The Two Old Men
Genkishi's nerves penetrated his thick muscles the way tree roots delve into the elephant wrinkles of wet black rock. Through them, the twitching energy of of tarantula legs slithered, hungry and searching between the thinnest fibers of his body. He could sense so much of his powerful magnitude that he could not tell where his skin ended and the outside world began. Thus, he held himself in this perfect relaxation.
Genkishi's meditation room glowed in amber incandescence. He sat in a ring of wax candles. The polished wood floors were engraved with circles of intricate labyrinth etchings. He sat on the largest of these mandalas, the wood-cut grooves colored in white. His frothing mist flame leaked onto the special paint and channeled into the design.
His released energy, flowing as a river and spreading upon the floor, then evaporated into the air, projected the maze upward as if above hot pavement. The gleaming amber walls and the shivering air was the vision a man lost in an orange, sun-burnt desert of smoke and wood and yellow light. Similarly, these throbbing rivers of flames weaved around his muscles, through his arteries, and against his bones, and projected their energy into his mind like the diffusion of fire into air.
'Be wary,' said the traveler. 'There is a sickness over that way.'
While he looked back at his past, his memories, and his motives, the maze of ocher and indigo candlelight danced about him. As time passed, the orange wall faded to corpse blue. The phantom's heart rushed with his cold, deceptive flame, as he sank into a meditation that only death's tranquility could surpass.
The Millefiorre Base was a glistening skyscraper, a tribute to modern man, to industry, to glass and steel and the world as we know it. Rome was the old center of the world. Caesar had once marched into this valley surrounded by its seven hills victory after victory. This grand building rose high above the old brick apartments and ancient marble ruins, and passers-by that walked underneath always looked up in awe, as if looking up flipped their world on its head. As if they were falling down to meet their death in the sky and clouds.
From way, way up, Byakuran stood in front of the wrap-around window of his luxurious office. His hands were in his pockets, lilac eyes tracing the ant-like humans. They were all in such a rush. The world would regret not taking its time.
Smell the roses, he thought.
The tape recorder on his desk whirred as it rewound, high pitched voices skittering incoherently backwards. Shoichi had once stumbled across an old vinyl record that when played backwards, the singer said 'demon inside me' as if he were ill and coughing. Shoichi found it quite interesting, since the band was one of his favorites.
Concentrating, and in a burst of light, he departed his body of this universe for another to snatch a new chess piece. A prince.
A few people down below shook their heads and remembered where they were walking.
"My name is Byakuran." So many times, he had introduced himself. "How about a deal?"
Back in his office, Rasiel promised he would destroy the Varia Leader, and with his head cocked mischievously to the side. "Many thanks for the ring." He lifted one hand to show off the ruby stone embedded in silver wings, and then left, his butler following behind him. Byakuran opened a few of his drawers, looking for something to scrutinize, but closed them bored. He then played the tape recorder over again. A colorful voice filled the white office like a pink bouncy ball in an indoor squash court. "Yuka-chan~" it began, all enthusiasm. "We're all set to attack, so you do your thing, you hear! Have a lovely dayyyyyy~"
To reward his genius, Byakuran chomped on a fistful of marshmallows like any Caesar would his grapes.
The worn out, discolored note felt soft in Yuka's hands. So wrinkled, it had the flexibility of leather. She held it close to her scrubbed clean face, the face of a girl dressed in uniform and expected to fit as a cog in a massive machine. The scrap was the size of a normal greeting note and when she held it up to her nose, she could smell a woody perfume rise through the coffee and sweat.
Even though the handwriting was dressed in extravagant ink cursive, the words themselves held no gaudiness, no poetry. It sounded like something he would say. How could she second guess such a message?
If there's a problem, don't come.
-Kyoya
Frustration welled inside of her and she didn't understand what was going on or what was happening in this unknown future. She ripped the note in half, then put those halves on top of each other and ripped down again, until she had snowflakes of brown paper. Her wrist came up to her eyes, and she said, "My life is such a mess." Because of her injured hand, she had some difficulty.
The white room enclosed her once. She slid off the hospital bed and her eyes set on the door.
Yuka shivered under her black hospital Johnny. She was barefoot too as she slipped out of her room and into the infirmary hallway, making sure no nurse was in sight. She held a box of tissues – she felt she had to hold something to be here in this sterile ward. Her mouth was bitter and dry and she was hungry now that she was awake, but she didn't know how to get food or drink. Bulletin boards on the side had flyers for blood donations and organ donor contracts, and her eyes wandered on them. The white doors were set with black plastic numbers. A nurse turned the corner, but Yuka stood up straight and walked with dignity. The nurse looked at her queerly, then, she turned into a room while taking her stethoscope off her neck. Maybe she should have said something. Maybe she should have asked for her clothes? She felt it would be wrong to intrude, no, she feared this place.
She feared this place. This colorlessness. This monochrome. A world of stone, but even less natural. A world of plastic. A world of white paint and black speakers set into walls.
So when she read 'stairs' on a heavier door, gray instead of white, Yuka heaved it open and hurried down countless flights barely a plan forming in her mind. She only knew her feet could carry her down faster than up. Down and down her feet stomped and marched, gravity taking over. Her knees lifted almost to her chest, she was in such a rush. Her hands pulled at the railing when she rounded and her feet skidded on the landings. She was practically falling. Down and down. She didn't pull herself together until she noticed the cameras. A security camera hung over the doorways of every other exit doorway. As she walked by the camera, it rotated on its mount. She just wanted to be alone, unwatched, in a spot all to herself. She halted on a landing without a mounted camera, yanked open the huge door. she used her body to keep it open.
Walls of rusticated stone masonry gleamed wet and rough as sharkskin. Rusty horseshoes were piled in a corner, half covered by a moldy, yellow tarp. More scrap metal, such as nails, keys, doorknobs, were stacked in wooden crates along the walls. There was even an oil barrel filled with aluminum soda tabs. The nails made her look down briefly at her bare feet. She thought of ripping up a bit of her Johnny and tying it around them, but what good was that? Johnnies were paper gowns. She wobbled away from the door and into the queer, anachronistic room, closing out the light as it closed. Her hands groped for the long narrow aisle between the crates.
There is an uneasiness that come with pure, prison darkness. Walls of crates and her blindness in the hall gave a sense of claustrophobia as if the color black was constricting. Ceiling pipes leaked water on her flimsy covering as Yuka passed beneath. There were earring backings like sharp pebbles and eating utensils like spikes, belt buckles and bicycle locks hung as chains around her handholds. Finally, as she crept around a barrel of wristwatches, though she would have only known them as such in the light, her hand found smooth wood, unlike the splinter filled crates and it was up against the wall. Yuka turned and spread her palms upon this spot and finally gripped a brass handle. She opened it stealthily so the click was hushed and then, she pulled it open and tottered into a fresher, well-lit room.
Inside, the walls were of smoother, prettier stone. An oil lamp was set on a broad desk. Next to the desk sat a simple bed and bureau, all under a low ceiling. Yuka only took a quick look as she heard the clinking of metal on stone coming from the outer passageway. Friend or foe? Stranger most likely, she decided, but she didn't know how to behave or what to expect in an area of the base such as this.
The door opened and she still stood in the middle of the room. There was nowhere to hide as the bed was not lifted above the ground. A hunched, cloaked figure entered pushing a trolley and humming. He stopped upon confronting the sparsely dressed girl in a wet paper Johnny. With a deep and raspy voice, he spoke:
"Ho Ho Ho! Now what do we have here? Ehhh?" Under the black hood, a rag hung over the old man's eyes. The cart he pushed jiggled on the uneven stone floor, the stones on top clanking on the metal. Rings decorated his knotty fists, which lifted to take a piece from his push cart, a rock of lustrous ore. His other hand leaned on a cane carved with a vultures head, painted vile purple and orange. Yuka stepped back nervously, inspecting him head to foot.
"Excuse me… I'm going back to my room. I got lost coming from the infirmary," she huffed weakly. "Would you know the way, sir?" Here she was in this old man's bedroom! She felt awful and extremely awkward for intruding. Despite her embarrassment, she didn't like the way his smile lifted on those blistered old lips.
"A little girl in all black. It's not a pleasant sight," he said rapping the cane on the ground, "isn't it genie?"
Like a cloud of smoke pumping out of a steaming gutter, Yuka's doorway was suddenly blocked by a tall man also dressed in black. His trench coat and tall boots glistened rebelliously in the dank, medieval cellar. Yuka paled and started away.
"How did you…?" she quivered. Mukuro looked at her amused, his lip curving into a similar smile as the old man's, only with more elegance.
"I have my ways," he hissed and Yuka held her elbows in the cups of her hands nervously.
"So you're a Genie then?" Yuka looked at him skeptically, her tone disappointed. Genies were supposed to be servile.
"One of sorts," Mukuro mused. "Only older. But I'm not here to answer your questions."
"Talbot, you called me early?"
"It's all right. I can leave," Yuka uttered. This dark alleyway in the Millefiore complex suddenly grew with a shadow of menace and humor simultaneously.
"I'm afraid I'm all out of ruby slippers, Yuka-chan," Mukuro said, pinching her paper clothes as she passed him. He pushed her back into the room with the flat side of a long trident that had materialized into his hands. "So settle down, there's work to be done," and then he turned to the hunched, cloaked old man. "Talbot, I thought we had an agreement."
"She came on her own." Talbot murmured humorously. He did not face her, his hidden eyes not making it necessary. Mukuro was quiet for a while, tapping his trident on the stone floor in impatient thought.
"All right, then it is time."
"What's going on?" Yuka asked, unsure if she was held here to learn of a secret her older self had taken part in. "You took me to the infirmary."
"It's complicated," Mukuro said, looking around the room for a second. "It's lucky he's away. Talbot, I expect you to take care of this. Genkishi is tricky."
"If it will help the Vongola, Mukuro Rokudo. I am but a humble ring-smith. I meddle with metal, indeed, indeed, though against my will for this family. I make fine rings. However, any decent jeweler can hold his own against a trickster."
"Yes, yes" as if to put away a long story that hung on the tip of the hold-man's tongue. "There's no time to lose then. Yuka, how do you feel right now?" Mukuro casually studied her.
"Why do you ask?" Yuka asked suspiciously. She had walked over to the bureau and pulled open the drawers. She needed fresh clothes. She couldn't stand these dirty paper garments. "I'm fine. But I want to change." The drawers were empty. "Does anyone live here?"
Mukuro ignored her statement. "Fine? Is that so? You haven't been yourself lately. At least that's how Genkishi perceives it, and I think you cause him endless confusion. Since you have been replaced by your younger self, you have perhaps acted more your true self, Yuka—which is nothing very dangerous at all," Mukuro said. Yuka turned from the drawers.
"I'm not dangerous because I don't feel like it," Yuka said sourly. Mukuro looked disbelieving. Talbot rapped his cane, as if in applause. Yuka, defeated, opened a top drawer which contained a single, shiny black and white photo. "What was my older self doing anyway?" The photograph was of black-suited woman with stern blond hair in a bun and feinting a smile. "Why was she here, of all places?"
"Why, pretending."
"Pretending to be something she was not," Talbot clarified. Mukuro walked out of the hallway, distracted, but Talbot continued. "Suddenly, you're an innocent, little girl. That nightmare outfit doesn't suit you anymore."
"Genkishi knew me well, but he doesn't say anything."
"Yes, you shared a bedroom, but I doubt he knew you. You were pretending. Very well," Talbot cleared his old throat, "but then again, what would a smith know, eh? And that is all I'm going to say. My sheep know more on this subject of fornication." Genkishi was capable of sex? But he was so cold, so aloof. He never hinted once to such a relationship. Nothing he had done suggested what this old man implied.
"But why was I pretending to like him?" Yuka leapt in. "Was it to be close to Byakuran, so that I could eventually have my mother released? Was I using him, or did I love Genkishi?" This was an important question. Could it happen to her?
"It was on your mind," Mukuro said returning, staring at Talbot amused. The old man was grating at the hunk of metal with an old file. Then, his eyes shifted back to Yuka and he continued pompously, waving his gloved hand.
"However, I can deliver your mother from Vendicare just as well as Byakuran. Both of us have made this promise to you, in fact," he said. "It's an easy promise to make."
"So it's not real," Yuka muttered quickly.
"Hoho, don't get him started on reality, little girl," Talbot rasped, his body shaking with old laughter. Mukuro gave him a silenced look, but the old man was too bemused.
"Well," Mukuro said seriously, then he smiled coolly. "Both our promises are real. You dance with powerful and dangerous men."
The two men had paused in the conversation, giving her room to speak, only she didn't want to. She wanted to push back the silence as one might a platter of some putrefying substance, only there was no platter tangible to physically remove from her presence. They waited for her to react, as if their teasing should be taken lightly with a agreeable smile on her side.
"I am not a whore," she announced. And she wasn't. She was still young, she had never gotten that close to a man before and her personality wasn't about to let her anytime soon. But what is a girl when she is faced with the knowledge of her future, lifted from the dank soup of the unknown. What is she when what she sees disgusts her?
"Are you so sure now?" Mukuro asked. He had the nose of a possum, a face like the skull of a rat, she realized. He repeated it again so softly. "Are you so sure now?" His voice seemed to draw aside a curtain in her mind. A navy blue curtain like the sky at night, and she shuddered as images were fed into her vision, set on fast-forward. Voices were low and infrequent. A red light blinked in the reflection of a mirror, and there was rhythm on the floor, an unstoppable rhythm that wouldn't break until Yuka shouted in anger and the vision broke. "You are exactly that."
"Well, then, you better get going now. Give me your ring," Talbot said "It's jade, I believe."
"No. You—" Yuka began.
"Do you know what you're doing?" Mukuro's tone beat down on her with its questioning, sarcastic arrogance. "Do you know how much planning it took to get you out of this base? Give him your ring." Yuka shot a bitter, uncomplacent glance at both men. Then, she found the purple jade on her finger—as if it had reappeared in her need.
"Didn't you take this from me?" she asked Mukuro heavily. "Yes I gave this to you!" She pulled it off, looking at Mukuro and thinking how the hell she'd become associated with him, but still frightened of him seizing her mind. Most of all, she was afraid of his relationship with her older self.
"It is bound to you, unfortunately. Now hand it to him. We must be off."
"But I have nowhere to go outside this base," Yuka said while reluctantly giving her ring to Talbot.
"Your living arrangements have been taken care of," Mukuro concluded and turned to Talbot. "So what do you say, old Sheppard?"
"Powerful rings contain spirits," Talbot cackled. "I've heard Byakuran has tampered with this one. We must be careful. It might be cursed, from what you've told me." Talbot put down his rock and file and felt the ring with expert hands.
"It's not cursed!" Yuka yelled. "It's my mother's! It's anything but!"
"HEHEH! Indeed she is right!" Talbot announced. "But it has its own breed of danger, a very hungry ring. Why," his eyes shifted to Mukuro Rokudo, and then he hobbled over to the sly man and whispered, "It only needs a soul to become another hell ring."
"I figured as much," Mukuro answered and took the ring back from Talbot as smooth as a pocket thief. "Thank you for breaking its connection with her." Yuka leapt up at Talbot's cloak, trying to take the ring back, but the old man swung away. Then she launched herself at Mukuro, who chuckled and glided out of reach as a toreador avoiding the horns.
"It's connected to me! Of course it is! It's my mother's!"
"Let's go!" the illusionist answered and, pulling Yuka backwards by the wrist, he leapt into the dark hallway.
"Let go! I can't see, let me at least—," Yuka exclaimed, but the hand on her wrist ignored her complaint and continued to drag her through the darkness. She stumbled and tried to turn around but everything was moving too quickly by her and she couldn't make her bearings, pulled and yanked this way and that in her blindness. She couldn't see a single step she took, and neither did she trust her steps. They led her through a maze and the whole way, her shoulders bumped into wooden crates and stone walls, until finally, she emerged into the stairwell. Only beside her stood a fat woman in a white spell uniform.
"What…," her deep husky voice shocked her and she looked down at her body.
A man's body, a middle-aged, skinny, wrinkled old man's body torso, legs and feet were beneath her. She felt her neck where her voice ought to be and her hand held the lump of an Adam's apple instead. Two crutches were nestled under her armpits and her foot had a white cast on. The fat woman's hand came up and pushed her shoulders down, instructing her to lean on the two sticks.
"Darkness is only an illusion," the portly woman squeaked, smirking.
Mukuro, with sweet, helpful tugs, as that might be given to a dying horse, assisted the disabled Yuka down several flights of stairs. His womanly eyes were glossy as a dead fish and his polished hands were cold on her arm. Was he really inside that woman's body like she was in this man's? Downwards, the couple descended. Yuka found her new body clunky and slow, overweight in the midsection. Her eyes disagreed with her brain when it came to the true length of her arms and where the exact perimeter of her skin lay. Was this a mask or truly part of her body, a sort of extension to it? She could touch what it touched, hear what it heard, eat what it ate—she could sense hunger, but nothing beyond a sugarless-voice in the bloodstream—the stomach distant and walled by foreign cells.
They exited the stairwell at another lower level, but still not the ground-level. Yuka's old man feet tromped into a garden, with a skylight that didn't make sense if there was a floor above, but yet there it was, a roof of glass with sunshine pouring in and warming the broad leaves of the plants. She limped with her crutches on a pebbled park pathway, looking up at the high domed ceiling of glass panels. Mukuro's portly woman walked at Yuka's side now, going at Yuka's pace and looking around as if he were enjoying a walk on a nice summer's day with an old buddy. Yuka looked closer at his disguise. The woman had very fine wrinkles covered up with garish make-up, her chestnut hair lifted in a tight bun. The White Spell uniform looked tight on her fat body, the buttons nearly bursting. In contrast, Yuka's fit the way it was supposed to. The lady's bulbous nose was slightly misshapen, and she seemed to have spent to long bathing in a jar of pickles.
"Can I have my ring back?" Yuka grunted. Her armpits hurt where the crutches dug in.
"That won't do, Yuka-chan. Your sentimentality are so obviously your weakness."
"Where is it? Just give it back and I'll leave Byakuran, Vongola, everything. Whatever you want!" She followed as well as she could on her crutches.
"That won't do either," the woman said. "However, I'm not giving you the ring back."
"What will you do with it then? It's just a ring." Yuka looked at the woman skeptically and finally her sarcasm suited her gender.
Still, she had only a very faint clue as to what was happening here at Millefiore base. There was a war outside these walls—she wasn't blind to the training rooms and combat instructors. Byakuran had been curious of her relationship with the Vongola, and with Mukuro escorting her now around the base, she was uncertain as to how exactly the Vongola were connected to Millefiore. She studied Mukuro's hobbling figure in front of her, trailing manicured fingers through a bush. "Or it's not my business to ask why you need my ring?" she added.
The old woman shook with her chuckle. Then she twisted around. Both stopped walking.
"You are assisting me with research for the Vongola. You are also a member of Millefiore. To one, you are a traitor, understood?"
"Which one?"
"Well, I have never trusted you, but who am I to judge?" Mukuro's eyes narrowed and his thin lips pursed, which seemed more of a habit to the body he dwelt than any expression of the man's true body. "I have merely enjoyed your company." And with that little remark, he melted into a satisfied smile, turned around and continued down the way.
"Well, I doubt I enjoyed your company." Yuka grumbled.
Could she assume he was a friend? She now lagged behind, limping slower on her chunky bandaged foot, and the old woman seemed unlikely to turn around. Suddenly, she turned left, pumping her crutches as fast as she could. The pebble pathway narrowed and the hedges grew taller. She turned several more corners, not sure where she was going but wanting to be away and on her own once more. Maybe she could escape disguised by this new body? Stopping, she pinched the hairy man's forearm to see if it was real.
"What are you doing, Kaltashov?" Yuka looked up and one of her crutches fell to the ground. Genkishi strode up to her, his large build finally equal to her own, and they now stood at the same height. "Close your mouth," Genkishi instructed as he approached.
"Going for a walk, sir." His eyes darkened and suddenly, an indigo flame awakened from the ring on his hand, which drew Yuka's own eyes—the hand came to her neck and she shuddered, and would have stepped back if it weren't for the crutch hooked under her armpit and locking her where she stood. His fingers clung like spiders hairs on her possessed man's spine.
"What are you doing, Kaltashov?" the Black Spell Officer whispered in her ear. "You drip with mist flame."
"It's Yuka," her man's face crumpled into her emotions. "I don't know what I'm doing. This place, the people here. I know no one." She felt like the illusions boiled off her skin in a cool light. Genkishi was so close, how could she not bring her arms up around his neck in an embrace that wasn't coy or seductive, but of a human being who might hug a life vest when lost at sea. "I'm a stranger," she said leaning whatever body she had now into him. The bruise on her cheek running down over her back and the bandage on her hand—they were erased.