Yuri Worlds

[76] Cerberus

Cerberus? The name sounded familiar to Misaki. Hell, the hound of Hell. A three-headed monster dog from Greek mythology. She assumed this was the adult, forever name that Yuka had been alluding to before. Her boyish name.

Sure. Whatever name she wanted was fine with her. It was just jarring for the moment to deal with the raw, wretched loss of Maharu, the demonic looming of Yasha saying and doing so many dark and horrible things, and this added uncertainty with Yuka. She didn’t know what to do.

Yuka and Yasha were going to fight. Misaki desperately wanted to help Yuka, but how? She didn’t have any powers or fighting abilities. Not that it seemed like Yuka did either.

Yasha twisted the strange light around her even tighter as she responded, “Cerberus? What a stupid name! About what I expected from something like you. I can beat a stupid dog as well as anything else.” The bluish-white illumination snaking around her flashed through the air like a bolt of lightning. A sudden slice of it blasted at Yuka, heating the air with a feral roar in all directions.

Dashing to the right through the clearing, Yuka gave a sudden, squeaking gasp as the bolt made contact with the unfurled, black licorice of her arms. A flash of red pain overwhelmed her, and like lightning surging through a tree branch, the last few inches of what used to be Yuka’s left hand sheared off and plunged to the ground. The mass that dropped wasn’t much, but it immediately changed from a solid, rigid appendage to a roiling, black soup. Just like the dark entities hidden away inside the wristbands. Misaki was at a loss for what that meant.

She kept an eye on the fight but carefully moved over to Maharu‘s side. The girl’s precious, wide, gem-like brown eyes had lost an intangible amount of their luster. Even with the strangeness of anime flesh, Misaki could tell she was gone. But she was so peaceful, even with those eyes half open. Her mouth remained curled slightly, as though she had a clever secret to tell that no one would ever know but her.

Death felt so surreal. It never made sense to Misaki. Sure, her mother‘s passing had been rather smelly and undignified, but she’d been like that for quite a while. Her father went with barely a cough. The rest of that morning, until the mortuary workers came, it was hard to convince Franklin that he wasn’t just sleeping a little heavier than usual. Movies and shows make it look so dramatic. Aside from a paleness because of the blood loss and the dense, drying red stains, Maharu appeared perfectly fine. It seemed almost silly that she would just lay here like this.

Come on, Haru! You need to get up. Your dance did seem rather exhausting, but you had such radiant plans for the rest of the evening. Don’t sleep through them! You have to get up. You have to cheer on Yuka and raise those skeptical eyebrows at the peculiar name she decided to take for her future, for the rest of her life.

This world clearly holds the miraculous. Women practically lived forever with fresh faces and clever minds. It’s not right; it’s absolutely unfair that her precious little firecracker of spirit and heart would extinguish in so short of time. We just can’t have that! No way. Goddesses? It’s time to do your fucking job!

No time to dawdle, ponder, and wait. This kid put on a show that you had to have seen. It was the talk of the neighborhood. She deserves this. She deserves happiness. Misaki refused to accept any other outcome.

She prayed to the heavens, to nature, to a world below, and past the cosmos. Everything she had in this quiet moment went to her thoughts and will. Wrapping her arms around Maharu was necessary, even though it almost felt like an invasion of something sacred.

Misaki‘s stomach desperately gurgled as she held the girl close. Maharu’s body listlessly acquiesced to her embrace. Its passivity was so wrong. Despite the coolness of the night, her form still felt quite warm. Glancing over Maharu’s still shoulder with tears running across her face, Misaki felt the same bright shimmer she had followed to this clearing. It was a presence with the same light as Maharu, even though it kept trying to rush away from her before. She had no idea what happened then and still couldn’t figure out what was happening now.

But that presence, blurred by her tears, shone on her. It was like an assurance that the sun would rise again with the dawning of another day and shine forth all the brighter. Hair brushed back by caring fingers. A support when she was sure she would tumble. A hug and a kiss transmitted remotely. Maharu at peace. And she wasn’t alone. She stood between two others, women who clearly shared her features and inspired her energy and spirit. They held hands and said goodbye.

Fighting back tears, Yuka struggled and strained to get up from her knees as Yasha loomed. She drew back the tight tangle of blazing light and aimed it at Yuka’s face. A light, gentle waft of laughter slipped through. Yuka looked back, past Misaki huddled around Maharu’s body, and saw something that made her eyes widen. Yasha looked truly terrified, if for just a moment. The light lingered softly before the forest darkened, as though a curtain had dropped on a stage. The branch limbs of Yuka’s arms squeezed together like a rope twisting tight.

When the next attack from Yasha lanced through the air, Yuka rolled sharply to her left and retrieved what she had lost. The oily mass coated her dark flesh as she reshaped the limb into a glinting obsidian blade. Yasha widened her blood-red eyes and looked delighted.

But Yuka slowed her breathing and restrained herself. The blonde didn’t have patience as silence slipped back over the forest. Yasha soon turned her attention over to Misaki. She gathered several handfuls of the glowing radiance laced around her and bunched them together like channeling a charged rope.

Before she could wield it against Misaki, Yuka shot along the ground in a sprint to challenge Maharu’s speed and swung her arm through the air like a sharpened whip. The dark blade wobbled but cleaved through the blonde’s left arm, severing the blazing molten strands with sharp shocks of pain and hissing steam. Yasha screamed as her arm plopped lifelessly on the ground with the bright bands dangling like useless strings.

Yuka leaned back cautiously and nursed the cracks and pockmarks in her blade limb that struggled to recover. She clenched her teeth against the biting pain and waited. Soon, Yasha’s wild, banshee-like screams shifted into uproarious cackles. She held out her severed stump as a new arm swiftly filled the void without a mark or blemish difference between the old and the new.

“You actually managed to touch me. Invigorating! But I came prepared. As I always do. You can’t kill me. Nothing can.”

A blast of light tunneled out of Yasha’s right arm like toothpaste made of sunlight. Yuka dashed away, seeking out Misaki and Chika. Misaki was clear of the latest assault, but the blonde was moving towards Misaki’s purple-haired little sister. Yuka’s left arm moved stiffly, but she still managed to grab onto a nearby tree and use the bladed part for support as she looped around it to escape the flaming attack.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

This drew Yasha away from Chika and afforded Misaki the chance to fashion a plan to grab her friend by the shoulders and drag her away from danger. Chika was uncomfortably prone, but peering through the chaos gave Misaki the impression she was still breathing. She hoped she was still breathing and that it wasn’t just an illusion of shadow and light. She couldn’t lose anyone else. Maharu was already too much to bear, even with the frail hope of her finding peace.

Yasha remained in single-minded pursuit of Yuka, like a ravenous bear after a wolf. While Misaki’s fear and attention were on the burning, blazing swipes surrounding the girl she loved, she managed to wrap Chika’s arms around her shoulder and pack strap carry her an awkward few feet past Maharu‘s body. It was easy. Until her muscles started to fight back for several breath-stealing seconds, like she’d been jabbed in the side and wrenched around the shoulder. Misaki fought through the pain and carefully dropped her friend as gently as possible before checking her pulse and finding a steady beat.

She was also definitely breathing. Movies and shows would tell her to start slapping Chika around and try to shake her, but good sense and plenty of first aid training back in college instead told her that the best thing to do now was to try to keep her comfortable and safe and maybe try to talk to her. Whatever Yasha had done to her friend might still be present, with her will suppressed and a danger to herself and others.

Misaki opted to gently rub Chika‘s arms and legs and whisper quietly at first before getting loud enough that she certainly had to hear her. It didn’t help. She still remained on the forest floor, with no sign of consciousness. It was then that Yasha started to turn her attention back to them. They were an easy way for her to bleed more pain out of Yuka.

She struggled to hold her panic inside as she dashed through a waterfall of semi-coherent possibilities. Run? Not with Chika on her back. Throw a clod of dirt and gravel? Why not also try spitting at that abomination? Scream? It would just be wasted breath. She still had that crumpled piece of paper in her pocket. Maybe she could bluff with it and make it more important than it probably was. Worth a shot.

The glowing, cobra-like form of Yasha started to loom and advance as Yuka gritted her teeth and shot around the tree. Before Yuka could bring her obsidian blade arm down for a strike, Yasha jerked her head and slashed with bright vine-supported fingernails. Yuka yelped and tumbled backward. A bright flash of blood arced through the air from a gash in Yuka’s cheek as she flailed to put pressure on the spot.

Yasha leaned back and regarded her quarry with a subtle look of confusion. It flashed for just a moment before she responded, “You bleed red…good.” She licked her lips as though she could actually taste some of the blood in the air.

A sudden silence fell over the forest clearing, softly broken by even, meticulous footsteps advancing from the direction of the festival. Several frantic thoughts flooded Misaki’s mind. She had to warn whoever was coming. Stay away! Danger! At the same time, she knew that this could be the answer. Someone, hapless or helpful, was coming.

As soon as they saw what was going on, they could run and get help. If Yasha wanted to keep what was happening here a secret, then she would have to go after them. Not that Misaki wanted to involve some random innocent in these events, but the entire town was likely going to be involved soon enough.

This monstrous woman had stolen the lives of Miss Okura’s child and daughter-in-law, followed by her granddaughter. Whatever the ladies of this place could bring to bear against this bitch and the complacency of the company couldn’t possibly be enough recompense. But at least it would be something.

A strange haze of light shifted through the verdant filter of the branches, breaking against soft shadows. Stark, bone-blank features glowed in the night, outlining a face. The figure loomed with anonymous subtlety as the details slowly resolved. Blue eyes, gray yukata, and a still, solemn visage peering out with wary resignation. Haruka stood before the clearing with her arms folded and her eyebrows tight.

Misaki struggled in place as though she were a fish searching for water, fighting for breath, and aching to speak. "Haruka…you.."

Haruka flicked her eyes over to Misaki with icy stillness, regarding some curious, floundering specimen. “Did you read it?” She spoke the question as though it were both the most important thing and a trivial matter draped in casual impatience.

It took Misaki several stunned moments to process what she meant, while putting together a collage of personal anger, bitterness, disappointment, and shock that deserved to be shouted to the heavens and the unfeeling statue that was Haruka. All she ultimately managed was a glib, “No.”

Yuka tore a scrap of cloth from her yukata that was the right size to apply to her gash without choking her. Really, she needed some heavy gauze and paper tape, but this would have to do as the drying red rivulets still stretched down her neck. She panted with labored breaths and stared at her sister. Their eyes didn’t meet. Yuka’s fists trembled.

“Read it. Out loud. To everyone,” said Haruka.

Swallowing quietly, Misaki dug around in her pocket for the paper. Part of her hoped that it mysteriously vanished or dropped through a hole, to be lost somewhere in the dark, anonymous dirt, and that the responsibility wouldn’t have to fall on her for whatever this was and what it meant. But it was there, just as she had left it and just as Haruka had apparently left it with her.

With unnaturally loud crunches and crinkles of unfolding, Misaki scrunched up her eyes. She didn’t want to see. She didn’t want to know, even if it were somehow a positive message. She knew in her gut that the dark aura of the moment wouldn’t be present if this were anywhere close to a good thing. She was so sweaty all over despite the gripping chill of the night and how light and loose her yukata fell across her body. Dripping was sure to follow.

The scrap of paper was bulky but no bigger than the notepad Haruka fiddled with earlier. She had to grab her phone to provide enough light to see what was written. At the top of the document were the same reminders from earlier about doom and death. She will die. Then her eyes settled on the new part—the cruel words she saw but could not speak. Haruka said them verbatim instead.

“Not my sister. Sasaki Yuka is not my sister. Okura Maharu is.”

Those words leadenly settled over the clearing like an oppressive, crushing deep water presence, squeezing the air out of Yuka and Misaki. Moments later, Chika gave a rough groan. She was finally starting to rouse.

Haruka took several steps forward with her arms outstretched. She leveled her head, tightened her jaw, and flared a controlled sliver of her teeth. Light, like half-swords, stretched from her hands. Atop her head, goat horns shimmered into being.

“Step away from her, or I’ll be forced to attack,” Haruka said.

Yuka allowed herself a soft, careful breath, glaring at Yasha. “You better do what she says.”

Haruka’s eyes finally landed on Yuka. “I’m talking to you...”