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KAIZEN
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Kaizen felt no pain and didn't flinch as they passed right through him, but adrenaline still flooded his system. Oh, how I've missed that feeling. But back to the father. Quick to anger. And ready to defend his family. Good.
“What can I say,” Kaizen said. “It’s complicated. I’m a ghost, so you can’t harm me. Like I said, my name is Kaizen and I am the previous incarnation of Jules. We have a lot to discuss, but these cultists you spoke of, they make me nervous.” I didn’t have them until much later. Nor did my…master. The father’s tattoos dimmed down, and both he and Kaizen redirected their attention to Evelyn.
“Your son,” Kaizen continued, “is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, Wrath, and I am the previous incarnation. I regret your fears came true.”
Evelyn clutched her necklace again. The icon's sharp metal drew blood from her palms. “Salvos, no—No! Not my baby, my son!” She fainted. While the father attended to Evelyn, the doctor inched towards the door.
“I’ve come here to prepare Jules for what’s to come, to give him tools, to help you two raise him.”
“The prophecies of Salvos are true? Our boy, he’s…”
“I’ve only just come back to life and am ignorant of your prophecies or this Salvos, though he’s probably full of shit. But…if they mention an Apocalypse, that part is, uh, very true, I'm afraid.”
"…Apocalypse?"
Dammit, man, you are too close to that door. “Rukia. Please let our esteemed medic know that, however gracious we are of his delivery skills, that you won’t hesitate to violently, meticulously, surgically even, rip out his pudgy little throat. Should he flee, that is.”
Rukia growled and snapped her sharp fangs. The doctor collapsed on his ass, paralyzed in fear by a tiny, impish fox kit. “That pillar of light is going to draw attention Jules doesn’t want or need, but what he does need is a safe hideout. I’ll tell you more on the road.”
“But you’re sure it’s him? You thought he’d be a baby girl.”
Kaizen balked at the man. “Did you just see that fucking column of—ah, you know what? Tensions are high. Forgive me.”
Inside voice, Kaizen, Rukia thought to him.
Kaizen took a breath and composed himself. Time was scarce, but he needed the dad to cooperate. “Rukia bonded with him, so I’m certain. If you need more proof, that column of light would have left a mark on him like mine.”
Kaizen pulled back his kimono and revealed an intricate tattoo of the number 7 over his heart. The father walked over to his son and stared at him, in silence, his question answered. He picked up his son, crudely swaddled him in a blanket, and rocked him in his arms. As any first-time father would, he gazed at Jules with a blend of deep love and sheer terror. Kaizen knew those emotions would run deeper for him, given the news.
“Can I—can I see him?” Evelyn was awake again. The father awkwardly transferred baby Jules to his mother. He wriggled around in the blanket and grunted. He tried to escape his warm little prison but couldn’t, so he shrieked in frustration. Tiny red embers sparked around his eyes.
“Get him away from me,” Evelyn shouted. She thrust Jules back into his father’s arms. “I won’t have this monster feed from me. He’s a devil, sent to destroy us all.”
Rukia turned her attention from the doctor to his patient and barked a yappy protest. Why must we always be doomed to this family? “You are mistaken, Mother,” Kaizen said. “It is he who’s stuck with you.” She froze, and Kaizen spoke again to the father. “I understand Ryochu is important here, but can I use chi to power up a vehicle to escape? Or do you have a carpet?”
Kaizen heard the crickets outside, all desperate to find each other and mate. Right. They don’t have the concept of chi. “Dammit, man, help your son!” Kaizen’s eyes emitted red flames like Jules’.
“You must mean Ryoku. I don’t know what chi is, but Ryoku fuels everything here. I have stores of it, we can power my sailboat to safety.”
Kaizen and Rukia worked out a hurried plan. Rukia informed him of the meager forms of transportation here while Kaizen watched the man shush and rock his son; he felt the father’s love through his weak bond with Jules. I feel worse for this man than I do for losing to Death right now.
“Alright, we need to flee to a new city. You’ll have to start over again, but Rukia has experience with fresh starts. Now let’s pack up your—shit.” Kaizen scanned the room. “Where’s your medic?”
Kaizen sprinted through furniture and the window he’d spied through, touching nothing. In the distance, a mob approached the cottage, outlined by the torches they carried. The doctor scurried away, halfway between them. He flailed his arms and yelled at the growing crowd. Kaizen ran back inside.
“Dad, in five minutes, you’re gone. Rukia, our prey awaits.”
The father shoved Jules into Evelyn’s reluctant arms. She held him at a distance from her breasts and looked disgusted. At least she’s holding him.
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Kaizen and Rukia exited the cottage together. They heard some of the doctor’s shouted words. Sins. Wrath. Monster. Another villager called out from the pack’s center.
“That true, Tideshaper? You harboring the spawn of demons in there?”
“Zeke,” the father whispered at the doorway, though it was more like a curse. “They really will kill my boy, won’t they?”
“They’ll certainly try. I’m afraid it’d be easier for them to kill me, though. Thought I told you to pack. Three minutes now.” Kaizen and Rukia approached and stopped short of the madding crowd, who hurled a variety of slurs, insults, and threats at him. All around, the vigilantes' tattoos lit up the growing darkness. Kaizen concentrated his strength to his core and grew in size by another half. His muscles bulged and veins popped.
“Said he’s a g-ghost,” the trembling doctor said. “He can’t touch or do anything!”
“Aye. I can’t.” Kaizen jerked a thumb towards the fox. “But she can.”
Rukia charged to the midpoint, fangs out, and squealed out a roar. The villagers cackled and shouted more insults. The right side of Kaizen disintegrated slowly from his body, into a fine powdery mist.
> « Integrate »
The rest of his body evaporated into a cloud of ash that flowed into Rukia. She grew back to the size and build of a tiger, though she retained her foxy features. Archaic patterns and glyphs lined her white fur in fiery crimson tufts all over. Like the tattoos of this world?
A girl of honor, a regal lady true to her word, an avenger of the downtrodden and the weak, Rukia fulfilled her promise and attacked the doctor first. She pounced high into the air and roared again. This time the sound echoed through the entire forest. Rukia—and Kaizen within her—flatted the medic and wrenched out his throat with surgical precision. We warned you, they thought as one.
The villagers rioted and ran forward to attack, with their pitchforks and makeshift weapons brandished, their own tattoos aglow. Nothing braver than a zealot. Rukia charged the horde. She lacerated and crippled a dozen men before she took a pitchfork to the side. Enraged, she eyed the man who had impaled her.
“I’ll give you a head start.”
The man fumbled with his farming tool and scurried back to the safety of the crowd. She slashed the throats of three more men with thick claws and bull rushed a few others before she leapt on her assailant’s back. Rukia held him prone on the ground with one paw and glared at the remaining villagers. The young man writhed around under her weight as he suffocated in the mud. Too many. Time to pull back.
Rukia carved her claws into the man’s back and flung him through the air at the group closest to Jules' home. The man howled midair and collided into his own allies. Rukia leapt back to the cottage door, and Kaizen ended the Integration and ripped himself away from her. He removed her collar just as she turned back into her fox kit form, then ran inside to the father.
“We don’t have enough power to fight them off. I’m tied to Jules’ and Rukia's energy levels, and I don’t know how anything works here. How can he get more?”
The father held up a pouch filled with roughly cut purple gems. “We can give him Ryoku from these crystals, but not much. It’s all the money we’ve got.” Money?
“We can’t give away all we have for him,” Evelyn snapped.
Kaizen’s skin crawled. “Give him all the energy you can. We will stay and dispose of the villagers, but we won’t be following you. Here, take this collar. Rukia will find Jules one day.” The man took the collar. “Let Jules give her the collar—make sure it’s him and only him.”
Evelyn continued to protest, but Kaizen knew she was much too weak from childbirth to fight. The man picked up Jules in one arm and wrapped Evelyn around his shoulder with the other. He turned for the back door, which overlooked the sea. Kaizen reached for the father's shoulder but went through it. He whipped around, startled by the sensation. Jules cooed.
“What’s your name?” Kaizen asked.
“Liam. Liam Tideshaper.”
Liam? Jules acts like this is his father, but—What the Hell is going on here!?
“Liam…I see.” Kaizen gazed at Liam with forlorn hope; after taking the deal with Wrath, Kaizen knew all too well how this would end for him. “Take care of Jules. You are all he has. Your son was born a Sin, but his destiny is far from determined.” Wide-eyed, Liam nodded, and Kaizen felt he understood the message. This woman may have given birth to him, but you are Jules’ only parent. “Patience,” Kaizen added. “You must seek Patience.”
He turned his back on Liam and returned to Rukia. The villagers threw torches at the home. Kaizen felt Jules carried through the back door as Liam ran to safety. Better still, he felt Liam feed Jules all that invigorating Ryoku. The riot closed in on the cottage. Kaizen and Rukia smiled at the raging flames. “If only they knew how much we love fire."
> « Integrate »
This time, Rukia’s body disintegrated into Kaizen’s. His long auburn hair receded back into his scalp until it was much shorter and mixed with white tufts. The slits of his eyes narrowed like a cat’s, and his fingernails sharpened like claws. Crimson tattoos crept down from his eyes to his cheeks.
Thirty men, most of what remained, stormed Kaizen in a full frontal assault. He dug his feet into the ground and wrapped one finger at a time around his katana’s hilt. When the wave surged close enough, he ripped the Sound of Fury out in a single sweep across them all.
Upon finishing, he cleaned off his blade with the inside of his elbow and sheathed it. Rukia disintegrated from his body and formed her own again. Kaizen turned back to the shore behind the cottage. A lone pale white sail drifted through the darkness.
“That’s all the Ryochi, Ruke. I’m sorry to leave you again so soon.” She didn't laugh at the poor attempt for humor. A single tear fell down Kaizen’s cheek. “Find him, but keep your distance. This time… This time I trust the father.”
“Why do you have to leave? I’ve missed you so much.” Rukia’s puppy dog eyes welled with tears.
The Sound of Fury lit up with a soft white glow, then burst into light. It shattered into three pieces that hurtled off into the night sky in different directions. Each left a comet's trail behind them. Kaizen thought of his friends, his comrades in arms, as the light from each faded away.
“Just now, I breached an agreement.” He knelt down and scratched her ears, one final time. “We’ll meet again. But for now, there’s more prey to hunt.”
They surveyed the battlefield. Just beyond the thirty butchered bodies were a handful of villagers who kept a safe distance from combat. Some backpedaled and ran away, while others stared in horror at the massacre.
“Will you do it one last time, Little One?” Rukia asked, still moping.
“Of course.” He pet her from head to tail and stood up. Kaizen reached back into his kimono and chucked the ball towards the survivors. “Fetch, girl!”
Rukia’s face lit up with excitement and focus. She zipped through the air after the ball, full speed ahead. Kaizen smiled as his vision once again faded to black.
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