Disclaimer: When I offered to buy the series, the creators looked at what I'd done with their characters, and ran away screaming.
Rating: "Haunting" is rated T for language. And this chapter. Sabrina scares the hell out of me.
Haunting
Renn Ireigh
Chapter Three: Scarlet Letter
Fifteen Years Ago: Gravekeeper Tower
Sabrina could hardly wait to have a team of her own- a group she'd train herself, rather than relying on the products of others' systems. She supposed that would have to wait until after she'd proven herself to the organization, but all the same, that would be easier to do if she could have a competent group of individuals working with her.
All the same, Koga's team, having been skilled in the rudiments of ninjitsu and their leader's work ethic, were admittedly more than adequate for her purposes.
She left them swarming the walls of Gravekeeper Tower, clambering silently up the stones on the dark wall facing the mountains, satisfied in their abilities to invade a building without drawing attention. She herself could walk straight through the front door.
She strode in as though she'd done so every day- never mind that she hadn't so much as set foot in Lavender Town in seven months- and nodded to the two guards. They had the decency to conceal their surprise. No one knew why she'd left, but they guessed it was related to what had happened to the boys, and none in the family had thought she'd be coming back- after all, Karin hadn't. All the more reason to twitch the fingers on her left hand and erase their memory of seeing her.
The first floor looked like it always did, a muddle of the living weeping for the dead. She slipped through the knot and took the stairs, forcing her legs calm. No need for undue speed. She had no need to race, no matter that it felt that every ghost in the Tower was slowly turning to stare at her without blinking.
She was Sabrina, second daughter of Agatha of Aetherios House of Gravekeeper Clan, and the heir to powers never before seen in Gravekeeper. This was her family's home. She'd grown up here. She had no need to hurry. People moved out of her way, and had since she was three years old and teleported herself to hover over the top of the Tower simply because moving herself about the nursery was boring. Even the civilians milling about like ants felt the aura of her power and stood away. Gravekeeper Tower was her turf- no one could have mistaken her for anything but a daughter of the Clan.
She wove through the gravestones on the second floor and climbed the stairs to the third. Koga's squad of Rocket fleet members should be no more than a floor above her at this point. They'd reach the top of the tower before she did, but they'd wait for her orders. Though she wasn't their regular squad commander, and indeed most of them had never seen her before the night, she had impressed them with her force of personality- and a small demonstration of how she felt about failure, courtesy of the merest whisper of her power and a lemonade can whose snap-top was broken and which refused to open.
Third and fourth floor passed underneath her feet, and the everpresent Tower mist coalesced around her ankles. To a ghost, it would be saying "Welcome home." To her, Clan or not, it said "Who goes there?" and thickened to try to hold her in place. Ghosts guard spirits, darks remove them from the mortal plane, and psychics… make them profoundly uncomfortable, Sabrina thought.
Her psi powers were far more a threat to the living than the dead- one could not manipulate the thoughts of a being that did not think, nor tamper with the physiology of a creature with no body. All the same, psi was just another form of energy, and could be used to disrupt the spirit world. Especially when it was present in quantities like those Sabrina commanded. Especially when it was held in check by very thin barriers made of anger and not much else.
Especially when she'd spent the better part of her childhood with those spirits doing their damndest to do what they did best, where psychics were concerned- which was to kill them and turn them into ghosts themselves.
She didn't bother to kick the mist out of her way, even when it tried to solidify and hold her by the ankles. All she had to do was let that anger bleed out of her skin, slipping through her boots, and the spirits fled to the shadows, howling soundlessly. You would have thought they'd remembered that, she thought. Ghosts thought they had superiority over psi powers- and generally, they were right. But Sabrina never had been a typical practitioner. The typical sort would not have lived through childhood in the Tower. Right now, she was atypical and angry.
Her boots crunched over bones on the fifth floor and she felt, rather than saw, a Gastly fleeing into the corner of the Tower with another piece of the skeleton. She spared a moment of pity. Ghosts tended to believe that consuming their former bodies would restore them to their place on the mortal plane. It wasn't true, although it made them far easier to reanimate if you listened to Agatha, but that didn't stop them from trying. This Gastly would never manage to find out, not with his old body crushed into dust on the stone floor.
Sixth floor. She was getting closer. A small staircase off the back of this room would lead up to the family's quarters, bypassing the seventh floor entirely; floors eight through thirteen were domestic. Her own room had been on floor twelve, a tiny bunk with a window, her precious few books stored under the mattress. (Agatha had hardly liked her second daughter studying psychic theory; it was yet another reminder of Sabrina's utter failure as a human being, at least as far as the Clan was concerned. But it had been hard to stop a daughter who could get in and out of the Tower as easily as breathing, and not even Agatha had wanted to stand against Sabrina after the time she'd wrecked the entire fifth floor and exorcised all its attendant spirits, and threatened to do the same to the sixth if Agatha took another of her books away.) Well, she'd gotten the books out with her when she left, at least.
Had she not been a daughter of the Clan, the spirits watching her from the fringes of the room would have concerned her. This floor was dangerous. No signs were posted to warn visitors to the Tower what sort of creature found its rest on floor six, but the fact that there were three large spirit chimes hanging from the ceiling should have served for a hint that the ghosts on this floor were the type that needed to be under strict control. Murder victims, all of them, and none too happy about it. Ghosts didn't like to die. That was the fundamental thing that made them ghosts instead of passing on into the atmosphere. Either they were afraid, or angry, or resentful, or guilty- but they tried to rise up and leave and rectify the situation that had gotten them dead. Hence Gravekeeper Clan to keep them at their rest…
Hence the subtle motion of her fingers, and the violet energy haloing her hand. Ghosts didn't like killers. They would generalize that to anyone who intended harm to another living creature. Sabrina was fairly certain that, although she had no intent to kill, the distinction would be lost on the centuries-old and centuries-strong ghosts on the sixth floor.
She thought she might as well back it up, since ghosts didn't like psychics to start with. Sixth-floor spirits wouldn't respond well to the little trick she'd worked on floor five. "I am Sabrina of House Aetherios of Clan Gravekeeper," she whispered- one didn't speak aloud to ghosts. "By the right of my bloodline, I counsel you to peace."
Faced with psi energy in strength and a daughter of the Clan- that daughter, the one who had done for the fifth floor, and had done it recently if you were counting in ghost time- the ghosts subsided, albeit not without a distinct air of watching and waiting. Sabrina shook off the feeling of foreboding, and it wasn't hard; she'd grown up with it.
She paused at the window, ostensibly catching her breath after the climb. The first mate of Koga's squad raised a finger in the darkness, awaiting orders.
((As we planned)) she said, broadcasting into the minds of the whole squad. She didn't bother to see if they were wincing again. With luck, they'd figured out that their current commander was going to speak mind-to-mind, and they'd best get used to it. ((I immobilize him; then you come in. Remember that we want him unharmed as we make the deal)) She paused. ((Physically and mentally. Although it won't hurt him to be scared out of his mind))
She didn't bother waiting around to see if they'd listened or if there were any questions. She took the last staircase, drew her power like a bow, and struck from the shadow of the threshold.
Fuji froze in the middle of the floor. She hardly had to bear down at all before he swung his head around, eyes wide, teeth almost- were they chattering? Sabrina came through the door with a sneer. She hadn't remembered the man being so weak.
She stopped in front of the little man, who stared at her the way a Rattata watched a Pidgeot. "Such a pleasure to see you again, Fuji," she said conversationally, watching his eyes dart from side to side, scoping out an exit route.
"Wh-wh-what are-"
"It's been so long, hasn't it?" she continued. "A good… seven months, is it, since I last walked through the doors of Gravekeeper Tower."
"W-w-we thought you'd-"
"Left. Yes. I have."
"Wh-why-"
"We have business to settle, you and I," she said. "And it happens to coincide with some other business of mine. A work obligation."
"Business?"
"Tell me, Fuji. I haven't been here since the… accident. How are my brothers doing?"
There- that fractional widening of the eyes, the tongue darting out to moisten the corner of dry lips. If she hadn't already known, she knew now.
"Morty and Will… surely you've not forgotten them. It was most upsetting, that… accident… they sustained."
"M-most disturbing," Fuji managed to choke out around the fear. Hard to miss the way he'd gone rigid.
"There's something more upsetting, however," Sabrina continued. "The idea that someone as devoted to Aetherios House as the responsible party would dare to hurt the children of the Clan. Tell me, Fuji… what do you suppose such a person would be feeling as he salted the ice on the lake?"
This will be the interesting part, Sabrina thought, though the part of her brain coming up with the words was far detached from the rest of her. Which lie will he tell?
"Remorse?" Fuji suggested, his voice as weak as the suggestion. "H- such a person wouldn't wa- want to hurt the people he l-loved so well, would he?"
"You tell me," Sabrina said. "Go on. Conjecture."
"I-I don't have anything else to s-say."
"How about the truth?" she suggested quietly, understandingly, and added a touch of power behind it. Fuji felt it and winced- it felt like a caress, the sort given by seaweed to the face of a newly drowned man.
"H-how would I know?"
"Fuji," Sabrina sighed, and added a touch more power. "You are hardly in a position to be playing innocent. Will doesn't speak any more, you know. A part of him died at the bottom of that lake. And that means…"
Fuji was part Gravekeeper himself, at least on his father's side- his mother had been a nurse, but the family tie was enough for him to have been employed in the Tower after he attained majority. Simple valet and secretarial work had been numbing for his sharp mind and it had been a relief when Agatha's children had been born, as he'd been promoted to tutor- as well as Agatha's right hand man and occasional lover. He knew enough about ghosts to feel the clench of despair in his gut.
Sabrina smiled, but she was hardly amused. "I see you are familiar with it. Yes, a part of him died at the bottom of the lake. Which means that that part of him marks you, Fuji, since it hasn't been laid to rest. Oh, it marks my mother too- I know who gave you your orders. But you had a choice, Fuji. You didn't have to go out to the lake that day."
"I-"
"Spare me," Sabrina suggested. "I know my mother makes a very strong case for her minions obeying her at all costs, but really, I am not interested in any excuse you might come up with."
Fuji's jaw snapped shut as though she'd punched him. She hadn't. She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. Her fist itched with the desire, her power like fire in her veins, coming out her pores. She thought: You tried to kill my brother. She thought: Control yourself. She stilled her hand and watched Fuji as he thought it over.
"You're going to kill me, aren't you," he said. Whispered, rather.
Her fist itched. She ignored it. "No. Not today."
He whimpered, and whether he meant to say "Thank you" or strangle out "Today?" she couldn't tell.
"No, Fuji," she said, again with the voice that she'd learned from her mother, the voice that prompted the Tower ghosts to press against the seventh floor door, convinced they'd be welcoming a new member to their ranks. "Not today. However. There is… just one little thing."
"One…"
((Now)) she told Koga's squad, and in they came through the window, fanning out around and behind her, black-suited and black-masked. Fuji looked as though he were ready to faint.
"Yes, Fuji. Just one little thing you have that we need…"
.
The squad vanished back out the window the way they'd come- they'd meet her back at base. She wasn't worried. As for herself, she put the thing in her pocket with her tingling hands and walked to the door, ignoring the man in the middle of the room and the faint mewling noises he was making.
"I couldn't help it!" he cried as she touched the door, and she turned around. "She made me! You don't understand!"
Her hand shot forward before she could stop it, her mind blazing like fire, purple energy shooting from her palm and coalescing in the middle of the room. "You couldn't help it?" she hissed. "You tried to kill my brother."
Fuji's mouth opened, but the scream wouldn't pass the violet sphere of the power that encircled him. Her hand stayed steady. "You nearly killed Will. You crippled Morty. You couldn't help it?"
The man dropped to his knees, still screaming. She flicked her wrist and he fell into the center of a letter R smoldering in the stone of the floor. The violet light went out.
Sabrina looked at the body on the floor; her power sensed the faint heartbeat. She looked at her hand. Her veins were quiet now, and so was her mind. Quickly she wrenched away his memory of the last ten minutes, all his recollection of having seen her, and twisted her fingers around her mental representation of the spirit chimes on the floor below.
She opened the door to the sixth floor staircase, where the spirits of murder victims awaited, and let the ghosts in.
.
She teleported to base and knocked on the Boss's door with her right hand; her left hand, the dominant one, felt numb.
"Enter," he commanded, and she obeyed.
"Sabrina," he greeted her, laying his pen down. "Sooner than I expected."
"I have some history with Fuji, as I said. It was a simple matter."
"You have it."
She handed him the Poke Flute- and one of the spirit chimes from the sixth floor.
He raised an eyebrow. "I see you came back with extras."
"Yes. The Flute, as you know, rouses any Pokemon from sleep- and the melody we discussed will wake the dead. The chime, however, will put the ghosts back to sleep. They're not made outside of Gravekeeper Tower and they are not, underscore, bought or sold. I thought it might be useful."
Giovanni smirked. "I send you off on a completely useless mission, and you manage to make it a success."
"Sir?"
"Surely you didn't imagine that the flute was at all useful to me," he said, setting it aside. "Although the calling card you left- you did?"
She nodded. "The letter R burned into the floor."
"There's an element of style to that."
"Thank you, sir."
"Yes, that, added to the fact that there is no trace of your visit- I assume?"
"None."
"I presumed as much. That will inspire fear- that the organization can infiltrate even the Clans. The flute, on the other hand? I'm assuming your Clan has an excellent reason for making sure the dead stay dead. No, that was included as an exercise for you. Call it a training drill.
"But these chimes…" he trailed off, then smiled. "Should your Clan retaliate, these will be most useful."
"Thank you, sir."
He looked at her with those dark eyes. She folded her hands behind her back, right hand clasping left wrist. "I suspected, when I hired you, that you would turn out to be most valuable to this organization. I can see that I was right. Was there damage done to the squad you led?"
"None, sir."
"Any incidents to report?"
"None, sir. We entered the building, had a… conversation… with Fuji, and left. No questions asked. The man himself will have nothing to say if pressed for information. He will not remember a thing."
"He is alive?"
"I felt his heartbeat as I left the room. I will not promise he will be alive tomorrow."
"No?"
"In that Tower, it is dangerous to be scared near to death."
She felt the intensity of his stare, but said nothing.
"If he dies, is there anything that will let it be traced back to you?"
"No. And rightly. I did not lay a hand on him. Things happen in the Tower as a matter of course that most prefer to call 'accidents.' In many cases they are. As I said, I've a history with Fuji. The reason for that is that there are things that he has done that have left others in the Tower- namely the ghosts- feeling they've a score to settle. In his line of work, that is a serious occupational hazard."
"And his death, will that be traced back to the organization?"
"Not in Gravekeeper Tower. It will be traced back to the hands that killed him, which is to say, the ghosts. It is the sort of thing that can happen at any time inside the Tower. And he may well live out the night, however. He is half Gravekeeper himself. It is possible that he will defend himself." She shrugged. "I decided not to risk Koga's squad further by staying around in a spirit uprising once I felt it starting. I did not know enough about the squad to know if they were prepared to deal with it."
The Boss was silent for a moment. Sabrina tightened her hand on her wrist. She wondered if the first mate of the squad had reported by radio before she'd gotten in, if he'd seen that flash of violet light as he descended the Tower. She wasn't fool enough to think she'd been sent out in sole command, with none of the squad's members under orders to report all details.
"It is most irregular, as you've not been here a month yet, but if I were a man who ignored all common sense in the name of regularity, I'd hardly have developed this team into what it is," the Boss said.
"I'm sorry, sir?" Her left hand tingled and she dug her nails into it.
"Sabrina, every mission you have been part of, whether it was a solo or team effort, has succeeded brilliantly. I would be a fool not to acknowledge that. I would like to offer you the position as Elite within the Team."
.
At breakfast on Wednesday, two days later, Sabrina opened her mail to find a small gray envelope with the faint scent of lavender. It contained a brief obituary of one Fuji Tsuhino, half-Clan, who had joined the Tower's ghosts on Tuesday morning. No details were given of his death, which meant, to any Gravekeeper, that he'd met the fate of so many members of the Clan- the ghosts had gotten him. It was the end that awaited the careless, and there was little honor to it. That notwithstanding, and half-blood or not, there would be a welcoming ceremony for his spirit held on Friday. He would be interred on the sixth floor.
Sabrina looked down at her left hand, which felt quiescent, and searched her mind for any traces of that burning feeling. She closed her eyes and turned them inward, examining herself for that anger.
Never again, she told it when she found its cinders smoldering. I have dominion here. She proved it with the wall she built to corner it and keep it away.
She finished her breakfast and left the mess, seeking her new quarters and the small office attached to them- the one she intended to make her practice room. She'd find an instructor in Saffron, shameful as it was to contemplate, but that was a matter for later in the day.
She sat in lotus, dropped her mind into meditation, and held her left hand securely in her right as she began the mantra she'd read about in one of the books she'd salvaged from the Tower so many years ago. Power is nothing without direction. The mighty blizzard is nothing more than a collection of snowflakes under strict control. Without control, one accomplishes nothing…