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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