Strike!
It had been foolish of her to place her faith in one of Carantula's schemes, let alone believe his creation, the swollen and absurd Pinch In Out Dagames, could have hoped to have succeeded; she had been both misguided in following his advice, and stupid for believing that it might succeed if handled correctly—even the beast he had fashioned had been astoundingly unsuccessful, all of its energy drained after using its powers a mere two times. Had she actually cared about the situation, she would have been disgusted with herself, yet it was difficult to truly care. When Yodonna had first awakened, when she had first arrived on Earth, there had been a sense of urgency, a feeling of dread regarding the consequences of failure, yet now it had begun to feel that her life at the Emperor's side was just as dreamlike, just as distant as those moments of absence in her memory, those long years that she could no longer recall.
Glowering, she watched the hunched forms of her Bechat soldiers scrabbling about in the dirt. Occasionally, one of them would draw too close to her and she would lash out with her crop. She wondered if any of them knew they would die after this, wondered if any of them understood that by ordering them to complete this task for her, she would be forced to silence them afterwards so as to prevent them from sharing what they knew.
Autumn was fading now, the cold of winter coming in, and here she was, standing on a mountain, watching her soldiers scour amongst fallen rocks and frozen dirt for signs of a forgotten hideout, the reminder of defectors from Yodonheim who had allied themselves with human powers now as equally forgotten as they were.
She did not want to admit how much time she had spent over the past week overseeing such fruitless search parties; first, standing amidst the tall grass as the Bechats had searched for the fallen shapes of Kiramaizin and Gigant Driller, and now as those same soldiers dug about in the dirt, she felt the same indifference as to whether they succeeded or failed. She lashed out with her crop, swatting the air with impatience; either way, she reflected, they died.
"You won't find anything here," a nasal voice called out to her.
She turned, instinctively striking out with her crop, and finding the blow batted away by the swing of a baseball bat, a figure in a trailing cloak and black uniform, his head an engorged, scuffed white ball decorated with stitches and faintly human eyes.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
At her back, the Bechats chittered and cooed, their digging momentarily paused, their attention held by the stranger before them.
"Exactly who you've been looking for," he proclaimed, circling his wrist and spinning the bat around.
She understood instantly.
"One of the defectors."
"Almost," he replied snidely.
"One of their servants."
He pointed the bat directly at her head.
"Exactly."
Her expression hardened.
"Tell me your name, servant."
"Yakyu Kamen," he answered, "not that it's anything to ya."
"And where are your masters?" she continued.
He looked at her with those almost human eyes.
"Dead."
She waited for him to elaborate, and eventually, with a sigh, he relented, swinging the bat over his shoulder and turning away from her.
"They've been dead for 40 years or so," he remarked. "I should be dead too, but someone came along and started messing with time a few years back, and wadda ya know, here I am."
She nodded.
"You will accompany me back to Yodonheim. The Emperor will wish to speak with you."
Before her, Yakyu Kamen let out a shrill, bitter laugh, rolling his large head, and turning to look at her again.
"Not on your life, lady," he answered.
Again, she nodded, lips twitching with distaste.
"Very well." She brought the crop up once more. "Bachats—"
"It's no use," the figure before her announced, "I've seen what you did to those guys with that whip of yours, I know they ain't gonna last none if they get into a fight with a fella like me."
Yodonna's face flushed with anger, her nostrils flared.
"Impertinent," she muttered, raising the crop.
"Hey, cut it out, will ya? I'm doing you a favour, right?"
She hesitated, the crop still held above her head.
"I came back here all special like, didn't I? I didn't have to tell you those guys were all dead, did I? They're all gone now, whatever you thought of them, whatever you might have wanted them to do, you're too late. I'm the last one left, and trust me, lady, I ain't getting into no fights just 'cos you say so, no way, José."
Their eyes met, and then, with a sigh, she lowered her crop.
"Leave," she instructed. "I do not require the aid of cowards."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, lady," Yakyu Kamen said, lifting his cloak, "but from where I'm standing, it seems to me you need all the help you can get."
Anger flared upon her face once more, and she cracked her riding crop through the air, yet before she could strike him, with an inelegant swirl of his cloak, he was gone, his presence as absent as those other former Black Cross luminaries.
For a moment longer, the anger on her face remained, and then her expression slipped into indifference once more, and she realised she did not care. Behind her, the bodies of the Bechats began to tremble and spasm, their lives fading away. This, she realised, she did not care for either.