Yuri Worlds
[78] Run
Yasha flared her teeth, which didn’t look quite as scary or sharp as she probably hoped they did. She tightened her grip on the knife, bending it down to face her quarry. Dashing forward, she pressed it to the side of the old woman’s neck. Despite the way it pushed back the flesh on contact, no blood was drawn. She shifted the knife slightly, as though giving the old woman the most delicate shave.
She traced the sharpest section of the blade, caked in dried blood, in lazy loops that summoned subtle pink shading from the old lady. With her mouth closed, Yasha managed an irritated growl as she feigned toward carving off her skin. She did eventually draw a tiny drop of blood before pulling back and tapping the old woman on the head with the flat edge.
“Nice try. Valiant effort. I know by your age, all you have left is the beauty of a just death. You won’t get it from me. But I am sure the company can find something to do with you. And the rest of you. Distant bird, take care of it.” She issued that nickname with a turn of her head in Haruka‘s direction. Haruka dipped her head but gave no other sign of recognition.
What was she going to do? How was she connected to this awful woman and the horrible things the company had done? Misaki started to tear up even though Yuka squeezed her eyes tight into narrow, strangled slits. No more tears from her sister’s betrayal… No, not even her sister, just some girl they placed with her. Misaki could sense that raging energy from Yuka as though it were pinging to her on a private radio broadcast.
Eventually, Yuka had to speak. "Take care of it. You’re good for that. None of it mattered to you. When I was sad and scared at night, when I was confused and lost and just wanted to talk. My protective big sister. A big fat lie…Just saying words to a thing with this face. Placate it, shut it up; it means nothing. You should be ashamed. You would turn your back on them, on us, on everyone… And for what? What is this bitch and the company she keeps giving you? It’s not enough, because you’re next, when they’re done with us." The old woman raised her head but resisted the urge to do anything with her mouth.
Haruka looked down on them with a stony expression tightly carved into her features. Neither of her sharp, dark pen-mark eyebrows wavered. Despite her hair cresting as practically ocean foam around her head, jostling in the residual breeze fighting through the trees, it remained just as focused in opposition to any implication of chaos. Unfeeling order—that was Haruka. Nothing behind the mask. Yuka cast her eyes down and heaved a heavy breath. Resignation. If there were cuffs to slap on her, then she wouldn’t have protested.
Misaki reached her side with a cautious arm of support stretched out. She lamented that Chika wasn’t lined up for a grab. Yuka flinched back with her licorice trunk arms, holding them close to her chest. Her eyes subtly shifted, somehow getting bigger. Misaki reached in and squeezed Yuka’s tendril-like stubs.
Instead of a monster with slime, wretched oils, or vicious spikes, what she felt reminded her of a long-ago aquarium trip that she couldn’t be sure actually happened. It honestly didn’t matter.
They were at the small pool with some variety of stingray or manta ray casually making loops in the water. The creature, dark and dreamlike, floated along almost out of reach of most children straining to get a touch. Franklin… If that was even her name… had to wait several circuits, but it was finally worth it when it lingered and she gently slipped her hands across it.
Velvety soft, like a perfect teddy bear immersed in the waves. One parent randomly scolded her for trying to reach in and viciously imagined that she was hurting or trying to harm it, even though the aquarium worker assured them it was fine. Yuka’s exposed, true flesh felt just as wonderfully luxurious.
She transmitted joyous wonderment to her partner, calmly adoring how beautiful she was. It was a pointless moment; Maharu was gone, Chika was surely terrified, and Haruka had no human spark. The old woman may have powers, but they were clearly no match for this monster. Yasha could strike any of them down in a moment of fickle cruelty. But they had each other, and no matter what horrible truths lay ahead, she would stand with Yuka.
The poor, nervous girl at her side. She thought she was hideous; she had to be a monster, something wretched and awful, a black mass, a dark entity. How could anyone ever love such a thing? Misaki leaned close, gently brushed her sweaty hair, disheveled from her fights, cradled her sensitive gash, slowly drying, and squeezed her in a kiss to answer the one she left, which she feared may be her last, minutes before. Do your fucking worst, distant bird, and red-eyed demon, Misaki demanded without words.
It didn’t take long after that for Chika to echo the plaintive cries and begging panic they had already heaped upon Maharu’s impossibly quiet shape. Yasha swiftly snapped her fingers, and Chika froze like a statue, like a single cel without an animator to continue it, twisted in tears that refused to fall, hands reaching out but unable to close the distance, and eyes that held a bitter fury fighting to be free beneath that shell.
Miss Okura practically branded Yasha with her gaze, egging her on to do what she really wanted her to do. Instead, Yasha licked the sides of her blade, spreading the dry blood without actually cleaning it. She couldn’t control the old woman, which Misaki made a critical mental note about.
On their side of the clearing, Haruka had practically paused before them, still looming ominously, pressing a weighty aura over them without wielding physical force. What was she waiting for? What did ‘take care of it’ really mean? Was she going to kill them? The threat hadn’t had teeth since Yuka’s pointed questions.
Then she noticed a shift in Haruka, as though she were holding something heavy aloft, and exhaustion finally gripped her. Panic and grief rippled across her features, hunting for the words she wanted to say.
"Blast them or use your blood on them; I don’t care. Just do it," Yasha growled at Haruka.
Diligently, Haruka snapped into a precise pose and reached into her yukata for a small pocket knife. Blood? The dark entities under the wristbands recoiled from blood as if it were acid. What would Haruka’s blood do to them?
She carved a small mark in her palm, and her painterly blood pooled towards her thumb. With her other hand, she gestured to her wrist. This puzzled Misaki, as she already knew about the black wristband. But that was on the other wrist.
Her other hand didn’t have anything on it; it was just blank. Blank. White. A blank white mark. Colorless. Nothing there… But whiteness. She couldn’t quite resolve it, but something inside her knew that, in opposition to the black wristband she wore, Haruka also wore a white one on her other arm. What on earth did it mean?
When she looked away from it, Misaki noticed that Haruka wasn’t gathering the blood to use against them; she was squeezing it in her hand and pressing it against something that dropped from her sleeve into her other palm. In ragged, blood-scrawled letters, she wrote a single word: "RUN." A moment later, a brilliant flash filled the clearing like an icy star exploding.
Yasha yelled in bitter, angry confusion, her arm shielding her eyes from the blazing light. A few feet in front of her, the old woman deftly jumped to her feet and stole the knife out of the blonde’s hand. Before she could react, Miss Okura slammed the blade through the nearest flesh she could cleave from Yasha‘s body.
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The knife raggedly tore through her forearm, twisting a confetti of colorful muscles into a fountain of viscera. The edge carved a line of dripping red tears across her crimson eyes. The demon blonde screamed like a pig at slaughter when she realized her relentless healing factor wasn’t kicking in. Her hand dangled like it was barely held on by a string as Grandma Okura went in for her second strike. The blonde’s severed fingers flew through the air as the blade sliced through her other hand, brought up in protection.
Haruka tightened her glare and swallowed the bloody paper before launching herself in a roll towards Chika. She scooped up Misaki‘s friend as though it were a careless act of grabbing the frozen girl as a shield for her own protection, but she had enough speed to sail between the trees like a bewildered, wounded bird. Misaki and Yuka were already bolting through the pines as swiftly as every natural and unnatural force they could summon would allow.
Running through the brisk, chill darkness with chaotic limbs and dark branches in all directions felt like a surreal relief, as though everything of the last few minutes could be edited out as the tired touch of a dream curse from ruthless forest spirits.
The sight of shack seventeen appearing and sailing past brought a fresh wave of relief but also tension as it signaled a countdown. Before long, they would be back within sight of the festival, back with the others. Smiling, eating, cuddling their prizes, chatting about Maharu’s performance, and becoming increasingly concerned about where she was.
Yuka shifted between her velvety, black limbs and a tight, urgent human grip. Getting too close still triggered a magnetic draw, but Misaki didn’t mind the possibility of being swallowed up by the girl she loved. Less for her to carry on tired feet, and she could remain an endless drumbeat of love.
Despite no rush of feet at their heels or cacophony of angry sounds swarming like released wasps, they didn’t slow and barely had time to breathe as the last of the shacks receded away and the light of the festival sparkled between the branches. The scene resolved into aching normalcy. Little girls twirled at the ring game. Cheers and claps followed a musical crescendo. Lanterns were rhythmically buffeted by a light breeze. A group of gleeful teen girls traded gifts.
Yuka sighted her mothers first and hesitated before urging Misaki toward them. The Nishikawa sisters appeared to be debating the perfect dance outfit, with Kosame stroking her chin and nudging Naoko’s shoulder. Bianca had her tongue pressed out with her yukata bulging like a puffer fish. Her fancy, eye-blocking fan of fancy hair had migrated into an even sillier, vague bouffant.
Namiko noticed their advance before anyone else and responded first with a little glass of shiny iced tea raised like a beacon above her head before concern started to settle. The Sasakis, watching the current music performance, soon noticed the return of their younger daughter as well.
Mari was also nearby, looking as though she were expecting them to arrive. She clearly stood apart from anyone else—a melancholy island fighting an invisible, rising tide. They had no idea where to run or who to seek out. Despite that look from Mari, they knew well not to trust anything. Ayame slipped from around the corner and turned her gaze on them.
A sudden, sharp mechanical squeal, like an emergency alarm, erupted from Ayame‘s mouth as though she swallowed an ambulance siren. The crushing noise blasted in all directions, and everything froze. The children at joyous play paused with mouths twisted in unknown yells and unsung laughter. The spectators remained in rising crouches despite how painful their positions appeared or how close they were to tumbling over, as their claps resisted contact. The trades went unfinished with unsteady, stolen leaps and sealed, silenced giggles.
The only woman still permitted motion was Mari, standing alone and wrapped in a pained expression. She sharply, without even a flicker of sound, mouthed the words in sequence, “RUN PLEASE GO!” Yuka couldn’t.
Her eyes refused to break from her mothers’. They were colorful, perfect statues lost in a moment between curiosity, calm, and dawning panic as their last sight was their daughter rushing towards them, shattered with fear. Misaki urgently anchored Yuka. It wasn’t a good idea to get too close to something like this. Even though everyone was frozen, who knew whether they might be compelled by unknown forces, as a zombie wave, to surround them?
Yuka understood from the pleading look in Misaki’s beautiful eyes that this was a terrible idea. But she needed this. She needed them. She needed her mommies. If only for the briefest touch, if only for a moment of reassurance that she would take care of herself, return as quickly as possible, and break them of this terrible spell and cruel control. But before she could make even that smallest gesture, the vibrant, preciously beautiful color throughout their bodies drained away with a burst of bitter wind.
The wind cut through from behind, twisting like a snake of air. It assaulted them from above, a fall of dragon’s breath. Kei’s bright, shimmering brown hair lost all its luster, freezing to an icy starkness deeper than Haruka‘s. The bright pools of her eyes emptied along with her matching yukata. Fuyuki soon matched her. It was like they had been taken back to the state of simple sketches, just a whisper of life from a pen that another rustle of air might completely wipe from existence.
Yuka screamed—a rattling, pleading scream of agony beyond pain. Hoarsely, she cried out, "NOOOOOO! NOOOOOOO!! MOMMY! MAMA! MAMAS!" The standing sketches of Kei and Fuyuki refused to return to what they should’ve been, though they did not wobble like fragile paper held aloft. The wind roared from its tight tube and turned towards them. Misaki expected to run, so she reached for Yuka. But Yuka pulled away, her licorice fists spreading out before erupting.
No pretense of humanity remained in Yuka’s shape as she burst from her clothes, a bubbling mass of blackness stretching, heaving, and tearing like taffy with a thousand mouths to rend and rip unseen monsters through her canine, shifting obsidian teeth. When the wave of air made contact with the black shape of the girl Misaki loved, there was sure to be a fight, a futile one like a bold but uncertain puppy nipping fruitlessly at a running hairdryer. That wasn’t what happened.
The column of wind, like a cloaked shimmer, pulled to a dead halt, and swooped back the way it had come. If she didn’t know that had to be impossible, Misaki would’ve wondered if she just saw it shit itself in fear because of her girl. Mari, the only other one present who could move, had her eyes open wide, less in terror than wonder. Yuka still wanted to fight, wielding an endless infantry of arms and mouths.
She turned back to Misaki, to check on her. She was so small but desperately precious. Perhaps all she had left. Misaki reached out her arm, and Yuka swiftly receded from the fury of her blackness to familiar, girlish flesh. Her arms also retreated, losing their licorice splits. The gash on her face healed. And she was naked, not that it mattered to either of them.
Misaki retrieved Yuka’s clothes as Mari burst in to say, “They’re coming. I’ll protect everyone here. At least, I’ll try. Go. Get as far as you can. The Sasakis have a nice little cellar, you know. Now GO!"