Hey everyone. Silverlocke980 here. I've been kind of busy, so my stories have suffered... as a fan of my HP story wrote, " What happened to updating once a week?" Well... life happened. Ergo, I'm devoting my free time to writing. Hope this is up to the par of my usual work... which isn't that on par itself... (scratches back of head) uh... heh heh. Anway, thanks to all who read this story, and more thanks to those who reviewed it. The rest of you should too, by the way! (glares crazily at you) It's for my sanity, I swear!
And as for Tiger... before my favorite Keniko loving friend picks up her baseball bat and starts using my head as target practice, I have this note. There will be a Keniko scene so touching, so loving, that you will break down into tears of happiness when you read it! (impressive sounding crack of thunder) So there! But that will come much later in the night. Sorry, but Kenji just tried to kill himself, and despite Bakuryu's valiant efforts to stop the mopey shit, he's still been badly hurt. It will take a while for him to wake up in Alice's hospital. Though that... is a story all it's own...
Anyway, on with the night.
"SHOWTIME."
Night of the Mark
Chapter Four
Twilight's Gleam
Abandoned Factory in Tokyo. 12:00 p.m., Midnight. Night of the Mark.
Stun runs as fast as he can, the recovering (but still hurting- and oh God, what kind of pain is this she feels, what kind of pain could rend and tear with such viral force at her?) Jenny in his arms, heading towards a factory abandoned long ago. It was built, like many of Japan's post-WWII factories, by American soldiers, and several reminders lay inside (including, carved into the wall, an American flag in one corner that strikes Stun as reverent, solemn, somehow, a carving carrying it's own story of life and love and hope and all the matters those things portend) of the occupying army that generously rebuilt Japan after delivering a swift, solid kick to it's ass via atomic bomb. The factory was originally a steel mill, and the Tokyo City Council has constantly been passing motions to tear it down... and every time, they get voted down for some reason. Maybe a force beyond Time has protected this place, to make a safe haven for those who seek comfort in the night. Or maybe it's just dumb luck. As we fly past the running insect Zoanthrope, we head for this place and ponder the little enigma of it's existence. A small mystery, especially compared to all the bigger mysteries that float in the air tonight, but an intriguing one nonetheless. It's said that God delights in small miracles as well as large ones. Who knows? As our wills speed us far past the two Zoanthropes, we ponder these things.
We reach the factory long before Stun and Jenny. It's midnight now, the witching hour, and on this night of all nights even the slightest noise or sound calls our attention. This factory is not the small, cheerful place we might have imagined in our heads, a little shack of a place with a small hole cut just right for a Zoanthrope in one boarded up window; this is a huge, rambling place, a maze of wires and belts, a labyrinth if there ever was one. It is a scary place, a place that does not seem to welcome visitors, and even though we are invulnerable to anything that might happen here, we still tremble in anticipation. This is not a place to tread lightly in. We land outside it and, steeling our nerves, walk forward. And immediately notice that the large front door is gone. Or, more correctly, crumpled into the doorway it used to guard. It looks as though something very large and very mad at the door has gone stampeding through it. Someone has beat Stun and Jenny to the factory. And it is most definitely not your average wanderer or city hobo. We rush in quickly, becoming like flowing water as we rush into the factory, over the ruined doorway. And stop as we see a most shocking sight.
The first thing we notice is the creature's size. He is enormous. His back is broad, wide with rippling muscles under the surface of the skin. His pelt is gray, the fur dead seeming somehow, and the stripes are black. We see little of him, for his back is turned to us, but what we see is enough. This is Shenlong, Long's clone and one of the most twisted experiments Busuzima ever performed. Shenlong is among the world's first clones, but like all clones, he is mutated and wrong in some fundamental way. Cloning was not and never will be a thing mankind was meant to explore. The figure before us snorts, and lifts his nose to the air to sniff. The absurdly delicate twitching of the nose as it gently tests the air would almost be funny if the eyes below it were not so concentrated. Not so focused.
Not so sad.
And that is the main thing we get from this creature before us. Not a wave of evil (though that is there too, a far more diluted version of Busuzima's evil), not a sense of arrogance as we would expect from what we know about this man. It is sadness we feel most strongly, like teardrops heard in the rain. Sadness.
And despair. Though many a poet throughout the long and winding road of human literature has used the two terms interchangeably, they are not one and the same. Sadness is a natural part of the human spirit. Without it, heartbreak would mean nothing, songs of love have no bittersweet taste, hope mean nothing without a counterpart. And that last is the real difference between the two. Sadness is the reason hope has meaning. Because we can suffer, we can try for better days. Despair is the lack of everything. Even hope. And that is the worst curse that can be wished on anyone. A wise man once said that if a man lacked everything but hope, he was in far better shape than a rich man who lacked nothing but hope. And he was right.
Shenlong feels no hope. We check his mind, rifling through his memories as Busuzima rifled through the pockets of the drunks he killed (though with far nobler intentions), and find nothing but bleak despair. Here is a man who knows he is wrong, that something is fundamentally broken in him, but knows not how to fix it. He is worse off even than cold Shina, for though her life is cold, at least she has the comfort of knowing that, at the very least, she is natural to this world. Shenlong has no such comfort. No mother's womb caressed him. No childhood was ever his. And the only father he'd ever had was Busuzima, the laughing, stabbing monstrosity who tormented Shenlong's early days with experiments and needles. That is now one of Shenlong's phobias: he hates needles. Because every time he sees one, he remembers the first days of his life, when the first sight he saw when he awoke (during those few times Busuzima allowed him to wake up from his drug-induced stupor) was Busuzima holding the long, sharp needle that would send him back to sleep, and the last sensation he felt before succumbing to Busuzima's anathesia was the cold and darkness of his arm. He still has pockmarks from where Busuzima stabbed him time and time again, a set of angry puckered wounds in his arm. He knows that he could eliminate them by squeezing small capsules of Vitamin E onto his arm and rubbing it into the skin, but he leaves them be. What does it matter? His past is his past. No escape from it. No future to flee to. No dream to run towards.
We discover all this in the few minutes it takes Stun to catch up with us and take a running leap off a nearby building. His aim perfect, he lands in an open window he cleared out himself when he first discovered this place. He lands with a muffled thump in what used to be an office, the floorboards creaking under his weight. Stun, busy both with the questions whirling about in his mind and the woman in his arms, has failed to notice anything out of the ordinary, to test the area as he would on any other night to make sure no one is watching him. Shenlong, who has no such distractions to bother him, is immediately aware of Stun. His head jerks up towards the noise two floors above him, his body tenses, and his mouth curls in an unconscious snarl at this new intruder. Presented with a choice, Shenlong decides in an instant what he wants to do. He found this place, by God. It is his right to enjoy a nice, comfortable stay here, and no one, not even some unknown Zoanthrope (Shenlong knows it's a Zoanthrope in the upper rooms through an act of intuitive logic: who else can leap from the roof of a nearby building and, over a distance of thirty feet, land in an open window on the third floor?) is going to take that right from him. He begins padding softly down the deserted, ramshackle hall where workers used to treat metal, on all fours now like the animal he so resembles. His padded claws make little noise on the metal floor, and the sounds of the old building creaking easily masks the soft thumps they make. He scans the walls as he goes, looking for possible ways to enter the upper floors quietly and discreetly. Not wanting to be left behind, we flap our wings and fly alongside him. The eerie quiet of the building strikes us as expectant, now. Something is about to happen.
Soon enough, it does, in an episode that is so comic in it's ridiculous absurdity that we break out laughing at the sight of it. It strikes our slightly frightened, nervous minds as hilarious, as just the sort of thing that *would* happen in a moment like this, and works as a wonderful tension breaker. We howl in laughter as we look at what Shenlong has managed to do.
Shenlong, in his crafty attempts to out-guile his new visitor, spotted a small chute leading to an upper floor. Thankfully, this chute is not made of metal (which would clang, creak, and bang loud enough to announce his presence to the whole of Tokyo) but of wood. It is a cheap replacement chute, designed to ferry loads of metal downward as fast as possible, made of wood because buying the actual metal chute would have strained company budget in that final downturn for the factory. When the factory failed, the workers left, and no one ever bothered to replace the wooden chute. So it has remained here, and protected as it is from most of the ravages of the elements, it is in reasonably good shape. It is also very close to the floor. Shenlong, grinning his catlike grin, decided to climb up this shaft. We floated in with him, room tight but manageable, and watched as he slowly and stealthily climbed up the chute. A small look of triumph glimmered in his eye...
The entire chute fell down with a thunderous bang. Shenlong, letting out a surprisingly human " Shiiitttt!" as he fell, banged against the floor, dazed but okay. As he lay dazed in the remains of the shaft, the collapse of the chute caused other parts of the factory to go as well. Clang after clang reverberates in this place, as most of the second floor machinery crumbles to the ground. It is hard to imagine even a bombing run of American B-52s making more noise in this place. As we burst into laughter all around the stunned and comically confused looking Shenlong, we feel some tension ease out of us. Shenlong is dangerous, yes; but Stun and Jenny have now had the best possible warning of his presence we could have wished for. Even if we had been able to put our hand into events, we could scarcely have arranged for a better accident to befall the helpless clone. As he dazedly crawls out of the remains of the chute, we hear a noise above us, and glance up to see a very aware and slightly confused Stun peering over the hole in the roof that marked where the chute once was. As Shenlong crawls out and stands up, Stun hisses in displeasure.
" You! What are you doing here?" Stun says, for good reason instantly suspicious of the trigger-happy clone's presence here. Stun thinks, in odd accordance with Shenlong before him, that this is his haven, and no one is going to take it from him. Especially not this man.
Shenlong, still groggy and oddly embarassed with his own stupidity, looks up and growls. " I'd rather ask the same question of you, bug man." He bares his teeth at the insectoid face above him.
" You'd receive no answer," Stun says to him, his height over Shenlong giving his words a hint of arrogance and distaste.
Shenlong openly snarls this time, anger darkening his features. " Hey. I was here first. I heard you leap into the third floor window. I found this place. It's mine."
" Actually, I found a few weeks ago," Stun says truthfully. " So, really, this place is mine. But I haven't the time to argue with you. Leave and disappear from my sight, o bleak creature."
" And where the hell do you think I'll go?" Shenlong says, his rage building up at this arrogant, holier-than-thou creature above him. " And who the hell says things like "o bleak creature"? Where the hell did that come from?"
" You shouldn't overuse the phrase," Stun says, this time actual distaste floating down to Shenlong. " If you do, saying "the hell" loses all it's potency. And as for "o bleak creature", that came from my own mind. Now, begone, I say."
Shenlong lets out a growl, but unlike the others, it's obviously more than threat. " No."
" Then suffer the consequences."
With that, Stun does a very impressive divebomb right on top of the mutated clone. Twisting in the air as he goes, we watch Stun flip and land feet first on the ground where Shenlong was standing (he moved very quickly upon seeing a bug man trying to pummel him into the dirt). The shockwaves from his short flight send dust and rock spraying everywhere, and several sharp chunks fly through our spectral forms, making us very glad to be memories and not humans. We gather about this fight, watching with great interest to see who will be the victor here.
Shenlong turns from his sideways leap and leaps again, a pounce this time, claws extended, long ribbons of silk flowing from bracelets on his arms. He snarls this time, mouth open to rend and tear this offending insect's head off. Stun has different ideas and falls flat on his back. As a student of the martial art commonly called "Wrestling", Stun is a master of weights and balances, of forces, as it were. He is also very good at making those forces work for him. As Shenlong leaps, Stun sticks his feet straight out, not kicking Shenlong in the chest but merely lifting him, pushing him up and over in the air. When the tiger is in the correct position, Stun bends his legs slightly and pushes out hard. Before Shenlong knows what is happening, Stun has ably kicked him into the nearest wall. The metal shrieks in protest and dents deeply as it accepts the weight of an enraged tiger Zoanthrope in full flight. He hangs in the air a moment, then drops with a muffled yelp of pain, back aching where it took the brunt of the impact. Shenlong looks up and snarls, seeing Stun just in time to roll out of the way of Stun's flying kick. Using both his legs to add force to the kick, Stun slams into the already weakened wall and further dents it, leaving two neat boot shaped imprints.
Stun jumps off the wall and lands in a fighting position, body widespread and open to attack, ready to grab and counter any move of his opponent's. His legs are spread wide and his shoulder thrown forward, his hands held out to the sides with palms up. It is a classic wrestler's pose. Shenlong runs forward, roaring. He swings his left claw in a blistering strike. Stun ducks under it and tackles his opponent, throwing him to the ground. Stun gets up far faster than his opponent does and grabs the tiger's left leg. Before Shenlong can move to kick him off, Stun performs a superhuman effort and slams him into the ground facefirst. As the tiger roars his pain, Stun grabs the leg he holds with both hands and falls on top of Shenlong, back first. The resultant pressure shatters the tiger's kneecap, and though the pain is nearly blinding, so is Shenlong's will. Putting his claws under him, Shenlong shoves to the right, throwing Stun off of him. Stun has the good sense to let go of the now-useless leg he holds (though it won't be useless long; in human form, the healing powers of Zoanthropes are extremely weak, but in beast mode they are nigh unstoppable) and scrambles out of the way before being squished underneath Shenlong. Shenlong slashes at Stun viciously, and his left claw finds purchase in Stun's arm. As Stun utters a grunt of pain and tries to remove the claws piercing his bicep, Shenlong pulls him closer, dragging him with his left hand and striking with his right. The claw should have rent his face apart, but Stun's mutated body is proving it's worth once again; the hard plates that make up his face are only badly scratched and nothing vital is pierced. Lashing out with his left hand to prevent a repeat performance, Stun begins bashing Shenlong's tiger snout, breaking the sensitive nose and cracking some of the long fangs. Shenlong roars, and Stun's fist goes straight into his mouth by pure accident. Shutting his mouth reflexively to avoid choking on Stun's fist, his fangs sink through Stun's plate armor and cause a rush of blood to pour out into his open mouth. Just as stuck as Stun is, Shenlong can do nothing but feel that blood pouring down his throat, and unable to swallow it, the blood begins choking him. Opening his mouth to free it, he coughs and splutters, muzzle crimson with the blood of both here. He removes his claw from Stun as well, in his panic wanting forgetting about Stun and concentrating just on getting a breath. The tiger rolls over, ignoring the pain in his legs, and coughs loudly and deeply. Blood and vomit pour out his mouth as he desperately tries to rid his system of this alien intruder.
Stun, freed now, rolls away and gets back to his feet. Holding his left arm in his right hand, gazing at the puncture holes with a clinical eye, he focuses his willpower and morphs into his insect form. Now far larger than his opponent, Stun stands and feels his body healing. As the tiger Zoanthrope's ferocious coughing settles down, Stun watches him and focuses on getting his breathing under control.
" You could end this, you know," Stun says as the tiger's breathing returns to normal.
Still coughing up blood, Shenlong says nothing.
" If you really don't have another place to go..." Stun mentally bites his lip and considers. Then he sighs, the act very strange looking in his new form. " This place is useless to me now. It's value lies in the fact that no one else knows about it. Now that value is gone."
Shenlong doesn't finish that sentence, but reads the implied ending: If he is dead, then it's value returns to it.
" So," Stun says, sighing once more, " I have no choice but to give it up to you. This battle will go on until one of us is dead, and I have had my share of fighting for tonight. I don't want to take the life of another Zoanthrope. Not now, not ever. I'd hoped to scare you off, make you leave... but since that will not work, I concede the battlefield to you."
Shenlong, his breathing coming in great gasps of air, replies to him, sarcasm like an auditory blade coming out in his words, " Right. And I believe that. You just fought me, got bit by me, broke my leg, and tried to choke me to death... and now you're just gonna give the place to me. Right. And I'm George Bush."
" Believe what you will," Stun says, noting even as he says it how absurd things look from Shenlong's point of view. " But I am being truthful. I am leaving now. Stay here if you wish. There are a few medical supplies in an office on the third floor. Stay here for a while, until your leg heals. Then head up there." Stun nods towards the other end of the hall. " Down there, there is a ladder that I sometimes use. It leads up to the third floor." Preparing to leave, Stun spreads his strangely feeble looking wings and begins to beat them, slowly at first, then more rapidly as his muscles warm to the task. " Do not seek to follow me, and I will not return to bother you. The police patrol this area at times; if you see flashing lights, try to stay hidden."
" Why are you doing this?" Shenlong asks, utterly confused. " I... just tried to kill you..."
" Yes," Stun says, as his wings speed up enough to allow him to hover over the ground slightly, legs dangling, " you did. But I've always felt sorry for you. We all live such damned lives... you more than the rest of us. You have been given a label, and nothing is harder to get rid of once received. It's the label of monster."
As he begins to fly straight up into the hole in the ceiling, Stun tosses down these last words, words that confuse the tiger Zoanthrope even more.
" And maybe... you don't deserve it."
Stun flies out, and we follow him, but slowly. We are torn now, unable to stay any longer (for we must visit another soon), but wanting to see Shenlong's reaction to such strange kindness. His reaction is simple. It is a complete loss of everything- words, thoughts, actions. He merely stares up into the space where Stun flew upwards, stares after the man who has just said the one thing he has wanted to hear his entire life. Who has told him that maybe he isn't a freak, a monster. That maybe he is not entirely wrong, in every way.
We reluctantly leave now, sure that Shenlong's next thoughts (when they recover) will be interesting, to say the least, but completely unable to stay. Our mission compels us ever onward, and we must go now to Long, the man Shenlong was cloned from. We leave Shenlong and fly into the night through cracks in the wall, and soon he is beyond our ability to sense. We let out a collective sigh. Oh well. Maybe his next few thoughts were not meant for us to peruse. We fly onward, into the night.
************************************************************************
Long's house, several blocks away. 12:35 p.m.
What we just saw was very active, very destructive, no? Very energetic. So let us go now to the complete antithesis of the factory we were just in. That was a huge place, sprawling, eerie, empty, everything inside dead save for the combatants fighting inside (and, of course, the wounded Jenny, still recovering from the Mark on her chest in Stun's little room, hearing the battle below her but unable to move or help Stun in any way). It was, in essence, the perfect place to have a great big battle: no civilans, plenty of interesting objects to get slammed into, and a great atmosphere to keep you entertained while you dodge punches. Quite a nice place, really.
This place is it's polar opposite. It is small, cramped, with few solid objects that would make combat more interesting, while also being less eerie and more cheerful. It is a small, prefabricated home, one of those so common in Japan, and the rent on the place is very cheap. Long is a librarian, and so cannot afford more than this little place. It's all he needs, though. Even the most pitiful of homes is a big step above a cave with grass bedding. We fly down and slip in through minute cracks in the walls so as to see the object of our attentions clearer.
Inside, the house continues it's trick of being small, quiet, and invisible. The first part is a long, twisting hallway, lined with shelf after shelf of books, most of them belonging to the library where Long works. They cover a huge variety of topics. The first covers we read (our eyes barely making them out in the dim light; bright light hurts Long's sensitive eyes) as we pass through this little entry hall deal with art, the next few with poetry, another with dancing, and at the end, a few classics ("Lord of the Flies", in another of those little quirks of Fate that are starting to crop up everywhere now that we have gained partial omniscience, lays on these shelves) sit to round out this small gathering of the arts. Past that, the details of the many wars mankind has waged with itself are collected, and even further past that, the art of combat is detailed, in the many ways it can be performed. The most well-thumbed book in this section (in fact, in the whole library) is the famous swordsman Musashi's "Book of Five Rings", detailing how the ancient samurai saw life. Though he never bathed and believed women were a waste of time, he was amazingly insightful into many other things, even going so far as to approach all life in five basic ways. Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, and Void. It is this last that Long ponders most often, especially when dealing with his youngest student, Uriko. He sees great potential in her, but sometimes that potential manifests itself in startling ways. The Void represents pure creation, the making of something out of nothing, the continual birth of the new. And that is a perfect fit for Uriko. She is fast, sometimes blindingly so, but at times this shifts and she becomes slower, more methodical, weaving in and out of attacks and striking with calm precision. At other times, her normally weak arms become sledgehammers, and she strikes with a rain of blows, ignoring subtlety and speed in favor of rapid fire strikes. And then again, she sometimes changes tactics and becomes counter based, not striking at all, barely moving save to turn some of his own attacks against him. She is strange, this young one. Her form is a half-beast, and he wonders sometimes if that is not the result of failed experimentation, but a reflection of her soul. She is young yet, and unformed, full of pure potential. And so her form is caught between human and animal, not really changing into any definite form like a lion or leopard, but just the generic form of "feline". He wonders if that will change as she ages. It is an interesting question, for this man who spends most of his time pondering such things. Yugo once joked, at a dinner Gado had hosted, that Long would eventually solve the riddle of life, all while sitting in his easy chair. Long, in his quiet way, had replied to great amusement all around that he'd already solved it and had moved on to the next question. Long is not a jester like Yugo, making a lovable fool out of himself, but he is a master of the deadpan delivery.
As we walk down this impromptu library, the walls of shelves turn right suddenly, forming a sharp corner. As we turn it, we walk down a small set of steps that Long built himself, and enter the living room. The first thing one notices is the fireplace. It is another of the many things here Long has built himself, and it is majestic in this small home. It is also completely out of place, but looks so nice that only the most die-hard interior decorators would ever raise a complaint about it. It is brick and burning quite cheerfully at the moment, lighting up the dim room with a pleasant amber glow. The gentle light of a fire is one of the few lights that Long can deal with; his eyes are very sensitive, and he's been blinded more than once by approaching cars who forget to turn off their lights. One of the abbreviated reasons he prefers to walk instead of drive. Long's eyes are not completely without power, however; as if to make up for their weakness in the day, they possess perfect night vision. In this dim glow, where even we have some trouble picking out details, Long can see minute cracks on the surface of the walls. Enhancing our sight as best as we can, we pick out other details of the room.
Continuing the library motif, the walls are packed with shelves of books, but these are different; these are memoirs and combat tutorials written by Long himself. He has published none of these publicly, and binds them himself, so no one knows they exist. Long sometimes loans the combat books to Uriko, to help her learn the Kenpo techniques he teaches, but as a general rule, the books stay here. He enjoys reading them in the dim and quiet of his home, reviewing and making corrections as necessary. Much like his feline counterpart, Long is a quiet man, and a loner. Though he enjoys the company of others, he does not require it to be happy. A true rarity, in a world where couples are the norm and the single are regarded as freaks.
Though, if Long had better skills with women, he would not be single for long. He likes Shina, and is even starting to believe he loves her... which is why he is so worried now. He heard a scream, some time ago, and it has contributed to a sense of general unease that permeates his thoughts. He is worried, this man. Worried about his love (though she is not his lover; Long is a virgin, having lived his life as, in order, an assassin, a hermit, and now a librarian, and hence is without knowledge in this aspect of life) and throughout this night he has been wrestling with his feelings, trying to pin them down. The ferocious itching on the upper right part of his leg has not helped at all; scratch as he might, he cannot make it quit itching. Soon enough, it will turn into a Crest.
Continuing our scan of the room, we notice him pacing it's small carpet floor, adjusting and readjusting his glasses as he tries furiously to ignore his leg. An enormous easy chair, the Japanese equivalent of a La-Z-Boy, lays in the center of the room, oriented so that the firelight will fall on whatever book Long is reading. If Long has a vice, it's that he loves comfort. Having lived in a cave for a good portion of his life, Long has an almost obsessive need to make his surroundings comfortable, to make his home luxurious in *his* sense of the word, to have a place he feels safe in. Just as his tiger counterpart will reject resting place after resting place because it feels uncomfortable there, so will Long constantly seek to make his home feel secure to him. The fact that as a Zoanthrope he is more secure in the middle of a battlefield than most normal humans are in a police station does little to ease his need. As we glance around, we notice that his needs have been ably met; this place oozes comfort, and after the very long and tiring night we've had so far, that couch looks most comfortable. But it is not our lot to sleep. We must trudge on, until the break of day and the strange new world it will herald.
And even then, the story might continue on.
Distracted by our survey of the room, we have not noticed Long stop his pacing. When we return our attention to him, we see that his brow is furrowed, as if he is coming to a decision. His looks grow steadily more and more concentrated until finally, with a violent shake of the head, he gathers his courage and grabs his keys. Running out into the night, he heads for the Mansion de Leo. He is going to check on Shina, and though it is a considerable run, this is a considerable man.
Silent as ghosts, we follow.
- Read and review, please. And to Tiger... put the bat down, please! :)
And as for Tiger... before my favorite Keniko loving friend picks up her baseball bat and starts using my head as target practice, I have this note. There will be a Keniko scene so touching, so loving, that you will break down into tears of happiness when you read it! (impressive sounding crack of thunder) So there! But that will come much later in the night. Sorry, but Kenji just tried to kill himself, and despite Bakuryu's valiant efforts to stop the mopey shit, he's still been badly hurt. It will take a while for him to wake up in Alice's hospital. Though that... is a story all it's own...
Anyway, on with the night.
"SHOWTIME."
Night of the Mark
Chapter Four
Twilight's Gleam
Abandoned Factory in Tokyo. 12:00 p.m., Midnight. Night of the Mark.
Stun runs as fast as he can, the recovering (but still hurting- and oh God, what kind of pain is this she feels, what kind of pain could rend and tear with such viral force at her?) Jenny in his arms, heading towards a factory abandoned long ago. It was built, like many of Japan's post-WWII factories, by American soldiers, and several reminders lay inside (including, carved into the wall, an American flag in one corner that strikes Stun as reverent, solemn, somehow, a carving carrying it's own story of life and love and hope and all the matters those things portend) of the occupying army that generously rebuilt Japan after delivering a swift, solid kick to it's ass via atomic bomb. The factory was originally a steel mill, and the Tokyo City Council has constantly been passing motions to tear it down... and every time, they get voted down for some reason. Maybe a force beyond Time has protected this place, to make a safe haven for those who seek comfort in the night. Or maybe it's just dumb luck. As we fly past the running insect Zoanthrope, we head for this place and ponder the little enigma of it's existence. A small mystery, especially compared to all the bigger mysteries that float in the air tonight, but an intriguing one nonetheless. It's said that God delights in small miracles as well as large ones. Who knows? As our wills speed us far past the two Zoanthropes, we ponder these things.
We reach the factory long before Stun and Jenny. It's midnight now, the witching hour, and on this night of all nights even the slightest noise or sound calls our attention. This factory is not the small, cheerful place we might have imagined in our heads, a little shack of a place with a small hole cut just right for a Zoanthrope in one boarded up window; this is a huge, rambling place, a maze of wires and belts, a labyrinth if there ever was one. It is a scary place, a place that does not seem to welcome visitors, and even though we are invulnerable to anything that might happen here, we still tremble in anticipation. This is not a place to tread lightly in. We land outside it and, steeling our nerves, walk forward. And immediately notice that the large front door is gone. Or, more correctly, crumpled into the doorway it used to guard. It looks as though something very large and very mad at the door has gone stampeding through it. Someone has beat Stun and Jenny to the factory. And it is most definitely not your average wanderer or city hobo. We rush in quickly, becoming like flowing water as we rush into the factory, over the ruined doorway. And stop as we see a most shocking sight.
The first thing we notice is the creature's size. He is enormous. His back is broad, wide with rippling muscles under the surface of the skin. His pelt is gray, the fur dead seeming somehow, and the stripes are black. We see little of him, for his back is turned to us, but what we see is enough. This is Shenlong, Long's clone and one of the most twisted experiments Busuzima ever performed. Shenlong is among the world's first clones, but like all clones, he is mutated and wrong in some fundamental way. Cloning was not and never will be a thing mankind was meant to explore. The figure before us snorts, and lifts his nose to the air to sniff. The absurdly delicate twitching of the nose as it gently tests the air would almost be funny if the eyes below it were not so concentrated. Not so focused.
Not so sad.
And that is the main thing we get from this creature before us. Not a wave of evil (though that is there too, a far more diluted version of Busuzima's evil), not a sense of arrogance as we would expect from what we know about this man. It is sadness we feel most strongly, like teardrops heard in the rain. Sadness.
And despair. Though many a poet throughout the long and winding road of human literature has used the two terms interchangeably, they are not one and the same. Sadness is a natural part of the human spirit. Without it, heartbreak would mean nothing, songs of love have no bittersweet taste, hope mean nothing without a counterpart. And that last is the real difference between the two. Sadness is the reason hope has meaning. Because we can suffer, we can try for better days. Despair is the lack of everything. Even hope. And that is the worst curse that can be wished on anyone. A wise man once said that if a man lacked everything but hope, he was in far better shape than a rich man who lacked nothing but hope. And he was right.
Shenlong feels no hope. We check his mind, rifling through his memories as Busuzima rifled through the pockets of the drunks he killed (though with far nobler intentions), and find nothing but bleak despair. Here is a man who knows he is wrong, that something is fundamentally broken in him, but knows not how to fix it. He is worse off even than cold Shina, for though her life is cold, at least she has the comfort of knowing that, at the very least, she is natural to this world. Shenlong has no such comfort. No mother's womb caressed him. No childhood was ever his. And the only father he'd ever had was Busuzima, the laughing, stabbing monstrosity who tormented Shenlong's early days with experiments and needles. That is now one of Shenlong's phobias: he hates needles. Because every time he sees one, he remembers the first days of his life, when the first sight he saw when he awoke (during those few times Busuzima allowed him to wake up from his drug-induced stupor) was Busuzima holding the long, sharp needle that would send him back to sleep, and the last sensation he felt before succumbing to Busuzima's anathesia was the cold and darkness of his arm. He still has pockmarks from where Busuzima stabbed him time and time again, a set of angry puckered wounds in his arm. He knows that he could eliminate them by squeezing small capsules of Vitamin E onto his arm and rubbing it into the skin, but he leaves them be. What does it matter? His past is his past. No escape from it. No future to flee to. No dream to run towards.
We discover all this in the few minutes it takes Stun to catch up with us and take a running leap off a nearby building. His aim perfect, he lands in an open window he cleared out himself when he first discovered this place. He lands with a muffled thump in what used to be an office, the floorboards creaking under his weight. Stun, busy both with the questions whirling about in his mind and the woman in his arms, has failed to notice anything out of the ordinary, to test the area as he would on any other night to make sure no one is watching him. Shenlong, who has no such distractions to bother him, is immediately aware of Stun. His head jerks up towards the noise two floors above him, his body tenses, and his mouth curls in an unconscious snarl at this new intruder. Presented with a choice, Shenlong decides in an instant what he wants to do. He found this place, by God. It is his right to enjoy a nice, comfortable stay here, and no one, not even some unknown Zoanthrope (Shenlong knows it's a Zoanthrope in the upper rooms through an act of intuitive logic: who else can leap from the roof of a nearby building and, over a distance of thirty feet, land in an open window on the third floor?) is going to take that right from him. He begins padding softly down the deserted, ramshackle hall where workers used to treat metal, on all fours now like the animal he so resembles. His padded claws make little noise on the metal floor, and the sounds of the old building creaking easily masks the soft thumps they make. He scans the walls as he goes, looking for possible ways to enter the upper floors quietly and discreetly. Not wanting to be left behind, we flap our wings and fly alongside him. The eerie quiet of the building strikes us as expectant, now. Something is about to happen.
Soon enough, it does, in an episode that is so comic in it's ridiculous absurdity that we break out laughing at the sight of it. It strikes our slightly frightened, nervous minds as hilarious, as just the sort of thing that *would* happen in a moment like this, and works as a wonderful tension breaker. We howl in laughter as we look at what Shenlong has managed to do.
Shenlong, in his crafty attempts to out-guile his new visitor, spotted a small chute leading to an upper floor. Thankfully, this chute is not made of metal (which would clang, creak, and bang loud enough to announce his presence to the whole of Tokyo) but of wood. It is a cheap replacement chute, designed to ferry loads of metal downward as fast as possible, made of wood because buying the actual metal chute would have strained company budget in that final downturn for the factory. When the factory failed, the workers left, and no one ever bothered to replace the wooden chute. So it has remained here, and protected as it is from most of the ravages of the elements, it is in reasonably good shape. It is also very close to the floor. Shenlong, grinning his catlike grin, decided to climb up this shaft. We floated in with him, room tight but manageable, and watched as he slowly and stealthily climbed up the chute. A small look of triumph glimmered in his eye...
The entire chute fell down with a thunderous bang. Shenlong, letting out a surprisingly human " Shiiitttt!" as he fell, banged against the floor, dazed but okay. As he lay dazed in the remains of the shaft, the collapse of the chute caused other parts of the factory to go as well. Clang after clang reverberates in this place, as most of the second floor machinery crumbles to the ground. It is hard to imagine even a bombing run of American B-52s making more noise in this place. As we burst into laughter all around the stunned and comically confused looking Shenlong, we feel some tension ease out of us. Shenlong is dangerous, yes; but Stun and Jenny have now had the best possible warning of his presence we could have wished for. Even if we had been able to put our hand into events, we could scarcely have arranged for a better accident to befall the helpless clone. As he dazedly crawls out of the remains of the chute, we hear a noise above us, and glance up to see a very aware and slightly confused Stun peering over the hole in the roof that marked where the chute once was. As Shenlong crawls out and stands up, Stun hisses in displeasure.
" You! What are you doing here?" Stun says, for good reason instantly suspicious of the trigger-happy clone's presence here. Stun thinks, in odd accordance with Shenlong before him, that this is his haven, and no one is going to take it from him. Especially not this man.
Shenlong, still groggy and oddly embarassed with his own stupidity, looks up and growls. " I'd rather ask the same question of you, bug man." He bares his teeth at the insectoid face above him.
" You'd receive no answer," Stun says to him, his height over Shenlong giving his words a hint of arrogance and distaste.
Shenlong openly snarls this time, anger darkening his features. " Hey. I was here first. I heard you leap into the third floor window. I found this place. It's mine."
" Actually, I found a few weeks ago," Stun says truthfully. " So, really, this place is mine. But I haven't the time to argue with you. Leave and disappear from my sight, o bleak creature."
" And where the hell do you think I'll go?" Shenlong says, his rage building up at this arrogant, holier-than-thou creature above him. " And who the hell says things like "o bleak creature"? Where the hell did that come from?"
" You shouldn't overuse the phrase," Stun says, this time actual distaste floating down to Shenlong. " If you do, saying "the hell" loses all it's potency. And as for "o bleak creature", that came from my own mind. Now, begone, I say."
Shenlong lets out a growl, but unlike the others, it's obviously more than threat. " No."
" Then suffer the consequences."
With that, Stun does a very impressive divebomb right on top of the mutated clone. Twisting in the air as he goes, we watch Stun flip and land feet first on the ground where Shenlong was standing (he moved very quickly upon seeing a bug man trying to pummel him into the dirt). The shockwaves from his short flight send dust and rock spraying everywhere, and several sharp chunks fly through our spectral forms, making us very glad to be memories and not humans. We gather about this fight, watching with great interest to see who will be the victor here.
Shenlong turns from his sideways leap and leaps again, a pounce this time, claws extended, long ribbons of silk flowing from bracelets on his arms. He snarls this time, mouth open to rend and tear this offending insect's head off. Stun has different ideas and falls flat on his back. As a student of the martial art commonly called "Wrestling", Stun is a master of weights and balances, of forces, as it were. He is also very good at making those forces work for him. As Shenlong leaps, Stun sticks his feet straight out, not kicking Shenlong in the chest but merely lifting him, pushing him up and over in the air. When the tiger is in the correct position, Stun bends his legs slightly and pushes out hard. Before Shenlong knows what is happening, Stun has ably kicked him into the nearest wall. The metal shrieks in protest and dents deeply as it accepts the weight of an enraged tiger Zoanthrope in full flight. He hangs in the air a moment, then drops with a muffled yelp of pain, back aching where it took the brunt of the impact. Shenlong looks up and snarls, seeing Stun just in time to roll out of the way of Stun's flying kick. Using both his legs to add force to the kick, Stun slams into the already weakened wall and further dents it, leaving two neat boot shaped imprints.
Stun jumps off the wall and lands in a fighting position, body widespread and open to attack, ready to grab and counter any move of his opponent's. His legs are spread wide and his shoulder thrown forward, his hands held out to the sides with palms up. It is a classic wrestler's pose. Shenlong runs forward, roaring. He swings his left claw in a blistering strike. Stun ducks under it and tackles his opponent, throwing him to the ground. Stun gets up far faster than his opponent does and grabs the tiger's left leg. Before Shenlong can move to kick him off, Stun performs a superhuman effort and slams him into the ground facefirst. As the tiger roars his pain, Stun grabs the leg he holds with both hands and falls on top of Shenlong, back first. The resultant pressure shatters the tiger's kneecap, and though the pain is nearly blinding, so is Shenlong's will. Putting his claws under him, Shenlong shoves to the right, throwing Stun off of him. Stun has the good sense to let go of the now-useless leg he holds (though it won't be useless long; in human form, the healing powers of Zoanthropes are extremely weak, but in beast mode they are nigh unstoppable) and scrambles out of the way before being squished underneath Shenlong. Shenlong slashes at Stun viciously, and his left claw finds purchase in Stun's arm. As Stun utters a grunt of pain and tries to remove the claws piercing his bicep, Shenlong pulls him closer, dragging him with his left hand and striking with his right. The claw should have rent his face apart, but Stun's mutated body is proving it's worth once again; the hard plates that make up his face are only badly scratched and nothing vital is pierced. Lashing out with his left hand to prevent a repeat performance, Stun begins bashing Shenlong's tiger snout, breaking the sensitive nose and cracking some of the long fangs. Shenlong roars, and Stun's fist goes straight into his mouth by pure accident. Shutting his mouth reflexively to avoid choking on Stun's fist, his fangs sink through Stun's plate armor and cause a rush of blood to pour out into his open mouth. Just as stuck as Stun is, Shenlong can do nothing but feel that blood pouring down his throat, and unable to swallow it, the blood begins choking him. Opening his mouth to free it, he coughs and splutters, muzzle crimson with the blood of both here. He removes his claw from Stun as well, in his panic wanting forgetting about Stun and concentrating just on getting a breath. The tiger rolls over, ignoring the pain in his legs, and coughs loudly and deeply. Blood and vomit pour out his mouth as he desperately tries to rid his system of this alien intruder.
Stun, freed now, rolls away and gets back to his feet. Holding his left arm in his right hand, gazing at the puncture holes with a clinical eye, he focuses his willpower and morphs into his insect form. Now far larger than his opponent, Stun stands and feels his body healing. As the tiger Zoanthrope's ferocious coughing settles down, Stun watches him and focuses on getting his breathing under control.
" You could end this, you know," Stun says as the tiger's breathing returns to normal.
Still coughing up blood, Shenlong says nothing.
" If you really don't have another place to go..." Stun mentally bites his lip and considers. Then he sighs, the act very strange looking in his new form. " This place is useless to me now. It's value lies in the fact that no one else knows about it. Now that value is gone."
Shenlong doesn't finish that sentence, but reads the implied ending: If he is dead, then it's value returns to it.
" So," Stun says, sighing once more, " I have no choice but to give it up to you. This battle will go on until one of us is dead, and I have had my share of fighting for tonight. I don't want to take the life of another Zoanthrope. Not now, not ever. I'd hoped to scare you off, make you leave... but since that will not work, I concede the battlefield to you."
Shenlong, his breathing coming in great gasps of air, replies to him, sarcasm like an auditory blade coming out in his words, " Right. And I believe that. You just fought me, got bit by me, broke my leg, and tried to choke me to death... and now you're just gonna give the place to me. Right. And I'm George Bush."
" Believe what you will," Stun says, noting even as he says it how absurd things look from Shenlong's point of view. " But I am being truthful. I am leaving now. Stay here if you wish. There are a few medical supplies in an office on the third floor. Stay here for a while, until your leg heals. Then head up there." Stun nods towards the other end of the hall. " Down there, there is a ladder that I sometimes use. It leads up to the third floor." Preparing to leave, Stun spreads his strangely feeble looking wings and begins to beat them, slowly at first, then more rapidly as his muscles warm to the task. " Do not seek to follow me, and I will not return to bother you. The police patrol this area at times; if you see flashing lights, try to stay hidden."
" Why are you doing this?" Shenlong asks, utterly confused. " I... just tried to kill you..."
" Yes," Stun says, as his wings speed up enough to allow him to hover over the ground slightly, legs dangling, " you did. But I've always felt sorry for you. We all live such damned lives... you more than the rest of us. You have been given a label, and nothing is harder to get rid of once received. It's the label of monster."
As he begins to fly straight up into the hole in the ceiling, Stun tosses down these last words, words that confuse the tiger Zoanthrope even more.
" And maybe... you don't deserve it."
Stun flies out, and we follow him, but slowly. We are torn now, unable to stay any longer (for we must visit another soon), but wanting to see Shenlong's reaction to such strange kindness. His reaction is simple. It is a complete loss of everything- words, thoughts, actions. He merely stares up into the space where Stun flew upwards, stares after the man who has just said the one thing he has wanted to hear his entire life. Who has told him that maybe he isn't a freak, a monster. That maybe he is not entirely wrong, in every way.
We reluctantly leave now, sure that Shenlong's next thoughts (when they recover) will be interesting, to say the least, but completely unable to stay. Our mission compels us ever onward, and we must go now to Long, the man Shenlong was cloned from. We leave Shenlong and fly into the night through cracks in the wall, and soon he is beyond our ability to sense. We let out a collective sigh. Oh well. Maybe his next few thoughts were not meant for us to peruse. We fly onward, into the night.
************************************************************************
Long's house, several blocks away. 12:35 p.m.
What we just saw was very active, very destructive, no? Very energetic. So let us go now to the complete antithesis of the factory we were just in. That was a huge place, sprawling, eerie, empty, everything inside dead save for the combatants fighting inside (and, of course, the wounded Jenny, still recovering from the Mark on her chest in Stun's little room, hearing the battle below her but unable to move or help Stun in any way). It was, in essence, the perfect place to have a great big battle: no civilans, plenty of interesting objects to get slammed into, and a great atmosphere to keep you entertained while you dodge punches. Quite a nice place, really.
This place is it's polar opposite. It is small, cramped, with few solid objects that would make combat more interesting, while also being less eerie and more cheerful. It is a small, prefabricated home, one of those so common in Japan, and the rent on the place is very cheap. Long is a librarian, and so cannot afford more than this little place. It's all he needs, though. Even the most pitiful of homes is a big step above a cave with grass bedding. We fly down and slip in through minute cracks in the walls so as to see the object of our attentions clearer.
Inside, the house continues it's trick of being small, quiet, and invisible. The first part is a long, twisting hallway, lined with shelf after shelf of books, most of them belonging to the library where Long works. They cover a huge variety of topics. The first covers we read (our eyes barely making them out in the dim light; bright light hurts Long's sensitive eyes) as we pass through this little entry hall deal with art, the next few with poetry, another with dancing, and at the end, a few classics ("Lord of the Flies", in another of those little quirks of Fate that are starting to crop up everywhere now that we have gained partial omniscience, lays on these shelves) sit to round out this small gathering of the arts. Past that, the details of the many wars mankind has waged with itself are collected, and even further past that, the art of combat is detailed, in the many ways it can be performed. The most well-thumbed book in this section (in fact, in the whole library) is the famous swordsman Musashi's "Book of Five Rings", detailing how the ancient samurai saw life. Though he never bathed and believed women were a waste of time, he was amazingly insightful into many other things, even going so far as to approach all life in five basic ways. Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, and Void. It is this last that Long ponders most often, especially when dealing with his youngest student, Uriko. He sees great potential in her, but sometimes that potential manifests itself in startling ways. The Void represents pure creation, the making of something out of nothing, the continual birth of the new. And that is a perfect fit for Uriko. She is fast, sometimes blindingly so, but at times this shifts and she becomes slower, more methodical, weaving in and out of attacks and striking with calm precision. At other times, her normally weak arms become sledgehammers, and she strikes with a rain of blows, ignoring subtlety and speed in favor of rapid fire strikes. And then again, she sometimes changes tactics and becomes counter based, not striking at all, barely moving save to turn some of his own attacks against him. She is strange, this young one. Her form is a half-beast, and he wonders sometimes if that is not the result of failed experimentation, but a reflection of her soul. She is young yet, and unformed, full of pure potential. And so her form is caught between human and animal, not really changing into any definite form like a lion or leopard, but just the generic form of "feline". He wonders if that will change as she ages. It is an interesting question, for this man who spends most of his time pondering such things. Yugo once joked, at a dinner Gado had hosted, that Long would eventually solve the riddle of life, all while sitting in his easy chair. Long, in his quiet way, had replied to great amusement all around that he'd already solved it and had moved on to the next question. Long is not a jester like Yugo, making a lovable fool out of himself, but he is a master of the deadpan delivery.
As we walk down this impromptu library, the walls of shelves turn right suddenly, forming a sharp corner. As we turn it, we walk down a small set of steps that Long built himself, and enter the living room. The first thing one notices is the fireplace. It is another of the many things here Long has built himself, and it is majestic in this small home. It is also completely out of place, but looks so nice that only the most die-hard interior decorators would ever raise a complaint about it. It is brick and burning quite cheerfully at the moment, lighting up the dim room with a pleasant amber glow. The gentle light of a fire is one of the few lights that Long can deal with; his eyes are very sensitive, and he's been blinded more than once by approaching cars who forget to turn off their lights. One of the abbreviated reasons he prefers to walk instead of drive. Long's eyes are not completely without power, however; as if to make up for their weakness in the day, they possess perfect night vision. In this dim glow, where even we have some trouble picking out details, Long can see minute cracks on the surface of the walls. Enhancing our sight as best as we can, we pick out other details of the room.
Continuing the library motif, the walls are packed with shelves of books, but these are different; these are memoirs and combat tutorials written by Long himself. He has published none of these publicly, and binds them himself, so no one knows they exist. Long sometimes loans the combat books to Uriko, to help her learn the Kenpo techniques he teaches, but as a general rule, the books stay here. He enjoys reading them in the dim and quiet of his home, reviewing and making corrections as necessary. Much like his feline counterpart, Long is a quiet man, and a loner. Though he enjoys the company of others, he does not require it to be happy. A true rarity, in a world where couples are the norm and the single are regarded as freaks.
Though, if Long had better skills with women, he would not be single for long. He likes Shina, and is even starting to believe he loves her... which is why he is so worried now. He heard a scream, some time ago, and it has contributed to a sense of general unease that permeates his thoughts. He is worried, this man. Worried about his love (though she is not his lover; Long is a virgin, having lived his life as, in order, an assassin, a hermit, and now a librarian, and hence is without knowledge in this aspect of life) and throughout this night he has been wrestling with his feelings, trying to pin them down. The ferocious itching on the upper right part of his leg has not helped at all; scratch as he might, he cannot make it quit itching. Soon enough, it will turn into a Crest.
Continuing our scan of the room, we notice him pacing it's small carpet floor, adjusting and readjusting his glasses as he tries furiously to ignore his leg. An enormous easy chair, the Japanese equivalent of a La-Z-Boy, lays in the center of the room, oriented so that the firelight will fall on whatever book Long is reading. If Long has a vice, it's that he loves comfort. Having lived in a cave for a good portion of his life, Long has an almost obsessive need to make his surroundings comfortable, to make his home luxurious in *his* sense of the word, to have a place he feels safe in. Just as his tiger counterpart will reject resting place after resting place because it feels uncomfortable there, so will Long constantly seek to make his home feel secure to him. The fact that as a Zoanthrope he is more secure in the middle of a battlefield than most normal humans are in a police station does little to ease his need. As we glance around, we notice that his needs have been ably met; this place oozes comfort, and after the very long and tiring night we've had so far, that couch looks most comfortable. But it is not our lot to sleep. We must trudge on, until the break of day and the strange new world it will herald.
And even then, the story might continue on.
Distracted by our survey of the room, we have not noticed Long stop his pacing. When we return our attention to him, we see that his brow is furrowed, as if he is coming to a decision. His looks grow steadily more and more concentrated until finally, with a violent shake of the head, he gathers his courage and grabs his keys. Running out into the night, he heads for the Mansion de Leo. He is going to check on Shina, and though it is a considerable run, this is a considerable man.
Silent as ghosts, we follow.
- Read and review, please. And to Tiger... put the bat down, please! :)