“There’s this amazing bird that’s on fire, and all the dealers and the analphabets and the goths catch on fire, and then they turn to dancers. It’s a pretty good idea for a clip, right?”

“Yeah, but maybe a different song? I don’t think it fits what you’re going for in “Fighter”.

A jingle of “Sore” broke their conversation one too many times, and it was only for the fact that it was a pricey phone that Christine didn’t throw it into a wall.

“You’re talking to the dead girl way too much, David!” she yelled. As soon as Yana’s mother arrived, followed by a committee of sympathetic parents, both Christine and Sara had been excused from the hotel, and proceeded to continue their conversation on the street, followed inconspicuously by the bodyguards, enjoying the spring sun and handing autographs to those in need.

“She’s not dead, sis,” David corrected with a rare tone of urgency in his voice.

“Whatever. Her mom’s already with her, I’m not going to hold the phone in her ear.”

“It’s hardly any work.”

“Hello? Awkward centre calling?”

“It’s-“

“A matter of life and death? Again? Deal with it some other way, I’m not going there and saying hey, my brother wants to talk to your dead daughter, he thinks he can save her. And why did you call dad? He just texted me saying he’ll land in Lisbon in three hours.”

“You don’t have to be so upset.”

“How am I not supposed to? You’ve been acting all sorts of weird, and that’s saying something. What’s going on, David?”

“I’ll tell you when I know.”

“You’ll tell me right-“ but the silence on the other side had been replaced by beeping noises. Christine took her phone from her ear and looked at it for a couple of seconds, gaping. “He hung up on me.”

***

All she could see when Yana woke up was herself, with tired grey eyes, dishevelled red hair and a bruise on the left side of her forehead. She pressed two fingers against it and quickly regretted it, putting her head back down and hoping that the nightmare would be over when she bothered to wake up again.

Nothing happened for a couple of minutes and, if anything, the silence only made it harder for Yana to sleep, so she grunted and lifted her head, finding herself staring at a mirror in a large conference room, more than a few feet over the ground, overlooking an agglomerate of palm trees, enveloped by several glassy buildings and rich residences, intricate flower gardens and pools. For a moment Yana thought she had been taken far from the desert but, in the distance, she could see rocky formations and hardened soil, and couldn’t help but feel a bit relieved she was still in the region.

For a while she merely looked at the view, trying not to think about anything that would cause her brain to implode, but the sound of a door opening brought her back to that small, closed off room. A large man in a lab coat, too familiar to be a coincidence, walked inside and shut the door behind him.

“Where am I?” Yana asked. The man sat down, flipped open a paper case he had brought along with him and took a pen from his coat’s pocket.

“Didn’t you listen to me? Where am I?”

“What’s your name?”

“What’s it matter?”

The man looked up from his papers and met the frustrated girl untroubled, and she remembered seeing him all the way back in Bulgarl Coliseum as they were about to leave.

“You are on the twentieth floor of the Mabaya Industries building in Oaris. You’re still in Rujad and you aren’t going to get out anytime soon. You’re here as an incentive to bring 63-Delta-6 to us for containment, extraction and reactivation.”

“Who?”

“The project that you’ve been following. It’s a fallacy to call him by anything but his code.”

“Jack? He’s not going to fall for that.”

The man put down his pen and crossed his fingers, waiting to hear an amusing answer. “Why not?”

“No one would come rushing into a trap as obvious as this one. He’ll just find another way out of here.”

“He was planning to use you to enter Lado,” the man wrote something down on his papers while Yana cursed herself for letting her tongue slip like that. “He will definitely come.”

“Didn’t you hear what just I said?”

“You’ve known Six for about three hours. I have know him since conception. Whatever you think you know about him is wrong. He is a deceiver. He was designed to have the personality of a predator and the rationality of an assassin. Regardless of what you’ve been through, once he is done with you he will dispose of you, brutally so, just like he has disposed of everything else that stood in his way. Now, I want to know what your connection to the Neal-Hidanna is, and why you can identify the sub-species of hidan that we’ve developed, commonly named “Bugs,”” he said as if the word were filthy and needed a good polish. “I suggest you start answering my questions, before I lose my patience.”

I could continue with the Q&A session, but since Yana doesn’t tell him anything we don’t already know, because she has no clue herself, I’m not going to do that.

***

Oaris is an incredibly appropriate name in a country that isn’t appropriate in any other circumstance. From above you can see its buildings surrounding an artificial oasis created from money that Mabaya did not know how else to spend. Seen from the ground one can find manor after manor, owned by associates of the company or by rich foreigners who wish to do whatever their hearts desire without anyone telling them it’s against the rules. The further inside the heart of the city we go, more small offices crop up, most of them heads of businesses found illegal anywhere that laws are even considered.

Leaving the bike close to one of these buildings, Jack walked the rest of the way towards the centre of the oasis, paying little to no attention to the various inhabitants in their time of leisure, glancing at him and frowning upon his overall appearance. He aimed for a glassy skyscraper, reflecting the sun like the massive jewel it was always supposed to be. As it came into view from the park he took a sharp turn away from the main entrance and towards the back of a coffee stall, where a handful people in a cosy esplanade enjoyed beverages, the desert sun and nature mixed in perfectly with a behemoth of construction.

There weren’t a lot of people talking, but the table with two coffees, a beer and a cold glass of milk was especially active, keeping their voices inconspicuous and their eyes on the building.

“Can you fend them off?” asked the mulatto man from Vandro’s electronics shop, working as his voice.

“If they see Rayala they should at least listen to me,” answered a mulatto boy, no older than ten, with a scabbard almost as big as himself resting cautiously on his lap.

“It’ll be enough. And the records you said you would investigate?” asked Kuchinja.

“Both are still inside the country as far as border crossing is concerned,” answered the boy. “If your source is correct, we will only find Dr. Daking.”

“It’s likely that he killed Dr. Geni to gain full control of the project,” said Vandro’s interpreter.

“All the more reason to…” the boy looked down to the hilt of his sword, as if it contained the words he sought, and then looked back up to the group. “I cannot thank you enough for telling me all this. I wouldn’t know any other way; I wouldn’t be able to do something about it.”

“Don’t worry, Master Matau. You’re here, you know what’s happened, now let’s go in there and give that monster what he deserves,” Kuchinja answered, reaching for his beer afterwards.

“Shouldn’t we wait for the person you were talking about?”

“He’s already over there, eavesdropping on us,” he answered pointing towards the stall.

How does he know?

“Very well,” the boy said standing up from his seat. Vandro wrote something down on his phone and presented it from him to read. “It’s my duty. If they don’t listen to me, proceed as you see fit.”

Vandro nodded and his interpreter tapped his ear, giving instructions for the activation of several bombs while the boy walked away from the esplanade. As he unsheathed his sword, several people took notice of its golden blade, and of the jewel incrusted in its hilt, glimmering with the numerous tones of light and rain, and they pointed and whispered of the great deeds of Archer, the liberator of Rujad, and his descendant Lesedi Matau, carrying the sword of Rayala, the most ancient of all the hidan.

***

“What’s the name of this world of yours?”

“You just think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“That is my considerate opinion.”

“My considerate opinion is that you’re fucking insane.”

However, the man’s attention had been shifted someplace behind her and, instead of unreadable, his expression had turned somewhat displeased. Turning back on her seat, Yana’s eyes widened as they watched a golden-feathered phoenix the size of a small house gracefully landing on top of the coffee stall, griping its claws around the roof and almost completely covering it. Fire licked the tip of its long-plumed tail, with a single flame on the top of its head serving as a noble crest, burning with a different tone at each moment, becoming a waving rainbow that disappeared with a simple blink of the eye.

It bowed its head, revealing a young mulatto boy sitting on its back, leaning one hand on its warm plumes, with a device similar to a watch strapped to his other wrist. He took it towards his lips, which magnified his speech to volumes that could be heard through the looking glass and spoke determinedly.

“Bwana Kichaa and Fenyang Daking, I, Lesedi Matau, am here on behalf of the people of Rujad to punish your most recent acts. As prosecutor of Rujad, I charge you of crimes against Hidannity, including DNA splicing, massive cloning, massive manslaughter, and incentive to violence with the use of an unsafe and unapproved form of hidan weapon. As judge of Rujad I deem you to be guilty of these crimes. As executioner of Rujad, I sentence you to a lifetime confinement in the dungeons of Ellage’s Coliseum should you be captured alive. We will give you ten minutes for you to surrender, and step outside of the building unarmed. If you do not meet this request, we will go in and take over the building by force.”

With a sigh, he put his wrist down and muttered something to himself while the phoenix slightly opened one of its wings and poked at its feathers.

“Why do they all have those weird names? It sounds like they’re aliens.”

“They are.”

“But Jack is just called Jack.”

“Perhaps for Jack it is the other way around.”

“Blasted kid…”

When Yana turned back towards the man, he had already gathered his papers and stood up from his chair, leaning two fingers on his ear and speaking to the air as he closed the door behind him. Although she checked after he left, Yana found the door locked and blew off some air, trying to keep her frustration in check. She couldn’t just stand around and wait for ten minutes to go by.

It didn’t take long before someone else unlocked the door and ventured in, taking a kick to the stomach before being pushed out of the way. Two gunshots sounded, but not only did they miss, they only released more adrenaline for Yana to keep on running, through hallways and doors marked with shady symbols, and people speeding from side to side, nervous and scared of something she probably didn’t comprehend.

As she crossed through a large group of individual booths, every single one of their workers rapidly gathered what they could and moved towards the stairs or the elevator, keeping a watchful eye on the one thing separating them from an ancient creature and the person with any sort of authority over it. Even though they all knew they had nothing to do with the boy’s affairs, they also knew they’d be caught in the crossfire, and had to get out of the way while they could.

But just as Yana reached the enormous pile of people waiting for the elevators, the floor trembled at their feet and the lights were cut. Following the workers’ eyes towards the windows, she glimpsed the phoenix flying past them with the boy in its back, making a heart piercing sound as it vanished from view. Panicking over the malfunctioning elevators, the workers gunned for the stairs, dropping down like a rampaging herd of wildebeest, before suddenly coming to a halt. Yana cocked her head above the railing to peek at a handful of armed men blocking the path against the protesting workers. One of them spoke to everyone in the upper floors with the help of another device strapped to his wrist, claiming that no one was to leave the building until the ones charged by Matau had been found. The herd quickly roared back and tried pushing through, convincing Yana to turn towards the door to the fourth floor and find another way out of the building.

Like in the staircase, everything was dim, lightened solely by a handful of red phosphorescent lamps, signalling exits and paths through the rooms and corridors. Used to having the monitor of her computer as her only source of light in the darkness of her bedroom, she easily crossed the hallway where the stairs had led her, limited by twin glass walls. The red lights smiting them reflected closed blinds, metallic structures, and experimental pipes and tubes and flasks, neatly stored in safe glass cabinets, for the people to see how pretty they looked and how cruel it would be to disrupt their perfection.

Running footsteps sounded ahead and Yana ushered in one of the rooms, hiding behind one of the loaded shelves. Once all sound had subdued, she ventured outside, leaning the glass door as quietly as she could back into its original place. She crept forward, joined by creaking noises and distant, eerie shouts that made her turn back on occasion, find nothing but silence and darkness behind her.

She leaned on a wall and peeked over the corner. Jack’s head peered from behind another wall further ahead, looking straight at her. While her mouth gaped open, he signalled her to join him, and after verifying there wasn’t anyone else there, she did exactly so.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to keep her voice at a minimum but without containing a slight angry tone. “Don’t you know this is the most obvious trap-“

“You can rant all you want after we get out of here,” he said cutting her off, already moving along the hallway, darkened with less glass and more sealed doors, plastered with yellow and black snarling signs. And although Yana wanted to call him out on the fact that he was doing something stupid and that she could have been capable of leaving on her own, there was only one thing that she was capable of saying when she caught up to him.

“Thanks.”

With a mischievous glance back at her, Jack pushed open one of the heavy doors, walking into a large room equipped with half a dozen steel counters, closed cabinets and silent, eerie machines covering almost the entirety of the walls.

A couple of steps into the room, in the blink of an eye, Jack took hold of Yana’s shoulders and threw them both to the floor. A gust of wind echoed as loudly as a passing typhoon right above them, shaking the top of counter violently and quickly. Before she could yell at Jack to get off her, the voice of the scientist that had interviewed her resonated in the room.

“Six.”

Muttering a swear, Jack jumped away from Yana just as another gust of wind collided with the table, a hair’s breadth away from her head. She rolled away and covered herself until it had subsided, looking back up to find Jack behind another counter, holding his two hidan weapons, transferring a string of dust from one to the other. Once he was done, he threw one of them towards her.

“It’s got electricity. Use it to open the windows,” he muttered.

“How?”

“Play it,” he said, moving away from another powerful gust.

“Come on, Six,” Yana turned her head to find the man walking way too close for her to be safe. “You have to come back with me.”

He raised his arm, revealing a simplistic halberdier with a green hue shinning like strands on a breeze, and jerked its blade in Yana’s direction. She stood up and ran as the winds born from it crashed on the counter behind. While he prepared to do it again Moonlight’s blade emerged from behind a shelf, forcing him to shut his eyes not to get blinded by its dazzling flash. As it vanished Daking immediately cast another gust towards the shelf, making it fall and loudly shattering everything inside, while Yana dashed and knelt behind a sink close to the windows. When she looked back, Jack was nowhere to be seen and Daking was pressing two fingers against his ear.

“I’ve found them. Laboratory 47. Take care of her, I’ll deal with him.”

Really, me? Just leave me alone…

Nonetheless she changed the sphere Jack had given her, turning it into a yellow flute with white glassy keys and a small chain at the tip holding a yellow glimmering stone. Supposedly it had electricity and supposedly she had to use it to open the windows, but when she looked at them she didn’t find so much as a handle, or even blinds. The glass itself seemed to be opaque.

A sudden presence had her to turn back and step away from a grip aiming for her arms. As she gained distance from her attacker, the broad bald man that reigned over Bulgarl Coliseum withdrew a hand bandaged in white cloth with red spikes in his knuckles glimmering like glass, and smiled at her.

“Truly wasted talent.”

As he neared with a darkened smile, Yana backed away, trying to think of a way to kick him in the head and make him disappear, when he suddenly stopped and looked to the side, letting a gust of wind collide with the wall and allowing the girl a chance to turn and run. There weren’t that many people that she would outright refuse to face, but even the way he posed told her that master Pretorius was on a whole different level from her karate instructor.

When she felt somewhat safe from a random glance, Yana scouted the room and found a triangular shaped signal with a bolt, hanging close to a refrigerator in the corner opposite to her. The gusts kept relentlessly striking the equipment, but she couldn’t see anyone nearby, so she dashed from behind the machine where she was hiding, stopping only below the sign, finding a locked electrical board and someone right behind her.

She ducked in time to hear a red fist connecting to the door of the board before rotating away and preparing to deflect his next attack.

“Move!”

As she straightened up, Yana confirmed that was not Jack’s voice. Kuchinja had started trading fierce blows with the master, keeping his attention away from her. A shout and the sound of breaking glass snapped her out of their fight, and she hurriedly opened the damaged lid on the electrical box. With one final look at her flute, Yana covered whatever keyholes she felt like and, focusing on getting the power back on, she blew on the piece with everything her lungs could muster. Responding to the loud note, the jewel on the chain began glowing yellow and making crackling sounds, before casting out a violent bolt towards the board.

All the lights were turned on, the machines on the walls began humming menacingly and the windows lost their opacity, letting the desert sunlight shine inside.

***

Winds aimed towards him cared little else about what they destroyed along the way. Half of the lab’s tubes and cases were destroyed before Yana could even open the windows. Without ever standing still, Jack kept dashing along the counters, looking for an opening to strike Daking in the midst of his hurricane assault.

Even having to fight that particular hidan as bad enough, as it made every resource currently at his disposal seem scarce. It had been something Daking had obtained while he was still at the laboratory; the last of the Kings of the Leyland that one of his workers had discovered somewhere lost and remote. What matters is that it rules over the sky and can control the wind at will. But its irrational, so it gave quite a lot of trouble before its power was contained inside a hidan weapon designed for the propose. It was extremely easy to control with it, and it was almost impossible to match its power.

However, for a hidanna, the weapon and the hidan inside of it are merely tools used to defeat other hidanna.

Jack managed to get behind Daking without being spotted and cast out a water jet from his meguio scythe. Daking abruptly turned around and let out a gust that not only cut through the water, but also connected with Jack and threw him back. After a second of unconsciousness, he opened his eyes and brought his hand towards a warm, ringing spot on the back of his head, bringing it back unfocused and with red smudges.

This is so unfair…

A change in the tones of light around him and the sudden appearance of several shadows along the corner of his eye forced him to pick up his scythe, stand up and move away from another gust. The lights were on, the windows were open, and he was in plain sight.

“You lost your only advantage,” said Daking’s voice coming from the other side of the counter he was leaning on. The headache lessened a bit as Jack realized he had no clue what was coming his way.

“Did I?”

A smile drew on his face when Jack saw the panicked look in Daking’s eyes as he raised his glowing diosol scythe. A beam of light shot out from it and he ducked away. Using the chance, Jack hauled himself away from sight and behind the same counter as Daking, swinging his weapon at him in hopes not to have been detected. In reflex, Daking turned back and received the blow. Another gust emerged from the halberdier that Jack avoided, colliding the blades again and again as both started to glow. Jack threw down his scythe, Daking took a step back and cast the halberdier to blow him away, only to get caught by his gloved hand.

Hurricane winds swirled around the dust gathering from the shattered weapon, drawing the attention of the other two brawlers and the girl waiting for an opportunity to sneak around them.

“Run!”

All four of them dashed towards the door, unwilling to take part on an ancient hidan’s revenge but, by karmic justice, Daking had not been so lucky as to escape the raging winds.

Outside the laboratory, Yana took a second to look back and see if something was following them. The wall was being blasted away by a small hurricane and the shape of a monster of dust.

“Matau! We need Rayala stat, Raytsu’s released!” yelled Kuchinja on his communicator.

“How bad is it?” asked Yana as they took a corner. A deafening screech and a wall exploding and blowing away everything it once held answered her just fine. “Why did you do that? Did you want to get us all killed?” she yelled at Jack once her ears stopped ringing.

“Now’s not the time,” ordered Pretorius, silencing them both. With Jack on the lead, they managed to find their way back to the staircase from which Yana had first entered the floor, only to turn the handle and find it locked.

“What? This was open when I got here!” Yana said while Jack let go of the handle and observed the door.

“Stand back, we’ll open this thing,” Kuchinja said taking a couple of steps forward.

“Breaking open a safety door? We’ll break bones before it gives in,” Pretorius said.

“Give me your glove,” Jack said, putting out his hand towards the master and cutting off his old boss. “That meguro is the fastest way to get us out of here.”

Although he frowned back, he pulled out his right glove and handed it to Jack, who promptly shattered it, releasing a red deer with a smoking grey underbelly, shrouded in a dark cloud and a void gaze. Yana quickly diverted her attention towards Jack, that pointed to the door with his head, spurring the deer to walk towards it with its head low and its glowing horns standing out, pressing them towards the door and forcing it to melt as it crossed to the other side.

Another screech echoed while the group galloped down the stairs, followed by the sound of dozens of shattering windows and the loud, prolong beat of a skin-piercing gong. The meguro made a second hole on the door to the ground floor and the group found dozens of people taking refuge inside the building’s main hall as the beat intensified and the palm trees outside shook like twigs cadenced to the wild winds of a storm.

***

The fear of the weak and an ancient anger choked the air around them as the sisters approached a tower made of glass in the middle of an oasis that was not meant to be. From inside the tower, the four-winged eagle that ruled the winds emerged, screeching its revolt for being imprisoned for too long and gathering a storm that would soon evolve into something to be written in legend.

As it took flight, the rainbow phoenix turned from the other side of the tower and, shrieking, reached out its claws towards the eagle, being promptly cast away with a powerful beat of its second pair of wings. After regaining control of its flight, the phoenix’s flames turned bright red and the air around it began crackling as it was forced to heat, soon to turn to flames.

“Everything inside will die…” muttered Seli staring at the tower of glass caught in the middle of the battle.

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Taking the words of her sister to heart, Seli joined her hands, closed her eyes and focused on the minds of the hidan.

“Ancients of old, heed to my call. I now free you from the rage in your hearts and the rashness that brought you upon. Forgive their actions, for they do not understand, and amend your ways for they do not correct. For the wind and for the life it brings I order you, be calm!”

She opened her eyes and the violent impulses driving the beasts quelled. The air gradually returned to its normal, poised state as the phoenix descended, spiralling around the tower, and the eagle, no longer with an uncontrollable gleam in its eyes, gained altitude and faded into a green dot in the distant blue sky.

THEY ARE COMING

***

As soon as the trees stopped balancing, Jack held up Moonlight’s blade and blinded everyone in the main lobby.

“Come on!” he yelled over the shouts and curses that followed, taking hold of Yana’s wrist, and hauling her somewhere.

“You could’ve said something!” she yelled back, unable to see anything, merely guessing from the noises, the smells, and the warm sunlight on her skin that they had left the building and were running along the grass of the park, tailed by the sound of trotting hooves.

“Can you open your eyes, now?” asked Jack as soon as they stopped, putting his hands on her shoulders. Although she still saw plenty of white, she managed to distinguish the red deer crouching in front of them.

“Why do you always have to catch me off guard?”

“I’m sorry. Come on, get on the meguro.”

“What?” she asked, refusing to let him pull her towards the deer.

“Get on the meguro.”

“I can’t ride that, I’ve never learned how to ride! And it’s all-”

“You don’t need to.”

While he talked, he managed to sit her just behind the meguro’s grouper, quickly sitting in front of her before letting it swing itself up in a rough motion that made Yana feel even less comfortable about the idea.

“Jack!”

Both briefly turned around to find Kuchinja and Sauti running towards them, but without thinking twice, Jack turned back forward and spurred the meguro into a fast gallop across the oasis’ palm trees, and soon out of their sight.

For a moment Yana lost herself to the swing of the canter, feeling the plants rush past them, but just as she was getting used it, the deer slowed down to a trot and immobilized itself before the two people that stood in their way. I called them people, but I think another kind of word stroke Yana’s mind when she crossed eyes with the Neal-Hidanna sisters for the first time.

“Who are they?” she asked under her breath when no one else spoke for a moment.

“They’re the ones that are going to get you out of here,” answered Jack.

“That’s right. You don’t belong here, you must return to your world so you may remain safe,” said Seli walking towards them.

“What do you mean?” she asked again, feeling sceptical and unwilling to believe a woman with moss for skin and the hay-like hair used for the “before” in shampooing commercials.

“My sister can take your consciousness back to your rightful body.”

“Why should I believe you? Everything-“

“Yana, they can’t lie,” Jack said turning around to face her. “Go. If you can trust me, then you can trust them.”

“What about you? What about him? Can you save him?” she asked facing the Neal-Hidanna.

“I’m afraid that is up to him.”

Getting a mere nod when she looked back at Jack, Yana jumped down from the meguro and faced him one final time.

“I know I can be difficult to deal with sometimes, but… Thanks for everything, Jack. I hope you can get out of here.”

“I got this,” he answered with a confident smile.

And she turned back to find a purple face with black voids for eyes, blending in the brushes like a mirage, too close and too scary to be a good thing, that touched her forehead with a long, skeletal finger before she could even conjure a scream.

As if Lissandra had drained the life away from her, the girl’s body fell cold on the grass.

YOU

The resonant voice of an omnipotent being made itself be heard not only by Jack’s ears, but also his nose, his skin and his eyes before he could even react to the fainted girl by the meguro’s hooves.

YOU ARE THE ONE WHO TOOK NIGH ONE HUNDRED SOULS AHEAD OF THEIR TIME, ON A SINGLE DAY, AND NEVER TOOK RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT. I STILL HEAR THEIR SCREAMS TO THIS DAY AND IT ANGERS ME DEEPLY THAT I MUST ENDURE THOSE VOICES FOR EONS TO COME. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?

“I didn’t do it,” Jack answered, looking fearlessly into the void of her eyes. “It was a monster. My only regret is that I couldn’t control it.”

Something changed in Lissandra’s face. You could almost say she was smiling if you could tell apart her mouth from the rest of it.

GOOD ANSWER