CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Kirito poked his head in at this point. “Oi, can we come in, or do you want us to stand on the porch all day?” Without awaiting a response, he trooped into the room with Kyoko and Saya. He was trying to pretend not to be curious about Gwyneth, but neither of the others bothered to hide their interest.

Saya went right up to Gwyneth, her big eyes even wider than usual. “Who are you? You remind me so much of Thalia-san,” she breathed.

Kyoko chimed in at nearly the same time, not giving Gwyneth a chance to reply. “You must be one of Thalia-chan’s sisters! Are you the one who makes all the beautiful clothes, or the one who cooks?” she asked.

“I do make the clothes,” Gwyneth replied to Kyoko with a bright smile, which then changed to a scowl. “But I also cook just as well as our older sister, so I don’t know why Thalia makes it sound as if we’d starve without her,” she said petulantly.

“Definitely sisters,” Kirito said in an aside to Yamamoto, who nodded his agreement.

“Call me Gwyneth, please, and what’s your name? Talk about looking like Thalia, you could be herself at eighteen! It takes my breath away!” Saya was blushing crimson, but obviously very pleased with such high praise.

“Not that it isn’t great to have all of you here meeting Gwyneth right now,” Okada said in a voice that suggested otherwise, “but we need to board the ship and leave. Do you have urgent business? If not, we need to go.” He wanted Gwyneth to himself as soon as possible, and he was chafing to be off the planet searching for Thalia as well.

“Of course we do,” Kirito agreed smoothly. “That’s why I’m here – where’s the Vice-Chief?” he asked Kato.

Chief Kato was paying no attention to Kirito, being still too absorbed in Gwyneth’s reunion with Okada. They had shared an immediate embrace, and before the knock at the door Gwyneth held his face between her hands, her eyes bright with unshed tears. He could not suppress his initial impression of it as being ridiculous and cringe, but the Chief was also a sucker for a good drama, and his curiosity was strengthening.

Kirito took hold of the Commander’s shoulders, speaking loudly and slowly, as if to a drunk. “Snap out of it, Chief! Where is Harada?”

“Stop yelling, moron,” Harada said from behind them. Kirito turned and met the Vice-Commander’s eyes. They were flat and hard as diamonds that have not forgotten the white heat that forged them in the bowels of the earth. This was the fearsome Demon Vice-Chief of Edo notoriety, no question – he hadn’t looked like this since before Thalia walked into their lives, and he was more dangerous than ever now, with nothing left to lose and everything in his world to gain back. “What do you want?” he asked Kirito, lighting a cigarette.

“I’m coming with you,” Kirito replied, braced for an argument.

Tetsuya nodded. “I thought you might,” he said. “Since you’re one of the few people who might improve my chances rather than destroy them, I’m glad.”

Kirito was rather stunned by this easy acquiescence, but relieved.

“One thing,” Harada said, the white-hot fire in his soul showing in his eyes again for a moment. “I know you and Sekiguchi were comrades in the War, and that you grew up together under the sensei who made you samurai. I understand that bond, but you need to understand that I am going to kill him to keep Thalia safe. He has made it clear nothing else will stop him from hounding her. So if you’re going to hesitate, don’t come.”

Kirito stared back at Tetsuya, letting his own banked fire show. “So that’s why you guys left me out of the loop the first time you went around the ring with Hellfire Rising. Let’s clear that up right now: if you want to kill Sekiguchi Teiji, you better beat me to him,” he replied. “I’ve owed him a reckoning for too long; if I had paid it earlier, we wouldn’t be standing here now worrying about Thalia-chan. Sure, we share a past, but the fact that he was – and still is, no matter how either of us feels about it – a brother to me makes him my responsibility. He’s a lost cause; can’t be redeemed. I owe it to our sensei, to myself, to the world, and even to the boy Sekiguchi used to be to take him out.”

Harada nodded, satisfied. “Good enough. Let’s get going, then.”

“Yeah, about that,” Kirito said, “I’m all for getting out of here, but it seems there’s an argument over who gets to come along.”

“There’s no argument,” Kyoko contradicted in her sweet voice, addressing Harada and subtly pressing her heel very hard into Kirito’s foot, making him yelp. “You don’t want to waste time in a pointless argument when we really need to be fighting the ones who took Thalia-chan. Kiri-chan, you can’t expect to leave your protégé out of this, and I’m no less a warrior than anyone else here, so there should be no problem having any of us along.”

Saya was scowling at both the Vice-Chief and Kirito, as if challenging them to forbid her to come. Kirito looked at her and pretended to heave an exasperated sigh, though everyone knew how proud he was of her – and justifiably so.

“Tetsu, you should bring them. Kyoko-san is a specialist with the naginata; no need to consider her a weak link,” Chief Kato said.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t think any such thing, since that would be a grave insult to my honor,” Kyoko said. Her tone was sweet, but those who knew her recognized the menace in it.

Harada bowed in her direction, unwilling to waste time on a doomed argument, and honoring her love for her friend. “I would be grateful to have you all along, particularly since I can’t officially involve the Shinsengumi yet.”

“Oh? Why is that?” Kyoko asked.

“This is confidential information I’m giving you, so be careful with it. The Mimawarigumi are in this up to the top with Hellfire Rising,” he explained, lighting another cigarette. He had nearly quit after the hospital stay, but since Thalia’s abduction his inward tension had skyrocketed again, and by now he was almost back up to his previous consumption level.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Tch! The jokers who arrested me that time for no reason?” Kirito said, his face going red with indignation at the memory.

“If drunken brawling in the street is your idea of ‘no reason’,” muttered Harada, who had ended up bailing him out on that occasion.

“Aren’t they the Bakufu’s elite police?” Kyoko asked, horrified. She had assumed the members of Hellfire Rising had stolen Mimawarigumi uniforms, never dreaming the depth of their corruption and involvement. Kato and Harada nodded.

“That pompous ass Natsume set up the whole thing,” Okada snarled; it made him angrier every time he thought of it.

“Anyway, they don’t know we know that, and if you read the paper this morning, you know they’re implicating Captain Okada and Lieutenant Cairde in Sekiguchi’s escape, claiming they came in and broke him out of there. The press is starting to listen to the rumors of Thalia’s darker side, which may not be entirely a bad thing in the end,” Harada explained.

“I was surprised when I read that Commander Natsume invited them to come forward and deny it if they could,” Kyoko put in. “Aren’t they afraid Captain Okada will expose them, or at least contest their statement of events?”

“They believe I’m dead,” Okada said grimly. “And that was the plan; if it hadn’t been for Kaa-chan, it would have been a corpse you found that day, Saya.”

Saya snorted at this. “Too bad they don’t know you as well as I do. You’re a plague; plagues are impossible to kill.”

Okada leaned over and sniffed the air near Saya, then made a face expressing distaste. “Oh, wow. I understand.” This remark earned him an elbow in the face, which he countered, then blocked her right hook and shoved her own fist back into her face. Their scuffle threatened to engulf the whole room, as often happened.

Harada lost his temper. “Oi! We don’t have time for this! I’ll leave you both behind if you don’t calm down, and if you do this on the ship, I’ll put you in the kitchen as help for the cook throughout the duration of the trip. Shut up and let’s get the hell out of here!”

Seizo scowled, Saya pouted, but they both went and got their bags.

“Fall off a cliff and die, Harada,” Seizo muttered as he passed the Vice-Chief.

“Go lie down in the driveway, Okada. Shift’s about to change,” he retorted.

“Sadly, we’re back to being snarky and rude around here without your sister,” Kato said to Gwyneth, embarrassed.

“Ah, that’s nothing. My sisters and brother and I talk like that to each other all day and night – it’s a family thing,” Gwyneth said, brushing this off with a smile. “I should make sure my bag gets on the ship, if you’d excuse me, Chief Kato,” she said, making a little curtsey as she headed out to the hallway.

Yamamoto had been informed that he would not be going on board the ship, since they could not risk taking more Shinsengumi than absolutely necessary. He had said nothing, but immediately began strategizing to find a way on.

He looked up and saw Thalia’s sister coming down the hall toward him.

“Hello again! I don’t think we exchanged names in all the rush, or if we did, I’ve forgotten yours, I’m afraid,” she said.

“Yamamoto, Lady Cairde,” he said, bowing and smiling down at her.

“Please, just Gwyneth,” she said. “I was wondering if you would help me get my bag onto the ship before we leave. I’m afraid I packed a lot, and I’ll have no time to unpack and repack before we leave. Stupid for a girl to pack a bag bigger than she can handle, I know, but I manage to do it all the time despite my best efforts,” she laughed.

“It would be my honor to take your bag on board,” Yamamoto said, leaping at the chance so providentially granted him. “No need to come with me – you should at least refresh yourself a little before we go.”

“How thoughtful! Thank you. Here’s the card to the door of the room they told me is mine – I’m sure it’s easy to get lost in there, and when you do, it’ll be my fault for having you do these things I couldn’t possibly do for myself,” she said, winking slyly at him.

His jaw dropped. “W – what? You knew what I was …”

“I’m empathic; it tells me a lot more than people realize. And I really do agree with you that you should come with us,” she said. So she gave her things into Yamamoto’s care, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“You know, the Vice-Chief and Captain Okada won’t be happy about this, and I don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” Yamamoto said reluctantly, his conscience reproaching him for getting this lovely girl caught up in his intrigues.

“Pfft! The Vice-Chief and Captain Okada are family to me. Their tantrums don’t scare me any more than Thalia’s do, and believe me, Thalia’s are scarier than theirs,” she replied, her smile brightening.

“I’ve still never witnessed one, but so everyone keeps telling me,” Yamamoto said, having already decided not to question any of the surreal things she said – which was the same rule he applied with Thalia.

“You’ll be sure to witness one soon enough while I’m around, so just stick close once we’ve gotten her back, if you’re brave,” Gwyneth laughed.

“Well, if you’re sure – thank you, Lady Gwyneth,” he said, blushing, then headed for the ship laden with her suitcase.

***

Thalia was not herself; some part of her knew this and was frightened, but most of her was caught up in the furious bloodlust that came upon her when she saw the little jewel-like planet laid waste by the Kaizoku. This felt different from her usual Fury manifestation; this was more visceral, less controlled.

It got much worse when she and Sekiguchi disembarked and her feet touched the ground. She could hear and feel clearly the few spirits remaining here, all elementals, none of them sane. They were far stronger than she at this point, and very quickly she knew she was in serious trouble. The spirit of the planet itself was dying, eagerly anticipating death as a merciful release from the incessant torture its existence had become. Its voice was one long, deep groan of grief and pain that never stopped; Thalia wanted to block out the terrible sound, but that was not the worst of it.

The blood of every living creature that had been spilled by the parasitic invaders cried out to her from the ground, and the multitudes of them made a deafening crescendo of vengeance in her head. She could not think with the shrieks of the dead in her ears – she could only react; it enraged her beyond anything she had ever felt before in this lifetime. Her Fury was for the first time so engulfing she was afraid it would burst the confines of her petite physical form.

The strength her Faerie blood gave her with earthly elements was greatly magnified here, she found; the elements themselves on this planet had been slightly different in chemical composition, and reacted with Thalia’s body chemistry in an unexpectedly ferocious way.

A tiny refuge of rational thought was soon all that remained to her; with that part of her mind she recognized that the elemental spirits of this planet had been driven mad with pain, with the desire for death and vengeance, with the grief of seeing their goddess die a tortuous death after all their power failed to repulse the invaders. They saw in Thalia a physical vessel through which they could act, a way for them to at last touch and destroy the ones who had destroyed their domain; they swarmed into and over her like a sandstorm.

Sekiguchi saw none of this, but knew she was undergoing significant change; she gasped with the force of the elementals’ entry and slowly changed form, becoming more fearsome. The ends of her fingers began to glow, and the slightest thought of burning set them alight along with her hair, which had become living snakes made of fire.

Her teeth grew longer, sharper than ever, and her jaw ached with a longing to tear into corrupt flesh, to rip it from its lard-encrusted bones, just as it had ripped all the life from this planet.

Each of her eyes was an ocean of death, swirling with the tempest of grief and rage that had literally possessed her.

The bones of this desiccated planet were sharp and thrusting; the land made weapons of her limbs – each joint in her arms and legs swelled and sharpened to a point, with the potential to become a blade hard as diamond.

Sekiguchi was enraptured with the fearsome beauty of her in full Fury; he was vaguely aware of tears streaking his face as they crossed the desolate, barren landscape toward the building near which they had docked, the only large building with any sign of life around it still. His bitter heart filled with love and worship for her; he could feel the tension and power rippling off her in waves. She was surpassing his expectations – but he remained unaware that she was no longer in control, insensible of the presences that had invaded her.

This was an entirely new level of Fury that had not been hers on either version of Earth that had been home to her in this lifetime; this was far too powerful a force for her to reckon with. The concept of balance on which her existence rested was overturned and lost in a sea of dark rage.

Thalia Cairde no longer knew her own name; she was no longer Fae or Human, no longer a woman with loved ones and a job that allowed her to bring both sides of her nature into play, maintaining her delicate balance; she was a furnace of dark elemental power, a mass of writhing destructive impulses with no thought, eager to lash out and kill those who had so cruelly raped and slowly murdered this planet.

She had become what Sekiguchi had become: a being with a single drive, knowing nothing and no one else. She was all Fury, no Grace.

A troop of armed Kaizoku guards confronted them when they arrived at the main entrance to the building.

“No admittance without” – the leader got no further than this. He raised his weapon toward them as he spoke. Thalia reached out in a languid, casual stretch, extending two fingers that melted together and lengthened to become a single sharp blade, and made a careless swipe at his head. Most of it came off, fountains of black and green blood issuing briefly from the main arteries.