This is a big one, ladies and gents. Very little character development; now we're just going on what we have, because there's no time for them to dive deep into themselves anymore. If you’re skeptical at the end, give it some time and a few more chapters, and I promise you won’t be.
In case you’re curious, Switzerland has four official languages: German, French, Italian, and Romanish (which is another romance language descended from Latin.)
For all of you unbelievers out there, remember that Minoru’s mother was British, and therefore he grew up bilingual.
The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst / out at you from their hiding place
Like acid and oil on a madman’s face / his reasons tend to fly away.
Astronomy, part one
Natsuki thought at first that it was just the feeling of drugs wearing off; her heart was beating out of her chest, and her nerves and senses felt on fire. Her limbs were filled with a weird, intense sort of energy, as though she had an extra muscle helping to move each one of them. Her motions were more fluid, more controlled, and she felt more at ease with her body than she had in a long time.
Even so, it was strange to think of having one’s first extra-sensory premonition on the roof of an elevator in a pitch-black shaft which smelled of acrid smoke and one’s own sweat, but this was precisely what happened to Natsuki as she mounted the ladder—which she found only by the grace of God, as it was directly next to the crawlspace she’d just climbed out of. All at once, the world went…not dark; it was already dark. The world went dead. The clamor below Natsuki—big, angry men speaking in a language she didn’t understand trying to force a very jammed elevator door open, trying to rouse the “accountant,” trying to, presumably, kill her; the cold feeling of the rusty ladder in her hand; the dull, thumping pain underneath the pins and needles in her side and in her leg—vanished as though it had never been, and all that she was left with was the voice of…somebody who sounded too much like Shizuru to be anybody but her:
Come to me.
…
Come to me.
(What is this? I don’t have time to fuck around, even in my head. Even about Shizuru.)
Come to me, Natsuki.
(Shut the hell up. Where am I? Why can’t I see anything?) Where are you?
I’m someplace not far from you.
(Could this really be her?) I want to come, but I can’t. I don’t know where you are.
You can, Natsuki. It’s very close, after all.
(How is this possible? Did I get hit with a needle full of something?) Are you in this building?
No. You’ll have to leave, but if you do, it’s only a few miles on foot.
I don’t think I can even make it out of here alive.
You can, but I’m afraid that you might have to pay for it. Will you still come to me?
(I need to get out first.) Pay? Pay what?
I can only keep it out a little bit longer, but if you don’t know yet, I’ll try and make sure it doesn’t hit you too hard. The price is very…painful.
What price, damn it? (Is she okay? She sounds as though…as though she’s in pain. Can a voice in your head sound that way?) If you would tell me something, I could—
I have told you everything I can tell you, Natsuki. You’ll just have to get out of there. If you find Minoru, trust him.
Him? You know as well as I do you can’t trust him.
…
…Shizuru? (Oh god what the hell)
Words in a language she didn’t understand. The voice was male. Not like Shizuru. Shizuru’s voice hadn’t quite been like Shizuru either. It had been…more raw.
Since when is Minoru our friend?
The world returned to Natsuki. No time seemed to have passed, or at the very least, her situation had not deteriorated in the slightest.
Well, nobody’s shooting at me, anyway.
Yet.
Looking straight up, there was a small pocket of light at the very top of the elevator shaft. It was a very long way up, but it occurred more than briefly to Natsuki that if the power in this building was gone—and it did, indeed, seem that way, though Natsuki had no idea for how long—that this was probably her best bet for getting out.
Unfortunately, climbing the ladder presented a problem: While her arms were fairly strong, and she was pretty sure she could climb on two arms and one leg, letting her funny-feeling leg hang a little bit, (so that she would, hopefully, be able to run when she had to) she only had one arm, since she was holding a gun in the other. She would have to stuff the gun somewhere, and since she was wearing pants—not the jeans she had worn before the shit had hit the fan that night, but almost…
Is this a prison uniform? Strange that she should think about it now, for the first time.
It was a two-piece jumpsuit, and Natsuki hadn’t really thought to consider its color, but it was loose except at the waist, so Natsuki figured she could probably hold a gun in there at least temporarily. Maybe. Very maybe.
I really, really don’t feel like doing this, she thought, but she realized that she needed to keep a gun, so she did it anyway.
This is probably a Swiss gun, she thought as she felt around the left side of the gun: There was a four-point safety system (a decocking lever, a firing pin safety, a notch to make sure you didn’t accidentally trigger the pin, and a trigger bar disconnecter) and a short barrel, almost as long as the grip itself. Probably a P220. She stuck with just the pin safety: It was important to not blow another hole in her side, but it was also important to make sure that she didn’t spend her chance at shooting the bad guys fiddling with a safety system she had only used twice before, and only at an underground range that wasn’t actually legal.
She stuffed the gun in her pants and started climbing. It got easier. Nobody found her, since nobody could actually see her. Eventually the meatsacks below her got the door open and managed to rescue the “accountant,” but nobody ever really thought to try and shoot her. Maybe they thought she couldn’t escape, or maybe they knew it.
Either way, it doesn’t bode so awfully well for me.
The tough part, he thought as people started running around the base, which turned into a clamor of noise in half a second, even though it was broad daylight outside, would be getting out of a base which was currently populated by a bunch of loud, very fast, very armed Swiss mercenaries, looking like he did—namely, not Swiss. He had a pistol—a silenced USP—but he was quite certain that even though he was a prodigious close-ranged marksman, he simply did not have the ammo stockpile nor the invincible skin necessary to shoot his way out.
If nobody shows up to check this room, I can stay here until nightfall and ditch then, but what are the odds that nobody’s going to check this room by nightfall? In fact, what are the odds that nobody is going to check this room in the next twenty minutes, being as how I just caused a major power outage?
Briefly, he wondered if he had killed anybody. He supposed it was possible; really, he had no idea precisely what had happened when he stuck that enormous metal stake into the ground; he only knew that the wiring coming into the building had started to smoke like a motherfucker.
Real smart, old man. You’ve got your way in, but you’ve got dick for a way out. Real smart.
In addition, it seemed that Shiratori wasn’t picking up his phone anymore.
It was on thinking this that Minoru realized that he had been played for a fool. Or rather, got the idea into his head.
Shiratori is shacking up with a woman named Inoue Nakahara when he’s not avoiding his wife; I even asked how she was doing while I was trying to wheedle a wire out of its casing. Inoue has a shady job at best: She’s ex-military, but not like half of our high-school dropout salarymen are ex-military. She did more than just get learn how to point a gun away from yourself and piddle around a JASDF base; she moved up. Started instituting some major changes in her unit, going so far as to get herself thrown out for slipping the both the male and female members of that squad hormone-suppression drugs.
You’re being paranoid, Minoru. How many good commanders have gotten themselves thrown out of the military? Any one of them could be running the enemy camp.
But it makes sense, doesn’t it?
In that twisted, life-is-less-a-mystery-than-a-series-of-kicks-in-the-crotch sort of way that you’re so fond of, yes. Stop being a dick. Shiratori’s probably boning Inoue right now. Or masturbating. Or fondling women on a train. Or doing anything that doesn’t involve setting you up to take a fall for the enemy camp.
Even so.
It made sense. In a paranoid sort of way, it made a hell of a lot of sense.
Either way, if he doesn’t pick up his damn phone and soon, you’re probably going to die.
You were probably going to die anyway. That was what you were going for, wasn’t it? Blaze of glory? Can’t die of old age, especially not if you die to save some kids you barely know.
We’ve been through this. Keep your cynical trap shut.
The door rattled.
Minoru’s stomach jerked. He raised the gun to what he judged was head level, then, since most of the people out there were more Aryan than Japanese, raised it a little higher. Looking down the barrel brought a strange sort of peace to his mind, but his heart was still pounding.
Before today, I think it had been at least ten years since I killed anybody up close.
Hell of a day, huh.
Huh.
They probably wouldn’t take him prisoner again. He was supposed to be dead already, right?
Thunk-thunk-thunk-wham.
Somebody was hitting the door and saying something in a language he didn’t understand. It sounded like Italian.
Thunk-thunk-thunk-wham.
Whoever was out there didn’t know that Minoru was inside, that much was certain: Nobody was shouting, and Minoru couldn’t hear that tightness of the throat that accompanied soldiers into close, bloody infighting.
They won’t toss a grenade in here. That would run the risk of breaking something really important.
So you’ll get to kill two or three guys before somebody in a vest twists in here and takes your head off. Must be your lucky day.
In spite of himself, Minoru found himself backing up against the wall a little harder. He supposed, in an absent part of his mind, that this was just instinct, but it still seemed silly.
And then something really silly happened: Minoru’s foot pressed hard against a brick, and it came loose.
Thunk-thunk-thunk-crack.
A brick building with a wood door. That’s innovation.
Minoru bent down, not bothering to keep his gun on the door. Whether you kill one or none at all won’t matter for shit, Minoru. If they recognize you they’ll kill you, and if they don’t they’ll haul you in for being in here and then kill you. The brick not only came loose, but pushed out all the way. Minoru’s heart did a little loop-the-loop, and for half a second he let himself think that he might just get out of here. If I can pull a few more bricks, I should be able to dig down and slide out.
Thunk-thunk-thunk-crack.
A new voice, with a tone of authority.
The first voice, angry.
The new voice, yelling something.
A jiggle of the handle. A key? Minoru froze.
And then, blissfully, the sound of several men walking away.
Minoru pulled three more bricks out from alongside the one that he had pulled first. He realized that this was bound to make the building very unstable at some point, but rationalized that probably not all of the bricks were loose like this. Nowhere in his rationale was that even a little brick shack probably had an underground foundation.
Click.
Minoru whipped around just in time to see the door open. Just in time to see a big white man pop his head in and say something in Italian.
Minoru froze, and then some strange, untapped circuit in his head kicked into gear and he turned around. A big man peered in and gave Minoru a funny look, and for a full half of a second Minoru was quite sure he was about to be killed.
Then the moment passed, and Minoru thought without thinking, planned without concentrating, and bent down, grabbed one of the tools—which, he did not take time to consider—that he had dropped so carelessly when he was finished with them and began to unscrew the circuit breaker’s lid, which he had entirely neglected during the course of his sabotage, as though he had been simply startled by the noise.
He knew, but did not actively consider that he could not speak to these men in Japanese.
He thought that if he could communicate on any level with this man he could claim to be some sort of contracted worker, but he did not think up a believable back-story to support this.
He had an idea that as long as he acted confident, he would be accepted, but he did not justify this by pointing out, rightly, that every mercenary unit had to repopulate on the fly sometimes, and so could not be picky about recruiting exclusively from one place or another.
And then, he said in the English that his mother had taught him, “I think there’s a problem with some underground wiring. Also, this building is very unstable. If we get some time, we should move the generator to someplace more stable.” He prayed to a god he did not fully believe in that the man did not notice the large metal stake that was connected to the ground and the other end of the circuit breaker, and moved subconsciously to block it from view a little better, even though it was already shrouded in shadow.
The man paused for a moment, and then said, also in heavily accented, very clumsy English, “Why did you lock yourself in?”
Minoru managed to say, “Loud outside,”without stuttering. “I should have the power back on in a few minutes.”
“Good. Very sorry my men scared you. Dumb bastard didn’t ask for the key.” The man laughed heartily.
“Don’t worry about it,” Minoru said.
“Leave the door open,” the man said. “Smells awful in here. Like smoke.”
“You got it,” Minoru said, his heart thumping.
Then the man left and said something loud in Italian. Laughter.
Something loud over a loudspeaker somebody had dug up.
Minoru let himself relax very slowly.
I can’t turn the power back on. Even if I could, if Natsuki is making a quick escape, she probably wouldn’t appreciate it.
Minoru made a show of fiddling around with the circuit breaker for a while, and then somebody popped his head in again and said in English, “How is the power?”
Fuck it.
“The wires are fried,” Minoru said. “All through this building. Do you have a gas generator?”
“Can get one.”
“There’s probably a backup lighting system somewhere. I can find it and we can get lights at least.”
“Okay. I will find a generator.”
“Thank you.”
The man shouted something else, and the men began to leave, their footsteps sounding with a practiced rhythm. And then, it was quiet around what was very nearly Minoru’s grave.
Minoru bolted. Nobody saw him.
But he didn’t bolt towards the exit. He could have probably made a show of trying to get cell phone reception and walking out towards the forest, and dressed as he was—very plainly—he might have been able to make it, too.
Instead, he went for the compound again.
--
Natsuki was about three-quarters of the way up when her assumption came back to bite her in the ass.
More accurately, her assumption dropped out of her ass. Her gun, with no sign that it was even loose, perhaps due to a misplaced foot or a too-quick motion, or maybe just due to the fact that if there was a God in his heaven, he really, really didn’t like Natsuki, slipped off of her waist, fell down through her pant leg, and clattered down the ladder to make a very, very loud clank on the roof of the elevator.
Oh, shit.
She started climbing faster.
It was easier than it had been when she’d started. Her leg barely even hurt anymore.
What the hell is this? Before I could barely even move my leg, and now it’s like nothing happened to it. This can’t just be adrenaline. She confirmed this by moving her hand to her side, and then to her leg. No blood. The gashes were gone.
She made it to the top and popped her head up for just a second, checking to see if it was clear. She heard somebody speaking very loudly in a Romance language of some sort—probably Italian or Spanish, she couldn’t tell—through a microphone of some sort—probably a hand-held loudspeaker—and she saw a pant leg.
Shit.
Hold on.
It was a jean leg.
Military types in jeans?
The leg bent down, and Minoru Alder was crouching next to her, all at once. His eyes went wide.
“Natsuki?” he mouthed, and then, without saying another word, offered his hand and helped her out of the shaft.
Minoru?
When she was up and out, she looked at him.
“What are you doing here?” Natsuki whispered to him.
“Listening to a rousing speech, obviously.”
“Cute.”
But, she thought, it was. A little. He was obviously scared—she could see that in the pale tint of his skin, in the way his eyes moved a little too quickly whenever he looked around.
He noticed. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been this close to this many people who want to kill me,” he admitted. “I’d feel a lot better if I were a quarter mile away holding a rifle.”
The honesty made her smile. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this kind if situation too,” she said, and he nodded, apparently unsurprised. Does he know? “And last time I had a bit of a leg up on everybody.”
He nodded again. “This time, instead of having a leg up, you have a good-looking old man with a pistol.”
“You have a gun?”
“I figured it was better than a slingshot.”
She smiled again.
And just then, her assumption, which had already bitten her posterior badly once came back for another go, apparently tantalized by the flavor of her buttocks. Because apparently, somebody had heard that gun drop. And that same somebody had known the layout of this building well enough to know where the ouside exit to the elevator shaft was.
And that was when Natsuki and Minoru found themselves surrounded by about ten large men with assault rifles.
And the accountant.
Oh, shit.
“Minoru Alder,” the accountant said, his voice raspy. Minoru smiled.
“You’re a pretty bad liar, scratch-ass,” Minoru said, the tightness of his voice destroying his confident image.
The accountant raised an eyebrow. “Are we twelve now?”
“I wonder.”
The accountant shrugged, and Natsuki said, “Do you know this man, Minoru?”
“He hired me to watch you, originally.”
“Oh.”
“Kill the man,” the accountant said. “Take the girl. We no longer need her as a bargaining chip, but we’ll need her later.”
“Are you sure, sir?” one of the soldiers said in Japanese.
“Positive. You have your orders. Tonight at sundown.”
“Sir.”
Minoru moved himself slightly in front of Natsuki, and it was now that Natsuki had her second extra-sensory premonition, in an equally inconvenient time as the first:
Natsuki. You have to pay the price. We all do.
What price?
You know.
(I do know but I don’t want it oh god there’s nothing I want less I would rather die)
I can’t. I can’t go back to that.
You have to. We all do. We don’t have a choice. He can’t keep it out forever, and neither can I. You can’t let Minoru die, not just yet.
How do you know about that?
I’m connected now. It’s so…so painful, but even then, it’s not half as painful as what he feels. Let me relieve him. His pain…it hurts me, as well.
(Comprehension. Bitter comprehension.)
…Will we have to do it again, Shizuru?
I think there’s a way to stop it this time, but we will have to be quick.
I don’t want this.
You’re a strong girl, Natsuki.
I’m not.
You are.
I can’t even say things I want to say. Not even to myself.
I love you, Natsuki.
But I can’t say it back.
Try. Try and then if I die, I can die happy.
What?
They will kill me if they don’t get results soon. There are plenty more of us here.
…
Please, Natsuki. Please trust me. Trust us.
I…can’t.
You can.
How can you say that?
Because I know you as well as you know you, but unlike you, I won’t lie.
How? How can you know anything if I’ve never let you in?
You have. You are too stubborn to notice, but you have.
How can you say that?
Natsuki, please don’t make me repeat myself over and over.
There’s no time anymore, is there.
There isn’t. It’s time. You will have to trust me.
I…do.
Hearing that makes me very happy, Natsuki.
Thank you.
Save that. You may not want to thank me shortly.
And it was true. For in the next instant, something hit Natsuki so hard that for a moment she was sure she had been shot.
But in the seconds following that, as a green, incandescent light began to radiate from her hands, she knew it was much worse than being shot.
Not much longer now.
Three syllables.
The door guards are long gone now. They’ve fled from the madness they hear inside the cell. The voice is ragged and worn now, because it has been speaking for hours straight, without ever stopping, now so quickly that it has become frightening.
mi…
ro…
ku…
miroku
miroku
miroku miroku miroku miroku miroku mirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumirokumiroku
Something hums through the air. The guard is being changed, and two men are wandering towards the door, wondering where the other guards went, cursing because they’ll have to report the bastards for abandoning their posts. What a pain.
The guards don’t hum, though. After a second, they hear it. Where is it coming from? It seems like it’s coming from a wall.
One of the guards presses his ears to the wall, and a second later the hum becomes nearly deafening. The guard has just enough time to pull back in horror and then the wall splits bursts open and an enormous sword, nearly the size of the man himself, cleaves him in two. The other man doesn’t even have enough time to be shocked. The sword seeks him out and severs his head, and then bursts through the wall and lands parallel to the Entire World, which has splinters and edges that will leave her back permanently scarred. It cuts through the thick chains which bind her to the Entire World, circling her little crotch and waist and wrists and thighs. It makes a sick little splash because it lands in a pool of her vomit. She has stopped coughing now.
Because the power is there again. It is no longer like touching a barely-live battery to her tongue. Now she has taken the plunge and hooked it straight to her heart, which thumps as though it will burst out of her chest. This is exciting. This is exhilarating. This is
power
yes. Power. They have hurt Mai, and by her power they will live only long enough to regret it.
And no longer.
Miroku dragging behind her, scraping maddeningly on the metal floor, Mikoto begins to walk.
--
Aoi and Mai’s plan did not work as they had planned it, but that was coincidence. In truth, it might have—a small team had, indeed, been dispatched to their cell when their monitoring device went offline.
But then, something happened. Shizuru’s screams stopped, and then Reito screamed, a single loud, piercing scream which contained the feelings of a man who has failed.
In truth, it was not his fault. But that did not stop him.
And then Midori began to scream as well; that same frustrated, angry scream that she had let out before.
And then Mai began to scream. Her body began to spark in Aoi’s arms, and before Aoi could even think about letting go, she was thrown back against the wall by an invisible force strong enough that it ought to have knocked her out.
But it didn’t, and that wasn’t what scared Aoi the most. What scared Aoi the most was that now she began to spark as well. Something new and intense pounded inside of her, and suddenly, she was aware.
Chie is alive.
Chie is alive and in this cell block.
“Chie!” she shouted as loudly as she could.
A…Aoi? The reply came hesitantly, and Aoi’s heart leapt and suddenly nothing seemed wrong with the world anymore.
That was in my head. That was not out loud.
What the hell?
I don’t care. It’s Chie. She’s alive.
“Where are you, Chie?”
I’m in a cell with Shiho. She’s acting really funny…she’s just…screaming. Loud. Why can I hear you in my head?
…What?
Aoi had no more time to think about it, because in the next instant, the door opened and seven armed guards forced their way into the cell and surrounded her and Mai, who had not stopped screaming.
“Shut her up,” one of them said, shouting to be heard over the piercing screams which came not only from Mai, but which echoed all down the corridor.
And now all of them were screams like Midori’s. Rage. Frustration. That feeling only felt in the face of something enormous and evil which you know will consume everything you love, which you are powerless to stop.
“Jesus Christ,” the soldier said. “What is this?”
And then, all at once, Mai stopped screaming. She stood up straight, her shirt in tatters, her eyes once again blank and somewhere near insane.
“Mai,” Aoi whispered, and then stood and moved to her, feeling no pain when she should have had a concussion from being hurled so hard.
She took her hand.
“What’s going on, Mai?”
“You can feel it too?” the other girl whispered.
“Yes.”
“Then I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“You’ll know soon enough.” And then, to the solders, “You should leave. I don’t want to kill anybody.”
“Keep your mouth shut,” the soldier said. “Sit down and stay quiet. I don’t know how you managed to break that damn thing, but we’ll have to move you to a new cell now.”
“No,” Mai whispered. “You don’t understand at all. None of you understand, and that’s why none of you are going to survive.”
All at once, the entire hall was silent.
“You tried to contain us,” Mai said. “But you don’t understand that that’s impossible. Your machines can hold us, but the problem is that you can’t. Your machines can control that energy, but you can’t. Not even we can.”
The soldiers took a step back and raised their weapons. “We can call it a misfire,” one of them said. “At worst, we’ll be thrown out.”
“It’s too late for that now,” Mai whispered, and tears began to well in her eyes. “I’m very sorry. I’ll try not to kill you, but I can’t control it either. It’s too strong.”
Mai was kind, but she was still human, after all.
Though, now, not wholly.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her.
“Don’t worry about it,” she whispered back. “We can deal with this. He is still dead, so it can’t start again. It can’t.”
“But now it’s me.”
“I have faith in you, as does Shizuru. That’s why she told you to let go.”
“Stand up. Keep your hands where we can see them,” one of the soldiers commanded. They all wore the same black uniforms they had the night before. “Nobody move.”
Midori did, but Reito couldn’t.
“Get him up.”
“Shut it,” Midori said. “He’s in pain. It’s amazing he’s still conscious, you insensitive bastard.”
“Our orders are to keep you both standing. Satou,” he said, turning to one of his comrades, “get him up.”
“Sir.”
Satou walked towards Reito, and Midori saw her opportunity in an instant. It was in the way he walked too quickly, not taking time to consider his footing as carefully as he should. He was probably new, eager to please.
Midori moved faster than anybody could believe, herself included. It was just that her body felt on fire, charged with energy she hadn’t felt since the HiME carnival. It made her a little sick, but mostly it gave her strength and she was grateful for that.
And she knew, felt as clearly as she might have felt a strong wind, that if she got outside of the cell, she would feel even more power.
The HiME carnival can’t start again. It’s impossible. The Obsidian Lord is dead. The star should have been destroyed too, but something must have happened. I don’t know what. Maybe it can never really be destroyed. Maybe the star was just in incarnation of something else. We can figure that out later.
Without the carnival, we should be able to avoid killing each other this time around.
But then, why do I get this feeling of futility whenever I think about it?
In one instant, the soldier was moving towards Reito. In the next, Midori was in front of him. She lashed out with a high kick that landed directly in his stomach, sending him sprawling backwards, and Midori moved in then, seizing her chance, plowing straight into the whole group of them, winding up in the hallway with three still inside, dazed, and three outside, on the ground.
The energy nearly knocked her over.
Then it was in her hand. The blade was sharp and polished, the shaft sturdy. Just like she had left it.
Looking at it, she knew she should be relieved, but she couldn’t feel anything but sick.
Yes, I'm aware that the HiME didn't have any sort of telepathic or electrical powers in the series. Yes, all of this is deliberate; their powers are not quite the same as they were in the series, and this will make sense. Trust me on this one, guys.
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