The Shotgun Approach

Chapter 16: Naudir

A/N: I hope everyone had a Happy New Year! Here's another Ettie POV chapter for you!

. . .

My fingers brushed parchment so old I feared it would crumble to dust. The words swam on the pages, the light of the waning moon pouring in from my sliding door was enough to read by, but it made me tired. I took another gulp of coffee, bit a pill in half and chewed it up, saved the other half for later.

Yusuke wouldn't tell me where he'd gotten this. And I didn't want to ask too many questions. Being less suspicious was more important at this point.

The text was old, far before my time, but it was in my language. There was only slight variances of certain words but I was able to translate them well enough, given enough time. It felt like I'd been staring at these pages for decades, but it must have only been a few hours.

In the aftermath of the most recent bombing I'd nearly forgotten about Yusuke asking me this favor. I was tempted to make things up, to tell him what he wanted to hear and send him on his way, but once I delved into the text I changed my mind—this was...delicate. I must leave out just enough. Make it sound like I didn't know the language quite as well as I did. Let pieces be lost in translation, sort to speak.

Over the course of the next week I poured over the book, I spent every second of free time to my name translating it's pages. I wrote them all down in a spiral notebook, little drawings in the margins—diagrams and words brought to life.

Sometimes one of the boys would stop by—Kurama with a new plant, Yusuke with coffee from the cafe, Hiei with little else other than his company. Even Kuwabara, who never stayed long but always made sure I ate something before he left. If I didn't feel like they had ulterior motives I might have found it sweet. As it was, I knew they were just waiting to see if I was finished.

But even if I told them everything there was to know about the book...they would understand little. It would be no use to them without the key piece of information I harbored.

My gut told me they could be trusted...but my brain said otherwise.

I was not always one to listen to my instincts, as they had failed me before. Emotion could not play a part. It could cloud judgment. The rational must come from my head and my head alone—I must not let myself get caught up in the rush of this new alliance.

Keep them at a distance.

It became somewhat of a mantra in the coming days.

One I should have heeded a bit better than I did.

When the translation was almost finished, a week and a half later, I called Yusuke. I sat at my kitchen table and waited, the text and the spiral bound notebook resting neatly on the table before me.

He let himself in, just as I knew he would, and came to find me.

"It's done?" he asked.

I rose, book and notebook in hand, and gave them over. "I offer no explanations other than what is written. I do not want to ever see this book again."

It was no lie.

That thing was a curse waiting to happen—a bad omen. How he got it did not matter anymore. But the information it harbored...well, it would be of some use at least.

"That bad of a read, huh?" he joked.

He sat down, much to my consternation, and began to flip through the pages of my translation. He skimmed most of it, stopping at points that drew his interest. He hummed to himself after a while, his fingertips brushing across the tiny drawings in the margins.

"How do you know this language, Ettie?"

I was sitting across from him now, toying with the new plant Kurama sent over just this morning. "I figured Kurama would have told you that."

"He was pretty vague, told me I should ask you."

Of course he had.

"This is the same language my people speak...albeit a much older form of it, but quite similar all the same."

For his credit, he did not seem all that surprised. He just eyed me up and down, then went back to the book. He traced the metalwork on the front, following the patterns and markings emblazoned across the cover in pure silver—the tree, Yggdrasil, taking up the center.

"So, what is this anyway?"

I didn't lie, couldn't afford to. "A book of the Gods."

He raised an eyebrow. "A book about gods?"

"No," I said, "A book of the Gods. One that belonged to one of them long ago."

He laughed, clearly thinking I was making fun of him. But the sound annoyed me. And it rang clear as day in my voice when I told him, "It's a book of Mimir, the giant who guarded the well of knowledge. He kept this for one of the Gods, recorded their history."

I knew when I lost him, because his entire face went blank. His eyes flicked to the book and then back to me. He released a drawn out, "Okay then..."

He scratched the back of his neck and groaned. "This isn't going to help us find who's behind the bombings, is it?"

"No," I stated, blunt and to the point. A complete lie.

"Damn it. I was really hoping this was some kind of manual for bad guys."

This garnered a laugh from me. It was certainly no manual, but what it contained was valuable in other ways. He just didn't understand how, which was perfectly fine with me.

"Perhaps you should take it to Kurama to peruse, he might be able to tell you more."

"Trying to get rid of me?" he asked.

I smiled, a bland, generic thing. "Of course not."

"Liar," he replied.

I got up to wash a few dishes and put the kettle on the stove. I slipped a pill into my mouth in the interim and tucked it up under my lip to let it soften. I didn't notice the taste anymore. Didn't care that it was vile.

I half expected Yusuke to come out and say exactly what he was thinking—that my connection to this text was more than a coincidence. I almost wished for the interrogation that would follow, just to have it out in the open.

But he didn't say anything. He tucked the book and my translation into a bag by his feet and promptly forgot all about it.

"So..." he began, "How are you and...Hiei...doing?"

It was cringe worthy awkward and because my inhibitions were lowered thanks to the drugs, I outright laughed. Wrong thing to do, it seemed.

"What the hell is so funny?" he snapped, clearly embarrassed, and my near hysterical laughter didn't make it any better.

Unable to stop, I gripped my counter and laughed until it was hard to breathe. That was when Yusuke slammed a fist down on my table, the noise it created so loud it shocked me out of my current state. When I turned to look at him, I wished I hadn't.

He was angry, yes, but also hurt. And those two emotions were a poor mix.

"Listen, I don't give two shits if you're fucking him or...whatever the hell it is you guys are doing. What I fucking want to know is why the hell you put up such a stink about not wanting to be with anyone, only to turn around and start screwing one of my closest friends?!"

"Jealousy is an unbecoming trait, Yusuke," I said, all traces of laughter long gone.

"I'm not jealous! I'm pissed off! I feel like I've been stabbed in the back!"

I sighed, no amount of drugs would get me through this conversation unscathed. So I took my time, poured myself tea, made some for Yusuke who pushed the cup aside as if I'd given him acid.

Once I lowered myself into my chair, I said, "Hiei and I...are not a thing."

"Really?" but the word was sarcastic, snapped at me as if I were stupid.

"Yusuke, I swear it, for whatever it is worth. Hiei has value, but he would not make a good husband."

"Who said anything about a husband, how many of those do you think you need?"

Tired. I was so damned tired. A breath of frost left my lips, the tips of my fingers, it froze my tea and began its trek across the table. I let my youki seep out, a clear warning to the whelp in front of me. King or no king, he should choose his words wisely.

"I suggest you derail from this line of conversation. I lack interest in it."

It was Yusuke's turn to laugh, the sound bitter and angry. "We used to be friends. What the hell happened?"

"You tell me."

And it was like he deflated. There was still anger there, still frustration, but he let it go for now. "I'm sorry," he said. "I can't help being like this."

"You can," I replied. "You don't. That is the problem."

He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck now. "Yeah...yeah I guess you're right."

"I know I am."

He still wouldn't look at me, but he spoke with carefully chosen words now. All his anger dissipated. "I'm not jealous of Hiei. Hell, if it was any one of them...I wouldn't be. But just if it was them, ya know. If you loved Kuwabara, or Kurama, or Hiei...it would be okay...because it's them."

"You're not making any sense." And he wasn't. Why the constant anger and acts of jealous pettiness? Why behave in this manner if he would not mind?

"I keep picturing it, ya know? You and Hiei together. And I can see it, I can see it much clearer than if it were me. You two seem to mesh. And that—that's what makes me see red. Not that it's him. Not that I don't want him or you to be happy, but because you two have this...connection, as if you just clicked."

"Don't be absurd. Hiei has made it clear that he distrusts me at best and despises me at worst."

"That isn't true anymore and you know it."

But Yusuke didn't understand...he didn't understand why Hiei and I seemed so comfortable in each other's presences. Hiei knew things about me I had never told anyone. He learned them all on his own. And he told no one, even though he distrusts me, even though he thinks I am a waste of precious air.

That was the sole reason behind Yusuke's rational. But I couldn't tell him any of it.

I could say those words aloud. Not to someone who wouldn't understand.

For a time I was rent speechless. What could I tell him to reassure him? His suspicions seemed to be deeply ingrained by now.

So all I could say was the truth. "I have no relationship with Hiei other than what you've seen with your own eyes. We are not sexually or emotionally involved. I do not love him or harbor any romantic feelings towards him. He is an ally and a coworker. That is all."

It didn't have the desired effect. If anything, his eyes grew sadder. "Is that all I am, too?"

My first instinct was to agree, but I knew it would be a poor choice in this scenario. What was wrong with being allies? Why did humans put so much stock in friendship and love?

Love...it was not the thing of fairy tales. It was painful and irrational and sickening. It destroyed and took and took and took until there was nothing left. No, love was not the beautiful thing humans so wished it to be.

I opened my mouth, to say what I was not sure, but Yusuke's phone blared out a loud electronic tune before I got the chance. He swore, pulling it out of his pocket and flipping it open. He snapped a quick, "What?!"

He listened for a moment, face drawing into a look of pure confusion. "Who the hell is this?"

"Yusuke...?"

He placed the phone on the table, clicking the button for speaker mode. There was a crackle of static and then a voice that repeated the same phrase over and over—dauoi.

"Hang up, Yusuke."

He didn't listen, yelling at his phone now, "How the hell did you get this number?!"

"Yusuke, hang up!" I snapped.

The voice over the phone was unrecognizable and the static background made it impossible for me to garner the location of the caller. But I didn't have time for that now, I never even considered this possibility. I was too caught up in everything else. Too caught up with this boy king.

They knew where Yusuke was, knew that he spent a lot of time here with me. And my building was one of the few in the city that allowed demonic tenants no questions asked.

He was still angrily questioning the caller, the caller who kept repeating the ancient Norse word for death, and so I shot up and grabbed him, dragged him towards my balcony. He didn't resist me, though I expected him to, and lifted him as if he weighed nothing ("What the hell, Ettie?") and threw him over the balcony's edge. He didn't even have time to scream. I called to him to run, hoping that the wind in his ears didn't blare out the sound of my voice.

The fall wouldn't kill him, not from this height, as long as he used some reiki to cushion his landing.

But the bomb about to go off here in the building would.

I could only hope I was wrong, that the call was only meant to antagonize Yusuke, and not the omen it most likely was.

But I could not take the chance that it was a joke.

I ran from my apartment, barreled down halls barefoot, the only sound the rush of blood in my ears and my pounding feet against tiled floors. I needed to find the bomb, needed to get it out of here. There wasn't enough time to evacuate everyone. Even if I started knocking on doors now or screaming in the halls, it wouldn't do any good, they would just think I was insane.

The building's parking garage, the roof, or the basement were the three most logical places for someone to plant a bomb. With such limited time, I could not check all of them, so I went with my gut instinct and headed towards the basement. If they chose to blow the bomb from there, the building would collapse in on itself, where as if they used the parking garage it might only destroy half the building. Same if they chose the roof.

The basement was the best placement for the most destruction. The most death.

I pushed energy towards my legs, urging myself to run faster, jumping down flights of stairs and pushing past any people I came across. As I drew closer to the basement...a feeling of trepidation bloomed and spread like a cancer.

Something was definitely down there.

And it left me wondering why they had not already set off the bomb. Why give me the time to try to stop them? Why the warning with the phone call?

No. No, perhaps my first assumption was incorrect.

I slowed as I reached the basement's access door. Given it's size, there were any number of hiding places. I ducked beneath the small glass window set in the metal, stilled and listened. When I heard nothing, I reached for the handle and pulled it open, careful to keep it from making too much noise.

Besides several glowing emergency lights, it was nearly pitch black. A strange smell permeated the air—something familiar. Something that did not match with the dankness of a basement.

Low to the ground, I crept across the cement floor, years of ingrained instinct and training taking over. My core cooled and the energy within calmed until you could not sense it at all. Even while suppressed, I could still use my powers. My hand dragged through a puddle of water left behind by a leaky pipe, using the liquid coating my fingers I built an ice dagger in my palm. It would have to be good enough.

Violence was no longer the way of things for me. But I would not lay down and die like an abused dog, either.

Far into the darkness, there was a single beam of light. I imagined it was much like a dramatic scene out of a book—the bomb would be in the center of that light, the hero would try to disarm it and either succeed or die a heroic death.

But as I neared it, I saw that no bomb was within the light. Only the shape of a man. A man whose face I could not see given the angle of where he stood.

I hid behind a furnace, pressing my back into it and waiting. My breaths came out as frost.

"Why do you hide?"

The words were spoken in my people's tongue.

Ah. It was clear now. What this was...who he was.

I rose, dropped the ice knife to the floor, and rounded the corner with my hands held up as if in surrender.

"Good girl," he crooned.

"You are the one they are calling the Aesir," I said.

He circled the light, careful never to enter it too fully. My demonic eyesight afforded me to see in the dark, but this darkness was unnatural. A product of a malicious demonic aura. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make out his face.

"You have heard of me, that makes things easier," he said. "But where is the boy king?"

"If you expected me to bring him straight to you, than you are a fool. A fool that uses such a blasphemous name to complete his misdeeds. The Gods will strike you down."

The laugh he released was bone chilling. But I was not afraid. He could kill me where I stood and I would go willingly. A woman such as me did not fear death. I welcomed it.

"You were once a shield maiden, were you not? Now you have fallen from your warrior status and you have the audacity to believe the Gods are displeased with me. What of yourself? Etternia of the Ice, the fallen Volva, daughter of Freyja."

I sucked in a sharp breath from between my teeth, the sound like a hiss. Everything fell silent around us, quiet as fresh snow.

"You took an oath many years ago. An oath that you broke for the sake of a human lover. If the Gods are displeased with anyone...it is you."

"How do you know this?"

"How indeed?"

"Tell me, who are you?!"

But he merely laughed again, still pacing around the light, his youki seeping out in dark tangles that threatened suffocation.

"The first element you ever called to was the water. The ice it could create—it comforts you, keeps you numb and in control. Air came next. Air was freeing, it healed you. It made the ice you so desperately sought. Then there was earth, rich and full of the life that you lacked, but also hard and protective."

He came to stand just outside the light's circle, his clothing of impeccable quality, his body lithe but solid. "But last...oh last...was the fire. The fire that raged and rent the ground asunder and destroyed everything. The fire you allowed to swallow you whole."

"Stop," I whispered. The memories I kept buried...they were threatening to engulf me. To ruin the careful numbness I'd cultivated all these years.

"Bring me the boy king. Bring me the king...and join us. All your sins will be forgiven then, I swear by the Gods."

"No," I said with conviction. "The Gods have forsaken me for many years, no empty promises from you will fix that."

"Ah, but they haven't, have they? What of your new arms?"

He knew too much. How? Were they there the night of the ritual? How did he know things I had never told a soul? These were my closely harbored secrets. Secrets that never saw the light, that never drudged their way up from my deeply buried past.

I would prefer to bite off my own tongue than breathe a word of this to anyone.

Who told him? Who knew...

My entire body went cold as deep winter's breath. "Tell my father I will not fight his war for him. Neither will the king."

"Your father? Don't make me laugh. He cares for nothing other than himself and his incessant greed for power."

"Then who? Who told you these things about me?"

"Bring me the king."

A beat of silence, cloying and thick, and then my core pulsed. I melded the cement beneath our feet into a barrier of unrelenting stone...and then I ran. I ran even as I heard that wall smash apart and crumble. I threw up new ones as I dashed towards the stairs that would be bring me back to the main part of the building.

He wanted the king. He cared for nothing else. They'd been following me. All this time I thought I was two steps ahead...that I was close, so damned close.

How wrong I was.

I would never find him now. They ruined all my chances. The Gods did forsake me all those years ago.

My arms were gifts, yes, but not a gift for me—they were for Hiei. Hiei who was as close to Elementa as any outsider I'd ever met. Two elements swam in his veins and the Gods answered his call and accepted his sacrifice as if he were one of their own.

I was a fool.

My pursuer never showed himself outside of the basement. When I burst through the front doors of the building, running out into oncoming traffic, it was as if I'd imagined the entire thing.

But the cold sweat on the back of my neck told me that could not be true.

I stood stunned in the middle of the street, the sound of car horns drowned out by the rush in my ears; the panting breaths that choked past my lips.

Yusuke jumped through the traffic, dodging oncoming vehicles just so he could grab me and pull me safely towards the sidewalk. He was talking to me in hurried sentences, but I heard none of it.

The Aesir...

He was one of my people.

He was kin.

And he knew everything.

. . .

I hid at the station for days afterwards in a constant haze. I took more pills than I could count, as if I were mindlessly eating candy. Numb. I needed to be numb. Needed to forget. Needed to wipe away the sin.

My crew began to notice, Shou forced me to hang back on a call and I grew angry with him. But when Eric stepped in I didn't have a choice. Alone in the station, I sat in the locker room, my fingers tracing lazily across the patterns engraved on the back of my hand. The story of my people. The story of my life before all of this.

The sound of the door being opened didn't register until I was picked up by the collar of my shirt. I dangled, several inches above the floor, held within Hiei's clenched fist.

His eyes were furious, swimming with so much disgust it was hard to look. But I was so numb that I just...didn't care.

"What is wrong with you?"

I breathed out, blowing strands of stringy blonde hair out of my face, my breath so cold it created a fog. My skin must be tinted blue, like a corpse. Part of me thought that would be okay...if I was one.

"Etternia!"

His hand shook me and I reached out, gripping his wrist, watching as ice traveled down his arm towards his shoulder. He didn't raise his body temperature to be rid of it. Strange.

Soon, the room was so cold that frost crept up the lockers and turned the cement floor to shimmering ice.

One man turned my carefully laid plan to ash. A few minutes, a few loaded words. That was all it took to destroy everything I'd worked towards. My life was meaningless.

"Your life is not meaningless."

I'd said that aloud. Or perhaps he could finally read my mind. Either way, it was not true.

Hiei set me on my feet, his fist still clenched in the collar of my uniform, fingers twisted in the dark fabric. "Do you call what you do for work meaningless?"

"In the grand scheme of things," I murmured, "what good have I done? People still die. Children are still abused. Mental health is a thing of dreams. Addiction is alive and thriving, I am living proof of that. To tell me I am not meaningless...you are blind."

His hand tightened and he dragged me forward, so close the heat of his breath made a sweat break out across my forehead. "I do not know what happened several days ago, what you saw after running off to defuse a bomb on your own as if you are some kind of hero in a child's fantasy, but this...this is not who you are."

A cold laugh left my lips. I did not recognize my own voice. "You do not know who I am, Jaganshi."

His fist dropped and he regarded me with a stare as cold as the ice at his feet. "Then show me."

"I already gave you a memory."

"It was not the one I wanted."

A smile that lacked all traces of humor curled my lips. "So be it."

A preternatural wind blew the hair around our faces, cold and biting, and I reached forward, placing my palm directly over the Jagan embedded in his forehead. The memory I chose was one I knew would satisfy his hunger for the knowledge he sought about me. I no longer cared what he did and did not know.

It was if I stepped back in time, the power of his Jagan throwing me into the memory as if I were reliving it.

A scream tore through the room, the wooden walls doing little to keep out the winter's chill, but the blood was warm. So much blood. It soaked the bed, the floor. I was going to lose him. The pain was too much, it was not normal.

Another scream. I realized it was coming from me. My arms shackled to the bedposts rattled the chains with all my might, but they would not break. They kept my energy from rushing outwards, from killing the people in the room who planned to rip my child from me.

I would tear their flesh from their bones with nothing but my teeth if that is what it took.

They would not have my son.

I pushed again, putting all my strength behind it, praying to the Gods that he would be born alive; whole and hale.

My vision swam...but I heard the cry of the babe a moment later. Alive! He was alive!

"Give the creature here," I head my father snap.

"No! Please no! Father...father do not take him! He is mine! He is my son!"

I reached for him, trying to see past the healers who were trying to stop the excessive bleeding. My son. Artair's son. Our child. They could not take him from me, they could not be so cruel.

"Father, please!" I begged, pleading with him, but my cries went unheeded.

"You are a disgrace to the people, Etternia. The beast must be purged from these lands."

"No! Father! He is just a babe! He will do no harm...please!"

But I heard the babe's cries grow distant, they became fainter and fainter until I could no longer hear them at all. My screams grew louder, I pulled at my bonds, fought against the maidens that tried to pin me down. No! They could not do this! They could not take him from me!

"Please!" I begged again. "Allow me to hold him at least once, please father! Let me see my son!"

I received a backhand across my face as my punishment, my cheek stinging from the blow. "Throw her out," he snapped, "once the child has been dealt with."

He leaned over the bed, his blue eyes colder than the deepest pits of the ocean. "You are a daughter of mine no longer."

The memory ended with my father's guards dragging me from my family's home, naked and exposed, covered in my own blood. They threw me out in the snow on the outskirts of the village...and left me to die.

Disgraced from my people, cast aside by the Gods.

Etternia of the Ice, Volva no longer, forsaken descendant of the Goddess Freyja.

And mother to a son I would never know.

We came out of the memory as if being struck by a physical blow. I found myself on my knees, hands buried in my hair, the locker room turned to a frozen tundra.

"Etternia..."

"Do not say my name!" I screeched. "Do not say my name with such pity coating your tongue!"

"I do not pity you," Hiei said. "No, I do not pity one such as you."

The anger in the air was suddenly palpable. I watched my ice melt, felt the water soak my clothes, the air stifling and the liquid almost hot enough to burn. This was a righteous type of anger, one I'd never seen from him before.

As the water turned to steam, Hiei knelt before me, and placed a palm against the center of my chest, just above my aching core. "Now...now, show me that fire, for you are Etternia of the Ice no longer."

"I can't control it." And my voice...it was not my own, but that broken bitter thing's from before.

He smirked, eyes regarding me with a heavy stare that left me breathless. "I will guide you. It is time you learned to use what is rightfully yours—and destroy the people who took your life from you."

I dropped my gaze, staring at the water flooding around our knees. Use my fire...?

"You want to, don't you?"

Yes...

The ache in my chest would never lessen. Everything was lost.

What better way to relieve some of the pain...then to enact a revenge so sweet that it was almost forty years in the making.

Yes. I would use my fire.

And I would destroy them all.

. . .

A/N: Oh shit, what's Hiei gone and done now? And who the hell is this guy that showed up and broke Ettie into smithereens? Find out next time xD

So you guys got to learn quite a bit of new information about Ettie this chapter! I'm pulling heavily from ancient Norse mythology (I'm part Greek and Norwegian and I've always wanted to write about both, so I've accomplished that goal). I hope you liked the chapter~