Divided Between You

“Humans and fairies have an innate ability to recognize when something is sacred. The problem is we don't know why it is sacred.”

Zhang Guìyīng, 1399

Tokyo(?)

The Prime Minister woke to find himself in an unfamiliar place. A dungeon? Some kind of underground fortress? Mr. Watanabe wasn't sure. All he knew for sure was that he was tied up to a massage chair with very rusty chains. And the chair was vibrating.

Masahiro Ito walked up to him. A balding man in his 50s, he looked rather calm and professional for someone who had just kidnapped Japan's head of state. “Do you like your new office, Your Excellency?”

“Mr. Ito…” the Prime Minister realized. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why are you doing this?” Mr. Ito mocked him. “It's not that difficult to figure out, Sherlock. I need an incident to arise between humans and fairies so I can enact my plans.”

“You want to go to war…” the Prime Minister guessed.

“Close,” Mr. Ito corrected him. “The fairies keep complaining about something called The Gloom. They say it has to do with us abusing magic or something. So I came up with a simple plan. What if we just… reduced the number of people capable of using magic? Wouldn't that solve the crisis?”

“You're insane,” the Prime Minister told him. “You're talking about mass murder, genocide even!”

“Maybe I am insane,” Mr. Ito replied. “But… sometimes insane problems require insane solutions.”

“The fairies will never let you get away with this…”

“The fairies have no say in this,” Mr. Ito countered. “But they did give me the means to make it happen.”

“You don't mean…”

“Yes, Your Excellency. The legends were true. Do you know where we are?”

“Not in the slightest, no.”

“We are inside Mt. Fuji,” Mr. Ito explained. “Right below our feet beats the Heart of the World, the source of all magic. I've had my best people conduct tests on the Heart. It's hurting, Your Excellency. There's too much magic in the world. If what the fairies are saying is true, the kind of damage The Gloom could cause could destroy the world. It's that simple.”

“There must be another way to solve this,” the Prime Minister pleaded with his associate. “I will not sign on to this plan of yours.”

“You won't have to,” Mr. Ito sneered.

•

Ichikawa, Chiba 

Melody made her way back to the start line to claim her prize. Kenta was sealed inside a bubble by the Barrier Mages awaiting whoever would come to rescue him. He sighed a great sigh of relief at the sight of the blue-haired catgirl.

“What do you think you're doing?” the first mage asked her.

“Kenta is mine,” Melody answered. “I won him fair and square.”

“You cheated somehow!” the second mage retorted.

“In a race with no rules except no teleporting?” Melody asked. “Give me a break.”

“There's no way someone like you, without a broom, won this race against forty of the best broom riders in the world.”

“Tortoise-and-hare logic,” Melody replied. “It's not about being the best at something. It's about being the smartest.”

“We're not giving you the prize!” the first mage shouted.

“Give her the prize,” the boss told the mages. “She won.”

“But sir!”

“She won the race fair and square. Now give her the prize.”

The Barrier Mages at last relented and freed Kenta from his bubble prison. Kenta ran over to Melody and told her, “Let's get out of here.”

“I hope you two weren't planning on leaving the city,” another voice told them. Kenta and Melody turned around to see two men pointing wands at them. They were not Agents, though Melody recognized them as members of the Defense Ministry. “Saber Rider wants to talk to you.”

“So the government is involved in this operation,” Melody observed. “I suppose Saber Rider is too busy to meet me in person?”

“Quiet,” the man said. “Let's get moving.”

•

Mt. Fuji

The two men had escorted them all the way across the Tokyo metro. First, it was by van, but as the roads could only get them so close to their destination, they had to proceed the rest of the way by foot. No one said a word during the entire journey. Melody, however, was busy putting puzzle pieces together in her mind. As the journey went on, the glorious Mt. Fuji loomed closer and closer. Eventually, she realized that was their destination.

Rumor had it that, in spite of global protections on the mountain and the surrounding area, the Defense Ministry built a base under Mt. Fuji in secret. Of course, Melody never sought to determine whether the rumor was true or not. She was never one to chase after silly little rumors like that. Unless, of course, she was paid to do so.

Kenta was also keeping track of things that he saw along the way. Part of their walk led them through a forest of Japanese cedars, tall, with long and spindly branches. One in particular caught Kenta's attention as the largest of them all. The sight of such a tall tree caused him to recall what the strange motherly voice told him before:

The tree, Kenta! There, you will find me…

Could this place be the source of the voice, Kenta wondered to himself.

Once they got to the entrance of the base, they were greeted by Masahiro Ito, the Minister of Defense.

“Hello, Melody,” Mr. Ito said.

“Mr. Ito,” Melody was, to say the least, surprised to see him out here. “You look a lot… older… since the last time we met.”

“Accelerated male pattern baldness will do that to someone,” Mr. Ito replied solemnly. “Please come inside. We've been waiting for you.”

Kenta wanted to resist because he immediately recognized Mr. Ito's voice, but the two men pushed him forward. The main hallway led to a central laboratory and was lined by cells full of various humans and fairies. As the five of them walked down this hallway, the barely audible muffled screams of the prisoners caused Melody's heart to sink down into her stomach. She was leading Kenta (and likely herself as well) into a trap and she knew it.

“I am so glad you finally came to your senses and brought the boy to me,” Mr. Ito told her. “Such a good girl.”

“What's with all these prisoners?” Melody asked. “Saber Rider…”

“They are not prisoners,” Mr. Ito, or Saber Rider, answered. “They're test subjects. Your people have stories of people who could remove magic from people…”

Kenta was not listening to Mr. Ito's explanation. He was too busy observing the faces of the prisoners. Though he did not recognize any of them, one caught his attention due to just how… unusual… it was. It was a large blue blob with a barely functional mouth and two small holes where the eyes should have been. Not recognizable as human or fairy, the blob seemed to not notice it was anywhere, let alone care. Kenta felt a strange connection to the blob already.

“Kenta!”

The voice was coming from the blob. Whoever or whatever the blob was, it knew his name. But how, Kenta asked himself, could such a mindless thing lead him all this way just to rescue it? But he had no idea how or whether it was even possible to rescue the blob, or anyone else for that matter.

Melody also spotted a few familiar faces amongst the prisoners: a few of her old crime buddies, her high school magic teacher, and the Prime Minister? He was still strapped to the massage chair and tied to it with rusted chains. She stopped to make eye contact with the Prime Minister for a brief moment. Before anyone could say something, Melody was forced to keep walking by one of Saber Rider's men.

Eventually, they made it to the center of the base, a decently sized auditorium with a small laboratory in the center. Already, a hefty number of political figures from Japan and elsewhere had been seated, waiting for something. Saber Rider took his position at the center of the plaftorm while Melody, Kenta, and their handlers stood off to the side, near the exit.

“Members of the audience,” Saber Rider began his speech, “I present to you the dawn of a new age in magical relations. This is the Etherial Essence Extractor, or EEE for short. For years, the fairies had in their arsenal a means to remove magic from people who committed heinous crimes. Their process was always lethal to whoever had to endure the process, and the process was unknown to humans. That is, until fourteen years ago…”

“I always hated these kinds of speeches,” Melody whispered to Kenta.

“Likewise,” Kenta whispered back.

“To this day, she is the only person in recorded history who has survived the process, but she lost her humanity in the process,” Saber Rider continued. “When we found her several years later, we were able to recover enough of her memories to allow us to recreate the process. Except now, we can do it faster, safer, and more economical than the fairies ever could. In just five minutes, we can solve the magic crisis with a technique that would take a master fairy mage ten years to learn. After some fits and starts, I have invited you all here to witness the first official test of the machine.”

Melody wrapped an arm around Kenta's shoulders. Saber Rider turned towards them, saying, “Now, the boy, please.”

Melody was dumbfounded. She was unsure of how to react. Hesitating to answer, she stumbled through her words, babbling a stream of incoherent nonsense before finally mustering a single “What.”