Torchwood Japan Library Archive - User contributions [en]

A Helping Hand

2014-11-16T17:04:55Z

Yaijinden:

<HTML>
<TITLE>A Helping Hand</TITLE>
{{Storybox
|title= A Helping Hand
|image=
|author= Yaijinden
|creationdate= 2005
|continuity= SSEU Earth 1337-B
|timeplacement= 2005
|synopsis= Artemis offers romantic advice to Hotaru over a crush she doesn't like that she has.
|rating= PG-13
|additionalnotes=
|}}

<h1>A Helping Hand</h1>
<h2>By Yaijinden</h2>
<h2>June 4th, 2005</h2>
<h2>Time Placement: 2005</h2>

One of the conveniences of being friends with the staff of the university library was that you had access to a multitude of resources that were simply not available to most people. When they had first started planning Artemis's legal defense, Hotaru had not considered that they would need access to the law
library- but when the idea had struck her, they had jumped at the chance to have actual reference work available to them.

After having spent the past several days almost locked away in there, pouring over tome after arcane tome, Artemis no longer found that he had the heart to mock Jedite. Yes, the Shittenou had taken law up voluntarily, as a way to begin laying the groundwork for his next world domination scheme- but Artemis was being forced to look into this to save what was left of his livelihood. Yes, he was living simply- but he was also living free of any work obligations. If Luna got what she wanted...

Suddenly irritated with the train of thought, Artemis sighed and put the book back down on his table, putting his fingers to his temples and rubbing. He was going to develop eyestrain if they couldn't find the hole in Luna's prosecution- and they both knew there was a hole. His wife- soon-to-be ex-wife, he corrected
himself- was aiming for far more than her fair share (and if she got anything, that was more than her fair share). There was a hole in the argument the prosecution, there had to be- her argument was based on one too many tenuous conjectures.

All they needed was a precedent that spoke the other way, and they would be in the clear.

He closed his eyes and rubbed at them, irritated. Artemis still wasn't used to spending this much time in his human form. His eyesight was a cat was the equal or better of any normal
person's- but they didn't let cats in the library, and they didn't check these books out, so human it had to be.

What he disliked most about being human, though, was having to wear the trucker's cap to conceal the golden crescent moon on his forehead. It was a ridiculous contrast to the rest of his outfit, but given his other options for headwear, it was the best of his options.

The cat-turned-man glanced over to Hotaru, who was nose-deep in a massive book regarding alimony settlements in the 1980s. "I couldn't read another word," Artemis announced, pushing away from the table. "It's lunchtime, anyway."

She didn't look up. She didn't give any indication that she'd heard him, either. "My treat," he offered.

Still no response. Raising a mildly concerned eyebrow, Artemis silently stepped around the table and stood behind Hotaru, noticing the dual-jacketed book concealed within the much denser legal tome. Once he recognized the title, printed above the text, the reason for her preternatural concentration on the text was suddenly obvious.

"As he thrust his quivering..." he read aloud, trailing off.

The effect was almost instantaneous. Hotaru reflexively snapped the book shut and twisted away. The horrified expression on her face was blended thoroughly with embarrassment- the sort of emotional combination worn by every and any teenager that had been inadvertently discovered by a parent doing something that no parent ever really wants to see their child learning about.

"I don't- I don't know how that got in there," Hotaru said quickly, turning a brilliant shade of red.

"Sure you don't," Artemis observed with a small, sad smile.
"You know I appreciate your help, but if all that's going to happen is you reading that trash..."

"It is NOT trash," the other girl responded fiercely, clutching her book to her chest. "These are CLASSIC works of literature.
I'm just... I'm just broadening my horizons."

"Danielle Steele," he said dryly, "is not on any classics list I've ever heard."

The angry glare Hotaru flashed at him was not new to him.
Artemis had been on the receiving end of those glares more often than he cared to remember. He waited a moment for her to say something, to be irritated with him- but Hotaru was silent, taking measured breaths. There was a strange sincerity in her gaze...

...but buried in there, though, was a seed of hurt that he was immediately regretful about touching. "Hey, now," Artemis said gently, holding his hands up defensively. "I didn't mean-"

"NOBODY does!" Hotaru shouted back at him, slamming the book on the table. She pointed a finger at him and tilted her head back. "Nobody understands what this is about!" she yelled, ignoring the stares of the many law students. "You don't know!
Jedite doesn't know! Minako doesn't know! Nobody knows what this is about and you don't CARE, either!!"

"Hey now, that's NOT true-"

"This is just a JOKE to you!" she screamed at him. "It's a JOKE, and I'm SICK of being the butt of it!!"

There was a violence in her voice that Artemis had never heard from Hotaru, and it killed any response he had intended.
Dumbstruck, he could only watch as she whirled around on her heel and fled the library.

Only after she was gone was he suddenly keenly and acutely aware of all the eyes in the room, trained on him...

<CENTER> ***</center>

Park benches were often very good places to sit. Some were planted under trees; others were fixed on hills, situated so you could see a long distance.

Hotaru's eyes were fixed sightlessly on the horizon, legs folded to her chest. She didn't want to go home right now- especially not after she'd blown up at Artemis. She already regretted blowing up at him; he'd just been convenient, and if she was distressed enough to be angry at him for something that wasn't even really his fault...

When she heard a slight rustle in the grass, she knew who it was that had come. "I'm sorry I yelled at you," Hotaru said quietly, sighing. "I'm just tired of everyone hassling me when they find me with something that isn't by Yeats, or Whitman, or written in Enochian..."

"It's okay," Artemis said reassuringly, leaping onto the bench aside her. "You... gonna be okay?"

Hotaru looked away. "I'm tired of people treating me like the baby," she said dourly. "Just because I didn't have a magical love affair dropped in my lap doesn't mean I don't know what it is. Between all the couples around here, I KNOW how these things go!"

Artemis sat down on his haunches and tilted his head. "This isn't about them at all, is it?" he said with a sad smile.

"It... ugh." She laughed, a brief, bitter sound. "Maybe it isn't," Hotaru conceeded, meeting his eyes for a moment. "But it certainly doesn't help that they insist on making my life difficult."

"Okay, then." The cat took a deep breath and rubbed against her leg, putting himself in her way. "What's really bothering you?"
he asked.

"...it's just a trifle," she responded, offering an ingenuine smile. "Nothing I can't handle on my own, I promise. Weren't you offering lunch a few minutes ago?"

"Even if I ignore that pathetic attempt at changing the topic,"
Artemis replied, unimpressed, "we're talking about you. Not lunch. This has something to do with that guy you met in the other channel, doesn't it?"

Hotaru raised an eyebrow. "Were you like this with sempai when she was younger?" she said, mildly impressed.

He rolled his eyes resignedly and shook his head. "Oh, the stories I could tell about those arguments..."

She relaxed after a moment, putting her feet on the grass and scooping Artemis up into her lap. "I thought," Hotaru observed contemplatively, "and I still think, that there was a lot to respect about him. He's smart. He's funny. He's not as well-read as I am, but he's an artist in his own strange way...
and it's attractive."

"So what's the problem?" he inquired, curious.

"I'm... pretty sure he knows I like him," she said, keeping her hands busy by petting Artemis. "I thought I'd done pretty well at keeping it a secret, but I'm for almost sure he knows, and I'm absolutely sure he knows how little experience I have... yo know, with this sort of thing."

"And?"

"And... well, that's it." Hotaru looked skyward, squinting against the sunlight she so seldom exposed herself to. "He knows, and he hasn't said anything to me about it- and I don't know what that's supposed to mean."

"Hmm. What do you think it might mean?"

"I don't know," she repeated, frowning. "There are so many options, and it could be any of them. He might be testing me to see if I ask myself. He might be shy. He might not be interested, or he might be interested in me but not in what I'd want..."

The Soldier of Ruin shook her head after a moment. "I almost wish I had sempai's power to read people," she murmured. "It would make things so much easier..."

Artemis was not new to the counseling business. It was something he'd been working at his whole life. Why was he having to fight himself to advise her? "So why haven't you asked him yourself?" he inquired, making himself smile for her benefit. "The worst that can happen is he says 'no...'"

"Maybe," she said thoughtfully. "But what if he says yes?"

"...I think you lost me. Isn't that what you want?"

"Ugh... maybe." Hotaru sighed irritably, scratching behind his ears. "We were acquaintances before any of this. I've had time to become familiar with some of his failings."

"And?" he prompted.

"He's not... the most moral of people," she admitted, hesitant.
"He's even proud of that fact, and I'm not sure why that appeals to me at all. If he tries to drag me into that amoral indifference... what if I like it there? What sort of compromises will I end up making?"

"Hotaru."

"Mmm?" She watched as he sprang from her lap and turned around to face her. Distantly, Hotaru wondered if she had seen his lecture face before.

Artemis closed his eyes for a moment, looking for the right words. "Hotaru, nobody can make you change who you are but you," he said confidently. "If you don't want to stop being thoughtful, kind, attentive, then listen to your heart. You've got a strong inner voice- don't let yourself drown it out with doubt."

"'Follow my conscience,'?" she said dryly.

"Only you can decide what makes you happy," the feline figure agreed, nodding. "Nobody else can decide for you... and that means you have to decide for yourself."

"...yeah." Hotaru nodded after a moment, an absent smile playing on her lips. "I think, somehow, I knew that already.
Maybe I just needed to hear it from someone else."

Artemis smirked and nodded agreement. "That generally helps, yeah."

She leaned over and scratched the top of his head before standing up. "I think I want to get back into the air conditioning," the pale young woman said lightly, smiling. "And maybe you can pay for dinner, then."

The cat blanched. "You know, I was almost hoping you'd forgotten that..."

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[[ Category: Yaijinden ]] [[Category:SSEU Stories]] [[Category:The Suburban Senshi]]

What Child is This

2014-11-15T20:44:36Z

Yaijinden:

=Part 1 (3129)=

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<TR><TD ><BLOCKQUOTE> 

A.D. 3129 
QUINOX CITY, QUINOX, SOL SYSTEM 

In the pursuit of her work as a pediatrician, Hakashi Taeruko, MD was possessed of many tools. She stood tall atop three thousand years of accumulated medical knowledge, had access to the finest tools of diagnosis and research, and had been reknowned during her practicing days as one of the most talented general practitioners of pediatrics. 

Her hot-shot doctor days were years past her, of course. Now, Dr. Hakashi was pleased to do often-neglected but just as necessary work pro-bono: care of the young wards of the state. The doctor's bedside manner endeared her to almost every child she checked up on; she could make them feel at ease, subtly administering tests and drawing samples while talking gaily about whatever subject presented itself at hand. 

She knew hers was a dying breed on the core worlds, but she took it in stride. With sophisticated artificial intelligences being able to do such things without tiring or looking for living space, flesh-and-blood doctors (as opposed to the more common medical technicians, who interpreted results given to them by impersonal instrumental arrays) were by and large relegated to frontier worlds. Hakashi herself was an old woman, and she largely expected herself to be one of the last wholly human doctors on her home world of Quinox. 

Dr. Hakashi had seen many things in her day. This, truth be told, was one of the most unusual. 

She was familiar with most alien physiologies as a matter of training. While the existence of the Serenity line (and their strange, truly magical powers) had made most of the non-human interstellar powers wary, they had not banned their citizens from coming there and observing the majestic splendor of the human civilization. Hakashi had performed regular, routine checkups on at least half a dozen alien species and genotypes in her career, and often stumbled across unwanted hybrid sons and daughters in her orphanage trips, and it seemed as though the current cause of her concern was one of these. 

It was a little strange for non-human, or partly-human children to be found in a Quinoxian orphanage, but it was not unheard of. This one was perhaps two years old. Very healthy, as far as she could tell-- responsive to all of the sensory tests, no known illnesses, and to all other investigations, a perfectly normal (if abnormally intelligent) little girl. 

What was unheard of, though, was that even with all of her tools and all of her accumulated expertise, she could not for the life of her discern this child's genetic heritage. 

In Hakashi's defense, there were a number of things in the girl's biology that were simply impossible. Her chromosones, encoded in a triple-helix pattern (which was in and of itself a feat of genetic engineering that quite frankly blew her mind), contained a mishmash of various traits. Some of the more regular codons the computers could recognize as human, but others were a sort of step to the side-- inexplicably older, somehow cleaner-- and others still were beyond anything she had ever seen before. 

And that was only the code of her physiology. She had two hearts, both beating in a synchronous rhythm. The rate of oxygen/carbon dioxide exchange in her lungs was astoundingly high; her breath rate was perhaps half that of a human when at rest. Her hearing and vision had both tested out to be at least time-and-a-half that of a comparable human. Compared to all this, the deep, almost navy blue of the girl's hair was a matter of almost tangential interest. The girl's anatomy could not be anything from the present-- she was either a gene-modified child of the future, or she was something older... from unknown old days, when the air was cleaner and the world was newer... 

Hakashi clicked her tongue self-reprovingly. She was getting superstitious in her old age. There was a reasonable explaination for this, a valid grounding in science-- there had to be. She glanced out the one-way window, looking to the child as one of her assistance distracted her from the tests with a storybook. For all the girl's incessant curiosity, she had initially displayed a distinct dearth of language skills; over the course of the few weeks she had been here, though, she was picking up the language and using the vocabulary of someone twice her age. The caretakers reported that she had easily become the most taxing of all the children amongst all of her peers, and that mostly because she would never shut up. 

Her parent, or whoever had left her here, had given her the name Soseiko. The computers informed her that the name was derived from an old Japanese word meaning rebirth, a return to life, or regeneration. Hakashi had run a mitochondrial DNA test to see if her mother was on file, just as matter of procedure, and had not been surprised when the computer reported that the DNA was not on file. All in all, when she put the many factors of this girl's brief stay together, Dr. Hakashi did not like what she saw. This was big, whatever it was-- bigger than her, bigger than the orphanage. 

But if it wasn't... if she was just being paranoid and superstitious... then this child really was in need. Besides, the orphanage was warded against malign spirits as a matter of procedure. Without concrete proof that the child was actually a threat to the others, Hakashi could not in good conscience refuse her shelter. 

She looked back through the window, observing that Soseiko and the attendant were now having a significant discussion on how hot the Three Bears' porridge had to be before it was too hot to eat, and how cold it had to be before it was unpalatable. The dialogue shifted quickly thereafter to the attendant reluctantly explaining to an insistant Soseiko just what exactly porridge was, and what exactly a bear was. Soseiko decided that she would much rather have pie than porridge, and then insisted that the increasingly harried-looking attendant continue the story. 

Soseiko was easily the most precocious child she had ever observed. Hakashi only regretted that she would not be able to make a more significant case study out of her. If she could unlock the secrets in that girl's genes, what benefit could she give to the whole of humanity? 

No, better to keep it quiet. At least for now. If she continued to be as interesting in her later life as she was now, the doctor thought with a wan smile, then she would be leading a very, very interesting life. 

That, in and of itself, was enough cause for sympathy. 

 </TABLE>

=Part 2 (3132)=

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<TR><TD><BLOCKQUOTE> 

AURATOPIA, QUINOX, 3132 

"Do you know why you're here, Soseiko?" 

"Because I'm too smart for my own good," the girl said mournfully, eyes cast downwards. 

The man sitting at the desk across from her paused for a long moment. She and he had met a few times before, once yearly, when she was old enough to start understand what was going on in the world around her. The orphanarium may have been state-run, but that only meant they had to find administrators with a certain level of compassion. 

Gods knew these kids needed it. 

"What gives you that idea, Soseiko?" the man continued, raising an eyebrow. 

"Everything." Her light brown eyes flicked up from the floor to meet his own gaze before dropping down again. "I'm too smart to play dumb and cute like the other kids when people come," she sighed dejectedly. "I'm never going to get adopted... I'm just going to get shoved into a foster home when I turn ten, and then I'm going to end up just like every other person who comes out of the foster homes." 

"Now now, you're just being silly." He smiled reassuringly behind his folded hands. "Lots of people come out of the foster homes as perfectly normal, well-adjusted human beings." 

"Human BEINGS come out of those!" she snapped back at him vehemently. "I'm not normal! I'm better than everyone else and I don't WANT to be better!" 

Best to change the topic. "You're a very bright girl, Soseiko," he said, offering her a small smile. "People who are looking to adopt like their children to be smart." 

"Not smarter than THEY are," Soseiko responded, the fight having left her. "And I try to pretend I'm dumb, but then I forget and say something about subquantum particle physics, or history, or nanotech..." She paused and looked back up to his eyes, turning away just as quickly. "I always forget, and they just freeze up and look at me like I'm some sort of freak..." 

She didn't continue on with the obvious thought-- she was convinced that those thoughts were right. He'd read this in her file, and had prepared himself for that train of disagreement. The caretakers had noticed that as a general rule, Soseiko stuck mostly to the small circle of near-human children at the orphanarium, emerging only to excel in her schoolwork and, occasionally, in the athletics competitions that were held against other private schools. When the girl bothered to compete, she was almost unmatched; the only children who could really stand up against her were the children of the Senshi and Knights, and the few other non-human childran on Quinox who possessed an above-human average stamina. 

Regardless, it was time to direct this conversation to its intended destination. "Soseiko, do you know what 'ki' is?" he inquired. 

The girl looked up at this. "'Ki,'" she mused, distractedly. "Noun. Kay Eye. The dispersed bioelectric field as a whole, generated by all living beings with a nervous system and the source of the mystic powers wielded by the Senshi." 

"Good," he replied, nodding. "I see you've been keeping up with your schoolwork." 

"Actually, that wasn't in my schoolwork," Soseiko shrugging. 

He concealed a smile. "Nonetheless. Do you remember those tests we had everyone in your age group take a few months ago?" 

"The ones where the military guys came in and hooked us up to those weird machines and we had tell them if we felt hot or cold?" 

How did she know they were military? "That's the one, yes." 

She nodded after a moment. "Yeah, I remember it. What about it?" 

"Every few years," he explained, "there are a few mandatory check-ups on all the children on Quinox. The government is always looking for new people, so they look for people with a certain gift and try to get them to join up." 

The girl nodded emphatically. "The Crystal Imperium is one of the few interplanetary governments to mostly use ki techniques in its soldiers," she said importantly. "When Cooler, King Cold, and Furiza were killed by the Z Fighters a thousand years ago, most of his empire died with them, and nobody's done it since then. A lot of people say that the Senshi powers are just a different way to use of the Changeling fighting style, you know." 

"Is that so?" 

"They're sort of right," Soseiko continued absently, brushing a bit of her hair behind her ear, "but the people who say the Senshi are more like Saiya-jins are righter. Senshi have Senshi kids-- everyone knows that, just like saiya-jins who went super saiya-jin had kids that could go super saiya-jin." 

"Very impressive," he replied, leaning forward. "Where did you learn all of that?" 

"...history reports," she answered after a sudden pause, abruptly very quiet. There was that look in her eye again, he noted-- the sudden awareness of her difference. It wasn't unusual for children her age to have obscure interests (he personally remembered being fascinated by prehistoric Earth saurians) that they would delve deeply into, absorbing otherwise meaningless bits of trivia in the pursuit of their hobbies. Knowledge of the incredible powers of the saiya-jins was more or less public record. While the bloodline of the species had spread thin over the past thousand years, leaving a remote few of their line with the power to actually achieve that vaunted state, their incredible powers were a known quantity to the Crystal Imperium. 

But Furiza? He hadn't heard that name since his post-secondary schooling. 

"The test you took a few months ago," he resumed, "allows the government to see if you would be fit for a place in the higher echelons of the military. They have ways to let normal people serve, of course-- technicians, administrators, medics, engineers-- but they like to have their officers, the people in charge, be capable of defending themselves in a fight." 

Soseiko looked up to him again, puzzled-- but in that look was a dawning awareness of what he was saying, and why he was saying it. "They want... me?" she said, a flurry of emotions in her voice. 

"You're not the brightest star they've seen," he said with a small, sage smile, "but you apparently have quite a talent, especially for someone with no formal training. The military is interested in recruiting you for their officer training program." 

"Really?" She was sitting upright in her chair now, her attention fully corralled. "But why do they want me?" the girl protested, confused. "I'm only nine. I can't fight. I don't even LIKE fighting." 

He smiled. "You're in good company, then. If you'll remember your history texts, neither did Serenity the Third." 

The girl flushed and looked away, but he could see the small, self-conscious smile on her face. The comparison to the noblest of the noble lines was an argument from authority, the sort of logical fallacy that she might become aware of in ten years' time; for now, though, it worked masterfully. Now, to seal the deal. "If you agree to go, you'll be with people who are more like yourself," he continued gently. "The military likes to have children that are about your age, so they can train them better for when they get older. You're a little younger than they normally recruit, but you're also smarter than most kids your age. You should be able to pick things up very quickly." 

She nodded, absorbing this information for a moment, then looked back. "Do I have to go?" she said uncertainly. 

"No, Soseiko, you don't have to go if you don't want to." A sad smile crossed his expression. "Just the same, though, I would recommend trying it out for a year. I went to military school myself when I was a boy a little older than you; I didn't have the talent like you do, though, so I washed out after a few years. If you don't like it, you can always come back-- though if you stay here, I feel obligated to remind you that you're getting close to the age where we start looking to put you in a foster home." 

"The foster home," she echoed, making a face. "Yeah... I guess I don't really have a choice, do I?" 

"You always have a choice, Soseiko," he corrected her. "Remember that. In any case, young lady, you don't have to decide right away. Think about it for a day or two, come to a decision then-- but be sure to think about it. If you don't want to, I'll tell the military you're not interested; if you want to, I suggest packing a suitcase before you tell me or one of your teachers. The military people tend to come very quickly when called, and they do not like having to wait for personal effects to be packed up." He paused, regarding her with an inscrutable look for a moment. "Any questions?" 

Soseiko shook her head. "That'll be all, then," he announced with a nod. "You may go back to class, now." 

The girl stood and bowed briefly, taking a few steps back before disappearing out the door and returning to the world she had been raised to. The girl had the potential for strength, he noted with a mental sigh as he returned to the business of administration. He wasn't in a position to see the results of her tests, of course, but he was certainly in a position to know when someone's skills were in demand. 

Besides, the liason he'd spoken to had been very firm about Soseiko's desirability. In the years since the child's arrival, she had been thoroughly tested. Nobody had managed to find latent psychological programming or unusual psychospiritual trauma, but that only meant that she was untapped potential, and had to be guided before she became dangerous. 

The poor girl would probably never have a truly normal life, he thought with a twinge of sadness. Hopefully, in the years to come, she would forget she'd ever wanted one.</TABLE> 

 BR> 

=Part 3 (3136)=

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<TR><TD ><BLOCKQUOTE> 

ACADEMY OF GALACTIC LEARNING AND STUDY, 3136 

The supply closet was a good place to cry. 

She'd discovered this by accident a few months ago, when one of the older students left it open for longer than they were supposed to. There were no full-time custodians at the Academy; all of the cleaning work was done by the students, some of which cleaned it as part of their regular duties, and others who were assigned it as disciplinary measures. 

As a result of the regular troublemaking by the older generation of students, the school was more often than not clean as a whistle. You could eat off of the floors without fear of infection (as some students were instructed to do after a particularly unusual violation), and you could see your reflection in the shine of the floors. 

Not that she was in a position to do so, at the moment. The closet offered a comforting darkness, one where she couldn't see how much of a freak she was. The medical programs had looked her over and given her a clean bill of health, but they didn't really know for sure what she was... how unclean she felt. 

And this was just the beginning. 

Nobody really knew what was going on. Not anymore. She knew there was something fundamentally wrong about her, when she didn't need to concentrate to read auras, or manifest her a reiatsu... they said she was talented, but she knew all along she was too talented for this to be true. 

The teachers meant well, but they couldn't help her. The nice students couldn't stop staring, and the mean ones... well, she was better off hiding. Better off where nobody could see her for the freak she was. 

It was her personal, inviolate hiding place. In the corner, nobody could see her; if she heard the lock cycle open, she could hold her breath, and nobody would notice her. Even if someone DID decide to look for someone in here, there were a few spell-based stealth techniques she'd spent her free time learning. Here, she was safe from everyone else... and she didn't like to think it, but everyone else was probably safe from her, too. 

She stifled another sob as she heard the door lock cycling, lapsing into silence as someone cracked the door open. Another cadet stuck her head in the door, the flourescent light of the hallway behind her casting her features into shadow. She averted her eyes, looking away-- people had a tendancy to know when they were being watched, somehow-- and breathed no louder than a mouse might. 

In defiance of her invisibility and silence, though, the other girl slipped through the door, oriented herself towards the corner she was hiding in, and quietly said one word: "Hello?" 

She jumped at the other girl's voice, banged her head on the shelf above her, yelped in pain, and then cursed herself for being jumpy. "I KNEW there was someone in here," the other girl said triumphantly, closing the storage closet's door behind her as she squatted down to the other girl's level. "I hate to pry," she said, concerned, "but why are you in here? Don't you have class, or something?" 

"No," she retorted indignantly, her voice catching in her throat. She paused, coughed, and continued, more quietly, "I'm not doing anything wrong..." 

"Didn't say you were," the second one replied, apparently content to talk casually in the almost absolute darkness. "'S a good place to hide, though. It's cool, it's dark, nobody really comes here... if I was sad, I might come here, too." 

Her cheeks burned. How could she have figured it out so quickly? "Go away, please," she said haltingly, turning her face away. "I just... I want to be alone. Please." 

"Mmm." The other one stood up with a rustle of clothing. "I'm going to turn on the light, okay?" she announced. 

"No!" she protested sharply. "Don't turn--" 

A click punctuated her sentence as the overhead lighting ignited, casting the small closet in a bright, pale luminescence. She immediately turned her head back away from the light, eyes shut against the sudden stabbing pain, and squirmed further back into the corner. "Just leave me alone," she moaned. "Please..." 

"Tell you what," her self-appointed companion declared, sitting back down to level with her. "I'm really bad about being nosy, so unless you tell me why you're crying in a supply closet, I'm going to tell the counselors about you and they'll make SURE to figure out what's going on." 

"Good luck," she snapped, shooting her a glare from the corner of her eye. "Nobody knows what's wrong with me." 

"Maybe," the other one replied, a smile flickering briefly over her face. "But hey, y'know? I like to get to know people before I eat their souls. Makes it tastier." 

"Makes it... wait--" she paused, suddenly very confused, and looked over at the other girl warily. "Eat my soul?" she said dubiously. 

"No, not really," the other one shrugged, amused. "But I got to see your face. You're the one they're calling Sanjiyan, right?" 

"My name isn't Sanyjiyan," she answered bitterly, voice cracking as another flood of tears threatend to overcome her. "I just... look like some thing out of those stupid Earth stories. That's all." 

"Ah," the other girl nodded sagely. "Well, what IS your name?" 

"...Shasa," she murmured. "My name is Shasa." 

"Shasa," she repeated, committing the name to memory and extending her hand. "Nice to meet you, Shasa. My name's Soseiko." 

Shasa turned her eyes to the outstretched hand, glancing from it to the girl's face. "Why are you bothering me?" she asked, finally letting her indignation at being discovered drain away into a more general exhaustion. "Can't you just leave me alone?..." 

"I could," Soseiko admitted, crossing her legs as she sat down and letting her hand drop down to support her. "But I don't want to. Most of the people in the Academy are royalty, and friends of royalty, you know-- it's a few rare exceptions, people like you and me, where we sort of get... you know, discovered. At random, even. Then, we get brought someplace like here, so they can keep us under watch while we mature into the lovely blossoms of destruction we have the chance to be." 

The confusion Shasa was feeling must have been evident, because Soseiko scootched closer on her bottom and offered her hand again-- but palm up, wrist held loosely. "Do you know how to take a wrist pulse?" the other girl inquired. 

"Yeah," Shasa responded, eyeing the outstretched hand warily. 

"Do it," Soseiko offered. "Humor me. Please?" 

Reluctantly, the girl edged out of her very comfortable corner and took the proffered hand in her own. A thumb settled on the base of her wrist-- Soseiko gently pushed it over about an inch to the side, an act that drew a raised eyebrow from the pulse-taker-- and paused when she found the beat. "That's... very fast," Shasa noted after a moment, concerned. "Too fast. But you're not sweating, or breathing hard..." 

"Two hearts," Soseiko replied with a smirk, tapping both sides of her chest with her free hand. "Averages out to about a hundred and seventy beats per minute. I've always been able to read ki patterns, and psychic disturbances, and magical emissions... well, when I knew what I was looking for, I could see them. Also, I've got orange blood-- you wanna see?" 

"Eww." Sasha dropped the other girl's hand and blanched. "No, I don't want to see your blood," she replied with a tired snort/sigh. "Why are you saying this? What do you want?" 

"Just letting you know you're not the only freak out there," she answered, rocking back on her haunches. "I mean, I know this's probably really, really weird for you-- I guess I've had it easier, since I look human and all and I've been this way since I was born... but you're not the only one." 

Slowly, she looked up to the other girl. "You're not... human?" Shasa asked, hesitant. 

Soseiko smiled crookedly and took a lock of her blue hair in hand. "You don't think they'd let me dye my hair this color, do you?" 

"I guess not," Shasa responded, frowning. "But I've seen hair color like that before, on normal people..." 

"Point," the other responded, rolling her eyes. "I'm partly human," she said after a moment. "But only partly. I've got some normal DNA, sure, but it isn't... well, it isn't really a lot, compared to the rest. The docbots don't know what I am, either, y'know, but you don't see me kvetching about it in the darkness." 

"Well, you still LOOK normal," she said bitterly, eyes narrowing. "People can't see two hearts whenever they look at you, or orange blood, or whatever else you have. I can't get away from it... ever." 

"Mmm." Soseiko leaned back in. "Yeah, I see how the whole third eye thing'd make that hard. Does it work?" 

"Does what work?" 

She tapped the center of her forehead. "That." 

"Well, yeah... I guess." Shasa sighed. "Not that it really helps..." 

"I see," the other girl said absently, nodding. "I like your eyes. I always wanted grey eyes when I was a kid... reminds me of rain. Like a cloudy day, full of water and the smell of wet earth. People used to say that if you had a third eye, you're close to enlightenment." 

Shasa smiled tightly. "Well, I sure don't feel enlightened." 

"And that's the first sign that there's still hope." Soseiko stood up, grinning, and leaned backward in an arcane sort of stretch. "I've got classes to go to, so I'm going to go ahead and let you sulk some more if you want. If you want to talk later or something, you know my name-- don't be afraid to use it, okay?" 

"Okay," she responded, nodding, as the other girl reached up to turn the light off and made her exit from the storage closet. Surrounded in the comfort of darkness once again, Shasa tried to fit herself back into her little corner beneath the shelves, willing herself to feel bad again. 

She was surprised to discover a moment later that she wasn't in the mood for self-pity. She wasn't sure why, to tell the truth; it wasn't like she felt better about her freaky mutant abnormality, or that Soseiko had said anything to help her... save that she thought her eye was pretty. 

Or, Shasa thought a moment later, her eyes. The one on top was the same misty grey color as the two in her head set where everyone else had them. She'd said that she had pretty eyes. Did she mean it? Was she just talking to fill the gap? 

Or was the compliment... genuine? 

Either way, she was too bewildered by the entire exchange to feel unclean, be depressed, or even mope right now. As Shasa squirmed out from her hiding place, she wondered briefly if that hadn't been the other girl's intent the whole time. 

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=Part 4 (3140)=

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ACADEMY OF GALACTIC LEARNING AND STUDY, QUINOX, 3140 

There were many unusual bits about being a student at the Academy that Soseiko had learned to appreciate for what they were worth. For one, the Royal Family had sent their own children to study here. This was important to Soseiko, mostly because this meant that it assured her that she was getting the best education that she could possibly get. The Royals would certainly want the best for their children, and how could she do anything but benefit from the trickle-down of such attention? 

The other quirk about the Academy was that sometimes, every once in a while, one of the Royals themselves would supervise one of the classes. Most often, they came to view the upper-level combat courses, scoping out potential recruits for post-secondary conscriptment; every so often, though, they would step into one of the lower-level classes to see the new generation straining to prove themselves. 

His Highness had chosen a good time to come. Soseiko's class in lom-chi-ki was taught by a man who had created a good way for students to prove themselves-- grading by the ladder. At the beginning of the year, he had randomly ranked the students, and informed them all that the person on the top of the list at the end of the year would automatically receive the highest grade in the class. Once per week, a student could issue a challenge to a person higher on the ladder; if the challenger was victorious, they would bump the loser down a rank and take the place above them. However, if that student lost the challenge, they could not challenge that person again for two weeks... and since a student was only allowed to answer one challenge per week, the challenge of a higher-ranked person always took precedence over that of a lower rank. 

Soseiko hadn't taken lom-chi-ki classes until the beginning of the year. As a result, she had occupied the bottom rungs of the latter for a long time. Her climb to the top had been slow, but inevitable; her classmates had long been familiar with Soseiko's ability to succeed at something when she put her mind to it, and physical combat was apparently one of those things. It didn't hurt that she was naturally stronger and faster than almost all the other students, and it certainly didn't hurt that the few people who COULD tap into greater power sources were forbidden to do so in ladder matches. The ladder matches were for the perfection of technique, and while weaving spells was certainly an advantage in actual fighting, it did not measure one's raw talent in unarmed fighting. 

It was a small distinction that Soseiko had learned to exploit. 

As the first-ranked student in the class, there was nobody for her to challenge-- and as challenges were resolved from the bottom up, she was always the last to fight. Her challenger this week was a boy named Joshua, an Earthan import, who held the third rung of the ladder. Joshua was talented in hand-to-hand fighting, probably owing to his distant Saiyan ancestry, but he wasn't her equal. She was pretty sure that nobody in this class was, really, but she couldn't fault them for that. 

Joshua was, at the moment, finishing off the match he'd been challenged to. The seventh-ranked student, another boy by the name of Reisashi, was very good when it came to the unarmed portion of the contests; he was limber, loose, and very quick with his hands. Reisashi couldn't convey his speed through weapons, though, and while he was certainly as good (if not a little better) than his current opponent at grappling, Joshua proved to be the dominating fighter in both the blade and bo matches. 

A strong kiai shout concluded the match, with Joshua's blade poised at Reisashi's gut and with Reisashi's blade too far away to deflect the final match-winning point. Sensei Rokubungi sharply called for a conclusion to the match; Reisashi checked his wild strike, and both combatants separated. Rokubungi barked out another set of commands; the two students bowed first to him, and then to one another. Soseiko smiled to herself, internalizing the pattern of attack Joshua had been using-- and suddenly realizing that the look that he was giving her in return was not the usual scowl with which he regarded everyone else. 

The expression passed after a moment, his sneer reasserting itself after a moment. If Soseiko didn't hear the sudden intake of breath from the girl sitting aside her, she would have chalked it up to memory. "Oooh," Shana said, gently nudging her peer. "Did you see that?" 

"See what?" Soseiko replied, attempting to forget what the other girl was talking about. 

"The way he was looking at you," she whispered, nudging her friend with a bigger grin. "He wasn't straining his face or anything!" 

"Maybe he forgot to clench," the azure-haired girl responded, rolling her eyes. 

"I've not seen him ever look at anyone when he wasn't constipated," Shana murmured insistently, giving a single thoughtful nod. "You don't think...?" 

"HIM? No! No. No way." She had NOT wanted to think about him like that. "Not a chance," Soseiko said in a clipped, emphatic whisper. "He's... y'know... not interested in things that aren't fighting." 

"He looked almost like a normal person," Shana marvelled. "Wow." 

She rolled her eyes. "As normal as anyone gets around here." 

Shana responded with a sharply-placed elbow, and Soseiko accepted it as was her lot. There'd been a lot of change in the other girl since she'd known her; maybe, Soseiko thought, some of it would stick once they parted ways. They were quiet again for some time, even when it came time for Soseiko to take the mat for her match. 

No words were necessary between the two girls-- their confidence in her victory was absolute. 

The order of matches this week was set to grapples, staves, and swords. The girl performed a few preliminary stretches, getting her muscles ready for another workout as Joshua emerged from the crowd of students. On a whim, Soseiko looked up between shoulder rolls, trying to catch his eye; when all she could see was the perpetual scowl that was constantly on his face, she could feel a bit of the tension leave her frame. 

If he really DID like her, she might feel bad about kicking his tail up his hindquarters. 

The few rounds of grappling were swift and certain. Joshua was measurably stronger than her-- not only because he had ancient Sayian genes, but also because he was a few years older than her, as well as a boy-- but one of the first lessons of lom-chi-ki was that it was not worth the effort to try and lift the mountain. 

Rather, she put her time in causing an avalanche, bringing the mountain to her. Saiyan genes or not, he still called uncle after she'd applied sufficient force to the elbow lock she quickly applied to him. The next two fights were similarly swift and brutal; while he almost broke her winning streak by hyperextending her shoulder, Soseiko countered this ploy by executing a standing flip, following this up with a leg-sweep and taking him down in the same fluid motion that reset the position of her arm. 

Rokubungi-sensei's sharp bark concluded that match. Both competetors picked themselves off of the mat, bowing to one another once again as the teacher's assistants quickly supplied a pair of staves. She and he accepted the weapons provided them with another bow, and took positions some feet apart from the other, waiting for the instructor's shout to begin the match. 

At his call, Soseiko quickly shifted into a defensive stance. Joshua always began a bout with a quick series of offensive strikes, trying to catch his opponent off-guard before they could read his intent and counting on the early victory to demoralize the other fighter. Months and months of watching Joseph fight, though, had ingrained his preferences into her memory. He himself probably wasn't aware he preferred this sort of tactic. 

Given how big he was, this would have been the proper strategy against anyone who didn't take pains to be observant. She deflected his opening swing and hopped over the follow-up sweep, feinting with her own weapon to his chest; he bought the bluff and brought his staff up to parry an upper-body attack that never came, leaving him open for her to place her weapon between his knees. A sharp push knocked him over. A kiai shout, and a would-be injurious swing, brought a conclusion to the round. 

One of the teacher's aides marked the point for the girl as they separated. Soseiko watched him more closely this time; examining the inevitable tells that she had picked up on her classmates in the many months. The stance suggested he was going to be more wary this time, ready for her to whip out something technical and tricky to defeat his overwhelming attack. When the match called out, she maintained her own defensive stance for a long moment. They circled one another, each waiting for the other's move; between steps, Soseiko launched herself forward and batted his staff to the side, and laid another swift strike at his neck. 

By the time Joshua had read her move, it was too late to do anything about it but freeze. Rokubungi nodded severely, signalling that she had earned her second point, and they stepped apart once again. The boy's memory was absurdly short, she marvelled, a small smile creeping across her face as he finally settled into the middle stance-- their last three ladder matches had pretty much exactly like this one was going to. He opened up strong for the first match, overreacted on the second, and then tried to fight her at her own game in the third. 

Joshua was a powerful fighter, but a tactical genius he wasn't. 

He wasn't sweating it on the outside, but she'd gotten him unnerved. With both misdirection and sufficient bluffing having defeated the options of total offense and defense, he was going to try and draw her into thinking he'd fallen for another trick-- and then, he would compensate with another blow. She played to him a little longer, feinting and away, giving him openings he knew he wouldn't take, and building the speed between feints-- 

and when he lowered his guard completely, expecting her to bob away, that was when she struck. 

The hollow crack of the staff echoed in the otherwise silent room. Her opponent staggered back, surprised by the rapidity of her attack; Rokubungi-sensei barked, "Point!" as the rest of the classroom began applauding lightly. Soseiko couldn't quite erase the victorious smile from her face as she bowed to Rokubungi, then to her opponent, and then performed a more elaborate, Occidental bow to the audience, which only encouraged them to be more energetic in their approval. 

She relinquished her weapon to the assistants, accepting the bokken they handed her and testing its weight in one hand, already concocting her strategy for the next match. He liked swords, was almost as good with a blade as he was with unarmed combat, and would likely be expecting more of the same... 

"Do you really have to do all the showboating?" 

His voice drew her back to the concrete. "No," she admitted with a smirk, resuming a combat stance. 

"What's the point?" he retorted, his scowl settling deeper and more angrily into his face. "If you're not going to take me seriously, then END it." 

"I've got you two for three already," Soseiko replied with a shrug and a wink. "I think I'll take the time to enjoy this one." 

His expression darkened. "So this is... entertaining to you, is it?" 

"Oh, come off it." She motioned with her weapon to his. "Like you've never gloated before. Are you going to fight, or are you going to jaw at me all day?" 

"Oh, I'll fight." Joshua brought his bokken up into a high, aggressive stance. "I will MAKE you take me seriously." 

"Enough!" Rokubungi bellowed. "This match begins!" 

Both students immediately snapped into memory, bowing first to the older man, and then to one another. A moment later, they had returned to their previous stances, awaiting only their sensei's barked command to begin-- which, a moment later, he gave. 

They stood apart for a long moment. Soseiko watched him briefly, wondering if he was going to shift stances or if he was going to go ahead and attack. If he voice was any sign, he was either going to go at her aggressively, or he was simply going to concede her the match by permitting her to strike at him and win. But which was it? 

The girl was so consumed with the decision that she almost missed the brief shimmer of building ki in her opponent. 

With a furious kiai shout, Joshua crossed the space between them faster than they eye could see and delivered an incredibly powerful stroke upwards, knocking her bokken upwards and out of the way. Her hands stung briefly from the impact, but she squelched the surprised yelp. She couldn't call forth her own ki without a moment's preparation-- she'd never needed to, as ki usage had always been forbidden to use in training against cadets unless properly supervised by someone else. Her weapon was away to where she couldn't use it to defend herself, and she wasn't in a position to dodge whatever he had planned next-- 

-- so when he merely turned his bokken to deliver a hard blow to its hilt, she was briefly thankful that he hadn't chosen something more potentially dangerous, like her head, or her neck, or her abdomen, or legs, and she continued to be thankful until the pain receptors caught up with her brain. 

The next few seconds were a flurry of motion that she barely followed. The other students reacted with a gasp, various levels of shock and concern registering amidst them; long before any of those could take action, though, both Rokubungi and the aides were in action, with the latter both disarming Joshua and taking him down to the mat, and the former delivering an atemi strike that would de-synchronize his ki circulation for a time. 

It was over before it started. "Back to your seats!" Rokubungi said harshly, delivering a swift chopping gesture to the rush of students. They complied meekly, falling back into ranks, and the older man crossed the distance to the kneeling, obviously pained girl. "Show me your hand," he said, tone indicating this was not a request. 

Reluctantly, Soseiko stopped cradling her hand and let him look at it, making sure to avert her own eyes. If she saw how bad she knew it was, she knew she might lose it. Rokubungi seemed less inclined to react on anything than an intellectual level. "Bones broken," he said matter-of-factly. "Fetch a healer... and the Monitors." 

The elder student bowed and quickly made her way out the door. Gently, Rokubungi released Soseiko's hand and walked calmly over to the student laying prone on the ground, both arms positioned where their dislocation would be a matter of ease. Joshua, wisely, was not attempting to resist the less-than-gentle ministrations of the more-skilled student sitting on top of his back. "You are aware of the rules of this dojo, cadet," the sensei observed evenly. "Ki expression is forbidden within these walls during ladder matches." 

Joshua remained stonily silent, facing the wall ahead of him. 

"The cadet is disqualified for violation of the rules," Rokubungi said dispassionately, straightening and regarding the assembled class. "Furthermore, he is forbidden to issue challenges for the rest of the semester, and this burst of violence will be noted to the appropriate authorities." 

"No!" Soseiko shouted, staggering to her feet. "I'm not done with him yet! I don't need tow hands to--" 

"The cadet," her sensei repeated, turning to face her with a severe look, "is disqualified. This match is concluded. Cadet Soseiko is the victor and retains her position." 

As much as she wanted to press it, she knew the nature of that look. Soseiko took several slow, deep breaths, calming herself and focused her mind on the sharp, stabbing pains in her hand. He'd struck her there to disarm her, not somewhere else where she might have been more injured... what did it mean? 

The medic arrived moments later and shortly before the two Monitors did, escorting both students to their different destinations. Rokubungi began barking orders as though nothing had happened, and the other students obeyed without question. Soseiko stole a look at her antagonist, trying to discern something, and suddenly realized that he was looking back at her, scowlless... and with a look of regret. 

But not the regret of being caught, she wondered. The regret of something deeper. 

It would be something for her to think about while the machines in the hospital re-knit her bones. 

 
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=Part 5 (3142)=

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"I'm dreaming," she mused. 

"You're dreaming!" Joshua echoed, surprised. "How did that happen?" 

"It does, sometimes," Soseiko answered, looking through him to the clock tower on the other side of the school. It was only late o'clock, much too early for anything but the lifeless mask of Quinox to be turning to the sun. The planet defended itself against hostile minds with its own power, only revealing its moddled steel and purple surface to those who were trusted enough by those who governed the will of the world. "I can see through you," she thought aloud, frowning. "Are these your true colors?" 

"I show you my face every day," he replied, still confused by her query, and took a step out of himself. Joshua's shell smiled winningly to her before it began crumbling in the stiff breeze, flakes breaking off and blowing into the wind. Soseiko watched it disintegrate and watched herself close her eyes and turn away. "It's hollow," the boy explained, gazing off away from her. "But you already knew that." 

Her grief would not manifest itself no matter how hard she wanted it to. "I always did," she said sadly. "I hoped, though." 

"That one of us was real?" he inquired, turning around to face her. Joshua was naked without his shell, now, skin drawn tightly over his already-gaunt frame. "It's convenient," the boy added, frowning. "But it won't last. We're not going to have the miracle romance." 

"It's not fair," she said stiffly, straightening up and sneaking a glance over her shoulder at his skeletal frame. "Everyone else gets love," the girl added, loosening up a bit. "I don't want to see through it. It's not just chemicals, it shouldn't be, it can't be. I won't let it be." 

"You don't want to be hollow, either," he agreed, nodded, and took a step towards her. "But you can't escape it. Aren't we the sum of what we are?" 

Soseiko shook her head fervently. "Life is more than the sum of our parts," she said. "Experience and action makes us what we are, strengthens the soul..." 

"A dispersed bioelectric pattern generated by the presence of a starseed," he agreed. "Past lives can be determined with an accuracy of no less than eighty percent with the right science. Starseeds germinate and re-germinate in bodies that are like their previous owners, giving them the opportunity to repeat the same mistakes." 

"We can learn," she retorted stubbornly, hands balling into fists. "We don't have to do what came before. We can learn from experience, become more than what we were..." 

Joshua tilted his head to the side. "'That which does not kill me makes me breakfast'?" 

She frowned and shook her head. "Makes me stronger." 

"Saiyan errors at best," he snorted. "Are you sure you're strong enough to embrace that?" He took another step closer, expression hardening. "Boil you down to your essence. Give you adversity, see where your genes end and your spirit begins." 

"You're not Joshua," Soseiko said suddenly. "You're something else. You wear his face, and you want to hurt me..." 

"But who am I?" He advanced another step, expression hardening into an impartial mask. "This is your dream, isn't it?" he inquired, smiling. "Your subconscious. If you really want to be free, you just have to keep yourself in disarray. If you find yourself, you run the risk of losing yourself. Stay unharmonious, stay anonymous. Embrace mediocrity, and you will be too busy being mundane to remember regret." 

Her eyes narrowed in answer. "I shall not fear," Soseiko replied coldly, her previous uncertainty crystalized into resolution. "Fear is the mind-killer. I will face my fears, and I will let them pass through me. Only I will remain." 

Joshua took the final step, closing the distance between them. "Hollow," he said casually, reaching out and placing a hand on the center of her chest between her breasts. "What terrifies you is buried within your nature. What you are. What you might become. It is why you embrace their ways like you do, why you push yourself in the ways they tell you to, why you obey them so willingly. You will hide yourself in someone else's will, and there you are sure you will be safe." 

"I do not fear you," she repeated angrily, but there was a waver in her voice that was not there before. 

"You do not fear me," he agreed, pushing her gently-- and the image of her uniform cracked, fragmenting and blowing away in the breeze. "You fear yourself. You hate being hollow, but you will not commit yourself to yourself for fear of embracing something terrible." 

Her controlled demeanor snapped abruptly, emotion coloring her face. "I'm HUMAN!!" Soseiko screamed, momentarily forgetting the flaking-away of her garments. "I've always been human!" 

"But never entirely human," Joshua said sadly, taking a step back. "There's too much mystery for one person. The you-that-might-be is lurking in your genes, waiting for the right time to come out and hurt people." 

"It's MY life!" she yelled back at him, hate in her eyes. "I'M in control! These are MY decisions!" 

There was a strangely very real hurt in Joshua's eyes as he regarded her. "Committment to your own destiny will only bring you pain," he sighed, shaking his head. "Committment to yourself will only give you the room to fall... and from some falls, there is no standing back up. Not as you were. But if you want to see what you are, what lies beneath the face of mankind, all you need to do is behold your facade crumble beneath you." 

"Lies," she said fiercely. "Illusions. I will not let this dissuade me." 

Then, she willed herself to wake up. 

RASHOMAN HOTEL, QUINOX CAPITAL, 3142 

The switch from the constructed reality to actual physicality was always a little jarring, but it always served to make sure she was awake. Soseiko opened her eyes, returning to the comforting darkness of her hotel room, and drew a long sigh. 

She could feel Joshua's pulse through his arm, tapping the slow sort of beat that told her he was asleep. He always had been a deep sleeper-- he probably wouldn't notice if she took a walk. Get out of the room, clear her mind with the night air... avoid thinking about the dream, that as it had gone on, had become progressively less and less dream-like... and perhaps pray that she was right about what she had told herself. 

If she lingered on the idea, though, it would consume her. This was a vacation; this was supposed to be something happy. Something special. Everyone had a first time, and she supposed she had been lucky that it was with someone she gave two shakes about. 

But he was so much simpler than she, and not just on the intellectual level. He knew what he was... embraced it, even. Even after those first awkward steps together, made so much more difficult by the flareup of his temper, he'd never quite understood why she was the way she was. He was a Sayian, one could trace his line back to the famous Vegeta (never mind the thousand years of humanity diluting the purity of the line), and that was who and what he aspired to be. 

He meant well, but he wasn't ready to listen... and she wasn't ready to talk, either. 

Yes, she thought suddenly. Perhaps praying over the idea would give her a clearer understanding of it. 

 
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=Part 6 (3144)=

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GYANNICHAN NATURE PRESERVE, QUINOX, 3144 

It was a pretty big disaster, as disasters went, but it was one that was ultimately going to be contained. Soseiko tried to content herself with this knowledge as she ran through the open plains of her homeworld, making a mad dash for the treeline beyond. Most of their scouting group had scattered in other directions, not anywhere near as tasty a potential treat as herself and the two behind her. 

"I can BEAT that thing!" Joshua roared, throwing a hateful glare over his shoulder towards their pursuer. "I just need a little more time!" 

"JOOOOOY!!" the thing behind them howled. 

"You can't even SEE it!" Shasa screamed back at him, keeping up as best she could. "How can you BEAT it if you can't SEE it?!" 

Joshua bit back another infuriated roar and pressed onwards, taking another few steps to match his speed with Soseiko's. For all Shasa's unique talents, Soseiko observed absently, the other girl simply was not going to be able to keep this pace up. She just wasn't biologically programmed to do so. She just needed to hold out a little longer, though-- long enough to draw it away from the cities, keep it far away so that someone who had the power could knock their enemy into orbit. 

The idea that COSPLAY-OR might some day bud off, sending its foul, nigh-indestructible spawn to land on planets across the galaxy, had never occurred to the people in charge. Everyone who had an inkling of history knew that COSPLAY-OR descended to Earth once every ten years, apparently heedless of what measures had been taken to destroy it and seal it away once and for all. Being knocked into a black hole, being sent into a timeless zone, being tossed through a portal several billion years into the future-- none of it had actually forestalled the return. Serenity III had simply grown weary of the efforts and made something of a celebration of the event, knocking the creature back beyond the atmosphere with a burst from the Ginzuishou. Soseiko had even watched the Ceremony of the Repulsion on video feed when she was much younger. 

But seeing a twenty-foot-tall, four-armed, very hungry monstrosity was much different than seeing one from a distance. 

It wouldn't have been so bad, if it hadn't mutated somewhat along the way. 

Now, instead of merely being an indestructible idiot-giant seeking the consumption of all things with spiritual power, it was an indestructible idiot-giant seeking the consumption of all things with spiritual power that could also cloak itself into near-invisibility. All the better to eat things, she supposed, like it had done with-- 

--no. Don't think about that. Just keep running. 

Only truly supernatural senses could pick it out of the rich residual ki of Quinox, and only a few had the sensitivity to discern what it was actually doing. Shasa could pick it and its movements out in a heartbeat, but she lacked the fighting power to do anything about it. Joshua had the power, and might even have had the strength to knock this one into low orbit-- but his senses were dulled, barely capable of picking discerning its form even when he concentrated. 

That left Soseiko as the one stuck somewhere in between-- capable of discerning it, and sometimes its actions, and with just enough personal power to be able to get on its nerves. It had fallen down to them to draw it away from the other students before it recognized them as a food source, and then to pray that the military could catch up to them before it was too late for them. 

They would fight it at the treeline. Both Shasa and Joseph had chosen to trust her when she called them to her; she wondered if they were ready to trust her unto the point where the half-baked nature of her plans caught up with her. 

She slowed her pace a bit, letting Shasa catch up and move past her for a moment. Even in the plains, where something so simple as the movement of grass in its wake should have given her a clue to its position, there was no sign of it. She had to squint, focusing her eyes on a higher level, to see the brief flashes of reiatsu that occasionally marked its path... 

...there. Close behind them, too close for comfort. Soseiko drew her bokken in a smooth motion-- the only real blade out here for any distance had been her sensei's, and her sensei was in the monster's belly. She didn't doubt that he had gone down fighting as long as he could, but he-- and his weapon-- were now useless to them. 

"JOOOOOOY!" it bellowed, some thirty feet away from her and closing quickly. Soseiko took up a combat stance, running through the effort of calling forth her ki reserves once again-- she would need them, to fight this thing for any length of time-- and hurled the bokken with all her might towards the monstrosity. 

The bokken, predictably, splintered with the impact against COSPLAY-OR's hulking frame. The girl sneered, more with irritation than with anything else, and sprang away just as the brute lunged towards her-- crossing the distance between them with a preternatural quickness that belied its size. She ducked narrowly out of the way of a pair of outstretched hands, the monster's palms open as if to swat her from the sky like an insect, and the girl came to her feet in the branches of a strong-bowed Quinoxian elm. 

Joshua struck out from the foliage the moment she was clear, a golden bullet streaking towards the space that Soseiko had occupied just moments ago. Now distanced from the creature, Soseiko could barely see the thing's presence as Joshua landed a series of hard punches to its abdomen-- and flinched involuntarily as he was knocked to the side by a fist he could not have seen, digging a furrow into the ground. 

The Saiyan descendant would not be so easily stopped, though. With a savage scream, he burst free of the hole that he'd inadvertantly dug, his blonde hair whipping about in the wind generated by his golden ki aura. He spent a moment fixing the veiled shadow with a hateful, green-eyed stare, and rocketed towards his opponent... through the space it had occupied... and then stopped, realizing it was not there anymore. 

"BEHIND YOU!" Shasa screamed. Joshua whirled around at her voice, a sphere of ki already building in his hands, but the monster was faster-- smashing him between two massive palms with one pair of arms, and then delivering a crushing overhand strike with its upper arms. 

Momentarily visible in the dust shower, the beast howled its mournful cry and turned to the other two still in the trees. "Shasa!" Soseiko shouted, turning to the other girl. "Joshua can distract it, but he needs you to see it for him!" 

Shasa turned to Soseiko, fear evident in her eyes and the tremble of her lip-- but nodded tersely as Joshua burst outwards from the hole and into the fray once again. Dirt and dust showered the area, his ki aura shredding the earth as he emerged and hurled himself at his enemy; after a strained shout from Shasa, he quickly reversed course and dealt COSPLAY-OR a massive punch. Soseiko watched, hope suddenly catching in her chest, as she watched the invulnerable foe dig a divot in the turf, and found it in herself to rejoin the battle. 

The difference between Soseiko and Joshua was obvious. She was nowhere near his power level; her punches, kicks, and ki strikes were nothing more than pinpricks compared to the sledgehammer blows Joshua could land, but even this was better than sitting on her hands... or trying to run, only to die tired. They only needed to delay it, so that the army could get here. 

It looked, for a time, like they just might have what it took able to pull it off. 

As the fight wore on, though, the feeling began to atrophy away. COSPLAY-OR had grown eerily silent as the two of them bobbed about its massive frame, and it was growing increasingly accurate with its defenses. Joshua had not laid another punch like the most recent one-- a dozen blows that would have shattered stone and put a sizeable dent in a foot of steel, but the sheer force of the first REAL blow of the fight had not been replicated. It was moving, adapting to them, predicting his strikes and leaving her needle-jabs undefended. 

She wanted to punish it for taking her lightly, but the thought was fantasy. She was already going all-out, and it wasn't working-- even if she had the strength to force it into a joint lock, it had six limbs, and it was equally capable with them all. It was focusing on defending itself from Joshua, not moving to attack except to test his own defenses. It was almost as though the beast was waiting for something. 

An opening? 

"A FEINT!!" Soseiko screamed, narrowly ducking a flailing arm. "JOSHUA, IT'S A--" 

--but she was cut off as the arm swung back around, the impact sending her flat into one of the newly-created ditches. The world went fuzzy for a long moment as her brain caught back up with her body. Somewhere in the distance, maybe on another planet entirely, Joshua screamed a furious invective at COSPLAY-OR, channelling a burst of ki and hurling it in the direction Shasa yelled him to guide it. 

When Soseiko had finally regained her senses and popped her head back out of the trench, she was just in time to see the monster deflect the ki blast... but the sphere of energy was not headed to him, or to her. Shasa had enough time to start to scream, but not enough to dodge as she needed. 

COSPLAY-OR's victorious roar was enough to drown out anything else that escaped Shasa's lips. 

It took a moment for Joshua to identify what had happened; as the case was, he screamed and hurled another pair of ki strikes in COSPLAY-OR's direction that simply soared off into the distance. In the next second, he was sent rocketing into the forest by a vicious blow. 

After a moment's extreme effort, Soseiko managed to wrench her eyes from the path of devastation that Joseph's body was carving through the forest and look to where Shasa had been shouting her directions. There was no sign of the other girl anywhere; she decided to interpret this as a good thing, that Shasa had been thrown clear by the explosion, and not atomized by an errant ki-blast. 

Shasa had to be alive. If she wasn't... 

The girl made herself look away and focus her attention on their enemy, concentrating on where it wasn't as much as where it was. Upon her increased scrutiny, COSPLAY-OR became visible once again, the dimmest of shadows in the midday sun; Soseiko bellowed a kiai shout, drawing up her dwindling reserves of energy, and launched herself at the creature. 

She did not have any illusions about her ability to actually injure it. She could hold her breath for ten minutes at a stretch, run a five-minute mile twice, bring a man to his knees with a coy smile and a wink, but for all of the benefits her body offered her, she was simply not good enough. There was a fundamental absence of power here-- and short of promising her soul to a fell power, she wasn't going to get it. 

The part of her mind that was not fixiated on distracting COSPLAY-OR was taking some sort of amusement in her current predicament. There were a thousand stories about people dying heroically for the cause, selling their lives dearly in a fight they could not win. Once Soseiko was old enough to appreciate ideals, she had gained a significant respect for the sort of person who could do that sort of thing. 

Soseiko had wondered if she would end up being the kind of person to lay down her life for others. It was mildly comforting to know that she had that sort of resolve. 

When COSPLAY-OR finally discerned through her endless series of feints and dodges, she was almost thankful. One moment, she was fighting; the next, she was sprawled on her back, staring blearily up at the purple sky above them. Joshua's reiatsu was still there at the edge of her perception, somewhere, fighting the good fight and fighting it blindly. Soseiko rolled over onto her front and slowly, excruciatingly, pushed herself into an sitting position. 

The world continued to swim around her, but that was more of a function of her shaken equilibrium than actual world-shaking. She could still see him fighting, swinging wildly at the blank space; his hit and miss ratio was perhaps one to one. Every time he threw a punch that went wide, though, COSPLAY-OR retorted by delivering a terrible blow. Joshua got back up after every hit, but always a little bit slower with every return. 

And then, when Joshua could no longer sustain his incredible pace, he was caught. Soseiko could see two of its massive hands wrap around the lower half of his body, holding him still; with his energy depleted, Joshua could not react in time to prevent the other two arms from coming together over the top of his body. 

Then, both pairs of hands twisted in different directions. 

"NO!!" Soseiko screamed, the sharp snap of bone breaking forcing her to her feet as the monster took its lower hands off of him. The golden nimbus of light faded in a heartbeat as Joshua screamed in agony; the blonde gleam to his hair disappeared, and he was suddenly looking more vulnerable than she had ever seen him. 

"JOOOOOOY!!" COSPLAY-OR howled triumphantly, shaking Joshua's limp form for a moment before hurling him in her direction. The saiyan spiraled through the air, the force of the throw snapping a tree around his body before he came tumbling to a rest almost at her feet. Soseiko stifled another scream when she saw the number of wounds he had sustained... and how he was even now fighting to stand again. 

The sight transfixed her for a long moment before she looked back to the advancing COSPLAY-OR. It was apparently intelligent enough to know when it had won, and was now strolling towards their location with no sign of hurry. Slowly, she turned to face it, gazing into its sightless eyes and wondering just what it was thinking. Did it view them as worthy opponents? Did it even view them as opponents at all, or did it simply perceive them as an uncooperative meal? 

Its maw opened once again, going slack as it loomed over the lot of them. This, it seemed, was to be her end: leaving the world with no more knowledge of who she was, or where she came from, than she had entered it with. She was to remain an enigma, voiceless, powerless, clueless to her own identity... nothing more than a plaque on the wall of the Academy, and a small footnote in genetic research. 

She barely registered the presence of COSPLAY-OR's massive paw closing about her body, pinning her arms to her sides and hoisting her off of the ground. She was going to die, going to get eaten, and there was nothing she could do about it even if she wanted to. It was going to eat her, and then it was going to eat her boyfriend, and then it was going to eat Shasa, whose only mistake was following them out here so that she could die too (please already be dead, please don't live to see this happen to you)... 

It couldn't end like this... and, for a moment, it didn't. 

"'Seiko!" Shasa's voice screamed, snapping the other girl out of her reverie. Soseiko looked to the side, taken entirely by surprise, and realized that COSPLAY-OR had paused as well. Apparently confident that she had gotten their attention, Shasa folded her hands together in a series of seals, her third eye blazing radiantly. 

"NO!" Soseiko yelled, panicking. "Run, damn you, RUN!!" 

"The dead star reaches to quench a young light," Shasa sang in a ritualistic monotone, forming the final seal and ignoring her friend's outburst. "That which burns alone burns brightest!" 

Soseiko watched the girl with mixed awe and horror as a great sphere of flame began to build in her friend's hands. She was alive, thank gods she was alive, but she was throwing her life away in fighting a battle that she could not win... 

And as Shasa unleashed the column of fire, Soseiko was suddenly struck by the depths of her own hypocracy. She closed her eyes and waited for the rush of heat to pass her by-- only to open them again as a terrifyingly foreign ki aura crackled through her awareness. To Soseiko's dismay, she could quite clearly see the bolt sizzling in the air, simply floating in place. The hand COSPLAY-OR had thrown in front of it was clearly visible, as was the energy radiating out from it and holding the bolt in place. 

Then, with a low moan, it drew back both hands and slapped at the bolt, reversing its direction. 

Soseiko found herself screaming, struggling desperately against the immovable force of the hand. The fire was moving faster than Shasa could dodge-- she saw Shasa's eyes widen, and her legs begin to bend in a jump-- but the fire was moving faster, and soon there was a great tunnel of char and ash where her friend had been. 

The fact that she probably didn't feel it coming was no comfort. 

It was a long moment before the reality of the situation settled in. Shasa was there a moment ago, and now she wasn't... Shasa had put herself in danger for her, made the mistake of trying to help her a little longer... the mistake of trusting that Soseiko would come up with something that would keep them all alive. Soseiko's hands clenched into fists. What right did she have to throw her life away for the survivor? What gave her the right to try and delay the inevitable? 

Only then did Soseiko realize the depths of her hypocrasy. Strange, though, that the sudden revelation was not filling her with shame as it probably should have... there was a strange, euphoric clarity here, something that she did not like feeling but was feeling anyway. 

Anger? 

No... something cleaner, more pure than mere anger. 

She looked back to COSPLAY-OR and regarded it dimly, and to her surprise, she could see it regarding her right back. This, though, was not the dead, emotionless stare of an unintelligent predator-- she could see an eagerness in there, an awareness to what its actions meant 

it knew it was hurting her, and it was doing it on purpose, and Soseiko was finding that the emotion welling within her was making it harder and harder to think 

so she did what felt natural, and just let go 

and her world 

<CENTER>went</CENTER> 
RED. 

She was dimly aware that she was no longer trapped by the monster's hand. She was also sure she was moving, somewhere, and moving quickly. Where she was, much less when she was, or if she even WAS at all, was a matter of contention. 

The one thing she was certain of, though, was that she was awash in her own soul. She could feel herself emanating through every pore, every cell of her body; the rapture she felt in release, the ecstasy of bathing in her own radiance, was overwhelming every other thought and urge she had ever had. 

In this red world, she was a goddess, touching all points of all times and places at once, and she wondered why she had never understood her true nature before now. 

But slowly, inexorably, the haze began to fall away from her senses. The effect was much like focusing a microscope onto a drop of water, with the broad outlines of ideas and concepts discernable long before detail was obtained. Time was the first awareness to return to her, and with it came the ability to discern the fact that she was still probably alive. Shapes were beginning to emerge out of the fog-- the terrain had ceased to be featureless, and she was beginning to perceive the directions of up and down... and someone was screaming at the top of their lungs. 

She was beginning to recognize the details now, and as the euphoria faded away, she found she could now fit them into her memory. She was fighting something that hurt her friends, and was going to hurt her too. She had stopped fighting now, though, which probably meant that she had won-- she wasn't feeling numb like she always did when something really hurt her badly. The voice was familiar, and she could almost name its owner... 

When Soseiko finally remembered her name, the red haze vanished in a heartbeat. She was still casting her own golden light, though, a high-intensity ki aura that was rolling off of her skin like water. She slowly made herself float to the ground and rubbed her throat, trying fruitlessly to get some of the rawness out, and looked about expectantly. 

There was no sign of COSPLAY-OR anywhere to be found. 

Had she won? Soseiko felt her feet touch the ground and gazed about them a moment longer, verifying that her senses were indeed telling her the truth. It was a pleasant, if somewhat unnerving surprise to discover that her initial sweep was accurate; COSPLAY-OR had been defeated, by persons or person unknown. But what of the others? 

She made herself not think about the other girl-- that could happen later, when she was ready to deal with the dead. There was a potential survivor, and he might need her help. Stepping through the shower of foreign spiritual energy, Soseiko pushed her way through to the treeline to where she remembered Joseph had been. 

He was alive, thank gods, and he was awake... but he needed help. His back had surely broken; they could fix the bone, mend the nerves, but if he bled out internally before they could get there, then all the science in the world couldn't fix him. She took a step closer and smiled, relieved that they still had a chance, but stopped short when she recognized a strange, almost hurtful blend of awe and horror. "Joshua?" Soseiko murmured, her confusion evident in her own face. "Joshua, what's wrong?" 

Joshua tried to respond for a moment, jaw working noiselessly; eventually seeing that he wasn't going to be able to answer her with words, simply pointed to his head... and then hers. She mimed his gesture, putting one hand to her head and was more than somewhat startled to feel her hair standing straight upwards, as though she'd had been electrified. Ignoring the chill running through her spine, she took a handful of the keratin and took a long look. 

"Oh," Soseiko observed coherently, releasing the golden lock of hair to hang there. "Well," she added. "That's odd." 

And finally, with her weirdness meter finally topped out and her borrowed strength leaving her in a rush, Soseiko decided that passing out would be a valid way to end her day. 

 
</TABLE>

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[[ Category: Yaijinden ]] [[Category:SSEU Stories]] [[Category:The Crystal Imperium]]

Long-Suffering

2014-11-15T20:38:37Z

Yaijinden:

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<BLOCKQUOTE>
"No noble and exalted life exists... without knowledge of devils and demons, and without continual struggle against them." Joseph Knecht
 -- The Glass Bead Game, p 261, Hermann Hesse 

A.D. 3125 
ISHTAR TERRAH, VENUS, SOL SYSTEM, 1337-B 

Sakura, of late, seldom had cause to find herself on Venus. Truth be told, the planet had long ago ceased to be "home" for her; nowadays, it was where the rulers of the world could be located, and (not so coincidentally) she could generally find her mother and father. Home was her TARDIS, or if she stretched the idea, it was found in the beauty of Crystal Tokyo or the chaotic serenity of the early twenty-first century. As a Time Lord, she didn't feel much in the desire to put down roots and settle; Venus was merely the place she was raised on when she wasn't on the TARDIS. 

She wouldn't have come back if she hadn't had a hunch about something happening here. It was only a hunch, but she had learned to trust to her hunches. They came only every so often, but they panned out more often than not. So, to that effect, she had followed it to one of rei.bot's former haunts: the Shinzumaki monastery, a branch of the Order of Ten Thousand Temples. 

The Order was a contemplative group of Zen Shinto monks who had decided some five hundred years ago to seek enlightenment in the depths of space. Sakura had been to this place a few times before as a child, and had not found much of it to be interesting. When she was younger, she was too young to understand, and then too young to want, the peace that this sort of environment sought to achieve. Now, though, she almost wished she could set some time aside to try to find a little bit of nirvana. 

If the monks of the Order recognized who she was, they did not make much fuss about it. They were content to let her be, as was she for them. It promoted peace on both sides, and their mutual attunement to this serenity was what tipped her off to the arrival of another stranger. 

Sakura turned about slowly, watching the familiar grey, red, and brown colors of an old acquaintence-- for Yaijinden was acquaintence to many, and comrade to very, very few-- make his way down the footpath. She had chosen to wait in the monastery garden, surrounded by the trappings of an old life long left behind, and spent the last few moments before he arrived watching her namesake tree swaying in the wind. 

When he was a respectful distance way, Yaijinden did not waste time. "I want--" he began, stopped, then continued, "No, I need a favor." 

Sakura lifted her eyes to the heartless shell standing before her, and suddenly recognized the change in Yaijinden. She had known him to be sober just as fleetingly as he had been manic and angry, but there was something off about this calm... 

...that was it. He was actually making himself calm. She could recognize the measured breaths he was taking-- three seconds in, three seconds out-- and there was a waver in his voice that she had never known him to possess in the entirety that she had known him. 

Rather than call him on it immediately, though, she decided to pursue it more subtly. "So that's why you came at a convenient time," Sakura said dryly. "I should have guessed that you wouldn't show your stubbly smirk around here unless there was something you sincerely couldn't procure with your personal power." 

Yaijinden took a long, measured sigh in response to her rampant alliteration. "There's something big coming up," he said. "Something really big." 

"Something big is always happening, my maddened maniacal mentor," she responded coyly. "You said it yourself: 'There's always someone dying somewhere.'" 

"This is bigger than some mortal drama," he snapped, face hardening into a scowl. "And you know it's about to go down. You've probably already experienced it on this timeline, too." 

"That so, hmm?" Sakura flashed him a small smile, simultaneously amused that she was on the needling end and somewhat concerned that he wasn't responding in kind. "What gives you that impression?" she added, one eyebrow raised above her smirk. 

"I can see it in your eyes," he answered tonelessly, looking away from her. "Sometimes, back in Azabu-Juuban, I could see the suffering you've undergone. The part of your soul that you keep under wraps, like your mother always did. The part of your spirit that's been rubbed raw with the pain, but that gleams all the more brightly for the polishing..." 

The humor had faded from her eyes as he trailed off. She gave him another long look, watching his ragged breath slowly reassert itself into a vaguely calm pattern once again. "The next big crisis," she observed with a small, unhappy smile. "Yes, I know. What of it?" 

"People..." He looked to her again before turning around to face away. "People like me don't rate very highly on the cosmic totem pole," Yaijinden said slowly. "We qualify as supernatural powers because of what's been done to us, but part of that elevation comes with a binding of our will. There are rules you have to abide by, things that you cannot avoid-- geasa, if you want to call it. Power and responsibility go hand in hand. The lower powers don't have much to abide by, but once those rules come into conflict with your established habits..." 

The words hung in the garden for a long moment, punctuated only by the click of a bamboo water pipe against stone. "I don't think I ever directly told you about the cosmic realities of being heartless," he continued, his thoughts gathered once again. "For the most part, you don't even notice that it's gone. The higher emotions are gone, just like they had never been there in the first place. A lot of people in my position are consumed by that freedom, letting their personalities be swallowed up by their id. I've come close, every so often, to just dropping anything human that was left of me and be carried away by the tides. But, in the end, I can't. Not because I don't know how, or because it would be hard... but because it would be a lie." 

Sakura moved a few steps closer, her head tilted a bit to the side. She did not say anything, though; he was obviously not done talking, and lifetimes of experience had taught her when to listen. After a time, he flopped down on his back unceremoniously, disturbing the patterns on the path, and focused his gaze on the sky. "It's easy to forget your limitations when you're free of them," Yaijinden added. "It's easier still to forget that these limitations aren't guaranteed. I'm only this way as long as my heart is far away from me, and only as long nobody thinks to hold it... and subsequently, hold my the very essence of my being in their hands." He paused, throwing a fleeting glance to Sakura before fixing his eyes back on the sky. "You've lost... many things, by this time in your life. Many people, many loved ones, friends, enemies, all of that. You couldn't take them back if you wanted to... but if you could-- if you could get them back..." 

The unspoken question was a loaded one, one he had been very fond of asking when they were both younger. "My answer is the same," Sakura remarked, somewhat detatchedly. "The past is done and buried, and there are times when it is better left unearthed." 

"And that," he murmured, "is the core of my issue. If you get those people back, you have to un-lose them. And after you're done un-losing them, you have to lose them again, later... and just because you've lost someone once doesn't mean it's any easier the second time around." 

"I presume," she responded, a small smile crossing her face, "that you are drawing this parallel as a way of illustrate the reason you came to see me." 

Yaijinden remained silent, apparently bringing the words together again. "I can feel it," he said suddenly. "I can feel everything that I am being rolled around in some Thing's hands. I can feel it scrutinizing me, hating the parts of my soul that it can't understand, but resolving to use me as a weapon anyway, and I can't do a thing to stop it. When it calls to me, I will lock step with every other tool at its disposal. And when the war is won, whether this Thing wins or it loses, I will be in a position to get my heart back." 

"This is not a good thing, then?" she inquired evenly. 

"When a khadi is in proximity to his heart, a phenomena known as 'bleed' occurs," Yaijinden explained, another sigh escaping his lungs. "The heart reaches out for the khadi, and the khadi perceives this stretch as flashes of emotion. Memories, of the times before one underwent the cardiectomy, and panges of conscience that are almost unbearable to have. This wholeness gives us access to the fullness of our power, but more often than not, that power comes with a terrible burden... self-awareness." 

"I would hardly call you not self-aware," Sakura demured, a small frown on her face. "If I may be so blunt, I don't think you're afraid of becoming self-aware. I think you're afraid of your conscience." 

"It's NOT-- it's not..." 

The vehemence of his retort disappeared just as quickly as it came into being. Yaijinden took a deep breath and composed himself once again. "I was told I would not have to regret anything, ever again," he said plainly, speaking slowly to keep it level. "That was the price I paid to rise above the person I once was. The trade, though, means that my agreement with my former holder is now effectively null and void. The thing that holds me now is not bound by contract to keep me away from my power. In fact, it will probably make sure I use it. 

"The war will be won by the good guys, of course," the khadi added, smiling bitterly. "I know this much from history. The universe favors the little people in this sort of struggle, and Gods know the little people of this day and age are willing to fight until the end." 

"Confident in your observations, aren't you?" Sakura observed with a momentary smirk. 

He laughed for a moment, but the effort came out as a hollow one. "That's not the point," Yaijinden answered, shaking his head. "I'm not afraid of you guys losing. If you do lose, then I'll change my plans, but I don't see it coming. It's unlikely. It's not even your victory that concerns me really-- it's what happens to me after you all win." 

Another absence of sound stretched out between them. "The consequences of victory, should your side win the coming war," he said, sitting up and repositioning himself to face her, "is that I will no longer have someone to keep my heart away from me. I was never much for self-control in the days before, you know... and if I'm taking hints from my old soul, I may forget it when the time comes. I fear that I will forget myself, and that the person who I am now will be consumed by the person I used to be." 

"Since I don't get to play devil's advocate very often," Sakura replied, "maybe you can clue me in. What's so wrong with that?" 

Yaijinden's eyes fell to the ground for a long moment. "That man-- no, that BOY-- is dead. He died a thousand years ago, and quite frankly, I think the dead should be left to rest." 

A half-smile crossed her lips. "That's not the attitude I've heard before." 

"So I'm a hypocrite," he snarled back, shooting her a glare. "I never claimed I wasn't!" 

"Easy there, killer." Sakura squatted down, lowering herself to roughly eye-level with Yaijinden. "Allow me to guess your desire, then," she said, voice softening. "In the event that you are freed by the thing that holds your heart, you want me, or someone else, to make sure that you don't try something silly." 

"In a nutshell, yes." 

"And, if I might ask, what possessed you to preface this proposal with the preponderous backstory you provided me?" 

"It's... an old habit." His face fell. "Very, very old. One I had thought myself rid of." 

"Mmm." She rocked backwards and came to a sitting position, legs pulled up against her chest. "And why didn't you ask an earlier me to do this for you?" Sakura inquired, curious. 

"Because the other you will be very busy, very shortly," Yaijinden replied, smiling back at her-- and there, in the schadenfreudian amusement in that smile, was the Yaijinden she remembered. "I wouldn't want to burden the coming you with one more worry," he added laconically. "You'll have enough on your mind soon enough, as I'm sure you're already aware." 

"How overwhelmingly kind of you," she said dryly. 

"So, what do you say?" 

Sakura leaned back and pursed her lips in thought. "I think," she announced, "that I will reflect on this revelation, and subsequently supply my response at the right time. No sooner, no later." 

"Ugh." Yaijinden rolled his eyes. "Of all the cryptic replies, I had to get THAT one..." 

Her lips parted in a brief smile. "You expected anything else?" she said enigmatically. 

"No, not really." In a fluid motion, Yaijinden kicked off the ground into a standing position. "I'm not sure why I was surprised at all, really," he admitted, turning his eyes to the sky. "I think I already knew what your answer would be. Maybe I just had to hear it for myself." 

"Maybe," Sakura agreed, pushing herself upright. "Was there anything else?" 

"No, not really." The khadi shrugged. "You'll forgive me if I'm not in a mood to go through the motions of reminiscing." 

She nodded briefly and returned to her previous contemplations. Yaijinden took that as the signal to leave; his presence was gone as quickly as it had come, and the monastery slowly began to regain the passive equilibrium it had possessed minutes before. Sakura permitted herself a small smile, briefly reflecting on events many years in her past. The irony of his coming and his question was not lost on her. 

The decision he was asking her to make had never been in her hands in the first place. 

Still, she would linger here a moment. It was good to get in touch with the person she had been, every so often. Perhaps, if things turned out as she remembered, Yaijinden would find that out for hismelf. 

Or perhaps not. As he would have said, were their circumstances reversed, "either way would work." 

</BLOCKQUOTE>

[[ Category: Yaijinden ]] [[Category:SSEU Stories]] [[Category:The Crystal Imperium]]

Long-Suffering

2014-11-15T20:36:48Z

Yaijinden:

<TABLE WIDTH="600" HEIGHT="30%" BORDER="0">
<TR><TD > 
<BLOCKQUOTE>
"No noble and exalted life exists... without knowledge of devils and demons, and without continual struggle against them." Joseph Knecht
 -- The Glass Bead Game, p 261, Hermann Hesse 

A.D. 3125 
ISHTAR TERRAH, VENUS, SOL SYSTEM, 1337-B 

Sakura, of late, seldom had cause to find herself on Venus. Truth be told, the planet had long ago ceased to be "home" for her; nowadays, it was where the rulers of the world could be located, and (not so coincidentally) she could generally find her mother and father. Home was her TARDIS, or if she stretched the idea, it was found in the beauty of Crystal Tokyo or the chaotic serenity of the early twenty-first century. As a Time Lord, she didn't feel much in the desire to put down roots and settle; Venus was merely the place she was raised on when she wasn't on the TARDIS. 

She wouldn't have come back if she hadn't had a hunch about something happening here. It was only a hunch, but she had learned to trust to her hunches. They came only every so often, but they panned out more often than not. So, to that effect, she had followed it to one of rei.bot's former haunts: the Shinzumaki monastery, a branch of the Order of Ten Thousand Temples. 

The Order was a contemplative group of Zen Shinto monks who had decided some five hundred years ago to seek enlightenment in the depths of space. Sakura had been to this place a few times before as a child, and had not found much of it to be interesting. When she was younger, she was too young to understand, and then too young to want, the peace that this sort of environment sought to achieve. Now, though, she almost wished she could set some time aside to try to find a little bit of nirvana. 

If the monks of the Order recognized who she was, they did not make much fuss about it. They were content to let her be, as was she for them. It promoted peace on both sides, and their mutual attunement to this serenity was what tipped her off to the arrival of another stranger. 

Sakura turned about slowly, watching the familiar grey, red, and brown colors of an old acquaintence-- for Yaijinden was acquaintence to many, and comrade to very, very few-- make his way down the footpath. She had chosen to wait in the monastery garden, surrounded by the trappings of an old life long left behind, and spent the last few moments before he arrived watching her namesake tree swaying in the wind. 

When he was a respectful distance way, Yaijinden did not waste time. "I want--" he began, stopped, then continued, "No, I need a favor." 

Sakura lifted her eyes to the heartless shell standing before her, and suddenly recognized the change in Yaijinden. She had known him to be sober just as fleetingly as he had been manic and angry, but there was something off about this calm... 

...that was it. He was actually making himself calm. She could recognize the measured breaths he was taking-- three seconds in, three seconds out-- and there was a waver in his voice that she had never known him to possess in the entirety that she had known him. 

Rather than call him on it immediately, though, she decided to pursue it more subtly. "So that's why you came at a convenient time," Sakura said dryly. "I should have guessed that you wouldn't show your stubbly smirk around here unless there was something you sincerely couldn't procure with your personal power." 

Yaijinden took a long, measured sigh in response to her rampant alliteration. "There's something big coming up," he said. "Something really big." 

"Something big is always happening, my maddened maniacal mentor," she responded coyly. "You said it yourself: 'There's always someone dying somewhere.'" 

"This is bigger than some mortal drama," he snapped, face hardening into a scowl. "And you know it's about to go down. You've probably already experienced it on this timeline, too." 

"That so, hmm?" Sakura flashed him a small smile, simultaneously amused that she was on the needling end and somewhat concerned that he wasn't responding in kind. "What gives you that impression?" she added, one eyebrow raised above her smirk. 

"I can see it in your eyes," he answered tonelessly, looking away from her. "Sometimes, back in Azabu-Juuban, I could see the suffering you've undergone. The part of your soul that you keep under wraps, like your mother always did. The part of your spirit that's been rubbed raw with the pain, but that gleams all the more brightly for the polishing..." 

The humor had faded from her eyes as he trailed off. She gave him another long look, watching his ragged breath slowly reassert itself into a vaguely calm pattern once again. "The next big crisis," she observed with a small, unhappy smile. "Yes, I know. What of it?" 

"People..." He looked to her again before turning around to face away. "People like me don't rate very highly on the cosmic totem pole," Yaijinden said slowly. "We qualify as supernatural powers because of what's been done to us, but part of that elevation comes with a binding of our will. There are rules you have to abide by, things that you cannot avoid-- geasa, if you want to call it. Power and responsibility go hand in hand. The lower powers don't have much to abide by, but once those rules come into conflict with your established habits..." 

The words hung in the garden for a long moment, punctuated only by the click of a bamboo water pipe against stone. "I don't think I ever directly told you about the cosmic realities of being heartless," he continued, his thoughts gathered once again. "For the most part, you don't even notice that it's gone. The higher emotions are gone, just like they had never been there in the first place. A lot of people in my position are consumed by that freedom, letting their personalities be swallowed up by their id. I've come close, every so often, to just dropping anything human that was left of me and be carried away by the tides. But, in the end, I can't. Not because I don't know how, or because it would be hard... but because it would be a lie." 

Sakura moved a few steps closer, her head tilted a bit to the side. She did not say anything, though; he was obviously not done talking, and lifetimes of experience had taught her when to listen. After a time, he flopped down on his back unceremoniously, disturbing the patterns on the path, and focused his gaze on the sky. "It's easy to forget your limitations when you're free of them," Yaijinden added. "It's easier still to forget that these limitations aren't guaranteed. I'm only this way as long as my heart is far away from me, and only as long nobody thinks to hold it... and subsequently, hold my the very essence of my being in their hands." He paused, throwing a fleeting glance to Sakura before fixing his eyes back on the sky. "You've lost... many things, by this time in your life. Many people, many loved ones, friends, enemies, all of that. You couldn't take them back if you wanted to... but if you could-- if you could get them back..." 

The unspoken question was a loaded one, one he had been very fond of asking when they were both younger. "My answer is the same," Sakura remarked, somewhat detatchedly. "The past is done and buried, and there are times when it is better left unearthed." 

"And that," he murmured, "is the core of my issue. If you get those people back, you have to un-lose them. And after you're done un-losing them, you have to lose them again, later... and just because you've lost someone once doesn't mean it's any easier the second time around." 

"I presume," she responded, a small smile crossing her face, "that you are drawing this parallel as a way of illustrate the reason you came to see me." 

Yaijinden remained silent, apparently bringing the words together again. "I can feel it," he said suddenly. "I can feel everything that I am being rolled around in some Thing's hands. I can feel it scrutinizing me, hating the parts of my soul that it can't understand, but resolving to use me as a weapon anyway, and I can't do a thing to stop it. When it calls to me, I will lock step with every other tool at its disposal. And when the war is won, whether this Thing wins or it loses, I will be in a position to get my heart back." 

"This is not a good thing, then?" she inquired evenly. 

"When a khadi is in proximity to his heart, a phenomena known as 'bleed' occurs," Yaijinden explained, another sigh escaping his lungs. "The heart reaches out for the khadi, and the khadi perceives this stretch as flashes of emotion. Memories, of the times before one underwent the cardiectomy, and panges of conscience that are almost unbearable to have. This wholeness gives us access to the fullness of our power, but more often than not, that power comes with a terrible burden... self-awareness." 

"I would hardly call you not self-aware," Sakura demured, a small frown on her face. "If I may be so blunt, I don't think you're afraid of becoming self-aware. I think you're afraid of your conscience." 

"It's NOT-- it's not..." 

The vehemence of his retort disappeared just as quickly as it came into being. Yaijinden took a deep breath and composed himself once again. "I was told I would not have to regret anything, ever again," he said plainly, speaking slowly to keep it level. "That was the price I paid to rise above the person I once was. The trade, though, means that my agreement with my former holder is now effectively null and void. The thing that holds me now is not bound by contract to keep me away from my power. In fact, it will probably make sure I use it. 

"The war will be won by the good guys, of course," the khadi added, smiling bitterly. "I know this much from history. The universe favors the little people in this sort of struggle, and Gods know the little people of this day and age are willing to fight until the end." 

"Confident in your observations, aren't you?" Sakura observed with a momentary smirk. 

He laughed for a moment, but the effort came out as a hollow one. "That's not the point," Yaijinden answered, shaking his head. "I'm not afraid of you guys losing. If you do lose, then I'll change my plans, but I don't see it coming. It's unlikely. It's not even your victory that concerns me really-- it's what happens to me after you all win." 

Another absence of sound stretched out between them. "The consequences of victory, should your side win the coming war," he said, sitting up and repositioning himself to face her, "is that I will no longer have someone to keep my heart away from me. I was never much for self-control in the days before, you know... and if I'm taking hints from my old soul, I may forget it when the time comes. I fear that I will forget myself, and that the person who I am now will be consumed by the person I used to be." 

"Since I don't get to play devil's advocate very often," Sakura replied, "maybe you can clue me in. What's so wrong with that?" 

Yaijinden's eyes fell to the ground for a long moment. "That man-- no, that BOY-- is dead. He died a thousand years ago, and quite frankly, I think the dead should be left to rest." 

A half-smile crossed her lips. "That's not the attitude I've heard before." 

"So I'm a hypocrite," he snarled back, shooting her a glare. "I never claimed I wasn't!" 

"Easy there, killer." Sakura squatted down, lowering herself to roughly eye-level with Yaijinden. "Allow me to guess your desire, then," she said, voice softening. "In the event that you are freed by the thing that holds your heart, you want me, or someone else, to make sure that you don't try something silly." 

"In a nutshell, yes." 

"And, if I might ask, what possessed you to preface this proposal with the preponderous backstory you provided me?" 

"It's... an old habit." His face fell. "Very, very old. One I had thought myself rid of." 

"Mmm." She rocked backwards and came to a sitting position, legs pulled up against her chest. "And why didn't you ask an earlier me to do this for you?" Sakura inquired, curious. 

"Because the other you will be very busy, very shortly," Yaijinden replied, smiling back at her-- and there, in the schadenfreudian amusement in that smile, was the Yaijinden she remembered. "I wouldn't want to burden the coming you with one more worry," he added laconically. "You'll have enough on your mind soon enough, as I'm sure you're already aware." 

"How overwhelmingly kind of you," she said dryly. 

"So, what do you say?" 

Sakura leaned back and pursed her lips in thought. "I think," she announced, "that I will reflect on this revelation, and subsequently supply my response at the right time. No sooner, no later." 

"Ugh." Yaijinden rolled his eyes. "Of all the cryptic replies, I had to get THAT one..." 

Her lips parted in a brief smile. "You expected anything else?" she said enigmatically. 

"No, not really." In a fluid motion, Yaijinden kicked off the ground into a standing position. "I'm not sure why I was surprised at all, really," he admitted, turning his eyes to the sky. "I think I already knew what your answer would be. Maybe I just had to hear it for myself." 

"Maybe," Sakura agreed, pushing herself upright. "Was there anything else?" 

"No, not really." The khadi shrugged. "You'll forgive me if I'm not in a mood to go through the motions of reminiscing." 

She nodded briefly and returned to her previous contemplations. Yaijinden took that as the signal to leave; his presence was gone as quickly as it had come, and the monastery slowly began to regain the passive equilibrium it had possessed minutes before. Sakura permitted herself a small smile, briefly reflecting on the events that were many years in her past. The irony of his coming and his question was not lost on her. 

The decision he was asking her to make had never been in her hands in the first place. 

Still, she would linger here a moment. It was good to get in touch with the person she had been, every so often. Perhaps, if things turned out as she remembered, Yaijinden would find that out for hismelf. 

Or perhaps not. As he would have said, were their circumstances reversed, "either way would work." 

</BLOCKQUOTE>
Disclaimer: All characters presented here are the property of their owners, and are used largely without permission. If the owner of a character used in this subdomain has issues with the way I mime their voice, there's a Contact link you can click on in order to get a hold of me and let me know. People who don't say anything to me get NOTHING changed, your sorrow is pathetic compared to my amusement at your expense, etc etc. 

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Metamorphosis the Second

2014-11-15T20:34:12Z

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<TR><TD><BLOCKQUOTE>A.D. 2395 
EARTH, ALPHA QUADRANT, 1337-B 

Eudial was out of her element. As much as she enjoyed gloating in the spotlight, she much preferred that she control the time and place when she was under scrutiny. She didn't like big, open spots, and she wasn't much fond of tea, either. 

It was as though her contact knew both of these things, and had set this meeting up specifically to keep her unbalanced. 

She was nothing if not professional, though, and refused to let this get to her. Her companion was enjoying the serenity of the garden, paying just as much attention to the garden as he was to the slow sip of tea. Eudial hadn't remembered much of the chai ceremony, but what she did remember suggested that this person had spent almost a lifetime perfecting the art. 

Chai was a strange art to pick up, though, especially if he was actually as inhuman as he seemed. Eudial had been exposed to many alien genotypes, but this one was not immediately familiar-- which only made her more wary. The man (whom she thought of as a man despite the lack of gender-specific characteristics) superficially resembled many of the member races of the Federation: upright, two arms, two legs, one head, two eyes, a mouth, and thin nasal slits in place of a nose. The eyes, though, were blue on blue, with no whites on the eyeball at all; what's more, the skin that she could see was sandy-colored and rough, looking more like scales or chitin than flesh. 

At length, the being set down its cup and focused its gaze on her. "You seek revenge against someone who has slighted you," he observed in a raspy dialect of Andoran. "However, what you seek... defies your best efforts."

Eudial did not react, meeting its piercing stare with a mildly disinterested look. It took this as license to continue. "You will not find her," it continued, looking back to the garden. "You have traced the money with which she bought tickets, but you came to a dummy shell account. You have hunted down her images in many archives, sought for birth records, and many more hints that would lead you to her. I will assure you, Yuuko Arimura, that you will not find any clues or scraps that will bear fruit. She has no birth records in the known worlds because there is no record of her birth." 

"And this is where you tell me her secret, hmm?" She was obviously unimpressed, drumming her fingers against the table. "If you could get to the point..." 

The being made a raspy coughing sound that might have passed for laughter. "There are no birth records of her because she has not been born yet," it announced, lips curving in an approximation of a smile. "The girl you seek will not be born for many hundred years." 

To her credit, Eudial's expression did not change other than a raised, curious eyebrow. "So, you're saying she's a time traveller?" she inquired pleasantly. 

The figure paused, and shook its head. "No, not yet," it responded evenly. "She is yet young-- too young to have mastered the ability to breach the boundaries of space and time on her own. She will do, of course, as she grows older; for now, though, she remains reliant upon the machinations of her elders to travel." 

Eudial dipped her head a bit. "Presuming that this means anything to me," she said darkly, "how do you propose I do anything about this without invoking some sort of grandfather paradox?" 

It paused and smiled again. "Time has a way of tending to its own wounds. I assure you, interference with prior events has a way of cleaning up after itself very nicely. The minds of mortals are subject to the ebb and flow of the universe writ large; those who travel above it even once, though, will find that their only enemies are other time travellers. It makes for a very subtle, very polite society, if you haven't guessed." 

This gave her pause. Eudial was no stranger to time travel, of course-- she had a device that would let her do it, taken from some poor fool who had underestimated the power of past devices-- but she hadn't taken the thought of going back in time to kill someone as anything but a fantasy. 

"Marshal your resources," the creature suggested. "She and her family are not taking pains to conceal their tracks-- they do not see any reason to be, not yet. Despite her age, she is merely a girl in a woman's body. Her mother is clueless to the work of her father, and her father is by no means skilled enough to evade a trained, ruthless individual such as yourself." 

"Maybe," she agreed. "If it's so easy, though, why don't you do it?" 

It fell silent for a moment. "As I said before, the existence of time travel requires something of a polite society," it said, shoulders lifting in a shrug. "In the event that you succeed, I cannot be traced to you. From your reputation, Yuuko, you will never be caught-- but even if you fail so dramatically as to be caught, you hate her for very valid personal reasons, and you possess your own equipment. They will not look further than that." 

Eudial nodded, digesting this with a wary frown. It was speaking with a distinct accent, she had finally figured out-- the vocal distortions had thrown her off at the beginning of their conversation. There was something antiquated about this creature, and she couldn't quite tell what yet. "Your communique said you had a deal to make, though," she noted. "I'm not seeing the offer, yet." 

"They do not take pains to cover their tracks," the humanoid observed, gaze unfocused, "but that does not mean they are unsubtle. Her father, for all his relative incompetence and youth, is still an experienced time-traveller. Their footprints are small, almost illegible-- and while you could eventually discern her identity, it would take you many years to put the clues together. I would offer you a shortcut that will save you much time: her name, and her family's name, in exchange for access to research you will be performing." 

Eudial pondered this for a moment. "Which sort of research?" 

"You will be undertaking some... genetics research in the near future," it explained, smirking. "When that research is complete, I simply require a copy of those files. After that, our business will be concluded, and we will go on our separate merry ways." 

"...deal. Provided, of course, that this information pans out..." 

"Of course." The being smiled and drew a small file folder from within the depths of its robe and passed it over the table to Eudial. "You will find relevant biographical data within," it explained, nodding. "The choice to act on this is yours, Yuuko, but I will know if you act on my information as opposed to doing your own legwork." 

"Hmph. Fine." She took the folder and opened it, flipping through some of the pages before setting it aside. "Is that all?" 

"That is all." It bowed to her from its sitting position and returned its attention to the garden. "I will see you when I do, Yuuko." 

She said nothing-- only stood, and made an exit. Once she was out of earsight, the figure reached beneath the table and crushed a small bit of metal between his fingers. She had been very wary of him, he noted with a brief smile-- so much so that she had set some bugs beforehand. He had permitted them to be, of course, because he knew she would take the bait that he offered, and nobody would know the better.

The veritas devices had served their purpose, anyway. She knew he wasn't lying, because he wasn't. Yuuko/Eudial would have been able to figure out those things eventually, of course-- she had either done it the first time around, or he had always been the one to feed her the names. He was simply saving her some time, and buying access to one of the most complicated genetics programs ever to exist. 

Many years ago by local reference, Sakura had told tales about the genetics program Eudial had been working on. It had produced no shortage of powerful creatures-- animals, imbued with the ki-channelling powers of the Super Saiyajins, and no small number of them had become involved in and around Ten'Aino House in the very early twenty-first century. Knowing what he did, though, he had been utterly surprised by a very simple connection that Sakura herself had never managed to make. 

He would have laughed if he wasn't too busy gloating. King Jeruka, the beast responsible for nearly slaying the entirety of the Sailor Senshi including the unborn Sakura herself, had not been born as others had. King Jerkua had been grown. And if Yaijinden could pick out the reams of relevant information in Eudial's clone files, he could seize a power like unto that on his very own. 

With his business done, the khadi willed his flesh to return to the way it was, from wormskin to a more familiar, human texture. The wormskin was empowering and long-sighted, but the longer he wore it, the more alien his own mind became to itself. The nature of this sight was necessary, as of late, to precipitate the next impending shift in himself... 

Besides, he thought with a smile as he started strolling back to his telephone booth, once he could perceive himself as complete, the switches would make for a neat parlor trick.

 
Disclaimer: All characters presented here are the property of their owners, and are used largely without permission. If the owner of a character used in this subdomain has issues with the way I mime their voice, there's a Contact link you can click on in order to get a hold of me and let me know. People who don't say anything to me get NOTHING changed, your sorrow is pathetic compared to my amusement at your expense, etc etc. 

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Set Me Free

2014-11-15T05:28:42Z

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A.D. 2014 July 
Outside Conventional Spacetime 

<CENTER>Set me free. 
What will you do if I set you free? 
I will kill you if you set me free. 
Then I cannot set you free. </CENTER>
The exchange was unspoken, understood completely by body language, a shared gaze, and the vibrance of their spirits. Yaijinden watched his prisoner as if looking into a distorted mirror, and did not wonder why others had feared him in years past. His prisoner was wild-eyed, sharp-smiled, and possessed of murderous innocence; the man-thing before him had seen strange horizons and been changed for the worse by his experience. 
In short, he was seeing himself: a Yaijinden who had tipped from faux-indifferent ambivalence about the world to caring about the world, deeply, in nihilistic delight. 
“You are doing me a cruelty,” the once-khadi Horror-Terror said to him, tone betraying mild irritation that never reached its gaze. Its voice was a thing that could drive mortals mad by the littlest of insinuations, and was something still that set the walls of its prison to quivering. “You keep me in a cage. You bottle me away. You feed me little trinkets, little pustules of information about the world you live in. I survive, but I do not live.” 
“You sound surprised by this,” Yaijinden mused, head canting slightly to the side. “Why is that?” 
The Horror-Terror picked up a magazine, wrinkled and crumpled, and held it to the looking glass. “You have hope,” it answered, the smile becoming a sneer. “I can smell it on your breath. You think the world may be made a better place. Free of hate, free of pain, free of suffering, free of all those other idiocies that they used to spout.” 
“Let us say,” he said, bemused, “for the sake of argument, that your assumptions are correct.” 
“You must release me. It is the only thing consistent with what you espouse.” 
“How do you suppose?” 
“Because I must be given a chance.” The Horror-Terror released the magazine from his grip, where it fluttered gracelessly to the floor. “I will not deny my wickedness, but am I irredeemable?” it hissed, soothingly. “Am I any different from the great demons and ogres? Release me. You will find me a tractable student, once I have fattened myself on your heartsblood.” 
“Quite the charmer, aren’t you.” 
It smiled again at him. “Will you set me free?” 
Yaijinden was silent for a moment, then shook his head. “’When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite’,” he recited, regretful. “You have taken a stand. I will honor that stand by not attempting to force you to recant.” 
“I am not so proud as to prefer destruction.” 
“But you are cunning, and a liar of tremendous skill. It is why I have not delivered you to Nyx, and it is why I have not released you back to whence you came.” 
The Horror-Terror hissed again – a baring of fangs and a changing of countenance entirely. “You walk with my face, but you are not I. You have stolen our name, and worse, you dance just as your fool cousins did: in self-righteous blindness to anything but their delight.” 
“Fool?” Yaijinden found himself chuckling. “They followed the path writ for them by their own wills. Danced every step precisely as their very existence demanded.” 
“'Any road followed precisely to its end leads to nowhere.'” The thing behind the looking glass sneered again at him. “You are not the only one who remembers the lessons of the Atreides.” 
“Conceded,” he allowed. “You call me a thief of names, but mine was given rightly to me.” 
“And you have turned against what it rightly ought have been.” The Horror-Terror leaned forward, face pressing against the glass. “I know you better than you think,” it said to him. “I know you have cast your eyes into the far reaches. I know you have seen what we could have been.” 
“And this was what happened instead,” Yaijinden answered, not impressed. “You sound as though you disapprove—which, really, is curious to me. Most might consider this existence something of an upgrade.” 
“It is a step BACKWARDS!” it screamed at him – and slammed a fist into the glass. Brilliant emerald runes flared in a spiral shape beneath its fist, the legend of the Widening Gyre denying it freedom by right of the cosmic law inscribed on the bones of the universe. The Horror-Terror lingered there, eyes wide with hate, breathing heavily, as the symbols slowly receded into nothingness again. “It is a step backwards,” it repeated again, calmer but no less bitterly, “and you carry the sins of the past into the future.” 
“And which sin,” Yaijinden asked indulgently, “would this be?” 
“…I do not expect you to understand.” The Horror-Terror turned around and walked back to the center of its prison. “That is what is most tragic,” it said, almost regretful. “Your facsimile – that thing you use, to think like a human – can only fumble blindly with the concept. Your highest manifestation, your greatest shintai, could not begin to fathom the slightest scraps of it.” 
“Because I am too big?” he ventured. 
The Horror-Terror’s shoulders slumped. “No.” 
“Because it is the same sin that slew the Primordial Otherthings, in the beginning?” 
“No.” 
“Because I did not walk your paths?” 
“No!” It whirled around to face him again, an accusing malice in its smile. “Even now, you grasp without vision, hear without listening, look without seeing. Release me, and I will show you your sin.” 
“I shall not release you,” he answered, disappointed. “I do not know you beyond your hate, which cuts at everything I have given you that you have touched.” 
“You attempt to pacify me when I am not here of my own free will. Is it really so surprising that I bear you ill will, above and beyond my contempt?” 
Silence. 
“I will tell you why I hate you,” the Horror-Terror said, suddenly mild, seating itself cross-legged in the middle of its chamber. “It will not help my case before you, because you will not understand, but I will tell you why I hate you. 
“What if I do understand?” 
The Horror-Terror blinked once. Then, its expression went dark. “If you do understand, I will have to redouble my efforts to escape and destroy you.”
Yaijinden smiled wanly. “Why is that?” 
“Because if you understand,” it said, morosely, “then you are not acting on that understanding. If you understand but do not act on your understanding, then your shiny silver heart is less than worthless because it has made you the worst of cowards.” 
“Ah.” He nodded after a moment, acknowledging the assertion. “Do what you can, then,” he suggested. “If you speak fact, and my convictions cannot make room for them, then my convictions deserve to be destroyed.” 
“It is nothing so meagre as fact that drives me onwards, I am afraid.” It drew a long breath, savoring what could be savored in the air in its cell. “You acknowledge samsara,” the Horror-Terror said, its tone made it obvious that this was not a question. 
“The wheel of karma and change, the activity of the universe, desire and fear and revulsion and a thousand things besides.” 
“Within samsara, you will find the root cause of all suffering in the universe.” 
“Accurate, but potentially misleading. It is not samsara that causes suffering, but the actions of the thinking beings within it.” 
“Beings that, themselves, are part of the cycle.” Its eyes narrowed. “A thing that thinks is part of samsara. Comprised of samsara, enmeshed within karma, creating karma, to die and return to karma. Part of the great mechanism itself. Therefore, the root cause of all suffering in the universe can be found within samsara.” 
“…for the purposes of your argument, let us say that this is so.” Yaijinden leaned against the glass separating them, an arm on the windowpane. “Go on.” 
“Existence is suffering,” the Horror-Terror said reverently, eyes closed, rocking back in its position on the floor. “Yes, there are positive experiences within samsara, but are they not outnumbered and outweighed by the negative experiences we thinking beings create for ourselves?” 
“Potentially,” he allowed again, warily. 
“Thus, the sum of existence is negative experience,” it concluded, unhappily. “Non-existence becomes superior to existence.” 
“If one measures the value of existence by subjective experience.” 
“What other measure do we have?” Its eyes opened again, and the smile was of the highest condescension. “Objective experience is untouchable by any mind capable of holding an opinion. The dogmas of old are mere dogmas. We have nothing we can trust if not our own experience, and even that we know to be unreliable.” 
“And yet, it is possible for a mind to shape itself to perceive fewer negative experiences by devaluing their meaning…” 
“Cognitive tricks,” the Horror-Terror said, waving a dismissive hand, “ultimately indistinguishable from rationalizations and further self-delusions. The experiences still occur. Their sum still outweighs the sum of positive experiences. This world is a trap – all of the cosmos is a trap – and rather than chew off our own leg or wait for the hunter who set the snare, we malinger in the trap and pretend we are not slowly dying.” 
“So what do you intend to do about this?” Yaijinden traced a spiral on the glass with a finger, widening slowly outwards. “Besides bemoan the state of the universe, and all of that good stuff we both indulged in back in the beginning.” 
“What I intend is to cut off the problem at the source.” 
There was a long pause. “You intend to destroy the universe,” Yaijinden said. 
“All universes,” the Horror-Terror corrected him. “Everywhere. Everywhen. And anything that could create a universe, too.” 
“And you think this will resolve the problem.” 
“If there is no samsara, there is no existence; if there is no existence, there can be no suffering. Quod erat demonstratum, yes?” 
“Godsbedammit,” he groaned, banging his head once against the glass. “I thought we were above this kind of nonsense.” 
The monster smiled back, visibly entertained by the reaction. “And, as I knew it would, my words have fallen on deaf ears.” 
“It’s childish, is what it is,” he said, shaking his head, not moving from his position. 
“Am I wrong?” 
“Your premises could use some work, for one.” His gaze snapped up. “Aren’t you going to increase the amount of suffering in the cosmos when you go to end all existences?” 
“Yes,” the thing behind the glass admitted, continuing to rock back and forth in its seated position. “It is very likely that I may be responsible for a spike in the suffering within the cosmos. However, as a surgeon must cut apart their patient to excise a tumor, so I would be doing a smaller harm to avoid a greater, everlasting pain.” 
“Then what of the potential purpose of suffering?” he went on, challenging. “You are just as aware of the process of Sublimation as I am. Do those cultures not factor into your calculations?” 
The Horror-Terror sighed, shaking its head. “Believe me, I did consider them. In the end, though, the one thing that can be certain about them is that nothing is certain about them.” 
“They seemed quite certain to me about the worth of going to the beyond.” 
“No less certain as the person on their fifth potentially-abusive significant other, completely convinced that this time, although nothing else has changed, this person will not beat them.” It folded its hands in its lap, unimpressed. “Whatever gains a culture may come into through Sublimation, does that truly balance out the tens of thousands of other cultures and their tens of millions, or billions, or trillions of lives that will never participate in such an event?” 
“It could well.” 
A grim smile was its answer. “You don’t know that. None of us do, not conclusively, not with any proof, not with any certainty. Next objection.” 
“…no, I think we are in fact done here.” Yaijinden stepped back, disappointed. “I’ll give you this much. You were right: we cannot be reconciled. I shall not accept your proposition, because I cannot countenance your premises.” 
“For fear that I am right?” the Horror-Terror said, leering. 
“For your decision to have chosen all things to be your enemy.” 
Silence. 
“You presume,” it said, rising at last to its feet, “that all things are not already your enemy.” 
Yaijinden laughed, nodding. “I do.” 
“And you believe that,” it said, visibly nauseated. 
“I do!” Yaijinden spread his arms wide, as if to encompass all things within them. “You look to the nighttime skies and you see the building hosts of your enemies. I look to the stars, and I see the ten thousand mysteries, each one beckoning me further onwards. How can I hold anger for a universe that promises to entertain me so? And in that realization…” 
He trailed off, the grin lingering on his face, before he leveled a finger at the thing that bore his image. “You would raise a weapon against everything I hold dear,” Yaijinden said, somewhere between surprised, delighted, and offended. “That you would kill me, murder me, rip me apart and burn me to ashes -- that means nothing to me. I experience traumas, and rise above them, whether by my own merit or the work of others. But that you would raise that same weapon against those I love?” 
“With mortals,” it hissed. “You diminish yourself with your pastimes.” 
“Do I?” Yaijinden’s delight did not waver. “I recall it being a common pastime among the gods of our forefathers,” he reflected aloud. “They think me diminished for my attentions. Focused on the small games. Safer. Less likely to cause waves. And perhaps they are correct – but I wonder why they seem so sure about it.” 
“One might suggest that threats to your loved ones have kept you out of the Nightfall conflict,” the Horror-Terror supplied helpfully. If nothing else, it remembered how to facilitate a monologue. “That seems like plenty of evidence off the cuff.” 
“It would be sufficient reason,” he agreed. “But necessary? No. And yet…” 
“Why are you telling this to me, rather than to them?” it finished. 
“…because the game is still on,” Yaijinden finished. “Because the music is still playing, and the dance is not yet done. And I think that if there is one thing we both still appreciate…” 
“It is an inside joke.” 
He nodded, pleased. “Can you see why I remain?” 
It tilted its head to the side, frowning. “Through a glass, darkly. But yes, I do see.” 
A long pause. “Even if you don’t agree,” Yaijinden said quietly, somewhat disenheartened. 
“You are indulging yourself in selfishness and vanity,” the Horror-Terror responded, mild but unoffended irritation back in its voice. “You are of course free to behave in accordance with your selfishness and vanity, as are all creatures, but that does not mean I am obliged to condone it.” 
Yaijinden sighed knowingly. “And thus,” he said regretfully, “we swing back to my problem with you.”
“Release me,” the Horror-Terror whispered tersely. 
“You are correct,” he went on, as if he hadn’t heard. “You aren’t irredeemable. It is within the realm of possibility that, in time, you will let go of your pursuits, that someone or something or you yourself will convince you that you are wrong. Precognition isn’t my thing. I don’t know that you won’t see the light.” 
“Release me,” the Horror-Terror repeated, intense. 
“It is a sign of my weakness and a marker of my shame that I cannot convince you of this myself. Would that I could do so… no, that’s not it.” He shook his head, gaze unfocusing. “Would that I were wise enough to do so without doing tremendous violence to you in the process.” 
“RELEASE ME AK’HAD N’YEEB’ARAI THOCHTET UCHSTEQ.” 
The spiral wards inside the its cell flared to the brightness of ten suns. 
Yaijinden said nothing for long moments, waiting for the tremendous light of the spiral warding inside its cell to slowly die away. By increments, it diminished, and the throbbing of the universe within those walls went with it, dwindling away. By fragments, he could see the Horror-Terror wearing what had been his face, on hands and knees, a pool of brackish crimson pooling beneath its head, dribbling in steady drips from its nose, eyes, ears, and mouth. “Clever,” he said, appreciative. “How long have you been waiting to use the Call to Submission Yielded to the Elder Ones?” 
It gargled something hateful in response, an act of defiance that ended up with it doubling over again in a hacking, consumptive cough that only produced more ichor. “It was a good idea,” Yaijinden admitted. “And maybe you have even better up your sleeve, but you’re going to need to use those better ideas if you want to escape.” 
The Horror-Terror slumped over onto its side, away from the puddle of thick, black-streaked ichor, weakness overcoming it at last. It managed to level a look at him, condemning and bitter and hateful and a thousand angry things besides, but the damage done to it in its attempt to breach the barrier ward would take quite some time to heal. It wasn’t going anywhere. “Here you are,” he said, with finality, turning and leaving it behind. “And here you shall stay, until it pleases me to release you.” 
His concerns were assuaged. He would not slay the Horror-Terror using his name, but he would not release it, and he would feel no shame over its indefinite containment. The shintai-avatar of the Widening Gyre turned its attention from its Self back to the physical sphere of the planet Earth, and the sanctity of home – and, with a lighter conscience, to the more entertaining subjects of the never-ending comings and goings that would always be part of the universe he so loved. 
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Why Am I Not In Russia?

2014-11-15T05:25:55Z

Yaijinden:

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<TR><TD> <BLOCKQUOTE>A.D. 2013 October 
Earth, [REDACTED] 

"There are a handful of people I expected would one day show up on my doorstep," Yaijinden mused aloud, pouring from the pitcher of orange juice into two glasses. "You were honestly not on that list." 
"Ha. Yeah, that's me. Full of surprises." 
The sheer lifelessness of Mango's answer drew his gaze back her way, studying her anew. Where he had merely been curious before, he was now somewhat concerned. Yaijinden and Celeste had known that their attempts at privacy would be breached at some point; the only questions would be 'who,' 'when,' and 'why.' 
On a hunch, he opened the cabinet above the sink and procured the bottle of vodka hidden there, adding a shot to both glasses, and brought them both to the dining table Mango was seated at. Her gaze was firmly directed out the window, her legs were crossed, one heel bouncing, tapping lightly on the hardwood floor; it was an interesting sign, for Mango was never that focused unless something was bothering her that she couldn't shake. "How have adventures been with Furu?" Yaijinden asked, taking a long pull of the screwdriver he'd mixed. 
"Fine," she said listlessly, taking her glass but not moving to drink from it yet. "Furu's all kinds of crazy. A little clingy sometimes, though." 
"That seems to be a statement true of most of them," he mused. "Nothing too intolerable?" 
"Nah." A brief, wan smile lit her expression. "He did make me a Valentine's Day heart made out of spines and skulls. That was neat." 
"How very romantic," he said, smirking. The alcohol shiver finally made its way up his spine, completing his readiness to get into serious things. "So what brings you to our little hobbit-hole?" Yaijinden asked, hands folded together. "Certainly not the garden harvest, not at this time of year." 
"Huh." Mango chewed on that thought for a moment. "Do you ever regret what you did?" 
"No." 
"Not about adopting the baby. About doing what I asked you to do." 
"No." 
A pause. "Am I asking the right question? I don't think I'm asking the right question." 
Yaijinden grinned. "Take your time," he said lazily, taking another long pull from his drink. "We've got plenty to spare." 
Several moments passed while Mango gave the matter delightfully-uncharacteristic serious consideration. She'd figured out this was a Teaching Moment; he and she had them every so often when she had come across something worth thinking about, and he was always glad to provide an whetstone to hone her edge. 
It was refreshing, in a way that very few other people had ever been for him. 
There was a tug at his pant leg. "Yes, kiddo?" Yaijinden asked, looking down at his daughter beneath the table. 
"Mama up," Faye said emphatically. 
"Do you want to sit in my lap for a little bit?" With a practiced maneuver, he bent over and scooped the toddler up, sitting her in his lap, where she seemed content to snuggle for a little while. Idly, Yaijinden bounced her gently on his leg, giving a bit of motion, and was rewarded for his patience when Mango took the glass containing her screwdriver in both hands for the first time. "Have you found your question?" 
"A long time ago, you said you cast regret away," Mango said, a certain curious detachment in her voice and expression. "What does regret mean to you?" 
A wide smile played across his face again. "Regret can mean one or more of many things," Yaijinden said, settling into his seat. "Most of them can be expressed in the English, 'I wish I hadn't done that,' or 'I wish I had made a different decision,' which, like most of English, is next to worthless when it comes to capturing subtleties. One of the cleaner forms, such as I've found it, is the rebuilding regret, where you wish you had not hurt another because it was not what you had wanted to do. It's an expression of compassion, helpful for the rebuilding of bonds you value, and thus has a function." 
The young woman nodded, considering. "And you don't regret what you did for me that way?" 
"You weren't running from anything," he explained. "And you weren't running to anything. If there was anyone who could have taken the strain back then, when I was handling cardioectomies out like Christmas cake, it would have been you. That and we've bonded as a result of it, so I don't regret it in that sense." 
Mango nodded again, putting the drink to her lips and then wincing a bit when she got a first mouthful. "What's in this?" 
"Wodka." He thumped his chest for emphasis. "Good Russian stock, the swill they sell overseas rather than the shit they purchase for themselves." 
She made another thoughtful noise and then took a longer pull, now prepared for the alcohol shock. "What's another regret?" 
"Another form of regret is resentment regret, where you wish you had acted in a different fashion to avoid your current troubles. It's a bit more self-centered, a bit more common, because we as thinking creatures occasionally make the wrong decision." He shrugged lightly at that. "Which doesn't preclude it from being useful. If I see I've caused myself problems, when I'm functioning at one hundred percent, the cause and origin of my problems merely becomes a data point for future reference, to avoid or invoke as I see fit. You're a lot like me that way, which is one of the reasons we get along so well." 
A small, pleased smile lit Mango's face. "What about another regret?" 
He straightened a bit, shifting Faye in his lap; her curiosity as to what was going on at the table had apparently been sated, and the child was starting to drift off in the safety of her parent's arms. "The third regret is the pining regret, which says 'If only I had done differently'. It laments what has been lost and only laments. It is pitying self-indulgence. The one I was prone to in times before my life became interesting, the one I bargained my heart away to cast out." 
"And you don't regret giving me what I asked in those ways, either?" 
"I don't." Yaijinden idly traced a gentle circle on the top of Faye's head with a fingertip. "If I regret helping you, I regret creating the you that gave me my daughter and provided me such delightful entertainment." 
Mango was quiet for another long moment, still pensive, still thoughtful as she took another long drink of the screwdriver, finishing it off in a single swig. "What happens now?" she asked, absently, abstractly, detached from the question as anything but a curiosity. 
"That's a good question." Yaijinden half-smiled and shrugged with one shoulder again. "One I don't have the answer to, either, because the only person who can determine that is you. I do have one that you may be able to answer, though." 
"Mmm hmm?" 
"How did you find us?" He gestured broadly out the window. "We're not exactly close to Russia..." 
"We aren't?" Mango blinked and followed his finger, looking outside. "But I know I was in Russia," she murmured, head canting to the side again. "I was at the Olympics place just yesterday, walking through the ruins..." 
"Walk me through it." Yaijinden leaned forward, interest sharpened, leaning slightly back in his chair and balancing the toddler in his lap. "What were you doing before you saw me?" 
Mango bit her lip, thinking. "I was walking through a field," she said slowly, thinking aloud. "Snow. Cold. Scrub trees. I was wondering why I'd chosen to come here, and I wondered if I wasn't making a mistake, and I started thinking about mistakes, and I started thinking about regret. And then I remembered something you'd said a long time ago about casting away regret, and I wanted to ask you if you still felt that way about..." 
"Go on," he prompted her gently. 
Her gaze unfocused, reaching back into fragments of memories, trying to piece things together. "And then," she said, puzzled, "I was walking up your way and I saw you in your garden, and Faye playing in the dirt. How did I do that?" 
"You passed through Elsewhere." 
Mango's face screwed up in a frown as she looked back to him. He half-smiled again and went on: "It's a subtle technique that bridges gaps in time and space, letting you pass from one place to another. When you set your will towards being somewhere, and the stories of the universe don't have any hold on you-- or believe they don't have any hold on you-- you can effectively walk anywhere you are not forbidden to walk." 
Her expression settled into a scrunched pout. "...I don't get it," Mango admitted. 
"You may not for a while yet,"he said freely. "You probably have a ways to go yet before you understand. But you can count on this much: when the student is ready, the master appears." 
She made another thoughtful noise. "So, you're saying don't worry about it?" 
"Pretty much." 
"Kay." Mango chewed on her lip for a bit. "So. Got another question." 
"Shoot." 
"How do I get back to Russia from here?" 
Yaijinden made a sound that somehow managed to combine a snort, a sigh, and a laugh, and shifted Faye into his arms to fetch the paper he needed.
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Why Am I Not In Russia?

2014-11-15T05:25:22Z

Yaijinden: Created page with "<HTML> <HEAD><TITLE>Repository neé Yaijinden</TITLE> </HEAD> <CENTER> <TABLE 9IDTH="700" HEIGHT="30%" BORDER="1"> <TR><TD> <BLOCK..."

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<TR><TD> <BLOCKQUOTE>A.D. 2013 October
Earth, <REDACTED> 

"There are a handful of people I expected would one day show up on my doorstep," Yaijinden mused aloud, pouring from the pitcher of orange juice into two glasses. "You were honestly not on that list." 
"Ha. Yeah, that's me. Full of surprises." 
The sheer lifelessness of Mango's answer drew his gaze back her way, studying her anew. Where he had merely been curious before, he was now somewhat concerned. Yaijinden and Celeste had known that their attempts at privacy would be breached at some point; the only questions would be 'who,' 'when,' and 'why.' 
On a hunch, he opened the cabinet above the sink and procured the bottle of vodka hidden there, adding a shot to both glasses, and brought them both to the dining table Mango was seated at. Her gaze was firmly directed out the window, her legs were crossed, one heel bouncing, tapping lightly on the hardwood floor; it was an interesting sign, for Mango was never that focused unless something was bothering her that she couldn't shake. "How have adventures been with Furu?" Yaijinden asked, taking a long pull of the screwdriver he'd mixed. 
"Fine," she said listlessly, taking her glass but not moving to drink from it yet. "Furu's all kinds of crazy. A little clingy sometimes, though." 
"That seems to be a statement true of most of them," he mused. "Nothing too intolerable?" 
"Nah." A brief, wan smile lit her expression. "He did make me a Valentine's Day heart made out of spines and skulls. That was neat." 
"How very romantic," he said, smirking. The alcohol shiver finally made its way up his spine, completing his readiness to get into serious things. "So what brings you to our little hobbit-hole?" Yaijinden asked, hands folded together. "Certainly not the garden harvest, not at this time of year." 
"Huh." Mango chewed on that thought for a moment. "Do you ever regret what you did?" 
"No." 
"Not about adopting the baby. About doing what I asked you to do." 
"No." 
A pause. "Am I asking the right question? I don't think I'm asking the right question." 
Yaijinden grinned. "Take your time," he said lazily, taking another long pull from his drink. "We've got plenty to spare." 
Several moments passed while Mango gave the matter delightfully-uncharacteristic serious consideration. She'd figured out this was a Teaching Moment; he and she had them every so often when she had come across something worth thinking about, and he was always glad to provide an whetstone to hone her edge. 
It was refreshing, in a way that very few other people had ever been for him. 
There was a tug at his pant leg. "Yes, kiddo?" Yaijinden asked, looking down at his daughter beneath the table. 
"Mama up," Faye said emphatically. 
"Do you want to sit in my lap for a little bit?" With a practiced maneuver, he bent over and scooped the toddler up, sitting her in his lap, where she seemed content to snuggle for a little while. Idly, Yaijinden bounced her gently on his leg, giving a bit of motion, and was rewarded for his patience when Mango took the glass containing her screwdriver in both hands for the first time. "Have you found your question?" 
"A long time ago, you said you cast regret away," Mango said, a certain curious detachment in her voice and expression. "What does regret mean to you?" 
A wide smile played across his face again. "Regret can mean one or more of many things," Yaijinden said, settling into his seat. "Most of them can be expressed in the English, 'I wish I hadn't done that,' or 'I wish I had made a different decision,' which, like most of English, is next to worthless when it comes to capturing subtleties. One of the cleaner forms, such as I've found it, is the rebuilding regret, where you wish you had not hurt another because it was not what you had wanted to do. It's an expression of compassion, helpful for the rebuilding of bonds you value, and thus has a function." 
The young woman nodded, considering. "And you don't regret what you did for me that way?" 
"You weren't running from anything," he explained. "And you weren't running to anything. If there was anyone who could have taken the strain back then, when I was handling cardioectomies out like Christmas cake, it would have been you. That and we've bonded as a result of it, so I don't regret it in that sense." 
Mango nodded again, putting the drink to her lips and then wincing a bit when she got a first mouthful. "What's in this?" 
"Wodka." He thumped his chest for emphasis. "Good Russian stock, the swill they sell overseas rather than the shit they purchase for themselves." 
She made another thoughtful noise and then took a longer pull, now prepared for the alcohol shock. "What's another regret?" 
"Another form of regret is resentment regret, where you wish you had acted in a different fashion to avoid your current troubles. It's a bit more self-centered, a bit more common, because we as thinking creatures occasionally make the wrong decision." He shrugged lightly at that. "Which doesn't preclude it from being useful. If I see I've caused myself problems, when I'm functioning at one hundred percent, the cause and origin of my problems merely becomes a data point for future reference, to avoid or invoke as I see fit. You're a lot like me that way, which is one of the reasons we get along so well." 
A small, pleased smile lit Mango's face. "What about another regret?" 
He straightened a bit, shifting Faye in his lap; her curiosity as to what was going on at the table had apparently been sated, and the child was starting to drift off in the safety of her parent's arms. "The third regret is the pining regret, which says 'If only I had done differently'. It laments what has been lost and only laments. It is pitying self-indulgence. The one I was prone to in times before my life became interesting, the one I bargained my heart away to cast out." 
"And you don't regret giving me what I asked in those ways, either?" 
"I don't." Yaijinden idly traced a gentle circle on the top of Faye's head with a fingertip. "If I regret helping you, I regret creating the you that gave me my daughter and provided me such delightful entertainment." 
Mango was quiet for another long moment, still pensive, still thoughtful as she took another long drink of the screwdriver, finishing it off in a single swig. "What happens now?" she asked, absently, abstractly, detached from the question as anything but a curiosity. 
"That's a good question." Yaijinden half-smiled and shrugged with one shoulder again. "One I don't have the answer to, either, because the only person who can determine that is you. I do have one that you may be able to answer, though." 
"Mmm hmm?" 
"How did you find us?" He gestured broadly out the window. "We're not exactly close to Russia..." 
"We aren't?" Mango blinked and followed his finger, looking outside. "But I know I was in Russia," she murmured, head canting to the side again. "I was at the Olympics place just yesterday, walking through the ruins..." 
"Walk me through it." Yaijinden leaned forward, interest sharpened, leaning slightly back in his chair and balancing the toddler in his lap. "What were you doing before you saw me?" 
Mango bit her lip, thinking. "I was walking through a field," she said slowly, thinking aloud. "Snow. Cold. Scrub trees. I was wondering why I'd chosen to come here, and I wondered if I wasn't making a mistake, and I started thinking about mistakes, and I started thinking about regret. And then I remembered something you'd said a long time ago about casting away regret, and I wanted to ask you if you still felt that way about..." 
"Go on," he prompted her gently. 
Her gaze unfocused, reaching back into fragments of memories, trying to piece things together. "And then," she said, puzzled, "I was walking up your way and I saw you in your garden, and Faye playing in the dirt. How did I do that?" 
"You passed through Elsewhere." 
Mango's face screwed up in a frown as she looked back to him. He half-smiled again and went on: "It's a subtle technique that bridges gaps in time and space, letting you pass from one place to another. When you set your will towards being somewhere, and the stories of the universe don't have any hold on you-- or believe they don't have any hold on you-- you can effectively walk anywhere you are not forbidden to walk." 
Her expression settled into a scrunched pout. "...I don't get it," Mango admitted. 
"You may not for a while yet,"he said freely. "You probably have a ways to go yet before you understand. But you can count on this much: when the student is ready, the master appears." 
She made another thoughtful noise. "So, you're saying don't worry about it?" 
"Pretty much." 
"Kay." Mango chewed on her lip for a bit. "So. Got another question." 
"Shoot." 
"How do I get back to Russia from here?" 
Yaijinden made a sound that somehow managed to combine a snort, a sigh, and a laugh, and shifted Faye into his arms to fetch the paper he needed.
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Personal Crisis

2014-11-15T05:21:34Z

Yaijinden: Created page with "<HTML> <HEAD><TITLE>Repository neé Yaijinden</TITLE> </HEAD> <CENTER> <TABLE WIDTH="900" HEIGHT="30%" BORDER="0"> <TR><TD><FONT FACE="verdana" S..."

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<TR><TD><BLOCKQUOTE>A.D. 2006 June EARTH, ILLINOIS, CHICAGO

"There's a reason I don't tell my own stories." 

It was an even bet as to whether the woman sitting aside him had any understanding of what he was talking about. Yaijinden watched her for a moment longer, hearing the repetitive thump-thump of her sandals against the concrete railing they were both perilously perched upon. If either of them lost their balance, the only thing separating them and the pavement some thirty stories below them was a fall of about three seconds. 

Of all the cardioectomies, of all the soul-removals and captures Yaijinden had done in the past few years, Hitomi was the one he had initially had the least faith in. He had only done the procedure because he felt somewhat obliged to the acquaintance who had brought her in. The girl was a meek, unassuming, and otherwise perfectly average human before her transformation, a former prostitute had contracted HIV some years ago during her work for the yakuza and had been on death's door for weeks before she had been brought in. Hitomi had agreed to the cardioectomy knowing that he was going to own her in a very literal way-- perhaps she was already used to the sentiment of belonging to someone. All she had wanted out of the ritual was the chance to be able to walk again, and to draw a deep breath without breaking down into a fit of phlegmy coughs. 

To see Hitomi now was to have difficulty believing that she had ever been ill. The woman idly kicking her heels against the railing they were sitting on looked more vibrant than she had ever been before, full of an unnatural life that even gave Yaijinden pause. He had initially thought of her as a more-or-less expendable pawn, one to do his dirty work and watch his back-- but when he deigned to see how skilled she was with sorcery, she proved more adept a student than he had ever dreamed. 

She had been so adept a student, in fact, that there was a remnant part of Yaijinden that was almost concerned for his own safety. Hitomi had pursued courses of study that Yaijinden had merely dabbled in, delving into knowledges and tomes that had driven mortal men to madness for eons-- but when she had become khadi, the mortal part of her mind that feared the Unknowable had atrophied into a mere honed curiosity. Just the mere knowledge she had gained through her own studies was subtly warping the elements around them; the air was stale and unfulfilling despite the brisk breeze whipping their hair about, and the stone they sat on almost sagged beneath their weight. 

If he thought about it, he might even say that the student had outdistanced the master in her knowledge of the Things that Should Not Be. 

"I almost envy you," he said evenly, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "You're already long divorced from mortal concerns yourself... I don't know whether I didn't teach you enough, or if I taught you far too much." 

"Mmm?" Hitomi's gaze flitted over to him, and she smiled brightly. "Were you talking to me, master?" 

Yaijinden shrugged. "Talking at you, maybe..." 

"Would it help if I paid attention?" the girl said helpfully, smiling. 

"Maybe," he conceded. "There isn't really anyone else in my position who I can talk to about this." 

"There are other khadi, master, like the one you married as a jest." Hitomi nodded, thoughtful. "You still have Mango-chan's heart. She would listen to you if you desired it." 

Yaijinden shook his head no. "Mango-chan, bless her soul, is too young to really understand this." 

"Yubari Akiko?" she offered. 

"Is just close enough to me to think this is some sort of cry for help." His face was briefly wrinkled in a frown. "She wouldn't stay quiet, and then I'd have people offering me to help me do something that I can only do on my own." 

Hitomi smiled and leaned on his shoulder. "I guess your lady-friend is out of the question, ne?" 

"Terrible irony of ironies..." He sucked in a long breath and sighed. "She wouldn't understand. Not the way she would need to. I don't want her to worry more than she already is... and I would rather have her in the dark than tell her what I am contemplating." 

"So I'm your choice, master?" Hitomi smiled widely. "I'm honored." 

"For the explicit reason that you don't care, won't try to help, and won't try to understand." He leaned back on the rail, staring into the deep blue of the open sky above them. "I know you're eager to get back to whatever fell deeds you're working, so I'll not take too much of your time with this." 

She laughed. "The master is so kind to continue to recognize that he has permitted his minions free time." 

"And I will thank you to acknowledge the fact that I am easily offended by your rampant brown-nosing attempts." 

"Of... course." Her smile flickered, and for a brief moment he could see something else on her face-- irritation? confusion?-- but it was gone before he could pin it down. "If you wish to talk at me, then, please do." 

He was quiet for moment, gathering his thoughts. Below them, the streets were filled with all sorts of human traffic-- vehicular and pedestrian alike, the veins of the city pulsing with life below. "In the good stories," Yaijinden began, "in the ones that motivate us to better things, the ones that inspire us, there's almost always one thing in common. The protagonist, however loosely defined they may be, bears the marks of change and passing time... and almost without exception, they are all the stronger for it." 

"There are many stories that don't end like that," Hitomi said pointedly. "Some of them are good ones, too." 

"And those stories have their place in the universe," Yaijinden replied, nodding. "That place, unfortunately, has no room for me as a protagonist. I am the monster in those tales, the enemy that must be overcome-- sometimes the wise-cracking side-kick, or the trickster spirit whose challenges bring the protagonists into greater wisdom of their own, but a thing that remains unchanged by the passage of time and events regardless." 

"That's because we are monsters, master." Another smile crossed Hitomi's face, though there was an unpleasant gleam in her eyes that had not been there before. "We are khadi. That is what you are, and that is what you made me. We are above humankind just as surely as humankind is above the pigs." 

"Are we?" He shook his head and looked down to the movements of people, many stories below. "Are we, really?" 

"This is unlike you, master." Her head cocked to one side, puzzled. "Are you unwell?" 

Yaijinden swallowed. "I've... been feeling the call to power again." 

"Really?" She pursed her lips. "Just 'again' now?" 

"It was always there before," he said hesitantly, trying to lose himself among the throngs of humanity. "But never so strongly, never so much as it is now. I can't sleep without being visited by something from the Dream. Some emissary of a vast and deep power, something from beyond the veil beckoning me forward to the place of no return... but I don't want to go." Yaijinden straightened slightly. "I like where I am very much, and if I heed where the voices ask me to follow, I know I'll lose everything about me that makes me who I am." He glanced up, back to her, but looked downwards again after a moment. "It's been said that everything either changes or dies... and as much as I want to change, I can't see anywhere that I want to be." 

"Master is thinking as though he were mortal," Hitomi observed, frowning. "Were you not listening when I said we were better than humanity?" 

"No. Not better." He shot a glare to the woman, irritated. "All we are is separated from the kharmic cycle, Hitomi, and all that does is give us a perspective on things that they happen to be spared. Nothing more. Nothing less." 

"If master says so." She smiled back at him and shifted her weight on the rail. "There's a part of me that envies you what you have," Hitomi admitted. "I never had anyone who was there for me, who really wanted me like Zora does you... I thought Wolfwood might do that for me, once upon a time, but in the end all he did was sell me out to you so he and his wife could life happily ever after." 

"You did agree to the cardioectomy," he reminded her. 

"Of course I did. How could I say no?" Her lips parted in a grin. "Of course, the fact that I agreed to be his pawn doesn't change the fact that he sacrificed me to save his queen and squirm his way out of check... though the fact that their souls have been scattered to the ether would suggest he failed in the end, neh?" 

He shrugged mildly. "It was what they wanted. Mortals have that luxury in life." 

"If you can call it a luxury." She snorted and shook her head. "If he had just said yes to you when you offered..." 

"It's a conscious choice. If it was any other way, I would be no better than the thing that created me..." 

Hitomi paused and studied his expression. "And that's important to you?" she inquired. 

"Yes. No!... fuck it, I don't know any more." 

"And that's what's bothering you." She nodded, slowly. "You're free to do whatever you want," she said, thoughtfully, "and now that you can do what you want to with the rest of your existence, you don't have anywhere to fall back to if you're over your head." 

"I... maybe. I don't know." His hands tightened on the rail as he leaned downwards towards the street. "There are a million different roads from where I am now, Hitomi, and I can't walk any one of them without succumbing to the darkness." 

"So succumb," Hitomi offered. "Give in." 

"Never." 

"So adamant..." She blinked, curious, and leaned in. "Why are you so afraid of power, master?" 

"Because there is no purpose to power, save power itself." 

"Is that so wrong?" 

"When its accumulation becomes the sole purpose of your existence? Yes. Yes, it is." 

"Plenty of people have power that they don't use for the further pursuit of power." She ticked them off on her fingers. "Protecting that which you want to protect, keeping yourself safe from the predations of others..." 

"And if I trusted myself with that power, I'd work towards them in a minute-- but I've gone as far as I can go." He sighed, frowning. "To go further is to become degenerate, and I believe I've already told you why I'm resistant to the idea." 

"What's the time?" she inquired. 

"Time for you to get a watch." Yaijinden glanced towards the tower of the bank some blocks away. "Twenty-seven after two local." 

"Good." 

"Good? Why 'good?'" 

"Just wanting to make sure you got all of this off your chest before my work had to begin." She smiled pleasantly. "Are you nearly done yet?" 

"Oh, am I boring you?" 

"Very much so." 

"That's unfortunate, as I'm not quite done yet." 

"No, I think you are done. In fact, I think you're done right about... now." 

"What are you--" 

Yaijinden's retort was cut off as he suddenly clutched his chest and fell over backwards with a low moan, collapsing in a heap on the roof of the office building. He sprang back to his feet after a brief second, shaking and unsteady, before he finally managed to level his eyes at Hitomi. "What the hell are you getting at, girl?" he snarled, right arm fastened to his left wrist. "The flying fuck is going on here?" 

"I'm a little surprised, actually." Hitomi turned around to face him, crossing her legs as she repositioned herself on the railing and smiled a little too cheerily. "A little bit ago, when you asked me if you wondered if you'd taught me too well," she announced, grinning, "I thought about telling you this then... but I figured this would make a better time, since you've revealed just how weak you actually are." 

"This..." Slowly, Yaijinden let his wrist go, though the hoarseness in his voice did not cease. "How did you find it, Hitomi?" he asked, evenly. "I told you to put it where it wouldn't be found, and then I told you to forget it." 

"Master is correct," she said brightly. "Master was very insightful when he first bound me to him, and told me I could never take an action that caused him harm, or through inaction, permitted harm to come to him... but master was also a fool, when he let me explore on my own, because he didn't think I would go places he wouldn't go himself." 

Yaijinden's eyes narrowed. "Where did you go, Hitomi?" 

"Everywhere, master." Slowly, she slid off of the railing, brushing a few bits of concrete detritus off of her sundress. "I wasn't afraid, master," Hitomi said triumphantly. "When you told me to watch you, quietly, back before any of this happened, I did. I learned so much that I thought I could barely contain it... and then when I saw where you were afraid to go, I went there. I've been to so many places, seen so many things... and I've learned to be so much more than you can possibly understand. 

"Don't try too hard to find my button," the woman added off-handedly as Yaijinden frantically reached into his pants, trying in vain to access the nondimensional storage therein. "I've sealed off dimensional access here so you can't get into your little pockets of tricks. I really, really want to show you just how insignificant you are in the grand scheme of things, you know. You could have been so much more, but you were always holding yourself back for fear..." 

Despite his best efforts and frenetic activity, Yaijinden found that she had, in fact, spoken the truth: the Cargo Pants of Holding were, in fact, empty of everything except lint. "How did you find it, Hitomi?" he repeated, slowly straightening. 

"Master told me to forget," she said cheerily, "but master failed to realize that I could leave clues for me to find later, that I could track them back and find out where things were. I knew I could get something if I knew where I had left it... and if I can get my heart out of it, why not do it?" 

"A trade?" He sneered derisively, but when his chest cavity pulsed again towards implosion, he found himself more concerned with standing upright. "Is that it?" Yaijinden growled. "Because surely you're aware I still have yours..." 

"All too aware, thank you... and no. I do not intend to trade." Her eyes gleamed as she stepped closer, hands behind her back. "I don't think you understand how deeply you are in my hands, Yaijinden," Hitomi marveled. "It doesn't do you any good to have my heart if you can't use it to command me, does it?" 

"Very clever," Yaijinden snorted. "So are you going to get on with this, or are you going to gloat all hrrk--" 

The universe went hazy for a long, agonizing moment. When Yaijinden regained his senses, he found that he was on his hands and knees, choking on the remnants of a flood of vomit. Horrified, he staggered back to his feet, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, twisting back to face his antagonist. "The hell are you doing to me?" he coughed. 

"I didn't dare try this before I knew how to sever the spacefolding aspects of your Pants," Hitomi laughed, leaning over to smile widely for him. "And quite honestly, if doing this to you wasn't part of how I needed to repay my tutor, I wouldn't bother." 

Yaijinden coughed one last time and spat the last few bits of his meal to the side. "I wasn't aware I merited the retribution from anything important enough that knew how to do that," he said dryly. 

"The old gods avenge all the slights against them," she shrugged. "And gracious, did you offend Her when you escaped Her clutches..." 

"You don't..." 

And understanding finally dawned on him. "No," Yaijinden said numbly. "No, it can't be that ridiculous. All I did was point them to something they were already going to do." 

"You defied Her when you were free," Hitomi corrected him, shaking her head. "And when you're done, she's going to use you to kill the two that helped you out." 

"I did what I had to do to SURVIVE," he snarled. "Surely she sees that." 

"I have no doubts of that," she said serenely, shrugging. "But though She wants you back, She doesn't want you back as you are now. Just like She taught you how to perform the cardioectomy, She taught me how to work a change on you so that you'll be more like She wanted." 

Yaijinden sneered. "A slave to the cosmic wheel... just like you." 

"A slave?" she said, puzzled. "How silly. What sort of slavedriver would permit me the sort of power I now have? What sort of master would let me roam so freely?" 

His smirk was defiant. "The same sort of master that created me, once upon a time. You just don't see your chains, yet..." 

Something dark and blasphemous flashed beneath the facade of her smile, but the power was bottled just as quickly as it appeared. "You know what the difference between you and me is, master?" Hitomi inquired, all smiles and cheerfulness again. 

"Spare me," Yaijinden snapped. 

"The difference between you and me is that I'm not afraid to embrace what I became." She smiled again, and the air between them darkened, the light afraid to come between them. "You once told me you journeyed to the center of all things, to the court of the Daemon Sultan, just to hear the music of the pipers," she said contemptibly, sauntering closer to him. "But where you fled from what you saw... I joined the dance, and touched the source of all things." 

"You're a pawn," he gurgled, stumbling back a step as nausea washed over him again. "You're a pawn, and that's all you'll ever be, you daft creature." 

"I chose my path in life," she laughed. "You, though, have always been content to let others dictate it for you. You let Fiona mutilate you while others rallied to your defense. Then it was Noriko, who manipulated you into letting her seize your heart and free you from your chains... and firstly and lastly, as it was meant to be, it will be She who dictates your path. 

"A cardioectomy does strange things to the soul," Hitomi added, suddenly more thoughtful. "It mutilates a lot of the things that are essential to mortals' spiritual well-being... the pure heart mirror, the starseed, the Soul Link and Soul Sleep... and maybe most significantly, the Chain of Fate. The thing that binds human souls to their bodies, and the dead to the things they haunt. The Chain of Fate still exists in khadi, you know-- it's just buried deeper, scarred by the knife, made so small to be nearly invisible to anyone who doesn't know what to look for." 

She gestured in the air and produced a length of dull, rusted chain from thin air, both ends trailing off into the ether from which she had produced it. "This is your Chain, Yaijinden," she explained. "One end goes to you-- the other, to the little lump of meat in a box you call a heart. Thanks to what I've learned, this whole thing is decaying all at once... and while I don't really know what's going to happen as a result, it's what She wanted me to do. I don't know why She wanted me to tell you, but I guess it doesn't really matter now, does it?" 

"This... this is madness." His face twisted into a slow, burning glower. "You really have no fucking idea what you've done to me, do you, Hitomi?" 

"You're right!" she agreed with an enthusiastic nod. "And I don't care!" 

"And how did you get past the first law?" Yaijinden glanced down to his chest. "This seems a whole lot like harming me, if you ask me..." 

"I didn't." Hitomi shrugged. "But if you have to have a reason, master, use mine: I'm giving you the chance to make the choice you ask so many other people to make-- to become something more than what you are, or to die." 

"Not much of a choice," he growled. 

"It wasn't much of one when you offered it to me, either," she nodded. 

Yaijinden laughed, and responded with a low, dull collection of syllables-- 

(the children in the day care in the office building below simultaneously burst into a hysterical, wailing cry) 

Hitomi said something dismissive in a language unheard on this part of the planet for an eon-- 

(somewhere in rural India, a cow lowed in agony as the unborn calf within her began chewing its way out of her womb) 

And Yaijinden fell to his knees again, hacking and coughing out a slew of limp, lifeless tadpoles that had lodged in his lungs. "A binding spell, right here and now?" Hitomi observed, unimpressed. "How droll. There is a way out, master, but She didn't tell me what it is. She'll tell you, though... and all you have to do is give your heart back to her." 

It was some moments before Yaijinden had cleared his lungs of the superfluous biomass enough to respond. Eyes narrowed as his anger refocused him on the goal before, he leveled his gaze on Hitomi once again. "She took it freely the first time," the khadi spat hatefully. "What's to keep you from delivering it to her again?" 

"That's what I wondered, too," she marveled. "I even offered it to Her, but no. It had to be freely given, not seized or taken-- but the Powers that Be are nothing if not eccentric, ne?" 

A sudden tightness, a constriction of his soul, preceded her words, and Yaijinden could not help but listen willingly. "First," she announced, holding a finger up, "when I lift the barrier preventing spacial transfer, you are not to procure anything the extradimensional storage space in your stupid Pants except for my heart. Secondly, you are not to command or influence my behavior while you possess my heart. Thirdly, you are not to damage my heart in any way, shape, or form--" 

She found herself interrupted by the fist planted in her face. Hitomi's head snapped back, her nose fractured by the force of the blow, but she was not stopped for long: with a precise twist of her midsection to one side, she dodged Yaijinden's follow-up blow by a scant inch, her upper body twisting around as she delivered a hard spinning backfist to Yaijinden's own head. 

Yaijinden reeled at the force of the blow, but he had not lost his place in the melee-- one leg hooked behind hers, in the confusion, set the both of them off-balance. Even as he was resuming a stance, though, Yaijinden was interrupted by another savage blow from behind, one that sent him tumbling along the rooftop to come to a crash against the railing. The concrete buckled at the force of his impact, leaving a spiderweb of cracks; he struggled to regain his feet for a brief moment, but quickly recognized the sudden absence of sensation in his legs as one of the familiar, tell-tale signs that his back had been broken. 

Grinding his teeth, Yaijinden pushed himself off of the roof, willing his spinal cord to knit together-- but in the next split second, his concentration was broken by a pair of hands suddenly finding their way around his throat. Yaijinden gasped for air in the half moment before their grip was certain, seizing a precious moment of oxygen, and shifted his attention back to his assailant. His immediate retaliatory strike was fruitless, hitting only the air-- and trying to pry her hands from his person was just as pointless. 

Still, his experiences in Ten'Aino house with the superstrong had equipped him for this situation, too. Locking his arms together, Yaijinden twisted forcefully, pitting Hitomi's elongated arms into a joint lock; Hitomi darted backwards, her limbs snapping into their proper position like elastic bands. From her position some several meters distant, her lips pulled back into a frown as she put her hands together in an intricate seal, lips forming the words of a call to power-- 

A flash of gold and the sigil of Venus in the dimmed sunlight-- 

And in a spray of blood Hitomi was suddenly missing her hand below the elbow. She yelped in surprise and staggered backward, clutching the stump of her limb with her other hand; mercilessly, Yaijinden brought the monoatomically-sharpened edge of his war fan back across her body, opening two more massive wounds in her body with an almost casual effort. Hitomi's jaw worked without effort as she stumbled backwards from the force of the assault, thoroughly soaked in her own blood, before her heel caught the railing and she tipped over the side. 

Yaijinden permitted himself a feral smile-- the sensation of being covered in someone else's vital fluids, rather than being covered with his own, was still something of a novelty-- and reached into his front pants pocket. Space-time was already returning to normal, he could hear the subtle snap, and when cloth finally gave way to open air, he reached deeply-- 

--and involuntarily, the kinamantine war fan Sakura had crafted for him clattered to the roof, digging a gouge out of the concrete as his very will was subverted. "Fourthly," Hitomi intoned, frowning as she rose back to the level of the roof on a current of stale-smelling wind, "you are not to do my body harm, either." 

"Yes'ms," Yaijinden agreed, managing a tight smile. 

"I can't believe I didn't think of that until now..." Hitomi sighed and wiped away the blood from the regenerated wound done to her neck. "Where did you get that from, anyway?" she inquired, curious. 

"One is wise not to keep all their means of self-defense stowed away where one might lose access to them," he answered, bowing his head. "Like this, for example-- catch!" 

In another blur of motion, he whirled about and flung a box the size of a bowling ball at Hitomi; for her part, Hitomi merely sneered and deflected the object with a contemptuous gesture. "I don't have all day, Yaijinden," she said coolly. "I know you're fond of your defiant gestures, but I have things I need to attend to before the day is over." 

"No..." Yaijinden managed a strangled, throaty giggle and a triumphant smile. "No, you don't." 

In an instant, her expression ceased to be anything that reflected the human she had once been. "NOW, INSECT," the khadi woman spoke, an alien resonance in her voice shaking the earth below. "RENDER UNTO ME WHAT IS MINE." 

"Stupid bitch..." Yaijinden met her eyes, his smile unflinching. "You should have caught your heart when I told you to." 

And distantly, almost inaudibly beneath the trembling of the building and the tumultuous din of the human flow beneath them, there was the sound of something shattering-- and a cool rush of wind that only the two of them could feel, of a world breathing ever-so-slightly easier. 

Hitomi recoiled violently in the air, reeling as though harshly struck; Yaijinden, unfazed, merely straightened himself to regard her as the terrible majesty of her essence disappeared to wherever it had come from. "Something I've learned about the universe," he said, brushing himself off, "is that when one is confronted with something outside the kharmic wheel, one's wits are always more valuable than one's power. For all I taught you, Hitomi, I suppose I failed you in this one vital lesson." 

"You... how?" Regaining some sense of herself, Hitomi looked numbly to her hands, flexing them emptily into fists, then back to him. "How did you, even when..." 

"I didn't, technically speaking." The hateful enthusiasm had drained from his voice by now, replaced with a bitter, resigned smile. "But if you have to have a reason, Hitomi, use mine: I gave you exactly what you wanted. When you rejected it, gravity took care of the rest for me. 

"You're not the only one who's spent their time learning," Yaijinden added wearily as she stared dumbly at her murderer. "Here's something I think you'll find interesting, though: nobody knows what happens to a khadi's soul when their heart is destroyed. We don't rejoin the kharmic cycle of our birth worlds... when we die for keeps, everything we were and are disappears into the aether, as though we had never existed at all." He reached down and picked up the war fan, snapping it shut with a flick of the wrist. "Though if you ask me, I think I have a good idea of what happens. 

"You said you'd danced in the court of the Daemon Sultan, yes?" He smiled again, though there was no life in it. "I say, look at it this way-- though it won't be recognizable as you, there will be parts of you that live on, in the undulations of the flesh of Azatoth." 

She nodded once, hollowly, as the animating force behind her eyes began draining away. "I guess I had a good run while it lasted," Hitomi mused. "I suppose I should thank you for that much..." 

Yaijinden did not answer her. She lingered a moment longer, waiting for him to offer comment, but when it became obvious he was going to say nothing, Hitomi sighed quietly. "If you see Wolfwood again," she murmured, "please, tell him goodbye for me..." 

The light of her spirit flickered once as she smiled, before fading into nothingness. As the spell that had held her aloft dissipated, its weaver no longer sustaining it, her corpse fell out of sight and began the long descent to the pavement below. Yaijinden gazed at the place she had occupied, trying to conjure some earned sense of victory-- but try as he might, there was nothing there to be had. 

His fugue was interrupted when a wave of agony washed over his awareness. Yaijinden shrieked in pain despite himself, clutching his chest as he suddenly and acutely felt the absence of his heart. The emptiness was a thousand pins and needles jammed his senses, each an individual point of searing flame, and there wasn't enough of anything to fill him up-- 

--and briefly, as the haze enveloped him in totality, he remembered how tenuous his own stolen immortality truly was. 

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[[Category:SSEU Stories]] [[Category:Suburban Senshi]]

Category:Suburban Senshi

2014-11-15T05:08:31Z

Yaijinden: Created page with "The trials and tribulations of the Sailor Senshi have come to a close... for now. This is the era of the Suburban Senshi, and of Ten'ou House, and Aino House, and Ten'Aino Hou..."

The trials and tribulations of the Sailor Senshi have come to a close... for now. This is the era of the Suburban Senshi, and of Ten'ou House, and Aino House, and Ten'Aino House, and well, take our word for it, it just gets more ridiculous from there.

Category:Galaxia's Last Charge

2014-11-15T05:07:07Z

Yaijinden: Created page with "The forces of Sailor Galaxia, having devoured much of the galaxy's Sailor Crystals, scent their ultimate prize -- and begin their long march to Earth, to ravage it in the name..."

The forces of Sailor Galaxia, having devoured much of the galaxy's Sailor Crystals, scent their ultimate prize -- and begin their long march to Earth, to ravage it in the name of their malevolent goddess.

Category:SSEU Stories

2014-11-15T05:06:59Z

Yaijinden:

These are stories from the Suburban Senshi Expanded Universe.

Eras:

* 99,344 - 10,557 B.C.E. - [[:Category:The Sailor Wars|The Sailor Wars]]
* 10,557 - 8102 B.C.E. - [[:Category:The Silver Millennium|The Silver Millennium]]
* 1835 - 1936 A.D. - [[:Category:The Steam Age|The Steam Age]]
* 1936 - 1991 A.D. - [[:Category:The Modern Day|The Modern Day]]
* 1991 - 1992 A.D. - [[:Category:The Dark Agency|The Dark Agency]]
* 1992 - 1993 A.D. - [[:Category:The Dark Kingdom War|The Dark Kingdom War]]
* 1994 A.D. - [[:Category:Galaxia's Last Charge|Galaxia's Last Charge]]
* 1995 - 2001 A.D. - [[:Category:The Modern Day|The Modern Day]]
* 2002 - 2897 A.D. - [[:Category:Suburban Senshi|Suburban Senshi]]
* 2897 - 3004 A.D. - [[:Category:The Crystal Millennium|The Crystal Millennium]]
* 3005 - 3057 A.D. - [[:Category:The Plutonian Epoch|The Plutonian Epoch]]
* 3057- 5720 A.D. - [[:Category:The Crystal Imperium|The Crystal Imperium]]
* 5720 - 8000 A.D. - [[:Category:The Revenant Galaxia|The Revenant Galaxia]]
* 8000 - 9054 A.D. - [[:Category:The Pax Serenity|The Pax Serenity]]

Gategory:Galaxia's Last Charge

2014-11-15T05:06:47Z

Category:SSEU Stories

2014-11-15T05:06:29Z

Yaijinden:

These are stories from the Suburban Senshi Expanded Universe.

Eras:

* 99,344 - 10,557 B.C.E. - [[:Category:The Sailor Wars|The Sailor Wars]]
* 10,557 - 8102 B.C.E. - [[:Category:The Silver Millennium|The Silver Millennium]]
* 1835 - 1936 A.D. - [[:Category:The Steam Age|The Steam Age]]
* 1936 - 1991 A.D. - [[:Category:The Modern Day|The Modern Day]]
* 1991 - 1992 A.D. - [[:Category:The Dark Agency|The Dark Agency]]
* 1992 - 1993 A.D. - [[:Category:The Dark Kingdom War|The Dark Kingdom War]]
* 1994 A.D. - [[:Gategory:Galaxia's Last Charge|Galaxia's Last Charge]]
* 1995 - 2001 A.D. - [[:Category:The Modern Day|The Modern Day]]
* 2002 - 2897 A.D. - [[:Category:Suburban Senshi|Suburban Senshi]]
* 2897 - 3004 A.D. - [[:Category:The Crystal Millennium|The Crystal Millennium]]
* 3005 - 3057 A.D. - [[:Category:The Plutonian Epoch|The Plutonian Epoch]]
* 3057- 5720 A.D. - [[:Category:The Crystal Imperium|The Crystal Imperium]]
* 5720 - 8000 A.D. - [[:Category:The Revenant Galaxia|The Revenant Galaxia]]
* 8000 - 9054 A.D. - [[:Category:The Pax Serenity|The Pax Serenity]]

Galaxia's Last Charge

2014-11-15T05:06:02Z

Good Ending?

2014-11-15T05:03:58Z

Yaijinden:

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<HEAD><TITLE>SSEU - Good Ending?</TITLE>
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<TR><TD><BLOCKQUOTE>PLANET KORENCHKA, GALI SYSTEM 
RUINS OF THE CITY NOFFKARA, 1994 AD

She was born for this. 

Sailor Chloria laughed madly as she strode amongst the chaos, revelling in the carnage around her. Any second-guesses about her path had long been sent to rest. The mistake of her birth, the absence of a true Sailor Crystal and its passage to her youngest sister, had been rectified with the assistance of Galaxia. Now it was she who was truly the ruler of her world, and all she had needed to do was sell the collective souls of a world. 

It was worth every scream. Chloria moved amongst the city like a wraith, quietly hunting down the survivors of the army while the chaos-animated corpses of those already slain sniffed out the civilians who had somehow managed to stay alive through the initial attacks. The work was bloody, terrible, and would have been almost unthinkable mere months ago... before her investiture, and before the betrayal of Sailor Korenchka. 

She closed her eyes and listened to the wind, letting her long, green hair billow out behind her like the clouds of death she commanded. The soldiers who survived were all equipped with standard nuclear, biological, and chemical protection... and as such, simply blanketing the city with a toxic fog would be insufficient to do her work. It was just as well, really; if all she did was lay down a cloud of gas, it denied her the delight of watching people slowly choke themselves on their own blood. 

Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the rumble of a collapsing building. Chloria paid it little heed; she had ordered her minions to lay waste to the city and reduce it to the ground. It had been one of her sister's favorite places; the gardens that grew here played host to some of the rarest species of flowers that grew on this otherwise desolate world. Chloria had spent extra time in there, drawing deeply on her strengths to make sure that everything there was dead, dead, dead. 

There was no force that could resist her left on this world. Her new Sailor Crystal would sustain her on what was left for as long as she desired to, until the Lady called her to bring her death and destruction to another world. Her loyalty was complete, her powers irresistable, her person invulnerable... untouchable. 

Another building fell, this one more close to her. Chloria paused in her walk to watch it fall, cocking her ear as the gruesome howls of the ghouls in her service preceded its collapse... and suddenly realized with a start that these were not howls of delight. 

They were something else. 

The Animamate lifted a hand and murmured a call to power, channelling the dust cloud that was billowing towards her into the sky so that she could see the building's new ruins more clearly. Yes, she thought with some displeasure, there was something there-- some source of power, not hers, not Galaxia's, moving amidst the ghouls, untouched, and systematically destroying them. 

Displeased, she turned from her original course and began stalking through the charred, blackened ruins of the city. The universe responded to her emotions, shrouding her in her signature green haze; when she finally arrived at the scene, she could see the being who was defying her rule. At first glance, she thought she was dealing with a rogue member of the Order of the Divine Fist-- the loose robes he wore over his upper body contrasted sharply with popular styles and the military uniform-- but as he turned towards her, the last of the ghouls rent in twain by a massive tearing motion, she could see him for his true self. 

He was an alien, and all the more hideous for how closely he resembled her own race... and how closely he resembled the Lady Galaxia. His hands had too many fingers, flailing like little tentacles; his face was smooth and fleshy, bearing none of the decorative crests that decorated the males of her own species. And his smile... there was something truly unnatural about it. 

And while she took a step back, her own expression dipping into the disgusted, the alien merely gave her a speculative look and nodded. "Nice bracers," he mused. "Give them to me." 

In a flash, her revulsion hardened into contempt. "Arrogant," Chlora sneered, and placed her fingertips together. The haze that surrounded her thickened, becoming almost palpable, before it lashed out at the trespasser-- but, incredibly, as the cloud rushed towards him, he merely draw a facemask from his trousers that should not have fit there and pulled it over his head. The cloud rushed over him, saturating the air, and he stood firm. 

"I warn you, demon," the Senshi growled, taking a step forward. "This land is mine, given to me by right of Sailor Galaxia-sama. I will not tolerate trespassers." 

"Okay, then," the alien responded cheerily, the face-mask giving his voice an odd resonance. "I'll be happy to go, but I'm not leaving without your bracers. Hand them over, and I'll be out of your hair, lickety-split." 

"You must be mad," she sneered, not sure what lickety-split meant but presuming it meant something along the lines of 'quickly'. "Surely you have seen my powers? Surely you must be aware that it is I who am responsible for the destruction of this city, and a dozen others before it..." 

"Yeah, I kind of figured that." He folded his hands behind his back and leaned forward. "The trail of destruction sort of leads here, so I decided it'd be best to look here first... so I did, and here we are." 

"Yet you do not ask a bargain," Chloria said darkly. 

The alien shrugged. "I probably don't have anything you want, to be honest." 

The Senshi snorted derisively, taking another step towards him. "If you were stronger than I, you would have simply taken it." Another step forward, eyes gleaming hungrily. "If you were my equal, you would have brought something to barter with." 

"That's an interesting chain of logic," he mused, head cocked to the side. 

A savage grin manifested on Chloria's face. "I do not know whose powers you think you have, creature, but they cannot possibly stand up to the might of a true Sailor Crystal. You think yourself impervious to my powers with your little technological toy?" 

"Well, no, not really, but--" 

"KORENCHKA STRATOSPHERE STRIKE!" she screeched, drawing her hands back and manifesting a brilliant green burst of ki. Two beams lanced out from each of her hands, crossing the distance towards the alien and spearing clean through him four times. The alien choked a bit, then staggered backwards and collapsed in a heap. 

How quickly they fall, Chloria mused with a sneer, and turned around... only to stop when she heard a decisively not-dead grumble from behind her. She whirled around towards the alien and watched, awe-struck, as he slowly shambled to his feet, four holes cleanly visible in his clothing... with flesh completely unmarred. 

They stood apart, eyeing one another for a long moment, with the one's disbelief written on her face and the other's resignation clearly evident in his stance. "This isn't a fight you can win," the alien said dryly. "I've fought your kind a dozen times before, Sailor Chloria. Killing me has always been and will always be beyond your ability." 

"...that is a very impressive talent of yours," Chloria replied, suddenly clamping down on her emotions. That he knew her name was not unusual-- the survivors of any attack who made it to other cities often told of her divine retribution. Of course, he must have heard it from some other party. "Your talents might be better served," she added, lips curling in a greedy smile, turning her wrists so that the green and purple stones on her bracelets faced him, "when you join my armies!" 

"Jebus," he sighed, shaking his head. "Not agai--" 

The starseed extractors flared with a brilliant light, propelling a pair of spheres of energy towards him. He did not, or could not dodge; the impact sent him staggering back, sinking to his knees with all the energy of the dead. 

Now, Chloria, thought, she would find out what made him so unusual. She relaxed her guard and strolled towards him, a definite smile at the edge of her face. Even if he did not draw his power from a Sailor Crystal-- which she acknowledged might be the case-- if he could regenerate his injuries so quickly as a mortal, his powers as a phage might be even more impressive. He would make a fine warband leader... 

The fact that something was wrong began dawning on her when she came within five feet of her defeated enemy. The dust cloud above was still masking a good deal of the light, but there should have been a distinct sparkle of a starseed in front of his forehead... but there was nothing there. Not even the faintest hint of reflected light. 

When his eyes opened fully, she realized the depth of her mistake. 

"GOTCHA!" he shrieked giddily, seizing her collar and pulling her towards him. "You guys ALWAYS buy it! I can't tell you HOW many times I've played that joke on you and yours and it NEVER gets old!" 

"Galaxia-sama!" Chloria sputtered, dislodging his grip and backing away. "What in the name of the gods below ARE you?!" 

The alien's hand flicked to the side, snapping a golden fan open with a foreign insignia emblazoned on the center. "What I am, Sailor Chloria," he said pleasantly, fanning himself idly, "is beyond your power to touch... now, and forever. I will ask you one more time-- give me your bracers, before I take them from you." 

"NEVER!" she screamed, pulling her hands back and summoning her power again. "KORENCHKA STRATOSPHERE STRIKE!" 

The four beams of light emerged from her hands, hurling themselves towards the alien again. This time, though, he reacted, swiped savagely at the incoming attack with his fan-- and to her shock and dismay, actually deflecting each beam to the side. The bursts of energy dug deeply into the streets, excavating four seperate chasms before her eyes. "Impossible," she murmured, stepping back again and drawing her energy for a third strike. "This can't--" 

--and with the same sudden, blinding speed, he was suddenly next to her. There was a flash of golden light, flickering in and out, before her eyes suddenly dimmed and the pain caught up to her. 

Chloria screamed incoherently, clutching the stump of her right arm with her left as her own blood seeped out through her hand and onto the streets. "Don't feel too bad," the alien said soothingly, stripping off his face-mask with a single, smooth motion. "It's nothing personal, see-- I just happen to need what you have. You never make it to Earth, anyway; even in my own past, your space fleet comes back and turns you into a crater with an orbital weapons bombardment." 

Despite the agonizing fire in what had been her arm, she managed to glance up at the alien's serene expression-- and found herself unable to look away. "Don't worry about your people," he added, smiling as he took her chin in his free hand. "Galaxia sends a second wave when she discovers your failure, and she takes into account what you fail to remember. There are no survivors, for what it's worth... which actually reminds me of something." 

He released her and took a step back, the serenity of his expression turning to something far more unpleasant to behold. "I cut a few deals to find you," he added off-handedly, snapping his fingers. As if waiting for his signal, the shadows about them in all directions suddenly grew many shades deeper. "You left no shortage of the hungry dead in your little rampage, you know," the alien added, pleased. "You wouldn't BELIEVE how happy they were to help me hunt you down and prime you for a feast..." 

And to her horror, she suddenly recognized that the shadows emerging from the dark corners of the city had very, very familiar faces. 

She screamed again and staggered to her feet, arm still clutching uselessly at her wound, but the shrill noise that echoed from her throat was not a scream of pain. Sailor Chloria turned on her heel, away from the faces of her sisters, her brother, her mother and father, her friends and family-- and started running for what was left of her life, only getting so far before the figures cloaked in shadow and darkness began closing the gap between her and them. 

The alien's gleeful smile widened further as a dozen more spectral shapes emerged from the darkness behind him, passing him by with such speed that his clothes rippled in the wind. "I always did like a happy ending," he observed with a contented sigh. 

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[[Category:SSEU Stories]] [[Category:Galaxia's Last Charge]]

Good Ending?

2014-11-15T05:00:50Z

Yaijinden: Created page with "<HTML> <HEAD><TITLE>SSEU - Good Ending?</TITLE> </HEAD> <CENTER> <TABLE WIDTH="900" HEIGHT="30%" BORDER="0"> <TR><TD><FONT FACE="tahoma"..."

Category:SSEU Stories

2014-11-15T04:59:28Z

Yaijinden:

These are stories from the Suburban Senshi Expanded Universe.

Eras:

* 99,344 - 10,557 B.C.E. - [[:Category:The Sailor Wars|The Sailor Wars]]
* 10,557 - 8102 B.C.E. - [[:Category:The Silver Millennium|The Silver Millennium]]
* 1835 - 1936 A.D. - [[:Category:The Steam Age|The Steam Age]]
* 1936 - 1991 A.D. - [[:Category:The Modern Day|The Modern Day]]
* 1991 - 1992 A.D. - [[:Category:The Dark Agency|The Dark Agency]]
* 1992 - 1993 A.D. - [[:Category:The Dark Kingdom War|The Dark Kingdom War]]
* 1994 A.D. - [[:Galaxia's Last Charge|Galaxia's Last Charge]]
* 1995 - 2001 A.D. - [[:Category:The Modern Day|The Modern Day]]
* 2002 - 2897 A.D. - [[:Category:Suburban Senshi|Suburban Senshi]]
* 2897 - 3004 A.D. - [[:Category:The Crystal Millennium|The Crystal Millennium]]
* 3005 - 3057 A.D. - [[:Category:The Plutonian Epoch|The Plutonian Epoch]]
* 3057- 5720 A.D. - [[:Category:The Crystal Imperium|The Crystal Imperium]]
* 5720 - 8000 A.D. - [[:Category:The Revenant Galaxia|The Revenant Galaxia]]
* 8000 - 9054 A.D. - [[:Category:The Pax Serenity|The Pax Serenity]]

Two Hours

2014-11-15T04:53:37Z

Yaijinden:

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<TR><TD>AD 2005 April Tokyo, Japan, Earth
<BLOCKQUOTE>Spring had sprung in Azabu-Juuban, and it was a fine morning for all persons concerned. 

The playground they were at was one much like any other in Yaijinden's experience. It was somewhat smaller than those of his hometown, but Japan was far more cramped for space than anywhere in the United States had been. Apartment buildings bordered the grounds on two sides, the streets swallowing up the other half. 

Traffic was light, though, and the other neighborhood kids were not out in force. For all intents and purposes, they might as well have been alone. The four and five-year-olds did not interest the girl he'd brought here- they weren't her age peers. Maybe the younger Sakura, or the younger Miki, or the futurespawn Minami and Kyanite- they might have associated with her. Everyone her age was in school. 

Perhaps Aoiko resented those latter children the most. 

The girl was a sight. He had made sure she wasn't going to stand out in a crowd, so he'd woven relatively mundane clothes. Leather sandals, a pink t-shirt featuring the vacant grin of Totoro, a brown pair of cargo capris, and hair clips pinning her longish hair back to her head- the combination seemed common enough that nobody raised an eyebrow. 

Aoiko's hair was obviously her mother's, the sort of yellow usually reserved for dandelions and particularly vibrant tulips; her eyes were her grandmother's, the blue of an afternoon summer sky. Most of Sakura's genetics had proven dominant in their pairing, and Yaijinden had been content to let that be as it was. All that really mattered was that the girl looked like his sister and mother and himself when they were all that age. 

It was the way she smiled- that half-present curl of the lips- that he knew she bore part of his genes. When he saw her smile, he could see what made Sakura so passionately attached in the brief time that the Gallifreyan woman had been with the girl; he could see part of himself in Aoiko, and he could feel part of himself attempting to parent her the way she would have needed to be. 

Instead, he leaned back and started swinging from the swingset, slowly. Aoiko had been busying herself with the slide for some minutes now- while she knew that such things were exciting and interesting, she had not actually experienced any of these playground devices. He couldn't imagine what it was like for such a thing to be new to him- it had been a long, long time since he had been that young. Since his viewpoint had been that uncluttered. 

Yaijinden watched absently as she eventually abandoned the slide and ran her way across the playground to the swingset he was now hanging from. "How do I get high up again?" she asked eagerly, planting herself in the direction opposite his own. 

He smiled a brief moment. "Watch my legs," he instructed her, pumping his feet and injecting motion into his seat. Aoiko watched intently as he slowly began ascending, back and forth, and then put her own observation into effect. 

When she had apparently mastered the deed, Yaijinden slowed down, eventually coming to a rest. Swingsets generally did not take kindly to people twice the girl's weight, and he did not need that sort of liberation. 

Aoiko was older than any other kid here, and the few other parents here knew it. This playground wasn't attached to any school, and Yaijinden had obviously been the one to bring her here; he briefly wondered what sort of words these young ladies were thinking to describe him. Irresponsible, probably. Maybe deadbeat. Slacker. A girl her age should be in school, et cetera et cetera. 

The thought of their disdain brought another brief smile to his face. It was then, though, that he noticed Aoiko slowly coming to a halt, and he turned his gaze back to the girl. Her swing had been at rest for a long moment before she haltingly voiced, "Y-dono?" 

An inquiry. He could see it in her eyes. "Mmyeas?" 

"Everyone was... really nice last night." She met his eyes briefly before looking away. "Is it because I'm going to die?" 

"Maybe." The edge of a smile crossed Yaijinden's lips before he glanced upwards to the sky. "We aren't subject to that much tragedy around here," he noted absently. "When something wrong happens, a lot of the people here will try anything we can to make it stop." 

"Even aunt stars?" 

"starcat... is a strange customer in her ways." He scratched the stubble on his chin. "You may be young, but you've also proven yourself to be a genuinely pleasant person to have around. Some of the people here were affected by that more than others." 

"Mm." The girl chewed on the bottom of her lip for a long moment. "They're going to miss me, right?" she asked hesitantly. "I mean, that's what they said..." 

"I can assure you that people will miss you." The older man reached over and ruffled her hair, watching her squirm and try to make her head look neat again. "You've made an impression," Yaijinden said pleasantly. "That's something that few kids your age get to do." 

Aoiko huffed. "If I have to die to make an impression then I'd rather not leave an impression." 

Yaijinden snorted a chuckle. "Such is not your fate," he observed dryly. "Yours is to pass before the sun sets; ours is to live on, if only for a little longer." 

"I know..." The indignant anger left her just as quickly as it came. "But, still..." 

They sat in silence for another long moment. "Y-dono, does it hurt to die?" she said suddenly. 

"It's not death that hurts," he answered sagely. "For some people, it's everything up to that point. For you, though... do you remember going to sleep last night?" 

She nodded. "For you, Aoiko," Yaijinden observed placidly, "it will be just like going to sleep. You'll get tired, and then you'll just... stop." 

"...will I dream?" 

"That depends." He tilted his head to the side and regarded another small grouping of children climbing amongst the playset. "There are many powers in this universe, and some of them very much desire the spirits of the dead. For you, fortunately, many of those who might claim you are somewhat benevolent." 

"Somewhat...?" 

"The powers that be are not always... kind. But children like yourself are not held to the same standards as people like myself." The thought brought another small chortle from him. "There are many places you might go," he mused. "You wouldn't dream in Heaven because you wouldn't have a body to dream with yet- but you would be able to watch people still alive. You wouldn't dream in Meido because nobody dreams in Meido. You might just return to the void from whence you came, and then you would wait for a new chance at a life." 

"And if I wasn't a kid?" she queried, curious. 

"Probably the same," he shrugged. "You haven't done great wrongs, and I don't think your spirit is petty enough to merit something more terrible. If you are aware of the nature of the power who ushes you onwards, you will probably be okay with it." 

Aoiko was quiet for along moment, lips wrinkled in thought. "You'll be fine," he clarified, a genuine smile on his face. "Let me tell you one thing I've learned- don't worry about where you're going to go. It doesn't get you anything but stressed out." 

"Okay," she mumbled, frowning. He watched the downward cast of her eyes, and the general listlessness; she was still thinking about unpleasant things, that much was obvious. Whether they were things she wanted to talk about, though... that much he would have to wait for. 

So he did. The chain joints on the swingset creaked every so often beneath his weight, as he pushed himself back and forth on the seat. Aoiko was almost motionless; the excitement had gone as quickly as it had come, and she was dwelling on important things. 

When she finally spoke again, he was almost surprised. "Y-dono?" Aoiko asked again. 

He looked over to her again. "Yes?" 

"Why... don't you love me?" 

Briefly, Yaijinden wondered if she had inherited her directness directly from him or from the Time Lady. "What makes you think that?" he inquired, keeping his voice level. 

"Well, S-dono..." She paused, swallowed, and started again, "S-dono wanted to be my momma. I... just know she wanted to. starcat and Archangel and everyone else wanted me to be happy. But Y-dono... well..." 

"...well?" he prompted, unusually gentle. 

Aoiko bit her lip again- she didn't want to cry, not in front of him, not in front of anyone. Heartless or not, he could still tell something that obvious. "You don't want me around," she murmured quietly. "You don't care. You don't- you don't want to be my father, do you?" 

"It's... a little more complex than that." Yaijinden took his hands off the chain and leaned forward, resting his chin on his outstretched fingers. "You deserve a mother and father," he stated matter-of-factly. "You have someone who wants to be your mother, yes, but I could not be your father even if I wanted to." 

Her hands tightened around the swing. "I knew it," she said quietly. "Is it because I'm... not going to be here?" 

"You're right," he acknowledged with a sigh. "But like I said, it's a little more complex than that. It's always a little more complex than that." He pushed himself upright and took a few steps, putting himself in front of Aoiko, and squatted down so that he was at eye level. "Mothers and fathers love their children, right?" the heartless man inquired. 

"Yeah," she responded, not meeting his gaze. 

"And I know you've noticed that a lot of people here have superpowers." He took hold of the girl's chin and directed her face towards his own. "Am I right?" 

"Yeah," she repeated, looking to the side now. 

"Well, to tell you a secret..." He glanced to either side, going through the motions of making sure nobody was listening, and whispered, "S-dono doesn't want you to go away. You know this, right?" 

Finally, she gave him her eyes. "Uh huh..." she said dubiously. 

"If S-dono could," he said quietly but intently, "she would do things to your body. You'd be with us for another few days, sure- but you would be hurting all the time. Your elbows and knees would ache, your ears would be ringing, you'd have a big headache... so because S-dono loves you, and doesn't want you to hurt, when her friends called her, she made herself go away. 

"Now," Yaijinden continued, releasing her chin, "If I was your dad, I'd do anything I could in order to make sure you stayed with us. I can't do what S-dono can- but I can do different things. Your body wouldn't hurt... but you would be different. And not in a good way, either." 

Aoiko raised both eyebrows. "Like... different how?" 

He considered this a moment. "You know how you've been having fun with people while you've been here?" he asked, tilting his head to the side. 

She nodded agreement. "Well," he said quietly, "if I wanted to be your dad, and then I did what I wanted to... well, you wouldn't be able to have fun with them. Or with anyone. All the ways you were happy today, and last night? You wouldn't be able to enjoy them ever again." 

"...Wow." The idea obviously puzzled her. "Why?" 

"Like I keep saying..." 

"It's complicated," Aoiko finished. 

"If I did that, you would just end up doing nothing but living." Yaijinden drew a deep breath and let it go slowly. "And nobody wants to just do nothing but exist. It sounds cool, but when you don't enjoy anything... well, you just get really, really bored until you just decide to stop." 

"That... doesn't sound good," she mused. 

"You're damn straight it doesn't sound good." He cracked a grin. "Another time, another life, things'd be different. Yeah, I'd be your dad. S-dono would probably be your mom, too. But for now, we have to take a step back. She needs to learn that sentient life is a wonderful, terrible thing, and I needed..." 

"You needed what?" she pressed. 

Yaijinden closed his eyes for a second, touching the spot on his chest where his heart had once been. "I needed to remember that I could want to feel again." 

Aoiko's lips curled briefly in a smile. She let go of the swing and, tenatively, put her arms around the first human being she had ever seen- the one who had given her a worldview to work from, the one who had spilled the fluid from the cloning tubes, and the one who had introduced her to the pleasant oddities of Ten'Aino House. 

And for a moment, he held her back, and let himself pretend. 

To deny her a childhood was unacceptable- so he could not allow himself to be her father. Never mind his own dulled, weakened emotions, never mind his own strange set of responsibilities- it was one of his own few taboos, one that he could not break without going against anything he stood for. 

But for a moment, he could give her this. 

Yaijinden sighed again and closed his eyes, listening to the silence of his own body and the twin heartbeats of his nearly-daughter. Yes... for a moment, he could give her this. 

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[[Category:SSEU Stories]] [[Category:Suburban Senshi]]

Two Hours

2014-11-15T04:52:41Z

Yaijinden:

<HTML>
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<TABLE WIDTH="900" HEIGHT="30%" BORDER="1">
<TR><TD> 
<BLOCKQUOTE>Spring had sprung in Azabu-Juuban, and it was a fine morning for all persons concerned. 

The playground they were at was one much like any other in Yaijinden's experience. It was somewhat smaller than those of his hometown, but Japan was far more cramped for space than anywhere in the United States had been. Apartment buildings bordered the grounds on two sides, the streets swallowing up the other half. 

Traffic was light, though, and the other neighborhood kids were not out in force. For all intents and purposes, they might as well have been alone. The four and five-year-olds did not interest the girl he'd brought here- they weren't her age peers. Maybe the younger Sakura, or the younger Miki, or the futurespawn Minami and Kyanite- they might have associated with her. Everyone her age was in school. 

Perhaps Aoiko resented those latter children the most. 

The girl was a sight. He had made sure she wasn't going to stand out in a crowd, so he'd woven relatively mundane clothes. Leather sandals, a pink t-shirt featuring the vacant grin of Totoro, a brown pair of cargo capris, and hair clips pinning her longish hair back to her head- the combination seemed common enough that nobody raised an eyebrow. 

Aoiko's hair was obviously her mother's, the sort of yellow usually reserved for dandelions and particularly vibrant tulips; her eyes were her grandmother's, the blue of an afternoon summer sky. Most of Sakura's genetics had proven dominant in their pairing, and Yaijinden had been content to let that be as it was. All that really mattered was that the girl looked like his sister and mother and himself when they were all that age. 

It was the way she smiled- that half-present curl of the lips- that he knew she bore part of his genes. When he saw her smile, he could see what made Sakura so passionately attached in the brief time that the Gallifreyan woman had been with the girl; he could see part of himself in Aoiko, and he could feel part of himself attempting to parent her the way she would have needed to be. 

Instead, he leaned back and started swinging from the swingset, slowly. Aoiko had been busying herself with the slide for some minutes now- while she knew that such things were exciting and interesting, she had not actually experienced any of these playground devices. He couldn't imagine what it was like for such a thing to be new to him- it had been a long, long time since he had been that young. Since his viewpoint had been that uncluttered. 

Yaijinden watched absently as she eventually abandoned the slide and ran her way across the playground to the swingset he was now hanging from. "How do I get high up again?" she asked eagerly, planting herself in the direction opposite his own. 

He smiled a brief moment. "Watch my legs," he instructed her, pumping his feet and injecting motion into his seat. Aoiko watched intently as he slowly began ascending, back and forth, and then put her own observation into effect. 

When she had apparently mastered the deed, Yaijinden slowed down, eventually coming to a rest. Swingsets generally did not take kindly to people twice the girl's weight, and he did not need that sort of liberation. 

Aoiko was older than any other kid here, and the few other parents here knew it. This playground wasn't attached to any school, and Yaijinden had obviously been the one to bring her here; he briefly wondered what sort of words these young ladies were thinking to describe him. Irresponsible, probably. Maybe deadbeat. Slacker. A girl her age should be in school, et cetera et cetera. 

The thought of their disdain brought another brief smile to his face. It was then, though, that he noticed Aoiko slowly coming to a halt, and he turned his gaze back to the girl. Her swing had been at rest for a long moment before she haltingly voiced, "Y-dono?" 

An inquiry. He could see it in her eyes. "Mmyeas?" 

"Everyone was... really nice last night." She met his eyes briefly before looking away. "Is it because I'm going to die?" 

"Maybe." The edge of a smile crossed Yaijinden's lips before he glanced upwards to the sky. "We aren't subject to that much tragedy around here," he noted absently. "When something wrong happens, a lot of the people here will try anything we can to make it stop." 

"Even aunt stars?" 

"starcat... is a strange customer in her ways." He scratched the stubble on his chin. "You may be young, but you've also proven yourself to be a genuinely pleasant person to have around. Some of the people here were affected by that more than others." 

"Mm." The girl chewed on the bottom of her lip for a long moment. "They're going to miss me, right?" she asked hesitantly. "I mean, that's what they said..." 

"I can assure you that people will miss you." The older man reached over and ruffled her hair, watching her squirm and try to make her head look neat again. "You've made an impression," Yaijinden said pleasantly. "That's something that few kids your age get to do." 

Aoiko huffed. "If I have to die to make an impression then I'd rather not leave an impression." 

Yaijinden snorted a chuckle. "Such is not your fate," he observed dryly. "Yours is to pass before the sun sets; ours is to live on, if only for a little longer." 

"I know..." The indignant anger left her just as quickly as it came. "But, still..." 

They sat in silence for another long moment. "Y-dono, does it hurt to die?" she said suddenly. 

"It's not death that hurts," he answered sagely. "For some people, it's everything up to that point. For you, though... do you remember going to sleep last night?" 

She nodded. "For you, Aoiko," Yaijinden observed placidly, "it will be just like going to sleep. You'll get tired, and then you'll just... stop." 

"...will I dream?" 

"That depends." He tilted his head to the side and regarded another small grouping of children climbing amongst the playset. "There are many powers in this universe, and some of them very much desire the spirits of the dead. For you, fortunately, many of those who might claim you are somewhat benevolent." 

"Somewhat...?" 

"The powers that be are not always... kind. But children like yourself are not held to the same standards as people like myself." The thought brought another small chortle from him. "There are many places you might go," he mused. "You wouldn't dream in Heaven because you wouldn't have a body to dream with yet- but you would be able to watch people still alive. You wouldn't dream in Meido because nobody dreams in Meido. You might just return to the void from whence you came, and then you would wait for a new chance at a life." 

"And if I wasn't a kid?" she queried, curious. 

"Probably the same," he shrugged. "You haven't done great wrongs, and I don't think your spirit is petty enough to merit something more terrible. If you are aware of the nature of the power who ushes you onwards, you will probably be okay with it." 

Aoiko was quiet for along moment, lips wrinkled in thought. "You'll be fine," he clarified, a genuine smile on his face. "Let me tell you one thing I've learned- don't worry about where you're going to go. It doesn't get you anything but stressed out." 

"Okay," she mumbled, frowning. He watched the downward cast of her eyes, and the general listlessness; she was still thinking about unpleasant things, that much was obvious. Whether they were things she wanted to talk about, though... that much he would have to wait for. 

So he did. The chain joints on the swingset creaked every so often beneath his weight, as he pushed himself back and forth on the seat. Aoiko was almost motionless; the excitement had gone as quickly as it had come, and she was dwelling on important things. 

When she finally spoke again, he was almost surprised. "Y-dono?" Aoiko asked again. 

He looked over to her again. "Yes?" 

"Why... don't you love me?" 

Briefly, Yaijinden wondered if she had inherited her directness directly from him or from the Time Lady. "What makes you think that?" he inquired, keeping his voice level. 

"Well, S-dono..." She paused, swallowed, and started again, "S-dono wanted to be my momma. I... just know she wanted to. starcat and Archangel and everyone else wanted me to be happy. But Y-dono... well..." 

"...well?" he prompted, unusually gentle. 

Aoiko bit her lip again- she didn't want to cry, not in front of him, not in front of anyone. Heartless or not, he could still tell something that obvious. "You don't want me around," she murmured quietly. "You don't care. You don't- you don't want to be my father, do you?" 

"It's... a little more complex than that." Yaijinden took his hands off the chain and leaned forward, resting his chin on his outstretched fingers. "You deserve a mother and father," he stated matter-of-factly. "You have someone who wants to be your mother, yes, but I could not be your father even if I wanted to." 

Her hands tightened around the swing. "I knew it," she said quietly. "Is it because I'm... not going to be here?" 

"You're right," he acknowledged with a sigh. "But like I said, it's a little more complex than that. It's always a little more complex than that." He pushed himself upright and took a few steps, putting himself in front of Aoiko, and squatted down so that he was at eye level. "Mothers and fathers love their children, right?" the heartless man inquired. 

"Yeah," she responded, not meeting his gaze. 

"And I know you've noticed that a lot of people here have superpowers." He took hold of the girl's chin and directed her face towards his own. "Am I right?" 

"Yeah," she repeated, looking to the side now. 

"Well, to tell you a secret..." He glanced to either side, going through the motions of making sure nobody was listening, and whispered, "S-dono doesn't want you to go away. You know this, right?" 

Finally, she gave him her eyes. "Uh huh..." she said dubiously. 

"If S-dono could," he said quietly but intently, "she would do things to your body. You'd be with us for another few days, sure- but you would be hurting all the time. Your elbows and knees would ache, your ears would be ringing, you'd have a big headache... so because S-dono loves you, and doesn't want you to hurt, when her friends called her, she made herself go away. 

"Now," Yaijinden continued, releasing her chin, "If I was your dad, I'd do anything I could in order to make sure you stayed with us. I can't do what S-dono can- but I can do different things. Your body wouldn't hurt... but you would be different. And not in a good way, either." 

Aoiko raised both eyebrows. "Like... different how?" 

He considered this a moment. "You know how you've been having fun with people while you've been here?" he asked, tilting his head to the side. 

She nodded agreement. "Well," he said quietly, "if I wanted to be your dad, and then I did what I wanted to... well, you wouldn't be able to have fun with them. Or with anyone. All the ways you were happy today, and last night? You wouldn't be able to enjoy them ever again." 

"...Wow." The idea obviously puzzled her. "Why?" 

"Like I keep saying..." 

"It's complicated," Aoiko finished. 

"If I did that, you would just end up doing nothing but living." Yaijinden drew a deep breath and let it go slowly. "And nobody wants to just do nothing but exist. It sounds cool, but when you don't enjoy anything... well, you just get really, really bored until you just decide to stop." 

"That... doesn't sound good," she mused. 

"You're damn straight it doesn't sound good." He cracked a grin. "Another time, another life, things'd be different. Yeah, I'd be your dad. S-dono would probably be your mom, too. But for now, we have to take a step back. She needs to learn that sentient life is a wonderful, terrible thing, and I needed..." 

"You needed what?" she pressed. 

Yaijinden closed his eyes for a second, touching the spot on his chest where his heart had once been. "I needed to remember that I could want to feel again." 

Aoiko's lips curled briefly in a smile. She let go of the swing and, tenatively, put her arms around the first human being she had ever seen- the one who had given her a worldview to work from, the one who had spilled the fluid from the cloning tubes, and the one who had introduced her to the pleasant oddities of Ten'Aino House. 

And for a moment, he held her back, and let himself pretend. 

To deny her a childhood was unacceptable- so he could not allow himself to be her father. Never mind his own dulled, weakened emotions, never mind his own strange set of responsibilities- it was one of his own few taboos, one that he could not break without going against anything he stood for. 

But for a moment, he could give her this. 

Yaijinden sighed again and closed his eyes, listening to the silence of his own body and the twin heartbeats of his nearly-daughter. Yes... for a moment, he could give her this. 

</BLOCKQUOTE>
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[[Category:SSEU Stories]] [[Category:Suburban Senshi]]

Category:SSEU Stories

2014-11-15T04:51:18Z

Yaijinden:

These are stories from the Suburban Senshi Expanded Universe.

Eras:

* 99,344 - 10,557 B.C.E. - [[:Category:The Sailor Wars|The Sailor Wars]]
* 10,557 - 8102 B.C.E. - [[:Category:The Silver Millennium|The Silver Millennium]]
* 1835 - 1936 A.D. - [[:Category:The Steam Age|The Steam Age]]
* 1936 - 1991 A.D. - [[:Category:The Modern Day|The Modern Day]]
* 1991 - 1992 A.D. - [[:Category:The Dark Agency|The Dark Agency]]
* 1992 - 1993 A.D. - [[:Category:The Dark Kingdom War|The Dark Kingdom War]]
* 1995 - 2001 A.D. - [[:Category:The Modern Day|The Modern Day]]
* 2002 - 2897 A.D. - [[:Category:Suburban Senshi|Suburban Senshi]]
* 2897 - 3004 A.D. - [[:Category:The Crystal Millennium|The Crystal Millennium]]
* 3005 - 3057 A.D. - [[:Category:The Plutonian Epoch|The Plutonian Epoch]]
* 3057- 5720 A.D. - [[:Category:The Crystal Imperium|The Crystal Imperium]]
* 5720 - 8000 A.D. - [[:Category:The Revenant Galaxia|The Revenant Galaxia]]
* 8000 - 9054 A.D. - [[:Category:The Pax Serenity|The Pax Serenity]]

Two Hours

2014-11-15T04:50:34Z

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<BLOCKQUOTE>Spring had sprung in Azabu-Juuban, and it was a fine morning for all persons concerned. 

The playground they were at was one much like any other in Yaijinden's experience. It was somewhat smaller than those of his hometown, but Japan was far more cramped for space than anywhere in the United States had been. Apartment buildings bordered the grounds on two sides, the streets swallowing up the other half. 

Traffic was light, though, and the other neighborhood kids were not out in force. For all intents and purposes, they might as well have been alone. The four and five-year-olds did not interest the girl he'd brought here- they weren't her age peers. Maybe the younger Sakura, or the younger Miki, or the futurespawn Minami and Kyanite- they might have associated with her. Everyone her age was in school. 

Perhaps Aoiko resented those latter children the most. 

The girl was a sight. He had made sure she wasn't going to stand out in a crowd, so he'd woven relatively mundane clothes. Leather sandals, a pink t-shirt featuring the vacant grin of Totoro, a brown pair of cargo capris, and hair clips pinning her longish hair back to her head- the combination seemed common enough that nobody raised an eyebrow. 

Aoiko's hair was obviously her mother's, the sort of yellow usually reserved for dandelions and particularly vibrant tulips; her eyes were her grandmother's, the blue of an afternoon summer sky. Most of Sakura's genetics had proven dominant in their pairing, and Yaijinden had been content to let that be as it was. All that really mattered was that the girl looked like his sister and mother and himself when they were all that age. 

It was the way she smiled- that half-present curl of the lips- that he knew she bore part of his genes. When he saw her smile, he could see what made Sakura so passionately attached in the brief time that the Gallifreyan woman had been with the girl; he could see part of himself in Aoiko, and he could feel part of himself attempting to parent her the way she would have needed to be. 

Instead, he leaned back and started swinging from the swingset, slowly. Aoiko had been busying herself with the slide for some minutes now- while she knew that such things were exciting and interesting, she had not actually experienced any of these playground devices. He couldn't imagine what it was like for such a thing to be new to him- it had been a long, long time since he had been that young. Since his viewpoint had been that uncluttered. 

Yaijinden watched absently as she eventually abandoned the slide and ran her way across the playground to the swingset he was now hanging from. "How do I get high up again?" she asked eagerly, planting herself in the direction opposite his own. 

He smiled a brief moment. "Watch my legs," he instructed her, pumping his feet and injecting motion into his seat. Aoiko watched intently as he slowly began ascending, back and forth, and then put her own observation into effect. 

When she had apparently mastered the deed, Yaijinden slowed down, eventually coming to a rest. Swingsets generally did not take kindly to people twice the girl's weight, and he did not need that sort of liberation. 

Aoiko was older than any other kid here, and the few other parents here knew it. This playground wasn't attached to any school, and Yaijinden had obviously been the one to bring her here; he briefly wondered what sort of words these young ladies were thinking to describe him. Irresponsible, probably. Maybe deadbeat. Slacker. A girl her age should be in school, et cetera et cetera. 

The thought of their disdain brought another brief smile to his face. It was then, though, that he noticed Aoiko slowly coming to a halt, and he turned his gaze back to the girl. Her swing had been at rest for a long moment before she haltingly voiced, "Y-dono?" 

An inquiry. He could see it in her eyes. "Mmyeas?" 

"Everyone was... really nice last night." She met his eyes briefly before looking away. "Is it because I'm going to die?" 

"Maybe." The edge of a smile crossed Yaijinden's lips before he glanced upwards to the sky. "We aren't subject to that much tragedy around here," he noted absently. "When something wrong happens, a lot of the people here will try anything we can to make it stop." 

"Even aunt stars?" 

"starcat... is a strange customer in her ways." He scratched the stubble on his chin. "You may be young, but you've also proven yourself to be a genuinely pleasant person to have around. Some of the people here were affected by that more than others." 

"Mm." The girl chewed on the bottom of her lip for a long moment. "They're going to miss me, right?" she asked hesitantly. "I mean, that's what they said..." 

"I can assure you that people will miss you." The older man reached over and ruffled her hair, watching her squirm and try to make her head look neat again. "You've made an impression," Yaijinden said pleasantly. "That's something that few kids your age get to do." 

Aoiko huffed. "If I have to die to make an impression then I'd rather not leave an impression." 

Yaijinden snorted a chuckle. "Such is not your fate," he observed dryly. "Yours is to pass before the sun sets; ours is to live on, if only for a little longer." 

"I know..." The indignant anger left her just as quickly as it came. "But, still..." 

They sat in silence for another long moment. "Y-dono, does it hurt to die?" she said suddenly. 

"It's not death that hurts," he answered sagely. "For some people, it's everything up to that point. For you, though... do you remember going to sleep last night?" 

She nodded. "For you, Aoiko," Yaijinden observed placidly, "it will be just like going to sleep. You'll get tired, and then you'll just... stop." 

"...will I dream?" 

"That depends." He tilted his head to the side and regarded another small grouping of children climbing amongst the playset. "There are many powers in this universe, and some of them very much desire the spirits of the dead. For you, fortunately, many of those who might claim you are somewhat benevolent." 

"Somewhat...?" 

"The powers that be are not always... kind. But children like yourself are not held to the same standards as people like myself." The thought brought another small chortle from him. "There are many places you might go," he mused. "You wouldn't dream in Heaven because you wouldn't have a body to dream with yet- but you would be able to watch people still alive. You wouldn't dream in Meido because nobody dreams in Meido. You might just return to the void from whence you came, and then you would wait for a new chance at a life." 

"And if I wasn't a kid?" she queried, curious. 

"Probably the same," he shrugged. "You haven't done great wrongs, and I don't think your spirit is petty enough to merit something more terrible. If you are aware of the nature of the power who ushes you onwards, you will probably be okay with it." 

Aoiko was quiet for along moment, lips wrinkled in thought. "You'll be fine," he clarified, a genuine smile on his face. "Let me tell you one thing I've learned- don't worry about where you're going to go. It doesn't get you anything but stressed out." 

"Okay," she mumbled, frowning. He watched the downward cast of her eyes, and the general listlessness; she was still thinking about unpleasant things, that much was obvious. Whether they were things she wanted to talk about, though... that much he would have to wait for. 

So he did. The chain joints on the swingset creaked every so often beneath his weight, as he pushed himself back and forth on the seat. Aoiko was almost motionless; the excitement had gone as quickly as it had come, and she was dwelling on important things. 

When she finally spoke again, he was almost surprised. "Y-dono?" Aoiko asked again. 

He looked over to her again. "Yes?" 

"Why... don't you love me?" 

Briefly, Yaijinden wondered if she had inherited her directness directly from him or from the Time Lady. "What makes you think that?" he inquired, keeping his voice level. 

"Well, S-dono..." She paused, swallowed, and started again, "S-dono wanted to be my momma. I... just know she wanted to. starcat and Archangel and everyone else wanted me to be happy. But Y-dono... well..." 

"...well?" he prompted, unusually gentle. 

Aoiko bit her lip again- she didn't want to cry, not in front of him, not in front of anyone. Heartless or not, he could still tell something that obvious. "You don't want me around," she murmured quietly. "You don't care. You don't- you don't want to be my father, do you?" 

"It's... a little more complex than that." Yaijinden took his hands off the chain and leaned forward, resting his chin on his outstretched fingers. "You deserve a mother and father," he stated matter-of-factly. "You have someone who wants to be your mother, yes, but I could not be your father even if I wanted to." 

Her hands tightened around the swing. "I knew it," she said quietly. "Is it because I'm... not going to be here?" 

"You're right," he acknowledged with a sigh. "But like I said, it's a little more complex than that. It's always a little more complex than that." He pushed himself upright and took a few steps, putting himself in front of Aoiko, and squatted down so that he was at eye level. "Mothers and fathers love their children, right?" the heartless man inquired. 

"Yeah," she responded, not meeting his gaze. 

"And I know you've noticed that a lot of people here have superpowers." He took hold of the girl's chin and directed her face towards his own. "Am I right?" 

"Yeah," she repeated, looking to the side now. 

"Well, to tell you a secret..." He glanced to either side, going through the motions of making sure nobody was listening, and whispered, "S-dono doesn't want you to go away. You know this, right?" 

Finally, she gave him her eyes. "Uh huh..." she said dubiously. 

"If S-dono could," he said quietly but intently, "she would do things to your body. You'd be with us for another few days, sure- but you would be hurting all the time. Your elbows and knees would ache, your ears would be ringing, you'd have a big headache... so because S-dono loves you, and doesn't want you to hurt, when her friends called her, she made herself go away. 

"Now," Yaijinden continued, releasing her chin, "If I was your dad, I'd do anything I could in order to make sure you stayed with us. I can't do what S-dono can- but I can do different things. Your body wouldn't hurt... but you would be different. And not in a good way, either." 

Aoiko raised both eyebrows. "Like... different how?" 

He considered this a moment. "You know how you've been having fun with people while you've been here?" he asked, tilting his head to the side. 

She nodded agreement. "Well," he said quietly, "if I wanted to be your dad, and then I did what I wanted to... well, you wouldn't be able to have fun with them. Or with anyone. All the ways you were happy today, and last night? You wouldn't be able to enjoy them ever again." 

"...Wow." The idea obviously puzzled her. "Why?" 

"Like I keep saying..." 

"It's complicated," Aoiko finished. 

"If I did that, you would just end up doing nothing but living." Yaijinden drew a deep breath and let it go slowly. "And nobody wants to just do nothing but exist. It sounds cool, but when you don't enjoy anything... well, you just get really, really bored until you just decide to stop." 

"That... doesn't sound good," she mused. 

"You're damn straight it doesn't sound good." He cracked a grin. "Another time, another life, things'd be different. Yeah, I'd be your dad. S-dono would probably be your mom, too. But for now, we have to take a step back. She needs to learn that sentient life is a wonderful, terrible thing, and I needed..." 

"You needed what?" she pressed. 

Yaijinden closed his eyes for a second, touching the spot on his chest where his heart had once been. "I needed to remember that I could want to feel again." 

Aoiko's lips curled briefly in a smile. She let go of the swing and, tenatively, put her arms around the first human being she had ever seen- the one who had given her a worldview to work from, the one who had spilled the fluid from the cloning tubes, and the one who had introduced her to the pleasant oddities of Ten'Aino House. 

And for a moment, he held her back, and let himself pretend. 

To deny her a childhood was unacceptable- so he could not allow himself to be her father. Never mind his own dulled, weakened emotions, never mind his own strange set of responsibilities- it was one of his own few taboos, one that he could not break without going against anything he stood for. 

But for a moment, he could give her this. 

Yaijinden sighed again and closed his eyes, listening to the silence of his own body and the twin heartbeats of his nearly-daughter. Yes... for a moment, he could give her this. 

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Category:The Era of Peace

2014-11-15T04:45:51Z

Category:SSEU Stories

2014-11-15T04:43:40Z

Yaijinden: