Blue Night//Burns Red
Cool blue soaks everything in a stillness.
A crouched figure watches from the ribcage of a fire escape–the whirling hero, the endless dance–one after another, two stories down. It turns in fits and phases as the things shaped like soldiers charge, again and again. They charge like maddened stags, coagulating into shadows like scabs. Plastic drab and metal helmets, clashing against the sunbleached pavement now drenched in blue night. Their uniforms are rendered murky blackish blobs. The boots blur into pavement. It's one amoebic crowd of death breaking and reforming to surround.
There is a shout below, a flash of light. Eight shaky arc-beams shoot out to the sides of the struggler, forming into points like a compass rose, smaller between the four cardinal directions. The light blinds all color within its beams to a searing white, but sheds a red glow over the comparatively-peaceful graffiti-laden walls of the alley.
The hero's eyes remain unseen, but its mouth splits into a maddened grin as it continues its attack. However, the drill-like spinning has been cut into swooping swirls fractured only eventually by reversals, not the start-stop record-scratch stutter of crowd management.
The soldiers fall apart to a pure rot called Clot Mud, writhing in gutters to return beneath the street. All traces of the of the inky sludge dry to flakes and blow away in the wind. The mass has largely escaped. The light shudders, and recedes into the red-clad August's form; ever briefly, the night is won.
The observer uncrouches, jumps from the fire escape like she's been well-trained to, lands low on her feet and rolls to that hero's. The August looks down at her crouched form–She remains perfectly still. It coughs. Her gaze flicks up, to see vermillion velvet brushed with fibers bent silver in the moon light. The Hero she's just seen wears stardust trails in a pool of blood. Gold fillagree cuts the hem and neckline into something entirely regal, recalling the blinding glare off its red-burning skill, Noblesse Fantome.
"Aw, geez. You don't have to–'you may rise.'"
She stands, and meets its lightly embarassed face. Or looks down to it. The August is a few heads shorter than she is, and it takes every chance to remind her that she's at much greater risk for decapitation and bisection for it.
I can feel something in my face tighten, involuntarily, at the thought.
The smile vanishes from their face, too. There is no blood, or mud, or mirth on her teacher's face as they start walking.
"What do you think?" It cocks an eyebrow.
"Venerable," she remarks, hurrying up from the ground to match pace.
It nods. "Good."
I twitch, pause my steps for a moment, and the August continues.
"But what did you learn?"
Learn?
Its red-clad velvet back disappears from view.
Who could learn anything from a fight like that?
It could hardly be called a fight. More like a raw display of prowess.
Quite honestly, no one should be able to stand against even one platoon of Crusader-class Enforcers. The number tonight would have killed us both, if the August were any less proficient.
I start walking again, faster to catch up, and my words match. "It was a close call. I could see them pushing for what felt like hours."
I learned I wasn't safe, even where you told me to wait and watch.
What? How do I figure that one? The August had it under control.
I could feel my face contort again.
No matter how I look at it, that was dangerous just now. And even if it wasn't, I was absolutely terrified.
... Yeah, there's no getting around it. I definitely hated that.
"Ha! It sure looked close, I bet." Its smile dies. "But it wasn't. It was as it would be. We're together, so we're stronger."
She nods assent. "They are paper. But why did I need to–"
It's out of my mouth before I realize; a quake burns in me, heart to fingertips.
Step after shaky step, trembling at my own words and I don't know why, I think I carry on.
"'Affirmation of power.' Without this, we'd each drift apart."
"But why'd I have to risk my life to see it again?"
Stupid. I really am... stupid.
"So you and I don't ever lose."
The adrenal rush of discovery makes me stupid.
Seeing the look on the girl's face, it just chuckles. "You weren't at any risk."
She nods.
"What?"
"I understand."
"Mhm. So, has it got you thinking about your Hidden Technique yet?"
"My... no. I still don't know how you channel that."
Its tone goes from lightly annoyed to completely flat, simmering."I just showed you."
"I–"
"I keep showing you." Its voice darkens further. She flinches, and her face burns red as the August's robes.
Her mouth opens in reply, closes silently, and the August smirks.
"You'll get it someday." It snaps two fingers on a suddenly degloved hand, tendons snapping against the wind, and as the world swirls around the pair.
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My eyes slam open, my heart pounds. Someone's shaken me awake roughly. I lay in sheets damp like earth of the grave for a moment, afraid that stirring will toll my heart to beat itself to a pulp. The image quickens my pace. I feel as though I have survived a great trial, once again. Every day I wake up and feel near-death.
I can't see who woke me up, which gives me a few ideas. The late morning sun casts long shadows, like dark puddles spreading along the vinyl floorboards. Bile rises in my throat. I choke it down with the last fears for my heart and sit up. The sunbeams burn amber, the floor is a calming oatmeal color. As the sun burns, the air remains cool as ever, and it suddenly occurs to me I've been holding my breath. I pull in as much of the morning surrounding me as I can; it floods me, cool like water, as if something wonderful is in the air. Each deliberately shaped vein in the vinyl "wood" pulls me in, the same way each precious breath tugs on my teeth as if resisting my lungs. For some reason, it calls the taste of ginger ale to mind, or maybe that was just the steady flow of air settling my stomach.
It's been lifetimes—seven years since the Scarlet Order, since the doomed missions. And even still the dreams and consequences keep knocking into each other, thudding into "that"... bruise, again and again. Echoing in chaos. And I still don't know what "that" is, at the center of that heavy cloth knot of memory rattling around in my chest. It holds my life hooked by the visceral organs, either with its weight or the mystery—once again, I find myself holding my breath.
The cool flood of an inhale. The air almost smells like a freezer; it's a rare day to be cold and sunny. The air reminds me of a warm touch in its absence.
Something spins my head as I force the breath down. I recall the definition of heat as friction, and cold, the lack of; the floor extends and translates itself hurling off the left side of my vision while the desk and mattress and piles of books on it fly off in the opposite direction. The walls stretch beyond my peripheral vision to accommodate the vertigal twisting of "space". TV static began to blot my warped vision as my veins fell out from under themselves; my heart begins pounding again.
Will I die here? If the floor starts to get close, I'm down with no hope for help. No one will catch me, ask if I'm alright.
Small solace, but I recall the August as I lean on a bare spot of kitchenette countertop. There are worse fates than isolation. After a while, controlled breath over the deep basin, cool air prevails, and the spots abandon my vision.
BLWOP!
The ping sound shatters the haze like a rock through a pane of glass.
A message from the Info-Net:
[bravemewmew@archonmail.net]
Subj: Cats and Dogs, Missing Together???
Hiya!
I've been noticing a lot of posters for missing pets walking around Rosetown lately. I think you mentioned you were in that area too, so hopefully you're already investigating whatever's plucking them off the streets, and this helps.
Anyway, I only realized it after my friend's longhair Snowball vanished suddenly last week off 56th and Skylit. If you could manage to get her back to the mint green house on the corner, I can get her to her owner. Thank you!
-ScorpioOfTheNewWorld
"Scorpio" was a good source, if implacably annoying in their chatroom mannerisms; but they'd never sent me a request before. That said, I was in no position to decline even something this mundane. As the days went by without a purpose, task, or sense of humanity... I could feel myself spinning on an axis, without an orbit, and every breath i took these days a pneumatic wind-up wheel in a ditch.
"Exactly, no position."
A flash of red velvet and black hair in the corner of my vision–
"Caela. Calm. It's me."
"Amoris. Was that–"
"It was. Just your mind playing tricks." The sunlight set her hair sparkling gold in its cascading path down her shoulders.
"I should stop jumping at shadows." That off-the-shoulder top is really cute on her, pale green is definitely her color.
"Then where would that leave us?" I should stop staring at her shoulders.
"Where, indeed..." I looked around at the room known as the "Juno Reactor".
Any time I'd asked, Amoris told me the Reactor was located in an interstitial bounded space.
'Bounded space.' The term recalled something from my long-forgotten magickal apprenticeship. Honestly, that was pretty worrying in and of itself.
In my quest to understand the fascinating person called the August, I had learned truths and many platitudes on the nature of magick. Most relevantly:
"'One does not forget a magick without good reason.' Isn't that true, Caela?" Amoris interrupted my thoughts as a catlike smile spread across her face.
"True enough. I won't pry further. Are we doing breakfast today?"
Changing the subject was a surefire gambit. Amoris was about as... "carefree," to put it nicely, as I'd like to be able to be, so she's pretty flighty and prone to forget difficult topics.
"Breakfast, at this hour?" I checked the clock.
"Lun–"
I couldn't get the word out. "Lunch is no good either! Look again, it's eleven. We're doing brunch!"
"Brunch? I'd rather die." Amoris's idea of "brunch" was a blindingly expensive pile of eggs, bacon and avocados on two pieces of toast, mostly dropped on the floor thanks to the dish's structural mendacity once runny yolk entered the equation. And the company she keeps... those people are loud. I started to hunch over, like I was shriveling up.
"Dramatic! Well, you're not doing that now. Besides, I already ate."
"I'm too slow, yet again." My hand flew to my forehead in mock shame, but i smiled behind the bottom of my palm.
"No, I'm glad you at least slept." Looking through my fingers, she was smiling, her hair glowing in the near-midday sun. "What?"
"You're kinda... radiant." I muttered into my hand.
Amoris cocked an eyebrow at me as she ran a hand through her hair. "What was that?"
"Oh, nothing. You wanna go look for stray cats?"
END TRANSMISSION: LAYER 01
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