Back to Hotaru.  She's depressed (why am I not surprised), but this with
some sort of reason.  Etc.
http://bloodgod.pc.cc.cmu.edu/smgray/index.html for all related info.
E-mail me if you need copies of stuff.  Any and all criticism
appreciated.

Django Wexler (khaine)
khaine@mindless.com

The more we learn about ourselves, the less we understand. By the time I
die, I may not even believe that I exist. 
	-Jon Carroll


Chapter Five
    Hotaru


    My first thought was that it was a mistake.  A horrible, impossible
mistake.  But of course it wasn't, since someone like Jahara didn't make
mistakes.  And that meant this really was Earth, and I was really
standing in Tokyo, and...what?

    In my time on the Aegis, I had seen some pretty strange things, and
visited some pretty run-down worlds.  This wasn't the worst scene of
devastation I'd seen -- the planet Inferno is destroyed every three
years by a periodic rain of fire, forcing the inhabitants to rebuild
their city from the wreckage.  I watched Jahara fight a god of metal and
glass in the ruined world-city of Cairn.  The great pyramids of Tsara
have fallen to pieces, and that world is ruled by the walking dead.

    But this...

    One thing, of course, was that Jahara was not at my side.  I missed
him more than I could possibly let on.  Not just his physical presence,
though there was certainly that -- with him around, I knew that nothing
bad could possibly happen to me.  But more than that, I missed his
unconcern.  No matter how horrible the setting, no matter what the
atrocity, nothing could ever crack the Unforgiven's calm demeanor.  It
rubbed off on me.  While we were together, I found myself assuming his
aspect more often than not, looking down on the local worlds we visited.
I started to acquire some of his perspective.  Jahara had seen the worst
that humans could do to one another, seen it over and over and over.
The apocalypse of a world was a terrible thing, but terrible things
happen constantly without a hope of stopping them.  To the Unforgiven,
even a world-crushing catastrophe is nothing.  People rebuild, or if not
there are always other worlds.  In the long run, such things are
inevitable.  Take the *really* long view, and even the lifespan of
worlds drops to zero.

    But now that was all gone, as though it had never been.  Because
somehow that only worked out there, with him -- it didn't seem *real*.
Now...now I was just teenaged Hotaru Tomoe, not the adjunct to the
ultimate guardian of Power Incarnate.  And this wasn't some world I'd
never heard of with people I didn't know, it was *Tokyo*, the city where
I grew up -- twice -- where all my friends lived.  Home.  And it was in
flames.

    Not the ungovernable fires of the city determined to burn to the
ground before morning.  This was more of a sultry, smoldering blaze, the
kind of fire that intends to keep on going until everything flammable
has been reduced to char.  I was back on the hilltop overlooking the
district around my house, a place I'd been so many times before -- it
had seemed as good a place as any to land.  Staring dully at the view,
the wreckage of what had been a residential sprawl dotted with crawling
blazes, I had to blink away tears.  I sat down involuntarily, legs just
folding underneath me as they refused to support my weight.

    "You might not like what you find," he'd said.  He'd known.  Of
course he'd known, somehow.  And he hadn't told me, because of his
gods-damned *rules*.  As though anyone could impose rules on him.

    I pulled myself backwards with my hands, until my back came up
against a tree trunk.  Then I leaned forward, my hands on my knees, and
watched my city burn.  The fires didn't look uncontrolled, when you
watched them closely.  Like bonfires, but huge, the size of houses.  And
it was hard to tell what had caused the catastrophe.  Most of the
buildings looked pretty intact, except where people had gotten to them
-- broken windows, smashed doors, cars overturned in the street.  Here
and there a house had fallen down, or had been taken to bits.

               I'm uncertain how long I sat there, staring out in a
daze.  The shock, I suppose.  Ever since I'd talked to Jahara I'd
expected the worst, prepared for the worst, all the while trying to
figure out what the worst really was.  I'd never expected this.  Nothing
like this...

    The tiny demon of guilt opened one eye and scampered up onto my
shoulder, the better to whisper in my ear.  [They had the final
showdown,] it said.  [Something showed up, and it was more than they
could handle.  And you weren't there.]

    My reverie was interrupted by voices, approaching from behind my
little tree.  Two male, one female, weaving their way across the grass.

    "Man, that was a bust."

    "No kidding."  The girl sounded bored.  "Fuckin' Imps.  I think they
do it just to fuck us around."

    "If they don't deliver more One soon, they're gonna have a fuckin'
riot on their hands."

    "S'right.  Basic economic policy.  The rest of this shit, Two and
Three and whatever, that�s all gravy.  But you don't fuckin' interrupt
your main product."

    "What're you going to do?"  The girl giggled.  "Fuckin' complain?"

    "Sure.  Walk right up to the cruiser, knock on the doors, and be
like, 'Yo!  What the fuck?'"

    There was general laughter.  I remained curled up, hugging my knees.

    "Yeah, right."

    "Try it.  I'd like to see that."

    "Go for it, man."

    "I'm gonna sit down for a bit."  They wandered into my field of
view, visible through slitted eyes.  She was in a short skirt and a
tight top, and both of the guys wore ripped jeans and frayed t-shirts.
They looked like high school students, or maybe college, and their eyes
seemed glazed, unseeing.

    The girl flopped down on the grass, and one of the guys sat next to
her.  They were looking the same direction I was, out over the city; for
a while, anyway.  Then the guy put a hand on her cheek, turned her head,
and started a kiss that lasted longer than I was willing to watch.  I
averted my eyes quickly.

    The other guy had noticed me and wandered over, crouching to get a
better look.  I didn't feel like uncurling just yet, so I let him stare.
He put his head on one side, then called out to his friend.

    "What's with her?"

    The other looked up briefly from his other activity.  "Probably
deuced to the gills."

    "Fuckin' right."

    I'm not sure why I didn't move.  Maybe I was still in shock, maybe I
wanted to see what would happen next.  Either way, I was too surprised
to react at first when he reached out, pulled my head back by the hair,
and leaned in to a kiss.  I could taste his breath, alcohol and
something acidic.  His other hand rested briefly on my shoulder, then
started to slip downward.

    Catatonia is one thing.  Getting molested is something else.  I
wasn't exactly in a great position, but I pushed off the tree with my
back and brought my knee up into his chin, hard.  The guy folded up with
a little sigh and collapsed next to the tree as I completed the motion
and regained my feet.

    His friend heard him fall and looked up again.  He raised an
eyebrow, impressed.  The girl, now lying on the ground with her top
pushed up far enough to expose black lace, didn't seem to care.

    "Nice body for a little girl."  He smiled.  "Shame about the tits,
though.  Still."  He gestured at his half-naked partner.  "You want to
be next?"

    *That* she seemed to take offense at.  "Ryu!"

    "Kidding."  He winked at me.

    I didn't feel anything more than a vague disgust.  I certainly
wasn't frightened of their petty posturing.  Transformed, I could have
cut them all to bits in the space of one breath.  But something about
their manner felt off, forced somehow.  I shook my head.

    "You're disgusting."  I directed this at the guy on the ground, who
was still rolling back and forth in pain.  His friend -- Ryu? --
chuckled.

    "Give him a break.  He thought you were high on Two."

    "So?"

    "When you're deuced, it doesn't matter what *any*one does to you.
It's all"--he closed his eyes, probably reminiscing--"it's all good."

    This conversation was getting creepier and creepier, and I decided
it was time to go.  I took a last look around to get my bearings.  It
was hard to figure with most of the familiar buildings in tatters, but
the lay of the land underneath was the same, and I started to pick out
the shattered forms of my old landmarks.  I'd come down exactly where I
wanted, not far from Setsuna's house.

    Or where Setsuna's house had been.  I stomped hard on that
importunate thought.  Guilt threatened to roll back in a wave.

    "Ry*u*."  The girl wove her hands behind Ryu's head and dragged him
down into her embrace.  "Leave her alone."  He resisted for a moment,
staring after me, then with a last shrug returned to other business.

    

    I wasn't accosted again as I walked home, except by the visions of
what had happened to the city.  The looters had stolen everything that
wasn't nailed down, and then bored thrill-seekers had smashed whatever
was left.  I saw the latter walking in gangs around the shattered
streets, groups of young people in black and gray, carrying makeshift
weapons -- hammers, crowbars, whatever they'd picked up.  At one point I
passed a miniature gang war, two groups formed into a circle around a
pair of struggling bodies.  One of their own lay against the wall,
already forgotten, as the ground underneath him stained red.

    The pleasure seekers were also out in force.  I passed one of the
big bonfires, not the clean flames of wood but a guttering, smoky
plastic-fed blaze surrounded by writhing forms, half-glimpsed.  I kept
my steps resolutely forward and tried not to look, feeling the blush
spread to my cheeks.

    That, I thought, was the most ridiculous part.  In the destroyed
city, with squads of killers walking the streets, I blushed at *that.*

    To take my mind off my surroundings, and more importantly what I'd
find at my destination, I tried to keep my thoughts on speculation.
That was no good, though -- I kept returning to the central question.
What happened here?  It was worse than a physical disaster, worse than
anything I could think of.  What could cause this kind of breakdown?

    If some kind of youma had won, I decided.  That could do it.  We'd
found on a few occasions that a youma's dark energy could affect
people's behavior, so a nasty enough monster could have created the
broken-down city I found myself in.

    If a youma had won, though, that meant that all the Senshi were
probably dead.  That made my breath catch, but it was true.  I couldn't
imagine them giving up, letting the monsters win, surrendering.  They
would have fought to the death to prevent this from happening.  So if it
had happened...

    I climbed the well-remembered steps without thinking, auto-piloted
through the gate, past the fence and around the corner.  The house -- it
was still there, sort of.  All the windows had been smashed, and at some
point the door had been ripped from its hinges.  Just inside, someone
had apparently been camping, leaving a bunch of empty beer cans and
cigarette butts behind.  A smear of something that looked suspiciously
like blood covered one wall.

    More than all that, though, it was cold, dark, and silent.  No-one
had lived there for a long time.

    I sat down, heavily, on the dying grass.  And wondered what the hell
I was supposed to do now.     


             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'