashcans on the side of the road, where the police will pick them up later.
" I heard something," Jenny says, nodding her head, " but my hearing's so good... I can pick up almost anything. I just try to drown out the sound of this city. If I didn't, I'd go mad."
Stun nods, then says, " Yes, I see. Oh well. If it was a scream, nothing I can do about it now." Shaking his head at the somber facts of the matter, he says, " So. How are things between you and Gado? Is the old man still kicking around in the UN?"
" Yes. He's been mad as hell at some of his fellow members, though. Some measure about human rights that he has been trying to get passed went into committee a few weeks ago, and when it came out it had an article tagged on that stated that "Zoanthropes shall not be considered for the protection of these rights." He's been in a state of uproar over it ever since. I was afraid he'd kill some of them, he was so incensed."
Stun solemnly shakes his head. " Not that they wouldn't deserve it. The bastards. Why does mankind so fear that which is new?... Why does the Beast always slip out when the least shadow threatens?..."
Jenny sighs. " I know. The world's in a sad state when you can compare it to Lord of the Flies."
Stun looks up into the night sky, searching maybe, looking for those glimmering lights which have always given mankind something to dream on. " Whatever his faults, Golding knew more than enough about the Beast. More than enough. I think, sometimes, that maybe he knew the truth of everything... and that Lord of the Flies was just his attempt to put it all down."
Jenny says to him, cocking her head to one side as she looks at him, " But surely you're not that pessimistic. Lord of the Flies is a good summing-up of fear's effects, but it's not all the truth."
" Isn't it?" Stun says, returning his gaze to her. " Maybe all life boils down to is trying to find the Piggys in this world and doing your best to protect them from the Jacks. Trying to be a Ralph, as it were."
Jenny inwardly wonders why such things, coming from Stun, do not seem as awkward as they would coming from someone else. Jenny is not the most poetic or eloquent of human beings (although her former job as a spy required some smooth talking, she has never been all that well-versed), and so she's never been able to say things like Stun has. It's one reason she's such good friends with him; he can say things that seem to her like statements of the deepest caliber. Gado, her lover, can do much the same thing, and she often wonders what a conversation between the two of them would sound like.
[Probably like lines from a Shakespeare play,] she thinks, and smirks. She opens her mouth to say something, to begin debating the merits and values of Lord of the Flies, as she and Stun are so wont to do...
A sudden piercing pain strikes her stomach. Her legs slip out from under her, and she lets out a high-pitched scream, one that is fortunately far too high for the humans below to hear. This is agony as she has never known before. Stun, ears ringing with Jenny's cry, grabs her before she hits the ground. She grits her teeth against the pain in her stomach, and her own fangs split her lower lip with two long, ragged gashes. She barely notices the warm taste of her own blood in her mouth. She is concentrating as hard as she can on simply controlling that pain, fighting it. She shakes violently in Stun's arms.
Stun, not knowing what to do, says to her, his sibilant voice trembling with worry and fear, " Jenny! What's wrong?"
Jenny, feeling her very soul being wronged as a Crest forms on her stomach, says to him, " Stun....," she draws in a sharp breath, and says all the rest in a single rush of breath, afraid that if she has to pause for breath, words will fail her and she will simply lie here moaning and shaking, " My stomach it hurts like getting clawed I'm being torn APART..!"
This last she lets out in a scream, and as close as he is, it is deafening to him. Controlling his urge to clap his hands to the small holes that are his ears only with an effort, he gently lowers Jenny to the ground and folds her arms back. She is too weak to even help him, and she lays on the ground shaking. Stun hisses audibly, taken completely aback by what he sees before him. We, having leapt from our perches at the sound of her scream and have gathered around her, are taken aback as well, though not from surprise. We are shaken because we know what is ailing her.
Jenny's stomach is shifting, twirling. It looks like the flesh is going to rip itself apart, and Stun is forcibly reminded of his own troubles, when a rib suddenly expanded or a shoulder bone forcibly jutted upwards and rent his skin apart from the inside. He wonders if maybe all Zoanthropes undergo these rapid mutations at some time, and if that is what ails Jenny. He has a few wraps with him (he always carries a few, just in case), but he doesn't know if he should bind up Jenny's stomach or not. If bone mutations are ailing her, then he has to bind her now, or it'll be too late when her ribs break out...
Soon, the Mark solidifies on Jenny's stomach, forming the same set of three jagged slashes we saw on Shina earlier tonight. Jenny shivers on the ground, the pain leaving her a little, and she folds her wings over herself protectively. She tries to lift up, and the pain that shoots up from her stomach causes her to lose her control and fall back to the hard surface of the rooftop. Stun grabs her before then, and asks her, " Jenny? What the hell is going on?"
She looks at him, chin covered in the blood that is starting to pour ever more rapidly from her torn lower lip, and she says, " Don't... know. Hurting... bad. My... lipsh..." Her voice is slurred, drowned in pain and blood.
" Don't talk," Stun says, picking up his friend as gently as he can. " I'll take you to a small place I know around here. It's a private place- you can heal up there. But... your stomach..."
Jenny looks at him, her lower lip already beginning to seal itself up as her Zoanthrope powers kick in, " What... was it? I... didn't.. see... Have I... been shot?" She can't think of anything else that could cause that kind of pain, though logically she knows she hasn't been shot. To her sensitive ears, even a silenced weapon sounds like a bulldozer running over panes of glass. Still...
" No. You haven't been shot," Stun says, as he begins running towards an abandoned factory he found on one of his nightly tours of the city not too long ago, " I... don't know how to describe it. It looks like you've been slashed on the stomach, but the cuts appeared from the inside..."
Jenny looks at him, her face an expression of the same confusion that now runs through Stun's mind. " What...?"
" I don't know... Maybe it's a mutation or something along those lines. You can see when we get to the fact- to my safe place."
And so Stun runs onward, as we follow behind him, towards his little hiding place in the factory. Which, in one of those quirks of Fate that crop up in every life, is the same place someone else that both Jenny and Stun are far too familiar with is currently heading to...
-Read and review please!
And now, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's...
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter 3
And It All Falls Down
Ohgami household. 11:33 p.m.
For the last three minutes we have been sitting here in this house, shuddering and shaking, flapping our wings and tapping our fingers, waiting for Yugo to come home. We notice, to our growing anxiety, that the pool of blood under Kenji's wrist is quickly growing bigger. He now sits on the floor, legs buckled under him, holding the now-scarlet knife in his left hand, trying to slit his right wrist. But he can't; his hand won't obey his commands anymore. Bakuryu is in him, and the assassin is not going to go down without a fight. Strangely, Bakuryu's ferocious efforts to save himself may well come out all right. Because Kenji's Zoanthrope nature is even now working against him, the wound slowly healing. Had he been in his Beast form, it would be entirely gone by now; in his human form, it is healing, but slowly. Kenji believed, before he picked up the knife, that if he could slit both his wrists, then the blood loss would counter his own natural healing powers. And, of course, he had thought at the time that he could suppress them. Bakuryu has decided otherwise, and the madman is actually performing an act of Good- he is keeping Kenji from killing himself. But all his efforts will be in vain if Kenji can cut his right wrist as well. Even now, Kenji is beginning to feel weak, to feel faint. Maybe it will take just one wrist to kill him.
As we flap our wings and find ourselves reluctantly siding with Bakuryu on this issue, we hear a noise outside. We shift our gaze, and who is this opening the door? Yugo? He has traveled faster than we thought he would. We raise a silent cheer, as Yugo walks in, in human form now, a greeting already forming on his lips. It dies just as quickly as his cheerful mood, his face growing slack with horror. On the floor, Kenji notices him come in, and the bleak look on his young face is almost more than we can bear. It is a look that has in it all the sadness of a much older man. Kenji had not wanted Yugo to see this, to see him in his weakness. Sadness overwhelming him, Kenji loses his grip on consciousness and passes out from blood loss. Bakuryu, shrieking his defiance, goes with him.
Yugo stares for a second longer as Kenji's bleeding form, in a strange and sickening slow-motion tumble, hits the floor. Then, reacting on instinct, his mind completely blank save for one thought ([Kenji!]), he clears the distance between himself and his adopted younger brother with a running leap, diving onto Kenji. His fear and panic granting him strength beyond even his extraordinary limits, he picks Kenji up like a rag doll and cradles him to his chest. Turning in the same motion, he begins running out the door, his mind disoriented, the few thoughts floating back into his conscious disordered, incoherent. He has a vague feeling that Alice will know what to do. It's a thought that is not without basis- she is a nurse, after all- but Yugo knows some very light first aid and has a small kit in his house (a birthday present from Alice). So why does he run to her? As we take wing and slip out of the house with him, these are questions we cannot answer. Yugo himself does not know the answer.
We follow him, flapping our wings as fast as we can, following the Zoanthrope as he runs down the streets towards Alice's house, yelling at the top of his lungs. Lights flicker on, in the houses nearby; a young man running and screaming in the streets is not a common sight in this peaceful neighborhood. A voice yells for "those damn kids" to "shut up"; a second voice wonders what is going on. Yugo ignores them, and so do we. They might as well be on another planet, for all that they affect us.
Yugo runs, hurls himself down the street, and reaches Alice's house far sooner than expected. Kenji has been bleeding the whole way, and droplets of his blood fall like scarlet tears to the pavement below. Kenji moans softly, his tortured subconscious stretching out towards him again. Even to us, his mind is closed; it is impossible to tell, in the storm of thunder and lightning that is his mind, what he is thinking. And that may be for the better. Who knows what memories are his, what lives he's taken? Though we do not share his belief that he is a monster, we can full well understand why he thinks of himself that way.
Yugo rushes up Alice's driveway, and in one fluid motion moves his right hand from Kenji, lifts it, and begins pounding on the door. The same strength that is letting him carry Kenji as if he ways no more than a pound is causing his fist to strike far harder than intended; three blows, like rapidfire shots, pound the wood of the door, leaving indentions and knocking it off it's hinges. Yugo is more than willing to break it down if he must; he has to get to Alice. Before he does so, Uriko jerks the door open, having heard something outside but, being in bed and in that peacefully blurry haze that comes before sleep, she had not recognized it as Yugo. She jerks the door open, and as she opens her mouth to say something, stops dead. She sees Kenji, and clasps a hand to her mouth in horror. She does not realize that Kenji is alive; she sees the blood and his limp form, and in that instant believes he is dead. And it is more than she can bear. She shrieks, and her voice carries far into the night, where it is heard by the being flying above the city on leathern wings, by a long-limbed nightmare who has just finished robbing and killing several drunks in an alley, by a Kenpo master who looks up sharply from the book he has been reading. But those are stories for later on tonight. At the moment, this is what we must watch, what we must record.
Her shriek cuts through the haze and pain in Alice's head. She is coming now, running down the stairs, and upon hearing her sister's cry she shoves the dull pain in the back of her head aside. It still aches, but Alice, through sheer force of will, relegates it to a dark corner of her mind. She clears the bannister of the stairs with a smooth leap.
" Yugo?" she says, and then sees Kenji. " Oh my God," she says, and her eyes widen in surprise and fear. Her nurse training taking over, she runs to Yugo. Yugo looks at her, hoping and praying that Alice knows what to do.
" His wrist..." Yugo chokes out, fear pulsating in his mind. [Oh God,] he thinks. [What are we going to do? He's lost so much blood...]
" Bring him to the table," Alice says, and her voice is completely different now. It is business-like, orderly, the voice of those trained to heal. She runs to the table, and in one swift move knocks off the decorative basket she had placed there. It spins into the floor with a crash. No one notices it. Yugo places Kenji on the table, where he moans and shifts briefly before laying still. Uriko, her mind registering that Kenji is alive, immediately runs for the first aid kit the family keeps in the kitchen. Alice has beaten her to it, however, and so Uriko goes back to the bottom of the table, where she stares at Kenji, her mind a racing whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. Oddly, the thought that occurs to her is how much she never told him. She had never realized until now that she cared for him so much, that her feelings ran so deep. Now she prays that she has not realized what she had just to lose it. We gather about the table, to watch as they try to save this tortured soul's life, and we pray with her.
Alice brings out a tourniquet, and wraps it about Kenji's upper arm. She knows that a tourniquet is really one of the last things you want to do- if held on too long, it will kill the limb it's attached too- but at the moment, she needs to stop the bleeding. She tells Uriko, in her nurse's voice, to call the Japanese equivalent of 911, then returns her attention to the wounded boy before her. It strikes her forcefully how sad he looks, and she wonders why, in all the visits he has paid to their house, she always failed to notice it. She'd known him well, she'd thought; she'd believed that Kenji had healed, that his past held no power over him. Now, in the agonizing clarity of hindsight, she realizes how many times Kenji tried to tell her, to call out to them all.
[ And we never heard him,] she thinks, berating herself internally. [ We never listened.]
But now is not the time for such thoughts. She quickly returns to the nearby first aid kit, bringing out bandages and wraps. The bleeding has slowed greatly, but that is not enough. She must try to stop it fully. She wraps up his wrist as fast and neat as possible, making them with the calm and perfect precision of a nurse who has healed all her life. Perhaps coming here was not merely madness on Yugo's part; someone less well-trained and calm, say, a panicking big brother with only basic first aid skills, may not have been able to do this without losing their cool. We sit anxiously on our perches, awaiting the sirens that will herald the arrival of the hospital men.
And soon, within minutes of Uriko's call, they come. Alice lives near the hospital where she works, and is one of the most well-liked people on the staff. As soon as the operator heard Uriko's frantic, desperate call, the hospital put it's best team out. And now their sirens, those high-pitched calls of healing, are audible, and the flashing lights that herald ambulances the world over can be seen flashing in the windows. Before the ambulance even stops, the medical team is already out and moving. They are coming in, with a stretcher and blood transfusions ready to be put into use. Kenji, though he had taken a step over the abyss, has been allowed to draw his foot back.
And with his life now in good hands and soon to recover (but one must ask oneself: when, if ever, will his soul heal?), our part here is done. This is not our last visit to the respective families of Nonomura and Ohgami, but when we see them again it will be closer to the strange morn that will herald the change of so much in this world. Far closer.
We take wing and, with the flashing lights of the ambulance brightening our way, we fly.
************************************************************************
Bar in Tokyo. Two blocks away. 11:40 p.m.
We fly over the streets, and soon we find ourselves over a small bar, where Japanese men and women slake their thirsts with sake or, more commonly, beer. Tonight, however, a far more dangerous customer than the usual miscreants that inhabit this place has just fulfilled his thirst. His happens to be a rare taste. For this being hungers for blood.
The horror wipes his chin, where one of the drunks he has just killed managed to get in a lucky strike before going down under a rain of brutal blows. The punch didn't really hurt, but the principle of the thing gets to him. A master scientist and fighter like himself should be able to beat on any number of drunks without getting struck. He shakes his head slowly, long tongue lolling out like some strange tourist leaning out the window of a bus to take in the sights. It hangs there, saliva dribbling down it slowly, as he pants and thinks. The strains of a song (and what is it but "One Headlight", by the Wallflowers, the self-same American song that Xion was just so lately thinking about) float in the air around us from the bar. The figure ignores it.
The lanky creature before us is Busuzima. He is, in his own way, a figure of respect, for he helped invent the Zoanthrope process, and that act, for good or ill, changed the world. And yet what he is- what he *really* is- is so dark and horrendous that few men would grant him a place of honor in their hearts. Yugo, in those few moments when he feels thoughtful and reflective, wonders often why Busuzima is this way. What must be in his past, to make him the way he is. As we flap down into the alley to study this monster, we peer into his mind, to answer that question Yugo asks himself.
And what we see profoundly disturbs us. For there is nothing. Nothing at all. No rape, no abuse, no broken home, no draconian parents to rebel against, nothing. Not even the idle selfishness born of riches, for Busuzima's parents were middle class, and they were Buddhists, ruling out a dark religion. There is not even the smallest hint of the sadistic animal he would become, and the worst part of all is that Busuzima fondly recalls all of his childhood. He sees it as a peaceful time before his "rising", as he terms it (that nightmare period when he subjected so many innocent souls to his experiments), and recalls no great trauma at all. Peering deeper than even he can go, into the depths of the subconscious where all memory and past life stands suspended in a moment, we still see nothing. No animal torture, no "problems" in school, nothing and nada.
And that may be the most terrifying fact of all. That Busuzima, who by all natural law should be a normal, stable Buddhist scientist, could willfully choose to be a monster. All souls are allowed to choose what path they shall travel, but there is almost always something that makes them choose the road they do. But in Busuzima's life, nothing. His love of torture and evil is not a random quirk or twitch of some previously unknown disease, but rather a willful choice he made. He recalls that moment with special fondness. He was barely a year into college when he made his choice, when he killed a fellow student for a pitifully small amount of money (barely 50 yen) and dumped the body into a river. And he has never looked back since.
And maybe that is why Busuzima, more than any other villain we can think of, is terrifying. Because he made a conscious choice. No madness marks him (for the insane act he puts on in public and in combat is but another deception by him, a skillful and cunning trick made to fool others) and so he has no internal weakness, no slipped gears that will eventually collide and bring him down. If nothing brings him down from the outside, he will quite cheerfully keep on ticking until his death, which will probably come in his slumber. His beast form is that of a Chameleon, and it is more than fitting- it is just. Busuzima has done nothing but deceive others his whole life past that hellish choice, tricking his college buddies into thinking he was just another one of the guys when in reality he was far from it; tricking his parents into sending him more money than he needed so he could buy from the drug dealers about his school; deceiving the drug dealers into thinking he was a junkie when he was turning around and selling the opium and hash for far more money than he'd spent to get them. Deceit, deception, lies. And so his beast form is all trickery and illusion.
As we watch, he hunkers down on his long legs and swiftly rifles through the contents of the drunk's pockets. Nabbing a little yen to take with him, he quickly moves over and performs the same search on the other two drunks he has killed tonight. The search comes up with no interesting items other than yen, so Busuzima quickly throws them into a nearby Dumpster. He isn't worried about fingerprints, for he has none (a strange side-effect of his change into a Zoanthrope), and what few clues DNA might provide will be useless. The Tokyo Police have no records of his DNA, and in fact have no records of his existence at all. In addition to his formidable skills in the area of bioengineering, he is a master hacker.
He stalks off, heading along the city, scratching at a strangely itchy place on the back of his left hand. Later tonight, as he continues to walk the city streets in search of easy targets to rob and slay, this itchy feeling will fully flesh out into a Crest, a perfect set of three jagged slashes. Unlike the other Zoanthropes, it causes him no pain, but a sort of delirious pleasure. A servant of evil like himself does not fear the demon powers of the Tabula. Why should he? They are one and the same.
And so, completely unknowing, Busuzima is drafted into the service of the creature possessing Xion. And the service of that creature's master.
We begin to lift off as Busuzima walks out into the streets of cold, dark Tokyo, and the wind whips through the alley as if in mockery of the murders committed here. And though we are immune to the effects of this wind, we shiver nonetheless.
Let us take wing and fly.
************************************************************************
Night Sky over Tokyo. 11:53 p.m.
It has taken us a little time to find our next subject, but that is all right. There is a long way to go before tonight is over, and we have time to kill. The creature above us is flying as well, though her flight is more jerky and physically demanding than ours. After all, a far greater force than the mere pressure of air on wing surface is lifting us up.
The figure is one that would not look out of place on one of the great stone cathedrals of Western Europe. Large ears, sharp fangs, wings and talons all make this flying figure a being out of nightmare, a gargoyle come to life. It is not a very bright night, or the creature before us would never have attempted this flight. Still, she wonders if she could have restrained herself even if she wanted to.
Jenny flies above us, a former spy turned into stalwart defender of Zoanthropes the world over. Or so she likes to think. In truth, she is less a defender herself and more a supporter, a crutch that Gado leans on when the old man feels lost or lonely or tired. Jenny is greatly attracted to Gado, but does not know whether it is love or not. She has never really believed in love, but never thought it did not exist either. It was in an "open" file, one she can neither prove or disprove based on what information she has. Not that there's much evidence for either case in her files.
Jenny once worked as a spy, not belonging to any one organization but hiring herself out as time and needs dictated. Her most fateful mission as a spy had come close to being her last, for Busuzima had almost killed her when he had found out who she was working for and why. Bioganics Inc., the company that had supported the Zoanthrope projects all throughout the world, had hired her to spy on Busuzima and see what he was doing in Japan. When Busuzima found out, he'd restrained his initial urge to kill her and instead decided to exact an even more terrible tribute from her. He'd changed her DNA around, spliced her genes, and made her a Zoanthrope. A gift that was part blessing, part curse. Jenny often jokes with Stun (her best friend) that it depended on one's state of mind. If happy, a blessing. If sad, a curse.
At the moment it is a blessing, for though flying is one of the most physically demanding things she does as a Zoanthrope, it is also the most rewarding. The feeling of flying over the city, high above it all, is a feeling so far beyond anything she has ever known (better than any food or sex or experience she has ever had in her human life) that she is always at a loss for words when trying to describe it. Stun, who can fly as well (although only for short distances and heights) understands part of it, but no one could possibly understand all of it. It is this very feeling of freedom, of solemn things and great things, of expectation, that she has searched for her entire life. It was in search of this feeling that she had became a freelance spy, and she did feel some of this excitement back then, but only in flight does it become pure and free, dancing alone and independent of her. In flight, nothing else matters, and she feels herself close to some great mystery. What it is, and whether she wants to understand it or not, are questions she will not allow herself to ask. It just was. Any questioning of it might lead to a lessening of that great mystery. For that's the thrill of mysteries, isn't it? The ability to write your own tales and stories, to dream...
We pull up even with her, floating alongside her, more silent than ghosts and watchful as we must always be. We feel part of the mystery of flying, of the aura this act gives off, and for a few moments we leave her thoughts alone. We peer below us, to see what the city we have been flying through looks like from this vantage point. It seems to be made of light and dark, placed together like the squares of a chessboard, and for some reason this imagery sticks. It takes everything we have seen and learned tonight, even the things that were just suggested, and binds them all together.
We fly over darkness.
Kenji's attempted suicide.
We fly over light.
Alice's skill in crisis.
Darkness.
Busuzima's murders.
Light.
Stun's heroism.
Darkness.
Xion.
Light.
Yugo.
Maybe this place is just a chessboard, and the pieces are beginning to fall in place. Everything we have seen has shown itself on opposite sides. One stands against another. And maybe that's what all this night is really about: taking sides.
Down below us, further reinforcing the idea of a chess board, Stun stands in a square of light. Around him, all is darkness, but where he stands, the faint glow of a street lamp illuminates his form on the rooftops. He is crouched down on the edge of the rooftop, gazing into the almost entirely empty street below. A few humans pass, mostly couples out for a nightly stroll, and none glance up and notice their strange protector watching over them. From this high up, the most identifiable feature on him is his scarf, billowing out behind him and flapping in the wind.
Jenny lets out a high-pitched cry, a sound far too high for human ears, but Stun can hear her, and he glances up at his friend. Standing up and strolling into the middle of the rooftop, he watches Jenny float down slowly and land near him. There is little danger of being seen; this area is part of a block of industrial buildings, and none of the buildings about this one have easy access to their rooftops that might lead unsuspecting humans to happen upon them. Still, just to be safe, they step out of the light and into the more comfortable darkness of night. We fly down and perch so that we may listen to what these two old friends have to say.
" Hey, Vampirella. Nice night for flying?"
Jenny snorts at Stun's affectionate nickname for her and nods her head. She says, in a voice slightly muffled by her two large front fangs (Busuzima gave her the DNA of a vampire bat just to see a "real" vampire for once), " Yes. Wind's just right- it's only blowing down here, in the lower atmosphere. Up there, it's still and quiet." She tilts her head back, looking up into the sky and thinking. Unconsciously, she has crossed her wings in front of her. In her beast form, she has very little fur, and she has always felt rather immodest when in beast form. Stun, who thinks she looks like she's wearing a fur bikini in beast form, has politely never said anything about it.
" Good." Stun thinks for a moment, then says, " Did you hear something a few moments ago? I thought I heard a scream, but I was busy at the time and couldn't go investigate." The two would-be bank robbers Stun had been beating on when Stun heard Uriko's scream are now in two trashcans on the side of the road, where the police will pick them up later.
" I heard something," Jenny says, nodding her head, " but my hearing's so good... I can pick up almost anything. I just try to drown out the sound of this city. If I didn't, I'd go mad."
Stun nods, then says, " Yes, I see. Oh well. If it was a scream, nothing I can do about it now." Shaking his head at the somber facts of the matter, he says, " So. How are things between you and Gado? Is the old man still kicking around in the UN?"
" Yes. He's been mad as hell at some of his fellow members, though. Some measure about human rights that he has been trying to get passed went into committee a few weeks ago, and when it came out it had an article tagged on that stated that "Zoanthropes shall not be considered for the protection of these rights." He's been in a state of uproar over it ever since. I was afraid he'd kill some of them, he was so incensed."
Stun solemnly shakes his head. " Not that they wouldn't deserve it. The bastards. Why does mankind so fear that which is new?... Why does the Beast always slip out when the least shadow threatens?..."
Jenny sighs. " I know. The world's in a sad state when you can compare it to Lord of the Flies."
Stun looks up into the night sky, searching maybe, looking for those glimmering lights which have always given mankind something to dream on. " Whatever his faults, Golding knew more than enough about the Beast. More than enough. I think, sometimes, that maybe he knew the truth of everything... and that Lord of the Flies was just his attempt to put it all down."
Jenny says to him, cocking her head to one side as she looks at him, " But surely you're not that pessimistic. Lord of the Flies is a good summing-up of fear's effects, but it's not all the truth."
" Isn't it?" Stun says, returning his gaze to her. " Maybe all life boils down to is trying to find the Piggys in this world and doing your best to protect them from the Jacks. Trying to be a Ralph, as it were."
Jenny inwardly wonders why such things, coming from Stun, do not seem as awkward as they would coming from someone else. Jenny is not the most poetic or eloquent of human beings (although her former job as a spy required some smooth talking, she has never been all that well-versed), and so she's never been able to say things like Stun has. It's one reason she's such good friends with him; he can say things that seem to her like statements of the deepest caliber. Gado, her lover, can do much the same thing, and she often wonders what a conversation between the two of them would sound like.
[Probably like lines from a Shakespeare play,] she thinks, and smirks. She opens her mouth to say something, to begin debating the merits and values of Lord of the Flies, as she and Stun are so wont to do...
A sudden piercing pain strikes her stomach. Her legs slip out from under her, and she lets out a high-pitched scream, one that is fortunately far too high for the humans below to hear. This is agony as she has never known before. Stun, ears ringing with Jenny's cry, grabs her before she hits the ground. She grits her teeth against the pain in her stomach, and her own fangs split her lower lip with two long, ragged gashes. She barely notices the warm taste of her own blood in her mouth. She is concentrating as hard as she can on simply controlling that pain, fighting it. She shakes violently in Stun's arms.
Stun, not knowing what to do, says to her, his sibilant voice trembling with worry and fear, " Jenny! What's wrong?"
Jenny, feeling her very soul being wronged as a Crest forms on her stomach, says to him, " Stun....," she draws in a sharp breath, and says all the rest in a single rush of breath, afraid that if she has to pause for breath, words will fail her and she will simply lie here moaning and shaking, " My stomach it hurts like getting clawed I'm being torn APART..!"
This last she lets out in a scream, and as close as he is, it is deafening to him. Controlling his urge to clap his hands to the small holes that are his ears only with an effort, he gently lowers Jenny to the ground and folds her arms back. She is too weak to even help him, and she lays on the ground shaking. Stun hisses audibly, taken completely aback by what he sees before him. We, having leapt from our perches at the sound of her scream and have gathered around her, are taken aback as well, though not from surprise. We are shaken because we know what is ailing her.
Jenny's stomach is shifting, twirling. It looks like the flesh is going to rip itself apart, and Stun is forcibly reminded of his own troubles, when a rib suddenly expanded or a shoulder bone forcibly jutted upwards and rent his skin apart from the inside. He wonders if maybe all Zoanthropes undergo these rapid mutations at some time, and if that is what ails Jenny. He has a few wraps with him (he always carries a few, just in case), but he doesn't know if he should bind up Jenny's stomach or not. If bone mutations are ailing her, then he has to bind her now, or it'll be too late when her ribs break out...
Soon, the Mark solidifies on Jenny's stomach, forming the same set of three jagged slashes we saw on Shina earlier tonight. Jenny shivers on the ground, the pain leaving her a little, and she folds her wings over herself protectively. She tries to lift up, and the pain that shoots up from her stomach causes her to lose her control and fall back to the hard surface of the rooftop. Stun grabs her before then, and asks her, " Jenny? What the hell is going on?"
She looks at him, chin covered in the blood that is starting to pour ever more rapidly from her torn lower lip, and she says, " Don't... know. Hurting... bad. My... lipsh..." Her voice is slurred, drowned in pain and blood.
" Don't talk," Stun says, picking up his friend as gently as he can. " I'll take you to a small place I know around here. It's a private place- you can heal up there. But... your stomach..."
Jenny looks at him, her lower lip already beginning to seal itself up as her Zoanthrope powers kick in, " What... was it? I... didn't.. see... Have I... been shot?" She can't think of anything else that could cause that kind of pain, though logically she knows she hasn't been shot. To her sensitive ears, even a silenced weapon sounds like a bulldozer running over panes of glass. Still...
" No. You haven't been shot," Stun says, as he begins running towards an abandoned factory he found on one of his nightly tours of the city not too long ago, " I... don't know how to describe it. It looks like you've been slashed on the stomach, but the cuts appeared from the inside..."
Jenny looks at him, her face an expression of the same confusion that now runs through Stun's mind. " What...?"
" I don't know... Maybe it's a mutation or something along those lines. You can see when we get to the fact- to my safe place."
And so Stun runs onward, as we follow behind him, towards his little hiding place in the factory. Which, in one of those quirks of Fate that crop up in every life, is the same place someone else that both Jenny and Stun are far too familiar with is currently heading to...
-Read and review please!