Book 3 Chapter 4
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  Shadow shut down his third eye and left the sea of scrying images behind to rejoin the visible world. He had found his partner. It was a beautiful soul. A gaping maw in the center of a dark cave, even darker than the pitch black around it, only the maw had a deeper hole inside of it, which was even darker than the rest of the open mouth, and inside the hole there was an even deeper hole, darker than all the rest, leading all the way down into an infinite Abyss. His vessel would be an avatar of despair. Shadow was here to spread despair across the human world, by choking out all of their brightest lights and casting them into eternal darkness. He didn't need to kill them. Once they were in despair, they would destroy themselves, one way or another. In a decade or a millennia. It was all one to Shadow, so long as the job was done, he was content. With wyrd lifespans, they would be able to view the end personally either way. And with wyrd patience, waiting wasn't onerous in the least. For a soul to have such perfect despair, for a human to have already reached the point Shadow intended to throw all the rest of mankind, was such perfect symmetry. It wouldn't take much to prod a soul like that into action.

  "Flame, I'm off to recruit. Have you decided on someone yet?" Shadow nudged his partner who was still lost in the infinite imagery of the third eye.

  Flame was silent a moment longer, then relaxed and opened his eyes. "He's angry. I can use that. What a delicious anger it was, too."

  "Make sure he can get along with my partner. We're a two-man team." Shadow reminded Flame.

  "And how am I supposed to know that when you haven't even shown me your partner?" Flame blinked a questioning orange.

  "Well just don't hire a berserker or something. We need a tool, not a live explosive." Shadow reminded.

  "I know what I'm doing," Flame retorted.

  "It never hurts to check." Shadow said, shutting the argument down. "Let's have them meet up at a coffee shop or something. Are you ready?"

  "Ready." Flame blinked. "I think you'll be delighted." Flame glowed confidently.

  "Same here." Shadow glowed a happy gray. Things had not gone very well up until this point. Shadow and Flame had been some of the first wyrds to volunteer for service Earthside. If God planned on killing off the wyrds and replacing them with some sort of tiny insect grubs from a lower dimension, they had wanted to put a spike in God's eye. A sort of "we're here, and we're not going to take this," message right to God's callous heart. But the hyperdimensional tube hadn't functioned according to predictions. Not only had it folded them down through space, but it had folded them forward in time as well. So even though they should have been fighting alongside their comrades from the beginning, here they were, only now reaching the Earth seven years after their fold began. Amaranth had told them that similar mishaps had occurred all across the timeline. Some wyrds had ended up ten years back in time, and no doubt other wyrds would be appearing three years later for the first time, unaware of all that had happened during their journey.

  If Shadow and Flame had been here from the beginning, none of this would have happened. There would have been no organized Choice Giver resistance. The world wouldn't still cling to hope. Their connection to the dissidents in government who had smuggled the plans for the folding device to them wouldn't have been exposed and shut down. And most of all, they never would have allowed humans to escape to parallel dimensions. The Wyrd Council was a defeated shell of itself. But it was never too late to turn things around. Amaranth was right about that. Now that they were here, the direction of the wind had changed.

* * *

  "I'm home," Isao Oono announced, taking off his shoes and placing them carefully in the foyer.

  "Big brother! Mom! Big brother's back!" A twelve year old boy raced up and grabbed Isao by the arm, who promptly pulled him straight into the air to float giggling with excitement.

  "Hey Tetsuo, how's it going?" Isao asked his little brother.

  "Did you really fight bad guys?" Tetsuo asked. "I told all my friends you were a superhero, but they didn't believe me."

  "Of course I'm a superhero. I wrote it all down in my letter, right? I've been killing bad guys left and right. Sunup to sundown. Stab! Stab! Stab! Just like that." Isao punched his arm forward illustratively, sending Tetsuo swinging back and forth in the air precariously.

  "Aaagh, let me down, let me down!" Tetsuo complained.

  Isao lowered his arm enough to give his brother footing, only to face the rest of his family lined up in front of him.

  "Welcome home, Isao. Have you been well?" Mom asked.

  "Is this the girl you wanted to introduce?" Dad asked, looking appraisingly at the shy Shiori hiding behind Isao's back.

  "I'm fine, Mom. Has Maria already moved out?" Isao asked a little sadly, wishing he had gotten to see his older sister too.

  "She's living with her boyfriend, they've got a motorcycle shop of all things." Mom said.

  "Haha! That's just like her. Well, tell her I said 'hi,' okay?" Isao asked.

  "She said to tell you 'hi' if you dropped by with your new bride. Oh, she also wants to know when the wedding date is, so she can arrange around it." Mom remembered.

  "That's up to Shiori," Isao stepped aside, and pulled his pride and joy in front of him with his hands on her shoulders.

  "Pleased to meet you," Shiori bowed. "I'll be under your care from here on, M-mom, D-dad."

  "Likewise, please take care of us from here on." Both Isao's parents bowed solemnly. "So you're the one that brought back our wayward son?" Dad smiled affectionately, deciding she was pretty and polite enough for anyone.

  "I just wanted to meet everyone. We're family, after all." Shiori explained nervously. "Maybe, we could have your blessing?"

  "I'm sure Isao knows what's best," Mom waved the old fashioned idea away. "Of course you have our blessing, if you want it. Now let's all have some tea." She clapped and started escorting people away from the front door and towards the living room.

  "Ah, Mom, that's boring. I want to hear about Isao stabbing the bad guys." Tetsuo complained.

  "The bad guys can wait, child." Mom replied. "If it's too boring go out and play."

  "So how many did you get?" Dad asked, secretly just as curious as his escorted-outside-youngest-son.

  Isao's note had been legendary around the family and was still displayed on a shelf next to his parent's anniversary presents and grandfather's china ware:

 

  "Dear Mom and Dad,

  I have been chosen for an important duty that only I can do. Don't worry about me, and tell everyone at school sorry for the short notice. I'm going to kill the bad guys. All of them. Until then,

  Sincerely,

  Isao."

  "Asia's done. I'm working on Africa now." Isao smiled proudly.

  "So it was you. I should have known." Dad shook his head.

  "What do you mean?" Mom asked, not following at all.

  "We raised quite the terrorist." Dad chuckled.

  "We prefer the term 'freedom fighter,'" Isao grinned back.

  "What are you two going on about?" Isao's mom put her fists on her hips.

  "I don't know how, honey, and I don't think I'm allowed to ask either. But that's how it is. Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea. That entire wave of democratic uprisings? The perpetrator's standing right in front of us." Dad clapped Isao on the shoulder.

  "Though the Korea one caused a little too much trouble." Isao apologized. Shiori had had to clean up after his mess there. Who would have thought a unified Korea was a trigger for World War III?

  "And since you're bragging about it so openly, I suppose this girl's wrapped up in it too?" Mom asked askance.

  "She knows about it." Isao qualified.

  "Well, I can't say you're wrong. You've made a lot of people happy, Isao. But try to be safe." Mom complained.

  "Keep it a secret, or there will be reprisals directed towards you." Isao warned. "You might want to wait a few years before trusting Tetsuo with the details."

  "Of course you're right." Mom agreed, moving over to the kitchen to prepare their tea. "You were trying to keep us safe, weren't you?"

  "It crossed my mind." Isao smiled, sitting down on his old couch where he used to sit watching TV and doing homework.

  "Well, that's all water under the bridge. You're here now, and that's what matters. What I really want to know is how you two met. If that isn't classified information?" Mom arched an eyebrow.

  "It was through a mutual friend." Isao said.

  "It was at a hospital." Shiori replied simultaneously.

  "That hardly counts." Isao objected, turning on his fiancee.

  "I don't know about you, but that's when I fell in love." Shiori smiled.

  "Then why didn't you say anything at the time?" Isao complained.

  "I was thirteen! Do you think I could have said something that embarrassing?" Shiori shook her head at the idea.

  "Thirteen. Why, Isao!" Mom looked shocked.

  "It's a misunderstanding! We met again when she was nineteen!" Isao protested.

  "Uh-huh." Mom turned back to her tea doubtfully.

  "Shiori wasn't even pretty at thirteen. At first I thought she was a boy - -" Isao's sentence was stopped with an oof as an elbow landed on his chest.

  "It's all a misunderstanding, Mom." Shiori piped in with a high pitched ladylike laugh. "Why, he was dating a different thirteen year old girl at the time."

  "Isao!" Mom turned on him, scandalized.

  "It's a misunderstanding! I was only fifteen! And she was the one who asked! And we only held hands!" Isao sputtered.

  "At first." Shiori grumbled behind her hand. She knew exactly how far those two had gone.

  "Well, if you say so." Isao's Mom lightheartedly threw the concern away. "Tea's ready. I think we'll get along just fine, Shiori."

  "What a coincidence." Shiori said with her widest eyed innocence. "I was thinking the same thing!"

  Isao decided to go outside and play catch with Tetsuo.

* * *

  Yume Minami lay in a slightly elevated bed, staring at the ceiling. She was ten years old, but her life was already over. Her family had been taking a trip to the beach this summer vacation, when a drunk driver careened around a corner and slammed into them head on. Her father, mother, and little brother had died instantly. She hadn't been so lucky. When the paramedics had pulled her out of her crumpled metal tomb, she hadn't felt any pain. She hadn't felt anything beneath her neck. She had broken her spinal cord. There was no cure. Her entire body was paralyzed for life. Impersonal nurses would come in every day to give her a sponge bath and exchange out bedpans, but no one she knew visited. Everyone she knew was dead. The nurses had put a vase with a plastic orange sunflower within her eyesight to cheer up the sterile white room. She liked to look at that flower and smile at a well played joke. I've lost my family, my friends, and my future, but at least I have an artificial flower. Thanks, God.

  The most hilarious part of the joke is that the drunk driver had survived uninjured. She thought he was serving five years in jail somewhere for his crime. Yume hadn't committed any crime, but she was imprisoned for life. Imprisoned inside her own dead body. Imprisoned by a stubbornly beating heart that wouldn't stop no matter how many times she told it to. Imprisoned by a will too weak to hold her breath until she died or bite her tongue in two and bleed to death. When the drunk driver got out of jail, he'd get to run and jump and play again, none the worse for wear. But she couldn't get any time off for good behavior. She couldn't be rehabilitated. No one would forgive her. It was impossible to live, and impossible to die. Her life was a case study in futility. And to think, just three months ago. No, to be precise, just two months and seventeen days ago, she had run to school. She had skipped rope without thinking twice about it. She had wrestled with her little brother and sent him crying to Mom as a daily ritual. The little snitch. As though he didn't start the fights in the first place.

  Within her short term memory, within just a few seconds ago, she had been alive. All of this could just be a dream, a fairy tale. She could wake up to an alarm clock and jump out of bed, shouting, "I'm going to be late, I'm going to be late!" It could still happen. After all, her memories from before the accident were still so clear. Her memory of spreading jelly with a knife across bread, of an arm and fingers that replied so deftly, so dexterously, so cleverly to her tiniest impulse. Her memory of jumping over a rainy puddle with infinitely strong legs that could take her anywhere. They were still fresh. So she might still be asleep. It could still all just be a long, long nightmare.

  Yume didn't cry. She had cried herself out long ago. She didn't ball up her fists and dig her nails into her palm. She couldn't control her fists. She didn't curl up into a ball and hold her knees tight against her chest. She couldn't change her position. So instead she stared at an empty white ceiling and hoped she would be waking up soon now. She had waited so patiently for so long. The nightmare was sure to end in the next five minutes. She started counting patiently to see if it would.

  "It's time to change, Minami." A nurse said with fake cheer, knocking on the door.

  Yume didn't bother replying. What could she do, refuse? She couldn't feel her own body, but it still had to be taken care of, or it would start bruising and becoming infected. Her worse than useless body, which should have just been amputated at the neck, meant she had to go through this humiliating ritual every day. But that was okay. She was up to two minutes. She was going to wake up soon.

  The nurse caught Minami's mood, and quietly went about her duty. It was a pitiable patient. One of her friends had simply quit after the first week, crying that she couldn't stand nursing anymore. Minami's eyes weren't those of a ten year old's anymore. They were endless pools of despair, that threatened to pull down anyone who made eye contact with her. They were eyes that challenged your faith in the gods. They were mocking eyes. Hateful eyes. And yes, the nurses knew Minami hated all of them. Who wouldn't? After all, every day they walked around in front of her, in perfect health, with a family to go home too, without any problems whatsoever. That was enough to hate anyone. The remaining nurses took this room in shifts, to try to lighten the load on any one of them as much as possible. None of them stayed to talk to the girl. Minami never replied.

  When the nurse had plumped up her pillow and carefully laid Minami's head back down, it was minute four. Minami impatiently started counting the last sixty seconds. By the time the nurse closed the door Minami was up to thirty-four.

  Thirty-five. Thirty-six. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three. Forty-four. Forty-five. Forty-six. Forty-seven. Forty-eight. Forty-nine. Fifty. Fifty-one. Fifty-two. Fifty-three. Fifty-four. Fifty-five. Fifty-six. Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Five minutes.

  Yume stared blankly at the ceiling. Well, she must have gotten enough sleep now. In the next five minutes, her chances of waking up would be even higher.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.

  "Yume Minami," A gray sphere floated through the window and intruded into her field of vision.

  "How would you like to walk again?" The sphere asked. It had no mouth, so she didn't understand how it was speaking. But if this were all a dream, stuff like that could happen easily.

  Yume tried to open her mouth, to respond. But for a moment she had forgotten how. How long had it been since she had said something out loud? Two months? Or maybe just one? Eventually she resurrected her voice into a whispered croak.

  "Yes, please." Yume couldn't sit up excitedly to stare at this new marvel. She couldn't lift her arms up to catch it like a firefly. So she lay still and stared instead.

  "However, there is a price." The gray sphere glowed, making sure she understood.

  "Don't care." Yume whispered.

  "That's the spirit. I knew I could count on you, Yume." The sphere spoke. No one had called her by that name since the accident. Against her will, tears started piling up in the corners of her eyes. She didn't lift up her hands to wipe them off her cheeks. She couldn't move. So tears just gathered up into little beads and trickled down either side of her face.

  "Repeat after me. Via tu lusches, Shadow."

* * *

  Ryu Kitamura was walking home from work. It was an office job, like any other. He was a compliance officer, who went around making sure everyone was following the million regulations local, state, national and international governments had for their company. It wasn't a fun job. People seemed to take his paperwork personally, like he had been the one who had personally passed every single law on the books overseeing every branch of the industry. But it had paid the bills. He had done everything he was supposed to do. He had graduated from college, then from graduate school, and finally landed as an intern at a shipping company. From there he had worked long days and nights putting in his fair share, and slowly been promoted into a real, long-term job suited to his qualifications. Once he had a salary, he had gone through a series of omiai, marriage interviews, set up by his parents with local available girls. He had given them flowers, said the expected words, and waited patiently. Eventually a woman had agreed, and they had married. Because of his sterling qualifications, he was a little ahead of the average man in the game of life. At twenty-eight his wife gave birth to his first child, a son. Everyone had celebrated, and everything had been going well. To make enough money for a real home that could house all of them, and another child to come, he had taken more and more hours at the office. He came home tired and grumpy, because work was always a tug-o-war with the rest of his company who "didn't see the problem with" an obvious problem, or "was only just for a bit" breaking the rules, or saying "surely that didn't mean it applied here" when of course that's exactly where the law applied. But did anyone thank him for keeping their company safe from lawsuits? Of course not. They just grumbled about their 'little dictator' and tried to slink out of their next regulation like they'd never learned a thing from the previous round.

  But that was okay, because he was being paid to take abuse like that. He'd taken that money and bought an expensive mortgage. It was a small house, only tycoons could afford a large house in Japan, but it was above average. It would take decades to pay off, but that was okay too. His job was secure and he was good at it. Everything was going according to plan.

  And then, out of nowhere.

  "I want a divorce."

  What for? For working? Should I have been a homeless bum instead? He hadn't beaten her. He hadn't even yelled at her. He hadn't cheated on her. Hell, he didn't have enough time to even look at other girls. He hadn't done anything. But she wanted a divorce anyway. There was nothing he could say to change her mind. He was too confused to be able to say much in his defense anyway.

  His wife had happily kept the house his work had paid for. She kept his son too, a son he'd barely gotten to spend time with while they were married, and usually only when the child was already asleep. Now he didn't have a son at all. From this distance, too young for the son to even remember his father, there was no way he could have any influence on the child. There was no way he could be in the child's life in any meaningful way. She had taken everything from him. Legally, freely, and without a shred of guilt.

  It was apparently all his fault. He hadn't been loving enough. Whatever that meant.

  Two weeks after the divorce was finalized in court and she had gotten the house, the car, and the kid, her boyfriend moved in with her. She had apparently been cheating on him for months.

  That was his fault too, she explained. She had been lonely. He hadn't been romantic enough. He'd left her alone too many days in a row. It was only natural.

  Ryu wondered what 'natural' meant in this world. If it meant women could take everything a man ever cared about, throw it onto a sidewalk, stomp on it, spit on it, and then walk away laughing, with the full endorsement and backing of society and the law, and a few claps followed by 'you go girls!' Then he supposed life was 'only natural.' Only, no one had told him ahead of time this was what natural meant. They had given him one story, about what he had to do and what he could expect in return. But they had pulled a bait and switch. Really, all he could ever have expected from women was this. A plan so universally endorsed and approved of that his wife had never even blinked an eye. For the rest of her life, she would sit around laughing with her boyfriend over what a fool Ryu had been. What a jerk. What a loser. What a guilty scumbag who deserved everything that happened. After all, the courts had sided with her, right? And all of her friends would agree with her, laughing that of course he had it coming. Her boyfriend would agree with her, laughing that of course you should dump a guy like that. It was in their self interest to side with her. The boy got to steal another man's wife. The women got the right to do the same in the future to their husbands without recrimination. Everyone won.

  Everyone but Ryu Kitamura. But no one gave a damn about him. The world had made that point quite clearly.

  As he searched for his key in the twilight dusk to open up his tiny cramped apartment -- he was still paying half of his salary in alimony and child support to his ex-wife -- an orange glow appeared behind him.

  "Ryu Kitamura, how would you like the ability to kill people -- and get away with it?" The floating orb spoke.

  "Will they be girls?" Ryu turned around, a fire leaping out from his heart and boiling through all of his limbs with uncontained rage. He didn't care if this was some sting operation or a giant practical joke. This voice had spoken his heart's one true desire, and he wasn't going to miss his chance, however slim, to fulfill it.

  "Most of them." The orange orb replied generously.

  "I'm listening." Ryu folded his arms in front of him.

  "It's quite simple, really. Repeat after me: Via tu lusches, Flame."

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