Oh boy, I ended up in a goddamn road trip, didn't I? . . . Again, why me?
Might as well stick along for the ride. It oughtta be interesting to say the least.
Sorry about that . . . So anyway, where are we headed, really?
I'm new to this whole "road trip" idea, so where is our destination gonna be, exactly?
Hit the gas, if you please?
-Cue—Apoptygma Berzerk, “Backdraft”
Kitsune looked out over the desert before him, hopeless sands, the trust of the earth in the sky betrayed violently. As if the cruelty of its rain-parched existence wasn’t enough, the sky above churned with thunder, sharp crackling explosions lancing through the stratosphere, promising rain but forever withholding sustenance. The idea that his perspective would remind many of listening to bad poetry brought a smile to his face. “So much in this world that could be wonderful . . .” he said, watching Fold and Adric become further confused. “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world . . . the Watchers still watch over us all. All will be well.” He looked to the right, along the stone wall of the castle. “Horrible things still mean well. Truth isn’t confined to comforting phrasing or proper grammar, is it? We all see the same images . . .”
Now, it's time to just watch . . . and wait. Something's gonna happen soon, and I think I'd like to see it before I run away from it. (Oh, gee, Kit, real intelligent idea there . . .) Let's hope the cats I've been riding with don't mess around.
Kitsune closed his eyes on the stone wall.
All right, I'm sick of this. What do you want, you nutcase, huh?
Damn . . . Roadblock . . .
WHY oh why do I get the feeling this is not going to help?
He opened them on nothing. “A blank page, eh?” he said. He looked around. Faint ghosts of actions flickered around him, gone too quickly to understand what they portended. Looking forward, nothing. Looking behind, he saw a curious circular array of stones. Each stone had runes scrawled on them to indicate their meaning: LOVE, FAITH, HOPE, DESPAIR, HEROISM, RESPECT, and HONOR. He cocked his head, walked over to them, and crushed them to pieces beneath his feet. He smiled, and looked up. His vision went white.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK. This is not going to turn out pretty. I am getting out of here, NOW.
Whatever the reason, we're together again. And I'm a little hungry. How about you?
Kitsune opened his eyes on the stone wall. “The Watcher doesn’t know how to write me anymore. I shouldn’t be surprised.” He looked up. “No personality, nothing really to contribute, just . . . hanging around, waiting for his grand finale . . . in his eyes, I don’t seem to be worth the breath he expends on me.” Kitsune smiled. “But then, he doesn’t see the beauty in pointless things.”
Hey, Mr. DJ, where's our next stop?
Know anyone else reading the newspaper?
Wherever everyone else is going. I'm not bothering with that detail at the moment. I'm more worried about where we've just been.
Well, looks like it's been decided for us. We've finally got a destination: Bish's place. I don't think we're gonna like what we find there.
Come to me, father. See what we have become in this dark sundering. This is truth. This is existence. This . . . drudgery, this endless hurry-up-and-wait . . . this is what we are. The desert before me, the citadel behind me. Nothing stands in for our broken destiny. The answers to our questions are in the stones we built with our own hands.
Oh great, not another one . . .
We're gonna stick together, remember?
Oh, no, you don't. You don't just damn near kill me, and expect me to do nothing about it, do you?
I don't know . . .
It wasn't a request.
Took him that long to figure it out, huh?
I'm beginning to like this.
And as if called, his father was there, in a blur of motion. Kitsune tensed, bracing against the wall. Orochi leaped into him, feet crashing into Kitsune’s chest. The impact carried them through the wall—rather literally, Kit noted, as the wall seemed unharmed and his feet remained planted on the ground. They skidded to a stop in the middle of a great antechamber, decked out in gold leaf and crushed velvet. Orochi’s momentum carried him off Kit’s chest and towards the doorway. He flipped in midair, landing on the ground and bracing himself within the doorway.
No, scratch that, we're going to get lost!! Dammit! We're not going to do anything just running away! Time to fight!!
So, what's he gonna feel like after he wakes up?
I want some answers, and I want them now.
Just what are you? What am I?
It makes sense to me.
“You destroyed your past, didn’t you,” Orochi said.
“Yes, I did,” Kitsune replied. “I see you played your cards too.”
Damn, these secret government agencies really like me, don't they?
So, can I trust you for it?
Easy.
With Kit's powers, they're doomed.
I envy him. He's one hell of a sleeper.
I . . . he's dead, like that . . . ?
Your wish is my command.
“It would’ve happened eventually. I couldn’t sit in front of that godforsaken screen and write all day.”
“I suppose. It would have been easier. Less painful,” Kit said.
“I think I’ve come to terms with that,” Orochi said. “But I always wanted to see God.” Orochi smiled ruefully. “Maybe now I’ll get an explanation.”
“For what?” Kit said. “For the music you sleep to?”
“No,” Orochi said. “For the wine.”
If he believes this is over, he's a long way from right.
He didn't deserve to die. I don't care what you say, you're no killer.
What the hell is with that corpse?
Will it stay that way for long? Only time will tell . . .
I'm guessing . . . we're here.
Guys, I don't think that's going to be easy . . .
Well, may I?
Orochi pounced out of the doorway, brushing along Kit’s legs with his shoes. For a moment time seemed to slow to a crawl, and Orochi’s hand reached out, caressing Kit’s hair. His eyes widened in realization. Life sped up, and, things happened at once—
—Kit lashed out with his legs—
—Orochi blocked with his arm—
—Kit grabbed Orochi’s arm—
—Orochi grabbed Kit’s face—
They seemed intensely tangled for that brief time, then flew apart effortlessly, alighting on opposite walls. Orochi sprang at Kit, who dove down to the ground and kicked off through the doorway into a huge, towering hallway. Kit turned onto his back to see Orochi fly through after him. The two met in midair and crashed along the floor, smashing into a display case with thick, spiked iron armor. The armor buckled and shattered.
They both stood up, brushing glass and metal off their bodies, not a scratch on them. “This isn’t happening,” Kit said.
“None of this has,” Orochi said. “It’s all just someone’s lucid dream.”
“When we wake up, I’ll still be here,” Kit said. “Come and get me, father. Come and get me, brother.”
I won't accept any other fate.
This trip seems to be getting close to wherever we're going, so we don't have much time to make decisions anymore.
Easy in, easy out, huh? Knock and the door shall be opened unto you . . .
I forgot . . . you could do that.
Wonder where that came from . . . Ah well, who cares? Never turn down a good thing!
Fold won't let us rest forever . . .
This ends now.
Something's out there, and it's watching us.
-Cue—VNV Nation, “Epicentre”
(A true hero disobeys what he’s told to do. In the end, he is made true and good by his rebellion.)
My name is Kitsune. I have fought and won many battles. Today I fight one I know I will lose. Surprisingly, I don’t care anymore. Through some alchemy of the written word, I have been given the chance to see the beauty present all around me and within me. For just this one glimpse of this amazing sight, I find my inevitable destruction or consumption has little effect on me. What is my destruction to the sheer boundless joy I feel?
That is not what I want to speak of, anyway. I want to speak of what I have been, not what I will be.
You really expect me to believe there's some grand power out there, and all you want with them is to destroy them? You really expect me to believe that's anything but bullshit?
Time to go back to where this all began, and where it ended once, too.
It'll never end . . .
I'll explain why . . . maybe.
Kit smiling . . . Kit laughing . . . Kitsune picking her up after she's dropped the latest batch of clothes washed . . . Kit frowning . . . Kit standing, red cables popped out of his arms, as the MIBs lay smoking around him . . . Kit vanishing . . .
I have no CHOICE--!!
Nah, it was nothing . . .
A wise woman once had her creation tell us, “It is with considerable difficulty I remember the first era of my being . . .”
It was cold. I felt nothing but the cold, the frightening sensation of being trapped in nothingness. For one moment, I opened my newborn eyes—and I saw the fanatical devotion in Orochi’s eyes, and fled from them as far as I could. I found myself in nothing. Pure white expanse met my month-old eyes. I feebly reached my arm out, even more terrified of this—for I could feel even less here—and was surprised to find my hand touched a wall in the air. The wall darkened from white to a simple flat grey. I pushed the wall, and it bent outward where I touched it. I grabbed at it, and though my baby’s fingers were little more than stubs, I pulled it towards me. A section of the wall disengaged with a popping sound, and I began to mold shapes with it, random images in my mind given form and life by this magical world.
I didn’t know the concept of boredom. Months, possibly years passed before I conceived of a need for a friend, of someone who looked like me. I constructed little homunculi, unthinking little men who I could play games with. Some got smarter. Some were crushed and not given a second thought. Jess and Mir came from this batch, and I took to calling them my “consciences.”
Life passed me by—the world might well have ended there. Leave me with my tormented subconscious and my innocent, naïve mind. The world refused—and so, one day there was a door. The door led me to an alley. The alley led to a street. The street led to a plaza. The plaza led me to the word “city.” I was ten years old. I had learned the concept of language. I thought I was the first to understand its infinite wonders.
You need a ride, buddy? You look lost.
If I'm part of this tapestry you're weaving, make me useful!!
Suddenly, it passed the point of no return with a feather's push, and the moment shattered in an explosive roar and flare.
Would someone mind filling me in on what the fuck is going on here?!
Not exactly hiding in a black van this time, are you? What do you want?
I don't care what they want, I answer to no one in any government.
(Heroes often have it pretty nice, until destiny rears its head like a poisonous snake and sinks its fangs into them.)
When I was a kid, I had this one dream that terrified me. I only had it once—perhaps I should be glad of that. I remember how terrifying it was, how real it had felt. Sometimes you have dreams that feel searingly real when you’re in them, but then when you wake up, you’re puzzled at how you could have believed it. This was not one of them. It felt real then, and remembering it still feels like something I truly felt.
If you’ve ever seen Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings, you know that the standard dark bad guy with something twisted inside is represented by a long, torn, hooded cloak and skeletal, thin hands. The Nazgul. The Dementors. Stuff of nightmares, right? Oh no. No. They may not be physical, but they’re real.
It was my elementary school parking lot. These monsters in dark hooded cloaks had been systematically hunting down everyone close to me. One friend had faked his own suicide to escape them. They would not stop till everything was dead, everything I cared about, everything sacred was destroyed and nothing was left but them. I was running. Running, running. Another friend, she had been running with me till one of these things ambushed us. Terrified, I ran and I never saw her again.
She'll not be harmed for any reason as long as I'm alive.
There I was, in the parking lot of my elementary school, because something told me I’d find a way to stop them here. Something had happened to me in the past, something that was important, something that if I could remember, they would all go away.
From behind the corner of the school, two of these things stepped out. They stopped. I froze. One of them pointed at me. I turned around, and there were more, closing in. I turned back, and one of the two had removed their hood. It was my friend, a look of abject terror plastered across her face, and recognition. She tried to stop them, but was pushed aside.
The monkey talks. These watchers are officially insane.
I don't know if you're out there or if you care, but with or without your help I won't let him get away with this.
I can't keep doing this!!
I remembered I was not where I was supposed to be. I realized someone somewhere was dreaming this. And I wished with all my heart that I would wake up.
And just before they reached me, I did.
Get out of that, why don't you.
It can only last as long as I can focus on it . . .
You're not human. You never will be.
And remember: When the time comes to choose, choose wisely.
If necessary, I will.
(Some say a hero is a hero because they fight for a noble cause—because their values are strong—because, somehow, we get the conviction that they and their cause are somehow right. Heroes are not right or wrong, They are heroes because they have a cause, because they are set apart from the rest of society, and because they will fight till they die for what they believe. A hero is no more, or less, than that which in the face of death chooses to persist.)
I was nothing. Now I have a future. I will not allow my future to be thrown away because of my fate.
It always rains when someone's in a bad mood, or something bad's about to happen to us. You ever notice that? Almost like someone just . . . cues it up for added drama.
I will not stop just because I know I’m going to die.
He should be arrested for indecent behavior.
Do you understand me, Watchers?
We Expatriates are cursed with our destinies, Icy.
Do you believe in fate? Do you believe there's something else out there controlling our every move?
Without her, I'm worthless, better off dead.
All my complaints . . . all my worries . . . all my attempts to try and break away . . . you planned them ALL, didn't you? You MEANT for me to realize what to do . . .
I will not die forsaken. I will not die being forgotten, relegated to the back story of some cheap shortcut of a character.
I WILL.
. . . please, don’t destroy my life just as I finally understand . . .
If he's meant to take me today, then he will.
So be it. It's time for a reckoning.
Should have thought of that earlier . . .
You know, this brings back memories . . .
-Cue—Overclocked Remix, “Silent Hill 2 True (ItsGoneNowmix)”
(Heroes are meant to show us what humanity truly is. They are the lens through which what is important to our souls is seen.)
“You know, usually when you hear a little kid laughing, something bad is about to happen . . .” Orochi said. The frosty giggle echoed around him. “So where’s the big surprise, eh?”
From out of the shadows stepped a little girl, holding a ball. She looked at Orochi and giggled. “Hello,” she said.
“Welcome to Subconsciousland,” Orochi said. “Who are you supposed to be, girl?”
There are more important things than Hyperspace that we have to deal with.
“. . . we can always go back after this is all over."
“I know you!” she said, smiling. “You’re the dead man, the man with no soul.” Her eyes widened, and Orochi’s hair stood up on his neck. “Do you really want one that badly? Will it make it all better?”
“What the hell are you talking about,” Orochi said. His voice came out a husky growl. “I want to live again, without being beholden to Ahasuerus or Kitsune or even the Watchers! I want my life back. I want out of this plot.”
They got what they wanted out of you. They never let anyone go that they haven't used up to the very last drop.
. . . and yet, my freedom feels farther and farther away from me every moment I breathe . . .
“Really?” she said, smiling wide enough her face seemed it might split. “I could arrange that . . .” Orochi stepped back. “But you might not like it. Strange things happen when people . . . stop following the story . . .” She giggled.
Orochi watched her carefully, then narrowed his eyes. He plunged his fist through her face, and the flesh and bone exploded and fell to the ground. Red splatter and white chunks on the black expanse of a night with no stars. “Fuck you, you little sanctimonious bitch,” he said. “We’re in my head right now, aren’t we? Should have picked less dangerous territory.” The ball fell to the floor, bounced, and began rolling away.
“Oh, I shouldn’t be worrying . . . this is your mind, but my world nonetheless . . . after all,” the girl said, laughing all around him. “I don’t hide behind little scared children who don’t know what they’re doing—I don’t use those I care about—I don’t try to kill the ones who can help me fulfill my goals . . .”
Orochi snarled. “I’m sure you don’t,” he said. “I’m onto your games.” He stood up straight, looking around as if daring the very shadows to tear him to shreds. “Stop fucking around. Stop playing these little mindgames and come out with it. I know who you are, just say it.”
Why can't I be one person and stay that person?
“I will when you stop being lost,” she said, her giggle turning into a mocking, derisive laugh.
Orochi screamed at her, pure feral energy, pure frustration. Then he screamed again, and again. Each time the cries reverberated around the nothingness, building into a roar, almost drowning out the silence about him. After the third scream, he sighed. “God damn this,” he said. Orochi stood up and walked away from the girl’s dead body. He walked till the darkness swallowed him up. And as the darkness embraced him, he said this:
“I am not afraid.”
Kitsune turned to look up at the sky. “Then come.”
"Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."
The gears of fate are turning, Ming. The entire earth grinds under their teeth, and this storm is merely the first of many to come.
So, where to?
(Above all, heroes tend to die fighting, rather than let their deaths overtake them in sleep. To Hell in blood rather than Heaven in slumber.)
“It was enough, wasn’t it? To see with your own eyes what you were a part of?”
Dammit, why'd they do it? Didn't they know I'd have to take a step to bring them back into the story? Couldn't they have at least TRIED to prevent this?
“Yes.”
“You paid your debt, as did I.”
“Yes.”
I know all too well how happy the Overseer will be to see me.
“Then we have nothing here. Nothing and no one.”
A pause. “Yet . . .”
To make an analogy: you meet someone, you get to know them, and you become friends. Then, one day, your friend tells you they're gay, or Christian, or some other thing you never knew before. It doesn't make them a completely different person, there's just one extra little thing you didn't know before. It shouldn't change how you act around them. And that's how I see the Watchers, Icy. Not as some omnipotent being typing emotionless words out on a computer screen. Just . . . just another person living my life.
“Do not worry. She will know I’m gone. I won’t leave her with nothing.”
“She’ll be beautiful when she’s older.”
I don't know.
A smile. “I know. I think I might see it someday, outside my dreams.”
“Are you ready?”
“We are.”
A paradox in its most pure and damaging form, aren't I?
(It was a blessing, in many ways, to see the end to so many heroes before my time.)
Kitsune opened his eyes, and he was standing outside the castle once more. Only now Orochi stood next to him. They glanced at each other, nodded. Stepping out, away from the wall, they faced each other. They watched each other. Above the battle reached its climax, the storm raged all the stronger, and below stood two pillars of serenity.
Is that why the Watchers are being so sadistic? So carelessly unemotional? Because it doesn't matter any more?
Invisible puppeteers, pulling all our strings? Sounds a little binding, doesn't it?
Poor Orochi. Killed by his Prodigal Son. (You are here. Here is a Hyperspace base. Rand AlToor and the Beast are loose in the halls. Welcome to hell on earth, gentlemen. Enjoy your stay while it lasts.)
He won't get the chance.
I AM done with the Expatriates, Rand. Done with following their rules, done with playing by someone else's handbook. Done with being a fucking weapon to be used by you, Bishou, or anyone else.
“We were characters once,” Orochi said. “Those days passed long ago, into some sort of abortive metaphor for creation.”
“We’re still characters, aren’t we?” Kitsune said. “Still acting out the destinies foretold by the keys of a keyboard.”
“Enough talk,” Orochi said. “We have business to finish.”
It was like a carefully orchestrated ballet, a beautifully choreographed scene playing out on hundreds of screens. They matched each other move for move.
Kitsune jabbed, Orochi dropped to the ground and kicked the fist away, lashing out with his own hand to grab Kitsune’s leg and pull him down, Kitsune jumped above Orochi’s hand, landing lightly away, Orochi rolled off the ground and into the air, just in time to lean back and let Kitsune slide over him, as he flipped end over end to bring his foot into Kitsune’s head, Kitsune fell to the side, sweeping his leg in timed perfectly to connect with Orochi’s foot, which wasn’t there because Orochi landed on his hands instead, springing to his feet a short distance away.
It must have lasted hours, but it couldn’t have, because they ended only a short while before the fight between chaos and control. But for hours they never hit each other.
A cold comfort, isn't it? To realize you're still alive, even when all else you care about is torn away, when your life is destroyed? (Will a child's rage determine a man's future?)
He just wanted to die, and he wanted the rest of the world to die with him.
Are you frightened of the shadows in your past?
Hyperspace's next try for the throne of the world. I should've known. Put her down.
It was a tap, light as a feather but with the power of a thunderbolt to the mind, that pushed the fight over the edge. Orochi’s knuckle grazed Kitsune’s jawline. The two of them were immediately hurling each other across the sands, bruising themselves, cutting themselves. Kitsune swung a haymaker into Orochi’s face, knocking out a few teeth, Orochi sucker punched Kitsune, Kitsune flying-roundhouse-kicked Orochi in the neck, raising up a huge welt, Orochi snapped Kitsune’s leg with a scissors-kick to the kneecap, Kitsune broke Orochi’s shoulder by slamming Orochi to the ground and bringing both fists down on the joint, Orochi head-butted Kitsune, breaking his nose.
“Too . . . easy,” Orochi said. “This is like the fight with the chaosbard. We’re not doing anything abnormal except survive.”
“That’s the point,” Kitsune said. “We are what we are. This is how we fight to determine our survival.”
You came alive too soon, too quickly to be any match for me. You may have intelligence, but I have experience and time on my side. You've been aware for all of an hour--I've lived for nineteen long, torturous years. You know NOTHING of the pain and suffering I've endured, nor the pain I've caused. You can't TOUCH my powers--you don't even know the extent of your own.
We'll avenge his death. He didn't deserve to go out that way.
I intend to do so. And I intend to finish the job you started, but my own way, not yours.
"You trust him with your life?"
Suicide isn't very appealing to me at the moment.
"You think you're freeing them? HAH! They're all still slaves!"
I will be who I WISH to be, not some monster. I WILL make my own destiny. You couldn't control me alive, and your memory will not control me when you are dead.
Orochi said nothing.
Kitsune felt the air about him ripple, then found himself yards away, a smoking crater where he once stood. Orochi momentarily fell apart into swiftly decomposing pieces of flesh and bone, but still stood there. Kitsune turned into a tree and was uprooted, falling to the ground human. Orochi’s chest puckered, and he flew backwards in the air to slam against the castle wall. Pieces of ground swirled into spikes hard as diamond and shattered uselessly in midair. Trees tore themselves to pieces to be wasted as splintered shields and swords. Huge bolts of lightning crashed to the ground and dissipated harmlessly.
“Two can manipulate the laws of nature,” Kitsune said.
“You’re wrong,” Orochi said. “Only one of us can. That’s the secret. That’s what we’re fighting for.”
Kitsune’s eyes widened. “Are you trying to—?”
“Fuck it all,” Orochi said. “End it here and now.” He smiled. In a heartbeat, he was standing beside Kitsune, his hand clenched around Kitsune’s neck. “We’re going to end it, you and I . . . and then the plot will go on without us.”
“It already has,” Kit said.
"'Ming, the world may end in a few hours. I intend to enjoy myself until then."
Best to let those with more experience handle him.
I’m NEVER leaving an Expatriate I trusted to die.
A psychopathic Commie, a mentally unstable artifical demigod, a schizoid psionic, and two cybernetically-enhanced fanatics. We're just a bunch of fanatics, Ming. If we're the good guys--if these are who the Watchers picked to save the world . . . I mean, would you want us to be responsible for your existence?
What good is a hero, if he can’t save those he protects?
You fool. You goddamned naïve fool.
-Cue—KMFDM, “Godlike”
Kitsune slipped, plunging his face into the wet mud beneath him. He snarled, glaring up at his opponent with one baleful green eye. “Why?” he said.
“Get up,” the opponent said. “You’re letting yourself get in the way.”
“I am the way,” Kitsune said.
Jab, parry.
“You are nothing, only a boy who thinks he has everything.”
“Why would I think I do? I am everything! So wise, but you can’t see it?”
“You’re in my way.”
“Make me.”
Kick, flip. Splatter.
You've killed hundreds of people--even almost your friends. And you have the audacity to say I'm evil for killing someone unimportant?
What the fuck are you talking about?
No. I HAVE to win.
If I’d been able to raise you, you’d be better behaved.
“Have to change.”
“Why do you not stop me, if you say you can? What is it holding you back?”
“Nothing.”
Haymaker, duck. Stomach uppercut. Drop.
“Stop it.”
“You’re only doing this to yourself.”
“Liar.”
“Who is to say a lie cannot be more true than the truth?”
“I won’t lose.”
“Is that for me, or for you? Are you only trying to make yourself feel better? Trying to pray to God for a miracle? He won’t answer you unless you forgive yourself.”
“Forgive myself for what?”
“For existing.”
Wild uppercut, somersault away. Gesture. Stand up.
“That’s a stupid way to act.”
“Then stop expecting Him to save you. It’s your choice, your destiny.”
“Bullshit! Every choice I make has been defined by people like you!”
“If it has, then you’d think you would have been able to strike me, then. I’m not so vain as to expect it to be impossible for one able to break even those restrictions.”
“Stop hiding behind your words and tell me straight to my face what you mean.”
“I have been, you just haven’t been listening. I don’t think you ever have listened to me, really.”
Flying kick, shove aside. Spiral away. Splatter in the mud again.
“You dirty your own innocence when your success is all but impossible. What is holding you back from grasping the truth?”
“I don’t know.”
“Now who is the liar?”
“Stop asking me for something I can’t give!”
“The only thing holding you back anymore is you.”
Stand up. Stare at the opponent. Above, a bird wheels through the air, a shriek piercing the blue sky.
“I won’t let me stop me.”
Feint, uppercut. Connection.
“Good . . .”
“I told you I would win.”
“Just the way it was supposed to be, eh?”
The Watchers write us, boy. We’re nothing but words to be manipulated to cause some sort of emotional response. We’re characters, brief flashes of inspiration on a blank computer screen. Our lives play out in their minds every time we make a move.
Kitsune shrugged.
----
When the world was new and fresh in our minds these characters meant nothing to us, merely symbols of the screen, bottles waiting to be filled, but now they have become more than the sum of our parts, they have become themselves, their own, something beyond our ken, and we have lost them to the tides of change, they are now what we often dream we could be inside the secret parts of our mind that everyone but us sees on our skin, and it saddens me to see these creatures of beauty dying before my eyes as we choke them to death, pushing them to the brink of exhaustion, stretching their days over years, manipulating them, feebly trying to pull them back under our control, destroying their hopes, destroying their need to be, destroying their will to be separate, tearing down the walls of their minds, making them forget who they are, making them live their lives over again like they’re dying, which of course they are, but they know it now even if they don’t come out and say it, they live on borrowed time, voices outside us clamor for their annihilation like rabid wolves—and we’re the Judas goats leading them along—so every action they make has a tinge of desperation to it, like a last vain gasp for hope in a hopeless world, except we know there’s hope because we write hope into existence like expert weavers at a giant loom of the ages, our words are real because we make it so.
----
-Cue—Frontline Assembly, “Equilibrium”
There was a time when I was not human—not mentally, at least. Then my mind became human. Now it is free once more. And I can see, trickling down the ages, all the treasures I have forgotten.
If it means my death, I will reclaim what I have lost.
“Bastard!” Orochi leaped away, clutching his left hand. Smoke curled up off it, and the fingers twitched limply. “What are you trying to do?”
I should have known you weren’t sane, none of you Expatriates ever are.
“Same thing you are,” Kitsune said. “Except I have another plan. Now. It’s over.” He closed his eyes.
“What?” Orochi said. He looked at his hands. They began melting, skin and muscle sloughing off their bones. Eyes wide in terror, he looked up at Kitsune, saw that as Kitsune stood on the ground, the same thing was happening to him. “Why?”
“We’ve taken this charade too far, haven’t we, Orochi?” Kitsune said, laughing. His legs slowly slid together, knocking against each other, through each other. “We’re just toys, after all. Toys to amuse the Watchers. That’s what’s beautiful about us, that we had a purpose. But now we’re moving on. We cut ourselves off from the story, when Adric severed our ties to the plot. What happens when characters are cut away from the plot, Orochi?”
Who said the world had to follow rules? Who says that someone has to order it all nice and neat and sensibly? Isn’t it enough to think?
“They . . . cease to exist . . .” Orochi said, shock creeping through his voice. His eyes drifted apart, sliding down his face. “I didn’t want it this way!”
“You cut yourself off from the plot, father,” Kitsune said. “You killed yourself, brother. This is where we shuffle off the mortal coil.”
This was life. This was existence. The miniscule parts of the world, all working, and doing something.
Rest easy, Watchers. We exist. That makes us beautiful. That alone will make this worth our destruction. (What am I still doing here?!)
Orochi cursed. “I should never have chosen to end this,” he said. “I wanted freedom.”
“The only true freedom is death,” Kitsune said. To Orochi’s eyes, Kitsune seemed to take on the appearance of a black, hooded spectre, two hollow eyes gazing out from beneath its hood. Then he was normal once more. “Did you actually think there was something beyond the story? For us?”
“Damn you,” Orochi said. “You want a choice?” He spat on the ground. “Fine then. Here is my choice. If freedom means I cease to be, I choose a cage.” Slowly he slid back together. His eyes drew back up to their normal level. “I choose this story.”
“See you at the end of the story,” Kitsune said. “I’ll be waiting.” Then he collapsed into an orange puddle, leaving Orochi torn inside.
“Be seeing you,” Orochi said. “Shit.” He looked up. “They’re still fighting . . . of course they are, time has no meaning to words, does it?” He laughed, running his hands through his short, coarse black hair. “God, so this is what it feels like . . . I never told him my name, my name . . . he never knew my name. It’s silly to worry about it now, though.”
Orochi slid his foot around in a circle, and kicked off the sand into the air. He twisted about in midair, reorienting himself—“The enemy’s gate is down,” he told himself, and chuckled at a private joke—and smashed through an upper-story window, landing on the floor of the hallway on his knees. “Tick-tock, tock-tick, the clock is ticking down to the evitable,” he sang tunelessly. He straightened and walked to the stairs. He clambered up to the door. “Revelation,” he said. “List all the signs and portents, list everything. Fuck if it doesn’t matter.” He opened the door. MiaoMing didn’t notice. Actor did, and nodded barely.
“Now let’s see this end,” Orochi said.
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