It was night, and Kamui was sitting on the edge of the mansion's roof, his knees drawn up close to his chest. His arms were locked tightly around his legs, and his wings arched over his head. Staring far away into the distance, he watched the twinkle of a million tiny lights beyond the trees: not stars, but the orderly lines of Tokyo's street lamps and windows. In the dark, the air around him was alive with the sound of leaves.Kamui heaved a sigh, and went on brooding.
Wings
An "X" fanfic
By Natalie Baan
Part Two
Slouching a little further forward, he gazed unhappily across the Campus grounds. The gardens and buildings were concealed by the cover of darkness, and there was nothing he could see but shadows raised against those distant, sparkling lights. His mind overflowed with images, though, and with the restless thoughts that went along with them, and he couldn't get that one memory out of his mind.
He couldn't stop thinking about that smile....
/Subaru./
Kamui jerked his wings in annoyance. He couldn't figure out what was wrong. Lately, his mind kept going back to that day, and to the look he'd glimpsed on Subaru's face then, an expression he'd seldom seen before from the onmyouji. Remembering that ghost of a smile, he'd remember as well the soaring, unexpected feeling deep inside himself: a feeling having nothing to do with the movement of flying, although it felt kind of similar. He'd been able to make Subaru almost happy in something...and then, thinking of that, he'd feel a pang once again at the terrible wound the onmyouji had suffered, the pain he'd been allowed to witness that one time when Subaru had penetrated into his heart. He would remember how Subaru had shared that tragedy, the most private and personal gift that could be made. Inevitably, that remembering would lead to futile, aching wishes that he could do something for the onmyouji in return. That he could help in some way, that he could take away the pain...and then, imagining that and what would happen after, seeing Subaru smiling for real, he would start to spin the thought out further: to see the two of them laughing and just being together, someplace far away where there wasn't any war for the future of the earth. He'd see them talking as they'd talked about the matter of his wings, only better. He'd flash back then onto what it had been like, that moment just after his change: the familiar yet strange touch sliding over his back and up along the sensitive edge of his wing, leading him out of his confusion; that touch bringing him to sharp awareness of his body, even with its new differences, making his heart beat faster for reasons he didn't understand, making him want more of that--until his heart would leap up in his chest once again, jerking him back to the present, and he'd have an immediate need to jump up and run or fly or do something else at once to release the fiery tension, that fierce sense of longing for--
Kamui rocked onto the balls of his feet and stood up abruptly. He spread out his wings...staring into the night, he hesitated, poised right at the very edge of the drop. Then, he sat back down.
And all of this was exactly why he was up on the roof, instead of downstairs with the other Dragons of Heaven...that, and the fact that if he had to continue to watch that movie and listen to Sorata and Yuzuriha giggle about it for one more minute, he might just scream.
Or worse.
Kamui hugged his knees to his chest once more. He glowered at the dark.
So instead he'd come outside to struggle with his thoughts, trying to get at least a little bit straightened out before he found some new and brilliant way to make himself look like an idiot. Despite his best efforts, though, he just kept on getting more confused. The confusion made him sullen and cross. Hunching into a tighter knot, he grumbled to himself, not quite out loud, and it occurred to him then that with his wings and the way he was crouching he probably looked an awful lot like one of those statues they had on big, old churches over in Europe. Gargoyles, that was the word for those things, and that was what he felt like now: lurking on the steeply angled pitch of the roof, half-hidden by his shroud of wings, and with his mind a murky tangle of thoughts and imaginings--only the picture that it created was pretty much spoiled immediately, because the Imonoyama mansion already had gargoyles of its own...sort of. Kamui glanced to one side. Caught in the glare of the mansion's spotlights, a cluster of goggle-eyed things gaped cheerfully back at him.
Kamui sighed again and turned away.
Somewhere deep inside he knew exactly what was wrong--and he knew that he knew it, too: was perfectly aware that if he'd only really look at the problem, he'd figure the whole thing out at once. But looking at it was the trouble, when every time that he approached the subject he found himself overtaken by a storm of emotions...by feelings of wanting and yet not-wanting to understand it...by feelings of longing...
...and of fear....
Far better to sit alone for a while longer, letting his thoughts bounce from place to place like crazed pachinko balls, and try not to focus too closely on anything at all.
Morosely Kamui studied the toes of his sneakers, dim white smudges against the dark. He wondered if the other Seals were still watching their movie and hoped that when it ended they wouldn't come looking for him...because if anyone was going to, it would probably be Sorata, and if the monk turned up on the roof being his usual smartass self Kamui might be forced to stuff him into the nearest fountain. It would be a real shame if that happened, too. Sorata wasn't so bad underneath it all, and besides which, he could be a good friend.
It was just that he got annoying at times.
Yuzuriha would be even worse if she found him, though--and with Inuki's help, she probably would. She'd be all happy and perky, and he wasn't supposed to stuff her in a fountain because she was a girl. He didn't think that distinction was very fair...trying to distract himself from his problems, he went on to consider the possibilities, picturing first one and then another Seal getting a proper dunking and what their likely reactions might be--and he had a flash of mild panic when he got to Karen and the thought of what she might be wearing for the event, which probably would be something very much like what she'd worn that time she'd visited him at school on his lunch hour. Three months later, his classmates had still been coming up to him and wanting to talk about that.
Especially the male ones....
Once he'd calmed down, though, he decided it didn't really matter which one came to find him. He didn't want to deal with any of them tonight. No matter what, no matter who it was, it would just be too complicated, because in the end he liked them all too much to have to chase them away like that. For at least the third time that evening, Kamui sighed. He listened to the mutter of the wind-stirred leaves, and then brightened just a bit. Daisuke could show up though, if the wind master had a mind to.
He could definitely get in the mood for a fight.
For a moment Kamui grinned at the prospect, the ghost of an old and purely wicked smirk--but the image of himself giving Daisuke another good thrashing slipped away like a late frost melting before the sun as another thought immediately arose.
But...if it was...
...if /Subaru/ came....
Kamui wrestled with himself a long moment, until finally he couldn't stand it anymore. He leaped to his feet once again. Opening his wings, he launched himself from the mansion's roof, stroking for several beats to gain height before turning to face the breeze. As he rode that gentle night wind even higher above the Campus, he set course impulsively toward those lights which shone like a many colored, star-drenched sky brought right down onto earth. Their sparkle was dazzling, and he winged toward that sight, his flight aimed straight for the heart of downtown Tokyo.
* * * * *
As he threaded his way swiftly through the mansion's corridors, making not even a whisper of sound even despite his pace, Suoh felt his pager go off. Without breaking stride, he reached into his pocket. He read at the message scrolling across the device's small screen, then frowned very slightly. Keying a brief reply, he put the pager away.
At the next intersection of hallways he changed course, turning right instead of left, but something caught at the corner of his gaze and so he paused, glancing down the way he'd originally meant to go. At the end of the hall there was a flicker of alternating light and darkness behind a half-open door, the sound of recorded voices and music, and then above that noise a high, girlish squeal followed by voices raised in some kind of comment. Closer, though, between Suoh and the door, a single figure stood by one of the mansion's soaring windows. That person had drawn the curtain a little aside, and now leaned on one arm against the glass. The tall, rangy form was unaccustomedly still as it focused on something invisible in the darkness outside.
"Kamui's left the Campus grounds," Suoh told the monk, pitching his voice to carry just so far and no further. "I thought you might like to know."
"Yeah." Sorata replied. The teenager's voice was equally quiet. "Thanks. I know." The monk leaned further forward, resting his chin against his fist. His gaze remained unwaveringly focused. Suoh watched for another fraction of a second, and then shrugged, deciding there was no more time to be spent on this. Turning, he proceeded on his way. He was already running through the calculations of how far and how fast a winged boy could travel, trying to predict what dangers could be waiting for a solitary flyer and from which directions such things might come....
Behind him, framed against the towering window, Sorata continued to stare into the dark.
* * * * *
It was a wonderful night for flying. The air was calm, stirred only by a breeze just playful enough to send interesting currents swirling across the surface of Kamui's wings, enticing him to little shifts of direction and altitude, and the sky was cloudless and unusually clear. It let a remarkable number of stars show themselves wanly through the city's glow, but those were put to shame by the brilliance of Tokyo itself. Lights glimmered out against the darkness, shimmering gold and white fields set off by single gleams of red, green, orange, and blue; they reflected back from the glass sides of buildings, and echoes of them multiplied on the rippling waters of the bay and rivers.
Kamui soared across the inlet that separated the Campus from Tokyo proper, the wind of his flight catching at his T-shirt and fanning his hair back away from his face. As he came over land once more he looked down, watching the tangled maze of buildings roll past beneath. There was a neon blaze from the nightclubs somewhere off to his left, the flicker of advertisements lining rooftops in the distance before him, and still further ahead the high-rise offices of the Marunouchi district...on a whim, Kamui shifted his flight a little more to the west, aiming for the stark, towering blocks that were Shinjuku's skyscrapers. Flying was so much quicker than walking or even building-hopping--he covered all that long distance in almost no time at all. Soon he was idly looping around the skyscrapers, swooping down in between them and then allowing the rising air currents to carry him up once again, each time higher than before. The wind was pleasant against his skin and he really wasn't tired in the least.
He felt like he could fly this way forever.
Just for fun, he tipped into another sheer dive, letting himself plummet toward the street in a long streak. He pulled out with a flourishing snap of his wings, just a few stories above the heads of oblivious pedestrians, and then grinned. Funny thing about ordinary people--most of them, he'd learned, were amazingly blind about one thing.
They hardly ever bothered to look up.
He flapped a little higher and then cruised along the street, feeling pretty confident that there wasn't much danger of him being noticed. He glanced toward the office buildings that he was gliding past, watching those rows of brilliantly lit windows where some poor bastards were obviously still at work, blind to the world outside their claustrophobic little islands of light. As he reached the corner of one building, though, there was an office dimmed to half-illumination, and a middle-aged salaryman was standing by the window there, apparently on some kind of break. Their gazes locked as Kamui flashed by him, and the man's eyes went huge and shocked above his mug.
Oops. Kamui ducked around the building's corner and swiftly darted away.
Oh well, he thought as he flew on, feeling just a touch of guilt--there was probably nothing so terribly wrong about what had just happened. And anyway, what harm could it do to let himself be seen? Provided he hadn't just given the guy a heart attack or something, maybe it would even convince the man to go home to his family before he turned into another overwork statistic.
Maybe spend a little bit of time with his kids, before the end of the world....
Having put some more distance between himself and that building, Kamui circled again. After a moment, he'd gotten his bearings. The moon had risen, a few days past the full, its slightly squashed shape hanging hazily above the horizon back the way he'd come. Beneath it he could see a miragelike glimmer from the bay. He probably should go back to the Campus soon but...Kamui paused instead. But that place there, in the other direction--he knew what that was. He'd seen it in his mind's eye once before, almost as if he'd actually been there. The memory of it lured him like a spell. He let himself be drawn toward it, half-eager and half-reluctant, watched the streets and smaller structures flowing away underneath him as that place grew near...that wide-open plaza, the low steps leading up from one end toward the shell of a huge building: a building split precisely down its center, large pieces of it having crumbled away. Although some rubble had been cleared from around its feet, there were piles still remaining. The building was sealed behind temporary fences: it hadn't been rebuilt or demolished yet, all work being held up by the continuing earthquakes which made such efforts dangerous. It rose against the city sky and pallid stars just like a monument.
Nakano Sun Plaza.
Kamui slowed, curving in a shallow arc around the back of the building. He could see right /through/ the building, riddled as it was with empty, gaping windows and cracks that showed where inside walls had been broken away. There was something eerie about those jagged concrete edges, scarred with shadows and the projecting ends of metal rods, and it made him shiver. Coming out from the building's shadow and into the reassuring glow of streetlights, he tentatively flew around the square.
There, at the top of the steps, was the place where Subaru'd fought the Sakurazukamori. Kamui could see the paving stones split by magical forces, those few marked even now with a deeply carved star...he sighed, scarcely aware that he'd done so, the sound snatched immediately by the wind of his flight. He circled Nakano Sun Plaza once more. It was exactly the same as he'd remembered it, that skyscraper over there was the one that had reflected Subaru's spell...he angled closer to it, gliding across the building's silent and unseeing face. In the light from the plaza's street lamps he could see his own reflection in its darkened windows, and for a moment he was distracted even from the memories of that day. He watched himself in flight for the first time, watched how his wings were held out, their curve changing to catch the air that swirled around the building, and he tried to put that together with the way that it felt...he noticed a tiny point of light behind his shoulder, a twinkle that was exactly like a star. A star that was growing brighter...that was growing larger...
...closer.
It became a tiny sun right behind him, and the eyes of his reflection went wide. Then Kamui wrapped his wings and arms around himself instinctively, and like a shooting star himself began to fall. As he fell, moving at first with almost nightmare slowness, something seared by just above him, passing only a little distance above his back--and power crackled hungrily into the bank of windows, exploding them in a wave that ripped shatteringly across the face of the building, a circle expanding outward in a glittering rain of glass.
Wildly Kamui twisted in midfall, trying to change the direction he was facing. He flung his wings open and grabbed at air...there was a second's pain as a glass shard nicked his wing, sending out a fine spray of blood, and then he was in the clear, gliding down at a sharp angle toward the pool of lit pavement below. Pulling up steeply, Kamui cut to his right, into the shadow of the skyscraper, and from there fought to circle back and confront his attacker. The wind felt slippery beneath his wings, both from the difficulty of his maneuvering and from fiery, distracting lances of pain from that slash on his trailing edge. Banking yet again, Kamui straightened out on a new heading, leaving the shadow of the building behind. He glanced across the plaza, and a dark silhouette, vast wings outspread, swept upward in front of the moon.
/Fuuma!/
The scream shook Kamui's heart and mind. Somehow, though, he couldn't even make a sound.
Fuuma seemed to hang there in midair, his wings stretched out with almost no visible movement. He raised one arm and a light of power bloomed around his hand. Kamui stared desperately at his friend and opposite, at war within himself as different longings struggled for control...he wavered back and forth between impulses, and then finally gave in to the simplest, the one that at least didn't force him to deny all the rest.
He fled.
Kamui bolted back the way he'd come, toward Shinjuku, but although he'd locked himself on the goal of those distant skyscrapers, he still was perfectly aware of what followed in his wake. He could feel the swell of energy on his skin and in his mind, could feel the sudden crackle as that force was unleashed in pursuit. Stretching for all the speed he was capable of, he raced those hissing dragon-snakes of power--raced for the hope of shelter, however small. The buildings were getting taller, rising up before him, and he plunged into the canyons that opened in between them. Behind him, destruction bit at the tops of the buildings furiously, breaking away huge sections of wall from their upper stories before coursing after him along the street. It reflected building to building, each contact a thunder of broken glass, concrete, and steel, and each strike getting closer to him. One more wing stroke, two, feeling the power scorching almost on his heels--and Kamui flung himself sideways, a turn so tight that he barely was able to keep from losing the air entirely and tumbling out of control. He flashed around a right-angle corner and the magical attack slammed into the next block, folding itself around the buildings and crushing them in its grasp. Kamui heard human screams amid the roar of devastation, heard the screeching of car tires and the panicked shriek of horns. Panting, he fled down the length of the next block and slewed around another turn. He banked acutely, darted between two close-set buildings, and there was what he'd been hoping for at last: a new building, still uncompleted, its openwork structure of girders reaching upward between its neighbors. Frantically he winged toward it, dove for one of the gaps in its side, and almost collapsed between the steel beams in relief. Catching himself quickly, he flipped to a better hiding place behind a temporary construction wall, a place where he could get a glimpse of the outside without being seen. He froze then, hoping for the shadows there to hide him, even if his mad flight hadn't been enough to lose his pursuer. Hugging his wings around himself tightly, he tried to still the beating of his heart.
In the not-so-far distance he could hear the howling of sirens, and further sounds of destruction, although none so loud as at first. Maybe it was only rubble falling from the damaged buildings. His mind was a white blur of adrenaline rush, still afire from the danger of his near escape, and he struggled to get it back under control. There was a part of him, though, that wanted the urgency to stay, that alertness which was keyed for instinctive action and not for thought...because to lose it and to let himself think about what had just happened meant to remember that awful chaos, and those cries.... Kamui pressed his fists to either side of his head, trying to force away the guilt. Of course he was the one responsible, even if it really hadn't been his fault at all and there was nothing he could have done to save those people. He'd led Fuuma right onto them heedlessly, and probably that was enough to damn him in the eyes of everyone else. But thinking about it now, dwelling on it, was not going to keep him alive, and he desperately didn't want to die just yet.
If he could survive this...if he could have a second chance...
...could be forgiven....
Catching his breath, Kamui looked up at the broad crack of sky between his hiding place and the other buildings. He wondered if Fuuma--or rather, that evil thing which inhabited Fuuma--had given up on him and gone away. Some inner sense warned him though, and he remained where he was, crouching behind his fragile, concealing barrier, as a figure swept down to light soundlessly upon the building opposite. Kamui thought that his heart must have stopped at that very same instant.
It hurt so damned much.
Fuuma--no, he reminded himself sternly, it was the "Dark Kamui" of the Dragons of Earth--stood impassive and motionless at the edge of the building's roof. Actually, it was easier at this distance for Kamui to remember what he was up against, when that person was only a faraway, menacing form, the face masked by a stain of shadow and the body framed by immense and moonlit wings...those wings really were awesome, Kamui thought, feeling a confused mixture of dread and admiration, awesome both in size and in their luminous, cloudlike coloring--and with that silent flight not a swan's wings after all. More like an owl's, then: the wings of a cruel, solitary bird of prey, carrying it on its hunt above the nighttime city.
Unfortunately, the thought made him feel more than ever like a flying rodent.
Kamui huddled himself smaller before the silhouette of his hunter, not daring to move a muscle. He scarcely dared to breathe...from where he crouched he couldn't tell if those cold, stranger's eyes were moving across the building's face, searching for him. He might have used his own inward sight to see the other clearly, but he didn't dare do that either. To go so near to his adversary, even if it wasn't a physical closeness, to "look" at Fuuma in that way...it meant opening himself up to the chance of being seen or sensed in return. Nervously he wondered whether the Dark Kamui could find him like that, even if he remained absolutely still and didn't reach out. Just as he was thinking about the possibility, he felt a slow touch slide deliberately over him, the heavy weight of a person's attention settling around him with possessive hunger, and he realized all at once that he had his answer, and that the jig was up.
The rivets holding the unfinished building together groaned once, a taut, stricken sound, but Kamui was already moving. He scooted from between the girders and leaped for the relative safety of the air as the building began to come apart. With a thunderous clash of metal, the structure started collapsing in upon itself, massive steel beams smashing into each other and then spinning lethally toward the ground below. Kamui tore his gaze from the spectacle, and as he streaked for the next tall cluster of buildings he threw a glance back over his shoulder instead. He saw Fuuma spring impossibly high into the air, the snowy wings unfurling at the height of the jump, and then Fuuma was soaring, turning to follow him, a glide that looked lazy but in fact was deceptively fast. Kamui spat a curse. He pounded across the open distance that separated him from shelter, expecting at any moment to hear and feel the crackle of magical energy in pursuit. Reaching the nearest block of skyscrapers, he cut a twisting path among them, swerving recklessly around corner after corner. He dove low, flashed beneath an elevated train line, hearing the startled yells of a couple of passersby, flicked himself around yet another sharp-angled turn, and then took refuge on the ground beneath the portico of a closed-up shopping center. He couldn't see the sky at all from where he was.
Maybe he'd escaped.
Long moments crawled by, counted off in breaths, as he tried to make his presence undetectable. Arashi'd tried to teach him a little bit of that.... Then, just as he'd begun to think once again about being able to relax, he felt a sudden, hissing whine inside his mind. He moved, a heartbeat before a head-sized ball of white kinetic flame smashed through the portico and erupted onto the pavement near where he'd been standing. He hadn't gotten away after all. Kamui took two or three running steps out from cover before he leaped, bounded off the side of a building, and launched himself down the street. As he corrected the angle of his flight he looked up and saw another fireball arcing toward him. This time he flung out a shield of his own power, and the flaming sphere shattered on the ward with ridiculous ease, flowing away in liquid streams just like rain.
What the hell? There'd been no force behind that attack at all. Kamui swerved to miss a streetlight and then tilted his head back to stare straight up. Directly above him a winged shadow shot smoothly across the narrow band of open sky, visible for only one moment before vanishing above the tops of buildings.
He'd given Fuuma the tactical high ground, Kamui realized suddenly. It was a terrible mistake. The Dark Kamui could be raining death down on him easily, but for some reason the Angel wasn't taking advantage of the opportunity. Instead it was becoming obvious that, after that first assault, the other had only been toying with him.
Discovering that, Kamui was starting to get mad about it.
He didn't know what to do, though. Much as he'd like to burn the cruel, careless son of a bitch, to turn and bring a little hell to Dark Kamui for a change, he figured that if he came boiling up out of the dubious protection of the streets his opposite was pretty likely to try to blast him--and probably had the power and position to succeed, too. Kamui had his own doubts as well, his own uncertainties, his wish to save the person who had been his friend.... If he fought back with his full power he might kill Fuuma, and if he didn't--
Dark Kamui would not have any qualms about killing him.
If he could only talk to Fuuma, Kamui thought in anguish, or, failing that, could find a way to stop the other without doing harm. At the moment, though, there wasn't the slightest possibility of any such thing. Not unless Fuuma decided to dive into these chasms after him, and there was very small hope of that--and then, as Kamui dodged into a side street and glanced up once again, seeing his enemy gliding high above him, targeting him apparently without haste, it occurred to him that maybe Fuuma wasn't coming down among the buildings at least in part because the other /couldn't/. Struck by that inspiration, Kamui risked another quick look up. Even aside from losing his position, it would be an awfully tight squeeze for Fuuma to maneuver in these tight spaces. In fact, the Dragon of Earth's wing tips kept being cut off from view as Kamui watched, disappearing first on one side and then the other as Fuuma rode the currents of the air. Fuuma was so much taller than he was, the wings had to be proportionally larger, and in addition there was that memory which bubbled up from the depths of Kamui's mind, the sound of a remembered voice--
--"there's another advantage, too...compared to a bird's wings, this type is much more flexible.
"It means that you can fly at very low speeds--and also, you'll be extremely maneuverable in flight."--
/Advantages/...immediately Kamui picked up his pace. He left the narrow side street and swept across a main thoroughfare. The buildings opened up a bit and his eyes took that opportunity, searching the irregular skyline for--
--there.
Putting the orb of the moon before him and a little to his left, Kamui took off. He concentrated on speed, abandoning all but the occasional tack or swerve necessary to avoid an obstacle. Far above he could sense that Fuuma was still trailing him, but the Dragon of Earth held off for now, perhaps amused by Kamui's seemingly desperate flight. Keeping a sliver of his awareness keyed to danger from the sky, Kamui made a straight-out dash toward the horizon.
* * * * *
There.
He was almost--
Catching a glimpse of his goal just ahead, Kamui summoned his strength. He'd left the last of the business and residential districts behind him some time ago; he was racing through the industrial strip now, its bitter tang of metal and machines and the sick smell of smoke just beginning to give way to something else-- He flashed among the blocky, silent hulks of warehouses and suddenly he was in the clear, bursting from between steep metal walls to dart over the docks and then dipping to skim across the mouth of the Sumida River. In the wild rush of his passing, he was only remotely aware of the harsh, sardonic cries of seagulls, the low hoot of a ship's horn, and the distant salt whiff of the sea.... He cut across the bow of a cargo ship pulling in to dock, and beyond there was only the bay's wide open expanse of riffling water. Kamui struck out across it, trying to coax a last sprint from his tiring wings. All that water underneath him, and above him all that unobstructed sky...Kamui looked down and saw, very near, that dullness on the glittering black water which was his own shadow.
Saw that shadow being steadily eclipsed....
Twisting his head around, Kamui looked frantically back over his shoulder. Almost directly above himself he saw a figure falling from the heavens, descending rapidly and growing closer with truly horrible speed. He saw the leashed, crackling power that encircled one hand, the wings folded close to the body and the face dark with that familiar, heartless smile...the teeth were bared abruptly, the wings snapped open in a rush of air as Fuuma reached out--
--and Kamui veered, flaring his own wings and wrenching into an acutely angled turn, pivoting almost on his wing tip. He glimpsed the cold, predatory expression in Dark Kamui's eyes as the other flashed by, so close that their wings overlapped. Correcting for the turn, Kamui stalled a bit, losing precious altitude--he fell so low that one wing actually threw drops of water into the air on its upstroke. Gasping, he struggled up again from just above the bay's surface, then fought through yet another change of direction, his aching muscles protesting under the strain. Banking tightly, Kamui came around once more, and there was Fuuma gliding right ahead of him, only now beginning to lean into a turn. Kamui scrambled further upward as he drew on his own power at last, feeling it blaze inside him, a reverberation of raw telekinetic force, before it echoed out into the air. "/Ha!/" he shouted, gathering that energy and hurling it in Fuuma's direction--but not at the Dragon of Earth directly, and not at the jagged shield that the other swept up to counter his blow. Instead the blast of power curved down before it reached Dark Kamui; it plunged deep below him and then swept straight up--
The blast seized a huge gout of water and flung it over the Dragon of Earth. For an instant Fuuma disappeared beneath that wave.
Kamui took the opportunity to climb a few strokes higher. He watched the avalanche of water crash back into the bay and saw Fuuma reappear, the Dragon of Earth's flight now listing and awkward, those feathered wings laboring under their own sodden weight. Kamui caught a tide of wind that carried him above and across Fuuma's path. Then, his eyes never leaving the struggling Angel, he folded his own exhausted wings and fell. He plummeted toward Dark Kamui, the distance measured out in fractions of a heartbeat, in an in-and-out sob of breath...he ignited a blaze of power in his hands just above his enemy, readying himself for the strike....
The other's head whipped up to look at him, those brown eyes a wild, startled flash in the uncomprehending face.
/Fuuma--!/
In that instant, Kamui panicked. He flung the gathered energies away from himself in a blinding glare of light. Slamming his wings open against the pressure of air rushing past him, Kamui beat once and then again, feeling his body whip around the pivot point of his shoulders as its own momentum tried to keep carrying it downward. His knees hit something that he couldn't see, something that tumbled away from him as he at last managed to slow his fall. Far below himself he heard the distinct sound of a splash. Blinking away white flare spots from his sight, Kamui straightened out onto a horizontal gliding path and circled, trying to see into the darkness, scanning the night sky...
...the water beneath....
Down there, shallow circles were spreading across the bay's surface. Even as he watched, those ripples flattened out further, the current from the mouth of the river carrying them away. Thunderstruck, Kamui gazed at the blank sheet of water below him, wondering if it could really have been so easy all along...and in that split second of wondering, he saw the water start to swirl and circle once again. It pulled back from the center of its rotation, creating a shallow vortex, and from that vortex a column of liquid began to rise steadily up. The column lifted a motionless figure toward the heavens, a figure that stood balanced easily upon the water, arms folded over its chest.
A figure that had no wings...no wings at all.
How the /hell/--!
Gliding in a flat curve above and around that rising column, Kamui stared down numbly. He saw the other person's head swivel to look upward, those dark eyes glinting with fury behind a plastered-down curtain of hair. Then an icy, overwhelming power lashed out toward him. It snatched him and flung him backward through the air. He was thrown helplessly spinning for a very long way, until he crashed headlong into something unforgiving that made the whole world ring about him like a temple bell.
It was all so absolutely and so miserably unfair.
* * * * *
"There," Seiichirou said, at just about the same second that Yuzuriha gasped out, "Kamui!" Sorata bounded onto the cargo crane next to the two other Seals. He followed where the man was pointing to and saw a familiar little person with wings pinned like a bug against the side of a freight canister. All of a sudden he had this really funky feeling of deja vu. He shrugged it off immediately, though--after all, there was rescuing to be done! and although the situation wasn't quite the same as rescuing a certain Fair Maiden from her Peril, well, Kamui was pretty fair, on top of being the "Kamui of the Dragons of Heaven," on top of being a guy who really didn't deserve to have this kind of crap be happening to him on a regular basis. Sorata was ready to spring down off the crane and see just how long it would take and how much damage he could do before the Kamui of the Dragons of Earth made him into a wet spot on the pavement when a hand latched onto his arm.
"Wha--?" He turned to protest at the owner of that grip, and then:
"You strike low," said the Head of the Sumeragi.
The onmyouji's voice was soft and abrupt, like even those few words were almost too much for him to get out because he was focused with such one-pointedness on the scene below. The pretty young man shifted his other arm slightly--the one not engaged with Sorata's--and when a pack of ofuda appeared from somewhere into his hand he fanned the cards out briefly between his fingers. Sorata glanced down at where the other Seal was staring, and then he grinned.
"Gotcha," he said, with a wink.
* * * * *
Through a confused blur of pain and fatigue, Kamui gazed at the tower of water, and at the person who was poised on the very top of it, standing effortlessly upon its foaming crest. Somewhere far away he could feel specific things that were hurting him--a fire in his arms and legs and on his wings that wouldn't let him move away or fall, a power that held him fixed in place, quite helpless. He could feel a distinct, throbbing spike of agony lodged somewhere at the back of his head, could taste dull metallic flavors of blood and nausea, and there was this great, strange, crushing weight which lingered someplace deep, deep down inside his heart...but those things didn't really matter. Not anymore. Because there was a dark fog sliding hungrily around him, and at its core that vastly greater darkness which was filling his sight...that shadowy mirror rippling right there in front of him, twisting everything that it reflected toward suffering and death, and if it would only take him now then he wouldn't have to fight it again and again and again and fail....
"Kotori," he whispered, because the pain in him was demanding it, the names breathed out like a rote prayer, their meanings nearly forgotten, "...Fuuma...." The blackness must almost have him, because its tendrils were creeping gradually across his sight. Kamui looked up at the cruel, remote figure haloed in a ring of power, the only thing now that he could see, and he let his eyelids slowly begin to droop, veiling away that distant smile which no longer had anything really to do with him...
...letting that long, slow fall down into emptiness begin....
/Light./
Something sparkled, so brilliantly that he could even see it through eyes that were nearly closed. Despite himself, he found that he was opening them again to look. One flash of light after another, a chorus of high-pitched warbling cries...there were white birds arrowing fiercely across the sky, almost too bright to watch. They swarmed toward that looming figure, diving for its head--for Fuuma, Kamui realized, the haze lifting for a moment before his surprise, someone was attacking the Dragon of Earth with those birds that were so familiar, that he'd seen before with distant sight--
"Subaru...?"
Fuuma crooked one arm above his head to shield it, a flat, astonished look coming over his face. Then that expression changed into a scornful smile. The birds vaporized all around him, except for the closest which he seized in his hand and crushed, releasing a tiny flare of magic. Opening his hand once again, he let go of a paper wad that crumbled into fragments before it reached the bay. Fuuma looked up and to the side then, and Kamui's eyes, following that gaze, saw the Sumeragi's slender form in midleap high above them, the onmyouji's legs drawn up like a dancer's and the moon a yellow-white bloom behind his shoulder. At the peak of his jump Subaru crossed his arms before himself, and then flung them wide, sending a second arc of talisman birds hurtling toward the Dragon of Earth. Fuuma put up a hand almost negligently; the shikigami burst like fireworks around him--
"Subaru...!"
--and Fuuma retaliated with a wave of power that rolled and curled toward the Sumeragi. Subaru had already begun to fall back toward the ground, having used up the momentum of his jump. He raised his hands in front of his face as the blast hit, catching the blow on a sharply angled shield that deflected most of the power to one side. Kamui saw the strike rock him, though, even half-blunted as it was. Subaru went skittering sideways through the air--he caught himself, just barely, on what Kamui realized was part of the superstructure of a nearby ship. One hand grasped hold of a railing as the onmyouji's sneakers scrabbled and found purchase on the steep metal side, and he twisted around, trying to reorient himself to his opponent--
--as the aura that surrounded Fuuma began sending out wavering coils of energy, like solar flares--
"Subaru!" Kamui clawed with mind and will at the bonds which were holding him down, seeing the real strike coming now, the one that was more than a mocking, idle swat. "/Subaru!/" Fuuma looked sidelong at Kamui with a feral grin. The Dragon of Earth turned away from him then, cold as black ice and yet also burning, aflame with things that were inhuman and somehow sinful. He focused his attention on the Sumeragi, gathering the arc of power close about himself--
"/SUBARU!/" Kamui screamed.
"--INDRAYA NAMAH SAMANTA!!!" Kamui's gaze whipped around to his other side, where the monk from Kouyasan was bounding over a cargo container, hands clasped together and fingers pointing forward like a kid playing gunfighter. Electricity crackled around the monk; it ran down his arms and blasted from his hands in a tremendous lightning bolt that hissed across the dock and over the small space that separated the Dragon of Earth from the water's shore. It struck at the base of the waterspout and Kamui could see its effect moving upward from there, that electrical force conducted swiftly and subtly through the column of liquid. Fuuma's body jerked spasmodically as the power struck him, jerked again, and then began to fall. The upswept water parted underneath and folded together above him as the Dragon of Earth fell through it, the whole thing plunging down to strike the harbor's surface in a thunderous collapse. For a moment the air and water echoed with that splash, and a rain of spray splattered over everything. Then there was silence, as the disturbance in the water calmly smoothed itself out and vanished.
Fuuma was nowhere to be seen.
The bonds which had already been strained by Kamui's efforts to break free began to give way at last. Kamui felt himself tilting forward, peeling away from the side of whatever it was he'd been bound to. He was near the top of a pile of freight containers, he realized as he began to fall, huge metal boxes that looked like trucks without cabs or undercarriages or wheels. They were sliding steadily toward the sky all around him now, and the pavement of the dockside was approaching with peculiar speed...Kamui watched the ground coming toward him, and wondered if there was something he ought to be doing about that. Then the flow of air past him changed, something strong caught at his wings, and the repeated shock upon shock of having surrendering himself and then being jerked back into life made everything around him start to waver. As the wind cupped his wings instead of the other way round, which wasn't right at all, the world became unstable, and though it felt as though he was being supported in some way Kamui's mind tipped up on edge. It lost contact with the currents that held it above the darkness, it stalled out and began to--
--fall--
* * * * *
"...be all right?"
That low buzzing noise became a voice that was partway through a sentence. It was so much easier just to let the sound wash over him, though, than to worry about what it meant. At least the murmur of the voice was quiet...was soothing somehow...
...was safe....
"Yeah, I think he's just fainted or something." That voice wasn't the same one. Though hushed, it reverberated close to his ear, and he could feel the vibration of it against his other ear and on the side of his face, which was pressed up against something that rose and then gently fell. "Poor guy's been through hell...again." Somewhere inside himself Kamui squirmed in protest at the voice's sympathy. His discomfort at that, and at the realization, as the meaning of the previous words began filtering through, that he really must have fainted, started to drive away the pleasant drifting feelings. Slowly he discovered that he had a body, and that most of it hurt. Rather than think about such things, he tried to focus on the voice again, which meanwhile was exclaiming softly, "Hey--nice job of catching him, ojisan!"
"Oh, it was nothing," the other replied mildly. "He's very light...besides, once the winds had him Inuki really helped to guide him down." Somewhere in the background there was a giggle and then a quiet babble of words that he couldn't make out. They didn't seem directed to the other voices, though. The first speaker was continuing on, "Say, aren't you the one who should be congratulated? That lightning strike was very impressive!"
"Thanks!--well, even though I can't take the credit for a brilliant idea, I can still take my bows for the execution of it, right? Ha ha ha!" That voice, which at some point had hooked itself up with the name "Sorata" in Kamui's mind, began to laugh. The jostle woke Kamui up a bit more, and as his body came into clearer focus he realized that he was sprawled against Sorata, the monk's arm embracing his shoulders and his head resting weakly on Sorata's chest. For a moment, he wondered if he was embarrassed enough that he ought to get up. Then he decided, oh what the hell....
It wasn't like this was the first time.
"/Zzot!/" Sorata was chortling gleefully, and Kamui felt the monk's free arm move. "Just like that...ah, if only Miss'd been here to see me!"
"You didn't put up a kekkai this time...."
Sorata jumped at that new, muted voice, and Kamui could almost hear him thinking <Where the heck did /she/ come from?> The movement made Kamui's head hurt; he was tired and he squeezed his eyes more tightly shut. He wished that all the voices would just go away. "Hey, hey, hey!" the monk was protesting urgently, "d'ya think I'd want to be shut up in a box with.../that/?" The last word was stage-whispered under his breath, as though Sorata thought that somebody who shouldn't might hear him. Then the monk added, the tenor of his voice shifting as though talking to someone who was further away, "Any sign of him?"
"No."
And Kamui opened his eyes.
Sorata looked down as he began to move, the monk's face wearing an expression of affectionate concern. Kamui pushed himself up a little higher, and then leaned back exhausted against the Dragon of Heaven's shoulder. He could see the other Seals now: Seiichirou down on one knee close beside him, a smile touching the man's gentle face; Arashi leaning up against a nearby freight container; and Yuzuriha a little bit further on, her arms wrapped happily about Inuki's neck. Slowly Kamui turned his head. Subaru was standing at the edge of the dock, gazing down at the water's surface. The onmyouji's face was turned profile to him, the dark gaze unfalteringly intent.
"Still," Arashi said quietly, "we should go soon."
"But how?" Yuzuriha cried. "Kamui's hurt, and even between us we won't be able to carry him all the way back to the Campus! It's too far."
"Uh, I don't think we're gonna have to worry about it." Sorata pointed straight up over their heads. The brief silence that followed was broken by a rapidly growing chattering sound, and then the darkness was split by light as a pair of helicopters whirled past high above the Dragons of Heaven. The helicopters circled swiftly, coming around for a second pass. As they swung by again, allowing a brief view of the familiar seal decorating their sleek, black sides, a light-haired figure leaned a little too enthusiastically from the door of the leading one. An arm reached from inside to pull him back.
"I think our ride's just got here," Sorata remarked.
As the helicopters lowered cautiously toward the dockside, looking for someplace to land, Kamui's gaze slipped aside. It drifted back toward the water's edge, and toward Subaru just now turning from the harbor, the rotor blades' gusts of wind whipping his close-cropped hair as he glanced calmly up. At the sight of him, Kamui was caught absolutely fast, stricken and unable to look away. It was as though a paper screen had been ripped from before his eyes, turning what had been only a moving shadow into color and life. He could feel himself torn open from the shock of this night's emotions, could feel his whole world focusing down into one stark point--and then that world grew still before the force of memory...
...the force of truth....
Kamui stared at Subaru as though nothing else even existed.
In that one moment of realization, he understood it all.