Why give up?
Till the End
Looking back, Natsuki should have seen it coming. Yes, the black-clad soldiers had saved them, but what had they saved them from? Black-clad soldiers. It hadn’t been an act perpetrated by a single group, since the fighting had been very, very real—Natsuki herself had killed a pair of them—but their means had been similar; why shouldn’t their motives be as well?
This piece of introspection came to her remarkably easily as she opened her eyes, allowing her head a moment to adjust to the sudden, unexpected change of scenery. The bizarre, momentarily inexplicable change in décor: From the back of a black van that smelled mildly of tobacco and gunpowder, trying desperately not to get in the way of the combat helicopter that had started to strafe their convoy about two minutes after they’d been loaded away; to the near-black room, made of what the back of her skull, pressed up against it, told her was very cheap concrete or stone, which smelled vaguely of urine and turpentine. Her head was still foggy, probably from whatever it was that had caused this odd lapse in her internal clock, and probably the external one as well, so for the moment, she felt fairly content to lay there, pondering the merits of a hard, piss-stained floor as a pillow. Maybe she would have, too.
Natsuki sat bolt upright for reasons she would only be able to explain much later, a searing pain tearing through her stomach and up her torso. It seemed to stop moving at her breastbone, and for one tense moment, she thought she would be spending the duration of her prison stay in rapidly mounting agony. A second later, her gorge rose, and she bent over and let her stomach empty onto the piss-stained floor that had served so faithfully for so short a time as her pillow. Her vomit was a ripe green, something she hadn’t really seen in vomit before, and smelled strongly of the same turpentine she was quite certain she smelled out of the room.
She put a hand to her stomach, which settled almost as soon as it was empty, and stayed in that position for a few seconds, tiny droplets of stomach acid hanging from her flushed lips, her whole body tingling.
It took her a few seconds to realize that her hand, clutched to her stomach, was warmer than her other hand, still holding her up off the stone floor. She pondered this abnormality for a moment, and then, with more effort than she’d have expected, sat up on her calves and took her hand away from her stomach.
It came away red, and not just a little. Blood dripped from her palm, full to the brim, seeping between her fingers and off of the sides. Startled, she looked down, found a rapidly-spreading stain on the left side of her shirt, plastering the thin fabric to her flesh.
For a minute, she found she could only stare at it, watching it spread in an oddly symmetrical fashion. Shouldn’t the bottom be progressing faster than the top? Is that just the myth of gravity?
No, wait.
She shook her head once, and then again, found it did her no good. She knew what it was she had to do, she just couldn’t come up with it. It was like her head was filled with lead and she couldn’t seem to get past it, no matter how hard she blinked, no matter how many times she shook it.
Was I drugged?
Or have I just lost more blood than I thought?
How long have I been out?
She wasn’t sure. The answer was, again, just underneath the layer of lead that had made its way into her skull. Just like all the other answers. She could get to them, but the digging was just too much. Best to send a canary in first, make sure there’s not some kind of gas still sitting
Gas.
Fucking
Gas.
What that meant, she wasn’t sure. She knew it was important. Damn important. Did they gas me?
It seemed likely. After all, she couldn’t trust them. Not at all.
Somehow, her mistrust and the validations of her inherent paranoia seemed to bring her enough motivation not to let herself bleed out all over the stone floor. Slipping out of her shirt, she ripped a shred off of it—it came off surprisingly easy, which meant she’d probably been ripped off when she bought it—while she looked at her cut more intently—it was fairly large, but surprisingly clean.
Where the hell would I have gotten something like this? Shouldn’t it be nastier if it came from a fight? It almost looks like I was cut with a scalpel.
Refusing to think on it more for the moment, with her brainpower so limited already, Natsuki tied the mostly-rectangular strip around her ribcage, making sure to apply as much pressure as she could to the cut area, which was already starting to clot a little.
Probably it had been mostly clotted when I woke up, and moving around like a dumbass ripped it open again. Hopefully the shirt would help it heal better, stop her from unconsciously being a bad patient again.
That’s what he used to call her when she showed up torn and bloody—a bad patient. He wasn’t even a doctor, he’d just splash on some hydrogen peroxide (Double-H Double-O, he called it) and then bandage her up and leave her laying on his couch, naked as the day she was born if it was really bad, and when she woke up he’d be gone, and she’d leave until she needed somebody to splash on some double-HO and bandage her up again when she couldn’t do it herself.
She considered leaving what was left of her shirt where it lay, decided against it. Her recent months sans violence had verily exponentiated her modesty, and she couldn’t quite bring herself back to where she’d been before, not on a whim anyway.
She had just finished donning her shirt when somebody said, “You know, we do have bandages. Had we known you were going to make such a mess of yourself, we’d have kept them on you longer.”
Lead-head it is.
Natsuki lifted her lead-head as quickly as she could, taking great care not to disturb the equilibrium within that she suspected was preventing her from a debilitating headache. Standing outside of her cell was a tall, casually-dressed man whose fingers, one set cupping his elbow while the other stroked several days worth of stubble on his chin, were far too long and far too thin for his not-unimpressive gut. He had a thin mess of hair, like a toupee but fairly obviously attached to his skull, covering his baldness, and it seemed to Natsuki strangely reminiscent of a man wearing a leaf to cover his privates. She snickered at the thought, unable to control herself. Do I have a concussion? The answer seemed increasingly to be yes, though she thought that if she did, her brain ought to be kicking at her skull about now.
If it bothered the man, he didn’t show it. Only smiled at her. “You heal remarkably quickly, Miss Kuga.”
How does he know my name?
Oh, right. He’s got me locked up. He knows whatever the hell he wants to.
“Though I daresay you’re rather lucky to be alive, in spite of this.”
“Some good it does me,” she said, her words coming out slurred into, “shome gooit uzz ee.” She blinked, and then touched the left side of her face, finding the sensation dulled considerably. For a single terrified, horrible moment she feared that maybe she’d suffered some sort of brain damage when they did…whatever they did, but a second later, the man said, “If you’re having trouble feeling that half of your face, don’t worry about it. It’s probably just a side-effect of the anesthetic we gave you. Now…” he almost seemed as though he was enjoying himself, “what precisely did you say?”
Natsuki grimaced, screwed her face up in focus. “I shed,” she said as clearly as she could, “shome guud it tus me. You sheem to have me locked up nishly.”
The man blinked twice, absorbing it as best he could, and then laughed of a sudden. “Locked up?” he said, chuckling to himself. “Have you tested the door to your cell yet? I suppose not. You only just woke up, after all.”
Natsuki frowned. She wanted to stand up, whether to test the door or to punch the man, she wasn’t certain. “What…” she gathered herself as best she could, wanting to sound threatening but willing to settle for not sounding pathetic. “What…am I doing here…if I’m not locked up?”
“I wonder,” the man smiled—that was to say, his lips curved upwards—and Natsuki decided at once that it wasn’t any kind of smile at all. “It wasn’t me who put you here, after all. I’m here to retrieve you, in fact. I’m afraid the captain insisted on detaining you until you’d been checked out as…how did he put it?” The man paused, and scratched at his face again. “Calmed.”
liar liar pants on fire
Strangely, this was not the first time this thought had occurred to Natsuki that day.
“Faut you shed I wash shedated,” Natsuki murmured, her eyes narrowing. The man wasn’t lying, per se—or if he was, he was good enough at it that worrying on it further would serve no purpose—but he was plainly not being friendly with her, which, when she considered his pleasant demeanor, was a lie unto itself, and therefore something to pay very, very close attention to. As she thought this, she felt her adrenaline pick up, and her head cleared a little.
“The captain found your actions on the Goza beach impressive enough that he wished to take no chances. I sincerely apologize for your present conditions.” At this, he actually bowed, though it, like his smile, was not truly a bow—the look on his face for a moment was too ugly. Too bitter.“If you’d like to come with me, I’m quite certain we can give you something for your pain.”
To her surprise, Natsuki found that there wasn’t much. That didn’t mean that she could stand—she moved into a squatting position, but found her legs to be not much more use than jelly—but as her head cleared of whatever had mucked it up (ironically, also a bit like jelly) no thudding, eye-bursting pain seemed to step in to fill the gap.
“Ah, still having trouble walking.” His back straight again, his face seemed to simply melt back into its previous smile, and after a moment, that burning
hatred
ugliness was simply gone again. “I’ll have somebody bring you a wheelchair at once.”
The idea immediately repelled Natsuki, who didn’t like the idea of being stuck with her back to somebody she barely knew, but she figured it couldn’t be too long before she was up and about again.
As though possessed with a dour sort of ESP, the man said almost immediately, “If you can’t walk now, I wouldn’t expect to be able to for at least a day or two,” he said. “We had to make an incision into your leg when we got to you, to remove a piece of shrapnel before it cut into your femoral artery. In the process we had to move some muscle aside, and I’m afraid we may have done some damage, due to the urgency of the whole thing. I’m afraid field surgeons are never the gentlest of hands in any case, but they saved your life, so I’m sure you’ll forgive them.”
Natsuki grimaced. I can’t wheel myself, either. Not with this gash on my side. “What happened here?” she asked, her words a little less muddled, clutching her bloody, bare side.
“A similar fate, I’m afraid,” the man said solemnly, only he wasn’t really solemn at all. “I can tell you, if you’d like, or I can save the tale for a time when you’re feeling more yourself.”
“Ish it long?” Natsuki managed to prop herself up so that her torso was straight, at least. It took some doing, between her half-numb ass and a pair of arms which she was hesitant to move more than a few centimeters in either directions, but she did it nonetheless. She was impressed, anyway.
“In gory detail? Yes.” The man scratched his chin again. “A military-style report is rarely brief and hardly ever fascinating enough to guarantee your consciousness all the way through, drugs or no. If you’d like, I can give you the condensed version while…excuse me.” He paused, and Natsuki heard a phone buzzing quietly from somewhere on his person. He dug into the pockets of his slacks, extracted a small cellular phone, and flipped it open, raised it to his ear.
“Yes?” he said curtly, turning away but not dropping his voice. “Yes, there was blood. I should have your head, but I think I’ll settle with your fee for now. Yes, and bring a wheelchair.” At this, he shut the phone and turned back to Natsuki, and again she caught the last vestiges of The Ugly fleeing from his face. “Please excuse me,” he said. “I do have a great deal of business these days.”
Natsuki frowned. “Who are you?”
“Who am I?”
“You. Them. All of this.” Her mouth was getting better by the minute, and Natsuki was beginning to suspect that maybe the numbness had had more to do with the way she’d been laying than any sort of drugs.
And that makes sense, doesn’t it? In a twisted sort of way, it does. If their anesthetics dulled me that badly, I probably wouldn’t be half as coherent as I am. Adrenaline can’t push off a really tough dose of tranquilizer, and I’m obviously on some sort of juice, since there’s a giant gash in my side and another one in my leg that I can’t feel.
Thinking about it like this made Natsuki feel good in an odd sort of way. It was almost nostalgic—the way her mind seemed to slide out of her body as she thought about her situation objectively, judged her surroundings. It provided her with a calmness she could never find anywhere else. It was something she hadn’t felt in quite a long time—that feeling of coolness, of readiness in spite of the drugs. It was one of the things, though she never really thought on it, that made her such a dangerous person. A dangerous warrior.
“I can’t tell you much,” the man said. “Mercenaries are notoriously taciturn about their private affairs, but I can tell you that you are currently under the protection and employ of the Third Swiss Remnants, a fully-supported regiment of mercenaries of the very finest caliber. You are sitting in a cell in an abandoned prison not awfully far away from where the van was—forgive me,” he paused, shaking his head at himself. This annoyed Natsuki—on another man, maybe it would have been charming, but this man was bookish, and although he was well-spoken, he came off as just slightly
insane
off-color, which ruined the effect he was going for.
“I’ll tell you the story of the van in a bit. In any event, you are not far from Goza, though I’m sure you understand that we have enemies that you are not to leak that information to.” He gave her a secretive sort of wink, something that she was sure was supposed to represent camaraderie, but was, as with so many things about him, hopelessly out of place. “And I…” he shrugged, and this seemed to suit him better. “I’m an accountant.” He smiled at her. “But in times of crisis,”
liar liar pants on fire
“we all must rise above our station, don’t you think?”
Crisis…?
Something dinged out of Natsuki’s view, and the man looked towards it, scratched his beard again. Another thing that seemed to suit him—it was probably a nervous habit, Natsuki decided.
People display nervous habits when they lie.
She kept that in mind, too.
“Ah,” he said. “Pardon me. It would seem that I have a bit of business to attend to before getting your wheelchair. My apologies.” He started walking, and Natsuki noticed his gait to be long and awkward—he probably wasn’t lying about being an accountant, either, she decided. But he was lying, of that she was certain.
Even so…
Was it possible that what he’d alluded to was true?
If she looked back at it very hard, she could remember some of it; how they’d ridden in the van, a few of them—Midori, mostly, along with Minoru and Natsuki herself, kicking ideas around about what precisely was going on, though it seemed that Shizuru was holding back on something. As though she knew precisely what the answer was to that all-important question that they were kicking around, and she simply had not been questioned about it properly. They really couldn’t come up with anything, though—many of them had become well-versed with fighting—too well-versed—but none of them had experience with this sort of thing—military affairs. Escalation. That was a word Minoru had thrown in there a lot. Escalation. It made a queer sort of sense to Natsuki, though she wasn’t quite sure how yet.
And then there was Mai.
Mai simply sat there, holding Mikoto close to her on one side, and holding Yuuichi close on the other. Mikoto had clung to her with a strange look on her face—something a bit like determination. Yuuichi had tried to hold her, but Mai would have none of it. She had whispered something into his ear when he tried to put up a snit about it, and about midway through, his eyes had sort of…sparked out, like a lightbulb switched off.
That’s not right.
Like a lightbulb after it’s been hit with a baseball bat.
He had started to say something back.
Before he could finish, the world had decided to quit around them. First tentatively—the van had rocked, and hard, sending them all into other people’s places—places they didn’t necessarily have any business being—but before anybody could get embarrassed about them, the van had jerked again, and then the world had torn itself apart around them. Natsuki remembered being flung out of her seat, her mind locked up in numbing panic, and then a sharp pain and
men with guns
It had happened to her a few times before—being suddenly and unexpectedly deprived of her consciousness. The most recent case was when Miyu—that bloody blue-haired robot, probably the most frightening thing Natsuki had ever seen, HiME carnival or no, because nobody should be able to move that god damned fast—had dropped behind her in a strange, stone room underneath Fuuka Academy, zapped her with something
on my neck
her hand moved faster than it should have been able to in her condition, but slower than she could have moved were she in better shape. She practically slapped at the back of her neck, then came back, more slowly, and felt around, searching to see if the area was tender or extra-sensitive.
It wasn’t. After another second, she was able to breathe again. She gently touched her leg, found it relatively numb. He wasn’t lying about that, either.
He was lying, though, and Natsuki got the feeling that whatever he was lying about, she had better catch on, but quick, or she was going to run the risk of getting into whatever it was she was getting into completely unprepared.
Because she was getting into something. Maybe if she’d known what, things wouldn’t have gone in the chaotic direction they did.
Or maybe they would have. She did not, after all, have her gun anymore, and it would be guns that she would need, and soon. She knew this on some level.
It didn’t make her happy.
She wanted him to come back. The man who was lying about something. She wanted him to come back and tell her what happened to the rest of her friends. Had they even survived?
What if they’re—
What if she is…
Impossible. Her mind rejected it offhand. These people couldn’t kill Shizuru. She was too strong, and sometimes, she was too
insane
focused. Before they got close…
If they got close, Natsuki felt as though Shizuru might resurrect the HiME star, gift it with all of its immense energy, singlehandedly, just to see them all dead in front of her. Especially after what Natsuki had done back at the camp, just before they’d all left. Especially after that.
Especially after…
“What was that?” Shizuru’s voice was hoarse when Natsuki pulled away from the kiss. “What was that, Natsuki? Tell me what that was.”
“That was…” Natsuki didn’t know how to say it. Natsuki didn’t know what it was she didn’t know how to say. “That was…” she let a breath out. “That was me asking you not to leave. To stick it out with us, to keep going. Until the end, one way or another.”
“To stick with us?” Shizuru didn’t say it as though it was a question. Probably it wasn’t. It was a sort of cool, if overly-assuming, confidence that she had—before, it had scared Natsuki. Before, when she’d tried to kill everybody.
No, that was a lie. It scared her now, too. Scared her so very, very much. Natsuki was a warrior, a fighter with the talents of a trained soldier, but independence and creativity to match it, and Natsuki was not often scared.
But Shizuru…Shizuru scared her. The cold
predatory
focus in her eyes sometimes.
One time in particular.
And even so, she’d kissed her. And Natsuki thought she might just do it again, at that.
“To stick with me,” Natsuki admitted. “I need you here, now. Mai is nearly…useless because of what happened, so I think you’re the only one I can count on if things turn ugly.”
Shizuru smiled. Natsuki was lying a little, and both of them knew it.
liar liar pants on fire
Shizuru smiled, and slid her arms around Natsuki’s waist. “I’ll help you, Natsuki,” she said, the truth flooding out of her voice. “I’ll help you, if you’ll kiss me again.”
It should have sounded sick. I’ll help you save the lives of these people if you’ll give me a kiss. Oddly enough, though, it didn’t. It sounded almost … natural to Natsuki. Maybe it was something she’d expect from Shizuru. Maybe it was just something she expected at the moment. After all, where was she? Behind a cabin, her arms still around the pale, smooth, bare waist of this girl…
this beautiful girl who
her lips still a little moist from the lips of this girl who…
entrances you so and
was pressing herself up against her waist, and a little more than that, against someplace just a little bit lower; this girl who
scares you just a little
loved her so much that it was
horrifying
astounding.
So why not?
Why not indeed.
She kissed Shizuru again, bringing her closer this time, wrapping her hands tight about her waist. It was different this time than it had been before. Than it had been all those times before. Those times, it had almost been like a first kiss, every time. This time it was different—this time there was something more to the way Shizuru gripped Natsuki’s shirt in back; the way her hand roamed around the back of her waist. This time there was a hunger to it that half of Natsuki’s body immediately rebelled against, and half of it, most notably something far lower than her heart, embraced.
They broke it eventually, and Shizuru smiled at Natsuki. It was a lover’s smile, yes, but there was something more to it.
i told you so
liar liar pants on fire
“I’ll help you,” Shizuru said. “I would have no matter what, Natsuki, but since you put it so concisely, we’ll do it your way.”
Her way indeed.
Had her way gotten them all killed? Were they all dead because of her way?
What was the alternative, though? To let Shizuru just walk into the arms of…whoever? The gaping black maw of soldiers?
Somehow, Natsuki thought that wouldn’t be enough to satiate it. Not thought. Knew.
But even so.
Did that mean that they were all dead because of nobody in particular?
They can’t all be dead. Back where she started. Simply because Shizuru would not allow it.
She could only put her faith in that. What little she had.
She laid back down. After putting her faith in that, she could only wait.
Waiting was always the hardest part.
The man smiled. “I can double your going rate for this contract, Mister Alder; I’ve said that already. I would think that this number alone—and it is a sizable number, as I’m sure you understand—should settle the matter for you.”
“Money’s no good if you’re too busy decomposing to spend it,” Minoru said. “Whatever’s going on around here—”
“I’m afraid I really can’t give you any details,” the man interrupted, and Minoru grinned inwardly. Bingo.
“Didn’t ask for them. What I was gonna say was that whatever’s going on around here is pretty nasty. I have a hard time believing you even found a Merc regiment to hire, let alone were able to afford them, no matter how much you claim to be able to pay me. Nasty situations rarely have such a neat, tidy ending.”
“Well,” the man smiled, “the Sino-Russian conflict does seem to have taken a rather bloody turn in the past months. I think you’ll find that mercenary regiments are popping up out of retirement all over the place. It’s a good time to be a hired gun, if I do say so myself. I wouldn’t dream of sullying my ranking with the mercenaries now by killing one of their own.”
I know a lot of people who would say it’s always a good time to be a hired gun. Me, I think I’d say quite the opposite. Isn’t that why I…
You didn’t quit, Minoru.
But I did. I retired. I stopped whoring my gun out to all but the most inane of buyers, pretty much only for contracts that I wouldn’t even have to fly to fill. Backyard shit. What the fuck am I doing back here?
The money was too good. That was what you’d said. The money was too good, and he seemed very intent on having you.
How the hell did he even find my name? I’ve been retired for over a year and a half. If what he’s saying is true, my name should have been off the directory in six months.
This matter, Minoru thought, merited further investigation. He had a couple of people. A couple of friends. Even an old retired sniper made friends now and then.
“What happened to the rest of them?” he asked of a sudden. “What happened to the rest of the kids?” He almost sounded like a concerned parent when he asked.
“Taken, I’m afraid,” the man said a bit regretfully. Minoru didn’t like it one bit—it sounded like a man repenting over a bad business deal, not a man who had just lost children to soldiers. “When the van was hit, we rushed a medevac to the area and started pulling people out, but we’d only managed to get you and one other to the van by the time their column hit the wreck zone. The soldiers panicked and fled. They’re being disciplined now, but the damage is done.”
“What do you think…”
“If I had to guess, I’d color them dead,” the man said with that same note of regret, but this time there was something else to it. He scratched at his beard as he said it, and Minoru thought, nervous habit. Something to do with your hands so they don’t get in your mouth’s way while you’re spitting bullshit. “I’m afraid our enemies want something entirely different from what we want, and I think they’re willing to—and, indeed, intend to—kill to get what they need.”
“And what is that?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you much of that, either, I’m afraid. It’s none of your concern, in any case. I’ve paid you, and so you should consider our dealings at an end. I have a jet ready to fly you out of the area, and it’ll leave in an hour. Your contract has been purchased, so you have no choice in this matter.” The man sounded almost frustrated. Minoru made a note of that, too. “You weren’t wounded badly, so I expect you’ll be able to walk out of here on your own. The man outside will escort you to your jet. As for me…” he smiled, and Minoru thought that it was no kind of smile at all, “I have a wheelchair to deliver to a young lady.”
“Which is it?” Minoru blurted—something he rarely did—without meaning to. “Which of the girls, that is?”
The man gave him a queer look. “Her name is Natsuki Kuga. Does that mean anything to you?”
It did, but damned if he was going to admit it. He shrugged as best I could. “I guess not.”
The man nodded. “Well, then. Please excuse me,” he said, and then stood and was gone.
As he left, Minoru found himself thinking a strange thought. A simple kid’s phrase he hadn’t thought of in years: Liar, liar, pants on fire.
As for him, he caught onto what the man was lying about considerably faster than Natsuki did.
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