Notes, part one: I cannot bloody believe this. This was supposed to be about 500 words. My first attempt was about that long, but I thought it was horrible and decided to re-write it from scratch. Somewhere along the line it evolved from a ficlet into a 4,000 word story. Oops.
Notes, part two: There are small references to the X movie in this fic, which I'm spoilering in these next few lines – it's a small spoiler associated only with Karen and Shogo who play very small parts in the film, but if you want, you can skip the spoiler altogether as the story will still make sense. Spoiler: Shogo, very sadly, doesn't have a big role in the film. He fights another character that existed prior to the movie in the X universe called Karen, whose element is fire. Shogo's element is naturally water in the film . Anyway, they fight, and Karen ends up killing them both in a fire. Poor, poor Shogo. So pretty, so little time to create a fan base. Luckily, Tsubasa changed that.
And now, onto the actual fic itself!
Flames.
He guzzles the beer, throwing his head back and wrapping greedy, inexperienced lips around the neck of the bottle, allowing the hot, burning liquid quicker access to his throat. It's nothing like Shogo has ever tasted, raw and sharp and ripping raggedly down lower and lower, and suddenly the snow isn't quite as cold and the air has taken on hues of colour that dance before wide eyes. He blinks, and then he chokes, and when he swallows he wishes that he hadn't, because it hurts more than it really should.
It's the best moment of his life, bar none. Wait until the kids at school here about this, the cocky little 'what are you doing this weekend, Shogo?' bastards. Shogo doesn't have time to go to the baseball games or to watch the Kudan tournaments, not when there are runs to do and alcohol to deliver. Of course, his father could actually hire someone, but child labor comes cheaper, although with the added disadvantage of temper tantrums.
And his dad is going to be pissed, although not the sort of pissed that Shogo currently is, half a bottle of his father's cheapest beer lining his stomach and the other half being enthusiastically suckled in. 7 year olds, his father will say after hitting around the head and rough handling him into his room, do NOT drink alcohol.
Well. They don't deliver alcohol for free, either.
And just wait until the kids here about this. Who needs fancy baseball games or Kudan tournaments when you can have your own back alley with beer and your best friend as company? Ghostly pale, his kudan wisps around the bottle even as Shogo takes another gulp, tantalizingly threatening to pull it away even though Shogo knows that it would not dare do so. His kudan doesn't like this, Shogo can tell, doesn't like the way the light is dying quickly and the alley way is being cast in shadows, doesn't like the way that Shogo can barely stand once the bottle is empty and casually disregarded. Shogo almost regrets it all simply because it has displeased his kudan so much, but then everything simply seems to make more sense and Shogo's actually enjoying his weekend instead of merely working it, and so he forgets the regret and simply enjoys the high. His father will still be at the bar, so if he sneaks up the back entrance then he'll never know …
All he has to do is turn right. He turns left.
He's just a little bit drunk.
He wobbles down through the streets, searching for the brightly coloured back door that he recognizes as his own. There are green doors and blue doors and doors without any colour at all, but none of them are black and orange and have battered curtains hanging behind the crisscrossed glass panes. His kudan mews quietly as the shadows start to follow them, lightly circling Shogo before diving into his shirt and coming to rest somewhere up his right sleeve. Their bar isn't in a very nice neighborhood, and Shogo really does know better not to wander the streets so late, but he's not doing it by purpose and just trying to find his orange and black door. He doesn't feel so warm now, although his kudan rubs against his skin in a feeble attempt to generate warmth, and his head is feeling heavy and strangely empty. There are thoughts there, but he can't quite seem to grasp them for any length of time, and he wonders briefly if they are escaping through his ears and floating away on the cold, cold wind.
He just wants to curl up and sleep, just for a little while. Instead, he throws up. The beer taste almost as bad coming up as it did going down, and as he groans his kudan murmurs in agreement Flittering through his clothes, his kudan suddenly flutters up along his back before escaping from his shirt, darting and dipping in the winds erratically, but in an erratic way that holds just a semblance of purpose to it. Shogo follows, stumbling over invisible rocks and sticks that he knows are there because obviously if they weren't he wouldn't be tripping over them, all the while thinking about how devious it is for there to be invisible objects in the alleyways in the first place. He doesn't for a moment think that his kudan is misleading him, or worse, leading him into deeper trouble. There is a trust between them that stretches beyond friendship and finds its home in something more familiar, more base, although he isn't really thinking THAT right now, either.
He follows on instinct.
The fire is almost burnt out when they get there, a few coals battling bravely against the violent winds and softly falling snow – Shogo doesn't quite remember when it started to snow – but there are flames there that still provide more heat than anything else does. His kudan becomes pushy, prodding and bumping into him until Shogo picks up a stick (not invisible, this time), and sparks the fire back into something that, while isn't quite life, is also not quite in the keels of death, either.
Shogo knows where they are now, although not how to get home. The low, small barrel that the fire lives in most nights is where homeless people congress when the nights get cold, yet are not quite cold enough that they have to risk things like dignity and pride and go instead to one of the shelters. They were here earlier, the coals tell him that, just as the fact that they are not here now tells him he might be in a little bit of trouble. But the fire is warmish and as he curls low against the wall, his hands buried under his armpits and his kudan flittering around different parts of his body, helplessly trying to provide a smidgen more heat, he finds that it isn't that bad.
He's always been somewhat of a hopeless optimist.
At first, he doesn't think of the flames themselves as he absorbs their warmth. But as his thoughts slink back into his head he finds himself drawn to them, mesmerized by each twist and turn, each flicker that breathes simply to keep him alive. He finds them comforting and friendly, but it is all simply an illusion that he realizes all too soon. If anything, he is being taunted, and with each flame that dies before suddenly sparking back to life, each coal that darkens before finding a reddish hue from somewhere to continue on, he discovers a new kind of terror in the flames. Hypnotized, he is too afraid to look away. Shogo is more scared by the oranges and red that dance deliberately before him than he is of the cold, as there is something deeper there, something that isn't simply colour and heat and resounds deep within himself.
And he can't look away.
His father finds him like that, wide eyed and horrified, and trembling, trembling. There are harsh words but warm arms, and Shogo latches onto him as pleads with his father to never let go. His father gruffly tells him to stop acting like a baby but his hold on Shogo tightens all the same, and he doesn't let go until they're safely home and his mother is there to deal with his 'antics'. It's hours before he's calm enough to be left alone, hours more after that before sleep becomes even somewhat feasible.
But just wait until the kids here about this.
The nightmares start the next night.
xxx
There is fire, there is always fire. Since that night when he was seven, flames have a habit of invading his dreams, crawling around the edges of his subconscious and threatening to devour him at any moment of perceived weakness. Most nights his kudan can chase them away, dousing the flames before they reach true consciousness, but it hasn't always like that. Initially the dreams had come nightly, ripping terrified screams from his throat and bringing curses from his father and worried looks from his mother. His kudan had been too weak to fight them back, too weak and too young to do anything other than flutter protectively. But Kudans evolve so that they may protect, and that Shogo had needed protecting from something as fragmented as dreams did not stop his kudan from discovering a way to do exactly that.
He wonders even now if it is really simply chance that his fear of fire feels so inbred, yet he has a kudan that represents the element of water.
But there are times when, no matter how bravely his kudan battles, that the dreams still find a way pass the small stingray. That he knows that this is a dream doesn't help, as his fear still slowly smothers him before the smoke has a chance to. The dream is always different, always the same, but he has never before been in the building he is now, the rafters falling around him as he desperately tries to escape. He doesn't know why his feet seem to know where to go, doesn't know why this seems all so eerily familiar, and the confusion only makes things worse as he feels that he should.
In each dream, he dies. And he screams and he screams even as death painfully takes him, but it's not because of the way it feels as though his very veins are flowing with fire that he cries out.
It's because he feel as though he should recognize dying, as well.
As he takes last breath in his dream he takes his first back in full consciousness, sitting straight up in his chair and slightly startled eyes darting around the room. He's at school; he's in class, except the bell has already rung as everyone has apparently left.
"Bad dream?"
Almost everyone. His history teacher is still there, smiling warmly and with a friendly sparkle in his eyes, but there is a strange concern there as well, as though Sorata sees more than he really should. Sorata is a not like any of Shogo's other teachers, he makes them all call them by his first name because 'sensei' makes him feel old, and he sometimes seems more like a child than half the people in his class. But he's also not like any of Shogo's other teachers in the same way Shogo isn't like any of the other students, although Shogo hasn't yet discovered why exactly that is. It means that Shogo usually keeps his distance from his otherwise very popular teacher, and Sorata doesn't make the same attempt to reach him as he does the others.
Until now.
"I'm fine." He offers coolness to neutralize Sorata's warmth, stretching disinterestedly even as the memories of heat remain far too real. Sorata dips his head slightly to the side, his smile widening even as his gaze turns contemplative.
"That wasn't what I asked, Shogo." Shogo freezes, his arm stretched above his head. They belatedly fall down to his sides, and Shogo has to fight to keep his expression uncaring.
"I didn't mean to fall asleep in class, Sensei. I promise not to do it again." It's far more formal than Shogo has ever been, and it's the exact type of thing Sorata hates, but his teacher just nods disappointedly and waves him out. He only gets to the door before a cry echoes down the corridor, and then more screams of terror and fear follow. Sorata reacts first, dashing down the corridor at a neck breaking speed, and Shogo is on his heels.
This time, the smell of smoke is not the phantom kind that sometimes creeps into his waking moments, but the real thing.
Flames lick at the second story of the building opposite theirs, leaping from window to window and twisting down pipes that are already starting to screech and bend. To their right is a sobbing boy, at least a year older than Shogo is but just as traumatized, and he desperately tries to say to anyone who will listen that he hadn't meant for this to happen, not like this. It's a kudan move gone wrong, something that happens all the time in a school where status is often reflected through power, but it's never before happened on such a scale. Sorata is already calling his kudan out but Shogo is a step faster, and as his kudan soars swiftly overhead, it takes on a shape and form that shadows them all. Deftly diving into the building and weaving through the corridors, Shogo can imagine his kudan streaking through the halls, the fire falling foul to its natural enemy. Steam slowly begins to slink through the windows, and as his kudan bursts through one on the far side of the building, plunging into the clouds before twisting back downwards, rain follows it.
The remains of the fire drown quickly in the sprinkling of rain, as does the fear that had frozen all the others. Cries turn to cheers, and unlocked now from their terror, students and teachers alike rush quickly into the building, calling upon their own kudans in an attempt to get everyone out and to make sure they're alright. Some students remain, taken now by awe instead of fear, and their eyes find Shogo. Cool and collected, he must appear the antithesis of them all, but he doesn't focus on them and instead on the building before him, ignoring the strands of long hair that are quickly becoming drenched and falling over his eyes. All it takes is a spark, a tiny flint of light …
"Shogo, the fire is out." He doesn't know how long he stands there, watching, waiting. The gentle hand on his shoulder shakes him from his thoughts more than the voice does, and startled, he turns to Sorata. The other man is smiling kindly, far too kindly for someone whose blue suit is now so heavy with water that it looks black, but his eyes are serious and warm. "It's ok to recall your kudan." Dazed, he realizes that this is just like waking up in the classroom all over again, as everyone is gone and it is just Sorata.
He doesn't want to know why that feels as though it is how it should be.
The field and pavements are slick with water, and the rain is falling heavier than he can remember intending it to be. There is no colour left, nothing but washed out blues and grays, and as a small, shuddering breath escapes through suddenly dry lips, Shogo nods. His kudan knows immediately and glides down to him, shrinking as it comes. The last few meters it resembles more a tiny, beaten-up toy plane begin battered by the winds, and as Shogo welcomes it back he can feel its exhaustion.
He can also feel its pride. He hopes it can feel his.
"It was a very bad dream." Shogo speaks suddenly, calmly, and he holds Sorata's gaze with ease. "But just a dream."
In this life, fire is the last thing he needs to fear.
xxx
The thing with kudan battles, Shogo learns very quickly, is that it's almost inevitable that buildings will fall, people will occasionally get hurt, and that his dad will be royally pissed off at having to foot the bill. The fact that he generally doesn't like annoying his dad (well, most of the time) is part of the reason why he quickly forms his own team and makes a new set or rules that is strictly against exactly those type of things. It is more, however, that Shogo would rather people didn't get hurt over something that is simultaneously so incredibly important and so utterly irrelevant. He breathes for the fights, loves the victories and the losses equally, calmly enjoying being pushed and challenged. But he is finding that the older he gets, the more he enjoys the way he and his kudan can – at times – be more than public nuisances.
And so, their reputation grows. Shogo and his punks, who tear up the streets but always put them back together again, and who can always be counted in to lend the occasional helping hand. His father still blasts him, but there is an edge of pride in his voice, and the awe that he first saw a couple of years ago when he put out the fire at his school is as constant as his kudan. The awe is somewhat strange, but Shogo takes it in a stride and returns it always with a smile, although his mother mutters good-naturedly that he breaks more hearts that way than if he was out every night on dates. The jealousy that his team inspires in some of their 'competition' is also a little strange, although Shogo takes that in his stride as well, and always with the smile.
His mother mutters darkly how that is the reason why he gets into so many street fights, and perhaps he could save that particular smirk for the girls? She doesn't realize how fun the fights are, how they're like flying and defying everything and everyone who has ever even thought of denying you anything. When he fights, there is a true joy about life that makes everything surreal and unbelievable, and it's the greatest high that Shogo has ever known.
Plus, it's something he is very, very good at. And everyone knows that.
It helps, naturally, that he often tells them exactly that.
Some fights are less, however, about soaring above the limitations of everyday life, and more about plunging deep into the hellish nature of humans. Given a choice, Shogo would not be here at this battered, rarely used train stop, his kudan swirling above as he studied his overly large opponent. The platform is dusty and cluttered with week old filth, some of which occasionally breathes and moans before burying deeper beneath faded jackets or thread-thin blankets. Shogo wishes they would move away, but they have refused to thus far, limiting his attacks on the man who seems hell bent on bringing the station – and the buildings above it – to its knees.
The others are above ground, fighting the remains of a team who care nor for status or pride and only for notoriety. Their leader has been left to Shogo, and Shogo dodges easily his next attack, a wooden spike that instead imbeds itself easily into the cement pillar just to his left. Kudans are meant only to fight other kudans, it's one of the basic rules that even the most sinister of gangs know to follow, but the fat rotunda of a man seems set on surpassing even them. Already there is blood trailing down Shogo's right side, a painful although shallow gash that serves of a reminder of exactly how damaging those wooden stakes can be. They fly from the Armadillo-like kudan with ease, and worse, a deadly precision. His kudan is tired and exhausted, although Shogo knows that it is not even close to giving up, attacking the enemy kudan's tough hide again and again without success. The next stake hits an electric box near the entrance to the platform, and the pedestrian who has just wandered down screams, more startled than scared, although quite possibly that's because she has no idea yet of the situation she has just wandered into. Calmly, Shogo orders another attack, trying to pin down the weak spot that is surely somewhere on the gigantic kudan, all the while taking deliberate aim at his mortal enemy's very obvious one. The other man bristles on cue at Shogo's lack of fear or panic, his own commands becoming more erratic and rushed, allowing Shogo's kudan to avoid the attacking stakes with more ease than before.
What few kudan trainers realize is that the relationship between kudan and human is not one of command, but is instead a partnership. It is why Shogo and his kudan rise to levels that others will never be able to quite obtain. For his kudan to fight this alone would not merely be unfair but a disadvantage, and as Shogo weighs up the situation, weighs up the chances of one of the homeless men or the stray passer-by getting caught up in all of this with possibly fatal results, he lets his kudan know exactly what to do.
He hopes there isn't a train coming; otherwise his father is going to absolutely kill him.
Shogo sets the other man up easily, baiting him with a cocky smile and a bored look. The desperate attack from his kudan also puts the Armadillo off balance, and Shogo's kudan takes the opportunity to ram into it hard, sending it spirally off of the platform and onto the tracks below. Shogo can feel his kudan's pain as the Armadillo's spikes pierce through the stingray's translucent exterior, but always brave, his kudan does not waste even a moment in flooding the tracks in a wash of water, the rapid current sending the Armadillo spiraling rapidly out of control down the long tunnel. There is little risk of the kudan attacking someone else randomly at another stop; the water attack has surely drained all of the other kudan's powers, just as it has drained all of Shogo's own. As his wonderful, brilliant kudan returns to Shogo's body, the sudden look of comprehension on the fat man's face gives away that his kudan has most certainly returned as well. For a moment, it looks as though the man will attack Shogo himself, but Shogo just raises an eyebrow and the other man scatters, racing back up the stairs to the street in a desperate attempt to get away. Shogo doesn't give chase; the others will nab him the moment he surfaces.
He checks on the homeless people – or homeless lumps – first, and they're fine enough to order him away and to let them go back to sleep. He turns to the woman to do the same, but casual concern gives way to momentary panic, and he dives at her, sending them both tumbling to the ground. The electric box explodes, sparks flying everywhere and leaving the part of the wall that the woman had been leaning against nothing but a mess of shattered metal and exposed infrastructure.
"These subways are a dangerous place, you should be careful." Shogo says it with a smirk as he rolls off the woman, brushing bits of burnt metal out of his hair. Extending a hand, he pulls her to her feet, a little surprised when she doesn't let go but invites herself in closer.
"I'll have to remember that." It's low and husky, not unlike her shirt, and as she brushes a lock of shimmering red hair back off her face, Shogo finds his smirk taking on just the slightest hint of cockiness.
"That's a good idea." He turned back to the stairs, easily slipping out of her grasp. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Miss …"
"Karen." For a moment Shogo is trapped in a gaze that lingers for slightly too long, caught up in this beautiful woman who seems to burn so brilliantly passion and heat and all the things that he only just now realizes have been missing from a life that has until then been filled with things like fights and school.
He is terrified. It is as though he is seven all over again, truly looking at a flame for the very first time.
Her smile falters then for the slightest of seconds, but then a roar of a train fills the station and the lights flicker in an almost violent fashion, blinding Shogo more than the darkness itself would. When they finally return back to normal, Karen has slipped into the train, and she waves with a cold, cold smile as it whisks her away.
It is several long moments before Shogo manages to turn away from the empty tracks and slowly make his way up the stairs. That night, he dreams of flames and death, and this time not even his kudan can drive the fear away.