Growing Pains
14: Change your mind
Auteur : Rain
Disclaimer : Shaman King…. Doesn't belong to me! How surprising! I am only playing with borrowed toys.
Notes :
To reach out; to argue; to choose.
Hello everyone!
Thank you for your support. A special thanks to CorporalQueen, Solemntempo, LugiaP2K, and Allie. Reading means a lot to me and commenting even more. Thank you.
Previously on: Growing Pains
Marco and Lyserg are both in a coma caused by Meene's death and subsequent disappearance inside Spirit of Fire. Yoh comes to see Lyserg on the ship and he and Jeanne talk. Tamao came with to watch over him and meets someone new. Hao, who was very pleased with his performance, comes to terms with the idea that Tamao is his soulmate.
...
Sitting at a desk too large for her, Jeanne stares at her Oracle Bell and tries not to crumble.
Everything is as Marco left it: the forgotten coffee cup on one side, the pile of reports precariously perched on the other, the additional papers on top of his books. As orderly and methodical Marco is, his workspace is proof of how little sleep and time he has.
She found her Oracle Bell in the jacket he still wore in the infirmary. There is another coat by the door, but she does not look through it. Instead, she scrolls through the contact list on the Bell. It takes her a good minute to find the right name, and she clicks it before picking out her message, one letter at a time. His favorite fountain pen lies next to her hand, but she wouldn't dare touch it. Plus, a letter would be too slow for what she has in mind.
Your son will die soon if you do nothing.
It doesn't feel right, but she doesn't know what to add. Is this enough detail? Can she be more specific? Free her. Ask your master to let her go. Please. Do something!
But what can he do? He might be as helpless as she is. He might not want to help at all; after all, he left them, did he not? He is fated to Hao, is he not? He does not care.
But he has to.
He has to.
Jeanne stares at the 'send' button and does not press it.
She has other things to do than mope. Yesterday, they were nine; now, they are four, and her three remaining men need her to lead them, so she will. Her men are angry, listless, brittle. they need direction, they need talking to. Comfort? Assertions of authority? None of it feels right.
Make lists, that's what a leader does. A leader organizes. She carefully tears off Marco's last memo, something about checking the weapons stored downstairs, and starts a new one.
So, what is there to do?
1. Fix Marco and Lyserg. She's trying. What else?
2. Figure out a strategy for the rest of the tournament. Things will not go on as they have; she refuses to send even a single other person to die. So she has to find another way. Something else she can do to save the world. There has to be something!
Hesitantly, she writes a 3.
3. Find Hao's soulmates.
Not the people he flared, but the people that will light him up.
It's no longer a mercy kind of thing. Now it can actually be the key to their success. If they manage to find them – if they can get Hao in the same state as Marco and Lyserg, she will have a shot. She can save the world.
So, find them, flare them, and do what's necessary.
It doesn't feel right. It feels like the choice of a coward. But what else is there to do? She can take a little blood on her hands. If it saves the world, she will send her own soul to the deepest reaches of hell. If it saves Marco…
She looks back at her Oracle Bell. Before she can think about it, she reaches out and presses 'send'.
ꙮ
The walk back to the village is silent and harried. It is a lot easier, Tamao finds, to walk in the quiet than to find something she could talk about with her new friend without upsetting one or both of them. She does not forget the choking grasp of his spirit, nor the hatred in his eyes when he looked at the ship.
"We'll be at the road in a few hundred feet," Ponchi says. "Then things will be easier."
They're still too close to the ship to do anything as obvious as bushwhacking, or using Ashil's spirit to carry them. Instead, they are creeping along prickly trees and strangling vines.
The teen stumbles regularly. The first time, she goes to support him, and he swipes at her. Like a cat, she thinks, and doesn't try again.
They find the road, and above it the stars come out naked and winking.
"Did you have a plan?"
"For what?"
"For getting into the ship," she prods. "You knew it was going to be guarded."
"Not well," he scoffs. "There's only four of them now, and I know how to be discreet. I'd have found the brat, strangled the lights out of him, and been fine."
"Really?" It's hard to imagine that. "You could just kill someone, like that?"
He looks at her like the question bothers him, but also like it's stupid.
"Why?"
"I told you why. Are you stupid?"
"I just don't understand."
"It's this stupid bond how did you not get that? Since his stupid friends suicided themselves against Hao-sama I'm useless. My arm burns like I'm the one who went and got hurt but I didn't! I don't deserve this."
He squeezes his arm to bruising and Tamao opens wide eyes. "So Lyserg…"
"Yeah," he says, sounding pitiful and ashamed. "He wrote I don't care on my arm and now he went and crippled me. It would be better if he was dead. If I'd never met him."
It sounds so sad, when he says it. Tamao cannot help but show her emotions on her face. He glances at her, and then he sneers sharply. "Bet you believe in all that bullshit, don't you? About soulmates and destiny and – ugh."
He clutches his arm. Tamao frowns, and doesn't try to help him. "Yes, I do." She could continue, but she doesn't want to be laughed at.
He does it anyway, and his laugh is a ugly sound. "That's for humans and for little kids. That shit doesn't mean anything. I don't need a stupid trick to lo – to choose somebody."
Tamao blinks. Anna's words, twisted inside out, but still Anna's words. And it's true: she didn't need a mark to choose Yoh. Is she fooling herself?
"So you have chosen somebody," she says, at length, and sees him bloom proudly.
"I follow Hao-sama."
"Oh." It doesn't sound like he simply follows him.
She should have guessed. Can she really bring home one of Hao's followers? To get him help? Yoh would not mind, but Anna might. Too late for that, she also thinks; she can't tell him no now.
To lo – choose. She heard right, in spite of that accent she cannot quite place. "So you chose him," she says, cautiously.
"Of course! Why pick anyone else? He's – he's amazing. He has power and knowledge and when he looks at you – it's like you're in on a joke against the whole world. Like everything else could burn but he and I."
Tamao tries to imagine that. It must feel nice, indeed. Yoh has that effect on people; the sudden glow, that warm feeling all over.
"He knows what we are owed, and it's not a crappy world where we have to hide," Ashil continues. "Even someone weak like you – humans should revere you."
"They shouldn't," she cuts in, horrified. "I'm not anybody special."
"But you are, don't you see that? You see spirits. You can harness their power. You are a goddess among them."
Is that what Hao tells them? Tamao imagines the Hao she's seen, Yoh's size but with earrings and a cape and different, she imagines him telling her these things. Could she hear it? Could she withstand the weight of such an offer?
"You know I'm right," Ashil says. He stops on the road, grabs her shoulder. Tamao is snapped out of her reverie and stares at him dumbfounded.
"Humans have no right to ignore you. Words have no power to bind you. It should all burn."
"No it shouldn't," she stutters, and pushes him back. Manta is kind and funny and alive and should stay alive. Her friends at school – she never had many, but she had some – they deserve to live. This world isn't perfect but this isn't…
This isn't right either.
"I don't need words on my skin to make my choices, you are right," she says, voice heavy with tears. "But maybe that's not why they're here. Maybe they're here to make me ask questions, and figure out my answers. Maybe Lyserg is a question you refuse to answer."
Ashil takes a step back. "What are you on about now?"
"Maybe Lyserg is supposed to be important for you. Maybe he's not meant to become your husband or your boyfriend or make you happy, but the fact that you hate that he's alive – you're running away from the sheer idea of him. Why? What's the question he's making you ask yourself? Is it because he's a boy?"
"Of course not," Ashil splutters, going red. "Hao-sama is – well –"
She knew as much, but it puts him ever so slightly off balance. Good; she half-believes he would jump at her throat otherwise.
"So what is it?"
"It's nothing! You're just stupid, there's no question, I –"
He doesn't finish. His arm pulses in a ring of fire, and he falls to his knees with a sharp scream. His hand goes to his arm like it's about to fall out. Tamao kneels. His shirt is not on fire; there's no sign of him being hurt but his posture and the sharp breaths he's taking. They devolve into sobs and Tamao's heart squeezes.
"You don't have to love whoever marked you," she says softly. "You don't have to stop loving Hao. I – I love someone and I don't bear his mark either. But – but maybe your mark is here to make you think about your choices a bit more. Is Hao going to make you happy? Isn't there… I don't know, a softer way?"
"Of course he'd make me happy," Ashil mutters. "I don't need a softer way. I'm strong – I can…"
"Of course you can," Tamao says, just in time to catch him as he faints. For a moment she stays there, holding this boy. Is he dying here and now? She can feel his pulse. He breathes fine. But his arm is boiling hot.
"What are we going to do," asks Ponchi. "Can we just leave him here?"
"We are not doing that." Carefully, she maneuvers her new charge onto her back and rises to her feet. "We're taking him home."
"Tamao, it's not a stray cat. He's with Hao!"
"I know."
"He wants to hurt Manta! And half the world!"
"More like 90%, if Yoh's family has correct estimates. But we're taking him home."
And they do.
ꙮ
Hao drops stealthily behind Ashil and watches the boy move.
Nothing he knows about him explains going to Yoh's place, or even entertaining the conversation of one Tamao Tamamura. Ashil is spiteful, arrogant, mean. He should have scared the little rabbit right back into her room. He should never have set foot anywhere near their house in the first place.
Physically, too, there is something amiss. Ashil usually walks rigidly, head held high. He now stumbles hesitantly from shadow to shadow. He doesn't have enough light to see the path, and so he trips every other step.
He sees the pain there, the sheer impossibility of maintaining an Overssoul with fire radiating from his shoulder. Because of Diethel and the woman. Hao has to admit to surprise. He did not expect such side effects. Like he needed another advantage.
Ashil trips over his own foot and falls without grace. Hao stills in the shadows. A moment later, there are sobs.
Ashil does not sob. Ashil does not lose control of himself like that, unless in rage. But evidently he does.
His thoughts are a storm, a kaleidoscope of faces, his own, Lyserg's, the rabbit's. They had a squabble, it seems. He sees her, flushed and angry, in his head. What's the question he's making you ask yourself? She is so animated, so sure to be saying something important, valuable, although she is struggling to put it into words. Is Hao going to make you happy?
Perhaps ignoring him would be a kindness. He is on his way back, and he will absolutely hate that Hao has seen him in this state. Instead Hao walks out of the shadows and stops before his sobbing, hurting boy.
"I have been looking for you," he says.
Ashil jumps, and stares at him like he's just been caught doing something incriminating. There is no relief on his face; just fear.
Is Hao going to make you happy?
That's not his job. He never promised he would.
Is Hao going to make you happy?
"We're going home," he says, and Spirit of Fire lifts them both into the sky.
