Once in a Lifetime

see disclaimer in Part 1

"Who are you?"

That was the disconcerting thing. This strange girl, although vaguely familiar, was definitely not someone Lisa knew on personal terms.

She was taller than the 5'5'' ex-prostitute by a good two or three inches, and her cold, lofty demeanor only helped accentuate that fact. She was dressed almost completely in black--midnight-colored cargo pants, weighted down with silver chains, low-slung on perfect hips; black, clingy middy T-shirt with a faint gray "e" inscribed over the bust; black armwarmers, decorated with a series of interlinked silver rings along the backs of the hands and laces along the inner arms; dark leather army boots, scarred with usage; iron collar that encircled her slim throat, much like the one Kaze had worn... Her hair, a thick, dull silver, was bound firmly into four braids--two framed her perfect oval face; the other two stuck up as stubbornly as if the hair had been wound around strong wire. The girl's messy bangs cascaded into her face, but did not conceal her frosty silver-gray eyes, which bored into Lisa with a distinct look of mixed disapproval and distaste. Her facial features were a little too prominent to be Japanese, but she didn't exactly look European either, as, say, Kaze and Colin Byrne did. Her lips were plush and perfect, and had been painted a perfect metallic blue, catching the light reflecting from every nearby source; her complexion was deathly pale, hardly more than white. She was cute, in a gothic sort of way, if you were into that kind of thing, but Lisa was paying more attention to the fact that she knew things she couldn't possibly know, especially considering that Lisa didn't know her at all.

"How far you've fallen," the strange girl repeated, blatantly ignoring Lisa's blunt question. "I expected more out of you, considering how besotted Kaze was with you. But I suppose I was wrong... you don't look at all worthy of him."

Indignation flared in Lisa's chest, even as she wondered how the hell this cheeky girl knew about Kaze anyway. "Don't talk about things you don't understand."

The girl folded her arms and curled her lip, now looking down her nose at the other woman with intense dislike in her eyes. "You're right, I don't understand. I don't have any idea where you went wrong, when you had so much good going for you. I doubt that this is where you wanted to end up when you took on that assignment to look for the Hayakawas--"

Lisa's eyes narrowed. This was altogether too suspicious. How did she know these things?

"Or even when you came to Japan from Russia, after completing your training in Kigenjutsu... you worked very hard to succeed your mother, I'm told, and achieved mastery on your own, since she was the last of her abililty level--"

Another suspicious thing, Lisa realized, was that none of the passersby even seemed to notice her... they'd at least look, at this going rate. The girl wasn't exactly bothering to keep her voice down, after all.

"Or when you had to move to Russia from China, where you were born, your mother's death fresh in your mind. I'm under the impression that she and your father taught you right from wrong, and how to make choices, even before you were introduced to the concept of Kigenjutsu--"

"What business is my life of yours?" Lisa asked coldly, standing up to face this bizarre girl, her iced latte completely forgotten.

"It's your business, and my coming here is about you, Miss Hatsufiist. Clever, by the way, to change your name--no one could trace you, once you'd gotten the agency's protection--"

"Who are you?" Lisa repeated.

"No business of yours," the girl said with a snort. "Now, tell me, before I lose my patience entirely... where did you go wrong? I'm not sure that Mommy's little Risa-chan came to Japan planning to wander the streets like a common whore... or to be one, even for a little while."

"What do you care?"

"I care because you need to start doing the right thing... if not for Kaze's sake, then for his child's. I care because it's my job to find out... if you discovered where you went wrong, and you had the chance to go back and change it, would you?"

"What are you talking about? Of course I'd change it!" Lisa exploded. "You think I want to be here? You think I wanted to watch the love of my life die right before my eyes! You think I want to live knowing my parents would be ashamed to call me their daughter, homeless and about to bear a child out of wedlock? I never wanted this to happen!"

"Then I'd say it would be a good idea to find out what you did wrong, wouldn't you?" the girl asked coldly.

"WHO ARE YOU? And why do you know so much about me?" Lisa demanded again.

"I didn't find out any of this firsthand," the girl explained, hands on her hips. "I was told. Of course I wanted to intervene, considering where you're heading. Never make the mistake of believing you're the only one who ever cared about Kaze. I don't really like you, but I know he loved you, and I know you need help. For Kaze's sake, listen to what I'm trying to tell you. You need to realize your mistakes, and find out whether or not you'd really correct them if you could."

"You still haven't answered my question," Lisa said, her mouth suddenly very dry.

The girl shook her head; for the first time, Lisa realized that her left ear was pierced, and that she was wearing a silver pendant earring. "Aura Hougekiju. You don't know me, but I knew Kaze and thanks to her information, I know you." She turned to leave, but not before Lisa got a clearer look at that earring.

Going completely white, Lisa began to shake. "It can't be," she said softly.

The strange girl, Aura, looked over her shoulder and gave Lisa a long, piercing stare, then walked away, vanishing in the crowd.

Lisa didn't try to follow her, but sat down very quickly. It couldn't be. She just couldn't be...

"Where did you get this?"

"My sister... each of us had one."

It couldn't be.

It simply couldn't be.

And if it was--even though it was impossible--how could someone like that have gotten here? The interdimensional subway, Elizabeth, had been destroyed long ago...

---

Lisa Heartbreaker and Colin Byrne were married exactly three months after Lisa Pacifist had died, lamenting the loss of her beloved.

By that time, Lisa Byrne's lower belly had visibly swollen; there was a new, delicate curve to her body, small in comparison to the form it would take, but still full. Placing her hands on the curve, Lisa would reminisce, and wonder if her child would ever know the story of its true father.

Although there were a few days when Lisa Byrne wanted to tell her husband about the girl named Aura, she never did. She never even explained her past to the new man who shared her bed.

Lisa never went back to work--any kind of work. Simply existing in the faceless purgatory of her faceless husband, she completed menial tasks, such as cleaning, laundry, and cooking. Her life slowly became so bland, so formulaic, that of every other faceless housewife in her country, that she sometimes wondered if her ill-fated journey in Wonderland had even been real.

The only proof she had was the three-month swell of her own pregnant belly.

And the distant glow of the blacklit pillar that loomed on the horizon.

And the still-vivid waking dreams that stole her mind whenever Colin Byrne had his way with her body, the vivid dreams that pursued her into her sleep.

Lisa Pacifist, the perfectly extraordinary young woman, had become perfectly ordinary, her bright soul subjugated into little more than a dull, fading spark.

But sometimes...

Some dark nights, when her foreign husband lay asleep upon her...

The vision of a girl, silver braids and black dress flying, would haunt her mind, her frosty gray eyes at once desperate and passionate and sad.

And she would hear again the words that had woken her in the middle of the night:

"If you discovered where you went wrong, and you had the chance to go back and change it, would you?"

(TBC)