Visual Kei

So… okay, maybe I was an idiot for thinking everything would be peachy.

The moment we left the little boutique, Miko booked it toward a crowd of people, screaming her ridiculously-over-tanned face off as she did so. (Imagine my face palm at this moment.) We tracked her pretty quickly. We never really lost her, but after some time, she seemed to think we had. When she let her guard down, we moved in to “secure” her. It was pretty hard to do it subtly, what with all the people around, but we didn’t have a choice.

She was walking slowly, obviously keeping her eyes open for us, but she seemed otherwise casual. She wasn’t all that out of place in the crowds of Okinawa. People had long since stopped gawking at her, but a few still glanced nervously. I didn’t blame them. In their places, I would have though her to be a mental ward escapee or something similar.

As I edged closer, pretending to be texting a ways behind her, I felt my skin prickle. Without lifting my eyes from the phone, I sought the source of the uncomfortable presence in my peripheral vision, but before I could confirm that it even existed, it struck.

Dashing through the street far too fast for mortals to see, one of the Aku swept Miko up in his large arms and used a small, almost unnoticeable syringe to inject something into her. Within seconds of the penetration, she fell limply in his arms. For a terrifying moment, his beady black eyes met mine and he smiled, showing the pale, almost unnaturally white teeth. In another moment, he was on the other side of the street and had begun to scale the tall apartment building with relative ease.

I thrust my phone back into my pocket, jumping to make chase, but as I did so, I heard Kiiro call out from his place. “Take her back to the apartment and meet up with me later!” Shinji nodded without saying a word. I watched Kiiro leap a storey, landing on one of the apartment’s balconies safely before jumping and using the opposite building to kick up to the next one. He made it look easy. I stared after him, subconsciously following Shinji as I gazed at the empty rooftop.

“We can’t just leave him!” I insisted, grabbing Shinji’s arm. “What if he gets hur—is unable to stop the thing alone?”

“Don’t worry about Kiiro, Alice,” Shinji said, easily seeing through my poor façade. “We need to worry about you right now. If the Aku wanted to hurt you, he probably would have, but I didn’t miss that smile. My first priority—and Kiiro’s—is to see you safely to the apartment, where it is more defensible.”

“Are you kidding! This is ridiculous; you have to know that that guy was up to something!”

“Maybe he was," he said as he shrugged nonchalantly. "It matters little. Kiiro can take care of himself—I think even you would be surprised.”

“I—I’m not worried about him! I’m worried about getting Miko’s information.” I did not sound all that convincing, even to myself. “I know he’s strong enough to handle things.”

He patted my hand reassuringly. “He’ll be fine, Alice. I promise.”

“Now you’re just pissing me off,” I mumbled grumpily, falling into stride two steps behind him. He said nothing more, but a small, wry smile formed on his lips, and for that, I purposefully lagged even further behind.

**

“You are so not leaving without me!” I protested louder than before, trying not to sound petulant and failing miserably. Shinji was restraining me calmly on the couch with a hand on mine, and Emiko glared at me from Shinji's opposite side, equally upset about being left out of the action. Chino glanced outside, obviously eager to depart. “This is my life and... ehh.... prophecy thing. I can’t just be put aside while all this happens!”

His long, egg-shaped face was slightly apologetic, but his lips were set stubbornly. “I have made my decision already, Alice, you will not be going with us this time. Please… we worry for your safety and this is the best way to keep you safe.”

“But!”

“No, Alice,” he said, almost as if to a child. Though there was no impatience in his voice, it was indeed firm, and I knew that to argue would be pointless. Still, I felt a strange and unsettling feeling in my stomach as I watched Rei’s form shiver in the air, his body breaking and reforming into that of a giant bird. Though I knew that they were more than competent for retrieving Miko from the clutches of a few Aku, I knew that there had to be some sort of ambush. Come on, everyone knows about that little trick, right?

Closing my mouth, I ran a hand through my hair and closed my eyes to block out my urge to continue complaining. “Don’t jack around, just get Miko and GTFO. One Aku is bad enough but more…”

“Don’t worry, they’ll be back as soon as possible,” Shinji reassured me with a calm, patient smile. “Nobody will get hurt. We just need to be patient while the others deal with this.”

Chino nodded to Shinji and turned a sympathetic eye on me before disappearing over the edge of the balcony.

**

I lay in Kiiro’s bed staring at the ceiling while worrying about the guys. I hated being the fragile little “damsel in distress” from nursery rhymes and fairytales. Those stupid stories are for kids. Bleh. ALICE! a voice screamed in my head. The sound seemed to rattle inside my skull painfully, shaking the contents into soupy remnants of what they were. I jolted out of my peaceful, hazy drifting and shot up out of bed. Spots swam in my vision as my head throbbed painfully. Rubbing a hand across my forehead, I just sat still a moment to gather my wits, and heard Shinji rush into the dark room looking pained as well.

“Are you okay!?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, pre-occupied with the pain in my temples. “Geez, you heard it too?”

“It must have been loud if we both heard it. I didn’t hear the others come back yet…”

Gradually, the ache lessened, but remained just enough so that my concentration could not completely be on Shinji. “ I wonder if they are still trying to get Miko back…”

“Have faith in them.”

Emiko wandered into the room, finally, clutching at her head. She looked on the verge of tears, but I felt uncomfortable with having any empathy for her. Still, I asked her if she had taken it worse than I had, but she just waved her hand dismissively and steadied herself with one of the bedposts without saying a word.

I reached out with my mind, searching for Chino. I knew that if they were fighting, he probably wouldn’t hear me, but if they were looking, he might. Still, I wondered if it worked this way—if I could simply reach out for him and initiate the conversation without his power, myself. I had to try. The edges of my consciousness seemed to ooze out through the walls, pushing free of physical barriers and travelling through a dimension that I saw in my mind’s eye. I could faintly feel a great many things this way when I was concentrating. First, I felt the presence of people walking along the street outside. I felt their existence as one might feel the passage of people around them, but details were invisible to me. As my awareness expanded, it lost the identity of those it encountered. I no longer registered who I was feeling as my consciousness touched them.

“Don’t kid yourself, Shinji, it’s been like four hours,” I continued, turning back to him. He looked rather like an angel in the darkness, save for his tight black pants. Even so, his soft features were accented by the moonlight’s cold onslaught through navy voile drapes. “If they were coming back, they’d have done it by now. We need to do something before it escalates.”

“No,” Shinji said firmly, shaking his head. Emiko mumbled something quietly that sounded like idiot. “We will stay right here, as planned, until we hear from Chino. If anything is amiss, he will tell us of it, I’m sure.”

“I tried, Shinji. Chino won’t answer me.”

“They could be in the middle of something important.”

“Shinji…” I rubbed my temples in discomfort, each movement feeling a little more painful. “I have a… feeling… okay? Please, just trust me on this. We must go to them.”

His eyes fixed on me indecisively, torn between trust and protectiveness. From her place away from us both, Emiko murmured almost meekly, “Trust her, this time.” before she rested her forehead against the wooden post.

“Shinji,” I repeated, taking on a more authoritative tone, “listen to me. If something is wrong, we might not have time to waste here. We need to go and make sure everything is as it should be, at least. If we don’t see them, we’ll come straight back.”

“You promise,” he demanded, “you promise that you won’t do anything reckless?”

“Yes, I promise. Let’s be quick.”