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“Well, well, if it isn’t the one that got away.” I said, thinking back to the thugs and assassins that had ambushed me on my way home the night my parents were killed. I remembered each one of them; there were ten and I’d only been able to take down nine.
“You know this guy?” Cloud asked quietly.
“Sort of,” I replied. “He tried to kill me awhile back.”
“You danced very well then, but have you learned each step of the waltz?” He asked, tossing me a katana. I remove the scabbard and slid it into my belt.
“I know a lot of the waltz.”
I ran forward, our katanas meeting. I leaned back a little and pulled my blade a little further away from the hilt was further from his first sword in a second flat so his other katana hit mine. He didn’t put his full force against me, and he was the one to jump back. This time, he made the first move by swiveling to my right and striking low, but I still blocked him easily. I decided to take a chance and I heaved myself upright putting my upper-arm strength into my blade in a quick movement, so his right blade went flying. Even though, I missed my target since it went as far away from Cloud as it could go. I cursed to myself as I watched it go.
I blocked him easily for the next few blows, turned him completely around, and got a good look at him for the first time in six years. He had icy blue eyes, was poorly shaven, and had rather shaggy black hair. I glanced over his shoulder momentarily, and stepped back quickly as I saw Cloud grabbing his sword and charging him from behind. Half of the sword stuck through the front of his chest. The rain mingled with the smattering blood. He fell forward with a loud thud, dead before hitting the ground.
“That wasn’t surprising.” I said, sliding my katana back into its scabbard. “I got a prize too. I wouldn’t touch any of the other swords, they all have his initials on the blades. This is the only one that doesn’t.”
He nodded asking, “Shall we go?”
“What do you think?” I asked dryly, jogging over to the gates.
The iron gates were closing as we passed through them and entered the city. We stopped when we were down the hill that Twi-LIGHT was situated upon to catch our breaths.
“Twi-LIGHT is going to send out search parties once they realize we’re gone.” I gasped in between pants. “We’d better get out of the capital ASAP.”
He nodded saying, “It’s a good idea, but we’re both supposed to be dead. We’re stuck here as long as we don’t have any money.”
“We may be legally dead, but I have some friends that would believe I’m alive even though an ass-wipe like Trenxi said otherwise.” I turned around and looked down the street saying, “C’mon, there’s an old store in the slums where a friend of mine used to do business.”
I walked down the street calmly. Cloud followed, asking doubtfully, “Is this friend of yours still there? Money-lenders in the slums don’t last very long.”
“Nothing in the slums lasts very long.” I said dryly. “But this friend of mine has taken so many names; I know she’s still there.”
It was around midnight. Even though we were far away from Twi-LIGHT, the alarms were still pretty loud. I reached into my pocket instinctively to get my cell phone out, but I wasn’t surprised it was gone.
“We’d better hurry; the locals won’t like seeing Twi-LIGHT people around.”
We didn’t run, but we didn’t stop to hang around as we walked down the streets of the capital, Nioglow.
Things didn’t look that different, but there were more buildings and a large number of stores and houses had been rebuilt. As we got further away from Twi-LIGHT, the differences grew. All the residential houses were rebuilt, larger and cleaner than they had been. Nioglow was abnormally quiet though; almost all the stores should still have been open at midnight, and there had always been people and cars roaming the streets. Not now, though. Not even the bars were open, which worried me.
Maybe this is a bad idea…
I stopped when I saw a familiar sign in front of a car garage. I smiled and said, “C’mon. I think I just solved the transportation problem.” I walked forward and banged on the door the same instant Cloud said,
“The chances are nobody’s going to an-”
I heard a familiar voice call out loudly, “Come to the garage, the door is open.”
I walked over and grabbed the handle of the silver door and pulled it up. I ducked under it halfway, since it didn’t go any higher than that. Cloud ducked under too, though since he was taller than me, he had a hard time getting under the three-foot clearance.
“Rei, you awake? By any chance, do you have a motorcycle I can borrow? I won’t crash this one into a tree or run it into a lake like I did the last few times.”
The fit young woman who always wore grease-stained jeans and a once-white T-shirt looked up after ducking her head out from under the hood of a car. Her long tied-back neon blue hair with red streaks echoed the movement as her brown eyes met mine. She studied me a moment, her mouth open a little before she dropped her wrench and ran over, walking in a circle around me before shaking her head, demanding, “Akhy?”
“The one and only.” I said with a smile. “Miss me?”
She gave me a bear hug I returned, saying, “I knew that jackass was lying!”
We parted and she was smiling at me, saying, “What happened to you? I haven’t seen you in, like, six years!”
“Long story. Do you still have that weird smelly stuff that removes tattoos?” I asked as I showed her my arm.
“Yeah…” She was looking Cloud over and asked, “Who’s your friend? You picked yourself up a good-looking bodyguard.”
“Anan Nimbostratus.” I replied. “He’s just another one of Twi-LIGHT’s prisoners who came with me. He acts like an old fart though.”
He held out a hand saying, “Nice to meet you.”
She shook his hand. “Name’s Rei Takashi. You can already guess I’m a mechanic,” she said, motioning around the garage that was strewed with tools and motorcycle parts. There was a silver sports car in the center of the room with five motorcycles leaning against the wall on the other side with stickers on the seats that said things like, “Done, guy’s an ass so charge him a little extra for parts.” Or, “Need to shake guy down then buy new muffler system.”
She turned back to me saying,
“Care to come up to my room a second? Alone?”
“Sure.” I said. “Wait here.” I told Cloud and followed her.
When we exited the garage Rei closed the door quickly, asking, “Are you sure this guy is safe?”
“No.” I replied truthfully, “But he did save my life, and anybody against Trenxi can’t be too bad. I don’t have much of a choice either; I have to get to Maaya.”
Rei crossed her arms saying, “I can give you a loan in you need it. Ever since my brother started working again things have gotten a lot easier. He makes more than enough money to support the both of us.”
I smiled slightly saying, “Sounds good. I only need a hundred bucks or so.”
She gave me one of her famous, “Yeah, riiiiiiiiight” looks and asked, “Where do you plan on going?”
“I don’t really know. We need to leave Nioglow, but we can’t go too far because I need to get to Akiko.”
“Do you have any idea what’s happened?” Rei asked suddenly with distinctive irritation even though she looked worried. “Nioglow has been evacuated. Only people working for Twi-LIGHT and their families are here now. The slums are the hothole of ex-mercenaries and our old group is long gone.”
“I haven’t heard from Maaya and the gang in years.” She continued. “The slums are overflowing with creeps too; gangs, drug dealers, pervs, you name it and they’re there.”
“Is the old cathedral still there?”
Rei raised an eyebrow asking, “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Is it?”
“Yeah…” She replied, “Why?”
“I have a stash of crap there.”
“Define crap.”
“Weapons, books, portable DVD player, laptop-you know, crap.”
“If it’s still there, I’ll drink a gallon of break fluid.”
“Better get the stomach pump ready then.”
She shook her head, asking, “What makes you think the stuff is still there?”
“Because I hid it under the floorboards, and I always used to re-nail it too.”
She sighed saying, “Let’s see this tattoo you need removing.”
I showed her my arm saying, “Cloud has to have his removed too; neither of us can be going around with these things. We need to get out of here ASAP. I don’t want to get you involved with this too.”
She nodded, asking, “Will you need one or two motorcycles?”
“One’s probably better in the sense it’s less conspicuous.”
She shook her head saying, “C’mon let’s head upstairs so you can change your clothes. None of my brother’s stuff would fit your boyfriend, but the tattoos are all you really have to worry about once you’re out of Nioglow.”
I nodded and followed her up the stairs. The house was very familiar and felt more like a home than the place I knew ever did. It had been my home before Trenxi burned it, but it never felt very homey. Especially because I was always being dogged to dress-up and attend political parties and the entire sort.
The stairway we walked up was all wooden, walls and all identifying it as an old house. It was seldom that many houses or buildings were made of wood, but since the Takashis had owned the house for so long, aside from repairs it stayed the same as it was one hundred years ago. When we reached Rei’s room, she pointed to the familiar dresser saying,
“Pick out some clothes for yourself. I won’t miss anything.” She walked into the bathroom off her room, adding, “I’ll put some of the remover in a film vile so you can use it later.”
“Great, thanks Rei.”
She grunted a response and closed the door with her foot. I opened up one of the doors and plucked out a red mid-sleeved shirt and tan cargo pants. I knew Rei didn’t wear them often, she hated red and they were stuffed in the back. I looked around her room as I pulled off the Twi-LIGHT uniform and saw it was relatively similar to the way it used to be. Only the computers sitting on her desk and dresser were all more state-of-the-art and there were more of them. The carpet was still black, her sheets were still white, and if it weren’t for all the posters and pictures on the walls, it would look barren. Then there were a bunch of pictures of Rei, Maaya, and me, along with a few old T-shirts tacked to the walls. One of them had a picture of an old moldy hamburger that said in big cartoon-y letters, “Eat it? I wouldn’t sit on it!”
I smiled at that; we’d bought the same T-shirt. Mine had been burned though, so needless to say Rei was the only one who had saved it.
Rei’s shirt was on the tight side, even though the pants fit perfectly. I looked closely at the boots and decided to save them. I flexed and stretched my arms upward; the shirt was tight around my shoulders but not restricting.
Rei walked out of the bathroom and handed me a film vile of the tattoo-remover liquid and a credit card.
“It’s under a fake name. It’ll draw from a bank account with six thousand dollars in it. Don’t spend anymore than that without calling me first. And before you say you couldn’t accept that much money, it’s only the money that I receive for being a secret-keeper and pretending I don’t know you. Trenxi’s idea, he doesn’t want anybody who knew you talking about you.”
I nodded and pocketed the credit card, saying, “Thanks.”
She walked over to her desk, which had a good twenty cell phones on it with wires attaching them to the wall to charge or into a computer to transfer data. She picked up a black Nokia flip phone and tossed it to me, saying, “That’s also under the fake name. Bill’s paid for unlimited usage for a year, the battery can last four weeks if left on all the time, that’s with a thousand hours of talk time too. If you need to charge it, just slide off the back panel and hold up the battery to the sun for approximately five minutes, ten if it’s completely dead and it’ll be charged.”
“Rei, what’s this fake name anyway?” I asked a little wary.
“Mitsuko Nekarenra.”
“Gotcha.” I said, I was about to ask another question but Rei wasn’t done yet.
“Still like katanas?”
“Yeah, I already have one-sort of.” I said putting my hand on the hilt of the one I had. She walked over and drew it from the scabbard saying,
“It’s a REG-456, only used by the Twi-LIGHT Soldier unit, not something you would want to be caught carrying.” She took the blade and scabbard, and tossed it aside adding, “I’ll destroy it later. C’mon, I have a better weapon for you.”
She climbed up on the dresser and reached behind the large mirror and pulled out a katana with a red scabbard and red and black twist hilt. She jumped down nimbly and handed it to me saying,
“This is the Crimson Avenger Mark 10.”
I pulled the long and slender katana from the scabbard and looked at the blade. It felt sturdy, solid, and I liked the feel of it. The blade was silver, and the guard between the blade and hilt was done in black metal.
“Crimson Avengers start at-” I objected but she cut me off saying,
“I use guns, not katanas.”
I decided not to ask why she’d bought a seven thousand dollar katana if she didn’t like using them, and slid the scabbard into my belt and used the small latch Rei handed me to secure it in place.
“What about your boyfriend? Is that broadsword going to hold up?” She asked, pulling a pistol out of a drawer with a small belt and pulled up my right pant leg, attaching the gun belt around my shin where the baggy pants would hide it perfectly. She also slid a utility knife into my pocket.
“I haven’t even known the guy for a full day.” I objected but Rei ignored that.
“I’ll take that as a yes. So, what else are you going to need? I already know what motorcycle I’m going to give you.”
“That’s it; I don’t want to get you into trouble or anything.”
“Nonsense,” she said with a smile. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back for a very long time, Akhy. Best friends stick together, right?” she asked, pulling her keys out of her pocket. There was a small silver band that was engraved with “Best Friends” and the year it was made, now fourteen years ago. It was one of the two rings I’d had made; mine was in my old clothes…and who knew what happened to them five years ago.
“Well, you’d better be going. Cloud will be wondering what happened to you.”
When we reached the garage, Cloud was waiting for us. He looked up, pulling his right glove back on quickly, asking, “Ready to go?”
“Yeah, we’re heading to a cathedral in the slums. Well, the only cathedral in the slums,” I replied.
Rei opened up the garage door and slid under the clearance, followed by Cloud and me. She led us to the back and rolled out a sleek black motorcycle with two seats and all the controls at the handlebars, which was less like a bike and more like a mini-spaceship. The sides were covered with sleek panels of tear-shaped black armor, and the handler bars were attached to the center console that had a touch-pad screen. Under the main two side pieces of armor, there were another two tear-shaped ones that slanted up a little and guarded the rest of the controls. I smiled saying, “You always liked the Cyclone Battle Series.”
“Be careful, okay? Hold down the one on that cell phone and that’s my speed dial. You have no excuse for not calling me at least once a week to report in.”
Rei and I exchanged a quick hug, and she gave Cloud a stern look, saying, “Do anything to her and if she doesn’t kill you, I will.”
“I have no intention of harming the heir to the empire,” he said matter-of-factly.
I sat down in the driver’s seat saying as Cloud sat down behind me, “We’ll report in ASAP, but we need to get out of here quick; Twi-LIGHT will have search parties out by dawn at the latest.”
Rei tossed me a key and I started the motorcycle up and felt the gravel crunch under the wheels as I smiled one more time at Rei and blasted off. I tore off the lot and onto the desolate street and sped away from the last sanctuary I had.
I didn’t slow down at any point, even after about an hour of driving. Nioglow was big enough to be a state, but it had always been the capital city. After about a half hour Cloud finally asked, “You are Akhyia Ragnarok, right?”
“If Akiko Ragnarok is my sister, doesn’t that make me Akhyia? And I go by Akhy, always have and always will.”
“So if Trenxi died, you’d be the heir to Skyevi and the Parliament.”
“The Parliament is presently being controlled by Trenxi and those buddies of his that I didn’t kill so far. Trenxi has to go through the government officials before he can screw up the country too badly. The only thing he can do openly is declare war, which he’s going to once the rest of his mutants wake up. But you know all about my public past, why don’t you tell me a little about yours?”
“Most people don’t go asking about another person’s past after knowing them for only two hours.”
“Well, if two convicts are talking and one of them already knows all about the other person, than it would only make sense for the other person to know something about her counterpart. I’d like to know when we’ll be going our separate ways, you see.”
“Fine.” He replied now sounding too concerned. “My parents were both part of the government. They died of Evi poisoning when I was young. I was trained in the military for two years before I was accused of leaking government information to outside sources.”
“And were you?”
“No,” He replied, “My brother was the one doing it, he was also part of the military. After I spent half a year avoiding the army, they figured out it was my brother and killed him. They took the bounty off my head, but I never returned. The only reason I ended up as one of Twi-LIGHT’s lab rats is because I was in one of the towns they attacked and I was apprehended trying to be a hero.”
“I saw a ring on your finger when you had your glove off. You married or something?”
He scoffed saying, “That’ll be the day. No, I’m not married and never had a fiancé if that’s your next question. That’s all you need to know, too.”
“By saying ‘that’s all you need to know, too’ you’re only revealing that you have some kind of secret you don’t want me knowing. If you didn’t say that, I’d just guess you were normal until proven otherwise.”
“I never knew princesses could be such wiseasses after etiquette training.”
“I missed three hundred and sixty-five etiquette lessons a year. I was too busy with kendo and other martial arts.”
“I figured you spent your childhood in training, it shows in your personality.”
I took a distinctly sharp turn saying, “Arigato.”
“What?”
“Thanks. Don’t you speak any other languages?”
“No.”
We were silent for the rest of the way, mainly because we were hardly anything more than strangers with a common goal. The buildings got closer together, and more familiar. Apparently nothing had been changed in the slums. The city was poorly lit and all the people seemed grim and rather bleak. There were cars and motorcycles around, but they were all old, dented, and in desperate need of a paint job. Since we were cruising around in a completely new, shiny, high-tech, uncommon vehicle, we were being watched to say the least.
A lot of the people looked familiar, but I decided not to try placing faces to names. It would only be depressing, and if they saw me looking at them they might look at me; I’d gotten a lot taller and I‘d changed much, but anybody who knew me well would still recognize me upon closer inspection. Cloud? I couldn’t worry about whether or not anybody knew him or if he’d grown since he’d been abducted; he looked a little older than me but I didn’t want to get wondering.
I sped up as traffic increased, since as we got deeper there were more cars and motorcycles. After an agonizingly slow thirty-minute ride, I started seeing the distinctly familiar buildings and garages, and soon saw the tips of the cathedral steeples in the distance. Cloud apparently felt me tense since he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I replied quietly. “I see the cathedral.”
He nodded as I sped up a little more. The trip was driving me crazy; we were in another bazaar, so there were people walking through the streets and there was no hope of turning or getting onto a back road, since there was even more traffic on those. I cursed silently as I wished these people could speed it up.
At least having Cloud around silences the catcalls. Let them misjudge things all they want if they’ll leave me alone.
There had been a number of times I was speeding through the slums and had to slow down due to a bazaar and been pounced on a number of times. They’d quickly learn not to mess with me; especially if there were a lot of them and I just drew a katana I had hidden in the armor of my motorcycle. I loved the imported machines Rei always got…once I’d been chased around by a bunch of guys on conventional motorcycles when I was young, and I’d sped right into a lake with out realizing I was getting so close. Rei had reamed for that; and reminded me about the time I crashed into a tree. She’d always say things like, “Three crashes, and you’re banned!” I knew she’d never really ban me, but it posed many entertaining arguments to say the least.
When we broke free of the bazaar I took a right turn into a less populated ally and eased to a stop as we reached the cathedral. I stood before us in all the glory it had five years ago. I smiled at the place; it was all black and made of stone on the outside with stained glass windows and a large spherical window above the huge double-doors depicting Gaia, the planet. Gaia was another way to say “Earth”. I smiled and walked forward and over to the edge of the chipped wise foot-high stairway that lead to the doors. There was a small hole and you cloud reach under them if you hand was small enough. My hard still fit, but it was tight squeeze. I pulled out the old brass skeleton key and pushed it into the old rusted lock. It resisted me harder than it had when I first started using the cathedral; but it did give. With a loud squeak, the door slid open disturbing a cloud of dust and many-a-spider-web.
I smiled broadly looking in, it was completely untouched and looked exactly the same. I was about to walk in, but I looked behind me when I realized Cloud wasn’t following. He was still standing next to the motorcycle giving the church a wary look.
“What’s wrong? It’s not going to bite.”
He shook his head asking,
“Don’t you get a bad feeling even getting lose to this place?”
I have him an odd look saying,
“No. I feel like I’m coming home.”
I hopped past the stairs, landing smoothly on my feet and walking toward him. I grabbed his hand and pulled him up the stairs saying,
“Relax. Everybody feels that way when they first enter. Even Rei did.”
It started to drizzle as he reluctantly let me pull him along, and when we entered he seemed to relax a little. I leaned against the door and closed it saying,
“Still feel like it doesn’t want you here? She stops giving people the bad feelings once she gets to know them a little?”
“She?” He asked giving me a less than wary look.
I chuckled saying,
“The ghost.” I pointed over to the far wall that was engraved with the picture of an ancient city. “The mural in the stone over there depicts a giant utopia from thousands of years ago.”
The rain picked up as I said all of this, and I noticed him looking around the large main-room, the ceiling was a good few hundred feet up. The room was a good fifty feet wide, with broken and chipped stone bunches.
“I think she died here or something. I was wondering around in the slums when I was young after talking to a friend of mine, Maaya, when I followed this weird signing. The door of the church was ajar, so I entered and saw this girl standing in front of the mural singing in some lost language. She didn’t sound sad like the ghosts of children’s stories, in fact she sounded happy when I entered the church.”
I’m sure he didn’t like not being able to see very much in the dark, but he only said,
“Are you sure nobody’s entered this place in some other entrance? There’s no dust on anything, and a place closed up for so long would be pretty musty.”
I smiled evilly saying,
“She doesn’t let it get musty.” I could tell I was creeping him out; so I continued in saying,
“I think she has something to do with Skyevi. She appears like Skyevi does in my visions. I’d always wonder down into the labs when I was young and have visions of a utopia-like city when I touched her coffin.”
“If you think silly stories like that are going to scare me-” He said sternly but stopped when a bolt of lightening illuminated the church and we both saw the figure of a girl standing in front of the mural for a split second.
He froze, his hand hovering over the hilt of his sword. I smirked slightly and rolled my eyes saying,
“It’s okay…” I smirk widened into a evil smile as I added, “if she likes you, that is. If she doesn’t…” I left the statement handing off as another crash of thunder sounded and a bolt of lightening flashed. She turned around half way and I got a chance to see her.
“What…?” I muttered as she turned around and walked toward us.
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