08 Abandoned Public Library / ... of Fate

Tonight's game pieces: laid out across the web's playing field, as follows.

Hikage, the transfer student, and two-thirds of a mercenary trio, bound upside-down, helpless.

Akai on a nearby wire, struggling (has he lost his touch; or is he just distracted?) with the Aberration he's caught in his piano-wire filaments. Looking altogether like some puppeteer unable to control his rogue marionette.

Misa, post-shove, having just leapt to safety at the last second, now on an adjacent wire, trying to maintain balance.

… And the shover herself, Ito, String to her Red, face determinedly grim, perched on the same wire from which Misa had leapt. Cat's cradle of her own. On her pinkie, the other end of the Red String of Fate.

"Stay away from him," snarls Ito.

~

Akai and Ito. Banishers in love.

In stereo beheld no pair speaks more to of a coupling, of shared predestinations if not wholly in body then in mind and in joy.

Resolve their lean frames, their mutual balancings. Symmetries defiant against a gravity separate from the one which has brought them togther. Each the other's counterweight.

Rebraid the monofilaments of the library now, the Red String recomposited, each strand a distinct tally of years removed, by separate provenances consigned, and you wonder if they are not altogether some intonation of chance itself.

Because for whom else could either possibly be?

~

… Right. With all that in mind, even Misa knows she doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell on the wires. That's their domain.

She looks down, at her (and her partners') weapons, strung together in a bundle on the library floor.

Before Ito can catch on to the gyaru's next move, Misa is already on the way down. Jumping from wire to wire, headed for the ground floor.

Ito, about to follow, looks back at Akai, still struggling with the Aberration, which continues to thrash in his strings.

He looks back at her, fighting against the creature. Strained smile. I'm fine, he nods. Go after her.

~

It's a race to the bottom.

The gyaru and the tightrope-dancer, one flailing maladroitly from wire to lower wire, the other all but running down the network of threads.

Ito, of course, with the home team advantage.

Both pairs of feet, hitting the ground at the same time.

~

Misa makes for her weapons; Ito leaps, tackles her to the ground.

A swift kick to Ito's side is enough to force her off.

The girls pick themselves up, stand facing off against each other. The weapons stash equidistant between them. Monofilament threaded threateningly through Ito's splayed fingers. Daring the gyaru to just try and make a grab for her skewers.

Ito smirks, "Think you're safe just because you're back on solid ground? … Although, I must say, this suits you better. Watching you stumble around on those wires, I was almost feeling sorry for you. Guess some of us just aren't cut out for the beauty of the thread. Stick to your crude meat spits. Leave the more elegant weapons for us."

Misa, her usual face of disgust. "Ugh, wire-walking? Yeah, right. Like I really wanna be a circus freak? Might as well stick a red nose on me. And like, slap on a rainbow afro for good measure, too." She rolls her eyes. "… As if."

Ito frowns. (O-oh, she really took that personally.)

The two stare each other down.

Cat's cradles primed, taut.

Ito snaps her strings.

Misa, cautiously on guard.

And then—

~

And then it begins, their wireful dance.

~

Back up high, as the others' (well, perhaps not the transfer student; he's actually out cold right now, having no experience with being tied upside-down) ears fill with the sounds of the threads slicing lethally through the air below: the high-pitched, razor-thin Zzzhht!s and Ssssstss!s of Ito's lashings-out and the whistling Thhewwp!s and Thwip!s of Misa's reactive counters and defensive wire-parries, Misa trying not to triumph over her opponent so much as simply ensure Ito's narrow misses don't suddenly become non-misses, or in plainer words, survive (secondary goal being to fight off Ito long enough to grab her skewers, and properly level the playing field); they, the others, Hikage, Rina and Sakaki (the transfer student can't come to the phone right now, leave a message and he'll get back to you at his earliest convenience), watch on as an upside-down Akai loses the battle against the right-side-up Aberration.

… Because, as you well know, (and as Akai oughta know better than to not know by now), an enemy horde adapts.

Strategies once viable carry no guarantee of their further viability.

Case in point, none of Akai's old tricks seem to be working now.

He slices desperately through the creature, again and again. The strings appearing to go through the Aberration each time, harmlessly, to no effect.

As though the creature has become, through the aggregate humiliation suffered by its brethren at the hands of this … this lowly human, capable of manipulating the interstitial fibers that comprise the whole of its shapeless being. Of re-shaping its own horrid interiors to accommodate, and re-accommodate, the filament-fine wires as they pass through its terrible, recondite anatomy.

The flustered tightrope-dancer, see how his hands shake. The sweat dripping down his face. The expression of one having lost control he knows he cannot regain.

~

"Let us free," urges Hikage. "You can't handle that thing alone. Free us. Let us help you. That thing'll kill you. Then us. … And then your beloved. You know I'm right."

~

Yeah, right.

Like Akai's pride would allow that.

Nice try, Hikage.

But Akai weighs his options nevertheless.

If he frees his captives, he (… no; rather they, he and she, of course, it's they, it's always been they, they're all they have in this heartless world; it's them against it all, dammit) will surely lose out on the bounty.

Is that worse than dying here? At the hands of an Aberration?

The answer not so clear-cut as you might think.

Because to miss out on the bounty, to lose yet another Banishment Night, this one possibly their last, means having to go back 'home' empty-handed.

Yes, 'home': their makeshift tarpaulin tent, moving from park to park every few days. Rummaging through trashcans for their daily meals. Having to endure the glares and scoffs of the fast food restaurant staff as they scrounge together enough change to buy a coffee (cheapest thing on the menu) so they can use the bathroom. Saving up enough to be able to use the public sentou every so often, their only occasional luxury. The bathhouses clearing out every time they enter. …

… But it wasn't all bad, was it, Akai?

Living in the park, setting up tightropes between the trees.

That's how the two of you honed your craft, wasn't it?

Falling flat on your butts, laughing at the pain you two felt the next day.

And then getting better at it. Being able to traverse the rope, to walk it. And then learning to wield the string. Learning to fight. Your first Banishment together. How afraid you two were. Defeating it by the skin of your teeth. Improving together. Growing.

… That was all fun, wasn't it?

That was all—

~

No time for nostalgia, Akai.

… No time for nostalgia, or anything else, ever again, apparently, as the Aberration finally breaks free of the strings holding it and, leaping toward Akai, fashions one limb into a dark, spear-tipped tendril, and then impales the wire-walker upon it, stabbing all the way through, until that hideous barb protrudes from the back of the boy's hoodie.

His face goes pale.

Growing spot of crimson, radiating outwards from the gaping wound.

The Aberration's limb retracts from Akai's body.

His pinkie twitches.

The strings binding Hikage and the others go slack.

… And then they begin to fall.