Welcome once more! Do you like your new puppy nose? It just looks so cute on you! A decided improvement, and goes so well with the Tiger paws. Heh, heh, heh... Okay, Rini has now encountered another Beast folk, a young, early adolescent female who has nabbed her dress, leaving Rini to follow her through the woods in just her unmentionables. But to where? And to what end? Let's find out! Disclaimers first:
Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi, Toei, DiC, Pioneer, and Cloverway, in that order, none of whom are me.
The Island Of Dr. Moreau belongs to H.G. Wells and his descendants(if any), also not me.
This is emphasis, and this is thought. And ((this)) is auditory/visual flashback.
Yes, I know, it's been a couple of months, and I've been a lazy little slug, but it's here now. Enjoy!
And now, the terror continues...
The Island Of Dr. Tomoe
by Scorpinac
Chapter 5: Among The Beast Folk And The Sayer Of The Law
I am not sure just how long she lead me through the trees and bushes, though I can say I got more than one scrape from an evil branch or two. Also, my skin dried from the heat of the day as time passed by, leaving me almost totally dry by the time we stopped.
The beast girl lead me across what felt like more than half the island, passing palm trees, oaks, and even a few banana tress ranging from shrubbery to skyscraper in height and width, as well as all manner of bushes and vines. Sometimes she would lead me through a patch so thick I wondered how she managed to push through, or how I could and did. And every now and then she turned either left or right, as though trying to avoid something, or, as I thought at the time, trying to lose me as part of some kind of evil, selfish prank at my expense.
But then, just as I was about to yell at her to come back to me and return my dress, I suddenly found myself in front of an ooky, spooky looking cave. I stared for several long moments, my eyes dancing all about for the beast girl, trying to find which way she had, which way she must have turned...
"Uh...miss cat girl beast person?" I am embarrassed to admit that I whimpered, "Are you still here...?"
"Come!" her voice came up to me...from inside the cave... "Come! Follow! Follow to city! Follow to Sayer! Sayer of the Law!" Staring into the cave carefully, I finally spotted her now overly excited eyes glowing in the darkness of the cave about ten feet in, holding steady, waiting for me...
"Okay..." I replied, nervousness filling my voice, and I timidly began to tiptoe inside, watching my footing carefully, praying I wouldn't accidentally trip on something, or that something wouldn't leap from the darkness and devour me alive. The cat girl ahead of me must have started getting impatient, for she began entreating me to go faster as we moved through the passage. But my fear and alarms were too high to allow much speed, not even for the sake of regaining my dress, so I continued to move forward slowly and cautiously, my eyes on constant lookout for any sign of ambush.
It felt like I walked through that cave, or should I say tunnel, for hours and hours, but then I emerged from another entrance to the cave back into the sunlight, my shadow telling me it was now no more than noon. As my eyes re-accustomed themselves to the light, I noticed that at least two or three dozen make shift huts built from branches and planks carved and pulled from various trees filled the area, some large enough to hold whole large families, others just big enough for maybe one person. There were also five or six other cave openings in the rock face just behind me and leading off to the west slightly.
Finally my eyes stopped squinting, and I realized I was in a clearing I'd never seen before, and several, I'm not sure and may never be sure exactly how many, of the Beast Folk were milling about, doing such simple activities as maintenance on the buildings or tending what looked to be crops in a small field to the north...or was it east? Or maybe both?
Others seemed to be just frolicking, and a couple of the clearly older ones appeared to be acting like, or trying to act like, teachers or guardians for the especially smaller ones. And then they started to notice me as my "guide" skipped forward merrily with my dress still held captive in her arms. Now really nervous, I timidly stepped forward, deciding to try and keep track of my guide for the time being.
"Who this?" a white furred, gruffy looking creature that might once have been a kind of wolf or ape with piercing cold blue eyes asked.
"Five Man, Malachite!" my guide squealed in delight as she rose her own hand. "Like me! Like me! I bring her to meet Sayer of the Law!"
"Yes!" I cried, surprising myself as well them, and raising my owns hands for them to see clearly. "I am a Five Man, just like her." They all began quietly chanting it as they seemed to size me up, the littler ones looking almost as excited as my guide.
"Does it know the law?" a brown haired definitively canine like male with fierce blue-grey eyes asked, cutting into the chanting.
"Do you know the law?" my guide inquired of me. "I think it knows the law!"
"Uh...the law?" I asked nervously. "Like, don't steal and don't hurt people on purpose or you'll go to jail, go directly to jail, and not collect two hundred dollars?" They all stared blankly at me, obviously not familiar with the game of Monopoly, and thus completely missing my superiorly lame humor.
"It does not know the law, Ail," Malachite, who I was now certain was once some sort of Gorilla or Chimpanzee, maybe an Orangutang, said to the canine-man.
"She must learn the law!" a somewhat female looking, black-haired, dark green-eyed kind of deer or antelope like creature bellowed.
"Yes, as Prisma says, she must learn the law!" Ail agreed with her. "Take her, take her to the Sayer of the Law!" They all grouped around me and all but shoved me through their little make shift town to a cave on the west side, and then inside it, for about a dozen feet or so, to a small fire, beyond which sat an elderly cat-like creature with fur similar to my guide's, but with tufts of colored, dotted fur sticking out of the side of it's chin, like a beard or whiskers.
Its hands were covered in aged orange fur, and it wore only what looked like a long, red cloak, and one hand held an old, tall staff carved, somewhat clumsily yet with utmost care it seemed to me, from wood. And, I noted most prominently, it's eyes were closed tightly, not once opening to stare at me. It did, however, sniff at the air as I came to a stop before the fire.
"What has been brought here?" it asked in a rough, male voice, that made me think of my grandpas, weird as that may seem.
"A five man, Sayer," Malachite declared. "Kit brought her. She must learn the Law." The cat man, the Sayer of the Law, stood up, and moved around the fire using his staff as a walking stick, and reached out his free hand and felt my face carefully.
"Very well done," he said. "Like the other, the one who stays in the compound, with the 'little Mistress'." I blinked at this comment, wondering idly who he was talking about, as I hadn't seen any of the "trained" Beast Folk hanging exclusively around Hotaru and Melanie, though now I feel like a total idiot for not realizing the truth sooner. At that particular moment, though, I did realize one thing.
The Sayer of the Law...was blind.
"I...I'm Rini, Mr. Sayer, sir," I introduced myself to him, my nerves still on full alert. "Please don't eat me..."
"Eat you!" he stepped back, looking aghast. "Eat you! NO! Not to eat flesh, that is the law!" The last he declared loudly for all to hear, and it was followed by him and all the others around me chiming together, "ARE WE NOT MEN!"
"Okay," I replied with a very relieved sigh. "That's nice to know...unless you're all gonna gang up on me and devour me and then hide my bones so Dr. Tomoe and the others never figure out where I went..."
"Teach her the law!" the wolf-like Ail decreed.
"Teach her the law!" the ape-like Malachite agreed.
"Teach her the law!" Kit and Prisma chimed together.
"Teach her the law!" I heard what sounded like all the Beast Folk, minus the Sayer, cry out. To be honest, I now felt nervous, and yet somehow excited at the same time.
"Teach her so she can play with us again!" three child like voices said in a pig like squeal, and I glanced to my side to see the three pig creatures I'd encountered yesterday, though I had no idea to which to apply each of the names Tomoe had used for them, and there, just beyond them, watching me intently, was the bear-man that had scared me right straight back into Kaolinite's and Mimete's "waiting arms". The one I didn't see, though, was the cat-man who had actively hunted me through half the jungle...
"Very well!" the Sayer bellowed, breaking through my thoughts and bringing me back to the matter immediately at hand. "Listen, new-man, listen and learn the Law!"
"I'm listening, I'm listening!" I agreed, now officially all ears.
"Not to go on all fours, that is the law!" he decreed.
"ARE WE NOT MEN!" he and all the others cried out, and then glanced at me. I realized they expected me to say this part as well, so;
"Are we not men!" I yelled out, and they all cheered their approval of me.
"Not to hunt other men, that is the law!" the Sayer stated.
"ARE WE NOT MEN!" I and the other Beast Folk cried.
"Not to eat fish or flesh, that is the Law!"
"ARE WE NOT MEN!"
"Never to shed blood, that is the Law!"
"ARE WE NOT MEN!"
"Never to growl or yell like an animal, that is the Law!"
"ARE WE NOT MEN!"
"Never to suck up drink with lips alone, that is the Law!"
"ARE WE NOT MEN!"
And on and on it went, with several of the forbidden acts I no longer remember, nor care to. I do know that as the chanting continued, they began to sway and shuffle, as though dancing without moving from where they stood, and I began to move in the same way, lest they turn on me and forget about their "Laws". I am no longer sure just how long they bombarded me with this seemingly endless list of "don'ts", with to my recall not a single "do".
I also glanced about at the creatures around me when I could, and noticed that almost all of them had mis-formed hands, some having only two cloven fingers apiece, others having only two fingers and a thumb, some three, some four, some in combinations; three on one hand, two on the other, like Nephrite's hands; and only a very, very rare few that I could see had a full five-fingered hand like me and my guide. Then, suddenly, without any warning, the chanting switched to a new rhythm...
"His is the Hand!" the Sayer cried forth, surprising me.
"His is the Hand!" the Beast Folk cried in reply, and I quickly repeated it as well.
"His is the Hand!" the Sayer repeated. "His is the Hand that Makes!"
"His is the Hand that Makes!" The Beast Folk and I repeated.
"His is the Hand! His is the Hand that Wounds!"
"His is the Hand that Wounds!"
"His is the Hand! His is the Hand that Heals!"
"His is the Hand that Heals!"
"His is the Hand! His is the Lightning Flash!"
"His is the Lightning Flash!"
"His is the Hand! His is the Deep Salt Sea!"
"His is the Deep Salt Sea!"
"His is the Hand! His are the Stars in the Sky!"
"His are the Stars in the Sky!" By this point I started to realize they must have been talking of Dr. Tomoe, that after doing this to them, hurting them and forcing them into a shape so alien to that from which they were born, he had made them look on him as though he were some kind of God! And then came the next part of the seemingly endless litany...
"His is the Hand! His is the House of Pain!"
"His is the House of Pain!"
"Great are the punishments!" Ail declared.
"Great are they!" the other agreed.
"None escape!" the female pig creature with blue hair proclaimed.
"None escape!" the others roared their agreement.
"I did a little thing," the pig-boy cried, raising one of it's three-fingered hands, which I noticed for the first time then had a nasty scar upon it. "I slurped, I sucked my drink from the well without my hands or glass. He knew! He always knows! And I was punished! I am burned! He is great! He is good!"
"None escape! None escape! None escape!" they chanted.
"For all, the want is bad," the Sayer said. "Some want to follow things that move, some want to rend and tear with teeth and claw, some want to scratch and bay and howl! All the want is bad! So hear, listen, learn the Law! I am the Sayer of the Law! I sit here and wait for those new who come to teach them the Law! Listen, learn, and say the words!"
"Not to walk on all fours, that is the Law! ARE WE NOT MEN!" the whole group cried aloud, and again I found myself chanting along with them through the endless litany. The cave seemed to heat up as the meeting seemed to linger on and on, and I am sure I began to perspire all over, despite myself. And then I noticed Kit trying to don my dress...
"Excuse me!" I snapped aloud, cutting the litany short just I am sure they were about to go into another "rousing" round of "His is the Hand, etc." "Kit, may I please have my dress back now? I only came for that."
"But is pretty, is of Man!" she replied. "With this I am true Five Man! With this He no longer takes me to the House of Pain!"
"You think wearing my dress will..." I started, but her eyes looked at me with sorrow and...fear, yes, fear, in her eyes. For a moment I considered pressing the point, but as she awaited my answer, the rest of the group went quiet, also waiting to see how this moment decided itself. Finally, despite my own good judgement, I said, "Would you like me to help you put it on so you don't rip it?"
"Yes!" she gleamed happily at me. "Now I become true Five Man! Now I escape the House of Pain!" I moved closer to her, and helped her to step into the dress, then I made sure the straps sat properly, and she looked herself over in utter delight.
"I am true Five Man," she said in awe, and started to twirl about, the skirt flowing and rising slightly as she did. "I safe. I safe now forever."
"Now we continue!" the Sayer of the Law proclaimed. "As we were! Not to scratch the bark of trees with our hands, that is the Law!"
"That is the Law! ARE WE NOT MEN!" I and the other Beast Folk cried out, picking up where we left off when I...interrupted. As the litany continued apace, I began to question myself as to how I was to make my escape now. There was no doubt plenty of material in the Beast Folk's moderate village from which to make a simple oar with which to row myself away, and maybe even to create a rudder for steering, if I needed one.
But what was I to wear? Without my dress I would be rowing back to true civilization half naked! And I was not about to sully my family's good name for the sake of my freedom. Mother would never let me hear the end of it! Perhaps I could put together a simple loincloth for my chest, or maybe there was still a chance I could sneak back inside the compound and retrieve one of my other dresses...
And then my ponderings became moot when the litany was halted by a loud series of noises from outside the cave. As I turned, wondering what was going on, several of the Beast Folk suddenly shifted aside to give clear access to the cave entrance, and a moment later Hotaru stepped inside, to my shock a small handgun in her right hand and a whip in her left! And looking meaner and angrier than I'd seen yet!
As I quickly dove to the side to hide myself amongst the Beast Folk, praying that she had not seen me, she rose her gun and fired a single shot into the ceiling. As the Beast Folk cringed from the loud noise that rang around the cavern, I found my hands squeezing into my ears to try and stop them from ringing. As I glanced toward Hotaru, I noticed that she had changed her state of dress considerably.
Always before she had gone about in either what amounted to skimpy swim wear, or a simple dress or sundress. But now she wore a plain white short sleeved shirt, and regular brown pants with matching, much to my great surprise, boots! As I tried to wrap my head around this revelation, Hotaru spoke out loudly.
"There is a new man!" she yelled. "A female. A girl. Young. She has taken off on us, and if you have her here, reveal her now! Remember, Mine is the Hand!"
"Yours is the Hand!" the Beast Folk cried out. So, I thought, They know I'm not in the compound anymore. I'm so dead...okay, Rini, think! There's got to still be a way out of this! C'mon, there's got to be something you've missed or overlooked!
"We have taught new man!" the Sayer said. "We have taught her the Law!"
"Then you have seen her?" Hotaru asked. "Rini has been here?"
"Rini is here now!" the red-haired pig girl squealed. "She learns the Law! She learns the Law!" Hotaru turned her attention to her.
"Where, Nanako?" she stared. "Where is Rini now?" Nanako, as I now knew her to be, turned and looked right at me, as I pitifully tried to hide behind the ape-like Malachite, holding my finger to my lips in the international signal for shh! and shook my head 'no' quickly.
"There, behind Malachite," Nanako said. "She learn Law well, play with me and friends again." Hotaru, rather than bending around to see if I was truly behind Malachite or not, turned around and stepped away.
For a fleeting moment, I thought I might have a chance to escape before she came back, but then she was at the entrance again, and her father was with her, holding a shotgun in one arm, a second whip on his belt. Now I knew I was really in trouble! A second later Mimete stepped up, dressed similarly to Hotaru, and stood quietly behind them both, another handgun sitting in a holder on her belt while she nervously held a third in her hands.
"Behind Malachite, or so Nanako says," Hotaru commented offhandedly, and Tomoe looked towards me, causing me to duck and try to scrunch up as much as possible.
"Malachite, move," Tomoe's voice echoed through the cave, and he shuffled aside, revealing me to the mad scientists. "We've been worried half to death, Rini. I don't know how you got out of your room, since Mimete swears on a stack that she locked the door, but it's moot now...why are you naked?"
Blushing heavily, I stood up straight, deciding to meet my bad karma head on. I tried my best to look at him defiantly, but I don't really think it worked.
"One of your "pets" took a liking to my dress, so I gave it to her, kind of hoped they'd hide me for a while," I said slowly and carefully, trying to remain as calm as I could.
"Which..." Tomoe started, but Kit jumped forward, only too happy to show off her new look to her creator.
"Is nice?" she asked, doing a brief twirl to show him how it looked on her. "Am true Five Man now, yes? No more punishment?"
"Well..." he batted an eye for a moment, clearly unsure what to say on the matter. "Clothes don't really... It looks nice, Kit. Very nice."
"Rini," he turned his attention back toward me. "Why did you run? Was my lecture too much for you? Did I not explain anything clearly enough?"
"Oh, I understood it all just fine," I replied. "And I still say you're out of your mind!"
"Master?" Ail looked at him, clearly confused.
"She is...not like us?" the bear man from yesterday asked, eying me suspiciously.
"Correct, Chad," Tomoe said loudly. "She is not like you. She was not made. She is a true man! She is like me! Like Hotaru! Like Kaolinite! Like Mimete! She is a Mistress, a little Mistress! And like us, Hers is the Hand!" The last said especially loud while pointing right at me!
"Don't you drag me into this!" I screamed. "I want nothing to do with your madness! I just want the keys to your launch and a map pointing me to the nearest safe port of call!"
"You want to leave? So soon?" Hotaru asked with a slight sneer. "No one's going to harm you." At the comment of harm, the image of the rabbit I'd seen yesterday suddenly returned to my mind, and for a brief second the need to be sick with it.
"Tell that to the bunny," I replied.
"What bunny?" Tomoe and Hotaru both chimed at once, and Mimete suddenly looked panicked. More so than she already was, anyway. And their stare told me that nothing short of the truth would be tolerated.
"The one I saw yesterday, right before I ran into the cat man, uh, Kakeru?" I explained. "It was torn to pieces, literally!"
Tomoe and Hotaru stared at me, then glanced at each other. Tomoe then turned to the Beast Folk and spoke again.
"Where is the Sayer of the Law!" he cried out, and the Sayer shuffled forward into Tomoe's line of sight.
"Yes?" the Sayer asked.
"What is the Law!" Tomoe snapped out.
"Not to walk on all fours," the Sayer repeated once more, but this time Tomoe cut him off before he could continue.
"What is the Law!" he snapped again.
"Not to hunt other men..."
"What is the Law!"
"Not to eat fish or flesh..."
"What is the Law!"
"Never to shed blood..."
"Someone has broken this Law!" Tomoe declared. "Who was it? Who has shed blood!" The Beast Folk all stirred and stared at one another, all wondering who had dared to go against their Law. Even Kit looked anxious as we waited for a confession. Then another thought occurred to me. I wondered for a moment if I should tell about it, but then the choice was taken from me.
"Um, while we're on the subject, I saw Kakeru watching in the trees just out of my line of sight when we found Rini on the beach yesterday," Mimete commented, and I felt a small lump form in my throat. "He looked as though he'd been running, just like she had been..."
"Oh?" Tomoe glanced at her, then turned back toward me. "Is that true, Rini? Did Kakeru hunt you?"
"If you mean the cat guy, he did follow me from a distance for most of the day, yeah..." I admitted. "For awhile I was kinda convinced he was gonna have me for...dinner..." Now Tomoe looked really incensed!
"He was a Cheetah, Rini," Mimete commented quietly as she scanned the cave actively. Tomoe also began glancing around the cave, searching for the cat, er, Cheetah man.
"KAKERU!" he roared, his voice echoing loudly through the chamber. "WHERE ARE YOU!" For a moment there was silence, as nobody responded, and then my previous day's pursuer emerged from the crowd, dropping from a nearby "shelf" onto the floor, landing in a poised crouch.
"Yours...is the Hand," he said, staring carefully at Tomoe.
"Did you hunt this man!" Tomoe snapped out, again pointing at me. "Were you going to kill her had she not reached Kaolinite and Mimete!"
"No, not kill, just follow, see where go, learn if one of us," he replied. Somehow, I didn't quite believe him, though it did surprise me that I was actually willing to consider the idea that the beasts-turned-men could grasp the concepts of lying and "stretching the truth". After all, a dog or a cat cannot lie. Of course, under normal circumstances, they can't actually talk, either... But again, my musings were cut short as events continued to unfold around me.
"And the rabbit!" Tomoe inquired. "Did you have anything to do...with the rabbit?"
"I don't think so," I cut in. "He was drinking some water from a small lake or pond, and even if he had been washing blood off him at the time, it would've just wound up in the water, and I didn't see anything that remotely looked like blood in the water, or on him, and I found him only a few moments after I saw the bunny."
"He was drinking..." Tomoe started.
"With his hands!" I snapped out. "He was scooping the water up with his hands. Honest." Tomoe looked at me a moment longer, then shrugged it off and returned his focus to the matter at hand. I glanced at Kakeru, who stared back at me with bewilderment in his eyes. Clearly, he had expected me to tell Tomoe the truth, that he had sucked with his lips only, and was trying to understand why I lied for him. I gave him a light smile, to assure him I wouldn't let Tomoe hurt him, and he briefly tilted his head, then I turned back to Tomoe.
"Then who has shed blood!" Tomoe asked the crowd again. "Who has broken the Law!" He stared intently around the room, continually focusing on Kakeru, apparently already convinced that he was indeed the culprit, or at the least more involved than he claimed to be. More silence, then...
"NO!" a voice roared throughout the cave, causing loud echoes, and another wolf-like creature dove from somewhere into view, its hair and fur a mottled blue-grey-black, its four fingered hands clawed, and flexing as it stood. It stood a short ways away from Hotaru and her father and Mimete.
"NO!" it roared again. "You are not the Hand! We are not men! We are beasts! I say, we live as we are, as animals!" It lunged forward, went down to fours, and swiped with one of its hands, drawing up a large amount of dust, sending it straight into Hotaru and Tomoe's eyes, Mimete jumping back only a moment before the dust could reach her. The wolf man dove through the cave entrance while its would-be captors coughed on the dust, and seeing an out myself, I, too, ran forward and out of the cave.
My first thought upon stepping out of the cave is that it must have been getting pretty hot in there, because the cool air of the outside felt really good against my skin, and I was even more sure that I had been sweating up a storm. I felt soaked! I noticed that the wolf man was running off into the jungle, and that the sun had barely shifted, meaning no more than an hour had gone by at most.
I also noticed that nearby was Jadeite, who I then felt was perhaps carved from a large mountain goat, and Kyusuke, who could have only been made from a small canine, I think perhaps an unfortunate Rottweiler or Labrador, possibly a Mastiff, and also Melanie, who wore a normal dress for this occasion. All three held hand axes, and were clearly quite nervous, though Melanie looked at me, and probably more to the point, my current state of dress, in clear and abject surprise.
Then Tomoe, Hotaru, and Mimete emerged from the cave, and immediately began following the wolf man, several of the other Beast Folk coming up behind them, crying out, "Back! Back to the House of Pain!" Not wanting to get run over, I began moving as well, and was pulled along with the crowd, within minutes finding myself near Mimete, who glanced at me. At this point I noticed that she, too, had a whip tied to her belt.
"You really shouldn't have done this," she said, pulling the spare handgun from the holder and, much to my surprise, handed it to me. "Be careful with this," she told me as I took hold of it. "It's loaded, which means it's dangerous! Only use it if you absolutely have to!" I, frankly, was at a total loss for words!
The chase picked up, and we plunged through the trees and brush at breakneck speed, or so it seemed. I heard Tomoe say something about all-fours, and presumed that the wolf man we now hunted had dropped to a four legged run. As we turned left and right, right and left, passing this shape and that, I spotted clouds forming in the distance, and landmarks made not by nature that looked like monuments or graves, crafted I think by Tomoe's creations. And as we ran, I began to feel my energy fade from tiredness, and fell back a bit to run at a slightly slower pace. Mimete saw me, and barked an order.
"Juno! Watch the new Mistress! Stay with her, or you'll be next to go back!" she snapped out, and a thing, resembling some sort of hideous patch-together of a pig and a hyena, came up alongside me, as did, without any request, Kit. As Tomoe, Mimete, and Hotaru pulled away into the lead, I kept my eyes open for an escape route, and after several moments took a chance and dove out of the line and into the foliage.
Sadly, Kit and my new companion, Juno, along with, to my unpleasant surprise, Kyusuke, as well as Kakeru, pulled from the line as well, staying close to me. I attempted to outrun them, and when that became clearly pointless, I tried to lose them, hoping their wits were still no more than the animals from which they came.
But soon even that presented to me as being pointless, as the four easily kept in pace with me, and soon I just chose to ignore them and try to find my way back to the beach. Instead, I found myself on a small cliff, overlooking the beach...
"Where we go?" Kakeru asked. "We find Fiore other way, take from side?"
"No, I'm trying to get back to the compound so I can get another dress, steal the keys to the launch, and then leave this island of terrors behind me," I answered while working out where along the beach I had come. "Far behind!"
"But none leave!" Kit squealed. "Not without second mistress with the whip!"
"Yes, she who brings other men-to-be," Kyusuke agreed. "She who brought you from water."
"Mimete? Sorry, but I'm not waiting," I stated, and began to work my way through the jungle once again, just as I heard Tomoe and Mimete down on the beach, still guiding the hunt for the wolf man, Fiore. I heard further cries of "Back to the House of Pain!" from the Beast Folk, along with a cacophony of "None Escape! None Escape!"
"Besides," I added. "Am I not a Mistress, too?"
"Yes, Yours is the Hand," Kakeru replied.
I think I sifted back through the foliage for only a handful of minutes when Juno grabbed my arm. For a moment fear once again seized my mind as I felt certain the creature was turning on me, that it and its three fellows were now to devour me alive as they finally had me all alone. But instead, it pointed into the nearby shrubbery, and I blinked.
"There," it said in a female voice. "I smell him. Your's is the Hand, little Mistress..." I stared where she pointed, and timidly stepped forward, my companions holding back just behind me, and then I made it out, I saw Fiore the wolf crouched under some branches and shrubbery, staring back at me, frightened, and hurt from what looked like a million scratches and cuts, though they may have only numbered in the hundreds or thousands.
He also bled from his leg, below the knee, rather heavily, from a small, far too perfect hole in his shin. I knew instantly that he must have been shot, though by whom I could never hazard a guess. As he stared back at me, his eyes full of fear and pleading, I felt not fear, but sorry for the thing. It had not asked, never asked Tomoe to force it into this human shape, had not wanted it, wished only to be itself. If I was truly not to become like Tomoe and those who lived with him, I couldn't allow him to be taken back for more torment, more torture...could I?
"Please..." it said softly, it's voice pleading. "Kill..."
"Kill?" I asked, taking another step or two forward. What does... I remember thinking, but he spoke again.
"Kill..." he hissed, his voice barely more than a whisper, and then I heard Tomoe's voice growing nearer, his and the other's footsteps approaching, the continuing call of the Beast Folk of "None Escape!" and "Back to the House of Pain!"
"Please..." he breathed. "No...more...House of...Pain..." At that moment all I could feel towards this poor creature, this poor brute, was pity. And the possession of the gun that Mimete had given me became aware in my mind again, as I had dismissed its presence as unimportant, and in a moment that forever whirls in my mind, I lifted it, pointed it, my finger found the trigger that brings forth certain death, and pulled...
"RINI! What have you done!" Mimete's scream brought me back to reality, and I stared down at the wolf man, a bullet hole now present in his furry, no-longer moving chest. I couldn't even remember hearing the weapon go off, though there was now a painful ache in my wrist and shoulder, and I glanced down at my hand to see it sitting to my side, the gun looking as though it had tried to fly out of my grip, a small, almost invisible trail of smoke coming from the tip. I knew what I had done, and it filled me horror.
I had killed. I had committed murder!
"I wanted him alive!" Tomoe's voice roared as Mimete wrapped an arm around me, the gun dropping from my hand to the ground. He ranted for a few moments longer, but I don't recall any of it. I was too filled with shock at what I had done. How could I! How could I! rang through my mind over and over again.
"It's okay, it's okay," Mimete told me, using a soothing voice. The other Beast Folk watched me, curious, wondering.
"Hers...is the Hand..." Juno grunted. "She...has made...good punishment."
"Hers is the Hand," Kit agreed quietly.
"Hers is the Hand!" several of the Beast Folk agreed. It made me feel even sicker.
"Mine is the Hand," I breathed into Mimete's shoulder, I scarcely remembering falling into her embrace. "The Hand...that kills..."
What happened next is mostly a whirlwind in my mind. Tomoe took Jadeite and Nephrite on the launch with the body out to the sea, and sent it off into the depths somewhere, probably to be devoured by sharks, as I had seen once before already.
The other non-trained Beast Folk returned to their "city" while those who had come with my "rescue" party returned with Mimete, Hotaru, Melanie, and I to the compound. While Hotaru and Melanie informed Kaolinite on what had occurred, Mimete took me up to the bathroom and helped me bathe, which felt really nice considering the day I'd had thus far.
Once I was clean, she took me back to my room and helped me dress, and even combed out my hair for me. Finally, she turned me to her.
"Rini," she asked. "Are you okay?"
"How could I?" I asked back, beginning to sob. "I... I...killed him... I...I'm a...a murderer..."
"No," Mimete looked at me seriously. "You freed him. I believe he's at peace now. Maybe it was wrong, maybe it wasn't, I don't know. But if you really were a cold blooded monster, I do know you wouldn't feel so terrible right now. I wouldn't feel so terrible. God, what was I thinking giving that thing to you! If anyone's responsible, it's me!"
"But I'm the one who..." I started, and she squeezed me into a hug.
"Only because I made it possible for you..." she said. "And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, kiddo..."
"Excuse me," Hotaru's voice chimed in, and we turned to see her at the door, having changed her clothes to a sundress. "Father's back, and he says that until further notice, she is to have someone watching her at all times until we know she can be trusted to go around by herself again."
"Alright," Mimete replied. "I'll take care of it for right now, just have someone bring us some lunch."
"Fine," Hotaru said, and walked away. I watched her go, then turned back to Mimete.
"He's never gonna let me go now, is he?" I asked, feeling fresh tears coming to my eyes. "He's going to keep me here forever..."
"It's starting to look that way, kiddo," Mimete answered. "I'm sorry..." I embraced her again, and just cried myself out until I could cry no more...
I think I knew then for sure that Mimete was my ally, and not my enemy.
Da, da, Daaaaaaaa! Next, we look further into the "humanizing" process of Dr. Tomoe! Don't miss it now.
And for those who still haven't gotten it, Kit and the Sayer are Wileykit and Lynx-O of the Thundercats(in a simplistic guest appearance). And if you still don't know who I'm talking about, then to quote Fred Perry, author and creator of the Gold Digger comics, Shame! Shame on you! Unless of course you're only fifteen or younger, in which case you probably have a legitimate deniability defense...
And remember to R&R!