This chapter is easily the most violent and possibly the most potentially disturbing in the whole story. Fairly warned be ye...
It was considerably past sunset, so most of the tourists had gone. Two old men sat in folding lawn chairs on Makena beach, talking, drinking beer and munching on pretzels and homemade, self-caught ahi poke, as had been their Saturday night ritual for the past few decades.
"Eh, d'you see dat?"
"See what?"
"Dem weird hang glider, shape like batwing."
"No one hang glides 'round here, and what idiot would do it at night?"
"Nah, it true, I wen see dem, dey wen fly makai (seaward)."
"Okay Billy, dat's it. Give me your keys."
The moon seemed strangely low in the sky, it's reflection creating what looked almost like a glowing silver pathway leading the six comrades across the channel and to the island where things would finally be settled.
They flew in diagonal line with no more than a few feet between wing tips, Haji carrying Saya at the head of the formation, followed closely by Akahana, Ruka, and Freddie carrying Yuki at the back.
"He he he, Freddie, we're the caboose!" Yuki giggled as they flew over the Eastern Shore of the small 'abandoned' island.
They flew over the tallest point of the island, Aka and Ruka both dipping down slightly, showing off by briefly stepping on the tip of the peak.
Not more than a few seconds later, Saya furrowed her brows as she caught sight of something odd, a bit of firefly-like light flying towards them.
"What's that?!" she had to scream in order to be heard over the roar of the wind. Haji's grip on her tightened considerably as he took evasive action in order to avoid the white-hot projectile.
"It's the air defense tower, so much for the element of surprise!" Freddie shouted.
"No worries, I got this one," Ruka yelled as tucked her wings back like a falcon as it dives for its prey, her rapid loss of altitude far to fast to be caused by gravity alone. She drew her sword as she swooped down at the cluster of machinery that the glowing rounds were coming from and sliced through it with a deep, masculine grunt.
"Damn! Left a little nick in my blade!" she whined as she rejoined her comrades.
The helicopter landing pad came into view, and the winged chiropterans began their decent.
Even Freddie managed to make a graceful landing.
"Are you nervous about your first battle?" Freddie asked his Queen as he carefully placed her on the ground.
"No," she answered solemnly as she undid the top button of her trench coat, and pulled her left arm out of it's sleeve before tucking it inside the coat to keep it out of her way when shooting. "For some reason, I don't feel like it's my first time being in a battle."
Freddie arched a brow and smirked as he removed his brown leather jacket and tossed it aside.
Saya wrapped her hand around the blade of her sword and squeezed the blood from her palm into Yuki and Freddie's quivers, allowing it to run down the inside of the leather tubes and collect at the bottom, where the points of the arrows rested.
"The door's not open, and we're already running late," Aka said, sounding more than a little concerned.
"Do you think something happened to him?" Ruka said in the same tone of voice.
As soon as the last word left her lips, a low, groaning alarm sounded as a red light above the door began to flash.
A crack appeared at the bottom of the door and the warriors scrambled to ready themselves as it gradually widened.
Saya began to fret about what her nieces had said as some corpse corps jackboots came into view.
Why did he send us the signal to take off fifteen minutes ago if he didn't have the door open yet? Something must have happened…
Her eyes closed as she held her blade at the ready. I can't think about that now, there are things I must do, people I must protect.
By the time her eyelids snapped open to reveal fiery red eyes, the door was completely open, revealing one lone corpse corps.
He's not here. No… she thought as she reflexively swung her sword at the chiropteran in front of her, only to have him block the stroke just as easily as he had done in Bordeaux, several decades earlier.
Solomon chuckled as the majority of his face melted into his true appearance.
"Solomon!" Saya squeaked. "I'm sorry! I didn't -"
"There is no need for that, it's my own fault for not announcing my presence."
"You just had to make a dramatic entrance!" Freddie teased.
Solomon ignored him. "Sorry I'm late, but I thought I would do some house cleaning in preparation for your arrival." He gestured to a scene of carnage behind him – the hall was littered with corpse corps heads, limbs and various less identifiable parts.
"Um, Ojisan, I think you missed a spot," Ruka said, as she caught sight of a large group of enemies running towards them from the other end of the wide hall.
"Let's get this over with," Freddie groaned as he knocked an arrow, and immediately proceeded to shoot one of the approaching attackers.
"We'll go down the center, Freddie, Yuki, cover the flanks," Solomon ordered, his voice suddenly taking on the authoritative tones he had not bothered with since the end of the second world war.
Aka cracked her knuckles and Ruka cracked her neck as they both drew their swords.
"KYYYAAAAAA!" Saya let out her signature battle cry as she charged forth, followed closely by her Chevaliers and the other two sword-bearing Queens.
Freddie and Yuki's arrows cut down the front line before Saya even reached it. Saya singled out her first kill as she leapt over a few rapidly crystallizing bodies and swung her sword in a downward motion at it, it's claymore-like blade blocking the slice for a split second before she plunged her weapon into it's throat.
Solomon fought just to the left of his Queen, hacking away at his opponents, not anywhere near excited or angry enough to cause any change in his moss green eyes.
Haji fought at Saya's right, lunging at an opponent with his chiropteran claw, impaling it on his arm while sustaining a superficial wound on his shoulder. He retracted his arm from its body and took a step back while Saya finished it off with her blood.
Haji moved to attack his next opponent, but briefly slipped in one of the many pools of blood, and narrowly avoided falling down.
Solomon gave a brief chortle when he caught sight of Haji's momentary lapse of grace.
Aka grunted as she sliced two of her opponents in half with one stroke. Unfortunately, as she did so, one of the bisected chiropterans' comrades attacked her from behind, running her through completely.
Her eyes narrowed and she glanced down as the sword's tip briefly protruded from her stomach before being withdrawn from her body. She whirled around to face her attacker as her body rapidly repaired it self.
"You piece of shit! Now I have to get my coat mended!" she bellowed as she sliced off one of its arms.
Just as she was about to finish it off, a yell came from behind her.
"Aka, get down!" Yuki shouted, her arrow aimed directly at Aka for the split second before she heeded the warning and ducked, allowing the blood-tipped arrow to sail over her and directly into the heart of yet another corpse corps that had been about to attack her from behind.
"Thanks!" Aka yelled as she went back to her gruesome work.
Solomon continued to fight at Saya's left, noticing a figure standing at the end of the hall, calmly taking notes as he watched the battle, safe behind dozens of his little brothers.
Gershom's calm countenance wavered a little as his enemies fought their way through his infantry, until they got a little too close for comfort. He sighed as he placed his palm computer in his pocket just before one of his arms turned teal green and grew a massive red spike out of it.
"I guess I don't have this thing for nothing," he muttered as the battle neared him, the corpse corps' numbers rapidly thinning.
Saya ducked the attempted blow of one of her attackers, just before kicking one of its knees in, causing it to fall forward. She quickly took the opportunity to run it through as it lay on the ground and placed her foot on it's back, using it as leverage to dislodge her sword from the body.
She proceeded to re-coat her weapon with blood, when a shout came from her right.
"Saya!" Haji called out as he threw himself into the path of a sword clearly aimed for Saya.
A trickle of blood formed at the edge of his lips as the blade pierced his stomach and pinned him against the wall.
"Haji!"
Her fiancée's injury distracted her from battle momentarily, giving one of her enemies an opening.
Solomon noticed a badly wounded, one armed corpse corps swinging it's sword at his beloved Queen and he quickly slashed his blade arm across its back, but unfortunately, not before it got within striking distance of Saya.
Saya flinched as the dying one-armed chiropteran managed to cut a fairly shallow wound in her side, just above her left hip.
Haji, still staked to the wall, pushed himself forward up the length of the blade, to immersed in battle to be thankful that the sword didn't have a cross guard, which would have made such a move much more difficult.
Once he had finally freed himself from the blade, he fell to the floor, only to push himself to his feet a few seconds later.
"Are you alright?" Haji asked Saya, even though her injury appeared to be nothing more than a scratch compared to his.
"Yeah, but for some reason it's not closing up and -" she paused a moment, "and it feels really weird, like when your foot falls asleep."
Solomon stopped and stood motionless for a moment, trying to think of why that statement sounded familiar.
"Oh God no…" he murmured, hastily decapitating his current opponent before appearing in front of Saya.
With an unmistakable look of panic on his face, he immediately grabbed the fabric beside the tear in her coat and ripped it away, exposing her wound.
The gash that should have completely healed over by then had hardened into ruby-like crystal, and the flesh surrounding the wound had already turned gray.
Solomon stumbled backwards as Haji's eyes met the wound.
In all the years Saya had known him, she had never seen Haji like this.
He was actually shaking with fear, his face even whiter than usual, his narrow eyes widened, his jaw trembling. A tear slipped discreetly from the corner of his eye.
Saya examined the wound with her fingers, and gasped.
Gershom laughed as he watched the scene unfold, though it was not the cackle of a deranged villain, but the laugh of someone who found something genuinely amusing. "A shame to be sure, it looks like that will be one less guinea pig for me, but I suppose having you out of the way will be convenient."
Saya stared blankly for a moment, before blinking slowly and exhaling deeply.
She raised her hands up in front of her face and she watched in morbid fascination as a few cracks formed on her fingertips.
"I'm sorry," she said softly as she continued to stare at her hands. "It was a nice future to think about, to have a family together – but -" she shook her head. "I guess it's just not meant for me. I've killed a lot of innocent people, and caused the deaths of a lot more, it wouldn't be fair to them if I lived happily ever after."
Both Chevaliers believed she was speaking only to him.
She raised her eyes to meet Haji's and echoed some of the words he had once said to her at the MET.
"What will be, will be."
The last remnants of the guards having just been defeated, the rest of the party approached the scene.
"Obachan, no!" Aka screamed. "Quick, lay her down."
Ruka helped her sister accomplish this task, both of them knowing that this would at least keep her from falling apart, and possibly slow the circulation of the toxin through her system.
Both Haji and Solomon watched in stunned silence and thought the same thing at the same time.
I will not allow it end this way.
Solomon's eyes flashed red as his sleeves gave way to monstrous chiropteran arms, the right ending with his usual blade, the left with a fearsome set of claws.
He lunged at Gershom, who, for all the scientific achievements he embodied, was absolutely no match for the Solomon in a one-on-one fight.
In just over a second, Solomon had his foe pinned against the wall, his bladed hand to Gershom's throat.
"Save her," Solomon growled, the characteristic pleasant tones of his voice having completely disappeared. There was no need for a verbalized death threat, it was clear enough in his blazing eyes and distorted voice.
Gershom chuckled, attempting to mask his fear with bravado. "What? Do you think I have some magic cure for crystallization hidden somewhere on my person?"
Gershom gasped hoarsely as Solomon drove his clawed arm deep into his abdomen, and he gurgled as Solomon flexed his talons within the checkmated chiropteran's body, tearing up a few internal organs from the inside.
"Do something," Solomon's voice cracked in desperation.
"What would you have me do about it? The same operation that was performed on you? Only Amshel himself knew how to do it, and he is long dead. You know more about the grafting procedure than I do," Gershom mustered a snide smirk.
Solomon's mind traveled back to the night when he nearly died. After ridiculing him for his foolishness, Amshel had forced open his mouth, and poured at least a gallon of Diva's blood down his throat, before taking out some crude medical tools and hacking off the crystallized areas, right there in the ally. That was all he could remember before he lost consciousness. He woke up several weeks later in some sort of medical tank, with Nathan standing before him, grinning and clearly entertained by the sight he beheld. By that time, the shattered parts of Solomon's body had already been replaced and Amshel and Diva were dead.
Solomon glanced back over his shoulder at Saya, her left hand now having completely hardened.
His blazing eyes returned to Gershom as his blade arm turned back into a more human-looking hand and placed it on the top of the corpse corps leader's head.
Gershom screamed in horror as Solomon's still human fingers punctured his skull giving him a firm grip and he jerked his head back, forcing the terrified creature to look up at the insanity in Solomon's hellish eyes just before he ripped his head off with his bare hands. He threw the skull away with force so great that it caused it to virtually liquefy when it hit the wall while the body was sent flying in the other direction, leaving bloody skid marks behind it as it slid down the hall.
Solomon, his face covered in anguish and blood spatter, fell to his knees as he watched his beloved continue to crystallize.
…God, please save her. I will never ask anything of you again, just please save her. I will make up for the harm I have done, I swear it, just please don't let her die…
Concurrently with Solomon's desperate display of violence, Haji reluctantly left Saya's side, and walked towards Akahana.
He pulled out a dagger with one hand and grabbed her wrist with the other.
"Haji it was an accident!" Aka franticly cried as the dagger moved toward her, no doubt thinking that the stoic Chevalier had snapped, and blamed her for Saya's mortal wound.
She gasped as Haji forcefully closed her hand around the blade of the dagger, cutting her skin and causing blood to seep between her fingers.
He pulled the blade from Aka's fist.
Aka stared at him in relief and confusion as he turned his back on her.
Saya quickly realized what he intended to do. "Haji don't!" she screamed.
He subtly shook his head.
"Haji stop! I wish you to stop! I order you to stop! Please don't!" Saya feebly cried from the floor.
His grip on the hilt tightened.
"Nooo!" She screamed in tears as he jabbed the dagger into his own thigh as deeply as the small weapon would allow. He didn't even flinch as he unsheathed it from his body and the dagger fell to the floor. The cracks immediately began to form at the edges of the self-inflicted wound.
"Why did you do that?!" Saya sobbed as he slowly descended to the floor and lay down at her side, embracing her and pressing her head to his chest as he always did when she cried.
"I told you not to," she wept.
"Surely you must have known that when I made the promise, I never intended to let you leave this world alone. Ce que sera sera." He tenderly placed his hand on her cheek. "Tu es ma raison d'etre."
Saya gave a small gasp and stared at him in surprise.
"Je suis une 'tu"?"
"Oui. Une promesse est une promesse."
She smiled through her tears.
"Je t'aime, Haji."
He smiled and embraced her as tightly as he could with out causing her cracking body to shatter.
It was advancing rapidly now, and her arms hardened around him. She could feel it travelling through her body – a cold, uncomfortable tingling sensation followed by complete numbness.
"Je t'aime, Saya," he said softly, addressing her informally again. The edge of her lips curled as the glittering red cracks traveled across her face.
He let out a brief, muted sob as he felt the last of her skin harden against him.
His own upper body had crystallized, and it was traveling quickly down his legs and up his neck.
He lowered his chin, resting his lips against her forehead, and closed his eyes as the last of his own flesh died.
The remaining comrades looked down at the embracing statue-like remains in disbelief.
Solomon covered his mouth with his hand in an attempt to stifle a heartbreaking cry of grief that could only be described as the sort of sound that makes you cry just by hearing it.
Aka and Ruka clung desperately to each other as they wept.
The eldest Chevalier was quite teared up himself as he spoke under his breath. "Brava. Bravo."
For the moment, no one noticed what was happening to Yuki.
The ancient Queen trembled violently and she pressed her palms to her temples as a painful torrent washed over her consciousness.
It was the eyes.
The sight of those burgundy-brown eyes fading to gray. That image had been burned into her very soul thousands of years ago.
The others did not notice her until she began babbling desperately in an unknown, strangely melodic language.
The three heartbroken comrades watched in confusion and the disguised Chevalier watched in fascination as the girl hunched over, still holding her head between her hands, her eyes as wide as physically possible. The babbling got louder, faster and more frantic until it had turned into one, continuous, blood curdling scream.
The ungodly noise suddenly stopped, and her posture straightened. Her eyes had closed, her expression completely serene as her hands slowly descended from her temples down to her sides and very slowly settled, one on top of the other, over her lower belly.
The wind picked up, blowing down the hall from the open door, causing her hair to whip wildly about her face.
The two hands slowly moved up along the center of her abdomen until they rested over her heart, her head lowered slightly as if she was holding something very precious against her breast, shielding it from all harm.
Her eyes opened and glowed bright blue as she slowly walked towards Saya and Haji's remains.
Yuki looked down at the tragic statues and slowly descended to her knees, tenderly touching what had once been Saya's hair, some how not causing it to crumble. She gazed down at her daughter with a sad but comforting expression, almost like a Madonna in a pieta.
She leaned over Saya's remains as she put her hand to her mouth and bit down, sinking her teeth deep into her own wrist and tearing away some of the skin.
The first drop of her blood fell just below Saya's eye and trickled down the gray stone cheek like a tear.
But in its wake, the drop of blood left a trail of pink, living flesh.
The ancient Chevalier smiled and clasped his hands together across his chest in delight.
"The blood of the mother is powerful indeed," he quietly narrated to himself.
Solomon and the twins watched in hopeful astonishment as Yuki moved her bleeding wrist over the two bodies, her blood raining down on them, turning stone into flesh where ever it fell. The spots of renewed skin quickly expanded like drops of ink on thin fabric, fusing together and traveling rapidly across Saya and Haji's bodies, just as the poison had a few minutes earlier.
The two stiff forms fell limp, still embracing each other, unconscious, but breathing weakly.
Yuki collapsed in a stress and blood-loss induced faint.
Just in case the context didn't communicate the meaning:
Ce que sera sera: what will be, will be.
Tu es ma raison d'etre: You are my reason to be.
Je suis 'tu'?: I am a informal/familiar 'you?'
Je t'aime: I love you.
Correct me if I'm wrong though… I took one semester of French two years ago…
Oh, and I'm not totally fluent in Pidgin either (used by one of the old guys at the beginning of the chapter), so once again, correct me if you are.
I actually wrote some of this chapter (such as Solomon's violent freakout) several months ago, just after finding out one of my cats had been hit and killed by a car (RIP, Pele), so yeah, I was in a pretty dark place, as you can probably guess.
If you watch the 2nd opening credit sequence (episodes 14 –25ish?), you'll see where I got my inspiration for the scene with Yuki, as well as for her character in general…