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Chapter Eighteen
Recovery
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“Did you have to give me the double eye pads?”
Race didn’t respond, happy that she could smile to herself without being observed for the slight amusement she had at her superior’s expense. “Turn coming up in a couple seconds. You gonna be okay to walk in there?”
“Maybe you’d better go in and talk to her first.” Ren sighed, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know what could’ve happened to make her leave such a panicked voice message, but knowing how my eyes are right now might spook her further.”
“I’ll be sure to keep you posted.” Race felt about for the umbrella on the back seat. “Awful nice of Oisim to replace this old thing, even if he is working on the other side. Maybe you’ll be able to get an answer out of him after tomorrow in regards to what he’s up to.”
Ren didn’t answer. His sightless gaze was staring directly through the eye pads and into the floor. He stayed in the same position even as Race exited the vehicle and strolled to the door of the building.
“Sorry it took so long,” She began, lightly touching Kohaku on the shoulder, startling her from the cradled position she had entered on the cushioned seat. Before Race could complete her sentence, Kohaku jumped up and nearly crushed her to death in a hug.
“Oh, you don’t know what this means to me.” She gulped. “I’ve been through so much today, I-I thought it couldn’t get much worse… Where’s Ren? He is here, isn’t he?”
“…Ribs…” Race gasped, leaning on the back of the chair and breathing heavily after Kohaku released her grip. “Uhh… Yeah, he’s in the car at the moment, he isn’t doing too well. Nothing that won’t be better in a day or two, though. What exactly happened?”
“Are you BLIND??” Kohaku gasped, her jaw nearly hitting the floor. “THERE’S A-”
The other denizens of the cafe turned away from the wall-mounted television with dismissive glares at the interruption, slowly returning to the steady stream of footage which detailed the destruction caused by the monstrous rampage. The miniscule form of Odgu was entirely indiscernible from the crashing of debris captured by the street-level phone cameras and high-flying helicopters that desperately tried to keep up.
“That.” She glanced at Race, who had turned towards the window. “Ren didn’t get caught by that, did he? He’s okay?”
Her eyes caught Race’s reflection in the glass. The tears that escaped from her tired eyes and ran down her face matched the raindrops on the window, both framing the fatigued form of Ren inside the vehicle.
She softly rested her forehead against the pane. The leader of the Wild Masks lifted his covered eyes towards the building, surrounded by the soft sounds of rain colliding with the vehicle. Kohaku could not help but interpret the silent message Race could not bring herself to speak.
“What did Ren do?”
—
“Yeah?”
“This matter is becoming most indelicate.” The voice crackled. “I expect you have noticed these most recent events. We’re becoming less capable of countering these absurd maneuvers.”
“I noticed.” The assassin mumbled.
“We cannot allow this to be tolerated. You will visit the news station that girl works at and eliminate the assigned name. I will inform Odgu of the hit.”
“Understood, Makuei.” Another spiraling trail of smoke crept out from under the wide brim. “Master Odgu was locked pretty thoroughly in conflict with that thing… Where is he now?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “He is nearing Mt. Fuji, it seems. Whether that is of his own accord or the machinations of this foul beast is unclear.”
“Sir,” Pakka nervously interjected as Oisim hung up the phone. “He said- Odgu, said something about you maybe having information on this creature. That it can summon lightning and rain, and shoot water from its mouth.”
“His way of telling me where to look.” Oisim scowled even further than normal. “He already knew I was familiar with the creature. It is ancient, almost as old as the mask you now wear, and is said to have ripped itself from the bottom of the sea along the South American coast.”
His fingertips tapped together as his face darkened further. “It makes deals with those who have lost all hope. I suspect this Ren character managed some kind of swindle to utilize its power, although his actions have caused the death of countless innocent people.”
“But… What is it?” Pakka leaned forwards, his eyes nervously reading Oisim’s features for any indicator of offense. “What is this awful thing, that’s done so much damage in such a short amount of time?”
“Chubasco.” Oisim’s eyes rotated towards Pakka with a venomous stare. “The Devil fish. It cannot be stopped until the cause for which it was summoned is fulfilled… And it could only be after one thing.”
—
The rain whipped against his back.
“Two hundred.” Ren shuddered over and over, his shivering hands turned upwards to barely touch against the waterlogged eye pads he wore. His shins ached as they rested against the parking lot, the rest of his body flat against his folded legs as the massive droplets beat him down. “Two hundred. T-Two hundred.”
Kohaku was crouched in front of him, her hand nervously floating about, unwilling to actually touch him. Race stood a pace away, her tears trying their best to blend in with the rain, as her flat brow creased in the middle. “I killed them all. I killed them.”
“Ren.” Kohaku mumbled, putting all her strength into stopping any tears from emerging. “You… You didn’t. That monster did, the giant fish that-”
“I did it.” Ren protested, shaking his head even as it trembled right alongside his upturned fingers. “I killed two hundred people, Kohaku. I knew what that thing was capable of and I did it anyway. I’ve murdered them all.”
“That’s not you.” Kohaku swallowed, trying to ignore the fire building up behind her eyes. “You didn’t want any of this.”
“Stop giving me an out.” He growled, rearing up his spine just enough to allow his hands to clench into fists. “Am I not guilty enough by this that I can just brush it away? I killed them, Kohaku — there’s more blood than rain. There is no monster in the sky so much as there is a monster in me.” He scraped the outside of his hands against the asphalt for little reason other than the pain. "I should’ve… I should’ve drowned in that stupid pond-
“That’s ENOUGH.” Kohaku hissed, grabbing the front of Ren’s hairline and pulling his head upwards. “You’re acting real sorry for yourself right now in between all this blaming over something you didn’t do. When exactly did you tell this thing to kill everyone?”
“I let it loose-”
“LISTEN to me.” Kohaku snapped, bringing her face only a few inches from his as she descended to her knees. “Did you at any point TELL IT to do this?”
“It did it.” Ren winced as Kohaku pulled on his hair even harder. “I brought it out. I killed those people.”
“STOP IT!!” Kohaku slapped Ren as hard as she could, letting go of his hair and grabbing the sides of his collar instead. The impact tore through one of the eye patches, which dissolved from around its adhesive edge and separated on the ground. “Stop LYING to me! You think you can lie to yourself, but NOT to me!” She forced his body up by the shoulders of his shirt, bearing down on the hazy eye that met her stare. “Now TELL ME the truth! Yes or No!!”
Ren’s eye trembled as it searched the darkness for Kohaku. Unable to find her, it slowly descended towards her knees, dragging the rest of his head along with it. “No.”
Kohaku let out a breath she did not know she held. Her head tipped down for a moment before Ren captured her attention again, pushing himself up with his hands until Kohaku was no longer lifting him up. “But I still enabled it. They’re still all dead. Even if I forgive myself, there’s no one left of them to forgive me for this attack.”
Kohaku had leaned back, pausing in the middle of smearing her sleeve across her face to wipe away the few tears that had freed themselves from between her lids. “Ren.” She breathed, trying to keep her heart out of her throat. “I was there.”
Ren’s head snapped towards Kohaku, the moment of silence that followed making it evident he could not keep his chin from trembling, nor his eyes from welling up with tears. His eye drifted off from Kohaku towards the ground once more, his whole body shuddering as he failed to find a voice to speak aloud the silent cries that escaped his lips.
Kohaku barely processed the tears now streaming down her cheeks as she laid a shivering hand against the back of Ren’s head. “I forgive you.” She hiccoughed, barely able to keep herself from crying louder than Ren ever could. “I f-forgive you.”
Race stood a pace away, her hands cold from the rain. It was painful to watch, more painful to try and conjure up embrace them from a distance. She continued forming a crease in between her brows until, with a sudden clearing of her features, she broke from the scene, reaching out with one tentative hand to the water droplet hanging midair. The surface tension broke as her fingers brushed along it, traveling across her hand and dripping off the base of her palm, while the rest of its kind stayed floating in place all throughout the sky.
“Ren.” She looked upwards, slipping both hands into her pockets. “He’s here.”
Kohaku looked up last, following the purposeless gaze of the blind Ren and jolting at the sight. Twisted about in the sky was the evil form of Chubasco, stopped in the middle of what appeared to be a violent struggle, with a small black dot on its face.
“…Ren?” Kohaku murmured, her eyes flicking across different parts of the creature. “Do you… Hear that?”
It wasn’t a sound that reached his ears, but a hum which reverberated through his mind, like a cello played on the other side of the globe was vibrating through the ground to reach him. It was soft at first, but it dominated his senses until the only thing that he could think of was the message the noise carried.
It was a calm beyond anything he had known before, gently washing over the world with the unrelenting note as its messenger. The presence softly faded, trickling off like a dried-up stream, but not before one final, utterly clear message came through. As the rain slowly began to resume its fall, Ren’s fish-eyed gaze met Kohaku’s with determination shining through the mist across his pupils. “We have to go to Mt. Fuji.”
“Right,” Kohaku nodded, then started suddenly. “Whuh?? Where did I- where did you-”
“I heard that, too,” Race stepped forwards, slipping one hand back into her pocket. “I don’t think it was meant for us, though. Look,” She pointed her free hand at the creature, which now casually weaved through the air in the direction of the ominous mountain.
“What… does this all mean?” Kohaku turned towards Ren. “Is it over?”
“No.” He struggled upwards, losing balance just long enough to require Race to balance him. “We have to get back to Corey.”
—
“What are you going to tell him?”
Ren ruffled his hair, throwing water droplets in all directions. “The truth.”
Race could not help but give Kohaku the slightest of side eyes. In a matter of days, she had become very familiar with the goings-on of the Wild Masks, not to mention very involved with Ren, and to say Race was uncomfortable with the development would be a bit of an understatement. As the elevator doors opened, however, she stuffed it deep into her mind and helped Ren towards the waiting apartment door.
“…which is more important than saving a report card!” Tone angrily shoved his finger into Corey’s dejected face as the door opened. “Now this emergency signal was created by Wild a very long time ago, way before any of us were involved with his little group. That means it’s very special. And THAT means-”
“Corey?” Ren stepped through, feeling the wall as he entered. The youngest member of the Wild Masks leaned around Tone with curled lower lip and puppy dog eyes only to violently start at the sight of Ren with his grey eyeball. “What happened?”
“Not done yet, huh?” Tone stood up, crossing the room and ripping the mostly disintegrated eye pad from off Ren’s other eye without warning. “You got any idea how much longer it’s going to be?”
“Is that really necessary?” Kohaku huffed, her typical attempt at good humor falling flat instantly as her genuine irritation at Tone’s maneuver crept in.
“Tone,” Ren leaned against the wall, patting Race on the shoulder and thereby signaling to her that she could go elsewhere. “What happened with Corey? Is everything okay?”
“…Is he blind? Will he be okay??” Corey very loudly whispered.
“Yes, yes.” Tone waved him away with a flop of his hand. “Ren, look, there’s been a bit of a- oh wait, right, sorry. Lemme describe it to you instead.”
“Hey.” Kohaku’s jaw muscles flexed as she started down Tone. “Knock it off. This isn’t the time for-”
It nearly bowled her over the way Tone rounded on her, his eyes burning with an incontestable fury that rivaled the sun. Corey sunk backwards into the chair, Race turned to face the silent display, and Ren flinched at the gesture. When Tone resumed speaking, his voice carried the charm and pleasant attitude it had before, but his eyes spoke only fire.
“We’ve currently got no idea what’s going on at the party tomorrow, or even any indication whether or not it’s still on. This rampage has undoubtedly caused at least some of the guests to have second thoughts about making an appearance, which might help us get in easier, but would make existing anonymously much more difficult. Roof entry or no, we’re going to need some kind of IDs or invitations if we want to get out safely.”
“Rampage?” Corey peeked out from under the golden mop of hair above him, having drawn his knees up to his chest. “What rampage?”
The fire in Tone’s eyes shut off the moment he turned towards Corey, slipping effortlessly into a casual coolness almost more concerning than the display before. “I’ll tell you about it later. Right now these fine folks have got to hit the showers. I think Ren would probably-”
Tone froze as he turned back towards Ren. The room turned to face him as he blinked several times, slowly processing his sudden restoration of eyesight. Standing up off the wall, he met Tone’s determined gaze with one of his own.
“What…” Kohaku slowly stepped forwards, looking at Ren’s eyes with undisguised concern. “What does that mean?”
Ren looked at her, then at Tone, and to every member of the Wild Masks in turn. Stepping towards the bathroom door, he paused a pace from reaching it to turn back over his shoulder, any of the joy and warmth Tone had forced onto the scene gone from his stoic features.
“The leader of the Pangolins is dead.”
—