CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Five-year-old Kirito had been found on a battlefield himself by Sensei Kurama, half-starved, scavenging what he could while searching for his parents. The normal reaction of a samurai to a child alone on a recent battlefield is not to reach for his katana; however, that was what all three of them did instinctively when they caught sight of this one.

At first glance, there was nothing so terribly wrong with the child’s appearance, apart from the fact that she was eating a piece of a corpse. She looked about six years old, with long black hair that glinted slightly purple in the light and pale yellowish skin smudged here and there with dirt and corpse fluids. It was clear to them all, nonetheless, that this creature was neither human nor a child - nor was it sane.

She did not look up at first, but when Kirito cursed softly, her head jerked up at once. Her eyes were green and pupilless.

“God!” Kirito exclaimed involuntarily. “She looks like Sekiguchi,” he hissed to the others. Harada made an instant connection that he would really rather not have made, and felt physically ill.

“Se – kigoo – shi,” the girl repeated, surprising them all. Somehow they had not expected she would be able to speak. “Is that my mother or my father?” she asked, tilting her head to one side in a gesture that made their skin crawl. “My father, I guess,” she said when no one answered. “I made myself from stuff he spilled from his body, so I should look like him,” she added proudly.

“What about your mother?” Okada asked in a tight voice.

“I am my own mother,” she said with a hint of contempt. “I used somebody else’s container to make myself with my father, but she doesn’t really count.”

“Do you have a name?” Kirito asked.

The child’s brow furrowed in troubled thought. “I do. It’s the name of this planet. But no one has said it in so long that I cannot remember it,” she said wistfully. “Do you know my name?” she asked.

“I wish I did, but I’m afraid not,” Kirito replied softly, his eyes wide.

“So you’re an elemental spirit,” Harada said, hearing his own calm and reasonable voice as if from a distance.

“Wrong!” the child shouted, grinning in a way that showed at least two rows of sharp yellowish shark teeth with stringy bits of tendon stuck in them. “Not just one element, and not just a spirit anymore. All the elements are in me, 'cause they worked together to build me. I’m going to get very big and very strong, so no one can come and hurt us again. That’s why it’s a good thing I have a lot of food here. Food makes me grow.” Okada made a sound in the back of his throat that indicated he was not likely to keep much food in his own stomach for much longer.

Harada made an intuitive leap. “Is that what your mother planet wants?” he asked gently. The child looked down sadly at the piece of leg she’d been gnawing when they arrived.

“She’s been dying too long; she just wants to die all the way so it won’t hurt any more. But I can make her feel better, you’ll see!”

“How will you do that?” Harada asked, not in a challenging way, but in a tone of mild curiosity.

“I have a good plan,” she said defensively.

“I’m sure you must. I just wondered if you would share it with us,” he said in a friendly way. Nothing in his voice indicated that he felt as if there were thousands of ants crawling over his skin.

“See all this food I have?” she asked, using the piece of leg to make a wide sweeping gesture that encompassed the entire building. They all nodded, trying to look pleasantly interested rather than revolted.

“This is the first cycle of the new beginning,” she explained. “This used to be a place of continual cycles, from new life to death to rebirth. Everyone and everything becomes food for something or someone else in the cycle.”

Harada nodded. “Our planet is also like that,” he told her.

“Then it must be a good place,” she said brightly.

“It is,” Okada said with an onset of sudden violent homesickness.

“This food came here and destroyed our cycle,” she told them, her voice deepening to a growl. “They took and took and took until there was nothing left. The planet was our Mother, and she had so many children they were hard to count; but these greedy things came and killed them, leaving the rest to starve. Finally there was nothing left alive, except Mother and us. We don’t really count, though, because when all the creatures died, our force died too. We had no connection left with the physical world.”

Her voice by this time had become a plurality of voices, speaking in several registers at once, the rhythms slightly offset from one another. Her strange blank green eyes seemed to be twin whirlpools, spiraling in patterns that were dangerous to gaze upon for too long.

“We worry on our world that the same thing is happening there,” Harada said when she paused to stare with disconcerting silence in Okada’s direction, both to distract her and to continue establishing rapport. That thing might look vaguely like a six-year-old girl, but he was fairly certain none of them had ever been in graver danger than they were in her company.

“Then it will become like this, unless someone stops it,” she said. “We learned that the hard way – but it’s a lesson we won’t forget. I wasn’t sure this would work, you know, this new body for us. We just acted on instinct, and this happened; a new life. The cycle is starting over, here, with me and with this food.”

“But how will you create more life just by eating?” Okada asked, fascinated despite himself. Harada winced, not liking the possibilities she might awake to through this sort of question.

“That’s how the cycle has always worked – I’m restarting it. They consumed all the lives on this planet, so all that life is still stored up in their bodies, which are now food for me,” she said. “But then I must also find a donor to give me something that's not myself, in order to conceive a new life and birth it,” she added more slowly, expressing the realization as it dawned on her.

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This was exactly the direction of reasoning Tetsuya had been afraid of. Her blank green eyes began to glow speculatively as she looked at them; then she stepped nearer each of them in turn and sniffed. Kirito and Harada managed not to flinch, and Okada stopped himself on the verge of stepping back.

They were in worse peril now, and all of them were well aware of it.

“You smell like that woman,” she said to Harada, showing her grotesquely misshapen, begored teeth and stepping away from him quickly. She had obviously conceived as strong a distaste for Thalia as Thalia had for the planet, through their brief and unfortunate coexistence.

She seemed to like the smell of Okada much better. “So young, so full of life. You could give us a new start,” she said, tilting her head and smiling hideously. Okada tried hard not to shudder with revulsion; this is the worst moment of my life, he decided unequivocally.

“Definitely your best bet, going with the youngest,” Kirito put in, folding his arms and taking a wide stance. Okada glared at him, until he realized his strategy; the girl-thing was distracted from Okada and drawn toward Kirito.

“Then again,” the nameless girl said, “You elder ones are in the prime of your strength; that one has too much of Her on him, but you … yes, I think you’ll do,” she said greedily, raking her fingers over Kirito’s arms.

Harada thought frantically; fighting was not the way to get out of this, they all knew that. They were brilliant warriors, but the other two had no experience in diplomacy or politics. He himself hated all the posturing and hypocrisy that went with it, but at least he knew how to play the game.

That, however, was on earth; how do you sweet-talk incarnate rage and grief? he wondered. For lack of any better ideas, he went with the straightforward approach, which often proved surprisingly effective in delicate situations.

“What exactly do you need?” Harada asked, hoping he wouldn’t regret the question.

“Less than I thought I would,” the girl admitted, thinking. “I was going to take all my father’s liquid, but the woman only let me drink a little from his neck.” She pouted, apparently still annoyed with Thalia for that imposition of will.

Enlightenment dawned. It was blood she wanted; just blood. They looked at one another, relieved; shedding their own blood was no hardship, they did it every day.

Praying they would follow his lead, Harada went to one knee and looked solemnly at the monster. “We’re moved by your terrible situation. Please accept a donation from each of us to help you move into the next cycle.” That said, he drew his katana in as non-threatening a way as possible and made a small cut in the underside of his forearm. When it was bleeding in a steady stream, he held it up and hoped she would not bite his whole arm off.

The creature appeared confused at first, but when the bleeding arm was offered to her freely, she began to cry. Her tears had a reddish tinge, but they were honest tears, shed because someone voluntarily gave instead of taking endlessly.

She said nothing, but took his arm in one hand and held it near her mouth, letting the blood drip into her throat. She swallowed greedily, but soon stepped back with incongruous daintiness, offering an awkward half-bow.

“You don’t really smell bad,” she said; that was the only way she knew to apologize and thank him. She was a terrible creature, it was true; a monster created from horrors heaped one atop the next in minds long gone insane. But she was pathetic in her monstrosity; it was not her fault that she was what she was. He felt pity for her, and for the tragic spirit of this dying planet.

Kirito followed his lead, opening a shallow wound close to his wrist for her to drink from. He was not as fortunate in her method as Harada; she actually latched on and sucked the blood out. Still, he understood this was their best chance of appeasing her and escaping intact, so he bore it without complaint, even when he began to sweat with the stress.

Okada was pale and tight-lipped, but he too used his sword to make a wound from which she could drink. She lapped hungrily at the blood, like a vampire child created by damned parents. He almost winced once or twice, but tried not to, especially with her vacant green eyes on him.

When she finished, she wiped her lips with her forearm in a gesture so much like a normal child’s that it made her more grotesque. “Thank you very much,” she said primly, inclining her head.

“We’re happy we could help with your new start,” Okada said bravely.

The other two indicated their agreement with this sentiment, and then Harada spoke again: “The time has come for us to leave; please know we will never forget you.” This, at least, was the exact truth.

They all knew this was the moment of potentially greatest danger, but tried to keep that awareness out of the atmosphere.

“Already?” she asked, seeming surprised.

“We can’t stay here very long. The air is a slow poison for us,” Harada explained, which was not entirely a lie. The other two were apparently content to let him take the burden of conversation, which was beginning to seriously irk him. At least they weren’t making it worse, he supposed, which was always a possibility with these two.

“If you leave, I’ll be alone again,” she said.

“Not for long,” Harada reminded her.

“Ah, yes, my children should be along soon,” she said more brightly, putting one hand to a stomach that did, in fact, look as if it was beginning to swell. Harada felt ill, but grimly pushed the sensation back again. Kirito was looking greener by the moment, and Okada had been on the verge of losing the contents of his stomach almost since the moment they had first seen her. At least that made his excuse more convincing, Harada thought.

“I guess I could let you leave,” she said, pondering this with furrowed brow. “I wasn’t going to, but I am grateful you gave me children. Also, I don’t want to share my food, and I don’t really need more right now. Go ahead,” she said, waving one hand carelessly at them.

“Thank you,” he replied, then turned and walked back the way they had come. He knew they all wanted to run like hell, but also knew that would be inviting her to change her mind and chase them – which was the last thing they wanted; so when Seizo began to pass him, walking very quickly, he put out his arm and held him back, giving him a warning look.

“Easy, Captain,” Kirito whispered from behind them both, apparently on the same page as the Vice-Commander for once.

Okada nodded once, though he was visibly irritated, and slowed his pace. They walked casually out of the room, but began going faster on the stairs, and were soon running full-speed back to the ship.

***

Gwyneth and Saya were just about to come out the door when the three men opened it and practically leaped inside. Saya promptly punched Okada in the mouth, catching him completely off-guard and knocking him to the floor.

“And to think I was actually happy to see you,” he said after a startled pause, wiping blood off his lip and climbing to his feet.

“Don’t give me that shit,” she retorted.

“Why did you leave without telling anyone but the crew?” Gwyneth said in a voice of ice that none of them had heard before. She looked primarily at Harada, though her angry blue-green gaze included all of them.

“We intended to be back before our absence was noted,” Harada replied, nettled and defensive. “It may have escaped you, but we’re actually adults capable of making decisions and taking actions without asking permission.”

“What kind of adult makes decisions and takes actions that are potentially very dangerous without a word to those who love them most? Do you have any idea how frantic Thalia is right now?” Gwyneth snarled.

“Why did you tell her we were gone?” he demanded, stung by sudden guilt, which made him angry.

“I didn’t have to tell her!” Gwyneth snapped. “She was falling asleep, then suddenly sat straight up and told me something was wrong with you. She started to panic, wanting to get up and try to find you, so I decided to get a sense of where you were and what you were doing in order to reassure her. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that quite the opposite result occurred.”

“Shit,” was all he said in reply, already heading down the corridor toward his and Thalia’s cabin.

“Same goes for you both, so don’t look relieved, as if you’re less culpable,” Gwyneth said to the other two, her eyes practically shooting sparks. “All of us are family, do you not understand that?” Once she said this, she burst into tears.

Kirito and Okada looked at the floor, then at each other, immensely uncomfortable. Saya embraced Gwyneth, glaring at them over her bowed head.

Harada entered the room to find Thalia up and pacing, her eyes and hair wild with fear and worry. She looked up as soon as the door opened, closed the distance between them in two steps, and slapped him.

“How dare you,” she said, her voice shaking, then collapsed against him in tears, her hands in fists against his chest.

“It had to be done, and I didn’t think you would know we were gone,” he said, feeling guiltier than he ever had in his life before. He put his arms around her hesitantly, unsure if she would receive his embrace. “I didn’t want you to worry,” he added when she permitted him to hold her, the irony of his words not lost on him.

“That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, and the stupidest excuse you’ve ever made,” she informed him, tears still streaming down her face.

“I know that now,” he said softly. “I’m truly sorry.”

“I’m too exhausted and relieved to be as pissed off as I should be,” she told him angrily, striking him lightly with one fist. “Take me to bed, and I may forgive you when I wake up.” He smiled a little in the sheer pleasure of being with her again, angry or not; but he made sure she didn’t see him smiling. The ache inside was gone again; that gaping wound was closed and whole.