Author's Note: I take a couple of small liberties with canon in this story. It's set during Gatchaman II, so Joe's a cyborg...but they still have their original vehicles and weapons, and a life outside of G-Town. Apologies to Tatsunoko... :-)
Standard disclaimer: I adore them, but sadly don't own them. Sigh.
THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA
PART III
"...we commit his body to the ground..."
His eyes fixed on the grass in front of his black, polished shoes, Ken started as a familiar figure slid up next to him. "Damn, are you still here? I thought this'd be all over by now."
"Joe, shhh!" Ken hissed.
"...earth to earth..."
He felt rather than saw the shrug. He frowned, belatedly noticing that the legs beside him were clad in jeans and the shoes definitely weren't black or polished. "Where's your suit? Hakase will have a fit..."
"...ashes to ashes, dust to dust..."
"Ken, are you ever going to quit lecturing me?"
Ken glanced quickly at the others, relieved that nobody appeared to have heard them. Jun was quietly weeping, Jinpei and Ryu either side of her, red-eyed but silent. Nambu stood on the far side of them, staring down at the grave, normally impassive face etched in pain.
"The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him..."
He swallowed his anger with an effort. "Why weren't you at the church?"
"I shot a priest, Ken. I don't belong in a place like that any more."
Ken stared at him. "What is going on with you?"
There was amusement in the deep, rumbling voice. "You don't know where you are, do you?"
"Of course I..." Off Joe's level stare, Ken frowned, suddenly uncertain. He looked around, at the grave...and then he saw it, the smooth polished granite of the memorial marker, the red-roped enclosure, the grassy slope below that led to the edge of the cliff. The ocean beyond it, blue and endless.
"...and be gracious unto him and give him peace..."
Oh, God. Oh, dear God. Joe...
He swung back quickly, heart lurching in his chest. But the Condor was gone, leaving only his footprints...rimmed in blood in the grass.
"I think he's coming round..."
The words didn't make sense at first – he knew what the sounds were, but his mind couldn't attach a meaning. He floated just beneath the surface of consciousness, seeing the figures above him as if he were lying on the bottom of a pool and they were gathered around the edge, gazing down at him. Their images rippled and distorted like watercolors, and he closed his eyes again as the movement made his stomach churn.
"Ken? Can you hear me? Ken?"
Jun. Ken opened his eyes in shock, his vision a little clearer now. It's her, it's really her... He moved his head a fraction toward her, tried to speak.
Relief washed over her face. "Shhh, take it easy. You've had a bad time."
His whole body hurt. He tried to move again, bit back a groan of pain. "Where..."
"G-Town," Ryu's voice told him. "You're back home."
G-Town's not my home. The thought rippled through his mind but was gone before he could catch hold of it. He tried to make his dry lips and throat cooperate again.
"Do you want some water?" Jun asked.
Water... His eyes went wide as it all came rushing back with the force of the tidal wave that had almost drowned him. Drowned... "Joe!" he gasped, trying to sit up, body screaming in agony at the attempt. "Joe..."
Jun gripped his hand. "Ken, listen to me. Joe's going to be all right. We got you both in time."
Ken's eyes locked on hers. "Where..."
"He's nearby, don't worry."
Ken's fingers closed on hers like a vise. "Show me." He needed, desperately, to see for himself, to quell the panic that was rising inside him like a choking flood.
Jun looked up. Ken followed her glance, saw Nambu there at the foot of the bed, hands on Jinpei's shoulders...probably as much to restrain his enthusiasm as anything. Ken was happy to see that although his hands were bandaged and there were dark smudges under his eyes, the youngest member of the team seemed none the worse for wear after surviving his own trials on board the mecha.
Nambu gave Jun a brief nod and moved to the left. Ken turned his head slowly and painfully to watch as the professor opened the curtains that separated the room into two. Tears of relief burned at the back of his eyes as he saw Joe in the other bed, hooked up to a maze of tubes and electrodes. The rhythm of his heart monitor sounded nice and steady, music to Ken's ears.
He couldn't help an involuntary shudder at the memory of how close it had been this time. How very close to a repeat of Cross Karakoram, even if this time they would have had a body to bury.
"There," Jun said. "I told you. Everything's going to be okay."
He nodded, sinking back gratefully against the pillows. Just that brief effort had exhausted him – he could feel the sweat plastering the thin cotton of the hospital gown to the back of his neck.
"That's better," she said. "You need your rest." She leaned over him, smiling reassuringly, smoothing the damp tendrils of hair out of his eyes. "Now give me the override code for G-Town's core systems control."
Ken stared at her. "What?"
Something was flashing at the side of his vision. Jun's eyes turned hard and dark, her face morphing before his eyes, her voice becoming shrill and harsh. He wanted to yell but he was frozen to the spot, unable to move a muscle. His surroundings shimmered and broke, collapsing around him, turning to water...
Water...
The first thing he recognized was the smell.
There was nothing else he'd ever known that smelled like that...like industrial strength antiseptic mouthwash crossed with the thing you can't find that's rotting in the back of the refrigerator. Regen fluid.
He forced his eyes open.
"Ah, Gatchaman. Nice of you to rejoin us."
Gel Sadra! The jolt of adrenaline lent strength to his efforts. Blinking past the stabbing pain of the light, he focused enough to see the familiar, purple-masked figure smiling down at him. That voice...it was unmistakeably the same one that Jun's voice had changed into, in his...dream? Was that what it had been?
Was this a dream, too?
His stomach lurched as he realized he had no way to tell anymore.
Gradually more details of his situation bled through to his pain-fogged consciousness. He was still in his civvies, slumped on the floor against the wall of a large chamber. Was he still on the mecha? Couldn't be, it would have split open like a tin can by now... But where...? He stared dully at the blood and vomit that mingled on the floor beside and in front of him, both presumably his own.
Gel Sadra was seated in a heavy metal chair in front of him, her long legs crossed and tucked sideways in a bizarrely demure pose that seemed at odds with the costume she wore. Behind her stood a half circle of Galactor soldiers, two deep. They weren't taking any chances...he heard the percussive double click of a dozen rounds being thrown into rifle chambers as he tried to drag himself more upright against the metal wall.
Gel Sadra raised a hand to forestall any of her guard with an itchy trigger finger. "Fools, he's not going anywhere."
She leaned toward Ken. There was something long, thin and metallic in her other hand, but he couldn't quite make out what it was. "Now where were we? Ah, yes, you were going to tell us all about how to override G-Town's core systems control."
Ken stared up at her, wondering how long he'd been here, how long this questioning had been going on. Wondering why he couldn't remember. The pain was a thick haze at the edges of his vision, and breathing took almost all the strength he had left. He could hear the faint whistling bubble of fluid in his lungs. "You're wasting...your time... You must know...I'll never..."
She made an impatient sound and swung up the thin metal wand. Burning agony slashed through his body, a pain so unspeakably hideous that it robbed him of breath and thought. Every muscle and nerve snapped rigid, his back arched so tight his spine was going to snap at any second. He couldn't even scream.
When she let him go, the relief was so total that he collapsed like a shattered marionette, unable to do anything but sob for breath. His body felt like it should be smoking, the aftermath of the current sparking and twitching across his nerves.
"You're not in a position to "never" anything, Gatchaman," Gel Sadra snapped.
"Gel Sadra-sama...if I might have a word..."
Ken made his head move enough to focus blurrily on the man who had stepped up beside the Galactor leader's chair. All he could reliably make out was that he was dressed in a white coat.
"Make it quick," Gel Sadra demanded. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
"Yes, Gel Sadra-sama. It's the Condor. He's regaining consciousness."
Joe... Ken's heart sang with hope in his exhausted, battered body. Joe wasn't dead! There was still a chance...
Gel Sadra rose from her chair and turned, waving impatiently for the circle of Galactor soldiers to clear her eyeline. Ken's breath caught as his clearing vision registered what she was looking at. A regen tank. That was the source of the smell he had recognized when he had first awakened.
He hated regen. Quite apart from the odor, he hated the claustrophobic feeling of full suspension in the thick, viscous fluid, breathing entirely through a specialized oxygen mask sealed tightly to his face with tape that hurt like hell when they peeled it off again. He hated the way it made his skin itch for days afterwards, a side-effect of the accelerated cell growth the process produced. And almost more than anything, he hated the color. Bright, cheerful, Pepto Bismol pink.
Of course, Nambu and the other doctors just ignored such complaints, talking about the process with an almost religious fervor. It was easy to understand why – without the regen fluid and the rest of the ISO's related arsenal of accelerated-healing drugs and procedures, the Kagaku Ninja Tai would have been out of business long ago. Regen could take a badly injured Science Ninja and put him back in the game in less than a week, a timetable most medicine that called itself modern could only dream of achieving. And staying in the game was the only way they had even a hope of winning this war.
And now here he was...wherever here was...staring at a regen tank in the hands of Galactor. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised that they had the same technology...for all he knew, Nambu had acquired it from the enemy in the first place. It was that kind of ongoing game they were playing, like a technological tug of war, each team continuously pulling each other backward and forward over the line.
The Condor was suspended in the tank in a harness attached overhead to an articulated metal arm, his chest dotted with wireless electrodes, breathing mask obscuring the lower part of his face. He wasn't moving.
"He doesn't look like he's waking up to me," Gel Sadra muttered ominously.
But then she saw it, and so did Ken. One of Joe's hands moved.
"Ah," she said. "Our last guest is about to join the party. I tried to have a nice talk with him earlier, but he wasn't quite well enough. You'll have fun watching me hurt him, won't you, Gatchaman?"
She turned around and looked down her nose at him, laughing. Hatred boiled over in Ken's veins. You touch him, bitch, and it'll be the last thing you ever do...
And then, in the tank, the Condor's eyes snapped open. Ken could see the whites around them, stark with terror. It took Ken a moment – then it hit him. Shit, he doesn't know where he is, and the last thing he remembers is drowning...
Joe's body convulsed, chest heaving, flailing uselessly in the harness. "Joe," Ken gasped, trying to get enough breath into his tortured lungs to shout. "Joe!"
Gel Sadra wheeled back toward the tank, staring at the Condor's furiously twisting form in the tank, the regen liquid boiling around him. "Pull him out before he breaks something, you idiots," she snapped to the technicians milling around in front of the permaplex.
White coats ran back and forth, shouting. The lift motor began to whine. Ken's eyes swung back to the tank...just in time to see Joe start tearing at his breathing mask.
No, no, no, no...
Desperation fuelled Ken's efforts to move, to force his body to work. "Joe, Joe, stop!" But it was useless, the Condor couldn't see him, let alone hear him.
Above him, the whine of the lift motor stopped. One of the techs started cursing and jabbing at the controls.
In ghastly slow motion, Ken watched the tape rip away from Joe's face.
There was a roaring in his ears, drowning out all other sound as everything narrowed down to one tiny, excruciating pinpoint of focus. He was on his feet without knowing how he got there, his whole being pure purpose, moving without thought. He launched himself forward, grabbing the metal arms of Gel Sadra's chair with both hands and hauling it off the floor. He heard the great whoosh of air as he swung it around his head in a high arc, then it tore itself out of his grip and he watched it sail through the air toward the tank.
The dull roar of gunfire sounded as if it was coming from a long way away. Then his body couldn't support him anymore and he smacked back down on his knees, no breath in his lungs, the agony so bad it felt like his chest was crushed. He could do nothing to hold back the blackness that rushed toward the center of his vision.
Joe...
The chair crashed into the glass. For an endless moment nothing happened...then cracks appeared, splintering out from the point of impact like a bright, jagged spider web. There was a sound like a grenade exploding, striking hard and sharp at his ears. Then the tank burst outwards, a tidal wave of liquid and razor sharp shards of glass coming straight at him.
He never felt it hit.
"Give him to me. I can't believe you did such a thing to your own son! He could have drowned!"
"Oh, don't fuss, woman. He's perfectly fine. Children are tough – trust me, I know."
"Baka! He's just a small child!"
"He's a Washio. And he'll have to do better than that if he's going to survive what's coming."
"What do you mean, 'what's coming?'"
"Never mind. Here, give me that blanket. Ken? Ken, you listen to your father. You're going to be all right, understand? Everything's going to be all right."
Everything's going to be all right...
Everything...
There was sky above him.
Pale blue, with high, scudding clouds. He was flat on his back in the open air – a steady, cold breeze blew across his face, filled with the scents of flowers and grasses and other organic things. Nothing like the stale barrenness of recycled atmosphere, with its vague leftover odors that you couldn't really identify.
And he was in birdstyle.
After a moment, Ken moved cautiously, turning his head to one side to take in his surroundings. Grass brushed his cheek below the curve of his visor – tough, scrubby, high altitude grass. He was in some sort of rocky clearing in the mountains, strewn with patches of snow and bordered by high dark crags. He could hear the wind moaning and sighing through the gaps and fissures between them.
He frowned. Scattered through the clearing were tall dark shapes that looked almost like...
He rolled the other way and came up hard against looming gray stone. His eyes traveled up it, knowing what he was going to see.
No, no, please, anywhere but here, anywhere...
There was something spread out under him, beside the stone, something old and crusted that stained the stunted grass a muddy rusted brown. It took him a moment to realize what it was, what it had to be ...
This was the place. The exact place where...
The jaws of a vise clamped down on his heart, threatening to crack it open. He hurled himself away, hyperventilating, adrenaline spiking so hard in his veins that he was gasping for breath. He managed to get up on one knee before the pain caught up with him with a vengeance, punishing him for moving far too quickly for his injured body. The world did a sickening revolve, his vision draining away, the blood roaring in his ears. He grabbed blindly for the support of another fallen statue, fighting the black, sparking fog in front of his eyes and the dry retching of his stomach.
The monoliths of Cross Karakoram stood unmoved, mocking him with their silence.
Ken hung on grimly until he could see again. Slowly he raised his head, looked around the clearing in front of him. The broken ground, the fallen statues. This wasn't real. It couldn't be.
Any more real than the voice that came from behind a monolith about twelve feet away.
"You should be in a hospital, Gatchaman."
Ken's head snapped up. Katse stepped out from behind the stone column. He laughed at Ken's instant pose of battle readiness. "Look at you...Nambu Hakase's little puppet. Half dead, should just lie down and give up – but you see the color purple and you slobber at the mouth like one of Pavlov's dogs."
Ken stared at him, not trusting his voice yet...trying not to show how hard he was gripping the rough stone just to keep himself upright.
"Of course, we're both puppets, really." Katse sighed, sitting down heavily on a boulder in front of the monolith. "Look at us. We're ridiculous. We both run around hiding our faces from the world, and neither one of us ever had a choice."
"Speak for yourself," Ken said. "I had a choice."
"Oh, you did, did you? Tell me about it, Gatchaman." Katse leaned forward, arms on his upper thighs. "Come on, don't be shy! Tell your Uncle Berg all about the time you came home at fourteen and confessed to Papa Nambu you weren't going to be a Science Ninja after all – you'd had an epiphany while dissecting frogs in science class and you wanted to be a surgeon instead! Or how about when you were sixteen, and you told him to lock up the dojo and throw away the key, because you'd met the girl of your dreams and you were moving to the beach to raise six kids and open a surf shop! Or..."
"Shut up, Katse." Ken spat through gritted teeth. The pain had receded enough now that he could use his grasp of the fallen statue to haul himself to his feet. Angling his body slightly away, concealing the movement against the stone, he slid his hand slowly back to his belt. His fingers closed around the head of the birdrang.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up..." Katse's head bobbed from side to side as he repeated the words in a sing song mantra, trailing away discordantly at the end. "Oh, that makes me homesick...Sosai used to say that to me all the time." His voice turned mournful. "Nobody ever has any compassion for me. They never think about how hard I had it, bossed around all the time by that intergalactic imbecile..."
Ken gave a snort of disbelief. "How hard you had it?"
"You have no idea." The tone of the hard, quiet words chilled Ken to the bone. He was taken aback momentarily, stood there just looking. Then anger rippled through him and he shook it off.
"I felt sorry for you once. Then you killed my father...and Joe. You don't deserve my pity, let alone my compassion."
Katse chuckled. "Fine speeches as usual, Gatchaman. And anyway, I didn't kill the Condor, although I have to admit I gave it the old college try. Do you know how many bullets he took? Gah. Hell even spat him back out. Indigestible, I fancy."
"Looks like it spat you back out, too." Ken gauged the distance between himself and the former Galactor leader. Could he get a clean throw, did he have the strength? Could his ribs take it? He was only going to get one chance.
"Circus freaks aren't welcome anywhere, Gatchaman," Katse said, shaking his head as if admonishing Ken for not knowing such a basic truth. "Not even hell."
"You're not a circus freak, you're a monster," Ken ground out. "My only regret is that I didn't kill you when I had the chance."
"Kill me?" Katse laughed, the sound like glass bells breaking. "Sosai would never have let you kill me. Sosai loved me."
Ken snorted. "Are we talking about the same Sosai who took off for outer space right after he told you his Black Hole plan was about to destroy the earth? The same earth he promised you would rule for him?"
Katse's shoulders sagged. "He was my God, you know," he said wistfully. "I would have done anything for him." His voice slid into a savage hiss. "Bastard."
He looked back up at Ken, sing-song again. Ken had to stifle a cold shiver at the continual, unnerving changes of mood. "Galactor is like a hydra, Gatchaman. Cut off one head and the many that remain will live on to fight again, stronger than ever. Mark my words, one day your kind will be gone from this earth and we will prevail."
"No." Ken's jaw set in a hard, grim line. "Mark my words, Katse. We beat you once, we'll beat you again. And we'll keep on doing it, as many times as it takes."
Katse giggled. "Speeches again." He stood up. "Oh, go on, give me the one about the white shadow that slips in unseen. For old times' sake. I used to love that one!"
"You're insane," Ken said, shaking his head.
"I'm dead," Katse pointed out tartly. "I can be anything I want."
He knows he's dead. Ken's mind raced. Does that mean I'm dead, too? Because if I am...
Then he couldn't be hurt anymore. None of this was real...not Katse, not Cross Karakoram...not even his injuries.
The crippling pain was gone. Blown away, evaporated, like water on the breeze. Ken straightened up, taking a deep, deep breath for the first time in what felt like forever. "Thank you," he said, his mouth curving up in a wolfish grin.
Katse stared at him, body language suddenly oozing uneasiness. "Nani?"
Ken's arm moved so fast the birdrang was flying from his fingers almost before he'd had the thought to throw it. Katse shrieked, body twisting to avoid the wicked silver blades. The weapon whipped past him, so close that Ken saw sudden daylight through the gash it tore open in his purple cloak. And then Katse was gone, racing full tilt across the broken ground.
Ken yelled in frustration, snatching the birdrang out of the air as it completed its return arc. So close, so close...
He launched himself forward, giving chase.
Katse ran with astonishing speed, dodging monoliths and hurdling boulders without the slightest pause or hesitation. At first it took everything Ken had to keep up with him on the unfamiliar terrain, but after a few moments he hit his stride and began to close the gap. It felt unbelievably good to be back – body pumping like the superbly conditioned machine it was, legs pistoning him forward, wings flying straight back from his shoulders in the wind of his passing. Not this time. You're not getting away from me this time.
Ahead of him, Katse disappeared.
The thought barely had time to register before Ken was hurtling through the air. He yelled out in surprise, tumbling into a forward somersault, coming out right side up as his wings instinctively snapped out to slow his fall. Down he went, down into the darkness, swooping after the receding echo of Katse's manic laughter.
An eerie flickering glow washed across his eyes as he emerged into open space. He had only a second to register the hard, blue-gray angles that swept past him before the ground was on him. He rolled to break the impact, the birdrang back in his hand by the time he was upright again. He held the defensive crouch, sweeping his surroundings.
The vise clamped back down around his heart. He was back in the ruined control room of the Cross Karakoram base.
No mistaking this place, not even for a second. He'd been back here a hundred times since the end of the first war, in his dreams. Even without the photographs in the piles of reports he'd ploughed through during the exhaustive investigation between the wars, when the ISO and UN teams had been taking apart this place rivet by rivet to figure out what had really happened here, he could never have forgotten the tall, darkly-curving walls, their smooth lines marred with massive jagged cracks, or the line of instrument banks all around their base, all of them quiet and dark now. His eyes fell on the oversized globe he had used to bludgeon Katse in their last battle, jammed up against a ruined panel, half its once-perfect sphere caved in like a broken skull. And beside it, the vast archway into what had once been Sosai X's communication chamber...the place where Berg Katse had communed with his alien god. The far end of it, where the viewscreen had been, was nothing but a pile of rubble, now – the rock torn open like paper by that god's abrupt and violent departure. The shifting red glow that licked across the steel walls was only reflection from the deep lava pit beyond the shattered wall, Ken knew. Even through the birdstyle, it was warm down here.
Purple flashed past his vision. Ken shot to his feet and raced after it, through another high metal arch into the chamber that had held the missile loading machinery for the Black Hole Plan. The machinery that Joe had jammed, through sheer luck, with the feather shuriken with which he had intended to take Katse's life. He had missed Katse...but saved the entire world.
The timer was still intact on the shattered display panel. And it still read 0002.
Ken cornered Katse at the far end of the chamber, sweating, trying to shake off the memories. "Why are we here?" he demanded. "Why?"
"Why are you always blaming me for everything?" Katse blabbered, staring around frantically for a way past him. "It's not my fault that everyone around you has a bigger death wish than you do!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Ken could see the hole that had been blown in the wall when Sosai X's last bomb had detonated in the wrong place, destroying the machinery that had been dropping it and its fellow missiles to the earth's core. He shuddered as he remembered trying to climb inside to stop it with his bare hands, a suicide mission that had been halted only by Jun's hysterical pleas.
Katse's words took a moment to register on him. "What the hell does that mean?" he demanded.
"Your father wants to go out in a blaze of glory, it's my fault. The Condor wants to beat you to saving the world, it's my fault. All you do is whine and blame me. As if I had anything to do with any of it."
All Ken could see was the red mist that descended in front of his eyes. He roared Katse's name and charged.
His first blow launched Katse halfway across the room, landing him awkwardly over a chunk of broken rock. Ken was on him at once, dragging him up, swinging him over his head and dashing his body back to the concrete floor. He dimly heard Katse screaming, a high, thin sound in the emptiness of the control chamber. But he didn't even think about stopping...the rage was burning cleanly now, like a hard, diamond-bright flame inside him. And it felt good. So very, very good.
Somehow, Katse summoned the strength to defend himself. He caught Ken's arm as it came chopping down, surprising the Eagle enough that he was flying through the air before he knew what was happening. Ken arced down into a handstand, springing out of it to land on his feet.
Katse was running. Ken was right behind him.
Katse skidded in a hard right turn into Sosai X's chamber, shrieking pleas to his god. Ken's mind flooded with the memories of their last fight, the way Katse had screamed the same things then. "Sosai can't save you now!" he snarled. "You're mine, Katse. Like you should have been two years ago. Mine."
Katse skidded to a halt at the edge of the lava pit, swinging around, babbling and frothing at the mouth. "You'll never take me alive, Gatchaman! Never!"
There was a brief, frozen pause. Then Ken did one of the things that made him Gatchaman. He sprang, launching his body through the air a split second before Katse made the conscious decision to swing around toward toward the pit.
The distance was only a few feet, but it seemed to take forever. Each heartbeat was separate and distinct in his ears, each intake of breath – Katse's one hundred eighty degree spin made up of a thousand separate freeze frames in time. The Galactor leader completed his turn and began to jump, but Ken's gloved hands were right there, right where he wanted them...locking like steel cuffs around Katse's purple-booted ankles. Katse screamed in rage and fury and fear, his leaping arc foiled, smashing down face first against the inside face of the flame-licked chasm. Ken landed hard behind him, flat out, the breath knocked out of him but holding on like a grim, avenging angel.
Hanging halfway over the boiling lava, Katse kicked out frantically. "Let me go, Gatchaman! Let me go!"
"Not a chance in hell," Ken panted. He began to move backwards, inch by inexorable inch, dragging Katse's writhing, struggling body back up over the precipice. As soon as the Galactor leader was clear of the pit, Ken sprang up and landed astride his chest, arm scything down in a sharp blow to the head meant to momentarily stun his opponent. Then he ripped off Katse's mask.
"Sosai," Katse moaned. His lacerated, bleeding skin was flushed from the heat of the pit, long blond hair soaked with sweat. Frothy, blood-flecked drool dribbled from his mouth. "Why have you forsaken me?"
Ken reached down slowly, placing his hands either side of the Galactor leader's face. He waited until Katse was looking right up at him, hardening his heart to the madness in his eyes.
"This is for my father," he growled, and broke his neck.
The fish were bigger than he remembered.
Ken watched one of them, a fat, shiny koi more pale gold than orange, swim lazily to the surface and snatch a bug that seemed to be just sitting on the surface waiting to be someone's dinner. The wide, man-made rock pool was exactly the way it had always looked, though – large boulders, some the size of a man, set at its entrance to slow and filter the speed of the incoming stream; hanging grasses and water plants softening the rugged gray slate that surrounded its cool, dark depths. He remembered coming here many times when he was younger and they had still been living and training at the mansion, just to sit and listen to the sound of the water and clear his mind of noise.
"How do you feel, Ken?"
"Hatsumi-sensei?" Ken turned in surprise to see Hatsumi Shingoro smiling up at him. Hatsumi was a sturdy, square-built man who smiled easily and often, a habit which was borne out by the rich creases in the weathered skin of his face. Even being in his company a few minutes it was easy to see why his Ninjutsu warrior name was Kofukuryu – Happy Dragon. It was a character trait that was both attractive and deceptive...Ken knew only too well that this man, the 36th and last surviving Grand Master of the Togakure Ryu of the Ninja tradition, was an extremely hard and relentless taskmaster. There had been many times during their time together as student and teacher when he had seriously thought he was never going to make it through the training in anything remotely resembling one piece.
He had made it, though...and it had only taken one skirmish with the enemy once the war began to make him very, very grateful. Grateful for the tireless teacher and mentor who would never, ever accept any less from him than everything he had to give.
"You sound like Dr. Sugiyama," Ken said, his mouth twisting as he thought about the Kagaku Ninja Tai's chief psychologist. "He always asks me that."
"And how would you answer him today?"
Ken turned away, staring back into the depths of the koi pond. "You're trying to tell me I shouldn't have done it."
"Only you can know that, Ken," Hatsumi replied evenly. "The answer is in your own heart. It is not for anyone else to say."
Familiar sounds reached his ears, faintly, and Ken glanced up across the pool. A shock rippled through him as he recognized himself and Joe on the wide green lawn behind the mansion, going through the moves of Sanshin no kata in perfect unison. They were about thirteen, he guessed. That had been the year that Hatsumi-sensei had taken over their training.
He couldn't help a smile...he'd forgotten how lanky Joe had looked when he'd gone through that growth spurt – his "awkward stage," as Nambu's housekeeper, Takahashi-san, had called it. His smile faded as he looked at his own younger self. Had he always had such a serious look on his face?
"I did not know your father," Hatsumi said. "But I hear he was a man of much pride, a man who believed in bending the world to his will."
Ken nodded, eyes still on the Ken and Joe of the past as they moved through the katas with smooth precision. When Hatsumi didn't immediately continue, he glanced sideways at him. "But what does that..."
"Remember our lessons, Ken. There is no independent action anywhere in this universe. Everything is connected, everything intertwined. It is all cause and effect."
"Ku, Fu, Ka, Sui, Chi," Ken murmured automatically. Void, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth.
"Yes," Hatsumi acknowledged. "But in order to defeat our enemy, we must know him...and we must also know ourselves. We must learn to translate what lies between the lines."
The thirteen year old Ken and Joe had finished their katas and turned, bowing to each other formally. Joe said something as they straightened up, his body language shifting instantly from disciplined martial artist to obnoxious teenager. Ken felt a sharp pang as he watched his younger self leap at the retreating Condor, sending them both down in a heap of flailing arms and legs. He remembered that moment. Joe had made a snide remark about his interest in the pretty young daughter of one of Nambu's staff, declaring that the Eagle was wasting his time, because if anyone had a chance at her, it was him.
Following his gaze, Hatsumi said, "What is the first step to attaining the kanjin-kaname of Ninjutsu, Ken?"
"To rid oneself of desire." Ken couldn't help the smile. "Do you remember Joe's face when you first told us that?"
Hatsumi returned the smile, his eyes dancing with mischief. "Ah, yes. He did not understand what I meant at first, did he?"
"No." The thirteen year old Ken and Joe were sitting up now, their fight over, friends again. Joe pointed, suddenly...and the adult Ken almost laughed as he spotted a small, white furry animal loping across the grass. Takahashi-san's pet rabbit, Tsukiko, an inveterate escape artist, was on the loose again.
White rabbits... He turned back to Hatsumi-sensei, the light beginning to dawn. "You told us that the desires of the personality were the most difficult to overcome," he said slowly. "Chasing after illusions...demanding that things be what they aren't."
Hatsumi nodded, his expression pleased. "If you were flying, Ken, and you saw that you were approaching a storm, what would you do?"
"Fly around it, or above it if I could."
"Exactly. You must always remember that a Ninja lives in the winds of shinobi. When the favorable wind is blowing, your body will seem to float above the ground, your progress easy and honorable. When the direction of the wind changes, you must use the techniques of doton to hide by the earth and wait in stillness for the spirit of shinobi to come for you again."
Ken watched his thirteen year old self as he scooped up Tsukiko, tucked the errant rabbit under his arm, and walked away toward the mansion with the thirteen year old Joe. His chest tightened, and he blinked against the sudden burning in his eyes. I'm not done, he thought fiercely. I want another chance.
As if he had spoken out loud, Hatsumi answered him. "It was not your path to sacrifice yourself for the dead, Ken. Your path is to lead the living."
Somewhere around the edges of his awareness Ken noticed that the sunlight was growing brighter, the details of the landscape beginning to wash out around him like an overexposed photograph. He stared at Hatsumi, his heart leaping suddenly, wildly. "The living? "
His teacher smiled broadly now, nodding. He indicated their swiftly fading surroundings. "You have seen nothing here in these gardens that is not a reflection of those still living. Did you not notice?"
"Yes, of course..." Ken whispered. The light was so strong now that he couldn't see anything beyond Hatsumi-sensei, as if they were both suspended in a pool of brilliance. He made himself say the words, shaking with the force of the hope that rose inside him. "I'm alive? I can go home?"
"I will ask you again. How do you feel?"
Ken took a deep breath. He felt as though his heart were expanding, filling his chest. "I feel good," he said, wonderingly. "I feel good."
Pride shone in his teacher's eyes. "You have faced your devils and defeated them, Owashi no Ken. It is time."
Ken heard himself laugh out loud. Then the light shot through their bodies, consuming them both.
He had been floating forever, enfolded in a timeless embrace of warmth and light. He dimly remembered that he had once belonged somewhere else, but he couldn't quite recall where. In any case, it didn't matter. It was good here. Peaceful.
A steady beeping sound began to penetrate his consciousness – faint at first, a ripple disturbing the calm surface of a pond. He tried to ignore it, but it grew slowly louder and louder until he felt himself becoming angry. Go away. Leave me alone. Can't you see I'm...
Without warning, the veil of light ripped away, and he realized that his eyes were open. Something flat and white came slowly into focus in front of him, stretching away to either side. He knew he should know what it was, but... And what was that strange dark circle...?
Memory returned all in a rush. It was an inset light fixture. He was lying on his back looking up at a ceiling.
He was home.
With enormous difficulty, he moved his head to the side, blinking away the lingering fuzziness as he took in the familiar sight of a G-Town hospital room. He shook off the shivery feeling of déjà vu as it sprang up, recognizing with silent relief that there was no welcoming committee this time, no figment of his imagination designed to deceive him. The room was shrouded in quiet...the only other thing he could hear besides the soft beeping of the heart monitor was something that sounded like...breathing...?
He turned his head a little more to the right. Joe was sprawled in the chair near the window, fast asleep, his long legs hooked over the broad padded arm.
"Joe..." His voice came out as a croaking whisper.
The Condor's eyes shot open. A dozen emotions crossed his face all at once – it was like watching one of those high speed films of the sky, Ken thought incongruously, whipping through a hundred different weather patterns in a matter of minutes. Only he'd never seen a sky look surprised, or happy, or relieved.
Joe wasn't moving as fast as he usually did. By the time he'd gotten to his feet, he'd had time to revert to his normal obnoxious self. "Well, shit, Ken. It's about time."
Ken managed to make his unnaturally stiff face form a smile. "Asshole."
Joe chuckled, but he couldn't quite hide the concern in his eyes. Ken saw it and frowned. "How long...?"
"You've been out since they retrieved us. Nine days."
Nine days. Ken tried to process the information, but his brain was still full of cobwebs and fog.
"You cost me money," Joe informed him, folding his arms. "I had four days."
Ken managed a grin. Talking was a little easier now, although his jaw was still strangely stiff and his tongue felt too big for his mouth. "Who won?"
"Jinpei," Joe said, with disgust. "Squirt had eight. Can you believe that?"
Ken tried to laugh, but all that came out was a dry coughing sound.
"I'm getting Nambu," Joe said quickly. "Stay awake."
Ken did his best, but he must have drifted anyway, because the next thing he knew was Jun's voice. He opened his eyes again. "Don't cry," he managed to croak, unable to put any strength behind his voice. "Gonna be...okay."
She smiled, green eyes brimming with tears. "I'm happy, you idiot," she said. "You really scared us this time."
The rest of the team was all there now, as well...Jinpei, Ryu, and Nambu. Ken frowned, his memory beginning to return now. "Joe," he said. "How..." He couldn't find the words, managing to thump his fist weakly against his sternum instead.
Joe's eyebrows went up in very obvious surprise. He shot a look at the others that Ken couldn't read, then pulled up his shirt. The long scar looked nasty, but it was mending fast - without a doubt a combination of his accelerated cyborg healing time and regen therapy. "How did you...?"
Ken closed his eyes, suddenly a little dizzy with relief. "I thought... I almost lost you. Couldn't get you out, not by myself – that panel was too big... I kept diving, giving you air...I thought if I could just keep you breathing until they found us...but then Gel Sadra..."
The protracted silence above him made him look up again. He caught Jun's glance at Joe, who was now frowning deeply, then at Ryu. "Ken..." Jun began, "what are you talking about...?"
"My bracelet," Ken said suddenly, memory taking him off on another tangent. "I had to get it...outside the mech...so you could pick up the signal... Did you find it?"
The smooth skin between her eyebrows puckered. "Find it? Ken, I don't..."
Ken smiled faintly. "It's still down there somewhere, then. Never mind...at least it did the job."
"Ken, you're talking nonsense," Ryu said. "Of course we found your bracelet. It was on your wrist when we picked you up." He pulled open the bedside drawer and took out the bracelet, holding it up for Ken to see. "Where else would it be?"
Ken stared at it. On his wrist? How was that possible? "No...it couldn't have been..."
"We had to search for you for quite a while," Jun said. "There was a lot of wreckage in the water, the pieces were spread out for miles. We knew you were down there somewhere, but it was nearly an hour before we found you – Ryu spotted your wings, reflecting the sun. You were floating on what was left of the command center. You were hurt pretty bad but Joe was worse...he had a piece of an instrument panel right through his chest." Her voice dropped. "It was really close for a minute there, but we pulled him through."
"Ah, wasn't that bad," Joe rumbled. Jun rolled her eyes at him.
Floating... "On the water?" Ken repeated. "On the water? But that's impossible...we were a thousand feet down..."
This time Jun and Ryu both looked at Nambu. "Ken, you need to rest," the professor said. "We'll come back later and you can tell us more about what happened."
"No," Ken said, struggling to sit up. He was much too weak to make it further than his elbows. "I've rested enough... Listen to me, Hakase, please...I'm not delirious... We were in the mecha, under the water, and Joe was..."
"Later, Ken," Nambu said firmly. "Your first priority is getting well."
"Give me my chart."
"Ken..."
"Give it to me." Teeth gritted from the effort of holding his body up, Ken held out one hand. Nambu stared at him for a long moment, but ever since the death of Red Impulse, Ken had insisted that there be no more secrets, and the Eagle wasn't about to let him bend that rule now. Nambu unclipped the chart from the end of the bed and brought it to Ken.
Ken read the information quickly. To his dismay, everything Ryu and Jun had said checked out. Defeated, he handed the chart back wordlessly and sagged back against the pillows in exhaustion. He stared at his bracelet, lying on the bedside table where Ryu had left it. Had it all been a dream?
According to the chart, he'd coded during retrieval, and twice more here at G-Town – once actually during a regen session. The third time had been only the day before, and the notes said it had taken almost two and a half minutes to revive him, and had involved several hits of the paddles and an injection straight to the heart. He'd been in the regen tanks five times in all since his return. Maybe some of that explained a few of the things he'd felt, experienced, down there. Maybe. His mind still didn't want to accept that none of it had actually happened.
"Don't let it worry you, Ken," Nambu said. "You were in a coma for nine days. Things are bound to be a little scrambled at first."
Ken nodded unhappily. He had no more strength left to argue.
"Give it time," Nambu said. "You know the drill."
He began to shepherd the others out of the room. They left reluctantly, promising to return later. Ken watched them go through half-closed eyes, the fog beginning to cloud his brain again.
Joe lingered for a moment at the door for a moment, the puzzled expression still in his eyes. He looked as if he wanted to ask a dozen questions, but his mouth quirked instead. "You've really gotta get better at keeping your mouth shut, Ken. We're a thousand feet underwater, I'm drowning and you're giving me mouth-to-mouth? Sugiyama's gonna have a field day."
It was too much effort to roll his eyes, so Ken settled for a glare. Joe chuckled. "Baka, don't look so pissed off. You'll get another chance to save my ass, I can pretty much guarantee it."
I saved you from drowning, twice. I saw my father. I killed Katse. "Save your own ass," Ken muttered.
"Think of it as job security," Joe grinned.
Ken wanted to throw a pillow at him but he couldn't move. "Next time I'm gonna make it nineteen days," he said, the words a real effort now. "Just to get away from you."
"Never gonna happen," Joe promised him, his tone suddenly softer. "We go, we're going together, remember? I'm holding you to that, flyboy."
Ken closed his eyes to hide the tears that welled up suddenly, unbidden. He tried to answer, but he couldn't, his mouth wouldn't move anymore. He was slipping away down a long, long slope, and the sound of the door closing was the last thing he heard before sleep claimed him.
You have faced your devils and defeated them, Owashi no Ken.
This time, he wouldn't dream.