Calamity Hoppers ~Reprise~

by Christopher R. Martin

Chapter 16 – A Momentary Ceasefire

So this is what rock bottom feels like. This is what it means to be at the lowest possible point in your life. To back yourself into an inescapable corner. To fall so deep that you can't possibly climb back out into the light. The worst part about all this is the impact. I didn't just back myself into a corner, I forced myself there in a spine-shattering slam. I didn't just take a deep fall, I also landed flat on my face. Whatever shred of pride I had left, it all evaporated upon the emergence of this epiphany.

A nugget of wisdom that many people seem to share is that a moment like this can unravel your true self. Indeed, I've heard more than a few stories of people who've been down on their luck and managed to turn their lives around by means of perseverance, transforming them into better and stronger people than before. Revealing them to be greater than whatever their self-doubt could induce in them.

But I've come to terms with my true self. Right? Right?

Oh, who am I kidding? Besides myself, that is… Once a leftover, always a leftover. If only my condition would spread to whatever bit of…well, me remains. How could I turn back when I don't even know where the hell I am right now.

I take it from the top and assess my surroundings. The walls, ceiling and floor are all an unblemished white. The tender fabric of a blanket has laid itself my person, with my head anchored by an equally soft pillow. Strapped across my face is some kind of mask, inside of which is humid with each breath I take. A shelf containing jars, bottles, scrolls and all manner of medical equipment stands against the wall farthest from me. There's another bed across mine, and upon noting its emptiness do I see that I'm the only one here. My mind wracks itself trying to know who brought me to this hospital so that I can thank them if I ever meet them.

The second I begin to wonder, the wall adjacent to the shelf rises and reveals a familiar female rabbit with fur that's pink as a rose. She steels her face on arrival, and fits a pair of gloves over her paws and ties a gown behind her back as she approaches me. Once she's beside my bed, she holds my forehead with the heel of her paw.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead," greets Yin, taking down notes with a pen and notepad. "How are you feeling?"

I lift my body up a little to somewhat level my eyes with hers. "Like utter garbage."

"So nothing out of the ordinary?" she snarks, yet I don't feel the venom that she typically has for me. As a matter of fact, that question could very well be sympathetic. Not that I need it at all, least of all from her.

Taken aback by her sincerity, I divert my eyes from her and gaze at the blanket over me. This doesn't make sense. She and I should be trying to kill each other right about now. Her and her brother against me. That's always how the story goes.

"Hey, don't be like that," says Yin, her paws aglow with Woo Foo magic, waving them over my body. "I'm only pulling your leg." There's a rather lengthy pause after she says that. She then sways her eyes to the side as well, regretting her choice of words. "Sorry, that came out wrong. But y'know what I mean."

I do. I just don't know why. Why she's acting this way. Why she's not hellbent on killing me like she usually is. Do I even want to know why?

As sincere as she is, I can't help but still maintain my guard in the off-chance that she might be planning something else. My gooey mass goes as rigid as it can get, and I retreat an inch from her as she points a thermometer to my face. She appears annoyed, but not exactly angry. Instead of furling her brow into a scowl, she sighs and stops for a moment.

"Look, you can hate my guts all you want, and I wouldn't blame you for it, but I need you to work with me if you want to get better," she requests of me gently, parts of her loosening as she approaches me for a second time. Inserting the thermometer into my mouth, she pulls out a chair and takes a seat. She readies her pen and pad, scribbling down the temperature.

If I could quantify the trust I can put in her, it's about forty percent. Not quite halfway, but better than a zero. Breathing deeply, I relax into the pillow and close my eyes. Yin pulls the thermometer from my mouth. The next object she passes to me is a glass of water. She helps me to drink it all down, setting the empty glass on the nightstand afterwards.

"So I guess I should thank you for bringing me to this hospital, huh?" I ask her casually, quirking my eyebrow at her.

Yin lets out a single chuckle. "This isn't a hospital."

"What?"

"Calm down. You're just at the dojo. The infirmary, to be exact."

Now I know she's pulling my leg. I know this dojo inside and out, and I don't recall seeing an infirmary here before. Given the very look and feel of this room, it could easily pass for a hospital.

According to Yin, it's a recent addition to the place, as part of a large-scale renovation, in light of the celebrations towards Woo Foo, namely with the victory over the Eradicus corps during the fateful battle. The renewed reputation of Woo Foo has earned the support of the mayor, who'd appointed the art the frontline of defense for this town. That support came in the form of a generous contribution from the town government: a tidy sum to pay for expenses to renew the dojo. And that doesn't even cover everything that's unfolded in my absence.

That just goes to show how little I know, how much I've missed since then. Since searching high and low for ways to better myself. For the strength I so desperately yearned. For all the journeying I've done, for all my travels, I may as well have been standing still this whole time. Heck, I could have been walking backwards while the rest of the world went on with its business.

"Does that mean I have to call you Doctor Yin now?" I give out a chuckle of my own, which sways Yin into a chortle. The way she partially covers her mouth with her paw on reflex fiddles with my mind. I never thought that she'd look…kinda cute.

"Got a nice ring to it, but no," says Yin as she shakes her head. "It's just the 'Healing' branch of Woo Foo Magic, for the most part, which I'm still learning."

"And the robe, mask and cap?"

"Better safe than sorry. Y'know, to stay protected from germs, bacteria, virus, all that."

I roll my eyes at her. She must really enjoy playing doctor. Why else would she check every inch of her every three seconds other than to admire her equipment? Perhaps she feels important in them. She always had a thing for being a difference maker. If she really set her mind to it, she could change the universe itself.

She puts a halt to her revelry and affects a wry gaze. A puzzled look that leaves me as lost as she is. I've been given no reason to doubt her, yet I still don't like where this is going.

That's when she breaks the bad news to me. My condition is a mystery to her. This is precisely the first time she's come across something like this. Someone who is very much alive, but doesn't look anywhere like it. She does give me a tiny little nugget: my body is a huge, swirling trace of energy. It's different from Woo Foo and, just from reading her changing complexion, more potent and unstable. And my body as it is now has to be a reaction. But these are all guesses. Nothing concrete.

After giving me her diagnosis, Yin clasps her paws together and buries her head in them. She shakes her head at her loss for words. That's a frustrated rabbit sitting by the side of my bed. One who wants all the answers at her disposal. A desire that I know all too well.

"Sorry I can't help you any more than that," sighs Yin, adjusting her chair so that it faces the nightstand, atop of which she perches her head.

"Hey, 'A' for effort," I console her, but I reel in revulsion from the attempt. How do I even be sincere with what I say without sounding like a passive-aggressive dick? Wait, I can save this. And it bears mentioning anyway. "But Yin, I don't get it…"

With only the smallest turn of her face to my direction, Yin reads me like a book. "Why did I save you? Why did I bring you here? Bend over backwards to help you get better?" There's that sigh again. She lifts her head up and rests it on clamped hands. She closes her eyes, her breath audible in the fleeting silence. Within that paced breathing is a glint of guilt. "I'll tell you right now that it's not to correct a mistake I made." That was such a blatant lie that it couldn't be anything but intentional on her part.

"Okay…" I play along and let this conversation course on.

One more pause, and she opens like a pair of doors.

"But that's not to say that I don't want to…" She leans her head back until she's facing the ceiling. "There are so many things that I did that I wish I hadn't. It's costing me and the people around me." A pained stare on her face lingers above me. It casts my mind back to one of our previous encounters, and the last one I want to revisit, too. The visages of my attempts to turn over a new leaf being rejected again and again by Yin and Yang weigh down on my head harder than intensified gravity. "If I could dig into my brain with my own bare hands, there would be so much that I want to rewire."

Yin brings her legs up to her chair, tucking her knees into her chest. Weighed down by her own recollections.

Within me, my hideous, feral, vindictive side screams at her, flinging insult after insult at her self-righteousness, her stubbornness. It does not forgive, and it certainly does not forget. Alongside it, a side of me that rarely rears its head emerges. It sees past her shame, her guilt, her regret. It assures her of my conviction in my search for change. It wants to start anew. One side wants to guard me from any further harm, and the other gladly suffers that harm to earn the goodwill of others.

I know for a fact that Yin and Yang went too far in admonishing me, but I also know regret when I see it. That's the thing, though: forgiveness. I've never been on either the giving or receiving ends. The crimes I've committed are mountainous enough in this one lifetime that I might not know what it means at all. Why people find it so precious and, a lot of the time, hard to acquire.

"You don't think I'd give you a second chance whatsoever," I say, readying a shield.

"That's not what I said," Yin responds on reflex, almost letting her voice overtake her. Getting a hold of herself in short order. "But I wouldn't blame you if you didn't. I am just a prideful little bitch, after all, with such a big chip on her shoulder that you could see it from ten feet away. Still, if I started a mess, the least I could do is clean up after myself."

Standing up from her chair, Yin takes the glass with her and refills it with water. She mixes in some herbs from one of the jars in the shelf, using a popsicle stick to stir them into a consistent light green color. At her suggestion, I down the whole glass in one gulp. The herbs are said to decelerate a racing mind after about fifteen minutes, which I can't say I'm sure about, yet don't object to.

Yet she could use that same relaxing drink herself; when she sits back on her chair, she can't stop drumming her fingers along her lap. Her sullen expression is glued to her, removable only by her.

"Something bothering you?" I ask her, leaning my head on the wall.

"Oh, don't worry about it." She affects the loosest smile I think I've ever seen. "I don't wanna trouble you or anything."

"Trouble away," I chuckle at her. If I still had any paws, I'd be clasping them together right about now.

She doesn't bother hiding her reluctance in telling me anything. Nonetheless, she pulls through and starts talking. She explains to me the current situation between her and her brother, leaving no stone unturned. She mentions a disagreement during a training session, Yang's decision to venture off on his own to find…something—must be one of those self-discovery experiences or whatever—and the arrival of some strange wolf guy, and how Yang has taken a liking to him. I do recall catching a glimpse of this wolf person she brings up before passing out, but nothing more than that. Brief as the encounter was, I still felt a tremble in my person. The aura he radiated was otherworldly. I couldn't tell what that sensation was. It could have been Woo Foo, or something more dangerous.

"And that's the gist of it," Yin finishes. "You heard it here first from the worst sister in the world."

I raise an eyebrow at that last remark. "Excuse me?"

"Huh?"

"Worst sister in the world? Where did that come from?"

Yin shrugs at me and chuckles, trying to derive the closest thing to humor from her self-deprecation.

"What? Can't a girl beat herself up once in a while? Or is it that you don't believe me?"

"You really don't mean that, do you?" I know it won't change her attitude on herself, but I still want to try and dispel that belief.

"I don't know. Does a good sister take her big brother for granted? Does she let him go off to become a homicidal maniac? You tell me."

Those words and that voice of defeat, I recognize them all too well, having witnessed them myself more times than I'd like to admit. They make me remember how I came to be. Just because I was born of Yin's and Yang's worst qualities doesn't mean that they're completely rid of them. My mere existence won't suddenly turn them into bonafide saints. But it shouldn't mean that they should stop trying.

And I guess…it shouldn't mean that I shouldn't stop trying, either.

Having been in the light once before, I've wanted to be in its warmth again. I've wanted its comfort, its reassurance that it was worth it. Upon the epiphany that I can't be in that warmth again, I've since resigned myself to my fate. To the way I've been wired. A disgusting non-creature designed to wreak destruction on anything and anyone. No matter how many times the door has been slammed in my face, that desire has never really vanished.

Some things may never change, but others can and will…

I will a tendril of my slimy form into an arm and grab Yin by her wrist. She pays it notice before setting her eyes on me.

"That just means you have a lot of work to do," I tell her firmly, hardening my grip on her. My amorphous mass pulsates. "Just like I have a lot of work to do. Isn't that right?"

Yet again, Yin chuckles at me. But this one is a chuckle of agreement. She puts her other paw on top of mine. "I guess you are," she jokes. Before long, she quirks her eyebrow at me, which prompts me to react in a similar way. She puts her other paw on top of mine. "Does this mean you're on our side now?"

I want to say 'yes', but I don't exactly do that. Not yet. I want to savor this moment. Process it. Discern whether or not it's real. I want to know that I really do have a chance to be back into the light. Back under that splendor. That warmth. I want to know that I really am the one in control. That I'm the one who chooses my path.

The second Yin sees my hesitation, her determination seems to dwindle a little. Subsequently, her hold on me loosens.

"Rain check?" I say jokingly so as to not totally dampen her spirits.

She chortles and smiles lightly. "I'll hold you to it."

Before long, my head starts throbbing. I place my paw on it to lessen the pain, but to no avail. I lean past the bed and cough out some green and red fluid. A mixture of blood and my amorphous form. I didn't even think that I would still be made of blood in some way, but this just answers whatever question I would have had about it.

While Yin thinks that it's the herbs she gave me going to work—and it could be—my guess is that my affliction is just that bad. That it'll take more than medicine to fix whatever the hell is going on with me.

"Take it easy a bit, Yuck," says Yin. "I'll be back."

As she walks out of the room, I call out to her one more time.

"Hey…"

"Yeah?"

The words take some time to come out of my mouth. "Thank you…?"

She lowers her head in a chuckle. "Don't thank me just yet." She takes her leave, and the wall behind her lowers.

I rest my head back on the pillow and set my eyes on the ceiling before closing them. The throbbing has quieted down, but my head is still heavy. I cast my mind back to that day when I leapt into the Pit. My reasoning, or lack thereof, for doing so. I then dwell on Yin's explanation of the current situation. I don't draw as clear a picture as that of my own circumstances, but if I know Yang, for all that bravado he affects, he's always been the chip-on-his-shoulder type. Always having something to prove. And one small blow to his pride is all it takes to reduce him to less than a man.

If that really is the case, then I'm in no position to belittle him for it. Not with these demons of my own that call my existence their home.

All power comes at a price. I just wasn't ready for the steepness of mine. And I just hope, for Yang's sake, that he's ready for his.

Beyond the walls of the infirmary, a gentle melody sounds. A familiar, yet distant tune that I've heard from some movie I once saw. It somewhat clicks in twenty seconds. I remember hearing it in some shitty vampire movie I saw at one time after sneaking in a local theater – definitely one of my bigger regrets in life. Not the biggest, but up there. Definitely a saving grace for such a cinematic failure.

My mind registers the pleasant sound, easing me into slumber. All other thoughts that occupy the space up and evaporate.

My paws are delicate feathers dancing across the keys of the piano. The sounds they produce are precise. Defined. Graceful. The tune is accented by the shuffling of my right foot across the pedals, amplifying the notes or quietening them as I see fit. As I embed the melody in me and it carries my heart off the ground, I close my eyes and relish it. Even without my vision, I play the rest of the song without any difficulty. Without hesitation. The song ends in a slow, dense legato, and I lower my head against the piano's base.

River Flows In You, the song is called, composed by a man named Yiruma from Korea. But alas, most people associate it with that awful Twilight movie, having heard it played there. Regardless of how this piece is used, it doesn't make it any worse of a song. And it doesn't stop me from turning to it every now and then. Any piece of music that can set me at ease when I most need it is always worth a listen.

But as potent as the power of music is, I'm afraid it doesn't keep me from dwelling on my recent encounter with my brother and his canine master. My vision and my thoughts are overtaken by images of our battle. How his strength far eclipsed mine, how he left Yuck for dead with his unbridled fury, how I let him slip through my grasp yet again.

Before I can really wallow in my own self-pity, a paw rests itself upon my left shoulder. I look over. My father stares me down, eyes resolute and hardened. I shape my own face to match his.

"How's our friend holding up?" he asks.

"I've done everything I can," I answer, placing my paw over his.

"Let's take a look at him later. What about you? You ready?"

Rising from the piano stool, I face him directly and give him a firm nod. I curl my right paw into a fist. My pulsating heart is screaming to burst through my ribs. I rein it in and control my breaths.

"Don't hold anything back this time, Dad. Just like you promised," I declare to him.

"I won't."

At the backyard, we stand two persons apart from each other. Dad lowers his head. I acknowledge the cue and hold out my paw. He forms a cross with both of his arms. And when he closes his eyes, I do just that.

Within the reaches of my mind, a vivid picture of Snow Flower materializes, and with it text reading 雪印の花. A sparkling sound rings in my ears. The temperature around me takes a significant drop. My once empty paw now grasps the ancient Woo Foo Talisman—the Kami no Gofu, Yuki no Hana: Snow Flower—frigid to the touch. Gracing its presence, a thick mist and a small array of shards floating about harmlessly.

As I open my eyes, there's a rumble beneath my feet. I'm not sure if anyone outside of this dojo can feel it, or only Dad I can. In his possession, the iron gauntlets Terra Magnus: Earth Hand. He affects a fighting pose, and I ready my paw at the hilt. He lunges at me and throws the first punch, which I deflect in a flash.

Just as I asked him, he doesn't hold anything back. I expect nothing less. If it means smoothing out the edges in my skill to be on equal footing with Yang, then this is a pain I will gladly suffer. I won't stop until my bones are on the brink of snapping. Until my flesh is close to tearing in two. Until my heart is just about to pump out the last squeeze of blood.

Besides, it's not like any of this could be worse than what I'm going through now…