Episode 14: Pollutants (Favors)
As J careened to her rescue, Monica was not so much afraid of her robotic captor as she was angry with him. She had felt awkward enough, standing by while her friends did all the truly heroic stuff—to be taken captive added insult to injury. Or perhaps, she thought as he squeezed a bit tighter, it was injury to insult?
Either way, it was incredibly annoying. "No!" she yelled at J as he threw a punch at Grendel. "Go back and save Daisuke! He's the one we're rescuing right now!"
"Monica is in danger," J replied stoically, dodging as Grendel kicked. "I will save her and then return to Kyoko and Daisuke."
"Dream on," Grendel sneered, his dark face and piggy eyes leering at the black-clad android. "You want the little girl? You'll have to swim for her!" Turning, he ran; J lunged for him and, wrapping his strong arms around the other machine's torso, dragged him to the ground.
Monica screamed as she hit the floor, Grendel's own arms crushing her against the metal. Looking up through tear-streaked eyes, she saw a pair of horrified Celestial faces peering out of a nearby doorway. "Do something!" she yelled at them. "Don't just stand there!" Embarrassed, they retreated. She cursed.
Grendel got to his feet despite J's deathgrip around his middle, forced his way step by straining step up the hallway with Monica still dangling from his fists. "Give it up," he scoffed at J. "You'll never.--"
Gaining a decent foothold at last, J hoisted Grendel with tremendous effort off his feet. "Let Monica go," he ordered.
Craning his neck to look into the face of his arrester, Grendel smiled sweetly—a gruesome sight on his maddened face. "But of course, Grandfather," he replied innocently, opening his hands and dropping Monica in a tangle of scuffed limbs to the floor. Then, as she picked herself up and dusted herself off but before she could yell another warning, he twisted his body free and connected a solid roundhouse punch to the side of J's face.
Monica heard something crack and snap; terrified for J, she hurried back down the hall to get Kyoko and Daisuke. "He's losing!" she yelled, oversized shoes pounding the floor as she ran with all her might. "J's losing! You have to come and--"
"Look out!" Rounding a corner, Kyoko collided with her; down they both fell as Daisuke rushed past, pulled along by a desperate woman in a lab coat and heels. Open for ease of movement, the white garment billowed like a cape behind her; Monica caught a glimpse of what the woman was wearing (or, more specifically, what she wasn't wearing) under the coat and gagged. And she'd thought just sitting on Daisuke had been slutty...
"What the heck?" she asked Kyoko as they both stood; the young woman shook her normally perky pink head wearily. A flash of blue bounded past, ruffling both girls' hair in its wake. Down the hall, the woman gave a sudden, strangled yell.
"She's come to kill Daisuke," Kyoko panted, rushing down the hall again. "The other woman broke my gun with hers but then that girl sliced the barrel off with a knife--"
"What other girl?" Monica was already getting tired of all this running back and forth. Her legs weren't as long as her friends', after all. In wordless response, Kyoko pointed.
The woman in the lab coat but not much else had apparently tripped on her own heels, footwear not at all conducive to speed, and lay where she had fallen on the floor, her dark-skinned, curly-haired machine protecting her from a girl in black and blue wielding a twin pair of knives. J, for his part, stood in front of Daisuke defensively.
"You interfered," the girl accused the fallen woman emotionlessly. "Now you must pay."
"I didn't mean to!" The woman curled up on the floor, cowering behind her muscular machine. "Go ahead, kill him! That's all you want, isn't it, Usagi?"
"Usagi?" Kyoko asked in confusion, looking at the girl with the knives. "But it can't be..."
"Should I capture her?" J asked Daisuke, who shrugged.
"She's helped me in the past, so it's a pity she's changed her mind..."
"Stop." Heads turning, the entire group looked up as a small party of Celestials ventured down the hall, masked and cloaked. "One who bears the new blood is contaminating it."
The girl shook as they approached her, purple eyes wide in fright. "No..." she pleaded, blinking herself awake. "Please, no. Don't come closer...it hurts..."
"You fear the connection? What sort of bearer are you?"
"She's still human!" one observed, almost in fear.
"Leave," the Celestials insisted. "The evil on this ship is spreading, and should it reach the new blood there will be no saving anyone." Breathing heavily, the girl nodded, closing her eyes and forcing herself to relax. Her eyes were glassy again when they opened.
Turning back around, she darted around the dark-skinned machine and attacked the woman on the floor, practically a blur as her knives whirled through the air. When she had finished, she stepped backwards and vanished; on the floor, the woman moaned, sliced all over her body with long, shallow cuts.
"The bitch...didn't go for the kill..." Her machine scooped her up and, pushing past J, ran off as well. Daisuke, holding an arm out to bar his partner, let them go.
"Sorry about all this," he apologized to the Celestials with a helpless smile. "Why the getup?"
More joined them in the hall, dressed similarly. "We cannot stay here," one said.
"The evil has stained our ship."
"We must leave until it is clean again."
"We go to hide in the Road."
"Uh, the Road's not exactly clean right now either," Daisuke put in apologetically; Kyoko and Monica exchanged a confused look. "Unless someone's cleaned it up, there's about four dead beast-men lying around."
The Celestials muttered amongst themselves in discontent. Scratching his head, Daisuke turned to the rescue squad.
"While they're busy...I didn't get a chance to say thanks, you know?"
"Yeah, you better," Monica sniffed. "But we did it even without everyone else."
"Everyone else?" Daisuke put his hands in his pockets, regarded the small girl with amusement. "Everyone else who?"
"Though not immediately responsible for the contamination, you have contributed," the Celestials interrupted, having apparently reached a consensus of sorts. "Therefore you shall find us shelter until such a time as we can return here."
"Says who?" yelped Monica in shock; putting a calming hand on the girl's shoulder, Kyoko bobbed her head respectfully. "As you wish, sirs and madams. Please, follow me." In pairs they fell into line behind her: seventeen total, with one bringing up the rear.
"Where are you taking them?" Monica hissed to Kyoko, who was already heading for the deck with new purpose in her step.
"Back to the yacht," Kyoko explained. "It's not very big, but it's a good waiting place. J hid it well. Plus the others will find their way back there sooner or later, so it's a surefire meeting place."
"Hold on," Daisuke interjected. "Yacht? Where'd you get a yacht?"
Kyoko smiled childishly, girlish blush tinging her cheeks. "You're going to be quite impressed with us, I think," she told him. "We've caused almost as much trouble in the past week as you have all last year."
"Use of an illegally doctored craft, aiding in the escape of a convict, passing the twenty-mile mark unlicensed, opening fire on civilians, entering a city without the proper passports, evading arrest, assaulting an officer of the law, use of restricted explosives, damage of private property, interfering with the media," J tallied aloud. "We have committed at least ten infractions. In the past year, by his absence alone Daisuke committed thirteen, though none as major as those we have broken."
"Good grief!" Kyoko turned around. "I forgot about the media! Um, is there a back way out, anyone? We don't want to be seen..."
"Follow us, then," advised the Celestials. Falling in step behind the lines, Daisuke gave a low whistle and ruffled Monica's hair, thinking over the list.
"You've been busy...wait a minute. Aiding in the escape of a convict?"
Kyoko looked down, had to cough. "Um. Yes. About that..." She explained in brief.
The resulting astounded silence was almost as loud as a yell would have been.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o
The doorbell rang in the middle of the night, and Leorza started. Usagi had returned to the apartment just after dark and had nearly immediately retired for the evening to her room, its padded walls keeping out any instructions her impressionable sleeping mind might chance to hear. Her Master himself remained in his chair, watching the news periodically for any word of the missing Celestials and/or their mysterious assailants, and waited for his son to return. Though his opinion of the boy as Vampire was abysmally low, he had a healthy respect for his son's loyalty. Clair would walk through hell for his Papa, of that Leorza was certain; in that regard at least he had not failed in raising his child. And it was a good thing, too, as the hell through which his beloved son would slog through could very well be of his own father's making.
Opening the door in bemusement after checking through the peephole, Leorza let Trinity in, noticing without much interest that her lab coat was once again open and revealing her shocking ensemble. More troubling to him were the cuts all across her body, shallow wounds that only one expertly skilled could inflict without biting too deeply.
"Well, well," he said finally, as she crumpled onto his sofa and lay there for several long moments breathing heavily. Her dark hair tumbled loose and messy around her blanched yet exertion-flushed face; her dull eyes sparkled only slightly with the chance to rest at last. Her blood stained the inside of her coat in places, contrasting in scarlet brilliance with the whiteness of both fabric and bare skin. "Whatever have you been doing all day?"
"Your bitch did this," Trinity spewed at him between heaving gulps of air. "I got in the way and she--"
"Did she not warn you against interference? I made a point of telling her always to issue a warning. I shall have to scold her in the morning."
"Don't be cute. It doesn't suit you. And I'm not in the mood for it." Wearily she dug in her pocket for a cigarette but fumbled clumsily with the lighter.
He assisted her in lighting the cigarette. "I thought you wanted me to be more informal with you. Have you changed your mind, then?"
"I could have died," Trinity complained. "I thought the girl wouldn't--"
"Usagi? Usagi cannot distinguish friend from foe without my aid, as you should have well been aware. Do not blame her for your own stupidity. And do something about those cuts before you get blood on my carpet." Realizing there was nothing the woman herself could do, he rose to fetch swabs and bandages from his closet.
"Stop mollycoddling the vicious thing," Trinity called after him as he wandered into the hall in search of the first aid supplies. "She's a highly tuned killing machine, not a little girl you can take on picnics and dress up like a doll."
"I am hardly the picnicking kind, as you well know. Hold still. This will sting, I'm afraid." Leaning over, he began to swab the cuts on her legs with disinfectant; those on her stomach and...elsewhere...he was loath to touch. She blew smoke in his face as he rose to get more bandages. So much for gratitude. "So why run to me, if my agent caused you the troubles?"
"Oh, come on." Her head lolled on the sofa, hair cushioning around her cheeks. "You're the only one who—I was on that ship today and--"
"So I inferred from your condition. Whatever possessed you? What did you hope to gain?"
She laughed soundlessly. "What do you think? Your people leave us poor humans in the dust with the things you create. I wanted a piece of that power. I wanted whatever makes you able to do such things. I wanted new toys..."
"Who's the mollycoddled little girl now?" He had finished with her legs; she stared at him expectantly, and he shivered. Unable to keep his lip from curling or his entire body from shuddering, he dabbed at a cut across her stomach and slapped a bandage onto it with perhaps more force than was necessary. She winced, but smiled at his obvious discomfort.
"Oh, here, I'll do the rest myself," she groaned, grabbing the supplies from him and immediately tending to the injured areas of her breasts, watching him with a wry little grin as he carefully avoided looking at her while she worked. As long as she toyed with him, flirting and flaunting in ways even she considered outrageous, she could ignore her true desires as regarded the man. Playing around, whether with metal or men, had always been her favorite distraction.
"When you're ready to display some sense of decorum and propriety..." he began. She buttoned up her trenchcoat, remembering this time to take her cigarette out of her mouth before gritting her teeth in pain. The cuts would heal quickly, but in the meantime they would take some indulging.
"It's safe," she told him, working herself into something closer to a seated position on his sofa. Glancing over, his relief at her honesty was obvious.
"As you were saying. You ran to my side because...?"
She replaced her cigarette. "Why do I ever come to you, Leorza? Why does anyone? I need your help."
"With an entire syndicate at your disposal?" He sounded doubtful. "My, how parricides diminish in benefits lately."
"I never should have let you find out about that." Giving up on sitting down, she swung her legs onto the couch, repositioning herself into a recline. "He was a dirty, stingy bastard anyhow. You should be grateful to me—he certainly wouldn't have helped you."
"Would you be so kind as to get to the point? This is not a good time for me to be entertaining a guest."
"Tired? I didn't know Celestials slept."
"Don't be ridiculous. We were human once. Some claim we still are. The point, Trinity."
"Help me modify Grendel. He beat them today, but he won't always. I need something more, something that will make him truly unstoppable."
"I thought Usagi was supposed to fulfill that purpose."
"What, when they've never fought as a team outside the arena? She proved today I can't rely on the girl. Whatever you did to her mind to make her like that must be programmable too."
"I did nothing to spark the murder drive, or to make it manifest itself only when she sleeps. You should be asking the beast masters if they implanted it in her or if it is natural."
"They're a little boring," Trinity complained. "Three lashes and they spill it all. If I'm going to get easy information, I'd much rather it be from you. Far less messy."
He reached his limit of his patience and buckled. "New blood. She drank undiluted new blood in minimal quantities, and in that state I told her I was her Master. That is all, all, I did to the girl, Trinity. It connects her to the natural world around her and heightens her senses while increasing her naivete and walling her off from other sentient beings. It's not just a sedative ingredient."
"I see." She closed her eyes, as if thinking hard; fifteen minutes later they had not yet opened. She had fallen asleep on Leorza's sofa. Sighing, he tried to wake her by yelling and even prodding her in the shoulder, but "Baroness" had had a long day and needed her beauty sleep, it seemed. She refused to wake.
Fuming, Leorza tossed a blanket over the sleeping woman so he wouldn't have to look at her, made himself a pot of coffee to keep him up through the rest of the night, and resumed his anticipation of his son's arrival. The woman's presence had to be regarded as an unnecessary but unavoidable complication.
He need not have worried: though he stayed up all night awaiting the boy, Clair never came.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Night fell. Clair, once his command of the group had been acknowledged by all, made the unfortunate discovery that he could not quite recall the path back to his father's apartment and led them in the direction that felt the most correct to him. By dusk they had found no ex-Vampire, be he Celestial or a mere human the way his son insisted, and so after a brief meal of some of the supplies in Giovanni's pack (supplies bearing the label of the Echigo Group) they huddled in an abandoned tenement for the night. After assurance that his young master had indeed fallen asleep and that Boma would keep watch, Giovanni spread himself out on the ground and was soon also dreaming. Nona lay down with a hand on her amulet and dreamt with her eyes open.
Shun, like Boma, remained awake, but the werewolf seemingly ignored him, focused instead on the outside world. Yet as Shun leaned over to address his supposedly asleep mother, the Magnagalian swiveled his black ears backwards to hear a little better.
"Mother. Mother. I know you aren't sleeping."
"Unh?" She sat up. "Shun. Is something wrong?"
He sighed—barely; Boma hardly heard the breath at all. "What you said earlier about Lorenzo Leonelli. How much of it is true?"
"Why, all of it." She sounded confused. "I wouldn't lie, Shun."
"Of course not." His distaste dripped from his normally smooth, professional voice.
A rustle, and she half-lay cuddling up against him; once again, he looked as if he wanted to pull himself away. "I missed you, my son. You and Daisuke...where is he, anyway? You said something about him."
"I don't know where Daisuke is now," he replied bitterly. "We became separated from the search party. But Leonelli. What interest could he have had in Judoh?"
"You want to know about Leorza?" Her pitch rose slightly; she sounded almost afraid. Then her voice regained its normal balance., grew perhaps a bit grave. "I don't really know what he wanted. I've known him all my life, since before we came back to our old home here. He was always...very kind to me. We saw each other often, as Echigo was his best friend. Of course, his mother was the leader of the expedition, so he was often busy helping her run things, but somehow he always made time for us. He called it his duty." She said the word with obvious confusion; Boma could almost hear Shun smirk.
Nona continued. "He disappeared not long after his mother died and leadership passed to another; we offered him the position but he refused it, saying our goals and his were no longer compatible. I...I think I was the last to see him before he left. He asked me...but what does it matter what he asked? I refused. He scared me that night, saying he would change the world."
"But Echigo," Shun pressed. She shook her head.
"No, no, Shun, I don't want to--"
"Mother." He removed his glasses, wiped them halfheartedly on his trousers. "What about Echigo?"
She closed her eyes. "Please, Shun. Don't."
"Mother. Nothing you say can possibly shock or surprise me. I...you know I spent four years as that man. I think I have a right to know, both as his successor and as his—his nephew—to know on exactly what grounds he dealt with Leonelli." It was the closest Shun Aurora ever got to losing his composure.
"Leorza," she whispered. "His name is Leorza. And Echigo was helping him. My brother, who cared only about profit and power, was helping that man build an empire so he wouldn't have to worry about directly controlling the families himself. Both of them—well, they are what you call Celestials, of course, and so they have the charisma the new blood bestows. So they were both doing very well. Leorza's company was growing, and he had been acknowledged as leader of the underworld. All he needed was a son to ensure his kingdom would be sustained. I think he always planned on returning someday, so he wanted to be certain he'd have a place to return to." She glanced over at where Clair lay, his back to them. "Poor thing. And there's still so much I don't know, Shun...I made a decision when I left the ship yesterday. I want to find him again, and I don't care what he asks me to do. I'll do it, if only he'll take my confusion away. Because I can't ignore it any more, Shun..." Crying softly, she buried her head in his chest and dug her fists into his sleeves.
He put his arm around her with the same reluctance as earlier, but she welcomed even the mechanical comfort. Boma began to feel a bit strange about listening in and wondered if either of them remembered his presence, hidden as he was in the darkness.
Nona held onto her son tightly, softly sobbing away the fear and the uneasiness of eighteen years of conscious ignorance. "Marius..." she whispered as he held her a bit tighter. "Marius, I'm frightened..."
"Father's dead, Mother," Shun repeated with the same blunt unease as before, but his voice was calmer, more comforting. "It's me. It's your son. You can't ignore that anymore, either."
"I never have..." she protested. "I've never done anything wrong. I'm not like Leorza, raising a child as a pawn in some game...I gave birth to you because I loved you, Shun, not because I needed you, I love you...I'm not like him..."
In the darkness, Clair's back twitched. Watching the young man's chest rise and fall, Boma determined that he was not asleep after all, but merely feigning with his eyes closed. What was more, he had likely been doing so for quite some time.
Most likely, he had heard every word.