Co-Authoress Note: Yeah so… this chapter took forever to finish… Sorry guys! It's mainly my fault, I blame my two jobs. cry I hate being so poor. Anyhoo… This story is rapidly coming to a close, maybe only two more chapters to go, and we'll be done! However, the next chapter is REALLY the one to look forward to, but I ain't saying another word! Happy reading! – AmetrineButterfly
Girl in Gaea: The Untold Story
By Brenli and AmetrineButterfly
Chapter 12
"Oh, no…" Kitsune whimpered between the hands she clamped over her mouth and began to rush after Okami, but Dallet grabbed her, spinning her back toward him. "Dallet, knock it off! I'm not POWERLESS anymore! I can handle this!"
"You're gonna fight that thing?" Dallet spat. "Without thinking it through first? Then you're crazy!"
"Is there TIME to think? Is there?" Kitsune retorted, eyes aflame. "Well? You gonna answer me?"
"Kitsune…"
"What?"
Dallet's gaze was fixed behind her. "Look…"
Kitsune turned to find the Escaflowne's light body going dark, its cape transforming into a mass of long, flowing strips. "… What…?" She whispered in disbelief.
Okami was frozen too, staring at the true nature of the Escaflowne. "Oh no…" This was it. The destiny of the Spirit Stars was now set in motion. Only one hope was left before they would be forced to fight: The Wing Goddess. If she wanted to destroy the world, then that's how it would be, unless Okami and Kitsune could stop it.
Okami continued to move across the rooftops, flying towards the place the Alseides had fallen. She didn't know what she would find. Horror seemed to be paralyzing her system as she could only think of one thing: whether Dilandau was alive or not.
She soared over the final roof, and landed smoothly on the street. The mangled Alseides armor lay before her. Climbing up, she tried to ignore her heart pounding in her ears. She found the cockpit open, and Dilandau, nor his corpse, was inside.
"Okami…"
She spun to find him, unscathed and shirtless, on the ground below her. He stared up at her with hopeless, completely lost looking eyes. "Dilandau!" Jumping down, she wrapped him in the clingiest hug known to man, thankful that he was alive and in her arms again.
"Okami… I failed you…" His broken voice was muffled by her neck. "I'm so sorry…"
"Don't be." She insisted. "You tried… I couldn't ask for more."
Explosions of blue light made Dilandau pull Okami protectively to his chest, both gazing wide-eyed and fearful as the dark Escaflowne began to rip apart Torushina. Soon they heard the hurried, approaching footsteps of Kitsune. "… We're gonna have to fight it…" She said after a long pause. "… aren't we…?" She asked Okami. It sounded more like a statement than a question.
Okami shook her head. "You know the answer to that. We're the last resort… it's all up to the Wing Goddess now…" A moment of silence extended.
They watched as the short-haired Earthling girl referred to as the Wing Goddess ran up to the darkened Escaflowne and called up to it. They waited. They waited with baited breath until finally… the Escaflowne became light once more. The Escaflowne's body then morphed, transforming into a giant, light colored dragon. And just like that, the Escaflowne flew off.
"... We've gotta follow." Kitsune murmured quietly.
"Right. Let's go." Squeezing Dilandau's hand and giving him a reassuring smile, Okami stood freely and her dark aura wrapped around her, her feet lifting off the ground as she gained altitude, soaring after the dragon.
Kitsune observed the squeezing of his hand and the smile, and almost cracked a smile of her own. Almost.
"What the hell are you lookin' at me for? You've got somewhere to go! Go!" Dilandau snapped sharply.
"Hai!" Kitsune nodded quickly and flew off, speeding up to Okami.
X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X
Okami soon stood on the darkened rooftops of Torushina, staring out with a churning gut at the new assault on Gaea. The pilot of the Escaflowne was no longer Van… but his crazed brother Folken. The events leading up to this moment began to replay in her mind, images of Folken defeating Van as Kitsune, Okami and Hitomi could do nothing but watch. Folken then donned the Escaflowne and it returned to its dark form.
This was it… the Spirit Stars were now Gaea's last hope.
Kitsune was soon by Okami's side, mouth open as though ready to say something, but there were no words she could possibly express at this moment in time. There it was…Okami had been right all along. Folken was no good. Until now, Kitsune had never really considered the idea of Folken being the bad one in this mess. While he had always intimidated her with his cold, bicolored eyes, she had dismissed it as general fear of the man in power, not fear of the evil man. And now here she was wishing she'd heeded Okami's warning. If she had, would they have been able to stop what was happening before them?
Okami knew what Kitsune was thinking. "It's alright." She said. "You had no way of knowing…" A distant sadness rung in her voice, as if she was staring at her own poison cup, ready to take it in.
"But maybe we could've done something…!" Kitsune said softly, and then shook her head. "I guess it doesn't matter anymore… We can't rewind time."
Okami watched the Escaflowne as it ripped apart another building. "… We have to stop him…"
"Hai!" Kitsune gave a swift decisive nod. "Let's go…! We didn't stop him before but we can stop him now, right?" Okami watched her bring out before her a fan, made of white lace. She knew that with it, Kitsune would summon her Spirit, known by legend as Daedalion. Kitsune flipped it open with a sharp snap, her other hand poised on the hilt of her sword. She held in her dark eyes the look of warrioress ready for battle… so strange to behold, because the last time Kitsune had been in this situation, Kitsune had been too scared of the very sheath of a sword to touch it.
Okami felt the dread building inside of her like a coming storm. The tattoo on her wrist began to throb again, torturing her both physically and emotionally. She placed a hand on her forehead, a pained look on her face. She pulled out her own fan, a fan of black iron and dark purple accents of fire. Something was holding her back, and she knew that it was fear of the unknown. What if her Spirit, Aeopyx, possessed her like he did the Black Guardian? She glanced at Kitsune. What if it was her hands that took the life of Kitsune? Against her own free will? "I can't do this…" She breathed out.
The words took Kitsune by surprise. Her grip on her fan loosened and it began to close as it slipped. "… What?" Kitsune laughed, but it held no mirth. "You're not serious! You know this is what we're for! Come on. We have a fight to win…!" She spoke boldly, hoping the words would fuel Okami with some courage.
But Okami's fear showed in her face. She gripped the closed fan in her white-knuckled fist. Her tattoo was scorching her wrist, yet she ignored it, far too paralyzed in her apprehension to care. "You can defeat him…" Okami whispered. "But I can't fight, Kitsune. I just… can't do it…"
"Okami-chan…" Kitsune frowned thoughtfully. She eyed Okami's tattooed wrist, nearly glowing red by now. "You're afraid of the myth…" Kitsune didn't need Okami to say anything. She offered the frightened girl a comforting, confident smile. "… It's okay." And with that she brought her fan before her again. "I'LL TAKE CARE OF IT! YOU HANG TIGHT!"
Kitsune held the fan spread open before her, closing her eyes in concentration as she waved it before her in a complicated pattern, opened and closed, moving gracefully side to side. To finish off the summoning she pointed the lacy fan, now closed up above her, and there was a great flash of light. It was so bright, Okami had to shut her eyes at first, and when she dared to open them, Kitsune's satin dress had turned into white, flowing robes. The under robe shimmered like the satin of her dress but over it there was a gossamer over robe that glittered iridescent, pearly colors, blending into pink as the fabric flowed to the floor. Above her was her Spirit, the legendary Daedalion, a pearly-colored, giant horse with a great curved horn of crystal and enormous, white wings reminiscent of a bat.
Kitsune held the fan over her mouth, concealing her proud smile. "Go, Daedalion. Show Lord Folken what happens when you lie to a Spirit Star."
The great Spirit obeyed the Light Star, immediately going after the Escaflowne on wings that crackled with lightning. It made for a brilliant display of light versus metal as the forces clashed, but suddenly, far too quickly, the Escaflowne managed to strike Daedalion to the ground. The Spirit screamed as it fell, and Okami watched as Kitsune suddenly collapsed to her knees. "Kitsune..!" She called out, but the Light Star held out a hand to silence her, looking over her shoulder with smiling eyes. Kitsune kept her quivering mouth covered with her lacy fan.
"DAEDALION!" Kitsune screamed. "THAT IS THE MAN WHO WILL RUIN OUR LAND! … WILL YOU ACCEPT THIS?"
The Spirit gave out a loud yell as it struggled to its feet.
"FIGHT HIM! HE IS A TRAITOR TO GAEA! KILL HIM!" Kitsune commanded. The Spirit she summoned flew at the Escaflowne once more, determined to keep fighting the enemy, and yet, once again, Daedalion could not last long. Daedalion managed to cripple one of the Escaflowne's arms before falling again. This time, Kitsune collapsed onto her hands and knees. "Fall back, fall back!" She commanded, and the giant pegasus came to her, falling by her side. "You fought well, you did. It's not over yet." She said softly to her Spirit, glaring at the Escaflowne as it approached her. "OKAMI!" Kitsune gave her an urgent look. "It won't work…! I can't do this without you!" She held up her fan, motioning for Okami to do the same. "Summon your Spirit…!"
"I CAN'T!" Okami stumbled backwards, clutching her fan to her chest.
"Okami-chan if you don't, Gaea is lost!"
Tears trickled down Okami's pale cheeks. Her grip on the fan loosened. Kitsune was right, Okami would have to take the risk, or else Gaea would truly be lost forever. She looked down upon the crowd that was building below them, among the crowd she picked out Dilandau's face. The people were counting on her, and for their lives she would risk her soul. For she had no real choice…
She set her jaw in determination, spreading her iron fan with a musical ring. "Kitsune…" She said. "I apologize… should the worst happen…"
Kitsune smirked and came to a stand. "Save your apologies for later… Summon Aeopyx!"
Okami's dark aura made a reappearance around her stiff frame. She poised her fan before her, breathing steadily. Her clothing changed into a black flowing dress, adorned with a black gossamer robe, lined in dark purple. She pointed her fan to the sky, her hair billowing around her. A streak of dark energy shot into the air, forming a large orb above the city. Out of the orb, a great black bird of energy and black fire erupted, screeching a haunting note and fluttering its enormous wings. Closing her fan and dropping to a crouch, Okami glared at the Escaflowne, pointing her fan straight at it. "GO!" She yelled to Aeopyx. "Make him SUFFER for destroying your lands!"
Following it's orders, the great phoenix tucked in its wings and streaked towards the Escaflowne, broad siding it and knocking it to the ground. "Don't just stand there, Kitsune!" Okami shouted. "GO!"
"Hai!" Kitsune replied, waving her fan at Daedalion in a wide sweeping motion towards the Escaflowne. "Fight, Daedalion! You and Aeopyx will make Lord Folken PAY! KILL HIM!" She grinned confidently behind her fan as Daedalion joined Aeopyx in the battle against the Escaflowne.
It was a magnificent display. If it weren't a battle, spectators would have wondered what Torushina was celebrating. Bands and beams of lightning and black fire were encircling and piercing the Escaflowne. Suddenly, the Escaflowne, and its pilot, weren't so mighty and fearsome anymore. For the Spirits truly worked best as a team. Alone they could inflict damage, but to achieve their highest potential, Aeopyx and Daedalion relied on one another. And now here they were, guided by their masters, destroying the Escaflowne's tough shell of a body. Okami stared on with Kitsune, who was making wild motions with her fan, urging them on. At last, Aeopyx's dark energy tripped and bound the Escaflowne to the ground as Daedalion's lightning struck at it repeatedly, mercilessly. A tall, dark body was seen crawling from the useless form of the Escaflowne, and both Okami and Kitsune pointed to the body with their fans. "THERE IS THE TRAITOR!" Kitsune cried angrily. "DESTROY HIM!"
With this, Lord Folken's body was both electrocuted and burned. The last thing Folken saw, before he met his end, was the angry, piercing eyes of Okami and Kitsune, as they pointed with their fans, coldly saying, "We will never forgive you."
… That was it. Lord Folken and the Escaflowne were no more! Kitsune began to fan herself off, sighing in relief. "… It's done… It's done, Okami-chan!" She smiled and laughed.
Below them the citizens of Torushina had begun celebrating the end of this war. The cheers and laughter reached the ears of the Dark and Light Star, and Kitsune embraced the joy with laughter of her own.
"Kitsune…!" The Light Star turned and rushed into Dallet's arms, her pale robes flowing about as he lifted and spun her. "I am so proud of you…" He murmured to her, and without warning he crushed her against him in an urgent kiss, for all the Torushina citizens below them to see. There was laughter, cheering, gawking, and whistling. Everything that let off the feeling of a happy celebration of victory.
… But Okami was not a part of this merriment. Her heart was pounding so loudly in her ears, all she could take in was its deafening rhythm. A panic with an unknown source seized her insides and her breath quickened. Something was happening to her, she could feel it. And she didn't like it.
Dilandau saw the state Okami was in, and rushed to her. But he never made it before it was too late.
Okami opened her eyes, to find that time was frozen. She observed Kitsune and Dallet locked in a loving embrace, Dilandau suspended in mid-sprint, a worried expression plastered across his pale features.
"What…?" Okami frantically looked around, wondering what the heck was going on. Then she saw a woman with long, black hair, pale skin and dark eyes, staring straight at her. She was different from the others, for she leaned against the shoulder of Dallet, a smile creeping across her ominous features.
"So we finally meet, Okami." She said, her voice echoing and demonic.
"Who… who are you?" Okami stumbled backwards away from the woman.
Her smile curved wickedly. "You know, as my successor, you really shouldn't act so naïve."
"You're the Black Guardian." Okami said, not liking how her angry voice shook. "Leave me alone! I want nothing to do with you!"
"Pity…" A note of sarcasm rang in her frightening voice, and her eyes flashed. "It's a misfortune… you having no choice in this matter." Again, her voice was like chilled steel, binding Okami to the spot.
A fist seemed to grip Okami's heart as she continued to back away from this foreboding woman.
"You act like I'm your enemy, my Okami-chan…" The Black Guardian's tone adopted a motherly tenor, similar to a tone of poisoned honey. "I'm your friend, I'm only trying to help you get back at those who have hurt you!"
"You can't fool me with your tricks and lies!" Okami bellowed. "I won't listen to you!"
"MY tricks and lies? Okami…" She placed a hand across her own heart, a pained expression contorting her pale features. "It's not I who points and stares at you because you're of mixed blood… It is not I who made you believe I was so great, but slept with whores when your mother was away."
"STOP IT!" Okami shrieked. "DON'T talk about my father that way, you BITCH!"
"Such denial, Okami-chan… especially because you know that what I say is true."
The painful memories of her father flooded Okami's mind like poison. "Stop it…" She whispered. Her father was a good man, her father loved her with every last breath in his body…
"Yet he betrayed your mother… he wasn't the saint you thought, and that cut you to the bone, didn't it, cherub?"
Okami couldn't hold back her tears anymore. It was all true, her father was the one man she had always trusted, had always looked up to. But in the end, he was nothing but scum. The day she realized was the day her world fell apart. "Stop it." She repeated. "I know what you're trying to do."
"And what am I trying to do?" The Black guardian said, amused.
"You're taking advantage of my abhorrence… That's why you chose me to be your successor, so you could use me."
"No, Okami. I chose you because I wanted to help you. How often do you look at the world around you and decide that it would be so much better… if it all just disappeared?"
"That's not true. There are beautiful things, too…"
"Like what?"
"Like Kitsune!" Okami cried. "She's pure-blooded Japanese! And she befriended me, regardless of my race!"
"And yet she was the one who turned her back on you as soon as a fresh male scent came her way… She never cared about you, Okami, and you know it."
"That's not true…"
"Stop lying to yourself. She dismissed you as soon as you insisted that the Stars' path lead away from the Black Dragon Clan… and away from Dallet. She would sooner abandon you, for a new boyfriend. That's not true friendship, Okami."
Okami fumbled. "What about Dilandau! He cares about me! THAT'S beautiful!"
"He cares for you, and yet he deliberately destroyed the ones you call your friends and allies… right before your eyes? He killed them for the sole purpose of quenching his thirst for petty revenge. And yet you still believe he cares for you?"
Okami's voice merely caught in her throat.
A slight, triumphant smirk played across the Guardian's pale lips.
But Okami caught on. "NO!" She shrieked. "I will NOT be your puppet! No matter what kind of lies you feed me! I KNOW that life is worth living, REGARDLESS of the pain! And I WON'T let you destroy it!"
An anger unlike Okami had ever seen spread across the Black Guardian. It consumed her, changed her beautiful face into something ugly, and grotesque. "YOU DARE CHALLENGE ME! I DON'T NEED YOUR PERMISSION TO GET WHAT I WANT!" In a flash, her body disappeared, and changed into a shrieking, dark phoenix of fire and dark energy. It flew at Okami, eyes ablaze.
Okami screamed, a helpless scream that none suspended in time could hear as the flames and energy consumed her, changed her.
Time began again. Dallet continued to spin Kitsune in their moment of love struck glory, Dilandau skid to a halt, staring with wide, frightened eyes at the morphed frame of Okami.
The young woman's feet hovered above the ground, her blonde hair billowed around her, her face was set in a triumphant, evil smirk. On her body, hung cloth-like armor of black and purple, in her hand, a sword adorned with red rubies wrought in black metal. Sprouting from her back was a set of thick, smoky wings of the phoenix. And her eyes, glowing in a blood-lust and thirst for destruction. They met Dilandau's.
"I'm ba-ack…" She uttered in a sing-song voice. She threw back her head and a wicked, cold laughter erupted from her throat, in a voice that sounded nothing like the true Okami. The building beneath her floating feet cracked, and crumbled.
People were screaming as the sky darkened, buildings collapsed, the streets ripped apart.
"What's happening!" Kitsune cried as Dallet threw them both to the ground, using his body as a shield to protect her from falling debris.
Dilandau flung himself down beside them, covering his head as the debris showered them. He lifted himself on one elbow, his pink eyes boring directly into Kitsune's. "… The end of Gaea…"
To be continued…