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Third Beat
Day 7
When he next fell asleep, Kougaiji dreamed.
He was walking in grass half a foot high, along a chainlink fence. He knew it was finite in its perimeter, but could not see an end to it on the horizon, on those rare occasions he lifted his gaze from the ground. His feet rustled heavily in the grass and the thick density of the blades made movement awkward and slow-going.
Another set of footsteps beside him also shuffled in the grass. Occasionally nicotine-stained fingernails tink-tinked against the metal wire.
There were words, and he heard and responded, but it wasn't the focus of his thoughts. Instead he found himself possessed with wondering why he didn't reach through the gaps in the fence and touch the hand of the figure on the other side. It was so close. The wall of separation between them was only theoretical, when they shared the same air and stood not even a foot apart, as they walked along and talked. Even reaching out and grazing one of those calloused fingertips seemed an idea too radical to pursue.
He could not understand why he didn't just make that bold first move, reach out and touch before that hand slipped out of range forever. Even when it trembled with fear and its owner would give everything for the simple warm-blooded contact.
Instead, his hand lifted and his fingers, too, trailed along that chain, small tink-tinks across the metal, the shared vibrations going up through his arm and settling into his shoulder. He felt and sent feeling, and the joint resonance rattled strongly.
But that was all he could do. No more. It would have to be enough.
At least let it be enough for now
~*~
Kougaiji woke to the murmurs in hallways.
And to a shuffling, sliding and dull banging of wood drawers and cabinets in his room, polite scrabbling of the type that all by its own could define a character rushing to escape before they were caught.
The prince opened his eyes, or tried to, sufficing to groan and rub at the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb. The sun was angled out of direct view of his high bedroom windows, sparing him harsh light, just the slight blurriness of gradually ungumming eyelids blinking him into consciousness, and a woman with purple hair sliding the last dresser drawer closed.
"...Yaone?" he croaked, wishing he could get his voice a little clearer.
The woman jumped and spun around almost comically, all but clutching at the dresser for support. One hand still held a small bundle of folded clothes to her breasts.
"Lord Kougaiji! I didn't mean to wake you--"
"What are you doing?" he said, not to get distracted. He muzzily sat up, an odd feeling around his scalp letting him know that his hair was probably very badly mussed, and bless the woman's heart for managing not to giggle. He wondered if he could get away with a bit of finger-combing if she turned her back for a second...
Yaone, characteristically, stammered for a moment, as though she might sooner prefer he just chastise her and kick her out. "Er-- Well-- The launderers were doing the rounds and someone mistook me for a maid, so--"
"You seized an opportunity," Kougaiji finished for her. He sighed, feeling very much like flopping back into bed and going back to sleep, something he never did even when he awoke dead tired. Last night's encounter with Dokugakuji had been bad enough to get this upon waking up.
"I didn't know how else to check up on you," she admitted, a confession so plainly embarrassing it was almost pointless to note. Did the woman have any shame? "Everyone's very worried about you, Kougaiji-sama. And... I... I..."
She looked very awkward, Kougaiji noticed, in clothes that were
decently concealing for once. None of them had kept up their usual battle
attire upon their final return to the castle. There hadn't been a need
to, even on pretense. But for as shy as her personality usually ran, she
seemed far less at ease in modest court garb than she had in what was basically
a bikini and a vest. Though, come to it, Kougaiji felt just as naked actually
wearing a shirt these days. And he rather missed Dokugakuji's bare
chest.
From the internal to the external. From the external to the internal. Everyone in his group was finding themselves stripped of everything familiar, such that they didn't so much know how to carry themselves anymore. At a loss for everything.
Who would ever have thought that they had structured their lives so much on other people?
Kougaiji had stood up now, not at all at home with someone like Yaone seeing him from bed. "What is it?"
"...Kougaiji..." Yaone said with frightened determination, not meeting his gaze, but looking down at the folded clothes in her arms that she clutched at like a child holding a teddybear. "If you... I vowed that I would do anything for you, if it would help you. I would... give... anything to you. Anything at all. So, if you need it, I..."
He crossed the space between them in an instant, hands at her shoulders just as she broke down into tears. "No no no no no," he said rapidly, shushing her as best he could. "Please don't. Don't offer something like that."
"I just don't want to see you hurt," she wailed through choking sobs. "And you're hurting so much and none of us can do anything. None of us can even reach you. None of us even know what to do anymore, lord. It's all fallen apart."
"I know," he said quietly, so low he doubted she could even hear above her own tears. He half-held her awkwardly, mostly out of instinct and to quell the ache of sympathetic pain all brains are equipped to generate, no matter who the person suffering was. He didn't push her away, but didn't draw her any closer, just braced her, not knowing what else to do.
And still she cried.
~*~
When Yaone's tears had stopped, she excused herself as politely as she could, to allow Kougaiji to dress. Both slightly rattled, and too embarrassed to really say much else.
Kougaiji hadn't worn anything remotely robe-like for some years now, but somehow felt more at ease dressed in the loose garments than in regular jeans and jacket. He might have even gone out the door not even wondering why this was, until he caught himself folding the front left-over-right like a priest's robe, and deliberately reversed himself on the point. Afterward, the whole action from start to finish puzzled him.
He was hungry in ways he hadn't felt since being on the road, but couldn't think to eat. He knew he had slept through breakfast in the royal hall, an action that, while technically permissible, had the side effect of excluding him from dinner that night as well. Just one of the many vindicative unspoken rules a person had to get used to, under Gyokumen Koushu.
Relations with Gyokumen and her stable of scientists had grown very strained over the past few weeks, with recent events just solidifying things. He knew he was kept around only because of the questions that might be raised if he was done away with, and if Dokugakuji's fears were right that soon was not going to matter anymore, if he persisted to annoy the wrong people. What did it matter, though, when he had no purpose anymore? He couldn't even bring himself to visit the hall of his imprisoned mother, for the shame.
His mother... His greatest failure of all, beyond even Sanzo. He could do nothing for her now. And with his father's imminent revival, and and Gyokumen's solid conviction that she would become his legal wife when this happened, Kougaiji wasn't even sure if his mother's frozen remains would survive, much less him.
He didn't care about his role as a prince. He'd like to have forgotten about it more times than not. Were it just a matter of royal ousting he could almost welcome it. But first, as the Sanzo-ikkou had made clear more than once, the resurrection of the Demon King was going to upset more than a few thaumic wavelengths, and second, he could never, ever let harm come to his mother. But what could he do now?
You could have brought that up sooner.
Kougaiji nearly tripped over the hem of his robes.
Just how far is your radius going to get?! he cried.
No idea. How far away are you right now?
Just guessing I'd say around three hundred feet, but that wouldn't be in a straight path. Should I carry a map and ruler from now on?
Might be an idea, said Sanzo, who seemed to be deliberately ignoring sarcasm at the moment. About your mother--
Please, don't.
No go, highness. You ask me about things I don't want to talk about, I'm just as entitled to ask back. The priest was still clearly resentful about Kougaiji's attempts at couch therapy last night. --Last night? Oh hell no.-- It might have opened things up a little as hoped, but it had just made the human more bitter than ever.
By the way, Sanzo added, before Kougaiji could respond to the last remark, are you headed this way?
That was kind of the idea.
I wouldn't recommend it. There are other people here.
Kougaiji slowed in his procession a moment, more from the brain freezing up than with any actual intent. When things finally did get absorbed and processed right, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Scientists?
I'm guessing.
How many?
No idea. Not a lot.
What are they doing?
I imagine scientist-type stuff.
What specifically?
Look, I have a range of vision of three feet here, and I think they pumped sedative into the IVs when they noticed I was watching. Kougaiji had wondered why Sanzo's thoughts had come a bit more sluggishly than normal, but he was probably holding up a lot better than most would have, administered the same drug. He went on, But I'm guessing these aren't your idea of gracious hosts.
Kougaiji began to respond modestly, but caught sight of a shadow leading down the hall towards him, and pure panic took over instead. He quickly found and ducked into a side-corridor, hanging in shadows as a squat, pudgy human woman in a lab coat waddled past with a crate full of what seemed like junked computer parts.
Yeah, I'd say not good terms.
You have to understand, Kougaiji managed after a moment. One on one most of them are all right, they just treat me like I was-- I was a cat or something. Bit of a nuisance, but don't want to go through the bother of shooing it away, you know?
Very self-flattering.
It's just that as a group they tend to get scarydangerous.
Especially when she's after them about something important. And especially
when--
He nearly doubled over, his heart siezing up suddenly with a violent chill, his stomach twisting like it was trying to escape. Terror clanging inside his skull so pure and primal it was nearly animal.
Let me guess, he thought, gasping, Dr. Nii just looked at you.
Sanzo wasn't saying anything. There was a small trebble over the wavelength, as though a small child was whimpering and trying to hide in a corner.
He does that to people, Kougaiji tried to explain. Especially if you're beautiful. He's shameless. Complete fucking pervert. He and Gyokumen are even--
What the fuck do you mean, beautiful?
Just. Shut. Up. Right now I'd rather you treat the idea as a bad hereditary disease, rather than a compliment. At least when he's around.
And what's he doing with that bunny rabbit?!
Kougaiji cringed.
Nothing too obscene, I hope...
Shit, he's looking at me! I'm naked! How could you--
I couldn't exactly petition to have someone get you some underwear! Kougaiji snapped.
Odd as it was to think in this frame, the prince knew he was the calmer of the two at the moment, and didn't really appreciate having to steady the other man. Anyway, he'd been there, more than once. After a while you stopped feeling like terrified prey and just worked your way into pure and simple disgust and revilement. But for someone like Sanzo, and in his current position...
Look. Just stay calm. They're probably just there for a systems check; they'll leave in a bit and you'll be FINE.
But Sanzo wasn't fine. Very far from it, from how even in his most distressed moments last night he'd never been reduced to pure incoherency. Kougaiji swallowed and tried not to get caught up in the panicked emotes shaking up the frequency himself.
He kept trying. He repeated himself several times, ordering the priest to stay calm, reminding him that things would be fine in a little while. Just a little while. Stay calm.
Eventually, the line quieted. A little.
And then, an awful lot more, as the sedative Sanzo had been fighting off saw a gap in defenses and struck.
Kougaiji untensed.
It wasn't right to say he enjoyed, but there was a few minutes' radio silence then, broken by little more than a few flickerings of nonword thought as the brain shut down.
The rising sound of rapid tap-taps of nicely polished shoes, surrounding the muffled shuffling of bunny slippers, warned Kougaiji ahead of time to shrink farther back into the shadows of the side hall, just in time to watch a flock of labcoated scientists stomp past with readouts and gadgets and, one of them, a rather harassed looking bunny doll.
When they passed out of sight and their footsteps nothing but a memory, Kougaiji figured it was safe to breathe again.
Sanzo? he tried.
But Sanzo was gone. He could wake him up if he really put in the effort, but really rather felt the priest was due this bit of unscheduled rest.
Kougaiji scratched the back of his head awkwardly. Now what was he going to do for the time being?
Time was getting tricky anyway.
~*~
During their better days Prince Kougaiji and his servants had maintained a set of rooms to the rear of the castle grounds, from which they would plan their large-scale operations against Sanzo-ikkou or at least recuperate in company. These days the rooms were left largely abandoned, with even Lirin finding some other place to play these days, it seemed.
Never frequently clean to begin with, now the floors were covered in a distinct film of dust. Maps with so many squiggled paths and marked destinations they became more elaborate geometric designs than anything else, were rolled up and tucked messily in corners to decay in peace. What furniture there had been had been relocated for better use.
Yaone traversed its length in silence, leaving foot prints in dust as though it were a thin layer of snow.
Talked down from masquerading as a regular house servant, Yaone was once more without a direct purpose to fill the hours with. It's been said frequently that inaction is the greatest pain to inflict upon a warrior, and now that observation was coming to a head in full. The anxieties were welling up inside without outlet, or even any sort of distraction.
Cho Hakkai-dono had been so... nice. A little out of her league in battle, but he had always been very considerate of her. The best enemy anyone could hope for really. And now he, like all the rest of them, were gone from their lives for good.
But even that meant so very little at the moment, when the man she cared for so very much was falling apart before their eyes. He was starting to hole himself up in his quarters for days at a time, and no one seemed to know when he'd last eaten. And... she'd heard rumors from some of the other staff that he had been seen talking to himself, twitching or losing his footing at strange moments, and there was so much talk going around about the time he spent in that room... The more obscene jokes could be safely ignored, but...
"Yaone."
She started, pulled out of her thoughts abruptly to catch a glimpse of another figure emerging out of the shadows.
Dokugakuji looked even more strung out than Yaone was sure she looked. Dark lines under his eyes indicated he hadn't been getting much sleep lately either.
Yaone shook her head. "He didn't."
At that, the warrior actually seemed to relax a little. "We couldn't really have expected him to. Tell you what; we'll strap him down on a table and both have at him."
All efforts of protest came out as choked sputters.
"It's a joke. You know, the thing a person says to get the other person to ease up for five or six seconds?" He gave up. "It's not a very funny one, I guess."
"How can you even think to make light of any of this..."
Dokugakuji's smile was so brittle it could have shattered. "If I don't, what else can I do?"
She studied him for a moment, disapprovingly, and then sighed and looked away, rubbing at an itching eye. "Have you heard from your brother at all...?"
"No. Not at all. How could I?"
"You don't even know if he's all right or not?"
Dokugakuji tried to shrug and failed. "He's lasted this long without me."
"But it's different now."
"I know."
"What are we going to do about Kougaiji?"
Sigh. Shift of weight on feet. "We wait and see, I guess. Yaone?"
"Yes?"
"I think it's going to get a hell of a lot worse, pretty soon."
~*~
Elsewhere, Dr. Nii Jianyi was just seeing off the last of his assistants. Fun though many of them were to have around, and even helpful now and then, sometimes he just felt like going over his research himself. Worker's ethics and all that. Not that he really had many of those.
When they were gone, including the cute one with red hair, Nii set to work on the print-outs in front of him. It was stacks of data that could take even the fastest reader several lifetimes to plow through, if you didn't know exactly what the hone in on amid the garble. Fortunately, Nii possessed that level of experience.
He traced a line down a thread of ones and zeroes and did mental calculations faster than some computers, and smirked approvingly. Then he turned his attention to another strip of print-outs and examined a line on those.
The smirk vanished.
Nii's brow furrowed, not entirely sure what to think. Unless he had made a critical error somewhere, this wasn't right at all. But he wasn't in the habit of making mistakes either. Not of this variety.
He compared the two data sets again, determined to find some errant number somewhere to explain his mishap, and finding none.
This wasn't making any sense. There had to be a flaw in his equipment somewhere. But there couldn't be, he'd checked it out himself, he'd done all the diagnostics by hand...
What Dr. Nii was seeing was in violation of a good bit of physics. The one read-out was showing the instream of energy going into the blackbox --Sanzo had a more complicated designation in the official records, but Nii did so like nicknames-- was being converted and extracted in an outstream on the other read-out. The problem was that there was a significant amount of energy loss in the conversion, which shouldn't be happening. It was either getting absorbed (doubtful), repelled (he'd see that), or diverted. But diverted to where, imbedded in what? Magic didn't up and disappear just the same as matter didn't. It was always there, in one state or another; it was never not accountable.
Quite the quandary indeed.
Well. Little matter overall, really. The blackbox was functioning as intended, even if at an unpermissible decreased efficiency. Things were going ahead as scheduled, regardless.
Mind that Gyokumen wouldn't have the sunniest disposition if she found out her head scientist's latest toy wasn't working properly. It was going to stop up the psychological momentum she had going for herself, and he was loathe to ruin that. It made her very excitable in the evenings.
Besides. It was a problem, and scientists liked problems just as a general rule. It was sort of like a game.
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