Reminisce

Loading…

....

1: Rebirth

Do you wish to know the Truth?

Darkness. So much darkness, Hidan couldn't remember light. How long had it been? Who cared? He'd lost hope an hour ago… or a year… a decade? Underground, time didn't exist. He would have started swearing, cursing his circumstances, but his mouth was filled with rocks and dust. Every time he spat some out, even more replaced it.

Occasionally, these thoughts would start up again. If there was anything Hidan had learned in this intern, it was how to stop thinking, for hours on end. In the beginning, thinking had been his sole entertainment, but now it was simply agony, dragging out this lonely life sentence second by second. Second by endless second…

Crunch-shwish!

"Be careful over there! This is an archeological dig, not a graveyard!" Cecile Silverberg called, berating the hapless digger with her thick Gallic accent, brushing back her short brown hair as she held the tiny-yet-powerful palm-light aloft. Her green eyes were alight with enthusiasm. "Shibiyama-sensei is counting on us! We must do the job right!"

"Yes, Silberberg-sama!" the workers cried, giving her a sharp salute.

Twenty feet beneath the city of Leafscead, the team had come across what seemed to be a promising location, chock full of the dulled, rusty star-shaped weapons and knives that should have corroded into dust, but somehow miraculously survived the passage of time, and were occasionally found by children during camping trips in the woods. There were even metal plates with strange inscriptions upon them, which Shibiyama-sensei, their leader, claimed had significance. Once she was sure the man was going about his work properly, Cecile walked away to oversee the removal of a large boulder.

The worker in the cockpit of the forklift glanced over for approval. Cecile examined the supports keeping the cavern from caving in, then nodded, and, with the loud beeping noises that alerted everyone to the otherwise silent backing up of the vehicle, removed the stone. It came away from its bed with a grinding crunch and a cascade of dirt and pebbles. Beyond the background noise of old-fashioned pickaxes and modern machinery, Cecile thought she heard someone calling…

As soon as the painful light hit Hidan's eyes, he spat out the dirt for good and started calling. It had been forever since he'd actually used his voice, so at first, all he could manage was a quiet croak. Soon, however, he was calling to them at the top of his lungs, which, speaking of such things, were buried somewhere else. Currently, he was nothing but a severed head.

"Hey! Hey! Get me the #*% outta here! Someone!"

Cecile frowned, crawling into the space revealed by the boulder. Someone was calling, a male, but she couldn't understand a single word he said. Could someone from the other parts of the dig become trapped? If there was a cave-in, she would have known. All the sensors they'd placed would be blaring their alarm klaxons.

"Hello?"

More unintelligible speech drifted toward her ears. She knew they must be words, but they weren't in a language she'd ever heard. Whoever it was sounded angry.

"Ic grete pe?" A female voice filtered into the small crevice in which Hidan's head was wedged. The Jashinist frowned. He must be going crazy. Having a nightmare, or something. Had everyone forgotten how to talk? Brain damage, he concluded, they've all given themselves severe brain damage.

"Konnichi wa!" he called, frustrated. "%*%& greetings from Earth! Maido! Ohayo!"

"Konnichi wa!" Cecile heard, along with other words. "Maido! Ohayo!"

'Maido'…? I recognize that word! Shibiyama-sensei said it meant… said it meant 'hello' in an ancient language! I didn't know that anyone still spoke that language but Shibiyama-sensei… I'd better find her.

"Maido!" she called back. "I'm going to get help! Do you understand me? I'm… going… to… find… help!" Slowly, she backed out of the cavern and waylaid the nearest digger.

"Excuse me, but do you know where I can find Shibiyama-sensei?"

"Maido!"

Hidan grinned. They understood! It was a breakthrough! A miracle! Thank Jashin! "Hai! Maido! Maido!"

But the voice was calling other things. She was going away.

"No, no! Hey, wait, come back! Get %& back here!"

It was no use. Hidan was alone again.

Saki Shibiyama, history professor and archaeologist, sat at the antique desk inside her office-trailer, located at the entrance to the cavern, reviewing some of the reports her underlings sent in from time to time on her datapad, not the newest version, certainly, but it worked and allowed her to keep her office very organized indeed. All of the information automatically backed itself up both in the trailer's computer and the one located in her apartment in Leafscead. She brushed a lock of long, raven hair from her eyes, tucking it behind her ear. Her pomegranate eyes scanned the information presented neatly on the glowing screen, and she touched its surface with an olive finger. The information vanished as the pad entered hibernation mode and Saki slid the thin device back into a receptacle in the wall, where it would simultaneously be stored and recharged until she had need for it again.

A beeping noise alerted her to someone at the door.

"Come in," she called, standing. Her deep red coat, reflecting some of the dim lights of the trailer, reached her hips, and her tan skirt fell to her ankles. She wore white boots that reached her calves.

The door slid back, revealing Saki's student, Cecile, breathless. She was covered in filth, as though she had gone crawling through a tunnel. Cecile opened her mouth to speak, but Saki stopped her with a raised hand.

"Calm down. Take three deep breaths. Count to ten in Greek, and then you may tell me what happened."

Cecile took the deep breaths, muttering under her breath, "Ena… thio… tria… tessera… pente… eksi… epta… okto… ennia… theka."

Satisfied, Saki returned to her seat. "Fire away." Cecile wasted no time in explaining the strange events.

"I was working on my dig site, like you asked, sensei, and we removed a large boulder. As soon as I did so, I hear someone calling from a space behind the stone. I crawled in to hear better, but he was calling in an ancient language, Japanese, I think. I recognized the word 'Maido'. I don't think he can understand me, but I got the feeling he's trapped and needs help, so I came and got you because you know Japanese. Ma'am," Cecile added respectfully.

"Were you imagining it, Silverberg-san?" Saki asked skeptically, pressing her fingertips together in a gesture often used by her father and grandfather and their fathers and grandfathers, all the way back for generations. It helped her think.

"Oh, no, Shibiyama-sensei! It was far too real for that! I spoke to him."

"But you didn't understand him," Saki added.

"No, I did not." Cecile studied her teacher's fathomless expression closely. Saki's eyes were closed in thought. Finally, they opened, their piercing gaze fixing on Cecile.

"I might as well take a look."

"Hello? Is somebody here?" Hidan blinked. Someone was speaking his language! It was a different woman's voice, deeper and calmer.

"Yeah! Back here!" he called.

"I am coming to find you, understand? Please do not move," the voice called in return.

"I'm not goin' anywhere, baby," Hidan replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He squinted as a bluish light bobbed closer toward him, soon followed by a woman. She could have been a fashion model… a hundred years into the future, that is. Her black hair was pulled back with a silver ornament, and Hidan swore he'd seen those red eyes before. She looked around for him.

"Down here."

The woman looked downward, catching sight of Hidan, blinking in shock. She gulped a few times, and the Jashinist smirked. She's going to scream, he thought with a chuckle. Then, she regained her composure, mumbling to herself in the unknown language. She switched back to Japanese.

"I see. Is the rest of you buried somewhere around here?"

A few minutes after entering, Saki returned out of the tunnel, her coat removed and wrapped around some sort of package. She stood and turned to Cecile.

"I want you to fetch the doctor and the best diggers on site and meet me in my office. There has been a change of plans."

"S-sensei?" Cecile questioned, trotting after her. "What about the voice? Was anyone back there? Are you hurt?"

Saki stopped, turning around to face her student, her countenance unusually stern. "Silberberg-san, for once, will you please just follow my orders?"

"I-I… yes, sensei," Cecile replied, turning to carry out Saki's orders.

Saki made her way back to her office trailer. The door slid open for her, then closed itself as soon as she was through the threshold. She set her coat down on her desk and unwrapped it.

"Air!" the head gasped. Saki gave him a narrow-eyed stare.

"You spent five-thousand years underground," she reminded, "without air. What is five more minutes?"

"You're cruel," the head replied, pouting. Saki gave an exasperated sigh and took a seat at her desk, once again consulting the datapad. "What's that?" Before Saki could reply, the beeping doorbell sounded again. Saki quickly re-wrapped the head, despite muffled protests, swearing, and threats to bite off her fingers. She finally had to stuff some paper into his mouth to keep him quiet.

"Come in!"

The door slid into the wall with a soft hiss, revealing a man in his late twenties, in an expensive suit and dark shades. His black hair was cropped short and lay in all directions, and the darkness of the suit was a stark contrast to his pale skin. The man removed his shades, revealing pale blue, almost white eyes. The man, Hyuuga Hisoka, took a seat at the guest chair and folded his hands in his lap, looking around for the source of the loud guy speaking gibberish.

"Hisoka," Saki greeted, smiling and pulling him off his current line of thought. Hisoka was her childhood friend. They'd been next door neighbors, and even had attended the same college, albeit for only one year. Then, in spite of his controlling father, Hisoka had dropped out of business school and had gone into starship engineering. His father disowned him and revoked all tuition, but Hisoka continued his new line of study and later became chief engineer on one of Aerth's best starships, the Stargazer. He was often gone for years on end, in comparison to Saki's months of absence, but made a point to send frequent subspace messages and to drop by whenever he set foot on Aerth… even if Saki was in the middle of something important. "Not wearing the engineer gold today?" she asked, referring to the gold-colored uniform that Starfleet engineers and security wore.

"Perhaps I should have, instead of getting grave dirt all over my new clothes!" Hisoka laughed. Saki gave him a dirty look and the Hyuuga man raised his hands in defense. "Okay, okay. Not funny. So, um, what did you uncover this time?" he asked, eyeballing the head hidden in Saki's coat. "Pot full of oil? Fossilized pomegranates?"

"Nothing nearly as interesting," Saki sighed, rearranging some objects on her desk. "Just more of the same. Engraved plates, rusted weaponry, et cetera, and once again, no explanations whatsoever." Hisoka continued to eye her coat, and Saki knew she had to distract him before the overly curious man actually tried to open it. "How is the work on your modified dilithium crystals going?"

"Swimmingly!" Hisoka replied, instantly losing interest in the package. "It took a lot of math, but I figured out that if you cut the crystals to sit diagonally, they'll transfer the power to the warp core much more efficiently! It only requires minor adjustments to the rest of the power grid and a thicker shell, but this new design should take us almost to warp ten! In theory," he added.

"Make sure you test your theory thoroughly on a holodeck before you endanger the lives of your crew," Saki reminded sternly. Hisoka looked hurt.

"Do you really expect me to be that reckless?"

"In fact, I do," Saki replied seriously, giving him a hard stare. Although easygoing, in Saki's opinion, her childhood friend was overconfident and capricious, not to mention easily distractible. In grade school, he had also been a teller of very tall tales, which, even to this day, only Saki herself could sift from the truth with any ease. One of his favorites, which he would tell to young children, was that emperor penguins grew to be over nine feet tall.

"You cut me deep, Saki," Hisoka countered, putting a hand over his heart in mock agony. "To think, my own onanajimi doesn't trust me…"

"That's a vocabulary word," Saki chuckled, impressed that he still managed to pull Japanese words out of his hat long after she had given up on teaching him. They smiled at one another for several moments until the door-tone rang again. It whooshed open, revealing Cecile with the digging team and the doctor.

"Sorry, Hisoka, but I have some business to take care of," Saki apologized as the engineer slid the shades back over his pale eyes.

"That's alright. I don't have much time left before my shift starts anyway. We'll be here for about a week while we re-supply, so I can just drop by again next time I'm on break. Is that okay with you?"

"Of course," Saki replied warmly. Hisoka left, leaving her behind in the now over-crowded office-trailer. The crowd stood around awkwardly for a moment, while Cecile turned a little pink.

"Um, were we interrupting anything…?" She turned even more pink at the embarrassing thought.

"No, no, nothing at all," Saki assured them, returning to her desk, her face all business. She pressed a button on her desk which would keep the door from opening at any time during the conversation to follow. The archaeologist and history professor rested her elbows on the table and tented her fingers in a brooding manner, addressing the group. "It has come to my attention that we have stumbled upon an important discovery. Because of this, for the next week or so, only you, the best diggers, along with those whom you know and trust to keep important secrets, will be working on this dig site as we unearth some important pieces of history that have not seen the light of day in over five millennia." The woman knew how to set up an audience. The tension in the air was almost tangible, crackling between person to person in anticipation.

"Cecile-san was the one to stumble upon the head of this important clue, and it is up to all of you to find the rest of the pieces." Without another word of explanation, Saki carefully unwrapped the head for the diggers to see. Not taking immediate notice of the newcomers, it began to curse Saki, her parents, and everyone affiliated to her… in Japanese, of course. Several of the men jumped back, ashen. A woman gasped and seemed as though she might become ill. Cecile resisted the urge to hide from the disembodied head shouting Japanese obscenities, knowing that she needed to be brave like her sensei.

"Shut up," Saki ordered in Japanese, smacking the head from behind.

"I'll &*#* sacrifice you to Jashin for this!" the head bawled with fury, "I'll kill you! I swear I will %&§*% kill you, *%&!"

"You will do no such thing," Saki replied calmly, staring down at him with her piercing, level gaze. "Currently, you are nothing more than a disembodied head. If you continue to make threats and use foul language around me, I will make sure that you remain that way indefinitely."

"You wouldn't!" the head growled, giving her his most deadly glare.

"Watch me." Saki turned to her audience, who had somehow scooted closer to the far wall and the door, despite the cramped condition. In English, she informed them, "In his current state, this man is quite harmless."

"Is it… real?" Cecile asked, much paler than usual.

"Quite. For some reason, it seems that decapitation and dismemberment are unable to kill this individual, who claims to have been buried in this location for five thousand years, which I determined by comparing dates. He claims that the rest of him is buried nearby, but should a piece be found by someone unexpected, this could blow up in all of our faces. Therefore, for the next week, it is your job to unearth the rest of this man, and our doctor's job to piece him together. It is your choice whether or not to participate, however, if you choose to leave, I would ask that you not speak a word of this to anyone, at least until this information can be released to the general public. Those willing to help, say 'aye'."

There was a long silence, filled with people shuffling awkwardly and the head muttering obscenities to himself, cursing his luck to be thrown in with the coldest… woman… on the face of the earth.

"Aye," drawled a voice from the back of the group.

"You, there. Name?" Saki called as the dark-haired man, wearing a bored expression and slouching, came into view. He had an unlit cigarette between his teeth, one of the new kind that were designed to not have bad side effects but were apparently absolutely disgusting, rather like the alcohol substitute, synthahol, that was served in most bars nowadays.

"Shougo," the man replied, removing the cigarette from his mouth. "Minatsuki Shougo. Digger. I'm in."

Saki eyed the man carefully. Their eyes met for a moment, and Saki knew that behind the lazy attitude was a will of iron. "May I ask why? Out of curiosity."

Shougo shrugged. "Looks interesting. Everything is so boring nowadays. It's been awhile since I've gotten to do anything remotely exciting. And I'd like to see how this all plays out, if it's all the same." He replaced the cigarette and shoved his hands in his pockets. Saki was satisfied with this and nodded.

"Well then, Shougo-san, welcome to the team. Any more takers?" Slowly, diggers began to raise their hands. Cecile resolutely lifted her own. The doctor also agreed to the work, seeming enthused about the chance to examine an immortal patient. Saki quickly wrote up a document and had each person sign an agreement of confidentiality on the matter, then stored it away under password protection. With the dealings concluded, Saki stood again.

"Alright. We will meet back here tomorrow at six o'clock sharp. We will be working until late evening to get this done as swiftly as possible, so plan ahead. All of you will receive bonuses for your extra work. Dismissed." The group shuffled out of the unlocked door and it finally slid closed again, leaving Saki alone. She fell back into her seat, suddenly exhausted.

"So now what's happening?" the head demanded, glaring at her again.

"We're going to dig up the rest of your body," she explained, staring at a blank space on the wall. The head's expression brightened considerably. "However, whether you are united with your body, Head, depends on your good behavior," she reminded sternly, and the head glowered again.

"My name's not 'Head', &*%," he announced indignantly.

"And my name is not &*%," Saki replied, equally venomous.

"So I'll stop calling you &*% if you stop calling me 'Head'," the head bargained, leering up at her.

"Fine. What shall I call you, then? 'No-Body'?" Saki countered.

"*%#! My name is Hidan, &*%!" the head shouted crossly.

"And I am Shibiyama Saki, not &*%, and you will address me as 'Shibiyama-san' from now on," Saki responded in turn, equally cross. Both turned angrily away from each other as best they were able, both thinking along similar lines:

Why, oh why, did I ever end up with them?!