Chapter 20 – The Yang
A subdued group of girls quietly ate their last breakfast of egg and sausage onigiri in the dining hall amid the storm outside which showed no sign of abating. Ai ate as if she was in a trance, Risa glancing nervously and unnoticed over at her from time to time. While all the girls were quiet this morning with the idea of what they needed to do, especially in this unbelievable weather, Ai was unusually so, and something seemed to weigh down her mind terribly, which in turn worried Risa even more terribly.
Ai had hardly spoken a word since waking this morning, and Risa quietly observed her dressing and preparing for the day as if she was a zombie. She wondered once again about the day’s mission of going after Miki, which Ai never seemed to embrace fully. She seemed much more focused on Reina, though Risa could imagine at least one reason why that was.
“Dou shita no, Ai-chan?” she said softly to Ai next to her, momentarily pulling the girl out of her thoughts. Ai looked back at Risa, who was staring intently at her, with wide eyes as if she’d never seen her before. Risa began to worry even more, though she tried not to show it on her face.
“Um…” she began, face completely blank. “I’m just worried about what we have to do.”
Risa nodded slowly, though she knew that something else was bothering her friend much more. Ai seemed to notice Risa’s disbelief, and her nose scrunched. This nearly brought a smile to her face, and she was proud that she knew Ai better than just about anyone. However, due to Ai’s deliberately private nature, she knew that sometimes the girl wished she didn’t.
“I just wondered,” Risa went on just as softly, eyes returning to her food, though still peering at her friend through the side of her vision. “You haven’t touched your onigiri.”
Ai stared vacantly down at her bowl, seeming to notice for the first time that there was food in front of her. She demonstrated absolutely no desire to begin eating now, though, and just sat there motionlessly, staring into her bowl and apparently returning to her thoughts. Risa sighed.
No one had seen Sands this morning. Risa, of course not knowing any of the night’s or morning’s events, had knocked on his door to see if he wanted to come to breakfast with them. Ai hadn’t wanted to come with her to ask for some reason, which Risa thought odd considering how close they seemed, so she stood at his door alone. He didn’t respond, but she found it was unlocked and went on in. The curtains on the window blew out at the sudden channel for the breeze to follow, and Risa shivered at the chill of the early morning squall’s draft. Seeing that obviously no one was in the room, she hurried over and shut the window, feeling dampness on the sill where the rain had drizzled in. She looked around and saw a room which appeared to have let the typhoon outside into it.
Drawers stood open with clothes strewn over the edges, spilling onto the floor. The sheets of the single large bed were unmade, appearing as if someone had thrown them off in haste. There were a few damp spots on the sheets from who knows what, but it fit in very well with the streams of water sliding down the now closed window. Risa thought it was a very depressing room that he kept before she slipped back out the door and joined Ai on the way to their breakfast.
Risa woke from her own reverie when Yossi spoke lightly, “You two sure look a pair this morning.” She received two blank stares in return before both girls noticed their responses and blushed, leaning low over their food.
“It was a long night,” Ai stated plainly.
Since the two younger girls seemed unwilling to offer anything else, Yossi shrugged and went on, “I think it has been for all of us in some way. I just hope we find Miki… unharmed.” She hesitated a little at that last word as Aya walked up to join them, and soon the other girls appeared as well, having finished their own breakfasts.
Aya looked around nervously with red eyes. She looked like she’d been crying all night. Risa figured she probably had been. “Where’s Sands? Cage? London? Any of them?” she asked in a tremulous voice. Nothing but silence replied to her.
“I would guess they’re gone,” Ai said, somehow having stood up unnoticed by Risa. She rose to join her friend, stuffing a last bit of the delicious rice into her mouth that made her cheek puff out. She was going to miss the cooking at this place. She’d like to thank the cooks, she thought fleetingly. However, looking around the room a little bit, she realized that they had never seen anyone prepare the meals. There was an occasional server who restocked the buffet from time to time, but this morning even he had been absent. It struck her how lonely it really felt this morning, with only her nakama with her in this place which still felt strange and foreign, and thunder cracking outside the large windows.
She shook herself suddenly as she realized all this had gone through her head in the span of a second or so, and found that she was staring into Ai-chan’s face, which looked darker than usual this morning. Darker than Risa had ever seen it in fact. Did anything happen last night? She tried to jog her memory.
Ai continued speaking to the confused looks that surrounded her. “They’re gone, and it’s up to us now.” The finality in her tone and odd-seeming determination that she expressed that it was true quelled any further curiosity.
“Come on you guys. We need to find Mikitty.” Aya’s voice was so sorrowful and pleading that it seemed to soften even Ai’s expression somewhat. She tugged at Yossi’s sleeve and glanced between the other girls. Yossi stroked her chin with a finger as if she felt uncomfortable.
Any softening in Ai’s expression didn’t last long. “Yes. We do. We won’t get anywhere standing around here. She’ll likely have some kind of shield around her keeping us from sensing her with our power, so we’d better just split up into groups and hope that she doesn’t have enough of a shield to block even our sight.” Her tone was calm and commanding, but Risa noticed some doubt in it as well. If Miki truly was behind all this, there was likely little chance she’d overlook a detail like that.
The girls all looked expectantly at Ai as if awaiting something further, though a trace of discomfort flew across her complexion before she went on. Despite that, Risa felt pride almost stronger than she ever had before. Probably, because this time it was for real. There was no doubt who everyone expected to take the lead in this. Yossi may have led Morning Musume, and Kaori and some of the rest might be used to being in control, but this was a far cry from the life they knew as celebrities. Risa wondered if they could ever go back to being Morning Musume. It seemed so childish now. So immature, how they played around acting cute and singing strange songs created by an even stranger man. Thoughts of what might have happened to Koharu and Rika changed all that. Risa flushed slightly once again. What was she doing thinking she was so mature? She was nothing more than a scared little girl on an island in the middle of nowhere surrounded by friends who were in more pain than she was sure she could imagine, though she didn’t always know why. As Ai-chan cleared her throat and spoke, Risa’s heart went out to her, and amidst the pained girls with attention now focused on only one place, she knew nothing would be the same again.
“Well, if we’re going to split up and search, we’ll have to make teams. We’ve been in our own groups the past week doing all sorts of crazy things, but I think today we just need to be around those we trust the most. Take two or three of the people you feel that way about, and we’ll start doing our job.” Ai-chan’s eyes focused on Risa toward the end of this, and she tried to keep her eyes from watering as she nodded and shuffled closer to her dear friend.
A small, though empty-looking, smile crossed Ai’s face, and she looked now toward Konno, who returned her gaze intently and joined them as well. Konkon seemed to lack the emotion Risa felt, but that smile appeared on Ai’s face once more nonetheless.
The other girls shuffled around a little, darting glances between each other. A few looked interestedly at the three girls standing still in front, but quickly sought others of their friends and crowded in closely with them. Risa smiled as she saw a subdued Eri and Sayu look around uncertainly before being joined by Maki, who smiled at the two young girls. They weren’t really that young – not much younger than Risa in fact – but they sure looked alone in a room of adults today. They smiled back at Maki gratefully and hugged her.
Yossi, Makoto, and Kaori formed the last of the three groups, leaving Aya standing alone in the middle, eyes glued to Ai-chan’s. “I know you’re going to find her,” Aya said intensely, surprising Risa at the certainty. She wasn’t sure about the girl’s claim, but a glance at the other two groups found no disagreement. Eri and Sayu seemed to dearly hope, in fact, that they would have a quiet search. “I want to be with you when you do. I… need to be,” She said, a plea in her voice once more that seemed as if it couldn’t get more heartfelt.
Ai stared back at her for a moment, and Risa thought she might almost be embarrassed, before nodding. “If that’s what you wish. I can understand.” If she did, she expressed it in an odd way, because Risa thought her voice couldn’t get hollower. Aya sighed in relief, unsmiling, and joined the three quietly.
“Well. Shall we?” Yossi asked, obviously in Risa’s general direction. Everyone nodded. “We’ll go into the forest to the south,” she continued, her tone again requesting confirmation.
“We’ll head to the north,” Maki said with a bit more confidence, making the two girls next to her jump.
Ai nodded. “Then we’ll head east straight through the middle.” Risa thought that there may have been no need for the confirmation, somehow getting the impression that those paths had been determined before anyone even spoke. She looked out the large dining hall window into the dark gray sky, wondering about things that are maybe just meant to be.
The girls left the dining hall in their tight formations and didn’t stray from each other through the quiet corridors, knowing they needed to rush, but still reluctant to do so fully as they donned their rain hats and coats. When they finally made it outside, Risa tightened her coat to the wind and rain before joining Ai, who strode forward with a determination she’d never seen before, her coat billowing out with the wind as if she didn’t even feel it; Konno, her face thoughtful as always, mind whirring, Risa imagined, with plans and strategies taking advantage of her knowledge and cunning; and Aya, who also tugged her coat close to her, but stared ahead with her red eyes not unlike Ai, determination guiding her weaker steps. Before long, they entered the forest.
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The wind howled mercilessly through the dense trees in what seemed like the darkest part of the forest. It seemed to only be getting worse. Risa shivered in the cold rain which seemed to come sideways against her, and sometimes even fall up. Her soaked underwear beneath her long jacket was a testament to that. The others generally seemed to be affected as well. Aya looked as weak and drawn as she always had since not long after she arrived on the island. Konkon’s eyes were still shining in thought, but the rest of her body was apparently feeling the effects of the maelstrom. Sometimes she would huddle close to Risa or Ai as if to share their warmth. Risa felt like doing that herself quite often.
As for Ai… Nothing seemed to stop her determination in continuing on through this horrible forest. The rain didn’t seem to affect her as much as the others, and Risa wondered if that had something to do with her closer connection with the power. If that was all, though, surely Konkon would be doing better as well. Her literal knowledge of the power surpassed Ai’s, and perhaps, anyone on the planet. At least, Risa couldn’t imagine anyone learning more about it. Especially since it seemed like such a rare “gift” to have. As if the girl was summoned, Konkon joined Risa in the shelter next to a tree trunk for a momentary respite from the rain. Risa didn’t mind, and threw her arms tightly around the other girl, the two holding each other close against the sharp wind. They watched Ai-chan as she seemed to walk in circles, her eyes frowning as if something didn’t seem right with their environment.
She slowed to a stop, staring into what looked like a copse of trees and brush too dense to venture into. Apparently she saw something in there with some kind of sense of hers, and Risa hoped that she didn’t think they needed to try to get in there. She supposed they could burrow through it with their power, but it would still take a while to burn through enough of the brush to make any headway. She didn’t see what could be in there, anyway.
Aya stood off to the side, kneeling in a half-crouch to try to keep herself from blowing away, but looked intently at Ai, hope in her eyes as always. “Do you think something’s in there, Takahashi-san?” she shouted above the wind at the girl standing almost defiantly against it.
“I don’t know…” Ai responded, as if she was trying to work something out. “It looks like there’s plant-life packed in really tightly there, but I don’t understand it, unless it’s all dead inside…” She mumbled something else to herself too softly for the others to hear amid the howling of wind and rain. Though, Risa supposed, under normal circumstances it could probably be called a shout rather than a mumble.
“Dead?” Risa said, then immediately felt stupid because Ai-chan of course wouldn’t be able to hear her. Konkon looked at her with understanding, though, and guided her eyes back to Ai-chan, who now had a hand raised toward the barrier. By this time Risa knew what that meant, but she saw nothing come from the outstretched hand, only consternation on the face of its owner.
Suddenly, a flicker caught the edge of her vision, and her eyes moved from the girl to the thicket. She squinted, thinking the rain was muddling her vision, but the sight didn’t change. The brush Ai was pointing at seemed to almost blur for a second before going back to normal.
“Ha! I’m starting to learn your tricks now, Fujimoto. Just give me another minute…” Ai moved toward the brush, and Konkon stood up, dragging Risa with her by a hand, and set off to follow slowly. Aya was trailing closely behind the leading girl, seeming to not want to miss any glimpse of something that might happen and lead her to Miki.
The three girls were now close enough to make out Ai’s mumbles, and they listened intently through the wind as she began to kneel down. “I see what you’re doing. What you’re doing… Haha… You probably don’t even have any idea what you’re doing. This looks like it was just thrown together by some crazed emotion expressing itself with Earth. Though, this other aspect is what troubles me. What is it… It almost looks like… electricity?” She began her evaluation by staring at the ground, but was now staring at what seemed like nothing toward the brush, which was now only meters away. “I don’t really know anything about electricity, but surely, if I just…” She raised her hand in front of her face, palm stretched out facing the wall, and closed her eyes. The brush seemed to blur again, though this time it didn’t go back after a few seconds like before. Eyes closed and hand still in front of her face, Ai got up swiftly and began walking the last distance to the thicket, which seemed to get blurrier with each step.
Putting her trust in her friend as always, Risa started after her. The others soon followed her lead, and right when it seemed that Ai-chan was going to walk straight into the small tree ahead of her, the wind blew at them in a sudden strong gust, distracting their vision. When they were able to see forward again, Ai was striding briskly into a clearing that seemed to have come from nowhere. There was no sign of the brush – only the soft forest bed underneath and a lone tree standing in the center of the area, looking as if it had been struck by lightning.
Risa noticed that her jaw had dropped, and quickly closed it when Konkon smiled over at her, grabbing her arm and tugging her on. Aya ran after Ai as if heaven itself were somehow inside that tree. When the three caught up to Ai, she was kneeling at the base of the forlorn trunk, anger now etched on her face.
“What’s wrong Ai-chan?” Risa asked worriedly. Ai’s gaze traveled up the trunk to its severed height before answering.
“Miki’s been here,” she said quietly, and Risa was for possibly the first time scared of her friend’s voice. “But she wasn’t alone. This tree’s crying out, though it’s only faint now. So faint… It’ll be dead soon.” Risa tried to widen her senses and feel what Ai-chan said about the tree, but to no avail. Giving up on that, her mind began to reason and it asked herself, Do trees usually die after being cut like this? There’s still plenty of trunk left. Maybe so, but certainly not this quickly…
“She’s near,” Ai stated evenly, standing up once more. “The emotion she put into that wall wouldn’t be that strong if its source was too far away. I’m actually surprised it’s still there at all. Terror is what dominated what I felt in it, like she was running from something. If she did, though, she must have come…”
“Bravo, little girl. Maybe you do show that small measure of promise that…” The voice trailed off, but the effect it had struck in the four girls by the tree was better than the lightning flashing above could have. The wind suddenly picked up, cycloning through the clearing and detailing the girl that stood at its edge as if she were the center of the entire storm. Rain pelted in all directions, and lightning flashed brighter and quicker above them, easily illuminating the form of Miki Fujimoto.
Her face seemed as twisted as the storm, dark eyes outlined red and mouth twitching as if unsure whether to smile or frown or grimace or laugh maniacally. Her hands were clenched tight in fists at her sides, anger from some source feeding off the storm around them. Or was the anger feeding the storm? She just stood there, but the reaction of the other girls was anything but hesitant.
Aya and Ai shouted at once. “Mikitty!” “Fujimoto!” They ran toward her, but were stopped short by a lightning bolt crashing to the ground at their feet apparently from nowhere, and Risa screamed at the explosion in her ears, falling to her knees. At least she thought she screamed. All she could hear was an immense ringing.
Her senses returned finally, and she opened her eyes ahead to see Aya lying unmoving on the ground not far from them. Konkon was pressed up against the tree, steadier than Risa but looking as if she was actually trying to pull energy from the tree itself to stay standing. Ai, however, stood her ground, her own fists at her sides, seeming to show no effects from the blast as she stared at the girl who now definitely was laughing maniacally. The cackle was unlike anything Risa ever heard anyone make before, and she wondered if the girl truly was insane.
“Weak little Matsuura!” she managed to gasp out between guffaws. “I suppose I should have expected her to go down after just one hit. She always was just soft and prissy. Nothing hard in her whatsoever. Good thing she didn’t need to live a day in the real world.” The laughter increased in volume once more. “Though that would have been more interesting!”
“Shut up!” Ai said, kneeling down and thrusting her hand forward. As if her arm were a slingshot, a beach ball sized ball of fire grew along it as it extended and lashed out toward Miki, growing only bigger as it flew along. The girl’s laugh ceased and her brow knit slightly until a small whirlwind sprang up in front of her, reaching speeds faster than Risa could imagine, and engulfed Ai’s now pathetic-looking 3 meter wide ball of fire, pushing it up its core until the flames dispersed harmlessly into the sky.
Ai didn’t hesitate at all though before unleashing another attack, this time collecting the torrential rain around them into dense daggers of water, hundreds of which flew from all over the clearing toward the girl behind the dissipating cyclone. Miki’s laugh resumed again, and she flung out her arms wide, spreading her legs as well, as if to make an even larger target for the thirsty daggers. Risa didn’t know what the girl could possibly be doing, and apparently it caught Ai somewhat off-guard as well, as she focused her full attention onto the inviting attack. All Risa knew was that this was a fight she desperately needed to stay out of, and preferably far away from. Somehow, however, she got a bad feeling about the situation and remembered Aya lying on the ground not far away. Damn my compassion, she reprimanded herself, and jumped forward, throwing herself over the seemingly unconscious girl.
At just about the time Risa covered Aya, the daggers hit Miki in a dense shower, and she disappeared from view behind the exploding water. However, the picture didn’t stay solid for long, as the water that targeted her, along with, it seemed, all the rest of the rain in the clearing, blew toward the three girls standing between Miki and the tree. Ai only had time to give a look of shock before tides of water crashed against her from all sides, and Risa hung as tightly onto Aya as she could while she felt it crash over them as well. She’d been surfing before, but these waves were stronger than anything she’d ever felt, and it wasn’t long before Aya was torn from her grasp and she felt herself being whisked away.
The journey was a short one, though, because soon she felt her body slam hard into what seemed like a tree, and as the water passed, she realized she was high on a trunk stripped bare of its branches by the ungodly wind and tide before sliding roughly down it and crashing onto her side, the curve of the trunk rolling her out a meter or two before coming to a stop.
Amazed she was even conscious, she wrenched open her eyes and tried to move an unresponsive body, only managing to lower her head a little to see that she was actually off to the side of and behind Miki, who seemed to be dancing in the rain that had resumed its normal course, looking ahead at a crumpled thing lying in a large puddle toward the tree that could only be Ai. Poor Ai-chan, Risa thought. She must have caught the full force of whatever Miki did. This distracted her thoughts momentarily from the numbness that was her own body. She almost didn’t care whether she’d ever feel anything again beside her concern for her friend who seemed to have been crushed helplessly in that puddle.
“Who do you think you are trying to use the storm against me!” Miki shouted insanely. “You little bitch! Well now you understand! I am the typhoon! Nobody else can stand against the raw force of nature unleashed, and so you definitely can’t, especially when it’s guided by me!” She paused, bent over in fits of laughter, before continuing on. “And you think you could even stand against Tanaka! She’s who your real gripe is with, isn’t it, little Ai-chan.” A low swirl of wind snatched the body from the puddle and pulled it toward the triumphant girl, dropping it not far from her feet. Risa couldn’t tell how bad she looked from this distance, but at least it looked like she was fully intact…
Miki stood above the body now, laughter ceasing as she looked down at it more seriously now. “It’s good that you found me before you found Tanaka in the cave.” Her voice adopted almost a fearful quality. “You’ll think of what I’m doing to you as a mercy compared to what she… You girls don’t realize that the only power that matters is the kind she has. I don’t even know what she’s planning to dig up down there…” Her eyes seemed to glaze over, and Risa couldn’t do anything but moan at the confirmation of Ai-chan’s intuition that Miki wasn’t the cause of all this. From the sound of it, she didn’t expect that Miki started anything at all. If only she could have trusted her friend… Then what? Miki was able to nearly tear them to pieces seemingly without much effort. If Reina had half as much power as Miki intimated, they’d all be dead in seconds flat. Risa’s vision began to cloud as hope and consciousness began to leave her. A squeal brought her attention back to the girls before her, though.
Aya had her arms locked around Miki’s stomach and her head pressed into her back, seeming to squeeze her as tightly as she could. The squeal had come from the typhoon girl. The sounds now formed themselves into words which Risa could barely make out in front of the impending darkness. “What…! What are you doing! Who is…”
“It’s me, Mikitty!” Aya cried against her back, and Miki froze, hesitating at the unexpected twist. She regained her senses quickly, though, and began funneling wind and rain around her to try to pry off the insistent girl. It didn’t work, however. The girl’s arms embraced her as if in a final desperation with inhuman strength. Some of the strength probably was inhuman, in fact, but in other ways, it was the most human it could be.
Amidst Miki’s thrashing and attempts to remove the girl from around her, she cried out again, “Mikitty, I know things haven’t been the easiest for you. It’s true I can’t understand them because I’ve had so many good things happen to me. I’m not trying to torture you with it, though…” Miki seemed to start thrashing around less, though her fists clenched tightly to her sides and lightning crackled around them. Lightning seemed to be a much more unpredictable and uncontrollable force of nature, however. “The time in my life when I was happiest was when we were both having our own successes and when the whole idea of being celebrities was new to us. Those were the times when we had no doubts about anything and loved sharing it all with each other. Well, the times might be different now, but our sharing and love don’t need to change with it! All I want is to share with you the great things that are happening to me. And I want you to share all the things that happen to you, too, because I care… and I love you.”
“No…!” Miki yelled out, all fight gone from her now as she seemed to be yelling through tears. “You’re lying… Nobody could care about what I’ve become…”
“I care about you now the same as I always have, Mikitty! That’s what friends… That’s what partners do. They share everything, good and bad, because they love who each is inside. You’re still the joyous and successful Miki from a few years ago. I’m the Aya from before anyone knew my name and from when I’m old and ugly and nobody could give a shit about me anymore. I just don’t want you to be alone anymore. If this is you, then I’ll live with you this way. That’s all I want to do… be with you…”
Aya’s tears fell freely as she finished, but her commitment appeared to not be as dire as she would have accepted, as Miki fell to her knees, weak now in Aya’s never-weakening embrace. She turned around and their tear-soaked eyes connected as if either of them couldn’t see a more beautiful thing in the world. Miki finally returned the embrace, which only tightened in their mutual need, and Risa smiled softly, thinking how wonderful it must be to have someone love you like that, before the smile left her face as the darkness at last consumed her.
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Deep within an ancient cavern, Reina’s meditation was disrupted momentarily by a shock of unwanted power, and the lighting in the chamber flared chaotically in response to her mood. So, Fujimoto had somehow left her. It didn’t really surprise her. She figured the girl was too weak to handle what she promised. What they promised. It was of little consequence now; Fujimoto was only a small vessel, and the ritual had progressed quite far enough already. She smiled darkly as amorphous shadows danced around the walls, uncast by anything that could be seen within, and focused her attention back on the low altar before her.
That focus lasted only a moment again, however, as her amplified senses picked up some others entering the tunnels leading to the cavern. Sighing, she gave her attention to them long enough to identify two girls who seemed to be terrified led by a calmer and thoughtful one whose presence clouded Reina’s mind in memories for a moment. She quickly cleared them, though. Memories were long past, after all.
She carefully rose from her meditation, the shadows fading a little at her broken concentration. She almost thought she could hear wailing, as well as… something that stirred a fear deep inside herself. This had better be the last interruption, she thought dourly, as she prepared for the girls who had the misfortune to be the cause of her rapidly darkening mood.