A Star to Guide Them By
Written by: Firefury Amahira
Standard disclaimer: All the stuff from Boktai I do not own. You can thank Konami for making the games and making them so damn fun to play and so addictive, too. All the non-canon material though is mine. Use it without my permission and be smited! I've had to put a lot of thought into the original material I use to fill out the plot!
Chapter One: Omens of a Potentially Ill Nature
"Can't sleep again, Django?"
With a startled yelp, the blond boy spun around only to find his brother standing in the path to the Solar Tree's plaza. The Dark Boy had a terrible habit of sneaking up on his Solar opposite, especially in the past several calm days following the sealing of the Doomsday Beast Jormungandr. Everyone involved was finally beginning to relax, and the besieged city of San Miguel was finally beginning to resume some semblance of normality. With the world no longer in any imminent danger, the unspoken consensus was to stay in the city for a time and fully recover from the battle with Dainn.
"I've been having trouble sleeping lately." Django admitted after a long moment, wondering to himself if Sabata was in one of his obnoxious or thoughtful moods. The Solar Boy assumed the latter when the purple-haired youth sat down in the grass next to him and contemplated the starry sky above.
"Just insomnia or is it because of that?" Sabata inquired once he'd gotten comfortable. There was no need to specify what "that" was; they both knew what had happened to the Solar Boy as part of Dainn's scheme.
The question was met with a long silence before Django responded with an uncertain, "I don't know. Maybe both."
Sabata wasn't particularly good at offering thoughtful, emotional support, but was smart enough not to give voice to the sharp remark that first came to mind regarding Django's decidedly awkward situation. Instead, the Dark Boy turned the conversation toward simpler, more mundane topics. "Even in ruins this city is something else." He remarked with a shrug toward the broken cityscape around them. "I never did get to see it before the Count wrecked it."
"That's too bad." Django agreed, followed by another long and awkward silence. The past several days had been full of similar short, fumbling conversations, the first prolonged time the brothers had shared without more immediate and life-threatening concerns dominating their thoughts. While they had left Istrakan together, they hadn't stayed around each other for long at all, Sabata had left claiming he had to do something for Carmilla's soul. The purple-haired youth's situation worried Django all the way back to San Miguel until the Dark Boy had shown up injured but otherwise intact in the desert ruins east of the city. That reunion had been short though, what with Django getting felled by a vampire bite, and then Sabata nearly getting himself killed using the Pile Driver to save the Solar Boy with mixed results. Django wondered what had become of Carmilla's soul, but Sabata hadn't offered up an explanation, and he wasn't going to pry.
"I wonder what Zazie and Master Otenko have been talking about all this time?" The Solar Boy tried another topic. He suspected he had found a good subject when he heard Sabata snort derisively next to him
"Otenko and that flower girl have been at it for two days now." Sabata grumbled. "Whatever it is, I bet it means more trouble for us."
Django stifled a snicker at Sabata's obvious disdain for Zazie. The Dark Boy and the Sunflower Girl seemed to have a mutual disliking for the other, and could seldom go more than a few minutes without exchanging insults. He assumed that Sabata wasn't used to people talking back to him without any measure of fear or even something resembling respect, and Zazie… well, she didn't take flak from anyone. Django could easily envision the spunky star-reader giving Black Dainn a most thorough tongue-lashing had the two ever crossed paths.
Sabata turned his head to glare briefly at the blond, apparently sensing his brother's amusement. "What's so funny?" He demanded.
"Just thinking." Django managed to keep most of the amusement out of his tone. "About what happened three days ago."
"Hmph!"
Three days ago, Sabata had made a rather critical mistake, ignoring Django's warnings. The Dark Boy had interrupted Zazie's nap. He was positively livid afterwards; well, after the Freeze spell finally thawed out, at least. The entire situation had been amusing, to put it mildly. But the next day, the star-reader had seemed incredibly uneasy, and had requested to speak in private with Otenko, who had readily obliged. After a few hours of presumably urgent discussion, the pair had emerged long enough to request they not be disturbed. They had hardly been seen since.
Silence opted to hover once more as the two boys regarded the sky overhead again, the first vestiges of dawn still several hours off.
"What are you going to do when you leave?" Django broke the silence with more small talk.
"Dunno." Sabata responded absently. "Haven't thought about it. You?"
The Solar Boy shrugged. "I'd like to go back to Sol City." He admitted. "I didn't get to see much of it when we were there."
"If what Dainn said is true, San Miguel's the same kind of place as Sol City." Sabata pointed out.
"Except San Miguel has been grounded to keep Jormungandr sealed for ages. That's a big difference." Django countered.
Further conversation on the matter was halted by the bright slash of a shooting star across the night sky. A shooting star that seemed far too low, large, and bright for any normal shooting star. Both the boys jumped to their feet as the plaza was bathed in the eerie silver light of the thing. The meteor was distinguishable from the bright plume of its tail, a loose cloud of superheated stuff, bits and pieces tearing away from the edges as it plummeted.
While the two watched, the meteor seemed to visibly swerve its course and slow down noticeably before it disappeared behind the walls of the city instead of striking somewhere within the city itself. A moment later a flash of light lit the area as bright as day and a low rumble akin to a thunderclap rocked the ground and rolled over the city.
Before the last echoes of the blast had faded, both Django and Sabata were running in the direction of the fallen star, weapons ready. Zazie and Otenko met them on the way to the gates, both looking oddly disturbed. Lita, perhaps the only one who had actually been sleeping, was slower to arrive, having been rousted by the commotion.
"What happened?" The Earthly Maiden asked sleepily. "What was that noise?"
"It looked like a shooting star." Django offered by way of explanation.
"Except shooting stars don't crash land like that." Sabata muttered as the small group approached the area where the thing came down.
"Well quit yer chitchat already an' let's see what it is!" Zazie snapped at the purple-haired boy, though it was obvious her mind was occupied with matters other than sniping at Sabata.
Oddly enough, the impact site didn't look much like an impact crater. There was a very shallow depression in the ground, ringed by charred and flattened grass and shrubs, steaming bits of stone and metal littering the area, presumably what was left of the original meteor. The scent of ozone, and oddly enough, burned hair and flesh tinged the area, not yet dispersed by the breeze.
"Phew. What stinks?" Zazie covered her nose and fanned the air in front of her while she peered over the darkened crater, her gaze falling on the faint reflection of moonlight off a silver and red form. Her startled gasp quickly drew the attention of the others.
Sabata, having the best night vision of those present (with the possible exception of Django if the Solar Boy changed to his vampire form), picked his way through the maze of still-hot debris to what was unmistakably in his eyes a girl, curled up on her side, the scorched remains of what had likely been a fine silver robe barely keeping her decent, most of her pale skin marred and bloodied by burns and lacerations, her long hair a tangled, matted mess, and a surprisingly unscathed cloth-wrapped bundle held close to her stomach, shielded from most of the damage by the curve of her body.
"She's alive." The Dark Boy concluded loud enough for the rest to hear him after noting the weak rise and fall of the girl's chest. "But I don't think she will be for long. She's in sorry shape."
Questions would have to wait. Who the girl was, where she came from and why, what did she have to do with that meteor? Django and Sabata carefully carried their unconscious visitor, while Lita gathered up the bundle of what was likely the strange girl's belongings. Zazie and Otenko trailed behind the procession in quiet discussion.
"Omens don't come any more blatant than that, y'know." Zazie gestured in the direction of the girl. The sun's messenger bobbed his head in agreement.
"I don't doubt she's your 'fallen star'." Otenko agreed, concern coloring his voice. "The question is, what about the other elements from your star reading? The 'Star of Darkness', the 'last bastion of the kindred'?"
"If I knew, I'd tell ya." She shrugged. "If that 'fallen star' there lives, maybe she kin tell us."
In short order, the girl was delivered to the inn and into the care of Lita and Zazie, who both made it quite clear to Django, Sabata, and Otenko that there would be dire consequences if the guys peeked in on the girl while they undressed her and treated her wounds.
The trio stood with identical expressions of surprise at the now-closed door for a long moment before retreating to the common room on the lower floor.
"With that girl's arrival, there's something I should explain." Otenko interrupted the silence, the attention of the two boys quickly focusing on the little flower. "You recall the star-reading by Zazie's mentor which predicted Black Dainn's actions and the events surrounding the Ancestor Piece?"
Django nodded glumly, while Sabata crossed his arms and voiced a brief confirmation. "So what does that have to do with this?"
"Two days ago, Zazie performed her own star reading, and it resulted in some unsettling prophecy." Otenko explained, pausing briefly before reciting the star reading from memory. "When the grand twilight draws to a close, The Star of Darkness will rise, And bring down its Judgment upon the world. A lone fallen star shall make itself known, And once again lead the dance of the Heavens. Those thought lost shall awaken, And face a reckoning of defeat, When the Sun shines on the last bastion of the kindred, The ending of their own design will fall."
"'Star of Darkness'-?" Sabata frowned in thought.
"An Immortal?" Django glanced at his brother.
"Not one that I know of." The Dark Boy admitted. "Maybe it's something else?"
"What particularly concerns me is the 'fallen star' upstairs." Otenko gestured at the stairs with one leaf-like appendage. "I have a suspicion about what she is and perhaps where she may be from. If I'm correct, her arrival could be a very good thing or a very bad thing."
That had the attention of both the boys, who simultaneously showered the sun spirit with questions.
"Her arrival leaves little doubt, if she did arrive by way of that meteor." Otenko paused, pondering how best to explain information that he himself had only learned secondhand about a time before he had come to Earth to protect the life on the blue planet. "Before I came to this world, there was another race, perhaps more ancient than both the Solar and Lunar Children."
Django and Sabata exchanged glances at that. Something that the sun spirit didn't know much about with any certainty was rare. "Another race?"
"Just as there were entire civilizations aligned with the Sun and the Moon, I learned from the Solar Children during Sol City's prime of an older group who claimed alignment with the stars, and had built massive floating cities long before they had even dreamed of such things." Otenko continued.
"Star Children?" Sabata guessed. He briefly wondered if Hel had known of such people. If she had, the Queen had never mentioned it in his presence.
"Lacking another name for them, yes." The flower nodded. "But I was told they had all disappeared a long time ago, the greatest of their cities simply lifted into the sky and disappeared, the rest of their cities failing in the same feat and crashing to earth. The survivors had all passed away years prior, and no one knew the fate of the Star Home."
"You think that city not only still exists, but actually has people living in it?" Sabata looked and sounded quite dubious. "It took Hel a lot of time and effort to gather enough power just to lift her fortress into space. I can't imagine what it would take to raise an entire city!"
"By all accounts I was told, they were exceedingly powerful." Otenko stated flatly. "With even the least among them stronger in the magical arts than the Queen, by several orders of magnitude. Her castle likely would have been a simple matter for them."
"So depending on that girl's intentions, if she is from that city, she could be helping against the Star of Darkness, or a very dangerous opponent?" Django summarized neatly.
"Whatever that is." Sabata snorted.
"I imagine we'll find that out soon enough."
Author's notes: Yay, stuff that makes sense to the reader, right? Done with the vague stuff and on to the stuff with the characters you all give a care about! For the record, Zazie is a pain in the ass to write.
As always, comments appreciated, flames not!