Revenge

Chapter Two: Evil Suggestion

"Hello, Hitomi," he replied.

His voice was a little different: a little deeper, a little scratchier. He had always had a voice like an angel. He stepped towards her, from the other side of the street. She didn't move. The closer he came, the less he was lit by the streetlamps, until he came close enough that he was on the sidewalk beside her. Her heart pounded in her chest. She could feel the blood coursing hot through her face, and her hands trembled.

His hair was as blonde as ever, but cropped around his face. He had some small wrinkles on the edges of his eyes, and his brows looked more tense than she remembered. Before she could study him much further, he reached out two hands and grasped her shoulders.

"Hitomi," he said, "you have to come with me." Hitomi's mouth flopped open like a fish's. Allen shook her a little. When she failed to respond, he let her go and threw his hands up in the air. "Hitomi!"

His raised voice seemed to pluck her out of her stupor, and she started to breathe quickly. "Allen!" she cried. "Allen, what are you doing here? How are you here?" She fumbled with the words.

"Hitomi, I've been looking for you for weeks now." It was like a dream she might have had six years ago. "Hitomi, please, I need your help." He gasped a little. His eyes were wider now, and he looked a little frantic. She couldn't quite remember ever seeing him looking quite so terrorized.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped backwards and sat down on the bench. She offered him the seat next to her. "Allen," she said, "sit down. Tell me what's wrong." Allen looked almost frustrated with her, but instead obeyed. He was definitely older. He looked misplaced, unnatural, dressed like he was. The blue knight's uniform had suited him so well, made him appear so dignified, that he seemed reduced in casual, Earth attire.

His eyes seemed to soften, and his wrinkles fade a little. "Hitomi, things have gone wrong." It was obvious that she still didn't quite believe he was there, sitting beside her, so he was careful to speak slowly. "I've been living here… for a while," he said. "When I came here, I was at your, what do you call it, high school?" He looked exhausted. Hitomi noticed that his collared shirt was wrinkly and unwashed under the jacket. "I asked around about you, but no one seemed to know anything. Until tonight."

"Allen, how did you get here?" Hitomi asked.

"How do you think?" he answered with a long sigh. "The blue light."

"But, why?"

He seemed irritated, but not at her questions; he was struggling to put his sentences together. "You see," he began awkwardly, "After Zaibach was destroyed, there was a country of people who relied on the technological infrastructure. When it disappeared, the lives of these people had been changed by fate. Some of them, both willing volunteers and victims of the sorcerers, could no longer exist without the machine." He coughed. Hitomi wondered how he had been surviving here, imagining that someone must have been helping the handsome, charismatic man. He did seem worse for the wear.

"They started the Fate-Altered Military Front. The people of Zaibach were starving, and there was only so much Palas could do alone: Freid was destroyed, and Fanelia was trying desperately to rebuild." Hitomi could imagine such a thing. "Two years after you left, they launched their first attack.

"There were still plenty of scientists living in Zaibach after Dornkirk was removed. They started trying to rebuild the fate machine, but had little resources to do so. The Front took what military power they had left and began attacking energist mines, farms, anything where they could take resources to feed the people who had remained within the limits of the Zaibach empire. King Aston had intended to militarily absorb them, but found himself without enough troops." He looked at Hitomi. "They weren't a problem for myself, you see, until one month ago. They created a weapon that rained fire on all of Gaea."

Hitomi furrowed her brow. "Rained… fire?" She remembered the meteor storm.

"We were worried about you," Allen added. "We feared that Gaea wasn't the only planet struck by the attack."

"We weren't harmed," she replied quickly. "But we saw it. Our experts hadn't seen it coming—it was all over the news because nobody could explain it. Usually scientists know meteor showers are coming long before they do."

"The death toll is difficult to count. What I know is that many places in Gaea were destroyed, and people fled. The Fanelian castle was, for the second time, on fire. I heard of it from my men who had been in the area. Van has disappeared, and his people are lost." Hitomi was staring at him. Allen lowered his head so his hair hid his eyes from view. "They need their king. I was asked to find you, so that you might help us find Van."

Hitomi still couldn't be sure that anything she was seeing or hearing was even real. "The Front has special powers. Their generals are altered soldiers; their scientists are leagues ahead the rest of Gaea; and their guymelefs compare only to Escaflowne." Van wouldn't abandon his people. He had fought so hard for Fanelia, only to leave it when the enemy returned?

"He had to have been kidnapped," Hitomi told Allen. He looked surprised. "Van would not just disappear unless someone took him. But who could do that?"

Allen looked at her coldly and replied, "What if he did just leave?"

---

Hitomi wasn't sure what to do with Allen now that he was there, and they weren't instantly transported back to Gaea upon meeting. This, of course, was what she assumed would happen. When Hitomi was feeling cold and tired sitting on a park bench in the middle of the night, she finally suggested they return to her friend's house. She told Allen to stay quiet, and they could leave first thing in the morning for she and Yukari's apartment back in the city.

As they walked back to the house, Hitomi was forced to ask: "How have you been living here for so long? And where did you find those clothes?"

Allen looked down at his outfit and sighed. He was clearly dissatisfied with how undignified his situation had become. "I could not look for you at first because the people of the Mystic Moon speak a very perplexing language." As they passed under the streetlamps, they lit his face from above, making him look even older than before. "After a day or so, I was granted the power to communicate with them. I simply went to a house and asked if I might stay with them while I searched for my friend. The family assumed I was foreign.

"They insisted that I change my clothes and not carry a sword with me when I went outdoors." He shrugged his shoulders. "I told them I could repay them later." He gave Hitomi a meaningful look, and she sighed.

"So they live nearby, then?" Allen nodded his head. "I will go and sort this out tomorrow."

"And until then?"

"You can sleep in the car so you don't scare our friend. I can't imagine this family would appreciate you coming in at the wee hours of the morning." Allen shook his head. "The car it is."

The time between setting up Allen with a duffel bag for a pillow in the back seat of the rental car and climbing under the blankets inside evaporated. Hitomi kept pondering Allen's words: "What if he did just leave?" What would have had to happen for the loyal Van Fanel to abandon his people? Surely he could have retrieved Escaflowne from its resting place and at the very least, defended his country.

---

The next morning, Hitomi woke up before anyone in the house and went outside to check on Allen. He was sleeping with one arm up on the seat, the duffel bag tucked under his neck. He still had his shoes on. She went back inside to wake up Yukari and try to explain exactly what was going on.

Yukari yawned and batted away Hitomi's hand, then glanced at her watch. "God," she moaned, "it's only like, seven. We were up late drinking, doesn't even that knock you out for a little while?"

"Do you remember Allen?" Yukari gave Hitomi a confused look. "From… you know… that place?"

Yukari's eyes went wide, and she sat up. She spoke in a whisper. "What do you mean? What about him? Of course I remember."

Hitomi swallowed and told her, "He's here."

Yukari was silent. She got up off the couch and put on her day clothes and some shoes. "Show him to me."

Hitomi led her outside and Allen was already standing beside the car, trying without avail to flatten out his wrinkled shirt. When he saw them, he hastily put on his jacket and pulled the collar up around his neck. Yukari looked at him, then back at Hitomi.

"Well, he is blonde," she said quietly. "But I don't see the whole knight thing." Allen looked offended. "I mean…" Yukari paused. Hitomi sighed.

"Allen, shall we go settle your debt, and get your proper clothes back?" At this, the knight looked infinitely relieved. "Yukari, let's say goodbye to our host, and then I have to pay off the kind people who have been putting up a strange foreigner with only a vague promise of reward."

While the girl they stayed with was unhappy about being woken up so early, she said goodbye and wished them well. When they all got in the car, which Allen clearly found unnerving, he instructed Hitomi how to get to the house. The father was outside, watering some plants hanging above the front porch. When he saw Allen, he waved enthusiastically.

Hitomi and Allen went in the house, while Yukari waited in the car. When they returned, Hitomi was gazing forlornly into her empty wallet, while Allen was dressed completely as Hitomi remembered him. He suddenly looked more vibrant, and all of his wrinkles seemed to have vanished. His shoulders were straight and the handle of his sword glistened in the early morning sunlight.

"Oh my god," Yukari gasped. "You really are him."

"Madame," Allen replied, "I am pleased to make your acquaintance." He bowed, and lightly kissed the top of her hand. Hitomi rolled her eyes, but Yukari nearly swooned.

The ride home, Yukari asked him all kinds of questions. Allen was careful not to discuss why he had come; he kept the discussion narrowly confined to Gaean animals, culture, and language. "So, there really are dragons?"

"Of course," Allen replied. "If it weren't for dragons, nothing on Gaea would receive power, except with Levistones."

"Wow," said Yukari. She was sitting in the passenger seat, but still managed to gaze at him with half-lidded eyes.

They finally arrived at their apartment, and Yukari offered to take the car back to the rental company. "I'm sure you two have so much to talk about," Yukari twittered.

As soon as she was gone and they started up the stairs of the apartment building, Hitomi asked, "So the reason you came here is that you want me to find Van?" Allen nodded his head. "What makes you think I still can? Or that you can even go back, now that you're here?" She unlocked the front door, and they both went inside. She was suddenly very aware of how small and messy their apartment was, but Allen didn't seem to mind.

"I have faith that when the time is right, we'll be taken back."

Hitomi thought that any faith was too much faith in the unpredictable power that had once transported her willy-nilly all across Gaea. "I see." Allen looked at her intently. "What?"

"Aren't you going to pack?"

Allen was still handsome, there was no doubt about it. Neither did Hitomi forget that she had once been unquestionably infatuated with him. Of course, fresher in her heart was her much deeper feeling for Van: not only was he her friend, but had been her companion in battle. He had rescued her as many times, if not more times than she rescued him. In the end, he was the one who loved her. Allen had never felt anything for her more than a passing fancy.

If she was going back for anyone, it was going to be to rescue Van, not because good-looking, confident Allen had gone through so much to find her.