CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Saya disliked the section of the docks in the northern part of town, where many of the buildings were abandoned and inhospitable. There were no food vendors here, which was probably why Kirito stuck her with it – no distractions. She scowled, resenting the fact that he treated her like a child, even while secretly admitting to herself that in this case he was right.

She was going into each empty building and taking a cursory look at the first floor, looking for signs of recent human disturbance. A few of them wasted her time with stupid things like lovers’ trysting areas (she could tell by the used condoms, which was yet another disgusting thing she could have done without seeing, and which she promised herself to hold over Kirito’s head later), but eventually she looked into one and saw thick dust that had been recently disturbed. She followed the tracks further into the building, and found a katana on the floor.

“That stupid sadist,” she muttered, recognizing it as Okada’s. “What’s he doing, being so careless with his soul? Isn’t he a samurai?” This was her way of disguising the worry she felt at this unsettling discovery.

She touched the hilt and thought about whether to make noise. If the captain was still here somewhere, it would let him know someone had come looking for him, and he might make noise that would lead to finding him more quickly. On the other hand, they were dealing with dangerous criminals, and if Hellfire Rising were here, she would also be advertising her presence to them. It was a risk.

Distantly, then, she heard rhythmic banging noises, like metal clashing with metal. Her eyes lit up, and she smiled as she picked up the sword and began looking for the way down.

Saya made a mental note to thank Kirito for being the fussy mother hen he was and insisting they always carry emergency supplies, including small flashlights. She would not have been able to see anything in the pitch darkness without it, and it unnerved her a little to wonder if the batteries were fully charged. She was not normally afraid of the dark, but it would not be pleasant to find herself suddenly plunged into this thick, inky blackness without a single ray of light to mitigate it.

She stopped and listened for the sounds, uncertain of her direction once she reached the bottom of the steps. Finally she gave in and announced herself.

“Oi! Sadist! Where are you, dumbass? I have your soul,” she called, carrying his katana in a firm, careful grip.

“Why do I have to be rescued by you, of all people in the universe?” came a faint reply from the darkness. Saya smirked, relieved, and made her way toward his voice.

“Don’t complain to me, it’s your karma,” she called back.

“Which proves what they say about karma,” he retorted.

“Yeah, well, we bitches have to stick together,” she said, smiling since he couldn’t see her.

“Apparently so, since you and karma are synchronized,” Okada said, knowing he would regret it, but unable to stop himself.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Saya demanded.

“Just that karma is obviously on her period right now, and I’d say judging by the smell of fish that’s getting stronger, so are you.”

The timing was especially unfortunate, since Saya turned a corner just as he said this into the room in which Wataru had left him. She stopped dead at this insult, then turned her back and immediately walked away without a word.

Damn it, I should have waited, Okada cursed to himself. Aloud he said, “Oi, it’s just a joke. Don’t be that way.”

“Know what else is a joke?” Saya said, her voice still receding back into the distance. “A samurai without a soul. I wonder how much I can get for this crappy old sword at a pawnshop?”

“Shit,” Seizo said, knowing he’d have to eat some in order to get out of this mess now. “What do you want? I’ll make it up to you. I shouldn’t have said that. Come on, don’t leave me here,” he said, his pride taking a shattering double blow; not only was this particular girl about to find him in humiliating circumstances, but now he was also forced to plead with her for mercy.

“What do I want?” she repeated. Her voice began to come closer again, and before long he was blinking at her flashlight, behind which he could vaguely see her gloating face. “I want an apology, to start with,” she said.

“I’m truly sorry,” he said immediately.

“A public apology, read from a script I will write for you,” she said coldly. “I know it’ll be just as insincere as that one, but I want it to at least be humiliating for you. In addition to that, I want fifteen boxes of senbei and dinner at a restaurant of my choice.”

Seizo rolled his eyes. “Fine. Done. Now give me my soul back, and please get me out of here,” he said.

She leaned his katana against the pipe next to him and directed the light at the pipe to see exactly how to go about releasing him. Wataru had made him reach backward around the large water pipe, then cuff his own wrists together.

“Please tell me you have a key,” Saya said.

“Yes, it’s in my pocket,” he replied.

“Which pocket?”

“My front pants pocket,” he said, and started blushing even before she put her hand in. Tension mounted as she felt for the small key unsuccessfully.

“It’s not here, dumbass,” she said, yanking her hand away as if it had been burnt.

“Try the other side,” he replied, starting to enjoy himself.

“You let me try the wrong one first on purpose,” she hissed.

“Sure, I enjoy your fumbling fingers. Who wouldn’t?” he said sarcastically.

“Want me to leave you here for real?” she demanded, withdrawing her hand with the key in it this time and dangling it in front of his nose.

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“I’m very sorry once again, your Highness,” he said. “We’ll make it two dinners, but the second restaurant is my choice. Deal?”

“Plus ten more boxes of senbei,” she countered, smiling despite herself.

“Fine, yes.”

“You better not squirm out of it later, either, or I’ll beat the shit out of you,” she warned.

“You doubt the word of a samurai?” he demanded haughtily as she unlocked the handcuffs at last.

“Some samurai, leaving his soul lying around on a dusty floor,” she retorted.

“You think that was an easy gesture?” he said, stretching his sore, cramped limbs. He had been chained to that damn pipe for hours, and his circulation had been compromised for most of that time. He was about to experience pins and needles of a tortuous magnitude, he knew, wincing.

“I wouldn’t know,” she replied. “What happened, anyway?” she asked, trying to disguise her concern behind a casual attitude.

He stumbled, his feet too numb to respond properly yet, and cursed.

“Are you hurt?” Saya asked, momentarily worried.

“Just really cramped for too long,” he replied, teeth clenched as the circulation returned with a vengeance.

“Pins and needles, huh?” she said, then stomped on his foot.

“What the hell, Saya?” he squeaked.

“I owed you that for the period remark,” she retorted, and put her shoulder underneath his arm to support him.

“Fine, then the public apology is canceled out,” he snapped.

“For one stomp?” she protested, and immediately stomped on the other foot.

“Damn you,” he said, laughing in spite of it all. She laughed too then, and helped him rub his limbs more gently back to life as he told her briefly what had happened.

They had made their way mostly back up the stairs by the time he finished, and Okada saw that her eyes were big and worried. He was still leaning on her a little for support, though he could have walked fine on his own.

“We need to tell Harada-san right away,” she said. “But I guess you don’t have a radio, a phone, or a carriage. Damn.”

“Oi, we’re lucky they let me keep the key to the handcuffs,” he said.

“You’re lucky, you mean. I would have just left you there and gone to get someone else who had one,” she retorted, though she would have hated doing that and they both knew it.

“You had me right where you wanted me, and look what you asked for,” he said when they left the building, smirking at her. In part he wanted to distract them both from the frustration of the inevitable delay before they could do something about Thalia.

“Yeah, a public apology – which you immediately tried to wriggle out of, just as I knew you would,” she snapped, glaring at him.

“Not that. What you really wanted was a date, obviously,” he said, grinning.

“What I really wanted was food,” she replied, then smirked back at him. “Besides, I notice what you were so quick to offer – a second date.”

“It’s not really dating when you blackmailed me into it.”

They continued in this vein as they went quickly to the nearest building in use, where Okada banked on the authority of his uniform to demand the use of their phone.

***

“This is a much classier ship than the last one, Sekiguchi. I congratulate you,” Thalia said sarcastically once she had been ushered into her quarters and then conducted back to the captain’s cabin to talk with her captor. Wataru stayed in visual range of the large window, and in turn kept the hostages in range of his gun.

“I’m glad you approve, since it’s destined to be your home,” he replied.

“You’d better get those wounds treated. That burn is likely to become infected otherwise,” she said with a nasty smile.

“Your concern is truly touching,” he remarked, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, it would like to be, in a literal sense,” she retorted.

“No doubt, my dear,” Sekiguchi said, smirking. “Hence the hostages. Had you proven to be more malleable, they could go home; as it is, however, it’s really you keeping them here.”

“Not buying the guilt trip, sorry. I suppose it’s pointless for me to promise you whatever you want on condition you let them go home,” Thalia ventured without much hope.

“Completely pointless. I know you better now, and I know how much persuasion you’re likely to need for the tasks I have in store for you,” he replied.

“You’re an idiot. How are you planning to use one woman and one child to persuade me to destroy entire communities?”

“If you could confine yourself to pure logic, I wouldn’t be able to,” he admitted. “However, you will get to a place where you’ll do anything to stop them from being tortured in front of you, including the relatively merciful annihilation of towns or villages. You proved that much to me this morning.”

Thalia choked on involuntary tears, and could not immediately respond. “And this is my reward for caring about you as a human being,” she said bitterly after a long, tense pause. “You used to be one, Sekiguchi; a noble one, too. How far you’ve fallen.”

Pain flickered momentarily in his one dark eye, but he suppressed it.

“Please have some tea, Thalia. You haven’t had anything in hours,” he said, ringing the bell to summon a servant bearing the tea tray.

“You’re very thoughtful, for a kidnapper and a terrorist,” she said.

“And you’re very sarcastic, for a victim,” he retorted, darting an irritated glance in her direction. He was careful to keep his looking to mere glances, at least when making eye contact. He remembered too well what could result from looking too long or too earnestly into those silver-blue eyes; she had stripped his soul bare last time, and he did not wish her to do so again.

“All right, no more sarcasm. Let’s really talk. What is it exactly that you want from me, Sekiguchi?” she asked in a gentler tone.

“You’ll find out when we arrive,” he said coldly.

“Arrive where?” she asked, holding back her apprehension as she heard the ship’s enormous interstellar engine kicking in as well as the far smaller one for Earthbound water propulsion. Suddenly the chances for her and the hostages to be found before the day was over were next to none.

“Your first battleground, my dear,” he said, and smiled fiendishly.

The ship took off soon after Kyoko told the Chief and Vice-Chief about her encounter with Thalia and the others on the street, hours before Saya found Okada. The locator that said she was still in the city changed soon after everyone had begun to search, indicating she was no longer in the vicinity.

The Hellfire Rising ship headed not across the water this time, but into space itself.

Thalia shed bitter tears in her cabin alone that night, desperately missing her beloved, her safe place; she worried a little about Seizo, too, but not much. Some instinct she had long trusted told her he was safe and well.

Sekiguchi had provided clothes for her – a wardrobe full of them. She found a kimono that was simply designed in blue and gray, and wore it to sleep in because it reminded her of one of Tetsuya’s. She tried to conjure his smell, hugging herself, but could not quite manage it.

Sadly, she picked up her uniform and hung it neatly on the door of the wardrobe, despite the fact it was quite a bit worse for wear after the long day. And suddenly she remembered something that gave her hope.

She reached into the right-hand inside pocket of her jacket, and was relieved to discover it still sewn into the lining of the pocket: a rough prototype of a locator device that emitted a signal strong enough to be picked up from long distances. It was not specific, and could not be used to pinpoint an exact position, but it gave a powerful signal as to the person’s general area. She had no real idea what range it might have, and preferred not to know, given the circumstances - blind hope was better than none.

That had been Harada’s idea; he wanted them for the whole Shinsengumi once the design was perfected for accurate specificity, so they would not lose track of anyone in uniform. In the meanwhile, he gave the rough one to Thalia and insisted that it be sewn into her pocket. She wanted to object at first, but she’d let him talk her into it.

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” he admitted, “since it won’t help me find your exact location if I somehow lose track of you. But at least I’ll have a general direction to go in; and knowing you have it will give me some peace of mind.” He had looked so worried for a moment when he said this that it made her wonder now if he was given to having premonitions. She was certainly glad she had given in on this, and she hoped very much that the prototype was in full working order. It was her last hope, at this point.

She examined it after slitting open the little pocket into which it had been sewn and saw an intermittent flashing green light that brought her comfort and hope. She was not sure how this situation would end, and could not foresee a happy conclusion for all the players; what she did see was that she would have to admit she needed help this time.

Fortunately, she also knew she would receive it; she was learning to trust Tetsuya as much as she trusted herself – sometimes more. He might not have Fae blood in this lifetime, but it was still part of his essence, and he was at least half aware of how to use his heightened perceptions.

She believed he would come for her, just as she had come for him. He would not rest until she was safe with him again; this was a certainty in her mind. That had always been the way of it between them; if one was weak, the other was strong for them both.

What she had to focus on for the moment was keeping the hostages from being harmed. So far, she had not been permitted to speak to the woman much at all, and never alone. Thalia knew that as awful as this situation was for her, it had to be a thousand times worse for the innocent mother and baby who had been dragged into this with her.

Still, she reminded herself that she was not without power in the situation. On the contrary, it was because of her power that the situation existed. She would have to keep her wits about her, and hold firmly to her principles regardless of what Sekiguchi might throw at her. He was a formidable strategist, so this promised to be the most challenging task she had yet faced.

Thalia slept that night better than she would have believed she could, though she woke often and easily at the slightest disturbance. She cried into her pillow, but comforted herself with thoughts and dreams of her no doubt fast-pursuing lover. He would find her, and all would be well again.