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I woke up slowly, hearing Maaya scold Kairi for speaking too loud.
“Where…” I muttered, “Am I?”
I opened my eyes, and looked around the hospital room. Sunlight was streaming through the window, so I guessed I must have been out for at least a night. More stargazer lilies were on the nightstand beside my bed and I sat up to see Maaya and Kairi.
“You’re okay!” Kairi said happily.
I smiled at her saying and ruffled her hair saying,
“Of course I am!”
I looked up at Maaya asking,
“Where are we?”
“Nioglow.” She replied. “It’s Thursday morning, you left Tuesday and slept all that night, along with all through Wednesday.”
I nodded, glad to feel my wounds completely healed.
“Where’s Cloud?”
“He’s around here somewhere, I’m not exactly sure where though. He might be in Nioglow, neither of you seem to like to spend much time at the old Twi-LIGHT HQ.”
“Can you blame us?” I asked sarcastically. “Did Trenxi realize I tricked him with a fake Tear of Two Souls yet?”
She smiled slightly saying,
“Not that I know of, but I’d imagine you got some good information out of him.”
“Yeah,” I replied, “I’ll tell you later on though. Did you have to launch an attack on Kyvia?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t much of a problem since the army was ready. Trenxi, Akiko, and Lena were gone by the time we got there though.”
“It’s no surprise.” I said and stretched. “Call a meeting tonight if Kazuki and Rei didn’t elope.”
“Not that old joke!” Maaya said with a smile.
“Yup, that old joke!”
Later that day, after getting dressed in jeans and another white, button-up, and mid-sleeved shirt, after trying to find Cloud in the Twi-LIGHT building with no luck I prowled Nioglow for a while, but with no luck. I couldn’t find him anywhere. It was around noon, and although I was healed I didn’t have all my energy back. I flopped down under one of the cherry trees on the opposite side of the lake the graveyard was one. It was a warm spring day, something that wasn’t very common in Nioglow.
Was nodding off when I heard a voice ask attentively,
“Akhy?”
I looked up and smiled at Cloud saying,
“I was wondering where you were.” I stood up and stretched adding, “Although I can’t blame you for not wanting to hang around Twi-LIGHT all day.”
After a brief silence, he finally said,
“I’m sorry. I never meant for that to happen, I just-”
“It’s alright.” I said, cutting him off. “You couldn’t remember me, and you wanted revenge against Zeev. I’m not angry.”
“I--what?”
“I said I’m not angry.” I looked up, my eyes meeting his. “Because in the end, you did something not even my blood sister could do, remember me.”
“Only because you were trying to make me remember! It hardly counts.”
“What, do you want me to yell at you first?”
“That’s rather what I was expecting.”
I smiled saying,
“Good! That’s what you should expect.”
I saw him smirk slightly, but it faded as his eyes met mine. He took a step forward, and embraced me saying,
“I’m sorry.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck saying,
“Apology accepted. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Sort of.” He said leaning down to kiss me.
“Akhy…” He muttered as we parted, “I love you.”
I looked away, my mid completely freezing. I couldn’t reply; what the hell would I say? I didn’t even know if I was going live to my twenty-second birthday never mind something like that! He stepped away, apparently not expecting a response as he said,
“Let’s head back to the Exodus HQ.”
“Y-yeah.” I replied.
I flopped on my bed that right after an irritably long day spent in conferences and the training hall. Yes, the damn training hall. Maaya was short-handed, needed to update a platoon of Ragnarokain soldiers on swordplay so I was requited. Cloud was too, but since he used broadswords we didn’t see each other, not that bothered me.
It’s not that I don’t like him… I thought as I kicked off my boots, with no gagging arigato gozaimasu Odor Eaters, it’s just that I don’t know if I like him that much… It’s not like I exactly have experience with that kinda stuff anyway… Sure, Akiko tried hooking me up with a bunch of guys but that hardly counts, since I scared them all off.
…What about the confrontation with Akiko?
Focus on the thought at hand, you no good procrastinator!
What an attention span of steal I have…
It was her spirit that I was talking to, though. Skyevi said herself Akiko’s spirit may remember me, but her mind couldn’t because Trenxi was manipulating her. Ahem, is manipulating her, in the present tense. But, that also means when our final chaotic occurs she’ll know who I am when I kill her…
I sighed mumbling,
“My mind is such a dismal place…whoever said ‘safe inside my mind’ was real idiot…”
Maybe the mind is a sanctuary for some people.
Kinda odd; it never accrued to me that I’ve never really look for a sanctuary.
…Isn’t talking to one’s self a sign of insanity?
So is thinking inside your mind like there’s another person in there rather than the hopeful side and the wise-ass side.
Two different sides are close enough to two different people.
It was Maaya that compared my train of though to the “little shoulder angel and devil”, right? Probably, sounds like a Maaya thing…
“Wanna play Cat-Opoly?” Kairi asked brightly as she entered my room.
…Who gave her a master key to this place?
I smiled saying,
“Sure. You shall not get Persian and Main Coon this time! Those two are the most expensive prosperities on the board, last time you had me mortgaged to the max!
She smiled smugly saying,
“Well, I did have half the board completely developed. By now you’ve figured out that I get all the cheep prosperities, and develop them really quick so you’re mortgaged to the max in no time and can’t develop your own land!”
I smiled as she set up the game, glad she enjoyed kicking my ass although it took a lot of dignity to swallow my pride and let her win…I was getting soft-hearted, I was usually unmerciful even to children…or Kazuki, he’s really crappy at Monopoly.
Kairi once again got more than half the board, and we were joined by Niketa for a second game. Kairi won the first, me the second, and Niketa was going to win the third but when Kairi was getting severely beaten, Niketa porously self-destructed.
Kairi was asleep on my bed while Niketa and me put the game in its box as I said quietly,
“Thanks for letting her win, I had to swallow my pride many times but she’s only six.”
“I knew she was younger than she looked, but she’s only six?”
“Yeah.” I replied and stood up with a stretch.
“Want to get a midnight snack?”
“Midnight snacks are terrible for you.”
“Yeah, but it’s been over seven years since I last had one, so what the hell? Besides, it‘s not like I don’t get more than enough exercise sword fighting.”
Niketa smiled saying,
“True, true.”
After two shakes (chocolate on my part, as always) Niketa said idly as we sat on a bench under a overhang due to the rain in the courtyard toward the back of the Twi-LIGHT building,
“This would be an extremely romantic situation, were either of us with a guy.”
I snickered saying,
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’d rather had a gun to your head?”
“…Because it’s practically my catch phrase that I’d rather have a gun to my head than Cloud hovering around.”
Niketa chuckled saying,
“I think I heard you say that to Maaya once.”
“You probably did.”
She paused before asking,
“Akhy, do you plan on taking up my offer with the Tear of Two Souls? It still stands, you know. It will until the end, too.”
“If I were selfish, than I’d just say ‘hell yeah’ but I need to know exactly what destroying Skyevi entails, I won’t have the divine katana after all.”
“I thought of that…” She sighed, “Have any ideas?”
“Not really. It’s impossible to kill Trenxi with guns and swords, and it’ll be ten times harder killing Skyevi.”
“The Tear of Two Souls, it’s something to do with Gaia, right?”
“You didn’t ask Trenxi?”
“I kinda…forgot. I was pre-occupied with Kairi’s role in all this, Gaia itself, and getting Cloud back.”
“That trick with the fake Tear was pretty cool, though.”
“Mmm.” I agreed half-heartedly. “Supposedly, it was a Mazarain or Niveldonin legend.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Eh, it’s back to the days of searching for Skyevi relics, I guess. I need to collect information in Niveldon and Mazar. We’re heading for Niveldon for the Blood of Fayt, but Mazar…well, although that endeavor would be fairly hellish it’d cause too much trouble just yet. I’m glad Maaya finally admitted why she refuses to go after those two relics though, I knew it was because Exodus didn’t have enough soldiers to guard Ragnarok, the Spherical Line and attack Niveldon at the same time. I guess she didn’t want to admit Exodus couldn’t multitask as much as it needed to right now.”
“What about the Ragnarokain military? Isn’t that over six billion soldiers?”
“Twenty billion were killed, we have three billion, and the other billion are in limbo, we don’t really know where they are because they’re not registered with Twi-LIGHT. We know Twi-LIGHT has at least ten thousand Special Agents in cold storage, and an army of two billion normal soldiers, and luckily the Ragnarokain military has lost faith in them.”
She nodded asking,
“Cold storage, eh? Did Exodus gain control over Kyvia yet?”
“Yes, cold storage. Yes to your second question, too. Trenxi, Akiko, and Lena were no where to be found and they’re slowly exploring and securing the Twi-LIGHT HQ there. All the citizens of Kyvia were…”
“In the early stages of Special Agent-transmutation?”
“Yeah. They were all in comas, no hooked up to Skyevi energy though because they didn’t have enough direct stuff. We’re digging through their data base to figure out how to awaken these people, Twi-LIGHT has a drug for it because these comas are drug-induced in the first place, but we can’t use the normal cure for coma just in case Trenxi is using a different method that could somehow use the usually antidote to kill the person.”
“Could he really do that?” Niketa asked, looking surprised. “Yeah.” I said grimly. “Remember who we’re talking about, the mad man that collected citizens of cities to be mutated, poisoned countless soldiers and civilians with Evi poisoning, and didn’t even let the dead find peace.”
“Find peace…huh?”
“Well, you’d want to die if you were fighting for your enemy, wouldn’t you? All those dead Ragnarokain and Exodus soldiers are being mutated as we speak.”
“I guess you’re right. Especially with the soldiers.”
“It’s kinda dismal being a soldier, isn’t it? After all, their job is to die.”
“Yeah…that too.” Niketa looked up at the clouds covering the stars and moon, but the rain was slowing down so you could see the glow of the moon through the clouds, “He must really of loved her to do all this.”
“What?” I asked, fearing she’d lost it.
“Trenxi. He really must of loved her to have lost his mind when he was still Reluzera. If you think of it, he probably starting losing it when he first learned Skyevi planned on a honorable suicidal sacrifice. He must of realized right away when things started going out of control with his original plan she’d decided to go through with her original plan, and he must of completely lost it before she killed him.”
I was silent a moment before saying,
“I try not to think of my enemies that way. I don’t like thinking of the lives of the people who’s blood I have on my hands now. Not only that, it also makes it harder to kill an opinionate that will certainly kill me and my friends if I think of it that way.”
“I guess the job of the assassin isn’t all that different from the job of a soldier, huh?”
“There’s no difference at all.” I replied, “In the end, we’re all somebody’s tool that’s sent kill and be killed.”
“Were you with Anan?” Kairi asked sleepily as I entered my room on the thirty-seventh floor. She’d crawled under the covers a while ago.
“Always going to ask me that?” I asked pulling off my clothes, and pulling on my spongy circus peanuts of doom T-shirt and white shorts.
“Are you still mad at him?”
“Not really.” I said opening up my laptop to check e-mail before going to sleep. “Just in a turmoil, or at least I am. I’m qualified as an assassin, so I’m not taking part in the raids on Kyvia. When I’m sent it, it’s for special missions before the attack, or during the attack if I’m after something. Cloud might be sent out of the next attack, but it’s hard to say.”
“But, if you’re not mad at him why have you been avoiding him?”
“Isn’t it time you went to bed?” I asked, deleting junk mail.
She sat up, apparently talking had gotten her wide-awake as she said,
“Not really. You never specified a bedtime for me, and I don’t have a legal guardian right now. Akhy, when both my mommy and daddy are dead, are you going to adopt me?”
I looked down at her and smiled saying,
“Don’t worry about the legal matters, Kairi. I’ll always take care of you.”
Liar.
She smiled and said goodnight, but there was another dark shadow loaming on the horizon for me now, another lie.
I didn’t sleep very well that night, partly because my mind wouldn’t shut down and also because I couldn’t roll around much without waking Kairi, who was snuggled up with Megami on the edge of my bed. One down point about having inhuman endurance; it meant you hardly ever got exhausted and it took a lot of physical activity to even get “tired” so when your mind was reeling after a busy day, there was no feeling of being tired so getting to sleep was beside impossible, especially because it wasn’t needed so soon.
I wonder if Cloud gets insomnia like this too…probably. Although I went through more mutation, and had Skyevi power being fed into my body for five years, I’m probably less human than him but he probably gets insomnia too, even if it’s on a lesser degree.
I stood up silently, and opened the window that was over the dresser even though it was raining. The blast of cool air felt good; and I was glad the wind wasn’t blowing the rain into the room. The wind was extremely violent though, probably going about forty miles per hour. Still far below storm force, but hovering around gale force. Gale force was thirty-eight to forty-seven, fifth to seventy-five was storm winds, and seventy-five and up hurricane force winds.
All the Exodus soldiers were either in the borders of the slums, or guarding the Exodus HQ so when I saw a movement in the streets of Nioglow, I instantly got suspicious. The person was on foot, mainly hiding in the shadows of buildings. I closed the window, changed from shorts to pants but kept my spongy circus peanuts T-shirt as I pulled my boots on. I grabbed my gun belt, outfitted with my two katanas and two pistols.
I slid out of my room silently, and took the stairs down to the underground parking lot. The parking lot was the first level of the underground, having parking lots under the building wasn’t too uncommon.
After verifying my identity with the Exodus soldiers guarding the building and the gates, I was in Nioglow, getting absolutely soaked as I sped through the streets to where I guessed the person I’d seen had been.
“I gotta remember to buy a raincoat…” I grumbled as I slowed down, scanning the ally ways one either side of me. After patrolling a little longer with no results, I headed to the cathedral because it was closer than the Twi-LIGHT building by that point. I sat down on one of the benches, soaking wet and rather irritable. I lit a few candles, and squeezed the water out of my clothes. I sighed as I pulled giant Zip-Lock out of the floorboards that contained a change of clothes, glad I’d shoved an extra pair of bloody jeans and blood-stained shirt in there a few visits to the cathedral ago.
I had my wet clothes handing over the back of one of the booths, hoping they’d dry in the not-too-far-future. I looked around the familiar cathedral, distinctly at the large mural. I’d studied every part of the utopia depicted in it a hundred times over, but some parts of it has more significance now.
The utopia’s largest building was in the very center, other large buildings formed a circle around the huge city. On the center building, there was a large statue of a woman with feathery wings unfurled. On the nine smaller buildings that formed the city’s borders, there were also statues. One of the statues had a woman with a katana in her right hand and double-edged sword in the other in a warrior’s stance. The other warrior had a bow and arrows, taking aim at something out side the city’s borders. Another statue of a woman had a small stone in her hands, the cravings in the stone made it look like the stone was bleeding. Yet another statue of a woman held a key dangling from a chain, but the two most interesting statues were probably the one with a small stone cupped in her hands, but the stone was inside what looked to be a crystalline prison. I’d examined that statue closely, buy since it was an overhead picture of the city you couldn’t tell much.
Each Skyevi relic and divine relic had a statue depicting them, I guess the one in the center to be End of Time, but the mural pulled a complication into the puzzle; why was there a statue for all of the relics, if the Skyevi relics like her katana and bow were supposed to be secondary relics? Either there was something I was missing, or I didn’t have to truth but rather a well-rehearsed lie.
I stood up, picking up my candle and reached out to touch the mural, but when my finger tips came in contact with cold stone I was rudely jerked into the almost-familiar endless blackness, with Skyevi standing before me.
“You have not been lied to, Akhy. That mural doesn’t depict a true ‘Valhalla’.”
“Valhalla?”
“It is a word humans would use for that place.”
“A more common term would be ‘heaven’. After all, Valhalla has the same kind idea as any heaven for any religion.”
“Akhyia, you’re walking a dark road.”
“I know.” I replied, knowing exactly what she was referring to. Well, it’d be who she was referring to, not what.
“You don’t have any idea how you’re going to kill me when the time comes, do you?”
“Not really.”
“There are a few ways, but the simplest would be to harmonize with the Akiko. The two of you have the strongest connection, but you don’t have much experience with the relics and myself aside from using the Key of Seventh Heaven and the sort. The backlash of such an harmonization would probably kill you.”
“What is Gaia? Where can I find out more about Gaia?”
“You still cannot answer my question?”
She caught me off guard with that comment and I replied,
“No…”
“Than I cannot tell you the alternative. It is something you need to find yourself.”
She started fading out on me, and I stepped forward yelling,
“Skyevi, wait!”
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