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rallamajoopYe gods, I was not counting on this chapter taking this long to finish. >_< Wasn't counting on it turning into a single scene that went on for very nearly six thousand words either. It's been a real chapter for underestimation. I'm so very sorry.
Just a quick side note to since there've been quite a lot of people pointing out typos in the last couple of chapters: I appreciate that people are trying to help me out, but I'm not labeling this thing a 'draft' because I expect my audience to do the betaing for me, I'm doing it because it helps to have that regular posting schedule to keep the momentum going, even though I'm still half expecting I'll wind up completely rewriting every other line between now and the finished version. So combing through for spelling errors is probably a bit of a waste of everyone's time at this stage, especially when corrections made on LJ posts generally don't make it back to the main word documenton account of authorial laziness and will only have to be found again later if they don't get written out in the meantime. I'll have to get to finding someone to do a proper full betaing job on this monster some way down the line, but for now picking out typos is better left to the later polishing stages. (Unless of course it really has gotten so bad you can't make sense out of what I'm trying to say, which would be your cue to bash me over the head a few times and remind me that the whole world can see what I'm posting here, and I might want to pay a bit more attention. >.>)
Other parts: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Side Story 1
The girl who’d introduced herself as Tomoyo looked solemnly around the faces gathered in the room before returning to Kurogane. “You never told any of these people the truth about your past, did you? Not even when you sent your own to trade with us were they to know that this was your home, that you were once my most trusted advisor.”
“They didn’t need to be told,” said Kurogane, his voice regaining some of its usual steadiness.
“Not even though they trusted their lives to your judgement? You were so ashamed of your origins that you would never dare to speak of them?” She sounded genuinely saddened, though she had lost none of her composure. Doumeki frowned at her.
“As the man said, we didn’t need to be told,” said Fye sharply. When Tomoyo’s attention came to rest on him he near flinched.
“You are the one known as Fye D. Flowright? I have not had the pleasure before,” she said. “I should offer a welcome home to you too.”
“That’s funny,” said Fye. “I was never that welcome at my own Complex even when I lived there.”
“That is another matter which I hope we may resolve for you at this meeting,” said Tomoyo, just as smooth as everything else she’d uttered, “but you are not one of those among your campmates who were punished worst by the secret of Kurogane’s history. Your Syaoran, I am given to understand, has been left with little memory of his own past – a past you could have revealed to him at any time.”
“It wasn’t my secret to share,” said Kurogane. “That was between him and Sakura.”
“But even your Sakura knew sadly little of her origin, so young was she when the tragedy occurred that lead her to leave us,” said Tomoyo, eyes shining with sympathy.
“And if she’d wanted to know anything more she knew perfectly well she could have asked me,” said Fye. “You aren’t going to convince Kurogane he’s mistreated us like this.”
“What are you all talking about?” said Syaoran, loud and impatient. “This is why I remember this place? Why there are three of me and three of Sakura too?”
“Indeed, you and your Sakura were born here,” said Tomoyo. “Children of a project of rebirth of my own initiation – you and all your siblings here. By rights, both you and your Sakura should never have had to leave this place, if it were not for the most unfortunate of accidents; events we did not come to understand until years later. Though we did not recognise it then, you and she should have been our first success.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it –” Kurogane began, but Syaoran talked over him.
“Then why don’t I remember it?”
“I can only presume it is the result of trauma inflicted during the events of your escape,” said Tomoyo. “It may yet be possible to restore those memories, if you wish.”
“I…” said Syaoran, then resolve seemed to return to him. “That isn’t what we came here for! You took Sakura away! Where is she?”
“Do not fear, she is safe,” said Tomoyo. “They are all safe.”
“That’s not what I asked! Where is she!?”
If Tomoyo hesitated it was for less than a moment. “She and the other two have been placed in a shielded facility not far from here. As a protective measure.”
Syaoran got stuck on the oddity her last four words long enough to pause and blink, but he pushed it aside just as quickly. “Tell me where!”
“They are barely two walls away from us, but getting inside that room is not as simple as walking in or breaking down a door. At present, that would not be wise for even greater reasons. Please do not be hasty, there is still much we need to discuss.”
Syaoran took a step forward and opened his mouth to continue his demands, but was stopped by a heavy hand landing on his shoulder. Doumeki had heard enough.
“Oi,” he said. “I want to know whether I’m understanding this correctly.” When Syaoran turned under his hand he shot the boy a look that made even him think twice.
It wasn’t hard to understand why having Tomoyo's full attention on them had made the others so uneasy. You wouldn't have believed she was meeting Doumeki for the first time in her life today from the look she turned to him, you could have thought she must have known him forever. "You - if you'll excuse my presumption - you are known as Doumeki Shizuka, the one original resident of the deadlands I find before me today? Of course, the truth of your leader's past must be difficult to come to terms with..."
"Not my business," said Doumeki. "I'm asking about you. If you're in charge, you were the one who ordered the raid on our camp?"
"That is correct, it was my direct order." There was a tinge to her voice that might have been interpreted as regret, but Doumeki wasn’t sure whether it was an emotion she was hiding badly or something artificially inserted for effect. There was not the slightest suggestion of shame. “It is not unreasonable for you to feel you deserve an explanation.”
“Those men knew exactly who they were looking for when they arrived. How much do you know about the three of our people you sent them to kidnap?”
"A great many things," said Tomoyo. "Possibly more than you do yourself. The power that connects those three is no mere thing. You have had ample opportunity to see that for yourself, and I can tell you that the tales of the exploits of the April Fool have travelled so far that they have reached the ears even of the people of my Complexes."
"A power you feel you have more right to than anyone else?" said Fye, not bothering to leave any cynicism out of his tone.
"You do me a disservice by assuming my motives so simple, Mr Flowright," said Tomoyo. "I do not think you fully appreciate how much is at stake in this matter. The destruction of your Complex has changed a great many things."
"That’s what I was asking about," said Doumeki. "That’s how all this started. How much do you know about how that Complex was destroyed?"
Tomoyo turned serenely back to look Doumeki in the eye. "Perhaps you feel you may know better than me?"
He didn't know a lot. Everything Watanuki had told him had come out in one conversation that they'd never come back to, so brief that Doumeki couldn't even be sure he'd understood it all correctly, but... "It was the dead.”
Without turning, Doumeki could feel the silent ripple of surprise than ran through his companions, the way everyone was staring at him. It was a bad moment to recognise this was something he probably should have shared with them, not that he could have told them much that they hadn’t already halfway guessed. They’d all had just enough association with the strange world people like Watanuki and Kohane inhabited and just enough idea of what had probably happened at the Complex to know better than to ask about it.
Tomoyo paused just long enough give him the feeling that somewhere under the façade, he may have managed to surprise her too, just a little bit. “But there is more to what you know than that,” she prompted, looking expectant.
They couldn’t both go on refusing to show all their cards indefinitely. “It was Kohane,” said Doumeki. “She sees ghosts. Something they did to her made them angry enough to kill everyone in Complex but her.”
Tomoyo nodded, as if this was nothing so very extraordinary. “I see. So she was able to share those events with her new campmates. That poor girl; we were not certain whether she herself would be able to rightly comprehend what had occurred.”
“You knew?”
“What happened to the ruined Complex?” asked Tomoyo. "Of course. After investigating the site thoroughly, that was the only explanation we could find. The limited computer records we were able to retrieve allowed us to reconstruct the circumstances of the disaster in sufficient detail to infer that much about what took place, and about the misguided experiment which scared poor Kohane so very badly. As impossible as it may sound, it was not even the first such incident we had recorded, though it is only lately that we have begun to understand the truth of such events – the anger of the dead, as you put it, and just how much it has begun to mean, in our sad world of too many ghosts. Knowing all this, you must appreciate that steps had to be taken to ensure such a tragedy could not take place again."
"Like kidnapping everyone you could find with that ability and bringing them here?" said Kurogane. The roughness of his voice before was beginning to give way to a very real, cold anger.
Doumeki narrowed his eyes. "That doesn't make sense.”
"Whatever you may call it, it is only what was necessary,” said Tomoyo, answering them both. “Knowing the danger they posed to us, our only choice was to secure them.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Doumeki repeated. “It means you brought three people who could destroy a Complex right to another one."
"Of course,” said Tomoyo, sounding as though this really was the most logical thing in the world and the rest of them must have been very foolish not to see it. “There was no other way to test whether the protective measures we have developed would work."
"...the what?" That was more than Doumeki had expected.
"Protective measures," Tomoyo repeated calmly. "The circumstances of the other Complex's destruction were not all we were able to learn from the ruins. A chance observation at the ruined site lead us to the discovery of a means by which we might contain even the ghosts which those like Kohane see."
"How?" Should that even have been possible at all?
"Of course you are curious, but I expect the details of the technical side will be beyond your vocabulary,” Tomoyo replied. “What is important is that we have spent the past few weeks since the disaster using this method to construct a sealed room from which the effects of as similar incident should be unable to escape. However, all this remained no more than theory until we could test it. And for that, although you may question my means of doing so, we needed your friends.”
"You..." Even in anger, Kurogane's control was inhuman, but the rage seeping into his voice was unmistakable now. "You kidnapped three of my people, brought them all this way, made them believe their lives were in danger, all for the sake of one of your experiments?"
"It is for the sake of every person who's life has been made my responsibility," said Tomoyo, laying a hand on her chest.
"And what if your idea fails?” Kurogane barked. “The life of every person here is at risk. The same disaster you are trying to prevent is going to happen all over again!"
"Kurogane, I have not grown so overconfident that I would ignore such a danger.” Not even Kurogane’s anger had damaged her control in the least. It was almost surreal. “We had great hope that the seal would work, but we have not ignored the risk we faced if we were mistaken. That is why you find my Complex now deserted. Every resident but myself and my few attendants have been sent to the emergency bunkers until the experiment is complete."
"If your seal didn't work, what made you think even the bunkers would be safe!?"
"It was a calculated risk, and I assure you all possible care was taken when those calculations were made. In any case, the matter is now irrelevant. Had I been wrong, none of us would be standing here alive now. The experiment has been underway since well before you arrived. Our seal," Tomoyo smiled, "has been an unmitigated success."
There was silence in the room.
"How did you trigger it?" asked Doumeki, voice cold as ice.
Tomoyo gave him a considering look. She was still not the least cowed by him – or any of them – but her answer was came a little faster to the point than many of her previous ones. “From the records we retrieved from the ruined Complex, we were also able to gain some insight into what triggered the episode in the test subject. It appears to be something of a defence mechanism – quite beyond the owner’s conscious control – which activates in response to a recognised threat which places their lives in immediate danger. In other words, you may think of it as a reaction to a specific variety of fear.
“That is a difficult thing to trigger in under controlled conditions. Some level of cruelty was unavoidable, and I can only hope I may eventually convince those three to forgive me that much, such are the stakes resting on this experiment. As a last resort we considered making the subjects believe their lives to be threatened, or recreating the conditions which triggered the event at the other Complex. However, we are fortunate in that a more subtle method has proven sufficient. In that respect, obtaining all three of those we may refer to as ‘April Fools’ at once appears to have worked in our favour, as the stress of their transport here alone was enough that little more than their own imaginations was necessary once they were placed in isolation.”
Doumeki decided that he didn’t much like the idea of what Tomoyo considered a ‘merciful’ method.
“I am not proud of the cruelty which your friends have been subjected to in bringing them here, but our hands were tied,” Tomoyo went on. “The experiment had to be carried out on unknowing subjects, so they could be told nothing of what they would face. However, you must see that it is by far the lesser evil in comparison to the loss and suffering that we would have endured if another Complex was allowed to meet the same fate.
“In fact, once the storm subsides and we are able to reveal the full circumstances of the experiment to the three of them, I believe this may even become one of the greatest gifts anyone could have given them. All three of them have carried the guilt of harm done in similar outbursts in the past, and the fear that they may injure those close to them again. I am certain that learning that no-one has been injured, and that we now have the means to protect people from this side of their power will be the a great comfort to them.”
“Only you could turn this around into something that was for their own benefit,” said Kurogane, when at last she’d finished.
“It will be worth it, many times over,” Tomoyo declared. “You have all come here with the best of intentions, but I have barely begun to explain to you just how much is as stake here. I needed your friends in order to find a means to protect our Complexes, this is true, but this is barely the beginning. The work done at the lost Complex has finally proven something we have spent years of work on: the ghosts are real! And through the medium of individuals like those gathered at your camp, we have the means to communicate with them. Think you much this could mean! You yourselves have spent much of the last year profiting from the assistance of the dead with Watanuki's help; you who comprise a camp of not even ten members. Think how that ability could aid a Complex of this size – Complexes all over the world!"
Kurogane’s fists clenched and his teeth ground, and it was suddenly very easy for Doumeki to believe he’d spent a lot f his life hearing speeches like this one. It sounded crazy. It sounded so absolutely sane and logical that it could leave you in awe. Doumeki’s gut told him she had to be wrong, but it was more difficult to figure out why, so he didn’t bother. Easier to focus on remembering what he knew was right.
“And what about Chi?” said Fye suddenly, finding a resort in a subject change that he must have wanted to make for a long time. “I haven’t forgotten about her just because you’ve done such a very nice job of justifying doing whatever you may please with our human campmates, but you hardly lack for computers in this place. How was taking her from us anything but a selfishly deliberate attempt to cripple our camp?”
"The experimental Chobit we retrieved is a different matter, perhaps one we should have dealt with long ago,” said Tomoyo, undaunted. “Under the very guiding principles on which the project was founded, we cannot allow any such technology to fall into the hands of the residents of the deadlands, especially a piece equipped with our transfer protocols and codes. Any means by which residents from outside the Complexes may intercept the messages we exchange presents an intolerable risk."
“Too great a risk?” Fye hissed. “What do you think we do with that information, plan to invade? Do you have any idea how much she means to us? To everyone we trade with? The weather reports alone...!"
"The weather reports you have grown accustomed to distributing are precisely why we could not leave her in your hands,” said Tomoyo. “Mr Flowright, you were a resident of one of my Complexes not so very long ago. Someone of your intelligence must have discerned the reasoning behind our policies long ago. Those who live outside the Complexes are no less important than we are, and their means and the means of the Complexes must remain separate. Should calamity ever befall us and my great domes fall, it is they who will be left the task of rebuilding this world. That is why we must do nothing to help them, for if they cannot survive without us, their survival has no meaning at all. Everyone in this world has the right to survive. Everyone in this world has the responsibility to live on, by any means they can, for the good of the future of all of us.”
Fye tried to speak again, but Tomoyo held up a hand. “I know what you will say, that distributing the reports is your way of surviving, but it is a woefully short sighted way to live. You have seen for yourselves that even my Complexes may be vulnerable. You must have seen your neighbours begin to grow dependent on your weather reports; the ways in which they modify their own behaviour to the assumption they will always have that luxury. For the prosperity of your own camp you have even encouraged this. It must end. Everything we do, every sacrifice I have been forced to make, has been made for a greater cause.”
Tomoyo took another long solemn look around the room, gone silent once more after her last proclamation. “You are still unsatisfied by my answers, I can see. Allow me to approach this matter for you from a different angle. We have taken nothing our Complexes did not have a right to. Mr Flowright, you cannot deny the core processor of the computer we recovered was an item you and your brother smuggled illegally from the Complex at the time of your exile, can you?”
Fye said nothing, merely looked away.
“Similarly, Kohane was a resident of our neighbouring Complex at the time of its destruction. I know you think my methods cruel, Kurogane, but I assure you – we have made it our business to locate and accommodate every survivor of that catastrophe we could find.”
“Even those who wanted nothing more than to leave?” said Kurogane darkly.
“Regrettably, Kohane’s own wishes are irrelevant in this matter. As she is not yet eighteen, it is her late mother’s will we much respect, and she made it known until her death that she had no wish for either herself or her daughter to leave the safety the Complex provided. You and your dear Sakura are the same,” she continued, turning to Syaoran, who flinched visibly as her eyes fell on him. “The incident which lead to your departure from the Complex ha come to be viewed as the most regrettable accident. None of your caretakers ever intended either you or she any harm, and as you too are still children, it remains your caretakers’ decision whether the Complex or the outside is the suitable environment for you.”
“What about Watanuki?” said Doumeki, anger barely contained in his words. “He’s never belonged to any Complex.”
“Indeed, the one known as the April Fool is a different case,” said Tomoyo, “but I ask you to remember, all his known history, who has he been considered to belong to? The answer is whichever gang was able to capture and hold him. We have done nothing but follow the same rules observed outside, by that account, and think – we can offer him here what no-one else can. All his life he has been fought over. All he has ever wished for is to see the bloodshed carried out in his name finally cease, and that we can promise him, as long as this is where he remains.”
“You damned hypocrite,” Kurogane swore. “Every time the outside was mentioned to you, you’d say you couldn’t interfere. You lived by the mantra that the rules had to be different for them – that there’s nothing you can do to help them. Then you turn around to say you can use them as you like provided you observe their ideas of rules?”
“In the case of a power like Watanuki’s what rules can we be expected to apply? In all your time with him, I doubt very much that any of you truly understand the full implications of what he can do. Nor do I think you have yet realised how much we can offer him that you cannot. As I began to explain previously, I have great hopes that I will be able to make him understand the necessity of what I have done, even that he may eventually thank me for it.”
Doumeki remembered the way Watanuki had reacted when he’d heard about the trading mission. He hadn’t gone into specifics, but he’d made his opinion perfectly clear. “It won’t be that easy. He hates the Complexes.”
“On the contrary, he knows very little about the Complexes that is not either hearsay or information he received for biased references,” said Tomoyo. “Once he has met us and had the opportunity to see us as people rather than as some distant threat he will see us in a different light.”
“You don’t know that.” Doumeki glared at her. “You don’t know him.”
“It is true, I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting him in person,” Tomoyo admitted. “But I do know a great many things about him which you will not be able to deny. Watanuki lives in the utmost terror of the implications of his own powers. He has seen people killed for them, killed by them, always against his will but always repeating, himself always the lynch pin at the centre of events but helpless to change their flow. He has carried the guilt of those sacrifices for so long, a weight he has felt so strongly that it is a great testament to his character that he has not collapsed under it. He feels responsible for everything he has been unable to stop, paralysed with the fear that he will someday be responsible for the deaths of anyone he allows himself to get close to. Surely you must see – in a mind like Watanuki’s, no matter what empty reassurances you may have given him – to him it is inevitable that either another gang will slaughter each and every one of you to steal him from you, or worse, that his life will be threatened again in your presence and you will die at the hands of his overprotective ghosts. Can you not imagine what it will mean to him to learn that we have a means to shield people even from the ghosts themselves? Here alone, we can protect him. We can give him everything he has never dared to imagine he could have.”
“And in return, you get to keep a personal eye on the only people in the country who could threaten what you’ve built,” said Kurogane through gritted teeth.
“That is a little disingenuous of you, Kurogane,” Tomoyo replied. “I have already told you that this one experiment is only the beginning. You have benefited greatly from Watanuki’s presence at your camp over the past year, but none of you – not even those three themselves – have yet come to appreciate the true potential of the great gift they have been granted. There is so much more they can do for us! You have seen it yourselves every time Watanuki has lead you to their hidden caches of supplies, every time his power has aided you. The dead want to help us. They cry for us, and beg us to live on for all our sakes. They use all their power to protect what we need to survive for as long as they can hold on to it, preserving that which we need the most even while everything else around them ages and decays.” She paused there, tilting her head. “And it has worked in ways you will never even have considered. How old do you think I am?”
This had been nagging at the edge of Doumeki’s mind since she’d first started talking to Kurogane. It didn’t add up, but it hadn’t been important compared to everything else.
“I was sixteen the day the world fell, but I live on untouched by time,” Tomoyo declared. “I will live on – and they will keep me here – as long as the world still needs me. I am not gifted as your friends. I have never seen a single ghost nor been given any way to thank them, and yet all along they recognised me for all I would achieve, and I firmly believe it is my duty and my destiny to use every day of the life that has been given to me in the service of everything they wished me to protect.
“Do you begin to understand? This power to communicate with the spirits of the dead was not something that arose by chance. People such as your friends were meant to have it, and just as surely they were meant to use it for so much more than what Watanuki has ever used it for so far. Imagine, say, if we could find a way to communicate to the spirits what we need. They could so easily guide and protect us on journeys longer than any we have ever dared to take. No living scout would be able to compare to what they could do for us.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” said Doumeki. Watanuki had only once tried to get something more than what the spirits had offered him. Doumeki hadn’t forgotten it. He was never going to.
“An hour ago you would surely have told me the shield we have already demonstrated the use of was impossible,” Tomoyo replied, unmoved. “Only time will tell how much more we may achieve, but to give up now is to surrender to imaginary fears. Even your Watanuki understands that. He wants to help so very badly. Even when he was taken by gangs who would spare no thought for his welfare, he wanted to help. Here, there is a place for him here like nothing anyone beyond our walls can offer him. I am even prepared to extend the invitation further – to all of you. Even you, Doumeki, though you may feel you have little claim to life within our walls, I am sure we can find a place for you here. There is so much he can offer us, and so much we can offer him, and if we can ease the decision for him by offering his friends a place by his side, it is the least we can do.”
Tomoyo’s eyes shone with a victory already assured. “With all that you now know, do you think he will want to leave?”
And there it was. They could sit here happily arguing about Tomoyo’s claims of godhood or what Watanuki might think for as long as they pleased, but there was only one possible answer to that.
“I’ll go ask him,” said Doumeki, and made a motion to start towards the door.
Tomoyo’s brow creased, very slightly. “We will have to wait a while longer yet before that is possible. The ghost-storm within the sealed room has not yet ceased, and from our readings from the surviving equipment within that room it may well continue yet for a number of hours. To enter now would be suicide.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Doumeki shrugged.
“I’m going too,” said Syaoran. “Sakura’s there, I can’t just leave her.”
“Please do not make the mistake of presuming your connection to those inside makes you invincible,” Tomoyo begged them. “In their protective fury, those ghosts will make no distinction between friend or foe…”
“I know all that!” Syaoran barked, cutting her off. “You think I’m stupid. Think I don’t understand all this, but I understand plenty. Sakura doesn’t know that you evacuated this place, or about your shield thing. She’s in there thinking something she’s doing is killing a whole lot of people. I’m not leaving her like that!”
“You have the very best of intentions,” said Tomoyo fondly, “but for your own safety, I cannot allow you to do this.”
A rustle and a few soft footsteps from behind the group betrayed that the two Syaoran clones by the door – motionless and all but forgotten thus far – had each taken a deliberate step to place themselves in front of it, their expressions menacing. Syaoran’s hands balled up into fists as he glared at them – he was not the sort to take a threat lightly. He looked back at Tomoyo once, just long enough to make his point, then with barely two lighting fast steps he’d launched himself clean across the room at the guards in front of the door.
The battle was swift and brutal, but not over before Doumeki had had the time to note that the two clones moved just the same way their Syaoran did – the very same style that was all reflex and no thought at all, even many of the same moves there as a testament to their shared origin that every bit as striking as their identical faces. But the clones had been raised in captivity seeing no worse than training matches to hone their skills whereas their Syoran had lived most of his life in the deadlands and grown accustomed to fighting tooth and nail for it years before Doumeki had even known him. Not even the two clones together were a match for him, and within half a minute he’d laid both of them out unconscious on the floor.
“Any more?” he asked, glaring at Tomoyo from a crouch by the door. He was barely even breathing hard.
One of the Sakuras behind Tomoyo’s chair had let out a gasp as she watched the fight, and the other was holding on to the chair back with a white knuckled grip, but Tomoyo herself had managed, for the most part, to maintain the impression of calm. “I have sent every other guard in my employ to the emergency bunkers with the rest of the evacuees. I have no means to stop you leaving this room, but I must beg you to rethink this. Nothing could hurt Watanuki more than knowing you had died as a result of his powers. Simply to convince him he does not want to stay here, this is far too drastic a step for you to take.”
“I don’t plan on dying,” Doumeki told her. He could feel himself waiting to see whether she was going to tell him exactly how he planned on surviving the ghost storm the way she’d revealed she knew virtually everything else there was to know about them, but for once she didn’t seem to have an answer for him. The thought he’d given her something to wonder about was uncomfortably satisfying.
“Shizuka…” said another voice – Fye’s. He looked worried when Doumeki turned towards him and Kurogane, and Doumeki met his eye, willing him to understand. He couldn’t, of course, not when Doumeki couldn’t explain a word of his reasoning and the concern did not entirely smooth away, but for the sake of meeting Tomoyo with a united front he would have to trust Doumeki’s judgement on this one.
“There’s a large lab room just around the corner from here,” said Kurogane. “It’s bound to be the one. Right at the first junction outside, second door on your right after that, but she’ll have locked it. I’m not going to be much help to you beyond that.”
Syaoran nodded. “Aa. We’ll meet you back here.”
“Kurogane, you must dissuade them,” Tomoyo pleaded. “You must see you are sending all your campmates to their deaths if you let them do this.”
“All?” said Fye, haughtily, snapping his attention back to her. “You think I’m going to abandon Kurogane here alone with you and your mind games, do you? I am quite sure the boys know what they are getting into, and I assure you I am staying right here. I do have one last question though,” he added. “About Chi. Did you send her to the emergency bunkers too?”
“None of our computers were sent there,” replied Tomoyo. “The ghosts pose much lesser threat to those who are not technically living in a manner they recognise. She is waiting in one of our labs for our technicians to return to work on her.”
“Thank you,” said Fye curtly. “That’s all I wanted to know.” He fished in his pocket and retrieved a small metallic device, smooth but for one irregularly shaped end which Doumeki vaguely recognised as a kind of plug Fye used when connecting some of his devices together. “If there’s any proper security in this place the door will be electronic, which means an access panel, which means you’ll find a jack for this at the bottom. Chi will take care of the rest.”
“Perhaps if she has been connected to our systems…” Tomoyo started to say.
“If they think that can keep my Chi out for long,” Fye cut in with no small amount of pride, “then they underestimate me.”
Doumeki took the device with a nod, slipping it into a pocket. Syaoran was already waiting by the door.
“There is nothing I can do to dissuade the two of you from this path?” asked Tomoyo sadly.
“You’ve done more than enough,” said Kurogane. He turned to Doumeki and Syaoran, every inch the leader they’d looked to for so long. “Go on. Don’t keep them waiting.”
Doumeki nodded and followed Syaoran out the door.
Just a quick side note to since there've been quite a lot of people pointing out typos in the last couple of chapters: I appreciate that people are trying to help me out, but I'm not labeling this thing a 'draft' because I expect my audience to do the betaing for me, I'm doing it because it helps to have that regular posting schedule to keep the momentum going, even though I'm still half expecting I'll wind up completely rewriting every other line between now and the finished version. So combing through for spelling errors is probably a bit of a waste of everyone's time at this stage, especially when corrections made on LJ posts generally don't make it back to the main word document
Other parts: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Side Story 1
The girl who’d introduced herself as Tomoyo looked solemnly around the faces gathered in the room before returning to Kurogane. “You never told any of these people the truth about your past, did you? Not even when you sent your own to trade with us were they to know that this was your home, that you were once my most trusted advisor.”
“They didn’t need to be told,” said Kurogane, his voice regaining some of its usual steadiness.
“Not even though they trusted their lives to your judgement? You were so ashamed of your origins that you would never dare to speak of them?” She sounded genuinely saddened, though she had lost none of her composure. Doumeki frowned at her.
“As the man said, we didn’t need to be told,” said Fye sharply. When Tomoyo’s attention came to rest on him he near flinched.
“You are the one known as Fye D. Flowright? I have not had the pleasure before,” she said. “I should offer a welcome home to you too.”
“That’s funny,” said Fye. “I was never that welcome at my own Complex even when I lived there.”
“That is another matter which I hope we may resolve for you at this meeting,” said Tomoyo, just as smooth as everything else she’d uttered, “but you are not one of those among your campmates who were punished worst by the secret of Kurogane’s history. Your Syaoran, I am given to understand, has been left with little memory of his own past – a past you could have revealed to him at any time.”
“It wasn’t my secret to share,” said Kurogane. “That was between him and Sakura.”
“But even your Sakura knew sadly little of her origin, so young was she when the tragedy occurred that lead her to leave us,” said Tomoyo, eyes shining with sympathy.
“And if she’d wanted to know anything more she knew perfectly well she could have asked me,” said Fye. “You aren’t going to convince Kurogane he’s mistreated us like this.”
“What are you all talking about?” said Syaoran, loud and impatient. “This is why I remember this place? Why there are three of me and three of Sakura too?”
“Indeed, you and your Sakura were born here,” said Tomoyo. “Children of a project of rebirth of my own initiation – you and all your siblings here. By rights, both you and your Sakura should never have had to leave this place, if it were not for the most unfortunate of accidents; events we did not come to understand until years later. Though we did not recognise it then, you and she should have been our first success.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it –” Kurogane began, but Syaoran talked over him.
“Then why don’t I remember it?”
“I can only presume it is the result of trauma inflicted during the events of your escape,” said Tomoyo. “It may yet be possible to restore those memories, if you wish.”
“I…” said Syaoran, then resolve seemed to return to him. “That isn’t what we came here for! You took Sakura away! Where is she?”
“Do not fear, she is safe,” said Tomoyo. “They are all safe.”
“That’s not what I asked! Where is she!?”
If Tomoyo hesitated it was for less than a moment. “She and the other two have been placed in a shielded facility not far from here. As a protective measure.”
Syaoran got stuck on the oddity her last four words long enough to pause and blink, but he pushed it aside just as quickly. “Tell me where!”
“They are barely two walls away from us, but getting inside that room is not as simple as walking in or breaking down a door. At present, that would not be wise for even greater reasons. Please do not be hasty, there is still much we need to discuss.”
Syaoran took a step forward and opened his mouth to continue his demands, but was stopped by a heavy hand landing on his shoulder. Doumeki had heard enough.
“Oi,” he said. “I want to know whether I’m understanding this correctly.” When Syaoran turned under his hand he shot the boy a look that made even him think twice.
It wasn’t hard to understand why having Tomoyo's full attention on them had made the others so uneasy. You wouldn't have believed she was meeting Doumeki for the first time in her life today from the look she turned to him, you could have thought she must have known him forever. "You - if you'll excuse my presumption - you are known as Doumeki Shizuka, the one original resident of the deadlands I find before me today? Of course, the truth of your leader's past must be difficult to come to terms with..."
"Not my business," said Doumeki. "I'm asking about you. If you're in charge, you were the one who ordered the raid on our camp?"
"That is correct, it was my direct order." There was a tinge to her voice that might have been interpreted as regret, but Doumeki wasn’t sure whether it was an emotion she was hiding badly or something artificially inserted for effect. There was not the slightest suggestion of shame. “It is not unreasonable for you to feel you deserve an explanation.”
“Those men knew exactly who they were looking for when they arrived. How much do you know about the three of our people you sent them to kidnap?”
"A great many things," said Tomoyo. "Possibly more than you do yourself. The power that connects those three is no mere thing. You have had ample opportunity to see that for yourself, and I can tell you that the tales of the exploits of the April Fool have travelled so far that they have reached the ears even of the people of my Complexes."
"A power you feel you have more right to than anyone else?" said Fye, not bothering to leave any cynicism out of his tone.
"You do me a disservice by assuming my motives so simple, Mr Flowright," said Tomoyo. "I do not think you fully appreciate how much is at stake in this matter. The destruction of your Complex has changed a great many things."
"That’s what I was asking about," said Doumeki. "That’s how all this started. How much do you know about how that Complex was destroyed?"
Tomoyo turned serenely back to look Doumeki in the eye. "Perhaps you feel you may know better than me?"
He didn't know a lot. Everything Watanuki had told him had come out in one conversation that they'd never come back to, so brief that Doumeki couldn't even be sure he'd understood it all correctly, but... "It was the dead.”
Without turning, Doumeki could feel the silent ripple of surprise than ran through his companions, the way everyone was staring at him. It was a bad moment to recognise this was something he probably should have shared with them, not that he could have told them much that they hadn’t already halfway guessed. They’d all had just enough association with the strange world people like Watanuki and Kohane inhabited and just enough idea of what had probably happened at the Complex to know better than to ask about it.
Tomoyo paused just long enough give him the feeling that somewhere under the façade, he may have managed to surprise her too, just a little bit. “But there is more to what you know than that,” she prompted, looking expectant.
They couldn’t both go on refusing to show all their cards indefinitely. “It was Kohane,” said Doumeki. “She sees ghosts. Something they did to her made them angry enough to kill everyone in Complex but her.”
Tomoyo nodded, as if this was nothing so very extraordinary. “I see. So she was able to share those events with her new campmates. That poor girl; we were not certain whether she herself would be able to rightly comprehend what had occurred.”
“You knew?”
“What happened to the ruined Complex?” asked Tomoyo. "Of course. After investigating the site thoroughly, that was the only explanation we could find. The limited computer records we were able to retrieve allowed us to reconstruct the circumstances of the disaster in sufficient detail to infer that much about what took place, and about the misguided experiment which scared poor Kohane so very badly. As impossible as it may sound, it was not even the first such incident we had recorded, though it is only lately that we have begun to understand the truth of such events – the anger of the dead, as you put it, and just how much it has begun to mean, in our sad world of too many ghosts. Knowing all this, you must appreciate that steps had to be taken to ensure such a tragedy could not take place again."
"Like kidnapping everyone you could find with that ability and bringing them here?" said Kurogane. The roughness of his voice before was beginning to give way to a very real, cold anger.
Doumeki narrowed his eyes. "That doesn't make sense.”
"Whatever you may call it, it is only what was necessary,” said Tomoyo, answering them both. “Knowing the danger they posed to us, our only choice was to secure them.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Doumeki repeated. “It means you brought three people who could destroy a Complex right to another one."
"Of course,” said Tomoyo, sounding as though this really was the most logical thing in the world and the rest of them must have been very foolish not to see it. “There was no other way to test whether the protective measures we have developed would work."
"...the what?" That was more than Doumeki had expected.
"Protective measures," Tomoyo repeated calmly. "The circumstances of the other Complex's destruction were not all we were able to learn from the ruins. A chance observation at the ruined site lead us to the discovery of a means by which we might contain even the ghosts which those like Kohane see."
"How?" Should that even have been possible at all?
"Of course you are curious, but I expect the details of the technical side will be beyond your vocabulary,” Tomoyo replied. “What is important is that we have spent the past few weeks since the disaster using this method to construct a sealed room from which the effects of as similar incident should be unable to escape. However, all this remained no more than theory until we could test it. And for that, although you may question my means of doing so, we needed your friends.”
"You..." Even in anger, Kurogane's control was inhuman, but the rage seeping into his voice was unmistakable now. "You kidnapped three of my people, brought them all this way, made them believe their lives were in danger, all for the sake of one of your experiments?"
"It is for the sake of every person who's life has been made my responsibility," said Tomoyo, laying a hand on her chest.
"And what if your idea fails?” Kurogane barked. “The life of every person here is at risk. The same disaster you are trying to prevent is going to happen all over again!"
"Kurogane, I have not grown so overconfident that I would ignore such a danger.” Not even Kurogane’s anger had damaged her control in the least. It was almost surreal. “We had great hope that the seal would work, but we have not ignored the risk we faced if we were mistaken. That is why you find my Complex now deserted. Every resident but myself and my few attendants have been sent to the emergency bunkers until the experiment is complete."
"If your seal didn't work, what made you think even the bunkers would be safe!?"
"It was a calculated risk, and I assure you all possible care was taken when those calculations were made. In any case, the matter is now irrelevant. Had I been wrong, none of us would be standing here alive now. The experiment has been underway since well before you arrived. Our seal," Tomoyo smiled, "has been an unmitigated success."
There was silence in the room.
"How did you trigger it?" asked Doumeki, voice cold as ice.
Tomoyo gave him a considering look. She was still not the least cowed by him – or any of them – but her answer was came a little faster to the point than many of her previous ones. “From the records we retrieved from the ruined Complex, we were also able to gain some insight into what triggered the episode in the test subject. It appears to be something of a defence mechanism – quite beyond the owner’s conscious control – which activates in response to a recognised threat which places their lives in immediate danger. In other words, you may think of it as a reaction to a specific variety of fear.
“That is a difficult thing to trigger in under controlled conditions. Some level of cruelty was unavoidable, and I can only hope I may eventually convince those three to forgive me that much, such are the stakes resting on this experiment. As a last resort we considered making the subjects believe their lives to be threatened, or recreating the conditions which triggered the event at the other Complex. However, we are fortunate in that a more subtle method has proven sufficient. In that respect, obtaining all three of those we may refer to as ‘April Fools’ at once appears to have worked in our favour, as the stress of their transport here alone was enough that little more than their own imaginations was necessary once they were placed in isolation.”
Doumeki decided that he didn’t much like the idea of what Tomoyo considered a ‘merciful’ method.
“I am not proud of the cruelty which your friends have been subjected to in bringing them here, but our hands were tied,” Tomoyo went on. “The experiment had to be carried out on unknowing subjects, so they could be told nothing of what they would face. However, you must see that it is by far the lesser evil in comparison to the loss and suffering that we would have endured if another Complex was allowed to meet the same fate.
“In fact, once the storm subsides and we are able to reveal the full circumstances of the experiment to the three of them, I believe this may even become one of the greatest gifts anyone could have given them. All three of them have carried the guilt of harm done in similar outbursts in the past, and the fear that they may injure those close to them again. I am certain that learning that no-one has been injured, and that we now have the means to protect people from this side of their power will be the a great comfort to them.”
“Only you could turn this around into something that was for their own benefit,” said Kurogane, when at last she’d finished.
“It will be worth it, many times over,” Tomoyo declared. “You have all come here with the best of intentions, but I have barely begun to explain to you just how much is as stake here. I needed your friends in order to find a means to protect our Complexes, this is true, but this is barely the beginning. The work done at the lost Complex has finally proven something we have spent years of work on: the ghosts are real! And through the medium of individuals like those gathered at your camp, we have the means to communicate with them. Think you much this could mean! You yourselves have spent much of the last year profiting from the assistance of the dead with Watanuki's help; you who comprise a camp of not even ten members. Think how that ability could aid a Complex of this size – Complexes all over the world!"
Kurogane’s fists clenched and his teeth ground, and it was suddenly very easy for Doumeki to believe he’d spent a lot f his life hearing speeches like this one. It sounded crazy. It sounded so absolutely sane and logical that it could leave you in awe. Doumeki’s gut told him she had to be wrong, but it was more difficult to figure out why, so he didn’t bother. Easier to focus on remembering what he knew was right.
“And what about Chi?” said Fye suddenly, finding a resort in a subject change that he must have wanted to make for a long time. “I haven’t forgotten about her just because you’ve done such a very nice job of justifying doing whatever you may please with our human campmates, but you hardly lack for computers in this place. How was taking her from us anything but a selfishly deliberate attempt to cripple our camp?”
"The experimental Chobit we retrieved is a different matter, perhaps one we should have dealt with long ago,” said Tomoyo, undaunted. “Under the very guiding principles on which the project was founded, we cannot allow any such technology to fall into the hands of the residents of the deadlands, especially a piece equipped with our transfer protocols and codes. Any means by which residents from outside the Complexes may intercept the messages we exchange presents an intolerable risk."
“Too great a risk?” Fye hissed. “What do you think we do with that information, plan to invade? Do you have any idea how much she means to us? To everyone we trade with? The weather reports alone...!"
"The weather reports you have grown accustomed to distributing are precisely why we could not leave her in your hands,” said Tomoyo. “Mr Flowright, you were a resident of one of my Complexes not so very long ago. Someone of your intelligence must have discerned the reasoning behind our policies long ago. Those who live outside the Complexes are no less important than we are, and their means and the means of the Complexes must remain separate. Should calamity ever befall us and my great domes fall, it is they who will be left the task of rebuilding this world. That is why we must do nothing to help them, for if they cannot survive without us, their survival has no meaning at all. Everyone in this world has the right to survive. Everyone in this world has the responsibility to live on, by any means they can, for the good of the future of all of us.”
Fye tried to speak again, but Tomoyo held up a hand. “I know what you will say, that distributing the reports is your way of surviving, but it is a woefully short sighted way to live. You have seen for yourselves that even my Complexes may be vulnerable. You must have seen your neighbours begin to grow dependent on your weather reports; the ways in which they modify their own behaviour to the assumption they will always have that luxury. For the prosperity of your own camp you have even encouraged this. It must end. Everything we do, every sacrifice I have been forced to make, has been made for a greater cause.”
Tomoyo took another long solemn look around the room, gone silent once more after her last proclamation. “You are still unsatisfied by my answers, I can see. Allow me to approach this matter for you from a different angle. We have taken nothing our Complexes did not have a right to. Mr Flowright, you cannot deny the core processor of the computer we recovered was an item you and your brother smuggled illegally from the Complex at the time of your exile, can you?”
Fye said nothing, merely looked away.
“Similarly, Kohane was a resident of our neighbouring Complex at the time of its destruction. I know you think my methods cruel, Kurogane, but I assure you – we have made it our business to locate and accommodate every survivor of that catastrophe we could find.”
“Even those who wanted nothing more than to leave?” said Kurogane darkly.
“Regrettably, Kohane’s own wishes are irrelevant in this matter. As she is not yet eighteen, it is her late mother’s will we much respect, and she made it known until her death that she had no wish for either herself or her daughter to leave the safety the Complex provided. You and your dear Sakura are the same,” she continued, turning to Syaoran, who flinched visibly as her eyes fell on him. “The incident which lead to your departure from the Complex ha come to be viewed as the most regrettable accident. None of your caretakers ever intended either you or she any harm, and as you too are still children, it remains your caretakers’ decision whether the Complex or the outside is the suitable environment for you.”
“What about Watanuki?” said Doumeki, anger barely contained in his words. “He’s never belonged to any Complex.”
“Indeed, the one known as the April Fool is a different case,” said Tomoyo, “but I ask you to remember, all his known history, who has he been considered to belong to? The answer is whichever gang was able to capture and hold him. We have done nothing but follow the same rules observed outside, by that account, and think – we can offer him here what no-one else can. All his life he has been fought over. All he has ever wished for is to see the bloodshed carried out in his name finally cease, and that we can promise him, as long as this is where he remains.”
“You damned hypocrite,” Kurogane swore. “Every time the outside was mentioned to you, you’d say you couldn’t interfere. You lived by the mantra that the rules had to be different for them – that there’s nothing you can do to help them. Then you turn around to say you can use them as you like provided you observe their ideas of rules?”
“In the case of a power like Watanuki’s what rules can we be expected to apply? In all your time with him, I doubt very much that any of you truly understand the full implications of what he can do. Nor do I think you have yet realised how much we can offer him that you cannot. As I began to explain previously, I have great hopes that I will be able to make him understand the necessity of what I have done, even that he may eventually thank me for it.”
Doumeki remembered the way Watanuki had reacted when he’d heard about the trading mission. He hadn’t gone into specifics, but he’d made his opinion perfectly clear. “It won’t be that easy. He hates the Complexes.”
“On the contrary, he knows very little about the Complexes that is not either hearsay or information he received for biased references,” said Tomoyo. “Once he has met us and had the opportunity to see us as people rather than as some distant threat he will see us in a different light.”
“You don’t know that.” Doumeki glared at her. “You don’t know him.”
“It is true, I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting him in person,” Tomoyo admitted. “But I do know a great many things about him which you will not be able to deny. Watanuki lives in the utmost terror of the implications of his own powers. He has seen people killed for them, killed by them, always against his will but always repeating, himself always the lynch pin at the centre of events but helpless to change their flow. He has carried the guilt of those sacrifices for so long, a weight he has felt so strongly that it is a great testament to his character that he has not collapsed under it. He feels responsible for everything he has been unable to stop, paralysed with the fear that he will someday be responsible for the deaths of anyone he allows himself to get close to. Surely you must see – in a mind like Watanuki’s, no matter what empty reassurances you may have given him – to him it is inevitable that either another gang will slaughter each and every one of you to steal him from you, or worse, that his life will be threatened again in your presence and you will die at the hands of his overprotective ghosts. Can you not imagine what it will mean to him to learn that we have a means to shield people even from the ghosts themselves? Here alone, we can protect him. We can give him everything he has never dared to imagine he could have.”
“And in return, you get to keep a personal eye on the only people in the country who could threaten what you’ve built,” said Kurogane through gritted teeth.
“That is a little disingenuous of you, Kurogane,” Tomoyo replied. “I have already told you that this one experiment is only the beginning. You have benefited greatly from Watanuki’s presence at your camp over the past year, but none of you – not even those three themselves – have yet come to appreciate the true potential of the great gift they have been granted. There is so much more they can do for us! You have seen it yourselves every time Watanuki has lead you to their hidden caches of supplies, every time his power has aided you. The dead want to help us. They cry for us, and beg us to live on for all our sakes. They use all their power to protect what we need to survive for as long as they can hold on to it, preserving that which we need the most even while everything else around them ages and decays.” She paused there, tilting her head. “And it has worked in ways you will never even have considered. How old do you think I am?”
This had been nagging at the edge of Doumeki’s mind since she’d first started talking to Kurogane. It didn’t add up, but it hadn’t been important compared to everything else.
“I was sixteen the day the world fell, but I live on untouched by time,” Tomoyo declared. “I will live on – and they will keep me here – as long as the world still needs me. I am not gifted as your friends. I have never seen a single ghost nor been given any way to thank them, and yet all along they recognised me for all I would achieve, and I firmly believe it is my duty and my destiny to use every day of the life that has been given to me in the service of everything they wished me to protect.
“Do you begin to understand? This power to communicate with the spirits of the dead was not something that arose by chance. People such as your friends were meant to have it, and just as surely they were meant to use it for so much more than what Watanuki has ever used it for so far. Imagine, say, if we could find a way to communicate to the spirits what we need. They could so easily guide and protect us on journeys longer than any we have ever dared to take. No living scout would be able to compare to what they could do for us.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” said Doumeki. Watanuki had only once tried to get something more than what the spirits had offered him. Doumeki hadn’t forgotten it. He was never going to.
“An hour ago you would surely have told me the shield we have already demonstrated the use of was impossible,” Tomoyo replied, unmoved. “Only time will tell how much more we may achieve, but to give up now is to surrender to imaginary fears. Even your Watanuki understands that. He wants to help so very badly. Even when he was taken by gangs who would spare no thought for his welfare, he wanted to help. Here, there is a place for him here like nothing anyone beyond our walls can offer him. I am even prepared to extend the invitation further – to all of you. Even you, Doumeki, though you may feel you have little claim to life within our walls, I am sure we can find a place for you here. There is so much he can offer us, and so much we can offer him, and if we can ease the decision for him by offering his friends a place by his side, it is the least we can do.”
Tomoyo’s eyes shone with a victory already assured. “With all that you now know, do you think he will want to leave?”
And there it was. They could sit here happily arguing about Tomoyo’s claims of godhood or what Watanuki might think for as long as they pleased, but there was only one possible answer to that.
“I’ll go ask him,” said Doumeki, and made a motion to start towards the door.
Tomoyo’s brow creased, very slightly. “We will have to wait a while longer yet before that is possible. The ghost-storm within the sealed room has not yet ceased, and from our readings from the surviving equipment within that room it may well continue yet for a number of hours. To enter now would be suicide.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Doumeki shrugged.
“I’m going too,” said Syaoran. “Sakura’s there, I can’t just leave her.”
“Please do not make the mistake of presuming your connection to those inside makes you invincible,” Tomoyo begged them. “In their protective fury, those ghosts will make no distinction between friend or foe…”
“I know all that!” Syaoran barked, cutting her off. “You think I’m stupid. Think I don’t understand all this, but I understand plenty. Sakura doesn’t know that you evacuated this place, or about your shield thing. She’s in there thinking something she’s doing is killing a whole lot of people. I’m not leaving her like that!”
“You have the very best of intentions,” said Tomoyo fondly, “but for your own safety, I cannot allow you to do this.”
A rustle and a few soft footsteps from behind the group betrayed that the two Syaoran clones by the door – motionless and all but forgotten thus far – had each taken a deliberate step to place themselves in front of it, their expressions menacing. Syaoran’s hands balled up into fists as he glared at them – he was not the sort to take a threat lightly. He looked back at Tomoyo once, just long enough to make his point, then with barely two lighting fast steps he’d launched himself clean across the room at the guards in front of the door.
The battle was swift and brutal, but not over before Doumeki had had the time to note that the two clones moved just the same way their Syaoran did – the very same style that was all reflex and no thought at all, even many of the same moves there as a testament to their shared origin that every bit as striking as their identical faces. But the clones had been raised in captivity seeing no worse than training matches to hone their skills whereas their Syoran had lived most of his life in the deadlands and grown accustomed to fighting tooth and nail for it years before Doumeki had even known him. Not even the two clones together were a match for him, and within half a minute he’d laid both of them out unconscious on the floor.
“Any more?” he asked, glaring at Tomoyo from a crouch by the door. He was barely even breathing hard.
One of the Sakuras behind Tomoyo’s chair had let out a gasp as she watched the fight, and the other was holding on to the chair back with a white knuckled grip, but Tomoyo herself had managed, for the most part, to maintain the impression of calm. “I have sent every other guard in my employ to the emergency bunkers with the rest of the evacuees. I have no means to stop you leaving this room, but I must beg you to rethink this. Nothing could hurt Watanuki more than knowing you had died as a result of his powers. Simply to convince him he does not want to stay here, this is far too drastic a step for you to take.”
“I don’t plan on dying,” Doumeki told her. He could feel himself waiting to see whether she was going to tell him exactly how he planned on surviving the ghost storm the way she’d revealed she knew virtually everything else there was to know about them, but for once she didn’t seem to have an answer for him. The thought he’d given her something to wonder about was uncomfortably satisfying.
“Shizuka…” said another voice – Fye’s. He looked worried when Doumeki turned towards him and Kurogane, and Doumeki met his eye, willing him to understand. He couldn’t, of course, not when Doumeki couldn’t explain a word of his reasoning and the concern did not entirely smooth away, but for the sake of meeting Tomoyo with a united front he would have to trust Doumeki’s judgement on this one.
“There’s a large lab room just around the corner from here,” said Kurogane. “It’s bound to be the one. Right at the first junction outside, second door on your right after that, but she’ll have locked it. I’m not going to be much help to you beyond that.”
Syaoran nodded. “Aa. We’ll meet you back here.”
“Kurogane, you must dissuade them,” Tomoyo pleaded. “You must see you are sending all your campmates to their deaths if you let them do this.”
“All?” said Fye, haughtily, snapping his attention back to her. “You think I’m going to abandon Kurogane here alone with you and your mind games, do you? I am quite sure the boys know what they are getting into, and I assure you I am staying right here. I do have one last question though,” he added. “About Chi. Did you send her to the emergency bunkers too?”
“None of our computers were sent there,” replied Tomoyo. “The ghosts pose much lesser threat to those who are not technically living in a manner they recognise. She is waiting in one of our labs for our technicians to return to work on her.”
“Thank you,” said Fye curtly. “That’s all I wanted to know.” He fished in his pocket and retrieved a small metallic device, smooth but for one irregularly shaped end which Doumeki vaguely recognised as a kind of plug Fye used when connecting some of his devices together. “If there’s any proper security in this place the door will be electronic, which means an access panel, which means you’ll find a jack for this at the bottom. Chi will take care of the rest.”
“Perhaps if she has been connected to our systems…” Tomoyo started to say.
“If they think that can keep my Chi out for long,” Fye cut in with no small amount of pride, “then they underestimate me.”
Doumeki took the device with a nod, slipping it into a pocket. Syaoran was already waiting by the door.
“There is nothing I can do to dissuade the two of you from this path?” asked Tomoyo sadly.
“You’ve done more than enough,” said Kurogane. He turned to Doumeki and Syaoran, every inch the leader they’d looked to for so long. “Go on. Don’t keep them waiting.”
Doumeki nodded and followed Syaoran out the door.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2008-07-04 03:55 am (UTC)Thank you very much for the update. :-)
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Date: 2008-07-05 08:57 am (UTC)Glad you thought it was worth the wait. ^_^
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Date: 2008-07-07 04:06 am (UTC)Still hard to call Tomoyo wrong, though, not if you're playing the numbers. And she is staying up where the consequences of failure would hit her first... a scary, scary lady.
I feel intensely sorry for the seers right now. I can kinda see 'em, all huddled together under the storm... *wince*
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Date: 2008-07-04 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-05 09:19 am (UTC)Good to hear you're enjoying, I'll try not to keep everyone waiting too long this time.
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Date: 2008-07-06 07:07 am (UTC)again, looking fwd to more! =)
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Date: 2008-07-05 02:45 am (UTC)Your Tomoyo is brilliantly Terrifying! She's just like some insane politician. All serene justifications that trample over everything.
She's probably my favourite character now.
The age thing is just an additional creepy factor. @_@
I can't believe she offered them a place, wow - she must really want Watanuki. I guess it's also because unlike the girls, Watanuki can actually communicate with the ghosts.
O_O *waits for update*
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Date: 2008-07-05 09:39 am (UTC)She is, isn't she? She's like the ultimate politician who's actually mastered the art of fooling everyone, or who's just close enough to right that she doesn't need to fool people most of the time.
The age thing is just an additional creepy factor. @_@
You have to wonder what the regular Complex residents make about that - it can't be common knowledge. But I just can't picture her being older than how we've seen her in Tsubasa, so there needed to be some kind of explanation.
I can't believe she offered them a place, wow - she must really want Watanuki. I guess it's also because unlike the girls, Watanuki can actually communicate with the ghosts.
She has plenty of reasons for it (which she certainly went on about at sufficient length), and she does want the girls too - Watanuki mostly stands out because he's had the most success getting practical results out of talking to the dead. But with someone like Tomoyo it's nearly impossible to ever tell for sure what her real motive is for anything, and there is more left to be said on that subject yet. Which is another thing to be dealt with in that next chapter I'm determined to get out faster this time. ^^;
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Date: 2008-07-05 05:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-05 09:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-05 10:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-07 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-07 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-21 05:24 pm (UTC)And Fai's protective bits were love. “You think I’m going to abandon Kurogane here alone with you and your mind games, do you?"
Leaving Chi anywhere she could cause trouble was a mistack on Tomoyo's part (one I'm very happy she made)
I'm was wondering how you were going to explian Tomoyo's age.
On Tomoyo's background, I can't help wondering if there was an orginal Sakura and Syaoran that Tomoyo lost when the world was distroyed and that was one of the reasons byond cloning them. I could see grief at losing Sakura could inspire the twists her mind has taken to get her to this point.
Really really enjoying how its playing out.
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Date: 2008-07-22 02:21 am (UTC)The really nasty part is the question of whether a lot of the horrible things she's doing are necessary just to keep them going, but with Tomoyo justifying everything with just as much conviction as everything else, it's almost impossible to ever know.
I love how all the camp members stood by Kurogane (his past isn't our buisness, it doesn't matter) and Kurogane's "You kidnapped three of my people, brought them all this way, made them believe their lives were in danger, all for the sake of one of your experiments?"
*grin* Tomoyo may be good with crowds, but she is working with a *very* tough audience in this chapter.
I'm was wondering how you were going to explian Tomoyo's age.
^^; I was wondering how many people would spot that before I got up to explaining it. Tomoyo's one of those characters I have great difficulty picturing aged past 20 - let alone older than Kurogane - so it was fortunate I had a nice little way of getting around that problem, even with all sorts of other interesting implications about what the ghosts have been up to to go with it.
On Tomoyo's background, I can't help wondering if there was an orginal Sakura and Syaoran that Tomoyo lost when the world was distroyed and that was one of the reasons byond cloning them. I could see grief at losing Sakura could inspire the twists her mind has taken to get her to this point.
That would be a very logical thing to wonder about. Even I'm not sure what the full story was, but something like what you've guessed is probably not far from true.
I should say
Date: 2008-08-03 03:37 am (UTC)well done
Date: 2008-09-23 01:06 pm (UTC)thanks much
Date: 2008-09-28 04:32 pm (UTC)