by K.A. Rose
Stage 12:
You and Me
He knew he was dreaming again.
Once more he found himself in a grassed area, but
it was not a park by his house. This was a
grassland in The World, or more specifically it was Delta Bursting
Passed Over Aquafield, the favorite haunt of newbies and the stage where
Orca had first taken him to acquaint him with the game.
He was lying on his back watching the sky. The sun
was blotted out by the leaves of a nearby tree that cast morphing shadows
across his skin. A deactivated Spring of Mist gurgled nearby.
Just on the cusp of his vision he could see BlackRose,
sitting with all the propriety of a tea ceremony. Her legs were tucked
beneath her, and her back was ramrod straight, arms folded neatly in her
lap. She had her back to him, watching the water of the small pool, her
massive sword lying as though dead in the tall grass. From his perspective
on the ground she seemed to hang in space, existing outside time or gravity.
"You're a murderer now," she said without emotion,
like a counselor. "How do you feel about that?"
"I wish I could say. I'm not even sure it's my fault."
"Everything's your fault."
"That's not a proper perspective to have. I can't
go around holding myself accountable for everyone's actions. Sora says--"
"Sora says. Sora says," she grumbled. "Who is Sora
suddenly? Is Sora me? Am I Sora? Have you been trying to replace me?"
"No! That's not it at all..."
Without a perceptible shift in her body language,
Kite realized suddenly that BlackRose was crying. "I hate you Kite. I hate
you so much."
"Please don't say that, BlackRose..."
"All the promises you've made, and others that you've
broken, to me and everyone else... Don't you know how much everyone relies
on you? How much everyone needs you? Why are you giving them something
to be dependent on at all?"
"Dependent on-- What-- I-- You're
not making any sense!"
"Why? Why am I dependent on you?"
Kite began to sit up. "That's what
I should be asking!"
I'll
always want you.
"Why are you haunting me like this?" Kite demanded
of the crying figure. "Why can't I just forget about you?"
I'll always need you.
"Why don't you email? Why don't you at least tell
me why you're gone? Why don't you at least tell me where you are?"
I'll always love you.
"Why did you leave me?"
And I will always miss you...
"Why don't you answer?"
"Why don't..."
Kite opened his eyes to see his room in twilight
shadow, and despite his sweat and constant turning his sheets were ice
cold. His radio alarm, showing 18:05 in glowing red numbers, was blasting
tinny music that had just gone into the chorus. He slammed his hand down
on the off button.
I hate pop music, he thought muzzily.
Ten minutes later, when he had successfully returned
to sleep, he dreamt of hallways.
18 December, a Sunday.
Five days had passed without incident for Kite and
his former teammates. Even the Japanese BBS was oddly silent on the events
transpiring within the house. If anyone was
exploring it, it had either yielded nothing of interest to them or swallowed
them whole.
For these five days Kite himself did not access
much. He had no way of knowing how much the others did. If at all.
In the span of this time he finished his winter
break homework. He took up small work doing chores and odd-jobs for neighbors
to earn extra money. He went grocery shopping with his little brother,
though the latter was hardly pleased by his presence. The older sibling
now struck the eight-year-old as dazed and disoriented.
The most troubling moment came on Thursday when,
on an errand to the pharmacy, Kite had stopped in the young boys' section
at the bookstore and picked up the latest Shonen Weekly, flipping
right to the Rheingold Densetsu installment right there in the
store. His little brother almost died of embarassment, so overcome
with anxiety that he forgot entirely to pick up a copy himself.
Generally Kite avoided his computer, going so far
as to shut it off and let it cool down for a few days. He shunned the television
and all electronic devices, though he kept the lights on in his room at
all times. By most standards in Tokyo, this was the lowest of low-tech.
Many people would have been glad at such a reprieve,
but vacations made Kite nervous. Particularly the ones where he knew, beyond
doubt, that he was only putting off something inevitable.
But his inbox hadn't alerted him of any mail from
Sora, so...
He wondered whether it was possible that this entire
thing had found a way to resolve itself on its own, without his involvement.
It didn't seem so simple that Lios would concede at the drop of a hat and
that would be the end of their troubles. Though he had no way of knowing
just what the status of their petition was by now.
But no mail from Sora... so...
But what if BlackRose had...?
It was with that thought that finally, after the
end of the five days, Kite caved in and started up his computer once more.
He checked news first, hoping vaguely for some helpful sign that maybe
the story he had read last week was just one terrible coincidence, but
found nothing. Some random stock reports and rumors about Bigfoot.
He subscribed to no mailing lists and Altimit's
built-in spam filters were top-notch, so he rarely received email. What
existed was a belated customer service reply regarding overclocked internal
coolant cables, a mailer daemon from BlackRose's inbox informing him that
her box was full and would he please wait a few days while the older emails
are cleaned out, and a letter from Sanjuro. With Sora's name in the subject
line.
After five days spent in waiting, it was three minutes
until he logged into The World.
Sundays were the busiest for the Japanese servers.
Both adults and schoolchildren had the day off, and particularly schoolchildren,
most of which were out on winter break now as well. Mac Anu, the renowned
"newbie server," was incredibly crowded.
There was a large quantity of what some people in
Kite's former clique had dubbed imitators-- newbie PCs whose designs mimicked
that of famous players, including the people involved in either 'Ordeal'
with Morganna. There seemed to be an equal number of Tsukasas as Kites
around, though the latter wasn't so easily achieved due to Kite's particular
hacked model.
In one corner of the root town there were even --yes--
the Soras. His compatriot had never believed him when he spoke of them
and he had never been around when Kite had found them, but there they were.
Not all were exact duplicates, some because they desired to be ever-so-slightly
different and others because they had only heard about Sora second-hand
and had to piece together the design from hearsay, and still others because
they had attempted, badly, to make female versions of him, the results
of which were too horrifying even for Kite to comprehend.
He knew better than to assume one of them, even
the exact replicas, was actually Sora. Even if they had the look down,
none of them carried themselves the way he did. And if they half-managed
that, then that would go away the second they opened their mouths.
Though there was still something unsettling in seeing
someone with Sora's face smile so genuinely. Kite knew better than to think
he'd ever see an expression like that on the real Sora's face, but something
about it...
Kite shook his head. This was a mistake, coming
here like this. He couldn't deal with this now. He'd've been better off
to email Sanjuro back asking to name a meeting time, maybe something for
next week when it'd be a little less crowded, or when there was a potential
to find a nice field somewhere to not get interrupted--
"Rez plz," said something by his feet.
Speak of the devil.
"Sorry," Kite said absently. "I don't--"
He happened to look down.
Sanjuro's grayed-out form lay frozen on the ground,
slowly dissolving.
There was the obligatory freak-out moment, and then
Kite set to work resurrecting the Heavy Blade. Extraparty resurrections
were a feature of the 2011 spring expansion, Mystery of Nocturne,
and resulted in a lot of newbies begging for resurrections instead of accepting
their game-overs maturely. To compensate for this, the administration released
as Nocturne B expansion in which there was a two or three minute
delay in the items having an effect, a major detriment if the ghost in
question was close to total dissolve. Presumably this was to encourage
partying, or at least discourage the amount of requests. All it actually
did was make the pleas more desperate.
"If I didn't know any better," Kite said, after
Sanjuro had sat up, holding his head, "I'd say the actual phrase was 'can
someone resurrect me, please?'"
"I started saying that," said Sanjuro, "but no one
was paying attention so I thought I'd try slang. Thanks," he added dryly.
His expression indicated that he knew full well that Kite only helped him
because they knew each other.
"How on earth do you die in a Root Town?"
"I got PK'd, if you can believe that."
"Who?"
Sanjuro fixed him with a gaze. "You're kidding,
right?"
Kite cocked his head to one side in puzzlement.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, do you even have to ask?" Sanjuro growled
bitterly. "Who do we know that has a history with this sort of thing?"
For a moment, Kite's fingers froze. Paralyzed.
"No. No, he wouldn't. One of those mimics in the
corner--"
"It was him, Kite," Sanjuro insisted. "I
even saw his user data. There's no doubt. I guess it just figures..."
"What?"
"What he said to me last week, you know, after meeting
Lios. 'Should have known it was a mistake to play nice.'"
Play... nice...
Oh my god.
Kite dropped the controller. In-game, the effect
of this was slightly less dramatic, but his character took on a certain
quality of seriousness when it stiffened.
"Sanjuro," Kite said, voice so unnervingly calm
that Sanjuro could almost taste the turmoil going on under the surface,
"we need to find him. Now."
Delta Sickened Imprisoned Fallen Angel was one of
the strange stages in The World in that it did not follow the user's
local weather patterns. Instead, it rained. Always. Lightning was occasionally
seen to arc across the sky. The Spring of Mist was long dead and silent,
its small pool overflowing from the downpour. Within seconds on arrival,
Kite and Sanjuro's digital garments were soaked.
Kite considered at first to call out to Sora, if
he was there at all. Sanjuro put a hand on his shoulder and advised against
it, though the latter warning was lost as a crack of thunder edged all
other sound out of existence.
Somewhere faroff, they heard laughter.
"Kite! Sanjuro!"
The two PCs turned. Emerging from the hillside,
a familiar Wavemaster pulled himself up to greet them.
"What are you doing here?" Kite asked Elk, unable
to shed his disbelief.
"I read on the BBS about a PK on the loose," Elk
said uneasily, steadying himself on his staff. "I wanted to be sure, so..."
"It is," Kite confirmed, gravely inclining his head.
"He's returning to his old ways," Sanjuro murmured,
barely audible above the rainfall. "He's gone off the deep end now."
"I don't believe it!" Elk said fiercely. "I can't
believe you can, Sanjuro!"
"You didn't get to experience it first-hand,"
Sanjuro pointed out.
"You had every reason to get PK'd!"
"Elk!" Kite cried desperately, knowing the first
sparks of an argument when he saw them. And Elk in a foul mood was something
terrifying in its own right.
"No!" Elk persisted. He was shouting now. "Every
time I turn around you have some excuse or other to think Sora's a bad
guy. Maybe you're the reason he's turned out this way! Everyone's
patience runs out eventually; I doubted him once, but after he saved me
in the house I refuse to ever distrust
him again!"
Kite was at a loss. He'd never heard Elk profess
something so adamantly, or at least on any subject that did not directly
involve his friend Mia.
In the dimming afterglow of a lightning flash, Kite
just barely made out the shape in the darkness of an advancing figure.
"Watch out--!"
The Wavemaster detected the blade perhaps a millisecond
before it would have cut him through, and dodged quickly to the left. He
cried out, clutching his wand with both hands to keep him upright as blood
poured from a gash in his side.
Sanjuro struck out a hand blindly, smacked what
felt like a shoulder, and then nothing else. The creature that had attacked
was far gone from now in the rain-drenched darkness.
"I'm all right," Elk wheezed, hastily casting a
cure spell. Kite respectfully released his grip. "I'm not running from
him now. He's just trying to scare us off. But I'm not going to run."
"Elk..."
The small Twin Blade peered out into the darkness.
Distant thunder rolled, but no other sounds reached their headphones.
"You're lucky," Kite said. "Those blades have a
15% Instant Death effect."
"How do you--"
"They were mine, at one point. He gave them to me.
But when I offered he took them back." He added, knowing the looks Sanjuro
and Elk gave him without seeing them, "I don't regret it."
Kite, whose eyes hadn't left the spot where the
shadow of Sora had last been seen, stepped forward, straining to see what
he could of the surrounding area. Compared to the darkness of the house
this was nothing, but they had no extra light source either.
"Sora!" he shouted uninhibited, cupping his hands
around his mouth. "Where are you? Sora!"
"I feel awful about this all..." Sanjuro was saying. "More and more he
just seems to remind me of my own students."
"That's good for you," Elk told him sourly.
"SORA!" Kite screamed louder, voice breaking with
the effort. "Come out, please! It's me!"
"I'm already blaming myself. What more do you want from me?"
"You're a samurai, aren't you? Make with the sepukku already."
"Would that I could."
"...You're serious, aren't you."
"SORA!!"
"The worst part," Sanjuro said grimly, "was that last week I was telling
him how much he meant to Kite."
Sanjuro shook his head. "Here I was thinking he was screwed up before.
People like me made him this way."
"For the love of god, SORA!"
"Forget it, Kite!" Elk shouted, loud enough for
it to reach the Twin Blade's ears. "He's already gone."
Kite drew another large breath, making, it seemed,
to keep trying. But instead he sighed, and finally threw down his hands.
And then came a rush of air
as if something jumping overhead.
"There!" Kite announced at once, honing in on the
direction the sound had gone. "I'm going!"
"Kite--"
"Wait--"
A dull clunk as Kite unequipped his weapons.
"What are you..." Sanjuro began, interrupted as
the pair of daggers were cast into his hands. He fumbled with them for
a moment, as if terrified to let them drop. "Are you NUTS?"
"Do you deal with animals at all?" Kite said, quickly
discarding whatever weapons remained in his inventory, which included two
incredibly rare level 99 items, but he did not notice or care. "If an animal
bares its teeth at you, the last thing you do is come at it with
yours bared too."
In a split second he was out of sight, the last
hint of him a running blur as he went into a jump for the adjacent spiral
cliff. A dull rumble of thunder signified his departure into the rain and
mist.
In the darkness, running from the tops of cliffs
and hills and buildings, Kite tuned his ears to the distinct sound of another
set of feet, keeping pace with him. When they ceased he ducked, and Sora's
blades went by harmlessly overhead.
He could just make him out now, under a sliver of
moonlight peaking behind the rainclouds. A gaunt silhouette, all limbs
and sharp edges. Barely human in his proportions or, then, his body language,
cackling and tilting his head up as if to taste the rain that fell into
his mouth.
Kite found himself echoing the words Elk had spoken
before.
"I'm not going to run from you, Sora."
To no reply, but for a snap of lightning and a flit
through the air, and Kite being knocked roughly from his perch to the ground
below.
...Falling like floating, then the dull rumble of
the force feedback as he hit...
He struggled through the mud as the shadowed figure
danced and spun in the air overhead, almost seeming to fly. Within moments
Kite's head spun trying to follow the sound, and he focused instead on
reaching the next hill top.
Minutes later they had reached mountain outcrops,
and here Sora's advantage with jumping ran out. Racing along on a path
maybe three meters below his, Kite had gained to twenty feet behind Sora,
blessing whatever faults in programming permitted his smaller character
model to keep pace with him.
"What are you trying to escape?" Kite shouted after
him, hardly recognizing the words that came out of his mouth. Wherever
his questions were coming from now, it wasn't within him. "What are you
running from, Sora?"
When the running stopped ahead of him he immediately
went into a roll, but it wasn't fast enough. A thousand HP, over a tenth
of his total, were shaved off in a second, and a large gash appeared on
his arm where he'd been cut.
He did not rush to spells or curatives. He knelt
there in the mud, hand clasped to the wound, listening.
"Why aren't you healing?" the figure in the darkness
demanded.
"If you find reason to hurt me, maybe I deserve
it."
"What is this, a pity-me act?"
Any response he gave would be wrong, so Kite stayed
silent instead.
Sora hmphed. "I'll make the next hit count."
"Go ahead," said Kite, without challenge. He had
taken rest up against the cliff wall, where a shallow overhang shielded
him from some of the rain. "I don't mind."
Moonlit hints of form appeared out of the shadow,
and a hanging pair of garnet eyes. It struck Kite suddenly, randomly, that
garnet was exactly the word for them, and he was amazed he hadn't thought
of the association before. It probably came of reading his female classmates'
stories; girls loved comparing eyes to gems, unaware that it was a cliche.
But here it was exactly their property, even their luster in the moonlight.
That, or blood red.
"How many have you killed?" Kite asked.
"What?"
"How many players have you killed, Sora?"
"...Two."
"Including Sanjuro?"
"Three, then. The rest I just kinda scared."
Kite winced. Most likely the system admins would
be receiving far more reports than just those three. And while from a moral
standpoint that was something of a relief, it spelled trouble in every
other respect.
"I'll talk to Lios," Kite said heavily. "I'll get
it sorted out."
"Lios said one more infraction and I'm banned. Guess
I'm gone past that now. Ever watch baseball? One, two, three strikes, you're
out." He laughed, giggled, something in between, more akin to a hyena than
anything human. Kite could just barely see him nervously wringing his hands.
"But why am I talking to you about this...?"
"What happened with Lios, Sora?"
"I'm a bad, bad kid, mister."
"You believe that?"
"Everyone else does."
"Sucks to everyone else. Do you believe it?"
"Doesn't matter what I think, does it?" Sora crossed
the distance between them and squated down perhaps two feet in front of
him. His naturally darker complexion was ghostly in the moonlight, and
it cast weird shadows over the contours of his face. "Everyone's made up
their mind about me already. Sanjuro and them think I'm no good. Maybe
I am no good."
"You are good," Kite told him firmly. But Sora didn't
hear him.
"But you, oh, you're way worse," Sora said, voice
shaking. "You've made up your mind that I am good. You don't care.
You just expect. There was another asshole that was like that. I
couldn't stand the sight of him."
Kite knew without asking who the 'other asshole'
was. There was only one person Sora might've known that could fit the bill:
Crim, Subaru's loyal protector. He was so drastically different from Sora
as to be his antithesis. He was also, Kite knew, the only one to ever best
Sora in a fight. That sort of thing was bound to sting.
"And what does it matter-- really?" the taller Twin
Blade went on. He was now very close to Kite, eyes wide and locked on his.
One of the blades hovered by a cheek, slicing off single strands of dark
green hair. "There are no second chances for me. I thought maybe helping
you with this dungeon thing would finally get people to ease up, but no--
Nothing will ever, ever, ever--" his voice began to crack "--ever
change their minds, will it? Even you. There's nothing I can do to you
that..."
"That's right," Kite said. He strained to keep his
own voice steady. "Nothing you can do can ever change my mind. I don't
care what anyone says about your 'true nature,' even you, because you hide
it from yourself. You con yourself into believing you're no good."
"...Liar... What do you know..."
Sora held the blade out between them. It glowed
luminescent in the moonlight, or if not that by its own strange self-possessed
light. The blades he'd given to Kite as thanks after being revived, the
blades Kite had given him back just as readily, outdated weapons, useless
weapons, not even rare items anymore, just valuable by pure virtue of the
fact that these, specifically, were his.
"Take it back," Sora said from behind that blade.
"I'm only giving you one chance."
Kite only smiled. "You're a good kid, Sora."
No emotion, no sound exuded as Sora sunk the blade
into his chest, near the shoulder. Blood streamed out --blood had never
been an element of damage in The World until vehement protests by
the American players caused its inclusion in the 2010 winter expansion--
and it streamed and streamed, permeating his shirt and vest and turtleneck,
turning it black and shiny under the moon and the rain, trickling down
the length of the blade even as Sora pushed farther--
There was no pain, exactly. Kite was not physically
immersed in the game as he had been two weeks ago, but the sensation he
did feel still ran similar. The damage inflicted by a player's weapon was
different than that of a monster. Stronger, for one, and that a blade under
sentient control has its own special sting to it unattainable by other
means.
Sora ran the blade all the way up to the hilt. Kite
knew that if he could manage it, he could reach behind and feel the tip
protruding from his back.
His HP was plummeting almost too fast to track.
He made no move to heal himself.
And Sora did not retract the blade, but kept it
there, lodged in the boy's shoulder. This was a technique seldom employed
by PCs and never by monsters; just watching it someone would have been
able to mark Sora as a player of the old school, but that was hardly the
first thing on Kite's mind. It prolonged the damage over and over, and
every time a hit registered there was, he remembered, that 15% Instant
Death technique Sora was so well known for.
"What do you... think this proves...?" Sora was
stammering, voice weakening.
Teeth and eyes clenched, Kite said nothing.
"Why don't you...
"just...
"give...
"up..." Sora was sobbing.
Summoning all his strength, pushing internal parameters
to their limits,
Kite raised his arms,
seeming at first to clutch
his shoulders to push him away
but then turning to envelope
Sora
in a warm brotherly embrace.
"It's okay, Sora," Kite whispered in his ear. "Really."
"B--bastard..."
Sora was murmuring, blade shaking
ripping open Kite's shoulder even more.
Finding himself pulled forward
despite Kite's obvious pain, against the latter's chest
and held there.
"I don't care
what I have to do
or what anyone says.
Even you, because
I
'm not going to give up now.
On you or anyone else."
"I don't--
I don't deserve to--"
"Never let anyone
tell you that."
"But I--"
"It's okay. Whatever might be worrying you, whatever at all,
it's all right, Sora."
And then came the sick, wet sound as the blade thunked back into Sora's bracer, and Kite's HP stopped falling
at 1.
No one else was around to witness Sora,
the famous Player Killer,
the infamous terrorist of The World,
bury his head into Kite's shoulder
not to cry but
to whisper
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
And then the tears started.
Eventually the sun came out on Delta Sickened Imprisoned
Fallen Angel, although that was only by its standards. The rain abated
to a drizzle, and the clouds cleared enough to qualify as an early twilight
rather than midnight. There was still barely enough to see by, but the
darkness of a regular World field was a human darkness, not the
sterile, alien abyss of the house. This was
almost comforting.
Sora and Kite took refuge under a cave-like groove
cut into the cliff wall, with an overhang composed of large broad leaves
that dripped fat raindrops into puddles by their feet, as the two Twin
Blades sat in silence for so long that time had ceased to be an issue.
Sora had taken the liberty of healing Kite, sending
one potion after another long after the smaller PC's status bars had returned
to full, like he was making up for some grievous injury more imagined than
real. And Kite did not complain.
Kite ran a hand over his back near the shoulder
blade where a faint scar from the blade could still be felt. No thoughts
on its presence ran through his mind, though his inner monologue was anything
but silent.
He could never mention, of course, that Sora had
broken down. Probably even Sora was working steadily to omit the moment
from his memory. Kite couldn't really hold it against him. He'd probably
be the same.
Still.
Must be hard.
"You know..."
Sora glanced up.
Kite knew he had gotten Sora's attention, but he
went on anyway, "I wish you were my real little brother sometimes. The
one I have hates me, I think."
"M4hn4h... What's all this talk about 'real' little
brothers? Am I some other sort to you?" He shot him a dark look. "I thought
I told you never to call me that, either..."
Kite pointedly ignored the last remark. "It's interesting,
isn't it? The way we tend to refer to the net and the physical as two separate
worlds? And that one of them, the physical world, is somehow real, and
this somehow isn't?"
"It's an old observation."
"What do you say," Kite continued, "we start the
tutoring after New Year's?"
"You're still set on that?"
"I don't see why not."
"You don't want to... meet... do you?"
Kite chuckled a little at Sora's sudden shyness
but didn't remark on it. "Maybe not at first."
"Fine by me."
Silence fell between them, but Kite was happy to
discover it wasn't an uncomfortable silence, but rather that easy absence
that demands no words should fill it.
It was broken by a faroff: "OIIIII!"
The two Twin Blades looked up to see, trudging up
the last muddy hill to come into view, Sanjuro and Elk, shielding their
eyes from the rain with forearms or, in Elk's case, his staff. Sanjuro
waved until Kite gave in and waved back.
They stood up on their arrival out of courtesy.
By the look of things, both had run a long way. Sanjuro's remarks confirmed
it.
"We've been looking for you two for hours. You're
all right?"
"We're good," Kite answered, inclining his head.
"Right, Sora?"
"A-okay here, I guess." Sora shot him a glance again.
"Listen, Sora..." Sanjuro began.
"Don't even get into it," Sora interrupted him,
holding up a hand. "Just go commit sepukku and be done with it. On your
own time, though."
Sanjuro glanced back at Elk, eyebrows arched. "Do
you two coordinate your jokes or something?"
"It wasn't a joke," Sora insisted. "I'd've thought
you'd be all for it. Aren't all you samurai fanatics die-hards for ritual
suicide?"
It could have been that this remark sent Sanjuro
right over the edge, or that the surreality of Sora speaking at such length
to him without going for the jugular finally hit. Either way, Sanjuro broke
into laughter.
"I've got big news," Elk told Kite, once the Heavy
Blade's chuckling had subsided. "Mia's account was unfrozen earlier today!"
The exuberance with which the Wavemaster was able to say this boggled the
others. But they offered substantial sounds of joy to accomodate him. "I'd
written her about all the stuff I was doing and she came back just a bit
ago saying she'd take a look at the codes Adamantine drew up for us. She
thinks there might be a programming flaw she could fix."
"I don't know," Kite mused, rubbing his chin. "It
seems unlikely it'd be that simple. Especially since Adamantine was such
an expert to begin with."
"I mentioned that," Elk said, nodding. "But Mia
says she knew Adamantine a bit and she thinks that isn't so." He paused,
as if remembering something, and cocked his head to one side, adding, "Kite,
what's a 'script kiddie'?"
Sora was the one to laugh this time. And it was
no hyena cackle, but an honest, human, jovial laugh.
For the first time ever, Kite wondered if maybe
those replicant Soras were so off on their smiles after
all.
Drawing him out of his euphoria, Sanjuro said to
Kite, in tones sober enough to burn off the rest of the humor of the situation,
"As for Adamantine, I have some news about her as well."
"What is it?"
"They found her body. Badly damaged and frostbitten,
off the New Jersey turnpike. That's in the east, by the way," Sanjuro added.
"Almost an entire continent away from where she lived."
"Frostbitten?"
"I don't think caused by New Jersey weather, either.
Nothing in the U.S. gets that cold these days. They published the
preliminary results of the autopsy, as well; a lot of things not adding
up for Jersey authorities. But what they do have is pointing toward CC
Corp."
The other three exchanged glances briefly, but all
eyes drifted back to Sanjuro, in sheer disbelief.
"It's going to be out in the open soon. I don't
think Lios is going to survive under the pressure. Or any of the administrators,
for that matter."
"But just as before," Sora said, "it's out of our
hands. There's nothing we can do about this."
"Maybe," Kite said. Now it was his turn to draw
the glances of the others. "I don't know about the rest of you, but the
more I've thought about it, the more I think there is some sort
of solution to House of Leaves. I don't know
what it is. But I believe we owe it one last glance."
Sanjuro bit his lip pensively. "If we go ahead with
this, Kite, you have to promise this will be the last."
"The last exploration," Kite confirmed, with a nod.
"None of the mistakes from last time. None of the missteps. No detours.
Straight ahead to the goal, whatever it might be."
"One hell of a Gott Statue," Sora considered.
"Or one hell of a boss," Sanjuro agreed. He extended
his hand, palm-down, in the center of the circle the four had formed. "Do
or die."
Kite contributed his own hand to the center. "One
last shot."
"One last stand," Elk added, joining them.
Sora glanced from face to face. "This is a pop culture
reference I'm clearly not getting," he said, letting his hand fall on top
of the others.
End Stage 12.