Nariko/Bless the Child: Chapter One
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
"I was born amidst the purple waterfalls.
I was weak, yet not unblessed.
Dead to the world. Alive for the journey.
One night I dreamt a white rose withering,
a newborn drowning a lifetime loneliness.
I dreamt all my future. Relived my past.
I witnessed the beauty of the beast"
Where have all the feelings gone?
Why has all the laughter ceased?
Why am I loved only when I'm gone?
Gone back in time to bless the child
Think of me long enough to make a memory
Come bless the child one more time
How can I ever feel again?
Given the chance would I return?
Why am I loved only when I'm gone?
Gone back in time to bless the child
Think of me long enough to make a memory
Come bless the child one more time
I've never felt so alone in my life
As I drank from a cup which was counting my time
There's a poison drop in this cup of Man
To drink it is to follow the left hand path
Why am I loved only when I'm gone?
Gone back in time to bless the child
Think of me long enough to make a memory
Come bless the child one more time
"Where have all the feelings gone?
Why is the deadliest sin - to love as I loved you?
Now unblessed, homesick in time,
soon to be freed from care, from human pain.
My tale is the most bitter truth:
Time pays us but with earth & dust, and a dark, silent grave.
Remember, my child: Without innocence the cross is only iron,
hope is only an illusion & Ocean Soul's nothing but a name...
The Child bless thee & keep thee forever"
Nightwish - Bless the Child
Bless the Child: Chapter One
An array of images, moments from the past, showing in a blackened cup of sake. Each one containing Yoko and Hiroshi Watanabe. Each one a place of violent death. In the Praetorian world, they die as innocents in a crossfire, while their 12 year old daughter is injured, but heals almost instantly. In another world, a terrorist attack kills them, their daughter with her grandmother while they're on a 2nd honeymoon. Hundreds of Earths, thousands of them. Each one, finding Nariko's parents dead by or before 2002. All save one. The one thing Nariko did not want to see again. The fight with her parents on the hell world...
Nariko came to, as much as she could. Everything had this oddly distorted feel to it, a sort of odd rainbow sheen to the world, like on meat that's gone bad. Add in this funhouse mirror distortion, not to mention a feeling that not all is right in the world, and you'd get her sensations. She looked around, as much as she could. For some reason, she couldn't move her head, as if it was in a comfortably padded, but immobile, vise. Still, looking aroun she counted 7? 9? Hard to tell, and oh, don't forget the one at your head. You can hear them speaking, in Japanese. Wish you'd studied it more... Hang on. You know that voice. It's familiar. You've heard it many times before.
Nariko spoke out weakly. "Mother?" The voice continued talking, ignoring her. "Mother... what are-" She stopped. She had caught one phrase that she knew very well. "Yamata no Orochi." The eight-headed serpent. But why did she look it up? An image came to her. A similar situation, but only ropes holding her down, and some foolish man... a mercenary had brought her there, taking advantage of the madness of the invasion of Paragon...
Hang on! It hadn't happened that way! she'd caught the invaders by surprise, almost by luck, and sounded the alarm. Each time she had come up against the demon, he'd knocked her through multiple buildings, but she had kept on coming back!
You remember now. The voice in her head sounded of seas, and storms, and deep, dark waters. Good. You have little time. Yoko Watanabe's face swam over hers, across from Hiroshi's. In her hands she held a knife. The bracers and coronet have been removed. Your ki is running wild, you're used to having the bracers to shape it. Quickly. Focus all of your ki on this point. The knife was being brought down, overhand. Underneath it, a point glowed white for a moment, then the world exploded.
The next thing Nariko knew, she was on her feet, staggering around, glowing trails around her hands and feet. She brought her hand up to feint at another of the robe-wearers, and a line cut across his head, shearing it off. Horrified, she turned to block another attack, and the attacker flew against the wall with a sickening crack. Three of the cultists, her parents and one other, ran towards a table, it held something, what it held, Nariko didn't know. The other remaining 3 advanced towards her.
Crack! A slap broke the neck of one.
Thud! A kick landed them against a wall before it even touched.
Crash! An uppercut sent the last through a hole in the aluminum roof it made.
Nariko, dizzy now, turned to face the last three. They advanced cautiously, yet with confidence. She threw a punch out, the light flared and vanished. A kick did the same. Her mother still held the knife.
Reality warped in a corner of the warehouse, and Warp Factor, Belle, Psychist, Kyou no Oni, and several other Angels appeared. Belle looked around, and quickly tossed a pair of bracers to Nariko, calling out "Catch!"
The three cultists, who had turned at the same time as Nariko, watched, mesmerized, as the bracers sailed through the air, almost zeroing in on Nariko's arms as she held them in their path. The sick and wrong feeling vanished, along with the funhouse and rainbows. Ah, I see. With this, child, you can achieve something that normally would be out of your grasp. Focus the ki at your target, then move it. The rest comes naturally. Nariko turned to her parents and the other cultist, who smiled and moved forwards, a glow forming on his hands. A sudden barrage of attacks came from the Angels, who moved towards the four now fighting again. Nariko dodged a knife swipe, and knocked her mother back with a glowing burst of energy. Her father came at her, and a long sustained burst knocked him back. The third had already been knocked back. All three were looking fairly beat up, and Nariko advanced on them.
"Give up. You've lost." Her mother looked at the other two, then swiftly moved the knife around, Nariko got ready to block...
Her mother drove the knife into the nameless cultist's heart, Hiroshi's, then her own. Over Nariko's sudden scream, she called something out, the only thing being surely heard was 'no Orochi!' The blood from all three flew out, and their bodies shifted, growing into a shape defined by the outline of blood. Three heads, three tails, a single body formed, with each serpentine head featuring malevolent glowing eyes.
The details were a blur. Nariko remembers Warp Factor sending all sorts of attacks at the creature, and a moment where she was wildly blasting in any direction, then it all became a blur. Afterwards, she came to, and spoke things over with the rescue party, and went off to save Miguel, leaving this world and it's horrors behind.
Nariko sat there, staring blindly at where the cup had sat. Alriana's father was an odd one, no doubt about that. And something had attempted to block his spell. Something quite powerful. If it survived the pulse she sent back up the path. Something was grabbing her attention. Something missing, other than the sake, that she would replace... The incense. That had stopped burning. She stood herself up, and went to get a new stick of incense, and a new sake cup. She'd have to vacuum up the area, otherwise she'd be picking pieces of the cup out of her feet for weeks. After setting that up, she continued on autopilot, until her phone rang. Mechanically, she answered.
"Nariko here."
"Nariko! It's Peter Stemitz. Where are you right now?"
"At home. In Steel Canyon."
"Excellent! There's a weapons deal going down between the Council, and some rogue Crey, in Boomtown. We need you to stop it."
"Baumton."
"What?"
"The place is Baumton. Not Boom-town." A moment's pause, then suddenly Nariko was full of anger. "They're doing that in BAUMTON? Fine. I'll take care of it." She hung up, and flew out the window, not bothering to open it first, ignoring the breaking of glass, or the random lacerations that healed almost instantly.
A glowing streak flew to Baumton, entering the force field warded section of the remains that people called "Boom-town" now, in some sick joke. One the ground, several Council looked up, as Nariko descended, screeching in fury. "You hounds! You ghouls! People died here, and now you use it for illicit deals?" wiping them out in less than a minute, she flew around the zone, wiping out group after group, finally finding those making the deal. As the two lay on the ground, and the prisoner teleport worked its magic, suddenly she felt something. Some final remnants of the spell, perhaps, but she followed the thread, flying halfway up a tilted, gutted building. Yes... She didn't know how, but she was sure her mother and father were here. She entered through a window, looking around...
The sun was shining through the window, ready to set in only a few hours. Yoko and Hiroshi were smiling. This business deal would mean they wouldn't have to work any more, their money would be well taken care of, and they wouldn't have to worry about the day to day operations of their company. This would make a wonderful birthday present for Nariko. So they were enjoying the moment, as the representative was off copying some documents. "Hiroshi, what's that?" "Hmm?" Hiroshi looked where Yoko was pointing, and saw a flat red circle appear in the air. "I'm not sure. Look, they're all over!" At that moment, the representative returned, and after talking a short while about the odd lights, they finished the paperwork. In a week or two, it would all be filed with the various bureaucracies required, just in time...
Nariko shook her head. Intuition, dreams, visions while asleep, these she knew. Waking visions, these were new things. The path led onwards, and she followed it to the remains of some sort of restaurant, you could tell by outside table or two that had survived the invasion. Maybe this one...
Yoko and Hiroshi were having a celebratory dinner. The red lights, apparently portals of some kind, were a topic of interest to most, but the consensus was that the Phalanx could deal with it if anything went bad. Yoko glanced at a clock on the wall. 7:29. After this wonderful deal, perhaps they could go home, and perhaps work on getting Nariko the little brother or sister she'd been wanting. She glanced at the nearest portal, and saw something. In an instant, she was under the table, pulling Hiroshi with her. The sounds for the next fifteen minutes were devastating, and a stray shot knocked some debris right where the two had been sitting. Still under the table, for a few moments, the alien ships were elsewhere. Hiroshi and Yoko ran, then. "The sewers!" Yoko called out. "They won't be in there just yet!" They ran for a nearby manhole, then a chunk of building fell nearby, and their forms vanished in the soot and rubble...
Nariko came to, tears in her eyes. She walked over to where the building had probably crushed them, a piece of rubble still in the street. Their bodies had never been found. She crouched down, and started pulling up the concrete, focusing all her chi, finally moving it back, to find the manhole cover missing. But in the vision it had still been there...
Yoko didn't know how they had made it. "Hiroshi?" He groaned in response. Touching his face, she found a wet sticky covering, sniffing at her hand confirmed the blood. Her right leg hurt, but she could stand on it. It was bleeding, but not profusely. "Hiroshi! Speak to me!"
"Did you get the number of that... Ow! Damn, that hurts."
"Can you stand up?"
"Yes. A little dizzy, but I don't think I have a concussion."
"We made it." She felt around for her purse, and found it had made it down there with them. She pulled out a small flashlight, and shone it around, looking up. "Huh. The manhole is missing." She turned it around, and saw the body. Some nameless hero must have taken off the manhole and brought them in... only the upper half of his body was here. She had heard a strange whine as the rubble fell on them. The hero was young, maybe not even 18 yet. His eyes stared out, but he had been dead for at least five minutes. She closed his eyes, then turned the flashlight on Hiroshi. "Come on. There's got to be another way out of this." Trying to remember which way was which, she and her husband started off down the sewer...
Nariko flew into the sewer... rubble blocked everything off. Of course, another 6 months of fighting had done much more, and in any case, the trail ended.
She had never checked to see if her parents had survived past 2002 in THIS world!
Which left her back at square one, but at least she knew which direction to look.
