Catching Hell Part One: Journey

by Marc Watson

  There was no smile in Izuku’s face now. No more games. He wanted Aryu alive but not if he was going to cause this kind of trouble. The Power built within the part of him that was still human, and the air filled with the heat of the fire and the electricity of the sudden buildup of otherworldly essence. The blade was out, allowing Aryu to see, or more to the point, not see, the shape of the thing. All Aryu could make out was a glimmer and nothing more. He felt no power or emptiness, though a part of him knew it was there. Perhaps it was the part of him linked to the Shi Kaze? He didn’t know.

  “You,” growled the inhuman monster in front of him, “have run out of time, Aryu. A shame, really. You were supposed to open so many doors for me.”

  Aryu, ready for the attack, raised the sword he carried, bringing it up to eye level. Tokugawa Izuku saw what he was up against and the realization was considerable.

  Izuku’s eyes widened in an instant, recognition written all over his face. The ethereal blade he carried began to shake in his hand and suddenly the truth of his enemy dawned on him.

  He knew this sword. He had carried it himself once. He knew its story. He knew its history. He knew its Power.

  He knew that one good cut from it could kill him in an instant. And he had just let Aryu get in the first shot for free! What a fool! Why couldn’t he feel it? It was the Power given shape! How did the legendary blade of his father come back to the world again? Where had it been hiding? How did Aryu, of all people in the world, acquire it? If Aryu had just hit a few inches to the left or right…! It was staggering to suddenly realize how close he had just come to a crushing defeat. In fact, how close he still was now as Aryu challenged him. The downfall of his work, and even more so his life, was a few steps away in the hands of a child!

  At a loss for what to do, he eventually decided the original course of action was the smartest, though perhaps a bit faster than originally planned.

  “You and I aren’t done yet, Aryu. You’d better look after your friend.” He channeled a pulse of crushing nothingness into the air from the sword and the Est Vacuus it contained. The action brought a shrill scream to Crystal’s throat and she doubled over backwards as if struck, eyes wide and maddened, just as she had been when the Power had left her.

  The noise made Aryu turn to her, and in that instant, summoning the Power within himself to aid his escape, Izuku was gone.

  An older and more experienced man would have chased Izuku, knowing whatever evil he was attempting to unleash was worth the fragile sanity of just one woman. Aryu never even gave a moment of thought to following him. The safety and health of Crystal was paramount in his mind.

  It was no secret he was drawn to her, but not in the ways it seemed. True, he was quite taken with her strange and otherworldly beauty and sharp, likeable personality, but there was nothing romantic in Aryu’s mind when he looked at her. She was something from a time before he could even imagine, and that alone tethered him to her in ways he’d never thought possible. She was a god, sitting here in front of him in a great amount of pain. He had to help her.

  He went to her, taking care not to let his guard down in case she lashed out at him unexpectedly in her madness. Soon, he stood beside her, trying to devise a way to help her. Last time she said it had been her father, likely coupled with Nixon’s own gifts that had pulled her out of this craze. He had no way of doing what the phoenix could, so he did the only thing he could think of, using whatever Power it was he thought he possessed. As he knelt beside her, he drew the Shi Kaze in his hands and presented it to her, trying to tap the Power and what he had felt on the plane.

  It never needed to get that far. Once the blade caught her eye, her yelling stopped instantly. Soon, the lost look was replaced with that of understanding. The two’s eyes met. Aryu was relieved to see recognition there. Did he save her, or was it the Shi Kaze?

  Once the moment of understanding had passed from Crystal’s face, her radiant smile returned, followed by a sudden, diving hug into Aryu’s arms, sandwiching the extremely dangerous sword between them.

  He held her back, unsure of what to do and weary of moving too much in fear of the dangerously sharp blade between them. Soon, she let go, tears in her eyes. (Of joy? Of pain? He couldn’t tell.)

  “How did you know what to do? she asked.

  Aryu was flabbergasted. “I, um… I just assumed. Power saved you before, and this is all I have, so I hoped it would help. Did it?”

  She wiped the tears from her eyes and laughed lightly. “You had better believe it did, Aryu. The sword Izuku has was something from the Est Vacuus. I don’t know why or how, but it was a piece of it. A slice in our own reality, here in the heart of the Omnis. I felt it again and was lost to its nothingness. How he ever got something like that in his hands I couldn’t even guess, but it is a very, very dangerous weapon. I don’t even know how he’s holding it. We were extremely lucky.”

  “If that’s true, why couldn’t I feel it like you, at least on some level? Is it one of those ‘not experienced enough to feel it’ things, because I’m getting really sick of that.”

  “No, the Est Vacuus extends beyond something as small as the Power. It is the embodiment of nothing. No one can escape that.”

  “Except me, it seems.”

  “No, not even you do; however, you carry the Shi Kaze, which is the closest thing this reality has to a pure piece of the Omnis. It would seem that the two cancel each other out.”

  “Which is why I hit him like he was kicked by a horse! He didn’t know what I had could hurt him.”

  “Hurt him? Aryu, you could have killed him with ease right then and there. He lives only because of the intervention of luck and fate.”

  Aryu became dejected at the thought of how close he was to ending it all. Luck and fate. Old adversaries revisited once more. “Should we chase him?”

  “No, we’ll never catch him now. Besides, now that he knows what you have, he won’t be so giving with the free shots from now on. I’d say we’ll be hard pressed to get you near him again.”

  “Oh, I’ll get near him, don’t worry about that. He has crimes to pay for, and answers to give.” The things he’d said before disappearing weighed heavily on Aryu. What did Izuku know about who he was? What doors to open? “Can you move? We should try to keep going. We need to find you a cure.”

  “I’m not sure I need one,” Crystal whispered. Aryu wasn’t sure what she meant but knew she needed to regain the Power before they faced Izuku and his blade of the Nothing again. “You’re right. Let’s go.” She was up and leading the way once more, Aryu following behind, watching for another attack. “Thank you, Aryu,” she said as they left. “Thank you for bringing me back.”

  “Let’s try to find that cure and that way you don’t have to go there again.” A faint smile from her. One that said that she wasn’t so sure.

  “I didn’t hurt you with that thing when I hugged you, did I?”

  Aryu shook his head. “No, I’m fine. Thanks for the hug, though.”

  “Aryu, in another time and another place, I would have kissed you.”

  Despite his reticence to her and her attractiveness, it was a thought he didn’t hate.

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  They hunted high and low for a lab or some other location likely to have the fabled cure, but after searching room after room they realized they were searching for a needle in a haystack and called off their search before they ran out of time. HOME was burning madly, sirens blared everywhere, and it was clear that whoever was left was abandoning ship very quickly.

  Finding Sho and Nixon seemed the best bet. They had agreed to meet on the roof of the ship once they were done with their respective tasks. They found a set of stairs leading up and eventually made it to the roof of HOME once more, the sunlight cutting through the smoke from the crash site blinding them temporarily.

  Sho and Nixon were there. Sho spotted his mother and Aryu and waved them over. Fires burned unattended and a few scattered piles of me
chanical debris indicated that any remaining resistance from the Army of the Old left on the top deck had been quickly and easily dispatched.

  Nixon told them of the revelation of Team Yosuru and what that could mean. If Izuku did have a small army of Embracers, it made him that much more dangerous. The upside was that they had Nixon’s righteous broadsword and the Shi Kaze, two weapons that could easily take them down, not to mention the still hush-hush fact that Nixon was the same powerful beast of a man he always was.

  “We’ve got t’ get off this thing and head north after ‘em,” Nixon explained. “There are n’ more vehicles left 'ere we can take, so I fear it may be a long way fer us. Hopefully we can make up some ground when we reach land. Sho, d’ ya know tha best way t’ follow ’em? Any idea where they’re goin’?”

  Sho was unsure. “They were moving west, away from our home. There’s a large river estuary far northwest of here. Beyond that, a few small cities and towns, eventually leading to the Vein River Valley, but unless we find a faster means of moving other than walking or labored gliding, it’s still a great distance to go, and they have a hell of a head start.”

  “Then we catch ‘em when they stop,” Nixon declared. He had no way of knowing they would stop, but it was a safe bet they had to reach the rest of their army at some point. “Well, no point wastin’ time here if there’s nothin’ t’ see. C’mon, let’s find a way off this thing.” Nixon led them on, Sho and Aryu behind, Crystal in the rear.

  They found a tall set of emergency stairs on the far side of the ship. At its base was a collection of emergency rescue boats for the human element of Izuku’s forces. Though many of the boats were gone, two still remained. As the trudge of descending so many stairs began, Aryu looked behind him to see that Crystal was no longer following them.

  “Wait!” he called to the leading two. “Where’s Crystal?” They looked back in confusion until they realized she wasn’t there. A quick trip back up to the top showed them she was nowhere to be found.

  “Son of a bitch!” Nixon cried. “Why would she run off? We need t’ protect her!”

  “Maybe she wasn’t fully healed yet? Maybe that Est Vacuus thing took more out of her than she said.”

  Nixon wheeled on Aryu. “The wha’?”

  Aryu was so caught up in finding them and planning the next move, he hadn’t told them all the details about the meeting with Izuku. “The sword Izuku had, it was a part of the Est Vacuus.”

  “No,” Nixon said at once, eyes blazing, “nothin’ 'ere can be a part o' the Est Vacuus. It goes against everythin’ the Est Vacuus is! Wha' 'appened, Aryu? Tell me everythin'!”

  He did, explaining her madness, the blow to Izuku and what it had done, and how the feeling was lost on him and seemingly Izuku as well. When he was done, Nixon was beside himself in anger. Even the typically reserved Sho was showing signs of disbelief.

  “What?” asked Aryu. “What do you know that I seem to be missing?” He got no answer, not really a surprise considering his company wasn’t known for volunteering anything and assuming everyone knew everything. A very annoying trait in a time like this.

  “Tha’ bitch!” Nixon called out, fury overtaking him as the smoke began to rise again from his massive body. “I swear to my Lord God, Crystal! You will suffer for this!”

  Nixon screamed like an animal, loud enough to make the skies tremble, the earth quake, and the seas boil. They had been fooled somehow and he, the only one left with any kind of Power, had not seen it. So blinded was he by finding her and selfishly looking for the answers to his own problems that he hadn’t seen the truth.

  Crystal had betrayed them.

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  Crystal, long gone from where the other three were, heard the scream of anger and rage. The sound ripped through her like a knife, but she pressed on. She had to. She had to get away quickly before Nixon tore this place apart trying to find her. Even now she believed escape was not likely if Nixon really set his mind to finding her, but that was a risk she had to take.

  She hadn’t betrayed them. Not really, anyway. Betrayal implies that she allowed vital information about them to get into the wrong hands for the purposes of undermining them. She had not done this. Only their little party knew the master plan. No one knew that Nixon still had control of his considerable powers. No one knew anything other than the basics, and she wasn’t about to tell. That wasn’t part of her plan. A plan so grand in its scope that she was at once proud and ashamed of its magnificence.

  It was a plan worthy of Ryu.

  She both was and wasn’t sorry for what she’d done. She knew the truth was bound to escape at some point and now was the latest possible time she could have left and kept her plan safe. Crystal had played every side with the perfection of a true artist. Now they would go on to the final goal, and when that was done, every piece she put into play would come together and she would have what she wanted.

  She made it to a waiting escape ladder and small jet boat at its base. Soon, she would be gone and even Nixon with his God-given abilities couldn’t find her. His preordained mission to destroy the sword-bearer would block his ability to catch her unless she allowed it, and considering she currently had no actual powers to track (admittedly, this was not part of the original plan, and it was a situation she would attempt to rectify very shortly), she would slip away easily. If he hadn’t begun the chase by now, he wouldn’t at all.

  He didn’t know the truth. She never let that happen. It was so obvious yet so far from his mind that it blinded him. Of course she knew why he was sent to kill a young, powerless mortal man, but she had kept things flowing so well that he never asked. She knew why it was that Aryu had the sword. She knew his history, that of his parents and where he came from. She knew every who, what, where, when, why, and how, and Nixon was a fool for not assuming it was so. Izuku may be the oldest person alive, but she was still Crystal Kokuou, and that fact alone meant that she was still likely the most intelligent and dangerous person who had ever lived. Even Ryu proved in his final moments that he couldn’t be as strong as she was. Or as smart. She loved him very much, but good god was he impulsively melodramatic.

  Seated in the small jet boat, she set off for the mainland at top speed. She had escaped the wrath of the phoenix for now, and it was time to begin the last and most difficult part of the plan: a plan that rested very heavily on the ability and determination of Aryu O’Lung’Singh. It was a shame to have to leave him so soon. If she was younger or more impulsive, she’d be instantly taken with the young man and his strength. It’s amazing how much of an effect on a person having an ex turn into a malicious, genocidal nut job can be, so as it was, he was just a pretty face to her. A face that had not disappointed when the time came to show that he was truly the right person for the job. By gods, he’d mastered the Power, even on a small level, with barely any training at all! His mind needed the Power. It yearned for it hungrily. It was amazing to watch, and now he knew what to do. If he didn’t get too carried away with it (considering the penalty for failure was a monster of fire at his side constantly, she wasn’t concerned about that), he would soon master it. The Power was his to control, and he was hers to manipulate.

  Would her father approve of this course of action? No, likely not, but he was from another age. The rules had changed a hundred times since then. If the result to his vision was the same, she didn’t think it mattered. Everyone knows what desperate times call for.

  Into the horizon she went, on the hunt for the next part of the master plan. With a quick look back, she saw the distant smoke now pouring out of HOME as if every inch of it was burning.

  Somewhere on the burning deck in the distance were Aryu, Nixon, and her son, Sho. When this was all over, she hoped each would understand her and her reasoning better. For now, although it pained her to think about, at least one of them wanted her head on a pike.

  Aryu would be tossed into the pit of confusion that would lead to the bitter ending she began working
towards long ago. She hoped to meet him again.

  “Good luck, Aryu,” she said as she gave a wave of salute to the distant ship. Then, she turned back and was gone.

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  PoweR

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  HonoR

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  HumoR

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  HorroR

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  POWER

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  Eleotherios Duo watched it all while waiting for orders that never came. The loss of HOME was not in any plan that it had been made aware of. The development it was witnessing unfold in the distance was a new one. Now, as the waiting continued, its processors kicked in and the exciting opportunity at last arrived. E2-0901 began deducing its own plans for its next step.

  It knew it was different. It was stronger, faster, smarter, and simply better in every aspect of the things it did. It had no idea why it was created and it didn’t care. It was the pinnacle of what man can achieve. A walking, talking embodiment of the perfect harmony between technology and what was referred to by his creator as ‘The Power’, a quantum manipulation of basic scientific elements.

  Something about this Power allowed humans to exceed the standard boundaries of their genetic makeup. It allowed them to transform one form of matter into others.

  Izuku had slaved for decades to master the techniques needed to construct Eleotherios Duo. The research he’d done to build the artificial brain of it took years on its own, let alone the time it took to attempt the near-impossible task of forming its indestructible outer shell. Now even the most powerful of the Embracers would have more than their hands full simply trying to scratch it. Not that it would even allow anything to ever get that close.