Disclaimer and pre-chapter notes: *sighs* Must I repeat myself? Get a better short term memory, people!
The more I tweak this thing, the more it evolves. My ideas of how this story will ultimately flow have changed with this evolution, but only in certain regards. I think I might be getting rid of Merten Dripe in the final revision; Essade and Dubate, however, will ultimately remain. Just a word of warning, folks; I never really gelled with the idea of that one as much as I wanted to, and Essade has pulled bigger surprises on me than I had originally anticipated he would. I just can't break the action properly at this point if I have to deal with that character as I had originally planned; maybe in another part later on, but for now I'm just cutting him out entirely in the course of revising the rest of the chapters.
For now, though they may indeed seem cute and cuddly, take heed:
Chapter 15: Never, EVER, Do This to a Family of Badgers: AYEDYEDYEDYEHAAAHAAUGH!
At the Hinata, home of the fearsome, unruly, and dangerous, one thing had always been certain: if you see a giant turtle, run like hell before it sees you.
Giant turtles were the signature stock and trade of only one resident in the all-girls dorm, a very eccentric and brilliant girl barely into her early teens with an obsession for bananas and things that go boom. Indeed, Kaolla Su often rode, programmed, and even wore her Mecha-Tamas the way another person would don shoes and ride bikes; despite a long and often dangerous history of glitches and setbacks in her designs, she had always utilized each model she would create to the fullest possible and learn as much as she could from its successes and failures.
In a girl's dormitory headed by a frequently unlucky male kanrinin, this alone ensured a monthly repair bill higher in cost than the mechanical war machines themselves, but until very recently no one seemed to really object, either. After all, it's hard to reason with an energy ball, even one with a brain.
It also ensured that few people took the hyperactive barefoot Mol-Mollian very seriously, even at the best of times. Sure, her friends and co-habitants knew when to enjoy her company and when to duck for cover, but none would ever guess just how much the girl actually understood of the world around her.
A lack of maturity, however, should never be confused with a lack of understanding. Kaolla Su's picture of reality was never far from reality, no matter what her reaction was to it.
For instance, when Haruka had informed the residents of the need to pack up and jump ship for safer ground, Su had taken the task of sorting through her inventions very seriously. Even she knew, through simple logic, that whatever she left could be used against them, or stolen, or both; she had been told to bring the most accurate and controllable of her heaviest weaponry, and to either take or destroy the information she had on making any of it. While the others had been thoroughly confused, the young girl had reached her own conclusions and acted accordingly. Much as she enjoyed chasing the others and her kanrinin around with ballistic missiles, she didn't trust another with any of it for a second.
She had even gone a step further than this at the time. In place of blueprints (most of which were strictly stored in her brain anyway), she had packed a few choice robotic components and materials left over from her previous inventions and a robust tool set to work with. Under the loose guise of having something to do, she had set to work almost immediately upon their arrival, cannibalizing an old tank for parts and preparing a working, useful model of a Mecha-Tama in record time.
Sure, it wasn't her very best in terms of appearances, but who's going to really argue with working artillery in close quarters? Not Kaolla Su, that's for sure. She had put in the best of all her previous models, the parts and designs that she knew would work without hazarding a guess.
There was one component, however, that she had wisely decided to leave out. Perhaps with more time (and poor Keitaro's help, of course), she'd have the opportunity to continue working on fixing that one bug her inventions seemed to always suffer from, even some of the more benign-looking ones. For now, she left out the mecha's computerized guidance systems, and replaced them with a simple set of internal manual controls.
Thanks in no small part to her longtime best friend in the Hinata, Kaolla Su didn't really feel all that afraid for herself. She admired Motoko's warrior spirit, and had long ago resolved to adopt the better part of it herself. When it came down to it, there was something she could do, something her friends couldn't hope to master in a short period of time.
She could pilot her own inventions, and pilot them well. Her brain was faster than any computer she could make, and she already knew her own "bugs."
As the oblong-looking mechanical reptile rounded a final corner, her resolve grew even further. Boy, the bad guys were big and ugly! She could see them ahead, running toward her. The one she was looking at was as hairy as a bear, and about as strong as one, too…
Oh, wait, he had that funky armor! She realized just in time that he wasn't her target, and took her fingers off the triggers for her arsenal. She glanced past him on her display to see if she could see…
'Oh. Wow.'
She took back her earlier thought. Big Bear Guy was the looker; the things he was beating back with that iron stick and awesome energy projector as he ran won the Ugliest Villains of the Year award, hands down.
They were so repulsive, she forgot to feel hungry. She never forgot to feel hungry, and didn't like the feeling one bit. It was like her innards were stomping around each other in circles, something even she knew they weren't supposed to do.
Boy, were there a lot of them, too. And why were they all trying to eat each other? Gross.
She checked her displays. 'Missles armed, lasers charged, fireball chuckers lit and ready…party time!' she thought with renewed enthusiasm.
In front of her, a few dozen good guys were still running her way, including the ursine man. All looked kind of silly, shooting over their backs like that, but the good thing was that they seemed to get the idea that the place to be just now was behind her Mecha-Tama, not in front of it.
As the big one caught sight of it, she saw his eyes twinkle with the same mischievous glow everyone was always telling her she had. He actually seemed to enjoy the idea of her testing it out on the bad guys, and was hearily laughing with glee.
She was starting to like that guy, big though he was. Everyone else always chastised her for her inventions. With a grin of her own, she opened up with everything she had.
Some of them were lucky enough to dodge the barrage, so to speak. Most weren't. The ones that looked like they should have had last rites performed already fared the worst, as swift shambling was never enough to dodge guided ordnance. The big ones would have done better, had they a little more space to move around in.
Su's opening salvos reversed the flow of the skirmish in the space of a heartbeat. Soon, Mecha-Tama was crawling forward, flanked and assisted by a group of defenders that had found new spirit and hope in its shadow.
It wasn't exactly funny, but the turn of events had still brought laughter back to their hearts, and it came out in spurts and fits as the terrifying things that had been set to overwhelm and consume them all were quickly getting their asses handed back to them, courtesy of one giant metal turtle and the crazy young foreigner at the wheel.
It was better than facing the stress of it all head-on, after all. Especially when there was a battle to win.
And for their part at least, they had already won.
The problem with swordplay, Tsuruko considered to herself as she forced her body to maintain the breakneck pace of fighting still necessary for survival, was the degree of effort it took to overcome the limits of range.
In a normal battle, even against ranged weaponry, the sword could be used as effectively as any weapon, because the one using the blade was free to move. At Tsuruko's level of skill, bullets were more an annoyance than anything, something to be blocked or avoided half a moment before the edge of her own weapon ended the struggles of her opponents in a single stroke. Even when she was pinned down, the many secret ki techniques at her disposal could cross the distances for her, allowing her to sweep away what she could not reach on foot.
The real problem, however, didn't have to do with closing the distances or crossing them at need; it lay in properly maintaining them.
The opponents they now faced were relentless and inhuman; the effort to take down one had easily doubled, and the number to face at once had multiplied tremendously. Even a wide-arc blast of ki could only drive back the advance of such foes for brief moments, and for every one that fell two more were rushing to fill the gap in its place.
It was times like these that the master kendoist could truly appreciate ranged weapons, because the three-foot radius her sword could carve before her was too close for comfort against a hungry horde. Bullets gave her enough space to work with, even though she wasn't the one firing them; every inch was a fraction of a moment more that she could remain standing and fighting, and not be overwhelmed in mid-stroke.
Even with the backup of the Molmolian squads, which had arrived minutes earlier with the up-and-coming leaders themselves, there was barely enough manpower and firepower to keep the hordes at bay and only so long they could do so. Every man left standing was now essential; if one fell, the horde would not be kept back for more than a moment's time, and it would only take one breach for the entire defensive line to be overwhelmed.
In the back of her mind, Tsuruko noted the patterns of fire sweeping across the advancing zombies, most of which were gathered like a wave poised to crash over them. There were still hundreds before them, even if there were no more on the way, survival was now a matter of maintaining an impossible perfection.
All at once, it seemed, that perfection began to falter. For the briefest of moments, there was a split in the fire near the center, and like a dam bursting, the enemy suddenly surged toward her through the break.
She had maybe a second to register that the battle was lost, that there were now too many to hold back on her own, before the zombies were upon her. In that brief moment, Tsuruko knew fear like she had never experienced in her life, and faced it with all the bearing of a warrior she could bring. Death stared her in the face, and though she wanted to scream she did not. Come what may, she would go out fighting.
Just as suddenly, the visage of her own end vanished in a sudden, impossibly furious hail of fire.
In a split second, she turned her head and caught sight of the new source of destructive fury, and the reason she had nearly met her end. A slight divide in the ranks had been made just behind where she stood, wide enough to allow a single figure to stand with her weapon at ready. The weapon itself was just beginning to buck in her grip, the six barrels emitting their salvo of rifle-caliber lead rounds in rapid succession as they rotated in a blur too fast for the human eye to properly follow.
Even for a warrior such as Tsuruko, a woman that had faced down evils and Death itself the likes of which most will never encounter in their lifetimes, the look of pure fury on the face of the weapon's handler was a sight she knew would haunt her to the end of her days.
Tsuruko dived sideways and backward, out of range of the cone of fire that the weapon produced in the next few seconds. The undead horde screeched nearly in unison as the bullets swept and cut through them like flying serrated blades. Two hundred rounds per second flew out of the gun, the heat of their passing nearly melting them into a continuous stream of flying lead that twisted and lashed like the tail of a serpentine dragon. Even the remaining oni stood little chance under the assault, their high levels of resilience cut to the bone before they could register what was hitting them.
All other guns had fallen silent, most for lack of ammunition, but Naru's minigun roared in their wake. The sound almost outstripped the horrific screeches of the demon-raised corpses as they were ripped apart and annihilated before her, several hundred of them all at once. The mass of them writhed in agony as smoke and vaporized flesh choked the air around them.
By the time the gun barrels stopped spinning, their chambers finally exhausted of live ammunition and the chain feeding the behemoth gatling gun back to its beginning point, the smoke was all that still stirred before them.
The weapon clattered to the ground, its handler's rage now spent. The girl swayed where she stood, the exhaustion of wrangling the massive weapon as it had spewed annihilation finally catching up with her. There was a small amound of blood trickling down her forehead, Tsuruko now saw, coming from a small hole near the edge of her hairline that looked to be just skin deep. As though coming out of a trance, the girl's eyes widened in horror at the scene before her, as though disbelieving the possibility of it.
Tsuruko could sympathize. The end result of unbridled fury was never a sight one wanted to see, especially one's own. The haze of red that accompanied such a berserker state drained away all too soon from one's sight; in place of adrenalin, one was left with a private horror, a vision of what one has wrought that would likely never leave them again.
Mercifully, it seemed, the shock of it overwhelmed the young woman, and her eyes rolled back into her head in the same direction that she began to fall. Her descent was broken by the friend of Urashima that Tsuruko had sent minutes earlier to call on reinforcements and warn the others to retreat to relative safety; he managed to catch the girl by the back of her shoulders before she had fully slumped to the ground, and eased her down the rest of the way more gently.
Those left standing retained their shock a few moments longer, staring open-mouthed at the shredded remains of everything before them. What was left of the walls was blackened and slick with the shredded remains of their enemies, some still smouldering where errant flames from spontaneously self-combusting fallen oni had touched them. The stench of death and burnt flesh had grown from utterly revolting to overpowering, and quite a few of the remaining Guardians retched from it.
Tsuruko was only slightly more used to such scenes than the others were; even so, the scale of the one before her took her aback as well. And yet her attention did not stay on it for very long; though the battle before them had been won, she knew it wasn't yet over elsewhere. True to her commanding position, she forced herself back into action, her voice breaking others out of their stupor as she gave commands.
And then, all at once, she felt the touch of a power of overwhelming magnitude sweeping past her, an expansion of ki that would have swept the corridor and everything in it clear into the right-hand wall had it been physically directed at them. Its effects were felt even by those normally not sensitive to such things, its influence sweeping over them in a manner few really understood.
Tsuruko alone among them knew exactly what the source of it had been, but the knowledge alone did nothing to curb her own disbelieving reaction. Like a fingerprint, the force had a unique signature, a single identity retained and magnified over a wide spectrum from miniscule to magnificent.
There was only one person that could saturate the very air itself with his signature, and she both regretted that she would not see him in action and feared whatever had provoked him to magnify it so drastically.
She had a feeling, though, that Narusegawa wasn't the only one that would leave this place with nighmares of their own making.
It was a nightmare that wouldn't end, Motoko soon realized.
She was fighting a battle against a foe that had no fear, no feeling except hunger, no end in number that she could see. Even as dozens were felled by herself and those few that remained, hundreds remained. A thousand or more at least had come their way, and that was only what she could see of them.
The zombies that attacked did so en masse. Those that held back feasted on any fallen they could find, and the surplus of flesh was making them ever stronger.
Even as the defenders fought back with all their remaining strength, a hundred new oni were being born before their eyes, and the odds grew even worse.
Retreat was only getting them so far. They could stay ahead of the undead; the demons were a much different story.
Quite suddenly, they found themselves up against something none could defeat: a small armored gate that sealed the path of their escape. There was no time to get it open now; the horde was massed barely thirty feet away, and closing. They were in no hurry. The bastards had them cornered, and knew it.
"It…seems that this…is where…we die, then," Motoko muttered, out of breath, her mind slowly accepting her fate even as her will refused to accept it. Only five of them remained, and one was occupied with the door; the rest couldn't hope to hold off the advance of their foes and live.
But if one of them were to hold them off, the rest might live. She prepared herself for one final effort, the last she was capable of giving.
"I'll hold them off. Get out of here!"
She wasn't the one to say the words. Shirai was. In spite of the nearness of their doom, that simple fact shocked the hell out of her.
"W-what!"
"I'm the only one that can hold them back now, and someone has got to get that gate closed before they can follow. I'm slow as hell, and I already promised to protect my friend's friends. Didn't know I'd die for it, but I still plan on keeping it if I can…fuck, just get going!"
"But…"
"I can hold them off for about twenty or thirty seconds tops, but if you keep going the way you are, you won't last ten," he insisted, firing his unorthodox weapon to hold back the advance for just a little longer. "There's too many to keep back with a sword at once, you need something with range to do that and I have just enough to cover your escape. Now go!"
The enemies began to charge them in earnest now, and his weapon flared to full power. He swept the beam back and forth, keeping them barely at bay and yelling for all his small frame was worth.
The gate finally slid open, and the three others quickly went through. She had to run. Run or die. No, her mind wouldn't accept that: she would run, get help, quickly. Something, anything, it didn't matter. He was right, and if she didn't do something fast, he'd end up dead.
Or she could collapse where she stood now, and give up trying. But giving up was never an option for Motoko.
She ran, even as what little energy she had left drained from her with each step.
She made it only eight stumbling steps before her legs gave out. Ten feet beyond the gate, Shirai still stood, the demons and undead still closing in on him.
The gate began to shut just as the power pack in his weapon finally sputtered and died.
Ten oni charged toward him, moving with inhuman speed. At their back was the horde, sweeping forward now without resistance. He had perhaps two seconds to live; even as he tried to dive for the gate, she knew he'd never make it.
For a brief instant, time was meaningless. Honor was meaningless. She saw the scene in front of her as though the moment of time was being engraved into her brain. She saw an angle of truth she had not allowed herself to witness before, a facet of reality she would have pointedly ignored days earlier, if faced with a similar scene.
She saw regret in herself. Regret, that she was unable to change what was about to happen. Regret, that she hadn't had enough time to thank someone for protecting her existence, when she was unwilling and unable to do so herself. Regret, that she only learned of this now, at the imminent cost of another's life.
She saw on the slight, round-faced expression of the one Urashima had counted as a friend a mixture of emotions, a mass of contradictions. She saw his fear, yes, that instinct of self preservation that all that live feel, but she saw more than this. There was determination, her oldest friend, the one that carried her to override her own fears at need. She saw muted acceptance, as though he knew this would happen, yet stood by his own choice. She saw…surprise?
Very suddenly, something blew past Motoko fast enough to draw her further off her balance with its wake. The moment of near standstill all but vanished with its advent; it practically flew in a blur of muted colors, propelled by a momentum not entirely its own. Shirai's last stumble turned into a dive for cover as the flying blur tore through the closing metal of the gate without slowing. Shirai hit the ground just as the blur passed over his head, the form somehow missing him by the smallest of margins.
The demons behind him, however, had no such chance at avoidance.
She saw a series of flashes, an immense releasal of power unlike anything she had seen before, and the first line of enemies were quite literally annihilated in an instant.
It wasn't until the myriad of residual, air-distorting arcs of power had expanded to their full circuit, annihilating every surface they struck, that she realized what they were. There had been no announcement or buildup for these ki-infused strikes, as she had so often experienced in performing her own secret techniques; instead, the one that had delivered the blows had produced them in an instant, fully charged and focused at a rate that was faster than anything she could hope to match by far.
For the briefest of moments, the horde hesitated. This alone was surprising; even the undead seemed to hesitate in their mindless assault, in the face of this new opponent. Standing before them, between friend and foe, was a man cloaked and armored, an enormous axe in one hand and an archaic dai-katana in the other.
Weapon and warrior alike glowed with power overwhelming, and the sight of them was terrifying to behold.
Motoko didn't need to see his face to know who it was, but the sheer power of his ki overwhelmed the limits of her own belief.
"You…will…not…TOUCH… MY…FRIENDS!" he declared, the power in his voice so strong that it vibrated the surroundings like an earthquake. He stood alone against a thousand foes undaunted, as though he could wipe them out in an instant. For the briefest moment, Motoko found herself willing to believe he could make such a thing happen, even against so many powerful opponents at once. Each that now stood had survived the fight with her so far, and looked like they could do so for quite a while longer.
Whatever the effect of his appearance, the oni soon seemed both wary and angered by the display. The largest ordered the rest to attack, and they quickly moved to obey.
But Keitaro did not merely fight back, as Motoko and the others had. He did not limit himself with the precision of exacting technique, or the need to preserve the life of his foe.
Instead, he utterly annihilated them.
Never had she seen anyone fight as he now fought. The oni, fast and ruthless as they were, could not hope to match him. Every move he made was charged with his ki to a degree she had never thought possible, and he was moving faster than her eye could follow. Raw power poured out of him like a tidal wave, and he was in full control of the flow. The weapons of the demons, fortified by unholy and inhuman powers over millennia of dark and magic-infused crafts only they knew how to master, became as useless as the wooden toy swords of children; none could truly block or counter the energies he produced at will. Zombies became piles of limbs the instant they came in his surprisingly long range. Demons hundreds of years old barely stood half a moment before his assault; with terrifying speed and skill, he cut them down like so many blades of grass. He swung and threw the giant axe and long sword like they weighed nothing; even the bullets and buckshot of his guns became cannonfire in his hands, as each projectile was wrapped and hyper-accelerated by the effects of his ki.
The only thing that slowed him down was the accumulation of debris, a mixture of shredded concrete and metal of the surrounding walls and the growing piles of so many headless and limbless corpses before him. This, too, was swept up by his assault.
Shirai had made it to where she had collapsed unchallenged, barely taking his eyes off the sight of his friend as he did. A part of Motoko noticed this, and felt oddly relieved that he had managed to survive. The rest of her, like him, was focused on the reason for their survival.
Within minutes, even the ancient and nearly invincible leaders of the oni clan had fallen, their strength preserving their existence a few moments longer than those under them had fared. Keitaro stood alone at the end of what was left of the wide corridor, his already care-worn cloak tattered even further. He turned slowly, and even at a distance Motoko could see the intensity of expression on his face, a visage that was startling to behold. Cold, deadly eyes burned with the unnatural glow of his concentrated ki; the gentleness and concern that were so much a part of his natural expression were chillingly absent; deadly, merciless neutrality was left in their place.
It was like something out of a prophetic dream, a living nightmare, though it lasted only a moment longer.
She saw him breath deeply twice, and relax by degrees. The expression vanished, and the Keitaro she had known made a conscious return. The air immediately around his body still glowed and rippled with his ki, but with the spiritual sight that had led her the previous night directly to him she could see this physical manifestation was but the inner edge of its true scope and form. Wherever the outer edges were, it was well beyond her sight to tell. Like the waters of an ocean, it stretched everywhere at once and reacted to his will in ripples and torrents with ease.
And yet, even with his power so manifest, Keitaro stood as calm as she'd ever seen him, his will no longer bent on directing the overwhelming power he produced, but on steadying and containing it once more.
As soon as she had seen it, the power began to vanish once more, flowing like a receding wave with no successor to follow it. Only when she glimpsed his face again, its distant features focused with concentration, did she realize how much effort he was devoting to the process itself.
Finally, she understood.
Keitaro Urashima the kanrinin, the hapless human male she had until so very recently thoroughly disregarded and despised, was the face he chose to wear, the façade that matched the nature of his heart. Keitaro Urashima the warrior was the mask he had buried, the horror to reveal to his worst enemies only in the greatest of need. It was a face he had locked within himself the way Motoko had sought to lock away all that detracted from being the perfect warrior she strived to be, at the cost of blinding herself to truths she never considered or believed could exist.
Her ideals shattered like the illusions they were in the face of a reality she hoped to never become. The power Keitaro wielded was a force he had to control to a degree Motoko could not hope to match, lest he destroy all he was fighting for in the first place. His true strength was not in what he could defeat and destroy, but in what he could build up, care for, and protect.
"So…this is that which…you have shielded us from, Urashima-san," she murmured quietly to no one but herself, "like the keeper…of a great flood..."
Exhausted and stunned beyond her limits of endurance, Motoko finally lost the battle to retain her consciousness and slumped fully to the ground, leaving a startled Shirai to catch her gently midway.
For now, it was over, and they had all made it through.
'No, that's a lie,' Keitaro thought solemnly to himself as he looked at the small fraction of people that had actually survived the battle. 'I was lucky that the ones I know made it through, but how many of them can say the same?'
He wanted to be happy; after all, his friends were all alive, and many others besides. He wanted to feel proud, that they had kept themselves and each other going, alive, and relatively unharmed through the hell that had been the battle. He wanted to feel relieved, that there would be time enough to recover before more had to be done, that his two best friends were looking out not just for themselves but for those that mattered to him, maybe even to them. He wanted to be amused, that the former sources of his pain were coming more to terms with themselves in the face of all that had come against them today, and had done so in the company (and partly because of ) the actions of the only two guys Keitaro could see as being anywhere near his own level of cluelessness.
Who knew; maybe it would turn out okay in the end, after all.
The truth was that he didn't dare to let himself feel these things yet.
How many had there been? Even with the backup of his armor, he had held nothing back. He should be more tired now, he supposed; he was exhausted to be sure, and every bone and muscle in his body felt stiff and sore, but he wasn't worn out just yet.
Not physically, anyway.
He knew there was no hope for those he had slain; a thousand vessels of malice and destruction, horror and hell had fallen in mere minutes before him; he had swept them away, and torn them apart. He had ridden a wave of energy that was entirely his own, a torrent no human being should have been able to control as he had. Who had they been? Were they mostly foe, or friend, before the oni had stolen their existences for their own use? Did it matter anymore?
It did, didn't it?
None of them were going home tonight. They had come because of him, because of what he was and what he wielded, and they were dead as a result. Most had been dead before they'd even met, and now even what had remained of them was destroyed.
No matter how he tried, he couldn't focus on any of it. No matter how he felt otherwise, it no longer mattered to him. He was tired in a way he had never experienced, a way he hoped would not last forever.
He never wanted to feel it again if he could help it.
Oddly enough, the mess hall had become the point of regrouping for everyone. Secondary gates had been closed, exits sealed as best as could be managed; the dead were burned and cleared, and now there was maybe a dozen dozen left to fill the space of the hall.
He'd taken off his helmet, his gauntlets, his cloak. When he had the chance, he'd get rid of the rest for a time as well. Mitsune was with him, and he wanted nothing more than to be with her. Haitani and Shirai sat somewhere nearby, their discussions of the battle doing more to lighten the mood than anything else. Keitaro suspected they were arguing in that comic way of theirs just for that purpose, but he let it be. Motoko and Naru had recovered to a degree, and surprisingly sat nearest his pals; if they were in the mood to cause them trouble the way they'd always done for him, they didn't show it. The youngest of his tenants were with Seta and Haruka, who also sat nearby; at least one of them did not look entirely happy, but the mood of the others seemed to dampen the edges of whatever was bothering her. Maybe he could ask her about it later, if he had a chance, but not right now. He hoped she would forgive him that later.
All around him, the talk was a curious mixture of subdued and boisterous as they and everyone else had begun to eat the hard-earned second meal of the day. It was late in the evening, and all were starving. Food boosted everyone's spirits a bit; it reminded them that there was still a world beyond the horrors they had all faced, and that there were people to share with and relate to in their midst.
"Hey, Kei-kun," Mitsune was nudging him quietly, "Why so glum?"
What should he say to her? A part of him wanted to brighten up for her sake, to pull a cheerful air about himself once more.
Instead, he opted for the truth. "How many do you think were killed, Kitsu-chan?" he asked, looking at his hands. "How many would still be here, if I wasn't?"
She looked at him in confusion. "What do you mean?"
He glanced up at her. "Everyone here came because of…this. Because of me. How many do you suppose would still be alive, if I wasn't around? How many are going to have nightmares because of what they did on my account? I…I feel like I don't even know myself anymore." He shivered. "I didn't kill them, and yet…I did, in a way. I fought to protect as many lives as I could, and yet…there were so many, so many that I couldn't. I can't take back the lives, Mitsune. I can't raise the dead the way I can fix a hole in a wall, can I? I've seen what happens when someone does; those people did not deserve for that to happen to their corpses, whatever side they were on. What kind of monster am I, that would bring that upon them?"
"Do not fret upon the choices of others, child of my child," a kind and familiar voice said behind them, "not when so many more yet live because of your own."
He froze. It was a voice he hadn't heard in over a year, but he knew it well. 'It couldn't be…'
"If any should seek forgiveness from the dead," the voice continued, "it is not you. Each of them chose their own fate, Keitaro, just as you have chosen your own. Had you not made the choices you had, how many would still be here? Far fewer than there are now, if any at all! So cheer up, my boy, and give your Granny a hug!"
Fuck everything. He was going to be happy if it killed him. He was too tired to feel any differently, and knew it.
Without hesitation, Keitaro got up, turned around, and willingly complied with the earnest request of the underground base's leader, Hinata Urashima.
A.N.: Finally! Triple scoop of going postal, served up hot! Things will wind down a bit finally, and revelations are in store for the future. It won't stay that way forever. I'm going to end it here for now, but more is in the future.
There are some major props of inspiration to make note of in the making of this chapter. First, title courtesy of the late Jim Varney, and it stands as good advice besides. Musical inspiration comes from "Divinity II" (Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children), "The Omen of Jenova" (Nekofrog of OCRemix), and possibly others as well. Other inspirations come from stuff I've already covered by now, I'm sure.
Finally, inspiration for the story's title comes from the way Keitaro fights in this chapter, a scene that has been floating in my head in one form or another since the story's inception. Truth be told, I got the idea from Vash the Stampede of Trigun, that loveable goofball that follows the principles of Love and Peace, yet stands as one of the most dangerous men alive in his world for a very, very good reason. Keitaro's outlook on life, the way I envisioned he might react to having (arguably) a very similar level of power in comparative terms, and the personal dichotomy of roles he can assume when need dictates brought about this portrayal, and the idea for the name of the story itself:
Urashima the Flood.