Phantom Destiny Ch. 3: Trapped
Author note: Sorry for taking so long to get this out! Summer was very hectic, but I should be more prolific now. Thank you for the encouraging and helpful reviews!
"Coming!" called Mrs. Niwa in her cheerful voice as she walked through the kitchen toward the front door. She glanced around the kitchen, which was reminiscent of a battlefield after her son's valiant attempt at preparing dinner for Riku, and grinned, then opened the door casually. "Yes, how can I hel-.. Oh, Satoshi?" she said in confusion as she discovered her son's blue-haired friend standing out of breath on the other side of the door. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing in particular," Satoshi said breathlessly, leaning forward to peer into the door, "Is Daisuke here?" His face wore an expression of grim urgency.
"He went to walk by the fountain in the park with Risa. It's their anniversary, but…are you sure you're alright, dear?" Mrs. Niwa eyed him worriedly.
"Yes, thanks," the young man said distractedly, looking over his shoulder in the direction of the street. "Never mind then," he mumbled before raising his hand in farewell and breaking into a run back to the road.
"Satoshi? You shouldn't disturb them," Mrs. Niwa called out to him, but he didn't look back at her. "What was that all about?" she wondered, turning back inside.
"It's such a beautiful night," Daisuke said, gazing upward as he stood with Riku on the balcony that overlooked the ocean beside the fountain. The faint purple-grey clouds were drifting past the moon, reflecting in both of their eyes as they watched it side by side.
"I love you," Riku said with a slight blush, holding his fingers a bit tighter.
Daisuke turned to her affectionately. With the sky in her eyes and the soft violet glow lighting up the blue dress she was wearing, she was like an angel. "You're beautiful," he said.
Riku smiled. "It's so still and peaceful. Doesn't it remind you of that night after the city was evacuated?"
Daisuke thought for a moment before realizing she was referring to the night the Black Wings had been sealed, two years ago that day, which they'd decided to count as their official anniversary. He tended to think of it in terms of their anniversary alone, and forget the other events that took place that day. "Tonight seems much nicer," he said ambiguously. "That night was pretty rough, even though everyone was alright."
"I don't know if it was that bad. You managed to save the whole city. Hiwatari-kun's dad died, but in the end, that was what marked the beginning of his relationship with Risa. And we've been together this whole time!" She paused. One person was missing from her assessment of that night's events. "Dark never showed up after that, did he?" It was the first time she'd really thought about it. Risa hadn't mentioned him at all since she'd started dating Satoshi.
Daisuke's expression fell slightly. He'd never explained to her exactly what had happened to Dark: that he literally no longer existed, and he didn't want to think about those things tonight, when the mood was so good. "Wherever he is, I'm sure he's fine," he said.
Riku looked at him strangely. "I guess so," she concurred, sensing that he didn't want to talk about it. She had finally started thinking less poorly of the phantom thief, but then he'd left without a trace. On the whole, though, she hardly thought about it, and neither did anyone else, from what she could tell. Things were peaceful again, and that was what was important. She looked over her shoulder as she vaguely thought she heard something moving behind her.
"Is something wrong?" Daisuke asked, following Riku's gaze.
"It's nothing…I just..thought I heard something," she said, still looking into the darkness of the park behind the fountain.
"That's odd," he said.
"Sorry. Let's just relax and enjoy tonight," she said, turning back to Daisuke and running her fingers through his hair, then along his neck and across his chest.
Daisuke looked back at her, forgetting the previous topic entirely as her touch excited him. He gently put his arms around her shoulders and held her against him, then kissed her passionately. She sighed and leaned into his embrace, tracing her fingers along his back and pressing her warm body against his.
"Someone might see us," Daisuke teased, sliding his hands under her shirt and along her bare back.
"No one's here at this hour," Riku smiled in return, slipping a slender hand into the front of his pants and massaging him, causing the redhead to close his eyes and shudder with pleasure.
Daisuke was almost too overwhelmed with sensation to hear when he caught an unmistakable metallic clink from above them. His eyes flashed upward to see a form coming straight down at them. He quickly shoved a very confused Riku away from him with all his strength and tumbled backward himself just in time to miss the armored being that landed right where they'd been standing.
The person was a woman, clad in what looked like black Kevlar armor garnished with steel bracers and plated steel over the major joints. She was clearly aggressive, carrying a large black revolver which she immediately aimed at Daisuke.
"This little pipsqueak is the wing host?" a young woman's voice pondered dismissively from behind a reflective visor that covered her eyes and nose. A long ponytail of golden hair hung down her back.
"Who are you?" Daisuke demanded, looking around for anything he could use as a weapon against this person, though he was too shocked by the situation to think clearly. Why would someone be after him? Did they know about his former relation to Dark?
The armored woman just chuckled, a somewhat cynical and merciless, yet rather attractive voice. "You don't need to know. You just need to come with me, now," she said, still pointing the revolver with an arm that clearly had experience using the weapon.
"Leave him alone!" Riku screamed angrily, not daring to move lest the woman pull the trigger.
"Foolish brat," the woman said, ignoring Riku. "Oh, good. It seems my helpers finally decided to show up." Daisuke looked behind him, where two large men clad in black were stepping out of the shadows. "Seize him, and do something about the girl," she ordered.
Daisuke's eyes widened in panic as one of the men went for Riku and began struggling with her. "No! Daisuke!" she screamed in panic, trying to push them man's hands away as he dragged her off toward the end of the railing that guarded the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea.
"Riku!" Daisuke shouted and broke into a run toward her, ignoring the weapon that was trained on him.
… … … … …
Krad opened his eyes to a wrecked grey landscape, torn apart by explosions and battle. He wasn't sure what had happened, but he had an innate knowledge that he had been involved in most of it.
"Krad!"
He spun toward the deadly-furious voice just in time to see a very badly injured Dark flying at him with a ball of energy ready to launch at the blonde. He raised his hands up, a white feather between his fingers, and sent a beam of white energy slamming into Dark's body. The phantom thief flew back with a cry of rage and pounded into the dusty ground, blood flying from his lips. Krad flew up into the air and sent another beam of energy down into Dark, and another, until the body below him lay still. His hands seemed to raise above his head of their own accord as they gathered energy for the killing blow.
"Krad," a weak, almost lifeless voice came from the back of his consciousness, "Let me back. Haven't you used enough magic?"
Suddenly, instead of Dark's prostrate form, the body of Hiwatari Satoshi materialized below him, covered in scars and bruises and barely able to stand. "K…rad…" the young man choked out weakly before collapsing, taking Dark's place on the mangled turf. A deafening roar drowned out Satoshi's words as the ground, the blood, the sky, all began to shatter and collapse, whirling downward until he was surrounded only by absolute blackness…
Krad's eyes sprung wide with an unsteady breath. The pale, cloudless sky above and the featureless grey earth he'd been lying on greeted him dully as he pushed to a sitting position. He sat still for a moment, staring silently into space and regaining his bearings. Almost immediately, the nausea he'd awoken with gave way to anger. He stood up and materialized a white feather into his hand, disappearing from where he stood.
Dark sat awake, his jaw set firmly as sexual excitement pulsed inside of him. He endured the sensation, trying to think of something else, but he couldn't control the feelings passing from Daisuke's consciousness to his. He glanced up as a sparkling white light heralded that he was about to receive another visit from his blonde counterpart.
"Dark!" growled the man as he materialized in front of Dark. "You damned thief bastard, let me out of here!"
Dark smirked. "You seem particularly cheerful this evening. To what do I owe the honor of two visits in one day," he quipped.
This made Krad look even angrier. "Quit babbling nonsense! Who says it's nighttime, or that it's been a day? Who even cares? Can you even tell how long we've been here?"
Dark frowned, too tired of Krad's behavior to keep up his jokes. "We've been here exactly two years, unless I missed a day," he said matter-of-factly. "Like I've told you before, if you find this place so boring, add some color to the landscape." He clenched his eyes for a moment as the feeling in his body suddenly became more intense; probably, Daisuke was getting more than a kiss from whoever he was with.
Krad just glared, not noticing Dark's reaction. "Don't think for a second I'd create a landscape and please you in the process. I know the game you're playing, and it doesn't work on me. I need to get out of this rotten, colorless world," he said sternly, "I'm starting to see weird things in my sleep."
"Dreams?" the thief prodded teasingly, his interest stirred. "It's quite odd for you to come to me for dream counseling."
"Who says I came for your opinion!" Krad shot back, anger darkening his cheeks.
"Sure, sure, just hurry up and explain it so I can go back to sleep," Dark grinned, leaning back with his arms behind his head.
"I did not come to tell you about my dream!" Krad shouted. "If you're so damned curious, I got to destroy you, and that stubborn brat with the blue hair too…probably."
"And how does this make you feel?" Dark mimicked with an accent, clearly teasing, but Krad responded as if he didn't notice he was being laughed at.
"I was thrilled, of course," he spat.
"Sure you were. Then why come whining to me about it?"
"I wanted to assert how very sincerely I detest your existence," Krad said with conviction, wishing the dream had been true.
"Well, from where I see it-.." Dark broke off and looked confused for a moment. The feeling he'd been forcedly repressing in his consciousness had abruptly disappeared, with fear and anger in its place. For it to be strong enough to reach Dark, it had to be considerably intense emotion as well…
"Dark! Don't fall asleep in the middle of your sentence, you bastard!" Krad's bitter voice broke the thief out of his thoughts.
Dark blinked and looked back at Krad blankly. "From where I see it, you miss Satoshi Hiwatari," he said, still trying to figure out what had happened to Daisuke.
Krad's face screwed up in contempt. "Where the hell do you get that theory? That kid never did anything but limit my magical abilities with his pathetically low life force and deliberately impede my plans. If not for him, I'd have killed you and never been locked in this wasteland."
"I'm so sorry to hear that. Would you like me to get you a tissue?" Dark teased, "or maybe—nng!"
Krad stared at the phantom thief in confusion as Dark suddenly grasped his own shoulder tightly and twisted onto his side with a pained gasp. "What's wrong with you?" Krad demanded.
Dark stared at Krad wide-eyed as another burst of pain exploded near the top of his thigh, while fear and panic that weren't his shoved into his mind. With a choked cry, Dark clenched his eyes and squinted them back open shakily. "Nothing," he hissed.
Krad raised an eyebrow skeptically. "It doesn't look like nothing," he said blandly.
"Quit being so noisy and get lost," Dark countered through clenched teeth.
The blonde eyed him thoughtfully. If he wanted to kill Dark, now was the perfect time. However, Dark was also the only one who knew how to break their seal. But it didn't make sense…there were no enemies here, and no diseases to speak of to cause Dark's behavior.
"Whatever your problem is, you'd better get us out of here, or I'll do much worse," Krad said, disappearing again and leaving Dark alone.
… … … … …
Daisuke lay curled on his side, too paralyzed with pain to move. "Riku," he murmured in a shaking voice as the armored woman's lackey dragged her to the cliff and let her fall into the rocky shallows. The gunshot wounds in his shoulder and leg scalded his senses; he couldn't believe it. None of this was real. He tasted salt in his mouth as shocked tears fell from his eyes.
"Riku! No!" he screamed, struggling to stand up and go to where she'd fallen. "Riku!"
"Quit making noise, kid," the woman said casually as she walked toward him, putting away her gun.
"Help her," the boy shot back at her with anger and determination in his eyes. "Help her, and I'll go with you. Whatever you say," he said desperately.
The woman arched her neck back and chuckled slightly. "Help her? From this height, there's no way she could have survived. Besides, you're in no condition to strike bargains," she said almost gently. She leaned down to him and lifted him up beneath the arms, sending pain reeling through the boy as she moved his shoulder.
"Let go!" he snapped, trying without any strength to wrest himself from her grip and go to the balcony.
"I said to be quiet," she snapped, taking a small black case out of her suit.
"What the hell did you do that for? Why Riku? Whatever you want with me…why?" the boy said in a panicked, yet quiet voice.
"Just go to sleep for a while, kid," she said, again in a tone that was ambiguously half-gentle and half-indifferent, and pressed a needle into Daisuke's neck.
"Ri…k…" Daisuke stumbled, catching one more glimpse of where she had last stood before the injected sedative sent him completely under.
… … … … …
Dark sat grimly and leaned forward with one elbow resting on his knees, clenching his arm tightly although he knew it should make no difference. Something was wrong. This pain wasn't just a fall or a scrape…a knife wound? A bullet? It was frustrating, not being able to share Daisuke's thoughts as he once had. And from here, there was nothing he could do to help him. Was he in danger? Was he dying?
A moment later, the sensations in his arm and leg, as well as the misery and fear, ceased completely. "What?" he said to himself, flexing his arm and looking at it. The pain was gone? Or… His eyes revealed a flash of emotion. Was Daisuke dead? The thief tried to stretch out the connection, to find any sign of feeling or sensation from the redhead. The connection was empty. 'Daisuke,' he thought, as if he were still capable of mentally communicating with his former wing host. Of course, there was no response. "Daisuke," the thief said out loud. He jumped to his feet, looking up at the infinite grey sky of this prison-like world.
"Daisuke!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, a tremor in his voice as he knew that no one in the universe could hear him.
Krad watched the phantom thief's behavior with an inquisitive frown from a hill a short distance behind Dark's position. He didn't understand what was going on at all, but something was happening with Dark. Was he still thinking about his pathetic wing host? How foolish. After all, it was extremely unlikely that the wing host was thinking about him. Both of them were probably busy enjoying their pleasant little high school lives – certainly not pondering the beings that had resided in their bodies for a short time two years ago. He glared at Dark as a bittersweet feeling captured him for an instant. He rolled his eyes in frustration and plunked down onto the dull ground, watching Dark in irritation. He normally slept as far from the thief as he could manage to teleport, but it didn't seem to be a risk in this situation. Besides, Dark had ordered him away. That alone was the reason he was staying.
After a while, the thief sat down with his back to Krad, unaware of his presence, and remained there for a long time. Eventually, Dark leaned down and lay on his side with one arm under his head and seemed to fall still. Krad observed him dully and somewhat angrily until he finally drifted off as well.
…. ... … … ….
More coming soon!