CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Revelations
Scanning Mewtwo with an X-ray revealed a small device implanted into his nervous system that Jill and Samus determined was remote-controlled and would send an electrical shock through his entire body when activated. Fortunately, it seemed the device would only work if he was in close proximity to the remote's user, and even better was that Krystal was able to sense exactly where it was and telekinetically crush it so they wouldn't have to surgically remove it.
"Seems it was repressing some of your abilities, too." the cobalt vixen said once Mewtwo sat up. "Can't have that, can we?"
"Thank you, Krystal." Mewtwo said with a small smile. "…um, no hard feelings about 'beating you around the bush' so to speak?"
"Don't worry about it. We've recruited a powerful ally tonight, and from what I gather, that's just what we need right now."
She jumped slightly when Ike patted her on the shoulder.
"Let me correct you. You made TWO powerful allies tonight."
"My mistake. Nice sword. Where did you get it?"
"It was given to me by my country's queen. It's called Ragnell."
"Looks heavy."
"It is, but I've gotten used to it."
"I'll say."
While the others talked amongst themselves (save for ROB who had gone into sleep mode), Saya stared out the window feeling more worried than ever. She was worried about the friends she'd left behind, but most of all, she was worried about what had just happened.
"The axe is gonna drop, and I have no idea when or how."
She jumped slightly when Chris casually took a seat next to her.
"You doing okay?" he asked.
"Y-yeah. I'm fine."
Chris smiled and stared out the window with her, noticing that they were driving past a large shimmering lake with numerous cherry blossom trees lining it, the moonlight glowing off their petals.
"Y'know, I've wanted to go vacationing in Japan for the longest time. People kept telling me it's the country to go to for natural beauty, and up until now, I thought you could pretty much say that about every country on Earth…well, except maybe America."
Saya was thoroughly convinced that she couldn't be cheered up after what had happened, but Chris had most certainly done it. She stifled a laugh.
"Hey, there are those bright shining eyes I was lookin' for." he chuckled in turn. "Tell me something: what's the one place you want to visit more than anywhere else in the world?"
For Saya, there was no need to hesitate.
"I have a really close friend who I promised I'd go home with."
"Really? Where's he live?"
"A place called the Nowhere Islands. He didn't really tell me too much about them, but…he must really love them. He single-handedly saved them…he nearly killed himself to do it."
"How old is he?"
"He's twelve."
"Twelve?! Good God, I was still getting in fist fights with bullies when I was twelve!"
Saya laughed again in whole-hearted agreement. Lucas seemed far braver than either of them risking his own life like that, but that fond laughter faded away when Chris spoke again.
"Speaking of self-sacrifice, thanks...you really saved my clumsy ass back there."
"Oh…no problem."
"How did you do that, anyway?"
Saya was already bent on not answering him, but it became apparent that the others were listening, Jill and Trish in particular sitting across from her.
"Ain't that the big question of the day." said Trish. "C'mon, honey. What'd you do?"
"I-it's not a big deal." Saya stammered. "I just did what I had to do."
"Kid, you were getting blasted in the chest with a fifty cal." said Chun-Li as she raised an eyebrow. "And there isn't so much as a single scratch on you."
All eyes were on her and not letting up for even a second. She had to keep telling herself that they were just curious, but it was beginning to feel a lot like they were trying to force it out of her.
"I got lucky."
"People don't get lucky with things like that." Samus retorted. "Come on. It's not like you have anything to hide."
"I don't have to tell you anything!"
"Saya." Chris said. "Those people are dangerous and they kidnapped you for a reason. Maybe it has something to do with you being able to survive five hundred bullets to the chest, maybe it doesn't. Either way, you have to tell us."
"LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!"
She didn't sit still to see their shocked expression at her suddenly yelling at them. She shoved them aside and ran to the back of the vehicle, running into the bathroom and locking herself inside.
"What in the world was that all about?" asked Ike.
"Here." said Krystal as she got up from where she was crouching over Mewtwo. "Let me handle it."
"Are you sure? She looked pretty distraught."
"I'm sure. Just watch me work my magic."
Krystal could already hear Saya starting to cry in the bathroom, but that crying ceased when the vixen gently knocked on the door.
"Saya, please. Come on out. Everything'll be fine."
There was no answer. Krystal sighed.
"If you're going to come out, can I at least come in and talk to you?"
There were a few moments of silent before Krystal heard light shuffling footsteps and finally the unmistakable unlocking of the door. She slipped into the room and spotted Saya sitting on the toilet, her eyes red from crying.
The vixen was crouching in front of her almost instantly, gently stroking her arm.
"Please don't cry, Saya." she said softly. "Everything'll be alright."
"How do you know? How do you know that we're not gonna get jumped and everything will go straight to hell."
"I don't, but you can't think so negatively about the whole situation. If you're worried that we aren't going to understand your situation, you don't need to be."
"You're wrong. I do. I'm cursed, Krystal."
That one word caused Krystal's ear to twitch uncomfortably and caught Saya's attention for a brief moment, but she simply felt too distraught to scan through Krystal's memories and see what it meant. She appreciated that she was just trying to help, but it simply wasn't working.
"Saya, listen to me. I know that you know why S.I.N. kidnapped you, and I know you don't want to talk about it, but if you want us to help you, you're going to have to."
"Mom, I can't. It just hurts too…"
"Mom?"
The tears leaked out again at that word. Saya's mother...Krystal reminded her so much of her. The way she spoke, her soft eyes, her kindness. That, however, was the whole problem.
"Krystal…it just hurts too much to talk about it. I don't even want to think about it.
"Holding it in will only hurt you even more. We can help you, but only if you tell me your secret.
Saya lay motionless and kept her eyes away from Krystal's hypnotizing gaze for a brief moment, worried that the cobalt vixen would convince her. Her father told her not to use her power out of fear that she would be discovered and hurt, and by implication, that meant he didn't want her to tell anyone, either. But what good had that done her? She could have easily saved Bowser. She could have taken Hades, Ghirahim, and Juri and ripped them all apart in seconds. She could have just gone back to the orphanage and forgotten any of this had ever happened
But after thinking it over long enough, she decided that Krystal was right. There was no point in hiding her secret anymore. Practically everyone on the planet knew it already, so what was wrong with people who were actually trying to help her knowing it?
She sighed, but turned to Krystal.
"I called you 'Mom' because you remind me a lot of my mother…and I think you'd make a great mother, too."
Krystal smiled and stroked Saya's cheek.
"That's very sweet of you, dear."
"You're psychic, right?"
"Yes."
"If you scan through my mind, you'll see that I said I owed a debt to Yukimura Sanada that I could never repay."
"Yes. What about it?"
"I can't repay it because Yukimura Sanada sacrificed his life in the Sengoku battle of Tennoji so that I could escape… and that happened almost four hundred years ago."
Krystal had every right to be confused at that moment, but as Saya told her story, it all started to make sense…and also started to sadden her more and more to the point where she nearly shared Saya's tears. The others remained outside of the room, waiting patiently until Krystal finally came out.
"So do you know what's going on?" Chris asked.
Krystal looked at each of them with a somber expression.
"To answer that question, ask yourself this one: do you really want to live forever?"
Chris raised an eyebrow, both due to not having any clue as to why she would ask that and due to him pondering his answer before saying "Quite honestly, no."
"Good, because neither does Saya. But she can. She herself doesn't really understand exactly why, but…"
At that point, Saya was so sick of people talking about her behind her back that she decided that she needed to get directly involved if it was ever going to stop. She needed to show them what was wrong with her, not have someone else tell them. She kicked the door open and stomped toward Ike. What she did was one of the most shocking things they had ever seen anyone do. Firstly, she pulled Ragnell away from Ike, marvelling him and the others at her ability to hold it with only one hand, but that marvel went away when she suddenly turned it toward herself.
"SAYA, DON'T!" Jill screamed.
Too late. Saya plunged Ragnell straight through her chest up to the hilt before anyone could stop her. They all stood there with horrified expressions save for Krystal who simply sighed again. Then came something both confusing and relieving: Saya had winced, a clear demonstration that she had harmed herself, but no blood leaked from the wound and she showed no signs of succumbing to this injury.
"Yes." Krystal said softly. "It seems that Saya is physically incapable of dying. Chronologically, she is over four hundred years old."
"How…how is that even possible?" Chun-Li sputtered.
Saya let the tears continue to fall from her eyes as she stood there with Ragnell sticking through her, seemingly not affected at all by its immense weight or the fact that she had impaled herself on it.
"My parents told me that I died once when I was just under fourteen years old. They prayed to the heavens above that the gods would give me back to them by any means necessary. Then their prayers were answered…but not in the way they were expecting. As everyone and everything got older around me, I stayed youthful…and to this day, I have no idea why."
"This must be it, then." Samus concluded. "S.I.N. wanted to extract Saya's immortality from her and use it on this Ganondorf guy we keep hearing about."
Trish nodded.
"Right. If you combine that with the Triforce of Power or whatever it's called, even a god could be answering to you…but there's one thing I'm not getting, Saya. Why would eternal life be a curse to you?"
"I already said it. I stayed the same, but everyone I loved and cared about got older around me and eventually died...eventually, I was all alone. Every time I grow close to someone, I know that they're going to end up dying while I'll always look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day and look the exact same way. I'm cursed with immortality...a curse that keeps me from ever seeing the ones I love again, even in the afterlife."
She wiped her eyes, realizing that she was looking like the most pathetic person on the face of the Earth but being unable to do a single thing about it.
"I still remember that night. My parents had gotten so old that they could barely move anymore. I could feel their life starting to sleep away, and…I started begging them to take me with them. Saying that I didn't want to be alone…I must have cried for days on end."
Mewtwo nodded.
"She is right. If the body did not die, and the sorrows of mortal life continued to pile up after losing countless loved ones…the entire world would seem like nothing more than an eternal prison. Saya is trapped in life with no means of escape. Not by her own hand or anyone else's."
None of them could even pretend to understand how that must have felt. To wake up in morning and not look a day older while everyone and everything else decayed around oneself. She had no family left. They had all wasted away centuries ago, and just thinking about that could be enough to drive even the most innocent of people completely insane.
Saya clenched her fists and looked up angrily.
"But…I also see people's memories."
"Whatever do you mean?" Krystal asked.
Saya began looking at each of them and saying single words to them that struck a wide variety of emotions that ranged from fear to sadness to anger.
"It's the curse of Yami, apparently. I see everything that you've all seen, but the things I see the most clearly are all the worst moments and the monsters that have done you wrong, whether they made you sad, afraid, or angry…and just before you got here, they did something to me. They tapped into my mind and made me look into the psyches of people I've seen before. They're going to use your hatred of those monsters against you."
She finally pulled Ragnell out, revealing nothing. No sort of stain on the blade or even an injury on her. She slumped to her knees.
"And I can't bear to think that they'll try to use me to do that. I've watched people suffer time and time again…and the thought of being the cause of it all…the thought that you're all risking your lives to keep me safe…it's more than I can take. I don't want people to get hurt because of me. It's times like this when…I wish I just wasn't born at all."
Ike stepped forward and took Ragnell from Saya before placing his hands on her shoulders. A warm smile was spread across his face.
"Saya, I promise you now that there is a reason that we all want to protect you the way we do. It's because you and many others like you are worth fighting for. I don't care if you're cursed or not. You're still a living and breathing girl, and you have every right to have someone to be there for you. We will risk everything to keep you safe. Even our own lives."
"Don't. Enough people have already died because of me, and it's only served to make me even sadder."
"Then don't think that we're fighting to keep you safe." said Chris. "Think of it as us doing our jobs and serving justice. S.I.N. and 'Ganondorf' are evil in every definition of the term, so instead of trying to save you, why don't we save the world instead?"
When it was put that way, it made Saya's sorrow be washed away in an instant. Chris was right. She had been thinking so selfishly for this entire ordeal, whining to herself about how people were risking their lives for her. Now maybe it was time to try and stop S.I.N. instead of running away from them.
"Whoa, whoa, hold up!" Parker said suddenly to the vehicle's driver. "Hit the brakes!"
The vehicle came screeching to a halt and every single one of the passengers scrambled to the window to see what had happened. As it turned out, a group of people had stepped in front of the vehicle, and the second Saya saw who the members of this group were, her sorrow was gone in an instant.
"My God…open the door!"
Chris obeyed and Saya jumped out, breaking into a run and running into Lucas' open arms.
"Thank God you're all okay." she said, very near to crying again.
"Thank God WE'RE okay?" Ness asked with a huge smirk. "You're the one who got kidnapped!"
Chris and the group he led exited the vehicle, Chun-Li and Trish immediately identifying a different person in Saya's group.
"Well, so you got off scot-free, eh?" Chun-Li asked Dante with her arms crossed.
"I guess justice was served…no. I don't know. Just roll with it okay."
Meanwhile, Trish crossed her own arms and impatiently tapped her foot as Morrigan took notice of her.
"Great. It's you."
"Aw, come on, Trish. Have a little respect for your boy's ex-lover."
Dante raised an eyebrow.
"Is that why you're always praising that guy? Because you two used to bang each other before he actually hooked up with a chick with a hint of sense in her mind?"
"He's still hotter than you."
After she and Lucas had practically squeezed the life out of each other, Saya was approached by Takamaru with a bright smile.
"You can bounce back from just about anything, can't you?"
"You know me."
And so did Lucas, but he didn't dare to mention it and risk making her upset. Not when she felt so happy to be reunited with them.
"Are we all heading the same way, then?" asked Chris.
"We're heading for the Aokigahara." said Pit. "We're chasing a demon named Jedah Dohma."
"Well, we were headed back to Tokyo. We're hunting S.I.N."
"Jedah's working with S.I.N." said Saya. "He's the ringleader, in fact."
Chris smirked.
"Perfect. An even bigger army. Officer Xiang, I assume you've got them under tight enough surveillance"
Chun-Li smiled and responded with a thumbs-up.
"I'll be just fine.
"Got it. Jill, Parker, and I gotta head back to HQ and file the report on the situation, so you take it easy out there. I don't fancy bringing you all home in body bags."
Chris and Jill got back into the armoured vehicle and sped off into the distance, leaving the massive group to themselves.
"Alright." said Samus. "You guys seem to know where you're going. You lead the way."
Link and Takamaru proceeded to the front of the pack as the army of twenty-one began to walk across the plain in the direction they'd been travelling before. Within Saya, however, Mewtwo and Krystal both detected a hint of distress.
"Something wrong?" Krystal asked.
"Aokigahara…the suicide forest." Saya whispered. "…that's the place where I died."
"…how did you die?"
"I wandered in one night. I got lost and couldn't find my way out, and then I started hearing…voices in my head. Begging me to join them. They started moaning and screaming and…I just couldn't take it."
"And how did you come back?"
"…I wish I knew."
And the stress remained, none of them knowing that two demonic entities were spying on them from far away, both of them smiling maliciously.
"Her army grows ever larger." Jedah said. "The pieces are falling perfectly into place."
"Zing."
"Shut up, Hades."
But why do I have the strange feeling that reading memories and eternal life aren't the only powers Saya has?
And for those of you who don't know, yes. Aokigahara is a real place in Japan. In fact, it's one of the most popular places for suicide in the entire world, beaten out only by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. There's even signs set up at the forest's entrances urging those who go in for suicidal purposes to reconsider and seek help. What does Aokigahara have over the Golden Gate? Well, like Dante said in a previous chapter, it's rumoured to be haunted by the spirits of those who died there, but the second bit might really creep you out. Despite being an admittedly beautiful-looking forest, there's almost no wildlife there and there's enough trees to block off the sound of the wind, thus making the whole place eerily quiet.
Did I creep you out? Sorry. Just thought you ought to know that.
SOUNDTRACK SO FAR
Saya, Ness, and Lucas- "Pollyanna" from Earthbound (SSBM)
Marth to the rescue- "Together We Ride" from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (SSBM)
X and Zero versus Kirby and Meta Knight- "Meta Knight's Revenge" from Kirby Super Star (SSBB)
Link versus Morrigan- Morrigan's theme from Marvel versus Capcom 3
Link versus Dante- "Never Surrender" from DmC: Devil May Cry
Krystal and Trish versus the Moblin horde- "Lock and Load" from Devil May Cry 1
Krystal versus Mewtwo- "Poké Floats" from Super Smash Bros. Melee
Saya versus Ghirahim- Ghirahim's battle theme from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Frank versus Ghirahim- "On a Mission" from Dead Rising
Courthouse caving in- "No Redemption" from DmC: Devil May Cry
Samus escapes- Metroid Prime main theme
Chun-Li versus Samus- Chun-Li's theme from Street Fighter IV
Standoff on Mount Fuji- "Douchuumen" from The Mysterious Murasame Castle (go on Youtube and look for a version by a group called ysk1210)
Saya and Lucas- "Love" from Mother 3
"LET'S ROCK!"- "Devils Never Cry" from Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening
The Devil Trigger- "How Old is Your Soul?" from DmC: Devil May Cry
Ryu and Ken versus Juri- Ryu's theme from Street Fighter IV
Jedah's assault on the airship- Airship theme from Super Mario Bros. 3 (SSBB)
S.I.N. versus B.S.A.A.- "Ride on Sea" from Resident Evil: Revelations (or Biohazard: Revelations if you live in Japan)
Ike to the rescue- "Eternal Bond" from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Saya's sorrow- "Kinder Days" from Sin and Punishment: Star Successor (known as Successor of the Skies in Europe and Australia)
An army of twenty-one- Main menu theme from Super Smash Bros. Melee