Chapter 17: The Fury of the Seruva
As Meiko observed the pinned warrior against the temple walls, she could hear the old men still arguing over what their next action should be. With the sounds of warfare outside, they could not leave the sanctum until they could confirm the end of the attack. Of course she could handle them… but they still insisted on holding her back.
On hiding her strength.
Concealing her.
In one breath, she was their greatest hope. In the next, their greatest shame.
The newly reborn Spirit Caller bloodline. The twisted daughter of Noise.
The warrior's blue eyes remained unfocused, his body convulsing in ignorance of the pain from his deep wounds. His lips moved as if he spoke, but nothing emerged beyond the strange atonal sounds. Not words. No meaning to his actions.
The Spirit Caller was gone. Hunting him remained their highest priority. But she tired of relying on him so. He'd never possessed the true will to aid the Seruva in what they must do. How weary she grew of constant pleading and coaxing, of how weak his body had become.
"We must Sever him at once! And anyone that granted him aid!"
"But we can't let them see him like this! He's clearly filled with the Noise!"
"What if we hold him up as an example of the corruption the rebels spread? Not a soul will stand with him or his allies! We can crush this threat to order swiftly."
She hated the warrior for putting so many lives at risk, for constantly standing against her authority. Yet her voice alone had stood against his reinstatement as the Spirit Caller's keeper. Now she'd been proven right, and again her opinions discarded. Yet as she saw him now, a mindless puppet turned into a pile of mush, she actually found a strange sensation in her heart.
Pity.
Empathy.
He was like her. Trying to fight the mindless screeds and pointless codes that chained her people. Yet he was far too simple minded to understand how to stop them, and so he hung impaled upon the wall, his power utterly overwhelming him.
Meiko gripped one of the spears holding him in place. She turned her head and saw the Elders still involved in their simple games of power and maintaining order. She grunted as she pried the weapon free of the wall.
Such small-minded men. When Meiko couldn't become a Spirit Caller, they simply used her for blunt tasks. Erasing his memories. Twisting his loyalty. Stopping his weak, useless spirit from snapping at the strain of the Noise she could have effortlessly bared.
Utterly blinded to an opportunity in front of them.
She wrenched the last spear free and the warrior's body slipped down the wall into a sitting position, his purple hair spread around his shoulders.
The Seruva no longer needed to fear the humans that had been quietly stealing away their own. The Elders had ordered silence about the incursions presumably to prevent panic, but Meiko recognized cowardice when she saw it. They feared provoking war without Sujata Hama in their arsenal.
She stared at the man's form and she listened for the dissonant melody emerging from his heart. She extended a hand, quietly weaving a dark song of her own. The unshaped melody bent to her considerable will, the man before her becoming like fresh clay awaiting form in spite of appearing no different than before.
That soon changed as his eyes turned red, his wings slowly taking on a black hue. Red markings streaked along his face, accentuated his sharper features, his hands lengthening into long talons.
His trembling and mumblings ceased as he stood up, grasping his sword and sturdy as ever. "What are your orders?!" he boomed.
The sound of his voice caused the Elders to stop speaking at once and stare at Meiko. "What… what has happened to him?!" one of them remarked.
Meiko turned to them with a tranquil smile. "I have brought our salvation to us," she said simply, "We need no longer rely on Sujata Hama or the Spirit Caller to protect us from humanity."
At this they looked surprised. "Meiko, we can't possibly do this! The people shall never accept creatures of Noise as their guardians and leaders!"
"They will."
She could have laughed at how feeble their sudden attack on her felt to her powers as she calmly placed a red shield in front of herself. Three old men were no match for her if they couldn't control her will.
Meiko would no longer be controlled.
"Gakupo! Your orders! Find Kaito, kill all who interfere!"
The only way for her authority to remain unquestioned required her to become the only authority.
"Starting… with them."
In moments her newly crafted soldier dove through the air, a whirling tornado of sword play and furious swipes… as she watched the men who chained her fall one by one, her tranquil smile never left her face.
Earth would belong to the Seruva. Humanity would vanish. And they would finally live free and safe again.
And all who opposed that utopia… would be cut down.
As Miku awoke, she felt a heavy metal band around her throat. She opened her eyes to find herself in a dimly lit steel cell. "K… Kaito?" she mumbled. He was nowhere to be found, Miku in total isolation.
Rising to her feet, she touched the band on her throat gingerly… and tried to tear it off.
The jolt she received in response made her fall straight to the floor. Once her muscles worked again, she rose again, far more slowly. Remembering Kaito's stories, she didn't need to be told where she was. She was a captive of the same people that had started everything.
And Kaito was missing.
Naturally, so was her weapon. Miku walked over to the door and stared outside, trying to make out her location. Obviously they hadn't paired her up with Kaito, but he must be in the facility somewhere. As she peered through the glass, she did spy another person. A woman with shoulder-length black hair, tanned cape, and a green dress.
… a woman with wings.
Of course Kaito wouldn't be the only Seruva here. Hadn't Meiko made some comment about that? That the humans had been kidnapping Seruva? This woman must be one of them.
"…how many more are here?" Miku whispered aloud.
The woman's skin appeared a sickening pale shade, her eyes bearing dark ringlets. Her expression appeared so downcast… how long had the poor women been here?
As her blue eyes met Miku's, she showed not a glimmer of life. She looked briefly surprised to see Miku… maybe because Miku was a human? But she showed no other reactions to her, eventually turning away entirely.
Miku craned her eyes to try and see into any of the other cells… maybe Kaito was inside one of them?! But she couldn't peer through any more windows. Only the one across from her.
She walked over to the wall and leaned against it. Whatever Mirror wanted with her, it appeared they planned to make her wait. She clutched her hands together as she tried to think of what they wanted with her. She was just a normal human girl…
…a normal human girl that had gone on a spree of breaking as many of their Noise Generators as she could get her hands on.
A normal human girl that had directly fought Heralds on three occasions, not mention Gakupo's tengu form.
A normal human girl that had been drawn into the Noise… and come back intact.
A normal human girl that rode a giant white bird through the city, blasting magic everywhere they landed.
And the normal human girl that was the lover of the most powerful and valuable person Mirror had ever captured.
"… I guess I'm not really all that normal," she muttered.
She'd been knocked out so quickly she hadn't even learned if she and Kaito were the only captives. Had Luka and Gakupo escaped? Had they rescued Rin and Len somehow?
Obviously Mirror had done something to the twins… wherever they were, Miku knew how frightened they must be… if they were still allowed to feel any emotion that is.
'There's no way I'll be able to help them… I don't have a weapon, I don't know my way around… and I don't know where they're holding anyone… Kaito could be under guard and what if I have to fight my best friends!?'
She slapped her cheek.
'Positive. I've gotten out of worse…'
Miku leaned against the wall staring out the lone window, seeing only the back of her fellow prisoner. 'I'll get out of this too!'
Kaito lay in his cell, the odd melodies in his head continuing to toy with his sanity.
"Gakupo felt this for weeks…" he murmured, "I can barely stand it for a few hours."
For what haste and effort they'd undergone to acquire him, Kaito had spent what felt like hours locked up in solitary. And with the time to himself, he'd become aware of something he'd realized he'd heard ever since he first summoned Sujata Hama.
Two melodies, one of order, and one of dissonance.
Warring inside of him, trying to demand he choose one or the other.
He recognized now the story Luka told of the first Spirit Caller "summoning" one guardian or the other wasn't entirely accurate. After his experience, he knew now they'd called the beings onto themselves, taking its form themselves.
But that meant the same for the destructor. Sujata Raka. Someone had to have summoned it onto themselves.
There was only one person who had that power.
The first Spirit Caller.
No wonder the burden of the melody was so heavy to his ancestors.
Arbiter.
Kaito tried to ignore the voice in his head again as it tried to draw out a reaction.
Arbiter.
"I'm not speaking to you," he whispered coldly.
You cannot abstain.
Was it the Noise? He'd purged himself of his Seal, hadn't he?
'Maybe… when I restored my spirit and got my wings back… maybe it opened my mind to the beyond again…'
Then he was infected… and with the stun collar on, he couldn't purge himself. Singing even a single note would deliver a painful shock to his body and cease his song at once. So all he could do was suffer in silence as it continued to infest him.
You must understand the decision in order to choose correctly.
"If you're asking me to kill anyone, the answer is no."
Kaito hoped nobody could observe him talking to himself. Or if they did, they didn't have the idea to try and unleash it. But after seeing what happened to Neru… he feared that fate would soon befall him as well.
You cannot abstain. You must choose.
He fell silent, trying to ignore the voice and summoning his will to himself. He thought of things that he was fighting for. Afternoons at the ice cream parlor. Practices at the park. Duets with friends. Skies full of fireworks.
Miku.
She was human.
Nothing could make him attack humans because Miku was human and he loved her.
You cannot stand in judgement while maintaining ignorance.
Fine. If it was going to declare him some kind of judge of humanity…
"Then present your case."
Kaito felt his mind growing hazy, his body slipping to the floor as he entered a trance. He began to regret his words, but now he wondered what the voice intended to show him…
Rin's sobbing was the only sound Len heard. Each twin lay on their backs on metal platforms, their hands bound tightly by metal clamps. Len recognized this room as one of the observation labs – it would be well reinforced, even if he and Rin could break out.
Apparently the Hearts didn't consider either twin much of a threat – they were at least allowed to stay in the same room together. And they didn't seem to be wearing any of the shock collars Kaito warned about. Maybe it would interfere with the equipment the Hearts had slipped into him?
His mind flashed back to the tower. He and Rin had to have been drugged… he didn't remember anything happening to him. But he also didn't entirely remember leaving the tower either.
Just a simple command in his head.
"Go back to your base."
They had to have been attacked then, the memories prevented from forming by the drugs used on the two of them. Something lightly burned the back of his neck and his spine… perhaps that was what controlled their actions?
He… he and Rin… had attacked Miku. She could have died. And they couldn't stop it.
"Take the great bird and his mate alive."
His body moved on its own, in perfect sync with Rin's… and they'd used the very song taught to them by Kaito to capture him and turn him into the people who tormented him.
He didn't know where Kaito was in this massive complex… somewhere, they were probably going to fill him with machines and toxins to make him into a soulless doll as well. And who knew what they intended for Miku!?
…he'd actually flown. On some kind of strange yellow wings of light. A power of his and Rin's? Something implanted in them? A little of both?
What had his parents done to them!?
Voices in the hallway outside caught Len's attention. He saw a pair of figures enter an observation room to the side. He squinted to try and make them out, but the frosted glass obscured their faces. In a moment, it didn't matter, as their voices projected into the empty room anyway.
"Len. Rin. Finally… after all these years, our investments paid off."
His mother. Lola Heart.
"Where's Oliver?!" Rin shouted at the top of her lungs.
Len was amazed that the first question out of her mouth wasn't the state of her friends, questions about herself, or what the Hearts planned. But a question about a ghost from the past.
That telltale silence said everything Len needed to hear.
"We know you didn't kill him! So fess up already!" the boy added gruffly.
Len shouted knowing full well he was egging them on – and not caring anymore. What did he have left to lose?
"Oliver was an employee of Mirror for the last six years. We intended to decommission him after his organs failed, but he proved valuable to our research into artificial and mechanical organ transplantation."
To hear Lola speak so clinically about her own son disgusted Len. It somehow felt worse after he'd seen all the photographs of the three of them as a normal happy family. What drove her to become the person she was now?
"… They've been cloning Seruva for years," Gumi explained as she paged through the files she still had on Leon's laptop.
"Well, trying anyway."
Gakupo stood behind Gumi, observing as the green-haired girl's fingers flew across the input device. He still barely comprehended how such a machine could work and store information, but this young woman had somehow mastered it to the extent that even the owner of the device couldn't keep his secrets from her anymore.
Naturally, anything she could tell him, Luka, and Lily would serve to help him form their next strategy. He needed to know what happened to Rin and Len. What they planned for Miku and Kaito. Where they were, what their capabilities were.
And why they cared so much to weaponize his kind.
He watched documents labeled "Smith" and "Doe" pop up on the screen.
"The first round, they tried to rebuild an existing human with Seruva DNA. The doctors in charge used themselves as experiments but… their bodies just started falling apart. Apparently they got bumped into another project on cybernetics, the FX modules… They survived all the experiments and installations but the stress made em' go all…"
Gumi raised her index finger and spun it around her ear, making a "woo, woo!" sound.
"You don't think all those songs they perform in fights are…" Luka began to say.
Gakupo finished her thought. "…battle ballads. Or what they think are battle ballads."
Gakupo shook his head. "That explains their obsession with wings."
Gumi kept typing away, going through every one of the project Gemini docs.
"Their next subject was Project Cherubim. When Lola was pregnant, they tried injecting the fetus with some of the same tech. The baby was born premature, but he pulled through."
Gumi paged up an image of a smiling blond toddler covered in electrodes. "He seemed fine at first, so they started raising him as their son. Oliver Heart. But in spite of surviving the pregnancy, he didn't possess a second voice and he didn't seem to practice song magic. So he was a rather expensive failure when his health nosedived."
Gakupo couldn't help but recall how much the poor boy meant to her. To think he'd concealed all of that…
"They were gonna just let him die at first, then examine the cadaver to find out what went wrong. But… I can't find out what happened to him. All it says is he got moved to another project, on artificial organs."
So the boy lived… Gakupo made a mental note to ensure he was recovered in the coming operation. Hopefully he'd still be of sound mind as a grown adult.
Luka's wistful notes punctuated her thoughts. "They've built so much technology that could save lives… truly better us… cloning, artificial limbs and organs… breakthroughs that could have advanced humanity by decades…"
Her notes turned bitter. "Yet all they saw the use for was to try to control and enslave another race."
"What of the Kagamines?" Gakupo asked.
Gumi paged through another set of documents. "Rin and Len... They're basically a hybrid. They're the first set of clones to survive."
"… You were nothing but disappointments at first. We adopted you legally so we could try and raise you normally. To properly awaken your powers. But you constantly failed to produce a spell or show any unique abilities."
Lola let out a sigh.
"… So when you asked for your freedom… We acquiesced with the hope that perhaps when left to your own devices, the power would actually awaken."
That's all Len and his sister was to them. He was dead right… the Hearts acted so coldly because they didn't want children. They wanted weapons.
He was a weapon.
"Why are you so obsessed with the Seruva?"
He stared into the glass as if he could see them. Their cowardice felt so typical of them – acting as if they were all-powerful, but concealing themselves from any true consequences.
Because the Seruva are going to come back and finish the war they started," Leon spoke.
For a second, Len thought he detected some emotion.
"Lola and I spent years studying the mystery of a massive amount of casualties 1,500 years ago. It defies all logic – hundreds of thousands dying at once? There had to be a cause! Eventually… We discovered the common cultural myth arc of avenging winged beings. We started to uncover the lost history of the Seruva and what they did."
"Kaito-niisan wouldn't hurt anyone…" Rin whispered.
Len heard some whispering behind the speakers. "Kaito… was that his name? I see…"
Lola's voice returned. "You saw what he did in the city…"
"Yea! He was stopping YOU!" Len shouted, "You could have killed hundreds of people!"
Len just barely recognized the indignant female voice that spoke next. "No citizens would have been harmed had your interference not been an issue."
What was her name… they called her Flower? The woman that controlled himself and Rin. "The subject operated within expected parameters. We detected several more hostiles approaching the tower. We'd hoped to draw more of them out… until your companion sabotaged the operation and allowed them to escape."
She let out an annoyed sigh. "He's been so meddlesome… any one of the many subjects he destroyed could have been used to protect humanity once I got the Mesmeratic Overrides installed."
"Kaito-niisan was saving them… you'd never understand…"
Rin's voice sounded so defeated, and hearing his sister like this only made Len's protective instincts flare up even harder. Right now, his parents were lucky he was chained up.
"Typical shallow understandings from prototype humanoids. Forming attachments well beyond their understanding."
He thought Flower actually sounded bitter but… what had she called them?
"Doctor, you shouldn't chide them like that," Leon scolded, "The Gemini clones 'false attachments' are why they succeeded after all."
Of course… if he and Rin were just clones… hybrids… then they weren't twins at all. Just mirror images grown from another Seruva his parents plucked out of the Islands.
Like Kaito.
He felt nauseous and sick. He wanted them to stop talking. He wanted what Rin and he shared to be real, but was it just another manipulation of his parents?
"You two have an important choice to make," Leon said more seriously, "Whether you work with us voluntarily or not, we need you in our arsenal now that the Seruva are breathing down on us. They could initiate an apocalyptic event in mere hours if they wanted to."
"… you're asking us to fight and kill our friends," Rin murmured.
Like his sempai. Like Gakupo. Maybe even Kaito.
"We're asking you to be realistic," Lola said, "You're not human, but you're not one of them either. You were built to serve and protect humanity. If the Seruva want war, we'll show them the technology we've built to stop them."
Len took one look at Rin. She nodded at him.
"Cut our heads open if you want. We're not helping you!" Len shouted.
Lola let out a sigh. "As expected… perhaps it's the Seruva side that makes them so disobedient…"
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO OLIVER?!" Rin screamed.
Another pause. "He'll be salvaged tonight. We expected to use the results to serve humanity. Not whatever cause he fell into."
The microphones turned off and Len saw the people behind the glass leave. If that's how they intended to treat Oliver, he and Rin didn't have a chance. Except they'd made a fatal mistake.
They threatened Oliver's life.
"Rin…" he started to say. The revelations of her not really having a brother had to be weighing on her.
To his surprise, she was staring at him with a determined face. "Len! I don't care what we are. Clones or whatever. You're still my brother!"
To see her put things so simply… his cockiness started to return and he found himself laughing in spite of the circumstances. "Come on, you weren't planning on firing me as your brother, were you?!"
Her tears seemed to fade as she looked to him with renewed courage. "First chance we get… we break out and save Oliver!"
Len nodded his head. "Luka and Gakupo got away with Gumi so… we just gotta wait for them to do something crazy… and then we'll be out of here in no time!"
Arbiter.
Kaito floated in darkness, suspended by light. As if somehow he'd been drawn personally into the war for his heart and mind. Both sides cried out for him, two conflicting melodies trying to bend his ear.
Arbiter. Stand in judgement.
At once he found himself seated in an enormous golden chair. "Where am I?" he said, trying to see form where none existed.
Two shapes began to approach him in the darkness. As they neared him, to Kaito's surprise, he was staring at two near perfect mirror images of himself. The only difference was every place his hair or clothing was blue, the newcomer's possessed red coloring instead. One man's jacket was white and red, the other's black and red.
Each bowed before him. "Arbiter," the black jacketed man spoke, "We are here to present to you the past and present, and then you must make a choice for the future."
Fine, if this is what they intended to do… he would let them. Maybe they'd give him some answers to the questions he needed to resolve anyway.
In a flash, Kaito saw himself on a battlefield. He recognized the battle songs of the Seruva warriors. Though he stood amongst humans, watching the skies, none of them appeared aware of him.
The Seruva dove through the air, ready to slice the humans in half. Their powerful melodies pushed the defenseless earth-bound bipeds to their knees. Furious bolts of lightning carved a path through the assembled human forces.
Though Kaito had only heard of the brutality of the way once, seeing so many humans cut down at once by his own people filled his heart with dread.
"Who started the war?" Kaito asked.
The man in white spoke somberly. "According to humans, the Seruva came to Earth as conquerors, wishing to enslave the disgusting wingless humans."
As Kaito watched the humans torn apart by such violent magic, he felt sick. Were they truly capable of such naked evil? Had he been wrong to have any faith in his own kind? Even in the present, he had born witness to the evil perpetuated by those he trusted.
Soon the battlefield lay littered with human corpses. A victory song filled the air, a long tradition of the warrior caste to signal the end of a glorious battle.
Then at once he was on another plain of war. Yet this was not the open fields of the first battle, but what Kaito recognized as a Seruva settlement. And it burned.
"According to the Seruva, the humans feared what they could not understand, and tried to control the children of the clouds."
He gasped as he saw children flying through the air for safety… only for the sky to fill with arrows, rocks, and other projectiles.
Clearly the humans here changed their strategy compared to before – removing the Seruva's advantage of flight reduced their greatest advantage over them, leaving them helpless.
One by one, the children hit the ground. Some still stirred, others remained silent. He heard a few weak healing ballads. Kaito approached the bodies of some of the survivors, reflexively casting one of his own.
"These are simply memories of souls," the man in black commented in a scolding tone, "You cannot alter what has already happened."
"How many did we keep?"
A human's voice. Several armored soldiers approached. "Oh, maybe about five of em' will turn out all right."
Kaito cringed as he saw one of them draw a sword and approach a fallen boy, no older than 10. As the child attempted to crawl away from him, the soldier roughly stomped on his back, holding him down with his foot. In seconds, Kaito realized too late what he was about to witness. "NO! Stop!" he cried out.
But naturally the ghosts of the past could not heed the words of a man of the present. With a few ghastly slices and screams, the boy found himself rendered earthbound for the rest of his life. "We start training em' now, we might get some use out of him yet!"
As barbaric as the Seruva were in battle, Kaito couldn't believe how much the humans relished mutilating the weak.
Another battlefield. Another horror awaited him. This time he saw a massive human army, wielding catapults and crossbows. He almost vomited when he saw the same boy again, now several years older, chains hanging around his neck and hands, standing with others his age in a line-up.
"Open fire!"
As a charge of Seruva arrived to break the human advance, they faced the first round of projectile weapons. The sky lit up with hundreds of shields, the warriors protecting themselves as the humans exhausted their first rounds. Clearly they were learning to adapt as well.
Kaito heard the sickening crack of whips and the cries of children. "Break them or you'll break next!" he heard a joyless voice cry out.
The air filled with battle hymns. Seruva slaves forced to fight those who flew free. Arrows of light flew with arrows of steel and wood, the elements stirred to force apart the armies.
No matter how brave and strong the truest Seruva warriors… such an onslaught could not be so easily withstood. They began to plummet from the air, body after body landing in the dirt.
Kaito approached the boy, looking for some emotion, but what frightened him was that he no longer appeared to possess any. Had he been forced to do this so many times he had no emotions left?
As Kaito found himself transported again, he almost found himself begging for the end of it but he realized he needed to see this through. He needed to understand the past if he was expected to make any decisions about the future.
Kaito recognized the geography in front of him as that of the Verdant Plains of his homeland. Yet he could immediately spot one major difference… it remained rooted within the Earth.
This time he stood next to a lone woman with long white hair. "Ha… Haku?" he whispered.
He observed her carefully, but she couldn't see him either. "Haku… was a Spirit Caller…" he whispered.
Behind her stood hundreds of Seruva. Kaito realized these likely remained the final free Seruva survivors.
And all around them… the human armies marched through the Verdant Plains.
Kaito was about to witness how much of that story of the past was true.
Haku watched the approaching army. At first her body shook in fear, but then she suddenly calmed herself. She closed her eyes and sang a song in the ancient tongues. Kaito immediately recognized the tones – it was simply a children's melody. It bore no magic.
"She's praying," spoke the man in white.
Soon every other Seruva at her side joined her voice. Such a strange vision upon the fields – humans marching for battle, and Seruva joining in a chorus of the heavens. "Why don't they simply run?" Kaito asked.
"Why should they?" the man in black asked, "Should they spend the rest of their days fleeing, living in hiding, having nothing to return to or call their own?"
He stared at the oncoming warriors. "Perhaps the Seruva would have been no different had they reached this level of total victory. Or perhaps they would have known when to cease. But none of that matters. There are no free Seruva left but the ones you see, and they are tired of fleeing."
Kaito felt power welling up around Haku as she sang. It felt so familiar…
"… they're singing a Harmony!" he exclaimed.
The first round of projectiles flew through the air and he almost expected them to impact her…
…until a burst of white light consumed Haku right on the spot.
In seconds, there was no more Haku standing there, but the great white form of Sujata Hama. She spread her wings and encircled the sky.
In the confusion, the humans began trying to down her. He heard them commanding their Seruva slaves… but he heard a song begin to rise from them as well.
They were trying to grant her their power as well.
The earth trembled and shook as Sujata Hama beat her wings. Kaito took to the air to confirm what he suspected – the Islands rose from the ground, slowly lifting into the sky itself.
"Her heart is filled with the will to create, to save lives," the man in white spoke, "She wishes to end the conflict by granting a home away from humanity. If they cannot live together… they can live apart. But they will both live."
Kaito knew this couldn't possibly be every single human on earth – the clothing reminded him a great deal of some of the ancient Japanese warriors he'd seen Gakupo become so obsessed with. Perhaps this army was Japanese?
He heard screams from the human's side. Not a single Seruva had attacked them… he flew closer to try and see what had taken place…
The humans were slaughtering their own slaves.
He felt disgusted just watching it… seeing them so frightened by their abused captives that they chose to kill them instead?!
Apparently… Haku agreed.
She let out a cry and at first Kaito thought she might be trying to heal them… but he felt a familiar dissonance form in the air. "Dark… Notes?" he murmured.
"Where did they come from indeed?" the man in black posited.
Sujata Hama screeched so horribly… her wonderful song becoming twisted and angry… and Kaito watched her feathers slowly turn black, her eyes glowing red.
"Sujata… Raka…" he murmured.
The great black-feathered terror swept across the plains and Kaito could hear nothing in her melody but destruction.
"Her heart is filled with vengeance. She judged them… unworthy."
A wave of dark magic flew out of her throat, sweeping across the humans and their captives alike… and disintegrating them in an instant. "She… she killed them BOTH?!"
He tried to follow her, finding in this astral form he could just barely stay behind as she dove away from the Islands into the Oceans. Assembled human vessels prepared to fire upon her… but the terrible cries continued and soon nothing remained alive below her...
She flew above land, screeching all the while. More and more humans died in her wake around the Islands.
"HAKU! You'll wipe them all out!" Kaito cried.
"She cannot hear you… but she weeps for them…" the man in white spoke, "The heart of life and peace, the heart of death and war. All of that burden upon one soul."
He found himself pulled along with her as she flew back over land, her terrible song rending everything apart beneath her. Hundreds of thousands of lives ended by the distonal noise. She moved so quickly he realized she was crossing entire continents as she continued her wave of destruction.
This was the power of Sujata Raka.
Finally, Kaito found himself transported to the Verdant Plains. He was shaking from the sight of so much horror as he carefully approached the form of Haku. Once more a Seruva, she was seated in the grass, clutching her knees close to her head.
And she sobbed.
The scene before him faded and again Kaito sat in the chair. "Arbiter."
The two red haired men spoke in one voice. "This is the past of humanity and Seruva. You must now judge the present."
Gakupo kept his eyes locked on the clouds above him. He needed to get wind of any future attacks, from the Seruva, from the humans…
To find himself with so many fronts of war at once. He'd been trained to kill humans – every Seruva warrior knew how to do so. But of course humanity never ceased their advancements, gaining an ever greater technological advantage.
He knew from the stories that humans had nearly driven his people into extinction. Yet found himself dwelling on some of Kaito's lofty goals.
"If I ended the Noise… if I put humans and Seruva back on equal terms… then… maybe we could unite them as well."
"I wonder if he could really achieve that…" Gakupo mused aloud.
"Eh?" Luka asked.
"He wanted to find some way to unify humanity and the Seruva, remember?"
"He wished to do what?!"
Lily's shocked cry matched what Gakupo suspected might the average reaction of the Seruva. "Does he… not understand how terrified the Seruva are of humanity?! Many of them gave themselves willingly to the Noise just to fight them!"
She shook her head. "I can't imagine what our Spirit Caller intends to gain, but it's quite impossible… the Seruva have lived their entire lives in fear…"
Such cynicism was hardly unexpected when the two races stood on the eve of war. "For most of humanity… tonight will be the first time they meet a Seruva," Gakupo mused, "And they're going to meet Seruva who simply intend to kill them."
Kaito always possessed that naivety. That belief that he could somehow magically make everyone happy. But it wasn't often realistic… why would it be now?
"… perhaps we can fix both problems."
Gakupo turned to see Luka staring at him, her face solid and determined. "The humans in this city are going to be carved up if they stay on the surface," Luka continued, "We need a way to get them out of the streets and into safety."
"Pffft," Gumi muttered, "Ain't gonna happen, roads are getting blocked as it is. No way can we get civil defense workers together to handle it that fast…"
"…we don't need them."
Luka turned to Lily. "Commander," she said, her notes growing tighter and tenser, "when your soldiers arrive, will they take any order from you without question?"
The commander looked up in deep contemplation, stroking her chin with her fingertips. "I don't see why not. The ones who are going to come from the clouds are the ones that are most loyal to me alone."
Gakupo realized Luka's plan before she even finished speaking. "… Gakupo, how many will we need to storm Mirror?"
"Once the projectile weaponry is dealt with?" Gakupo said.
His tactical mind turned, plotting formations and directions. Really, he needed only to storm inside… once he got through the front door, surely he, Luka, and Gumi could handle a smaller rescue operation…
"We could do it with roughly two dozen at the door and a strike team inside."
"… then you would have me divert all the rest of them to defending humanity."
Naturally, the commander caught on to Luka's thoughts as well. "They may balk at first but…"
She watched the sky for a few moments. Something about the look in her eyes, the way they suddenly shook. Gakupo sympathized – they both shared a similarly horrifying invasion of their minds and bodies. Being turned to weapons. Their fellow Seruva were the same way now, alert only to the destruction Meiko wished for them to inflict.
"They'll take my orders. Without question."
Gumi began cackling. "Awww, see, we can totally make everyone shake hands when this is over!"
'That's woman's ability to disrupt everyone around her is uncanny…' Gakupo thought to himself as he observed her wily grin.
The green-eyed hacker stood up. "I've got Finch's stuff memorized. I can show you guys the tunnel system, all the shelters… you guys form up a plan nice and quick, right?"
Gakupo saw movement in the sky. For a moment he worried it was Meiko… but the feathers falling were white. "Indeed… we must disseminate the locations at once!"
Luka crossed her arms and lowered her head. "Now to ensure the people will believe the Seruva…"
"AHHHH!"
Gumi started hopping up and down in excitement. "What if we had Nasu-san do it?!"
Gakupo's eyebrow twitched at his insulting nickname. How had he not noticed it for so long? "I can't very well fly up to every human out there…" he muttered, "And why would the humans trust me?"
Gumi held up her smartphone. "Because you're the 'Samurai Angel' that saved Teto! The videos of you went all over the news!"
Right on the screen, a photo of Gakupo in the theater a mere two nights ago. "You're actually viral now! There's photoshops, and a bunch of hashtags, and like three or four SubReadits!"
So the humans had gone from treating him as a death god to a being of peace. He hadn't even been thinking of how they might have perceived him in such a public situation given how dire the situation was at the time…
… and they thought he was a samurai…
"Ah, Gakupo… you're famous already!" Luka said with a warm smile.
Gumi clutched her phone tightly. "Okay. You come up with what you want everyone in this city to do, I'll film it… and make sure everyone sees it in minutes."
"I don't understand," Lily said, "How are you disseminating his image?"
Gakupo let out a laugh. "Humans are quite obsessed with technology that lets everyone see and hear them at all times!"
Miku saw the doors to her cell open. The odd ponytailed woman in front of her looked quite young to be an employee, but her id tag, "Dr. V. Flower", seemed to indicate she was.
"Take her to the isolation chamber. Get the rest of this block ready for processing. I've got an appointment with the Hearts on the top floor with the new intake, but make sure Cyva forwards the results to me."
Miku tried to make a mental note – "new intake" sounded like Kaito. So he was safe for now but… probably not for long. And whoever this "Cyva" person was, it sounded as though Miku was going to have to get through her to save him.
As Miku was escorted out of her cell, she saw the Seruva across from her escorted out of her own. She turned her head to see dozens of other Seruva walking away. Every one of them showed nothing but resignation of their fates.
As she passed by the brunette Seruva, she leaned close to her. "Don't worry. I'm going to get you out of here."
The Seruva didn't react to Miku's proclamation as they passed by, but she felt a gun jabbed in her back all the same.
But she meant it. If she was setting Kaito free, she'd set every Seruva in the building free on the way.
'Positive. Positive.'
Meiko needn't even see the "miracle" to understand what had happened. The rift she stood before shuddered and cried out when Sujata Hama first flew, as if an opposing force had tried to snap it shut. Yet after a few moments… it stood still.
It awakens.
'Of course it has.'
So the Spirit Caller had survived his trial as the Seal. The time to solve a crisis himself only increased his power. And now… now he'd gathered Sujata Hama's limitless power.
You must claim it.
The priestess turned around the cavern to survey her makeshift army – several hundred warriors, each imbued with the heart of the Noise. Each ready and willing to carry out her orders without hesitation. What did it matter that Sujata Hama severed her link to just four of them?
"Humans… aren't good or evil… They're… so much more than that. Some of them are truly evil… and some of them are truly good… but they all have so many wonderful melodies and lives…"
It was pure chance that Kaito would be the one to inherit the power he had. A bloodline once populated by so many Seruva at once, at one time there might have been several candidates to take his position. If he'd been truly lucky, he might have never even taken the title at all, simply passing the potential on to his children and living a simple life.
But he was the last Spirit Caller. Circumstances and the sacrifices of the Seal winnowed the pool down to just one person upon whom every single one of their powers and history rested. She'd had to plan her entire operation around the idea that he might never learn the Hymn, relegating their greatest weapon to the dust of time.
How wretched it was that he'd become so thoroughly tainted by the evils of humanity. Had he awakened to this power as a Seruva... no doubt she wouldn't even need to go as far as she was. He would simply sing the last Hymn, summon Sujata Raka, and purge the Earth of the virus populating its surface.
Your power is greater.
She was not a Spirit Caller. That process had failed. But… she was something far greater than a Spirit Caller.
Finding Kaito was now an imperative. Whether he wanted to fulfill his duty or not.
They shall fall to you.
Meiko spread her arms out wide. "Today is the day of the Seruva's vengeance against our foes! We shall tear this city apart until we retrieve the Spirit Caller again!"
If she expected her gathered charges to cheer, she was quite mistaken. They remained eerily silent. They possessed no more emotions or will beyond that which she gave them. Perfectly ordered… perfectly obedient.
They would darken the sky and the humans would cry out in fear.
One by one her warriors took to the air, flying down the tunnels to finish their job. She pursued them, ready to direct their might wherever Kaito chose to hide.
Leon's right eye twitched as he watched the surveillance footage from outside the city. The calm of the early morning hours would soon shatter as he detected the motions of hundreds of winged beings in the clouds.
"They've finally started their war."
"It only took them twenty years," Lola remarked, placing her hand on his shoulder and gripping it tightly.
Twenty years. Every penny the they made the two of them invested in their technology. Their blood and sweat, their city, their company, even their children existed only for the events that took place tonight. Ever since he'd learned of the true history of humanity.
The creatures of the sky looked down upon humans. They'd stayed out of the way, but how could he be so certain they always would? They'd senselessly murdered hundreds of thousands of humans in the past. One perceived slight against and they could change their minds.
And that spoke nothing of Seruva prophecies of the End. That a howling legion of souls summoned by the Seruva themselves would devour the Earth.
But Leon and Lola would not allow such a wretched event to pass. Warning humanity of birdmen in the sky would have been useless, but they were not alone in believing in the Seruva. He'd deliberately not hired anyone in his organization that didn't absolutely believe in the reality of the Seruva's existence, and the threat they posed.
"Tonight… the Seruva learn why humanity will never stop fighting them."
Lola picked up her phone and dialed a few numbers. "Release the CV conversions. Give the Seruva something to think about."
She remained silent for a moment before her eyes widened. "I should watch what?!"
A/N:
And sorry for another unplanned delay. I tried to announce the one-week delay on my profiles on Wattpad and , but this time what did me in was hardware failures. Oh, I didn't lose any DATA, I keep those backed up on a cloud. But it did pretty much stop me from having access to my desktop to write properly and that basically led to Chapter 18 getting done late. I thought I was back on track for a normal Friday night update and then BOOM, SSD died. I put up an announcement on my DeviantART, but that should hopefully be the end of technical problems keeping me from my work. Chapter 19 is on track and going a lot smoother since I don't have to juggle QUITE so many plotlines coming together at once. Splitting the cast has been quite the headache! I probably won't set up a storyline that does that again, to be honest.
As for this story though, Akaito makes a pair of appearances, both the black and white coated versions! I don't tend to write with the Shion brothers as a group, but I couldn't pass up using him as a sort of Id representing the morality of the choices Kaito is being presented with. It should be obvious who the brunette Seruva Miku met is, but she'll get more time next chapter. As for Cyva… check your Vocaloid fan nicknames. I couldn't help but slip her in, I'm still a big fan of her voice.
I also realize placing Kaito in a judge-like position sounds like a Mothy thing, but I was really gunning more for the idea of a religious symbol. I did deliberately avoid calling him the "judge" for a reason though.