Chapter Twelve:
Hurricane
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Tell me would you kill to save a life?
Tell me would you kill to prove you're right?
Crash, crash, burn, let it all burn
This hurricane's chasing us all underground
-"Hurricane" by 30 Seconds From Mars
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A woman was singing. Reasonably, Allen first believed it to be Ash, although he's never heard her sing before. But it was only logical for him to conclude that it was Ash singing, right?
Well, he was wrong, and he found that out rather quickly, when he discovered Ash lounging on the couch. Her eyes were closed, her mouth not moving, and yet the music was still playing from somewhere. Soon enough, he saw that it was playing from a device sitting on the battered coffee table they still had. Ash adamantly refused to get rid of the poor old thing. It looked like it had taken on a few rounds with a mountain, lost every time, and fell down it every time it did for good measure. She, for some inexplicable reason, still retained a sentimental attitude towards the table that he's given up questioning about.
At the very least, though, Ash looked immensely relaxed. He couldn't recall the last time he's seen her like this because, well…she never truly ever had been. Not around him. As he ventured closer, Ash peeped an eye open to glance over in his direction, briefly smiled, then closed it again with a contented sigh. She patted the open space beside her on the couch.
"Come. Sit. Enjoy the music of my people."
"Your people?" He asked, amused. Allen took a seat, settling in against the comfort of the couch and listened. The device that it was playing from was a small rectangular object, thin, with a reflective screen and a circular pad with symbols.
"Pat Benatar," Ash remarked absently. "I think…no…I know, I grew up listening to her. It's fuzzy, but…I remember this stuff. It's funny, isn't it? I can remember music, but not what my mother's face looked like. What a copout."
She heaved a long sigh. He felt a pang of sympathy for the longing in her sigh.
"At least you're remembering something. Maybe if there're more things you had to remind of yourself, you might remember other things?"
"Yeah, that could be a valid theory…except for the part where I'm only vaguely aware of inanimate concepts and objects such as music and mechanical engineering and historical significance, up to a vague point. I know what song this is, and I know how to fix a boat engine, yet I know a car engine better. Memory recollection that is coupled alongside actual people or events or actual places, just…things that are mine, it's that that won't come back to me. I try to think of a time when I listened to good ole Pat here, like maybe while I'm in school or at home, but it's all blank. At least, I think I went to school. Maybe. But my point is, the music is there; sure, I remember all that. But where was I when I was listening to her? Who was I with, what was I doing? It ain't there. I remember the music, just not everything else. It fucking blows."
She slumped in her seat, a scowl crossing her features. Allen remained quiet for the time being, mulling over a good way to respond to that. It seemed like such an impossibility to consider, this condition that was plaguing her. It was almost as though this particular memory relapse was targeting very specific sections of her mind. It very well could have been just that, though.
Yamatai was a strange and dangerous place that was mired with too many impossibilities enough as it was. The dinosaurs alone were testimony to that. Himiko the Sun Queen and her semi-immortal Stormguard-turned-Oni monsters were in another category altogether. Ash herself…she was yet another mystery. Werewolves in general were. Or werewolf, rather. He's only ever met the one, sitting right beside him, and he only had her word to go by when she claimed they were "all assholes", including herself. She was honest about the latter, he'll give her that much.
"What other music do you listen to?"
"I'm spoiling you with these historic hits, I'll have you know," she said, sitting up and leaning toward the table to snatch up the device. She rubbed her thumb along the circle and the screen lit up. "You are going to receive an excellent music education and you will be popular with the ladies in no time."
"Are there any other women on this island that I should be aware of?"
"Well, there's me. I love this shit. Learn it, live it, love it."
"Then I suppose that'll have to do, seeing as you're the teacher and expert, apparently."
"Good answer."
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They were pinned down in one of the old Japanese homes, with the Solarii just outside of it. Ash had just barred the door to keep them from getting inside. Fire was spreading up the woodworks, but Ash was holding back the worst of it, downsizing the nasty bits without being overly obvious about it. The Solarii were shouting and whooping at one another. One of them proclaimed that they were going to burn to death in this house. Apparently, these were the ones who didn't realize Ash was ironically fireproof. Ash simply snorted and made a show of rolling her eyes and pointed with her thumb while saying, "Oh, this guy."
Allen wish she wouldn't make too light of the situation. There was still plenty of the fire to contend with, molding to her will or not. Ash then nodded at him and jerked her head toward the back of the burning house. "Over there; kick down those planks. I'm right behind you."
Allen didn't hesitate as he hurried over to where she had motioned to. The planks were weak and rotted with age and gave in easily after two kicks. The worst of the fire's heat may have been at bay thanks to her but the smoke was thick and burned at his throat and eyes. It was sweet relief to be outside, but he wasn't in the clear yet. Ash came scuttling after him through the hole in the wall, unperturbed by the smoke itself but she was visibly annoyed. Her face was sooty and predictably, she had a good amount of ash covering her as well. One particularly large smudge was smeared over her unmarred cheek. He couldn't help but snicker and she narrowed her eyes at him.
"Oi. No laughing. We're not back in Kansas yet, Toto. We still gotta get the fuck out of Oz."
"Your face, it's—!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, your face too, now let's go!" She snapped, although there wasn't as much conviction and harshness in it like it used to. She gave him as gentle a push she could muster, urging him to get moving around the back of the burning home. He didn't need any other prodding and took off, the wooden boards beneath him creaking loudly as he went. She was right behind him, her bow at the ready.
He didn't see the Solarii brother come careening toward them until the last moment. The man tackled Ash, but not before she fired an arrow into the man's gut. He howled in anguish and rage as he slammed into her. She let out a string of colourful curses as the man's momentum sent them flying over the edge of the cliff the house was backed up against. A hard knot of dread settled in the pit of his stomach as he raced over, only to be startled by Ash hauling herself up over the lip of the cliff. Or trying to haul herself up and failing.
She was just barely hanging on by her right hand, and it was shaking so badly, he was afraid she was going to fall any moment. She wasn't able to lift her dangling arm up much further than a shaky shrug. It was made worse by the sight of the Solarii brother dangling beneath her, a makeshift climbing axe buried in her lower back. He was attempting to pull himself up, using her body as leverage. There was a wild light in his eyes as he was making better progress than she was. Allen dove and grabbed her arm and almost let go an instant later when she let out a hoarse cry.
He quickly recovered, tightening his grip.
"Give me your other hand!" He shouted, reaching down to grab at her other arm. She felt like dead weight and he could see the pain misting over her eyes. He knew her shoulders had been bad—he just didn't realize it was this bad.
"I can't fucking reach my arm up," she hissed back through clenched teeth. Allen's eyes darted between her tense face and the Solarii brother's manic yet equally terrified expression below. Ash was instead trying to reach behind her and dislodge the axe, but she wasn't making any better progress with that. She fixed him with a glare. "Run. They're coming around, I can hear them. Just let me drop, I'll meet up with you later. GO!"
He was going to argue, and began trying to pull her up, but she managed to wriggle loose from his grip and launched herself away by pushing against the cliff with her pawed feet. The Solarii brother hanging on by his axe screamed as he was suddenly thrown asunder into open air with her. Allen watched in horror as the two of them went plummeting into the darkness below. He didn't have time to think of anything else other than pluck up Ash's abandoned bow and run when the rest of the Solarii came plowing around the burning house, screaming after him.
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"That was the most idiotic, harebrained, irresponsible—"
"I thought it was pretty awesome, but that's just my opinion—"
"You threw yourself off a cliff! You and that Solarii brother!"
"He buried an axe in me, I'm pretty sure that's considered a war crime. I'm still waiting on the Geneva Convention to get back to me on that one."
"I could have lifted you up, I could have helped you! Instead, you let yourself fall, both of you, and you broke your back in the process and dislocated your arm!"
"To be fair, it was either waste time and risk you getting shot in the head—which, last I checked, you can't recover from, you being human and all—and a broken back is, for me, just another day in fucked-up paradise. I can get better from a broken back. You can't get better from a gunshot wound to the head. Or any major organs, if we're being honest here. I know worst aid. Not worst surgery."
"It took me almost two days to find you and when I did, you couldn't walk. You were crawling and bleeding everywhere. You're lucky the Compies didn't find you first, or worse." Allen scowled. Ash shrugged.
"I couldn't reach the damned axe; a chunk of it was still in my spine. My spine. I need that for walking. But I was all better when you pulled it out."
"That's not the point."
"I think it is."
"My point," he stressed to her, "is that even though you can heal from all these injuries, doesn't mean you should put yourself in the way of harm like that on my behalf. I can handle myself."
"You were willing to let them execute you with a bullet to the back of the head while you worried about getting me back on level ground. That's the pot calling the kettle black, what you just did there. Don't try that logic on me, Allen Walker."
"I have an armoured cloak!"
"You mean that big, white fluffy thing you've pulled out of thin air once or twice before? No fucking way. That is a fashionable garment at best, fashion disaster at worst."
She stared at him in that sarcastically skeptical manner of hers: a brow ticked upward, eyes half-lidded, lips pursed, arms crossed. The epitome of skepticism, living incarnate. Two could play at this game. He smirked a bit.
"Yes, it is. Fluffy it may be, but it's tough."
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"I'm not shooting you."
"I'm telling you, it won't go through. You won't hurt me."
"You know, I thought you were a bit touched in the head, but this is taking it to a whole new level. No. No way."
He decidedly allowed that rancorous comment slide. For now.
"Ash, I'm being serious, you can't hurt me, not with my Crown Clown activated. It's essentially armour, and it's the toughest in the world."
"Bullshit, it's gonna go through, and you're gonna be gut shot and then you'll bleed out and I'll have to do something really special, like write an actual obituary or something if you died. I'll be very choked up if you were hurt, no really. I would."
Allen snorted and lifted his cloak. "I promise, I'll be fine—"
A clatter of gunshots rang out and he flinched in surprise. Impacts slammed into his cloak, throwing him off guard, but none of the rounds hit him. He blinked, wide-eyed at Ash. The pistol she had in her hands was smoking at the barrel slightly and she was staring at the area she had shot at with wide eyes. His ears were ringing but he could just barely make out Ash's words, muffled as they were.
Slowly, a hesitant grin was spreading across her face and she laughed.
"…so…big, white fashionably fluffy cloaks doubles as armour now? Where the fuck was I when this started happening and where can I get one?"
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"You know, I've been here for almost two years now, but…I don't think I've ever seen you…change."
"I have more than one set of clothes, Allen. Isn't that change enough for you?" Ash teased, but there was an edge to her words. A sense of humour she was trying to muster, but couldn't quite make it real enough. At the very least, she was getting better at relaxing around him. Joking, even.
"I meant…well, you say you can change forms. And its in your book. Werewolves…change shape, don't they?"
Ash fell quiet. It wasn't one of her more comfortable silences, either. She had those now, actually. It was a kind of hush that he actually felt calm being in when she was around. It wasn't electric with tension or palpable with uncertainty like when he first got to Yamatai.
But this…this felt off, somehow. Awkward was as close a description he could label it as, and even that wasn't quite on the head either.
"Ash?"
She stirred, but she didn't lift her gaze to meet his. He felt a frown tugging at his lips when she answered him after a few extra moments of tense silence.
"There isn't any reason you should want to see any more of the monster than you've witnessed already. It's best you never have to see that side of me."
"Ash, I—"
"No. Allen, just…just no. Please. Don't ask me to show you that side of me again. Please, just don't."
He didn't get another word in after that. She got up to retreat to her room. He didn't see her until the next morning.
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"Please don't."
"I can make that."
"You can't, I know how far you can jump. Admittedly, it's pretty far, farther than me at least, but you can't make that. Please don't jump."
"Wanna bet?"
Ash flashed him a rather wicked smile he was, secretly, glad to see more often than her usual trademark scowl.
"I'd rather not."
"That's 'cuz you know I'm gonna win."
"I don't think that, I just don't believe you can make it."
"I'm gonna do the thing."
"Ash, wait, Ash, no, no no!"
Too late.
She jumped. Allen sighed.
If he didn't think she was going to be the death of him before, now he did. She was going to worry him to death with these stunts she insisted on pulling and include him in to watch these days. That's it. That's how he was going to die. Death by stress. Not death by Akuma, or blood loss via Akuma or Noah or the Millennium Earl. It was going to be 'Death By Worrying Over Ash And Her Stupid Stunts.'
He wondered briefly if she'd put that on a tombstone for him.
Knowing her…probably.
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"Ow."
"I told you not to jump."
"But I made it," she quipped back, and lord almighty, he never felt the urge to smack someone for grinning at him that way before than now. She had a cat-got-the-canary grin plastered on her face, times ten. He could even see her canines and they were…they were big. Bigger than canines had any right to be. No wonder she tried to not smile with her teeth showing; it was slightly unnerving. How did she talk without a lisp of some sort…?
The only small victory he could claim in all of this above hers was being marginally right: she really shouldn't have jumped. Otherwise, her knee wouldn't be dislocated. It took him a better part of a half hour to convince her to let him pop it back into the joint, and not do it herself. He's seen the careless ways she's "fixed" herself and frankly, she was more than just rough around the edges in the treatment of her body. She displayed a delicacy for matters such as this the same way a ball of glass shards glued together was considered an appropriate play toy.
He worried about the times that she had no one at all to help her, how many times she's committed to stupid stunts such as these, or worse when she was alone. He worried about what she did when he wasn't looking, and how many times she's sustained an injury and didn't seek his help to alleviate it. Just because she could heal from it all, didn't mean she couldn't feel pain or couldn't suffer from the injuries.
He gripped her knee with one hand, and her calf on the other side. She leaned back against the armrest of the couch, an arm draped across her face. "Well, go on. Do it. Pop my knee back in."
He was glad he was braced for the kick when it came moments after he did as she asked.
Otherwise, he was pretty sure she would have accidentally broken some of his ribs.
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"Nope."
"It's just one card game. You've got a whole deck and I've never seen you play, not once."
"I hate card games. I know I suck at them, so what's the point? I'm better at strategy games. Like chess."
"I'm terrible at chess, and cards are easy enough to learn."
"Learning to map the stars is easier than card games."
Allen rolled his eyes, expertly shuffling the deck of cards in his hands. "Come on, just one game. I'll teach you."
Ash made a noise of disbelief and grumbled under her breath, but she plopped down all the same. She was eyeballing the deck like they were a venomous snake and she'd like nothing more than to fling it away from her as far as she possibly could. Why she kept them around at all was anyone's guess.
"I'll teach you the basics first, and then we'll play one game. Fair enough?"
She grumbled something about else that sounded somewhat of a cross between an affirmation and a curse directed his way.
Oh, this was going to be fun. He was going to absolutely destroy her.
No mercy.
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"You cheated."
"I would never," Allen said, looking offended. "A gentleman would never cheat at a game of cards. It's just not polite."
"You cheated," Ash repeated more firmly, her eyes narrowed and focused solely on him. He fought the urge to grin. "I don't know how, but I will find out and prove it."
"Prove what, exactly? That you're a terrible card player and student?"
"Have you ever had any other students that you've taught?"
"No. You're the first, and the absolute worst. Worse than I was when I first started. And you lost in a magnificently terrible manner, I might add." He gave her a cheeky smile and wink for good measure. The way her face turned red was absolutely hilarious.
"You think you're funny. I'll remember that next time a pack of Compies is munching on your ass."
"You're just a sore loser," he remarked offhandedly as he carefully shuffled the deck in his hands, and in the process, replaced all the cards he had hidden in his sleeves. The perfect shuffle. She didn't even notice. She was too busy glaring at his face. It was perhaps the first time he got one up on the otherwise very astute werewolf.
Gotta live for the small victories from time to time.
He smiled sweetly and stopped shuffling once all the cards were replaced. "Would you care for another round?"
"Bring it on."
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"Oh come on, how did you get all the avenues?"
"Doesn't matter, pay up or I'm tossing your ass in jail. Oh, and you'll owe me…oh, what's Park Avenue worth…"
This woman was destroying him. At some parochial game called 'Monopoly.' She had somehow managed to acquire almost all the railroads, avenues, and was in the shrewd process of maintaining all the money as the acting 'bank'. And he was hemorrhaging all his money he had managed to obtain and was being forced to pay out to properties he landed on that she had bought out. And every damned time, when he rolled the dice and silently prayed, please not to put him any of her properties, it would do just that. After that, he'd then have to pay out money to her. At first, it wasn't bad. Now he hated this game with an intense passion.
Somehow, he has managed to get some amount of debt heaped upon him, and it was still climbing.
He thought he was great at budgeting money. In fact, he was, considering the insurmountable debt he owed due to Cross's travels and him bundling the bills in Allen's name. He had to be, or he'd have more people gunning for him more actively than they were. But Ash probably hasn't seen money in years, and yet—she was dominating. Did she play this game with a demonic streak like he did with cards? How did anyone even dominate at a game that had no ending?
He'll probably never know.
At least it was fake money, and not real. And it was based on a game, not because of a certain gun-toting redheaded mentor that has left him with so much debt in the past. The small comfort he had on that? Most of everyone his master had owed money to, they were most likely dead now, and the debts were gone and moot now.
He hoped.
Allen glowered at the colourful game board before him and more importantly, at the smug werewolf across from him. He was beginning to hate her sly grin and pleased stare, all the while as she silently preened herself in congratulatory victory. Every card from the middle pile on the board was against him too, and it didn't help his souring mood.
"This is payback for the card game the other week, isn't it?" He finally inquired.
"Whatever made you think that?"
She smiled ever so sweetly at him as they continued playing.
Allen was convinced, after the game concluded rather unceremoniously when finally just he got up and walked away with her laughing at his retreating backside, that she was secretly some kind of demon at board games.
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Himiko was back.
She let her presence be known with a spectacular hurricane that lasted nearly two weeks. It wasn't snow, though, so Allen was partially grateful on that end. Ash would always be the one to go out, proclaiming that letting him out into the storm would be akin to suicide.
"The winds would blow you all over the place and knock you off a cliff. We both know I can survive a fall, and you might, by a marginal percent. But if you shattered something, that's it. Game over, man, you're done; even if I got to you in time. I can't risk that. Don't force me to risk that."
During one of her hunts, she came back with four soaked-to-the-bone strangers—their plane had crashed, they explained, and they were lucky enough to wash up on shore. They had run-ins with the Solarii and just barely made it further in before Báthory found them. Ash had been close enough to prevent any mistaken shootings and brought them back with a huge guardian in tow.
"Goddamn, and here I thought I'd seen it all, this place shows up and what do you know, it's got goddamn dinosaurs running amok, all over the place!" The oldest of the group proclaimed as they finished their tale.
Ash lingered near the doorway as the others meandered closer toward the warmth of the fire. Allen caught sight of her standing off to the side, looking about as soaked and miserable as the others. He noticed her hands were balled up into fists at her side, and clenched so tightly, they were bone-white. Stranger still, she looked pale and tense, ready to leap into action at any moment.
The others were too busy conversing excitedly, their eyes alit with a fevered expression, to notice anything was amiss. He heard on more than one occasion, "Yamatai! This is the lost kingdom of Yamatai!"
It was uttered with such reverence; one could almost believe they thought they'd stumbled onto a goldmine. Perhaps in their minds, they had. The four were babbling away to one another excitedly, casting occasional glances his and Ash's way. She, in turn, was keeping her distance, watching.
Allen turned back to the werewolf, venturing closer to her as he did.
"Ash?"
He reached for her, but hesitated at the last moment and nearly retreated. She surprised him by snaking her hand out to reach his hand halfway, gripping it tightly. He winced but let her hold on.
He leaned a little closer to her and asked in a soft voice, "Is everything all right?"
"My tolerance for people is limited to one person at a time, and this is overflowing that capacity right now. Too many people."
He mulled over that statement for a moment. It wasn't anger in her voice he sensed. It was anxiety. She was tense all over. Allen squeezed her hand back. "They'll be gone soon. We just have to wait out the storm."
She nodded, although if she heard him, he couldn't really say. Her eyes were focused on the four not unlike a raptor honing in on something foreign and unknown in their territory.
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Barely a week passed by after the arrival of their new guests, the destruction of the Sun Queen and the general state of the island returned to a vague sense of normalcy after they left.
If one could call it that.
It was only in the aftermath of it all, and things were settling back down, that Allen noticed that it was well past the New Year.
A bit of surrealism settled in as he stared at the date, having flipped back to Báthory's gaping maw and beady eyes honing in on the view.
I'm eighteen, he thought absently, not quite believing it. He'd been on Yamatai for over two years now.
Somehow, it felt longer.
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