The only person that you could truly depend upon in this world was yourself.
So that was precisely what Shiori did. She came to the conclusion, eventually, that she could either die when they decided to finally kill her or die trying to escape. She chose to die trying to escape because, really, at least if she died trying to escape she would at least be able to die on her own terms.
Not dying at all hadn't even crossed her mind.
She had never once in her life been naïve, not even when she had been a child, and she was far from a child now. She was a grown and capable woman, a woman capable of escaping when she needed to. She was also capable of biding her time when she needed to. She wasn't naïve. She knew that her chances of her plan actually working out were slim to none, but she still tried anyway. Dying on her own terms was better than dying on someone else's, of course, though not dying at all would have been preferable.
The 'not dying at all' plan was working out well.
It was amazing, really, how easy it was to kill a man. People were so fragile, like China dolls made of flesh, and she had no clue how humanity had reached the top of the food chain. All it took to kill a man, really, was a well placed stab in the neck with a piece of wood. She had been given a wooden bowl one day, maybe they were out of paper, and that was all she needed. She had broken a piece off of it, sharpened it against the floor, and then the rest had been the stuff of cheap TV movies and those over the top serials she used to watch as a child. All she was missing was a yo-yo or a gold coin or a pair of stilts…
They'd had some great writers back then.
This could have been turned into one of those over the top delinquent girl dramas if they'd still had them on. She would have had to be aged down, of course, to around sixteen or fifteen or whatever the most marketable age was. Bowls in general would have probably been her weapon of choice and instead of kidnappers it would have probably been a rival gang of teenage girls…huh. She had never thought about it but a lot of shows back then were about delinquent teenage girls. Weird, considering the direction society had been going in at the time. Don't work, stay home with the baby, see your husband once every twenty days for five minutes while he read the paper…of course things weren't that much better now, were they? When did she even see Touichirou…how long had it been? Long enough for her to miss him, to expect to see him…
She was delirious.
"Down you go." Said Shiori as she pulled someone in close enough to stab them. Weak, all of them, or maybe her powers had just grown stronger since she'd been in that curse room…wait, no, that made no sense…nothing made sense. She smelled copper. Her hands were sticky. They man in her arms did, in fact, go to sleep. The eternal sleep. She could see his spirit leaving his body….that so easily could have been her…but it wasn't her. She was here, she was alive, and her escape would be the stuff of over the top 80's style dramas.
The 80's were having a revival, right?
She didn't know, they could have moved onto a different decade by now. She had no idea how long she'd been in there for. Long enough that she'd had to roll up the band on her skirt. She must have lost at least a kilo…heh. If she had nothing to go back to in Osaka, if they'd picked everything apart like the vultures they were, then she could at least start some kind of a weight loss empire. Thin soup and plain water in a windowless cell for however many days or weeks it'd been. Lose up to a kilo. Some restrictions may apply…
One of those long, paid, infomercials that came on when no sane person was watching television.
"Only three easy payments of more than you'll ever be able to afford." Said Shiori, her voice coming out low and gravely. She needed more than the minimum amount of water people needed to live off of. More than the minimal amount of food, too. They said that people needed at least two thousand calories a day or something to live, five hundred to keep your brain alive. So unless she wanted to spend the rest of her life as just a brain floating in a tank then she needed to find something to eat…no…she needed to figure out how to get out of here.
Escape should have been her first priority.
She must have been eating more than five hundred calories a day, then, if she still had the presence of mind to keep moving. Enough to keep her on shaky legs. Enough to keep her aura visible…did using her powers burn calories? She honestly wasn't sure. She didn't always have the best control when she was hungry but that may have had more to do with her state of mind than anything else. She really didn't know…or maybe she just thought she didn't know because she was so hungry, or maybe this was one of those things that Touichirou would have known. He was the one who had put a small country's worth of money into researching what exactly made them 'them'…and she would ask him. If she made it out here she would ask him that and probably…she didn't know what else. Probably think of some excuse as to where she had been.
She wasn't going to tell him.
She missed him…she missed him so much she swore that she could feel his aura…but she wouldn't be breathing a word of this to him. He would just have gotten paranoid and put her under twenty four hour armed guard again, or that crazy domed city idea…or maybe he would have just bought a rope and tied them both together so he could keep an eye on her. She didn't need that. Sure, she'd had a setback, but she wasn't a child. She didn't need protecting. She could live her life on her own terms…and she would live…
Though death…she was ready to accept death.
"Not right now!" shouted Shiori, as best as she could considering how hoarse her voice was. The ground beneath her began to shake…an earthquake? So she was underground. The walls were shaking too…if she was underground and not just in a windowless compound…either way she didn't really want to die in an earthquake. Not in an earthquake and not by whatever methods the idiots who'd captured her had planned for her.
She would have rather taken her chances in the earthquake.
She didn't really seem to have a choice. Behind her she heard running feet, lots of them pounding the concrete, shouting, and then what sounded like someone dropping a plastic bag full of soup off of a building. She saw so many auras…or maybe none at all. Again she felt Touichirou…she couldn't trust herself. Maybe she had been eating too little, maybe her brain was failing her, maybe she was hallucinating the auras, the earthquake, and the group of people that ran right past her. She put up a barrier and prepared to fight with all that she was worth but, apparently, fighting wasn't on these people's agendas. They just ran past her, running, saying something about death incarnate…
That probably wasn't a good sign.
"Or maybe I'm just losing my mind…" muttered Shiori as she dropped her barrier. She had the urge, suddenly, to laugh manically and roll around on the floor like she was in an insane asylum. Maybe she was. Maybe this whole sequence of events had been her mind becoming unhinged. She didn't laugh, no, she just stood there and hallucinated. Her brain obviously wanted her to believe that she was seeing Touichirou's aura, that she was feeling it, that he was there…maybe this was how she died. Maybe her mind wasn't becoming unhinged, maybe this was just what her mind had to do in the end…when it came time to die. Maybe this was what you saw when your soul left your body and you went to that place beyond this one…or maybe she was just going to end up a spirit haunting this place for the rest of eternity.
Being a spirit might not have been so bad, at least she wouldn't have ever been hungry again…
"Wait, no…damn it! Spirits have to eat too, don't they?" muttered Shiori. Spirits ate other spirits…so she had an eternity to cannibalism to look forward to. Lovely….but spirits ate espers, too, or at least the energy that they gave off. There were espers that ate spirits, she had met one once, and they…well they tended to not be all the way right in the head. Maybe that was where she was going…or maybe she was just going to end up as one of those espers who could eat other espers? Or wasn't that just straight up cannibalism? If she lived then was she going to end up a cannibal? And then she was going to have to live on an island and become Shiori Crusoe…Crusoe Shiori…a lady in a goat skin hat…and cook and eat a man named Friday…wait, no, that wasn't how the book went…
Great. Moments away from death and THIS was the last thing on her mind? How in the hell a book that she read in the fifth grade went?
Touichirou might have known. They'd gone to school around the same time period, maybe his English class went over the great works of the western world, too. Or maybe he just did the smart thing, the thing she should have done, and rented the movie from Video Village…did they have Video Village in Seasoning City? No, wait, he'd probably bought everything….yeah, she couldn't see little Touichirou stepping into a video rental place and picking over things that had already been picked over…him waiting around for someone to return a copy of Seven Samurai but, of course, it never came back and when you demanded that they buy another copy they told you to piss off so you took the book from your bag and threw it through their front window and then when the cops came you said that some boys did it and, of course, you were believed but also you were out that stupid book you had to read for English class and you failed the test…
Oh. So that was why she couldn't remember how that book went. Alright then.
"Hey Touichirou, you ever read Robinson Crusoe?" asked Shiori. She knew that she was hallucinating but maybe her hallucinations remembered things that she didn't. There was no way that she was going to go to her afterlife with this on her mind, no way, she knew how spirits tended to get stuck in the last place they were before they died, both physically and mentally, and she didn't need to wind up haunting a library or a bookstore or just pestering people here about books…not the thing to pester people about…so she might as well be able to pester her own hallucinations.
As terrible as they looked.
"Touichirou, you look awful." Said Shiori as she reached out and braced herself against the wall. Her hand slid a bit, there was still a fair amount of blood on it. She needed to brave herself. This could have been it or…or maybe not. If she was going to hallucinate Touichirou then she was going to hallucinate a better version of him. Adorable Touichirou…just got up Touichirou…in the middle of a videogame Touichirou…any other Touichirou than 'looked like he just saw a ghost in a tomato sauce factory' Touichirou…
Wait, no, that was blood on him…so this must have been a hallucination. Nothing could hurt Touichirou.
If this was a hallucination then it was a pretty damn vivid one. The floor had stopped shaking long ago, the walls too, the whole room…the whole world was filled with a sense of complete and total stillness. She could even feel it in the air…it was cold. She watched him, he watched her, the world waited…it didn't have to wait long. In the blink of an eye…no…she hadn't even managed to have time to blink. In an instant he was in front of her, and she was in his arms.
It felt like rain.
"Shiori…Shiori…Shiori…." Gasped Touichirou as he pulled her close. He wrapped his arms around her…she had always been able to fit into his arms before but not like this. It was like his body was swallowing hers. She was dwarfed by him. His body, his aura, his everything…the world was red. The world smelled like blood, eggs, ketchup, and that spice deodorant he used…the world was him. She held him back, shaky arms barely able to make their way around his shoulders.
Everything was right with the world.
"Touichirou…" muttered Shiori. It felt like rain was hitting the top of her head. She tried to look up but she didn't even have the room to turn her head. He was holding her close…he sniffled. He was crying. Her cheeks felt wet…she was crying too. She couldn't let him see her like this. She tried to take a step back but he just held her closer. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide…and she didn't want to hide form him. She wanted him, to be with him, to spend the rest of her life with him…for it to be a long life…but what kind of life could it have been if he'd seen her like this?! He was going to think, for the rest of their lives, that she was incapable…that she was nothing more than a child…that she was less than, even, one of his children…he didn't keep his children under armed guard. He didn't have them followed. He didn't send his people out to report on their doings…he didn't give a damn about them.
Unless, of course, it was bring your children to work day.
"Dad! You have to…stop…." Said Shigeko. At least Shiori assume that it was Shigeko. Same sort of aura…what little aura she could see through Shigeko's. The voice was harder to place. They'd only spoken briefly, and she had done her best to block that day out. That little…there was some anger there…but Shiori was tired. She was too tired to deal with that girl right now…to deal with the fact that not only had Touichirou seen her like this but his daughter had, too.
And his son, of course, to round out the family.
"Dad! What the fuck….Shiori! You found…wait…are you…" now there was a voice that she knew. Touichirou let her go, he gave her enough room to turn her head, and yes. There he was. Sho, the only halfway pleasant Suzuki child. She wondered if they'd brought the toddler along, too, and Hatori. Fun for the whole family…a regular old family reunion….she hadn't asked for one. She hadn't asked for this, for any of this. She tried to step away…she had to step away…everything in her was telling her that she had to step away right now. To lick her wounds in private.
Metaphorical wounds.
The danger, the fear, the proximity to death…it had all passed. All of it. Now she was just…here, in this place, this concrete and tile hallway with about half of the Suzuki family. It could have been any reunion scene, maybe something out of a hospital drama based on how cold and sterile this place was, or maybe some kind of…no, she was sticking to hospital drama. It was over, now, and at any point they could have rolled the credits and this could have been over…but this wasn't television, this was real life, and in real life your fiancé cried into your hair while his children watched in rapt fascination.
"Are you seriously crying right now?!" asked Sho. His sister shushed him, the only reasonable thing that Shiori had ever seen the girl do, but that didn't stop him from repeating his question. That seemed to fully break Touichirou out of whatever that had been. His eyes were still red but the crying was done with…she knew what she had said, that she didn't mind if he was vulnerable, but she had never seen him like that…and she had never been like that around him, either…
It shouldn't have felt awkward, but it did, and the awkward feeling wasn't even replaced by a sense of ridiculousness…because that was what this was. Ridiculous.
"Are you really-" asked Sho
"Sho! Shigeko! Get out of here!" shouted Touichirou…she was fine. She didn't still have the urge to run…she would never have wanted to run from him.
"But Dad-" asked Shigeko
"Go and get Fukuda, now!" said Touichirou as he took her hand in his. The one covered in blood. She had dropped that sharpened piece of a bowl long ago. Now it was empty…oh. He thought that it was her blood…it wasn't, and even if it had been she could have taken care of herself. If his people were here then the area was secured and she was free, now, to find something to eat and a change of clothes. She wasn't a child, she wasn't a damsel in distress and she could rescue herself…she had mostly rescued herself.
She'd gotten herself out of that cell, that was what mattered.
"Do you want us to get out of here or do you want us to go and get Fukuda?" asked Sho
"Both!" yelled Touichirou. Shigeko and Sho both practically ran away. Smart kids. Touichirou was, in that moment, the man who conquered Japan. The man who was going to conquer the world. The man who inspired fear on the mention of his name. The man that…that these people had been trying to get at. That was, of course, why she had been kept alive for this long…
Of course.
There was a voice in her mind telling her that she should have been grateful to be alive, and another one telling her that she wasn't the princess in a fairytale. She didn't need to be save. She could have made her way outside and then back to civilization on her own. Both voices were drowned out by the one that reminded her that she was the one who had gotten herself out of that cell, she was the one who had gotten herself this far, and this was just…a stroke of serendipity, that was all…just a stroke of serendipity…
She was lucky to be alive, that was all she could have asked for, and yes it would have been better if she had done it herself…but it had been done right, that was all that she needed right now…to be alive.