"Wait a minute! Wait. I'm having a thought. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I'm gonna have a thought. It's coming… It's gone."
- Al Pacino
"Ugh! Shit! I picked a cute one!"
- Danny DeVito
"Zoinks, Scoob!"
- Shaggy at 1% power
"Hey, remember me? Benny Blanco from the Bronx?"
- Reito Kanzaki
"We'll give those other girls the show of a lifetime! I'm sure of it, Kazu!"
Princess Akane balanced on her toes as she pecked Kazuya on the mouth with an innocent kiss. She threw her arms around him happily, and he brushed her back tenderly as she rubbed the side of her face into his chest in a distinctively feline way. She giggled with drunken love as her ear listened to the source of his pulse.
Kazuya's fingers softly massaged the place behind her shoulder bearing her birthmark. He felt so relieved she took this brief, quiet moment to rest her gentle palm over the ticking organic clock in the left half of his chest. This could very well be the last time before something far less gentle reached for it.
"We won't let anyone take this away! You'll see!" she cheerfully promised.
Kazuya just closed his eyes and smiled as he was bombarded with all of her happy mannerisms. Her vivacity so overwhelming, it almost made him forget he could be a dead man within the next hour.
Akane energetically twirled out of his arms at the end of their embrace. She cheerfully and confidently sprinted away to take her place in the temple arena, with the sash of her royal kimono and the ribbon in her ponytail playfully flailing behind her.
The ceremony attendants mustn't have spent much time preparing her robe. It looked nice for what it was supposed to be, but the sleeves were comically too big on her. Kazuya was a little offended the organization running this party backstage didn't think more highly of her. She could be wearing that thing for the next nine weeks of the Festival, depending on how she performed in tonight's first event.
The Festival had been going on for centuries, and this was always how the processions started: The highly celebrated summoner entered first to vibrant festivities and loud applause. Then she was followed by her two potential sacrifices.
Akane was a kind young woman. Kind to a fault, some might say. But whoever said that hadn't grown up with her for close to two decades in the clan just next to hers, the way Kazuya had. To him, she was just the right amount of sweetness. Deep down, they both knew she was completely crestfallen over what she would have to do the other eleven girls in the intense Festival competition. But she liked the idea of losing him even less.
"The person most important to you" could mean a lot of different things depending on someone's personality and outlook on life. Some of the other girls brought a family member, an old mentor, or some close working acquaintance. Akane was one of the romantic ones who brought her cherished lover. Some of the relationships between the HiME and their respective sacrifice pledges were seen as commendable or respectable, maybe even awe-inspiring. Akane always took the adorable route.
She could've denied her feelings about Kazuya, but she didn't. She could have brought some other wandering schlub with her to the pre-qualification mass and said "Yep! This is my Kazu!" but she didn't. She would only be making things harder on herself, and her true love would be hunted down and dragged to the temple regardless. Only a fool tried to test those veiled crones who ran the place. They could always divine who a girl cared about the most, and Akane was terrible at lying to begin with.
Kazuya couldn't deny her no matter what the risks were, just like she couldn't to deny him. If this was Akane's curse, he always wanted to be there to share the curse with her. It was a burden she didn't deserve to carry alone.
Other guys would push her away. Other guys would avoid getting tied up in her witchcraft. For Kazuya, it just made him care about her even more. In a darkly funny way, it made perfect sense that it had to be him who was the mortal source of all his lover's powers. After all, the native Japanese word for wind was "kaze," and he was Akane's devoted Kazu.
Kazuya stood with Harimau parked next to him, wondering how his life weighed against the summoned Childs of some of the other HiME. Yatagarasu was a laser cannon attached to wings. Kagutsuchi was a village-leveling flamethrower. Gakutenou was a sentient battering ram. Miroku could turn any solid ground into a jagged crystal fissure. Vlas could rip your mind in two by bending reality around you before he even touched you. Gennai could pin you down with thousands of shuriken and crush you in a single hop. Julia could catch anything in her web and rapidly slash it to ribbons with her mantis claws. Diana could impale you, poison you, and fillet you with her tentacles while never leaving her hiding place in the ground. Duran could freeze you, combust you with mortar shells, or both. Kiyohime could strangle you to death and melt you in her acid.
Akane's Child was a cute yellow weedwhacker by comparison. Harimau made for a loyal personal bodyguard who had closely followed his princess everywhere ever since she was she was old enough to pronounce the first two syllables of his name. He was a force to be reckoned in any conventional fight: Easily capable of tearing a mortal man in half. Maybe even twenty men at the same time. But the only advantage he might have had over any other HiME's Child was sheer speed.
Kazu and Hari complemented each other like motionless statues of a hunter and his tracking partner as they waited for their cue to enter the combat shrine. Their only light came from the dim orange torches surrounding them. The air was silent except for the low, relaxing purr of Harimau's ventilation systems.
Kazuya was starting to succumb to the faintest feeling of déjà vu.
"This isn't the first time you and I have been standing here, is it?" The Wind and Lightning HiME's most beloved person turned his head and spoke with trepidation toward the Wind and Lightning HiME's Child.
"Grol." Hari uttered through his air vents as he submissively lowered his head, seemingly confirming Kazu's fears.
"Hey. Nothing to be ashamed of, fella." Kazuya sighed as he rolled his eyes up, trying to make a positive out of something he knew was practically a death sentence. "You and I share the same heart, right? So we share all the same heartbreak. Well, if I have to be sacrificed in some crazy Star-worshipping ritual, at least I'll be offered up by the prettiest one here. This is how people will remember Akane and I were a couple."
"Rowlf." Akane's metal tiger brushed against his leg in a display of cross-species brotherly support.
If Kazuya did meet his end today, he knew there wouldn't be anything left of him to properly bury. All he'd get is an anonymous black pillar underneath the temple grounds. But that part of the deal didn't actually bother him at all. Word of mouth, folklore, and just plain old superstition left much more of an impact on people than some wordy grave plaque these days. "The sweet princess and the boy she loved so much only the Ancient Ones could tear them apart."
"If you're allowed to tell me, how far do we usually make it into this thing?" Kazuya asked hesitantly.
Harimau extended one claw from his five-toed paw and scratched lightly on the ground in front of him for no particular reason. Several times, he stretched his claw upward and dragged it vertically down the same spot under his paw. His shallow scratches formed a straight line.
The number "1." Akane was always the first HiME defeated.
"Damn. Aren't we the lucky duo?" Kazuya shook his head in existential disappointment. "Guess Yuuichi will have to find another spotter the next time he goes quail hunting."
His concerns drifted back to his beloved Akane.
"Is she always this happy at the beginning?"
"Yrowl." Hari almost looked guilty the way he was flicking his tail.
"It's not fair." Kazu sighed in grief. But honestly, it wasn't the part about dying repeatedly in pathetic fashion that hurt him. It was the idea of putting her through that over and over again that really killed his spirit.
"Mrewl." Hari purred in agreement.
"You never give up fighting for me, do you? Even though you're not as… destructive?" Kazu asked Hari, but he already knew the answer.
"Nyowl." Harimaru growled reassuringly.
"I appreciate the effort, brother." Kazuya smiled as he felt the slightest hint of relief. "I bet you want to see me and Akane stick together as much as I do."
"Yowlf." The tiger snapped his chops and sniffed. Protecting his summoner so she was never lonely was his entire purpose for existing. Plus, he just seemed to really like Kazu.
"It's not right. It's not her fault she was born with some ancient curse that dooms whoever she falls in love with," Kazuya muttered under his breath. At least the likely outcome meant she would leave the Festival as an innocent with no one else's blood on her hands. She wouldn't have to spend the rest of her life thinking "I got to stay with my Kazu because I helped kill all the people the other girls care about." That was a plus, right?
"Do we ever warn her how it's going to go?"
"Nowrl." The tiger grunted in decline.
Kazuya's mind spun with conflicted emotions. On one hand, he could see why it was less cruel to hide the foregone outcome from her, as it provided her hope and helped her perform more confidently in the Festival. It provided him hope. On the other hand, he also saw why it was more cruel.
He hung his head and sighed again in resignation.
The sharpened vacuum rotary blade on Hari's chest lurched as a protective warning, to remind Kazu he wasn't completely without weapons. He curled his head and stretched the anti-personnel swords protruding from his back like a living palisade wall. Someone quick and crafty like Akane could easily push a person into those things, especially with Akane's bulky motorized tonfa giving her extra leverage. If all else failed, Childs could always attack HiMEs directly. If there was any chance…
Kazu and Hari were called into their ceremonial positions with the distant crash of a bonsho bell. For a split second, Kazuya felt an inexplicable frozen pain shoot through his chest. He shivered in uneasy dread before taking a breath and swallowing his fear.
"Well, fella? Let's not keep the crowd waiting," Kazuya quietly said down to Harimau. "Ready to be the opening act?"
The Child and his bound mortal slowly proceeded through the temple doors side by side.
Akane screamed in despair as Hari's smoking headless carcass was dumped out of Yatagarasu's talons like decaying hedge clippings. His crumpled remains went up in green flames, leaving only a small soot mark on the temple floor.
The last traces of Akane's warmth over Kazuya's heart were completely overtaken by a massive invisible force thrusting its frigid greedy claws through his chest. "And now I'll take you from this whimpering failed whelp. At least I'll get some valuable tears out of her," the invisible claws had said to him privately while never actually speaking. They wrapped over his heart the way Akane always did so tenderly, and then they kept squeezing tighter and tighter.
There was no better place Kazuya wanted to be right now than cradled in the bright silk-robed arms of his lover. Her knees were tucked under his neck for support—small knees with thighs that were good for running. Too bad it'd been against congregation rules to run from this battle.
His pulse had already stopped twenty seconds ago. Frantic tears were streaming down Akane's face as she screamed at him in muted silence, her quivering lips begging him not to leave, begging him to stay with her. But there was no chance of that happening anymore. Those sorts of endings only happened in fairy tales.
He wasn't allowed to stay on this Earth anymore. He had to answer the calling of his tragic destiny, and she was the one responsible for bidding him his final farewells before sending him off, and all that shmaltzy stuff. Tiny green twinkling stars were floating up around the corners of his hazy peripheral vision.
The summoner of the crow-Child remained standing on the opposite side of the arena in determined silence. The vicious and brutal hatred was palpable on the rival princess's face, even with the hood of her elaborate bridal kimono hiding most of her features. Her beast-guardian gently landed behind her and folded his black wings. Aside from a few sword scratches on his underbelly and a shallow gash on his neck, he'd come out of the fight in pretty solid shape.
Kazu's blurring vision was replaced with total darkness as his sunken eyes closed. His mouth felt warm as blood trickled from the corner of his lips and dripped down his chin. His heart had spontaneously burst at the same moment Hari was mutilated. His lungs were flooding.
His cold, deaf ears could feel vibrations surrounding him and Akane. But these weren't the powerful ominous vibrations that precipitated one of Miroku's Earth geode attacks. Even in his fading awareness, Kazuya realized the vibrations were coming from dozens of voices—including the voices of the ten other girls Akane could have been fighting if she had won today—singing that song. The song meant to comfort the defeated as she lost the person she cherished the most. Ensei. It was nice, even when he could only feel it and barely hear it.
He wasn't going to be around to keep her company anymore. Hopefully one of those other ten would care enough about her to keep an eye on her. She was going to need someone smothering her with compassion after how this Festival was affecting her.
Kazuya was ice cold, but he felt warm with his ear cradled against Akane's fluttering panicking heart. She was so round in the parts of her body that mattered, providing him a soft pillow in those last moments he really needed one. It was a shame none of his babies would ever get to drink from there.
His face tingled for a moment as a peaceful breeze brushed across his hair. The wind could do whatever it wanted now that its sorceress was powerless and it was free from her control. It brought to mind the feeling of resting his head in Akane's lap while they relaxed under the breezy branches of a tree rambling playful amateur poetry to each other.
If this was his fate, if this was the brutal ceremonial way he had to die, he wouldn't have asked for a different altar or a different priestess to send him off to the Netherworld. He opened his mouth with the last of his dwindling energy, bidding his farewell to his beautiful brown-eyed lover in a sad breathless whisper.
"I'll miss you. Maybe next time, Ak-…"
His soul was pulled from his body before he could finish her name. For a few brief seconds, he was looking down at himself, the lifeless charcoal-green fragments of himself disintegrating against her heart. Then he was gone completely, and her grieving and shocked emotions descended into shattered hysteria.
He spent those last seconds of conscious existence praying there would be some kind of repentance for all of this hopeless loss. Maybe if he gave up his life enough times, karma would pay Akane back in the long run. Maybe all these sacrifices she made would finally come back to her in the form of some blessing. Maybe, just maybe, she'd get a chance to win.
His body and his soul were consumed as offerings to the Obsidian Lord. His final prayer ascended to the Heavens, joining the final prayers of a hundred other Kazuyas who'd been taken from their Akanes.
Author's notes:
This one's going out there to all the Toji Suzuharas and Hikari Horakis. May you one day find your Evangelion Anima.
(Hikari also has Akane's VA in case you weren't aware. And the Evangelion Anima novels are basically the original Eva TV show's mech designer saying "Hey, you know how in the show, Toji ends up losing half of his body parts from horrific battle injuries and Hikari just kind of fades into a depressing off-screen role after one scene where she visits him in the hospital? Well, let's take that idea and turn it into THE ENTIRE CENTRAL FOUNDATION OH MY GOD I'M NOT EVEN KIDDING I LOVE HOW THEY DID THIS of a more uplifting alternate ending where the Eva team is going to stop the big Angel Unicron guy trying to cause the Human Instrumentality.")
I spent three days just concepting this story. I mean, I definitely had some strong ideas to start out, but I had no clue how to make it work. How do you tell a serious / tragic / bittersweet story around "It's okay, honey! I'm looking forward to you being awful at your job!"? And then my brain mashed a myriad of completely random sources together to create this little horror show.
Did you guys ever watch the 1977 movie House? Spooky. (I always equate Shiho's bridal ghost form with that movie.)
The less advanced but deeper bass CPS-1 version of Cammy's theme is better than the technologically superior but more whiney-sounding CPS-2 version of Cammy's theme and I will gladly give my soul to a Jomon era alien god to stand by that claim. But, hey. This remix I found where someone on YouTube totally just took the MIDI sequence for her theme and applied the instrument set for Starlight Zone from Sonic 1 is actually pretty rockin'.
Akane's nature elements in this story are wind AND lightning 'cuz I'm combining her TV and visual novel characters.
The fanfic I finished writing immediately before this was "An Une a Day Keeps the Despair at Bay," the ultimate demented fable about a couple who couldn't be separated (literally). In this story, we meet a couple who can't stay together no matter how hard they try. It's like poetry. It rhymes.
Kazu's death in this story is supposed to be a combination of his TV death scene (Mr. Pieta Scene with Tragically Peaceful Windy Hair) and his unused concept art death from the Tree of Fate game (Mr. Bleeding Mouth Internal Injuries Guy). It's definitely not based on the HiME EXA manga, though. My incarnation of Kazu-kun doesn't get that toasty. I was kinda going for "Zyu3 of the Kazu-kuns" with the guy in this fic.
("Zyu3" is the colloquial fan term for Saban's very early production activities on the second season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, where they initially went back to Toei's official designers and commissioned a bunch of new US-exclusive Zord designs. The five core Zords were going to be upgraded Dinozords with more advanced DaiRanger-inspired tech. The T-Rex had a Warrior Mode and the Triceratops was more organic-looking with legs. There were also multiple completely alternate Tigerzord designs that could combine with the Neo-Dinozords in the exact same style as the Dragonzord. Someone at Toei or Saban seemed to be big on the "Shoulder pylons fold to the front of the chest to form giant sixth Ranger symbol" motif started by Dragon Caesar. The designs exist on paper, but Saban ultimately scrapped everything due to budgetary restrictions. They ended up just buying a bunch of DaiRanger tapes to make season 2. Lul.)
We're learning ALL kinds of new things over here on the Sci-Fi & Pop Culture Educational Hour part of the Akane fanfic.
They start singing "Ensei" because it brings the story full circle with the official show's lore. I could totally imagine them singing "Himegoroshi ~ Unmei" as an alternate song pick, though. Mix it up every once in a while.
The rank for this incarnation of Akane is: Actual princess. Daughter of some family with relatively high political or societal importance. The official rank for this version of Kazuya is: Dude. Just typical, non-descript "Dude." Is he the prince of another family? Is he just a normal guy the local Akane took a liking to? It's not really integral to their relationship. They love each other for who they are, not what they are.
This fanfic is taking place in… Medieval Japan? Some remote corner of Feudal Asia? An early imperial society between the hunter-gatherer phase and the city-state phase? But Kazu-kun is casually describing lawnmowers and flamethrowers. Yeah, I don't care. I didn't feel like coming up with non-specific ancient descriptions for every piece of weird modern technology in this one. I even broke my own "Call them Hime instead of HiME because the acronym HiME doesn't exist yet" rule I created years ago for "Terrible Things Happen to Mai." I reeeally don't caaarrrre. The technobabble isn't really meant to be the "heart" of this story, figuratively speaking.
*soft nursery music rendition of Nirvana playing in the background* *smacks dude in face with an inflatable pretzel* *twists him into a really fake looking noogie* *bashes him over the head repeatedly with a plastic squeaky hammer* I'm vengeance.
