- July 19, 2026
The Royal Bastards of Galagan (Chapter 15)
The Royal Execution
“The past has never changed, and it never will.”
Lady Zohra Sha
Calcutta Sha
When I got to the roof and found Koki waiting for me, I felt so smug. Poppy has told me that my smirk can be a little smug, which means that it was really smug.
I gained a bit more respect for Koki then because that’s when I knew he was a bit like me. He did what needed to be done when it needed doing. Not after he got permission.
He opened one eye as I floated around him. “Wipe that smirk off your face.”
“You seem agitated, master,” I called him, catching how his other eye opened as I called him ‘Master.’
“Wouldn’t you be if a guest came into your home and broke your rules?” he said, and my smirk only grew.
I thought to myself, How like me he is when no one’s looking.
“Good point and such guests deserve punishment, don’t they?” I told him as he floated higher to be at eye level with me.
He grumbled and squinted his eyes as he moved his hands behind his back. That movement, his posture, it reminded me of someone I did not want to think about.
“Yes,” he said, “they do, shall we go to them?” Then he gesture to the air as if he knew where they were.
“Well, we’ll have to find them—”
“No need,” he interrupted me, “it only took a maid a few minutes to find notes on where the meeting will be, and nothing to follow them to confirm it. Despite being the natural inhabitants of this planet, people like this Flavia tend to forget about us… and our rules.”
I didn’t say anything about that, I just tried to keep upbeat. There wasn’t much to be upbeat about recently. This place was doing a number on us. Maybe not physically, but Lemon and Poppy were getting dejected for one reason or another. While I at least learned a new trick through my failure, they were struggling to learn anything in theirs.
Then there was Flavia coming and haunting Poppy which only made her even more anxious. Who knew what was going on with Lemon that he wasn’t meeting us for lunch or dinner. Howl said he went out with a ‘friend.’
That sounded like bullshit.
But tonight, I was going to put some of it back on track, and gestured for the Pyrie to, “Lead the way.”
Koki nodded, and without warning, blasted off.
That was the first time I saw a Pyrie fly like me, but I would not forget again. I quickly charged up my cakra to blast off after him. I caught up fast enough, but the fact that he got away at all was something to not forget.
“Was I going too fast?” he asked me, his voice somehow pinging through my head over the air gust and the cakra trails we were leaving. His was clear, with no color to it, but there was a stark outline that he left behind where the air and cakra together distorted light. I’m sure that meant something spiritually.
“No, it’s just been a while since I’ve blasted off anywhere,” I told him, trying to throw him off, but he pushed on me.
“It’s been a while since you’ve fought a Galagan of worth too, are you ready to fight some?”
No one had ever questioned if I was ready to fight before, it was an expectation. I turned to him and said, “Always.”
“Hmph,” he grumbled, smirking to himself in a way that bothered him.
What did he have to smirk about? What could he possibly have been judging me for then?
I didn’t get an answer to that question as we flew over the sky, Drota’s large irregular moon behind us. It must have been a supermoon that night because I felt small looking up at it. But when everything was all over, I could easily remind myself just how much bigger I am than some moon.
That thought settled me as we flew to wherever that craven Lexus bitch was having her ‘secret’ meeting. She would go last, but I hoped I would get to see her before she saw me. Then I would surely see the look of surprise on her eye.
She would know then who Poppy really sided with, and she would never get the chance to tell anyone about it.
“Dull your streak, we’re coming up on this… Flavia,” Koki told me, as he slowed down. I did too, enough that I could float without the silver cakra flowing around me.
The place we were landing wasn’t anything to scoff at. There was the sparse forest around them, typical trees, maybe a bit brighter than what I was used to. It was a nice couple of buildings with a mix of colors and shapes, I guess. Some were round, some were rectangular, and within the hour they were all going to come down. A bunch of little pueblos, all smashed to dust, or whatever they were called. It was not my job to remember.
Sensing energies was not something that most knew how to do. Everyone felt massive powers, but what most people gave off in their base was not something most could notice. This meant that for the most part, it was a strictly a combative ability, so I felt pretty confident that I wasn’t going to set Flavia off as we landed.
As soon as our feet touched the ground, Koki’s left it, leaping to the window. He silently rested his weight on the slanted surface, and placed his two fingers on the glass, just high enough that they wouldn’t see him.
When I got there I saw that the glass was tinted black, which explained why he felt the need to put his fingers there. I figured it was some kind of sensing technique until he confirmed it for me.
Before I could open my mouth, the two pointer fingers on his other hand were pressing against my temple. He shared with me not just what he saw, but how he saw the world.
He saw our cakra flowing through us, and the rocks, and the trees. It looked like how we all imagined it, but the stream was so wild, and we were all so connected. And yet I still felt blind.
I could see the strings, but I could tell where they coalescended into a person, or a thing. When you could concentrate and look at the world like that it was eye-opening, and yet so… damning. I didn’t understand what I was seeing back then, but I would eventually. I was too focused on what I was hearing.
“-taking back Zao is a costly and harrowing endeavor, and you expect us to do it without support?”
“We’re going to be wiping your overlords off the map around the star system, that will lessen the load,” the witch said. I couldn’t help but recognize the guttural bleh in the back of every high born Lexus’s throat. Being one of the inner family made Flavia’s accent distinct, hard to miss.
I’m glad that Poppy never developed the nasty sound.
“You keep saying that,” I heard the supposed Zaolight say, “but how does that help us overthrow the pigs and vultures planetside who hold Zao in a death grip?”
“Their numbers will thin when the Takeda’s are forced to chose between our assault on their homeworld and one of the backwater colony planets.”
I couldn’t tell who smirked at that, Koki or me, but I knew there were many glares at that.
“Zao is the richest planet in the galaxy in—”
“In spice and salts, I know, forgive my disrespect, but my people have learned to like the taste of flour,” Flavia cut him. I could have just imagined her holding the back of her hand to her mouth as she said, “If you weren’t so deep in Takeda’s grip you’d know that me and mine have a taste that’s far more alkaline.”
“Alka…?” the Zaolight repeated, before moving on. “You may think us fools but we know how this works. We rebel, we draw Takeda’s attention, and when they send troops to hold control of their largest money maker, you’ll attack during that opening. You’ll leave us for dead if it would be easier for your cause”
“You think they’d give up their homeworld for wealth?”
“Your lot would.”
There was a silence I anticipated was filled only with Flavia’s smile.
At that point I was wondering why Koki and I hadn’t done anything yet, and that’s when i realize Koki was reading my mind.
We need proof — I need proof of both guilty parties, he told me, which made me roll my eyes. Why kill the Zaolights when we can make friends?
Because they blow up civilian transports.
You blow planets.
Yes, and they die instantly, I don’t draw it our by blowing people up with fire bombs.
Maybe you should have just let the people who lived on Zao rule themselves.
And eat only flavorless food and wine like those Lexus fucks? No chance.
Isn’t your sister a ‘Lexus fuck?’
My sister is a royal bastard, and we bastards have no house.
Our little argument was interrupted by the Zaolight leader making their demands clear. “For us to stage this coup on the timetable your suggesting, we required several thousand trained soldiers, weapons, and anti-air mechs, yesterday.”
Flavia’s silence was far less condescending as she was forced to appease those she definitely thought her lesser. This woman suggested that the Takeda’s enslave the rebels of Zao to deter the rest, but the Khan put a stop to that.
‘Slavery is a money pit,’ he said, and then at some point he said something along the lines of, ‘dogs get put down.’ My father could be as generic as he was geriatric, especially towards the end, but at least he was to the point.
Flavia, on the other hand, took forever to get to the point. “What do you need the anti-air for? We just clarified that we expect to draw most of Takeda’s air forces, and even if they did send more to you, any spacecrafts they send won’t be able to get through the planet’s shielding if you take control fast enough.”
“We know well enough of the firepower the Fleet of Sha contains.”
Ah yes, for as peaceful as my mother’s quiet and unyielding people claimed to be, they put the most into their military. Their military budget was second only to the Khan’s own. It’s their regiment that made me what I am.
“But you don’t have to worry about Diadect Sha,” Flavia told the Zaolight, which put the brakes on my growing impatience. “The Shas aren’t even defending their own sectors. The sand snakes have gone back to their caves to cover themselves up as much as they can and hide out from the rest of us. Don’t expect the Shas to steal Zao from under you or Takeda anytime soon.
“So axe the anti-air weapons, and I can look into getting you the rest,” Flavia told him with a sense of finality.
The moment of truth, I mocked, knowing Koki would hear me.
Shut up, he told me.
The anti-air weapons were easily the biggest “no-no.” Flavia likely was planning to go back to her sister — Poppy’s mother — to tell her that she got them to forgo the anti-air weapons that could be used against Lexus’s forces.
No shot that Diadect Lexus wasn’t going to take Zao for the profits alone once they were finished with Takeda. A few dead foot soldiers were a small sacrifice towards those foals. The Zaolights had to know that, but even if they did, their cause wasn’t going anywhere. Without my brother, sister, and me in the picture, they likely thought this was their best shot at taking any real control of Zao.
They were wrong, but how could the poor little fools have known that?
The Zaolight leader told Flavia, “Once we receive those soldiers, we will be in agreement.”
“I’d say we should put on paper…” Flavia trailed off, but the Zaolight finished the thought for her.
“… but papers can be ripped up, or better yet, burned.”
Flavia must have grinned at that. “What a nice way to put it.”
Is that enough for you? I asked him.
Enough? he asked back. Respect for the rules would have been enough. Keeping your war off Drota would have been enough. This is not enough, and so I will punish them.
Yeah, let’s go—
He let go of my temple and I finished my sentence out loud.
“— punish… wait, ‘I?’” I asked. I would learn what he meant literally less than a minute later.
He floated before the wall and raised his hand. In seconds, his cakra vibrated and flowed through it in a way all too familiar.
It disintegrated in moments. When I looked back on this feat, things occurred to me that would not in the moment. I was too excited at the prospect of what I was being encouraged to do.
Even worse, as Galagans pushed rubble off themselves, coughing up lungs from all the dust, I could only smell the blood. It wafted through the air, and I was a loaded gun with a trigger itching to be squeezed. Things hadn’t changed.
“What is the meaning of—” the bitch Flalvia started saying, until the shadow of the little Pyrie floated in the dust where the wall was.
The dust clogged up the space, leaving them with nothing to see but his shape as he stood still above air, his hand behind his back. Cakra flowed from Koki, but was unseen, unknowable, and left the irises of his eyes of seeable.
“We Pyrie are very open to guests from all nations and planets,” he said, “even enemies, because we believe in neutrality and Drota being a common ground for everyone to walk on. We do not talk of furthering war on common ground, therefore we do not talk of furthering war on Drota. You’ve broken said rule, and as Master of this estate, I decide your punishment.
“Death by Sha.”
Through the ash and dust, I blasted my silver cakra beam. I took off the head of one, and blasted through the chest of another. By the time I singed the shoulder of the third they had hit the ground.
I walked through the dust before Koki did, entering right under him, putting some weight in my feet so the ground would shake. When it did, some of the Zaolights gasped with a familiar sense of fright.
I licked my lips. It had been too long.
Ki-YO!
I blasted through the overturned table, hitting it with so much force, so fast, that I punched a perfect hole through it and the chest of the man behind it.
I heard shuffling to my left and blasted without much aiming. I nearly took Flavia’s head off as she stumbled into the door.
When she stopped there, I started walking towards her, but then the sound of beams behind me set me off.
I swirled around and was ready to fight whoever dared to try and match my mastery of cakra, but it was only Koki, holding one finger up.
Ki-YO!
He blasted once through the rubble, and a body fell out from behind it.
Ki-YO!
Then again through a body laying on the ground, confirming he was dead.
A man freaked out and tried to run only for a twitch of Koki’s finger—
Ki-YO!
—to put a hole through his head.
He turned to me as I stared in awe. “Your mark is getting away.”
I turned and saw the door shutting as Flavia had gotten out of the building. “Not for long,” I assured him before I leaped up, smashing the roof off the place and over looking a street that was filling with people. Before I knew it, I saw the full platoon of Lexus Galagans that Flavia had brought with her, and Flavia — the coward herself — running straight to them.
She grabbed one and pulled his arm as she pointed towards the house. I lowered myself on the roof across the street from her as she tried to push men to go where I just came from. You’d think exploding out of the roof would have been enough notice, but I guess explosions didn’t always explain the flying bodies.
“My, my, Flavia,” I called out, making her well-worked neck turn up at me, seeing me with the moon at my back. Her eyes were moons in themselves with how she looked at me, and how all of her little body guards looked at me too. No one thought they would see me here, the bastard princess. “How small you are down there…”
She took an immediate shot at me.
Pow-YO!
Deflecting weak-willed beams from weak-willed people made such a funny sound.
Quickly, all at once, a dozen of her soldiers held up their hands — and a few guns too I guess — and opened fire on me. Suffice to say, it was music to my ears as my hand moved to deal with them.
She tried to abandon her men, run into an alley, but I put my cakra sensing to the test. I immediately sensed for her energy, and it a moment I went from deflecting blasts…
Whoosh.
To stand appearing in front of her. She kicked up dirt like a cartoon coyote trying to stop from running into me. I’m built like a wall, that would have hurt, so I helped her out.
I raised my fist…
Smash!
… and backhanded her with it.
Smash! Crunch! Crush!
I sent Flavia flying through one — no, two buildings. She flew clean across the street into the next building. She’s of noble blood, surely they taught her to have thick enough skin to survive.
Her soldiers started moving towards the hole to get between me and her. You’d think they would have learned better than to make that mistake, but alas, no.
I flew straight to her, the back draft of my cakra tail pushing most of them aside. I did grab one by his neck as I flew by, stopping to stand in the hole Flavia left when she flew through the door.
I used the head and body of the man I grabbed as a fan to bat away the dust before I broke his neck with a squeeze.
I won’t describe the sound of his neck snapping. It wasn’t as clean as usual. In fact, it made Flavia’s head pop up faster as she was pulling herself from the rubble. She stopped as I let the man fall, and she should have definitely seen the glowing silver of my eyes hovering above the dust. Not a pupil or iris to be seen.
Fights like this always created dust, it was the darnedest thing.
“If you think my niece—”
I stopped her before she could finish that thought. “She has name, it’s Poppy, you’d do well to use it.”
Flavia showed how agile she could still be, and how much smarter she was than the rest by back flipping to her feet and running through the wall to get to the building behind her. She would have kept running…
Whirl.
Blurk!
… if I hadn’t flown faster, busting through several walls, and appearing right next to her.
My fist clocked her clean on the chin, sending her face first into the floor of this club. People were already around us, some staring in awe, others screaming, and some not even noticing with how loud the music was.
Flavia though, props to her, didn’t take my hit lying down. Well, she was lying down, but she didn’t lay down and die there, she would do that somewhere else.
She pushed up with her hands and tried to kick me. I blocked it with the back of my hand, not even bothering to make a first.
There was this wfft! sound as she tried to kick me several times, and was deflected by my lone hand. She had to have known this was a losing battle, but what else was the poor woman going to do? Die without her pride?
She leapt and spun to kick me in the head.
Thump.
I caught her leg, suffice to say.
Thump!
Then I slammed her to the ground to suffice some more.
Whoof!
Then I threw her hard towards the closest wall, a step up, sending her flying through metal railing first… am I using ‘suffice’ right?
Oh it doesn’t matter, I nearly killed two people who almost didn’t dodge her in time.
Whoosh.
I flew and floated over her as she struggled to push herself up. I hadn’t fought a noble before then. I had assassinated a few, but never had a full-on one-on-one fight. They would push my siblings and me, but never that far, so I knew I had to be stronger than them. But I still expected more of a fight than I was getting. I grimaced as she wiped some blood from her mouth and the music cut off, signalling to the club that the party was over, and it was only to be Flavia and me.
“If…” she struggled to breath, already winded, “if you think Potempa will stand for this…”
Oh, I couldn’t help but smirk at that. I was giddy at the idea, my crossed arms loosening as I tried to contain a laugh. “Who,” I tried to say but chuckled through it, “ who do you think told me where to find you…?”
Flavia’s eyes didn’t get as big as when she first saw me in full glory, but her mouth certainly worked better. “That traitorous cunt.”
My hand was on her throat in a second, and lifting her above my head. “No,” I assured her as I tightened my grip, “you just misunderstood what family she was loyal to, sisters before all and all that shit.”
My fueled my cakra through my body and flew up, smashing her through the ceiling and carrying her up towards the sky with the moonlight on us.
Huh, it was strange, I saw the moon, but the sun off in the distance too. That moon was far closer to Drota than the one moving around Galagan.
I decided to make her look at it, and when light from the sun and moon hit her left eye at once, she grimaced. As she croaked out a sound, I tightened my grip to squeeze out whatever oxygen she had left.
I held her close when I stopped halfway towards the clouds, so she could hear me loud and clear. “You know, it’s hard to believe that you and the Takedas ever thought us royal bastards were loyal you, we’ve only ever been loyal to each other. We’re all we’ve had, as you’ve helped assure… you only treated us like weapons, no better than our father. But what you and your sister have done to Poppy…” I raised my other hand with my silver cakra pointed at her face, “… is what you’re going to die for.”
Flavia’s look of anger gave way, and her jaw dropped as she squirmed, for at that point, she knew true fear.
Rather than blow her head up, just then, I let her go as she started to kick me and let her float back away.
She didn’t try to run through. She focused her cakra to float across from me. She was bleeding from her head and had multiple cuts up and down her arms. Her long dark hair was a mess, no longer so straight and thoroughly combed as she faced what was going to be the toughest physical challenge she ever had before.
As Flavia clenched her fist, and let her purple cakra start to vibrate around them, she had to have known that the only thing she had going for her was her anger.
“It’s time I did what we should have been doing to you bastards a long time ago,” she said, as she eyes started to glow.
I made sure my eyes glowed with the electric shimmer, because why not? “Oh, promise, promises,” I mocked her, “but can you keep it?”
“You egotistical little bitch!” she called me as she reeled her arm back, and proceeded to manifest her cakra into a technique the Lexus nobles were known for.
Not Poppy, she never needed it.
Flavia’s cakra expanded outward from her body, not all that different to how the Pyrie’s expansion technique worked. But rather than flow and expand, the cakra came out solid in the form of hardlight. It covered the Lexus in an oversoul several stories high with hands that could crush ships with a flex of the fingers. It was covered in little details, with the sayings and language of Diadect Lexus flowing across the edges of oversoul’s surface.
The technique was called Titanifying, a secret cakra technique known only to the nobles of Diadect Lexus. With her Titan out, I was just barely taller than the distance from her pinky to the farthest side of her pointer finger. I guess I was lucky I’d always been tall.
I’ve never had the chance to fight against this technique, though I’ve received training in how to combat it. The Khan wasn’t a fool. I was his fist and he made sure I knew how to defeat any would be traitors, but I wouldn’t start with that. I had to know if the bitch could punch.
Flavia pulled back her fist, floating backwards with the momentum. Either it was to make sure she had the room to hit me, or she was at least moderately adept at throwing her weight around.
I floated in space and waited for the hit to come. Her giant fist flew out me faster than I thought, but there was definitely a loss of speed compared to the Pyrie’s expansion technique. Poppy was getting a much better ability over this.
Bumm!
What it lost in speed, it made up for in strength, sending me flying to the ground, just outside the bounds of the town. I hit the hot sand that made up the moat around it, and while the blow stung, what incensed me was the smell of shit. She definitely hit me close to, if not in the town’s sewer waste.
Flavia would regret that, among many things.
I was up and flying back at her before she could start coming at me.
“Had enou-”
She didn’t get to finish her lame taunt before I shot myself straight for her Titan’s steely head. I flew with both fists in front of me, and threw her for a loop. She spun completely around, but her point of gravity never changed. She stood in the same spot in the sky.
Oh, did I know what to do with that.
Anyone and their mother could tell you that when you put on size, you’re putting on weight you got to carry. I already pointed out how being able to swing like a woolly bear makes you as slow as one too, but it doesn’t just make you slow in body but in mind.
So when I flew back towards Flavia, she couldn’t even process where I was until I was already underneath her. I punched her Titan right where its spine would meet its pelvis. I doubt she felt it one-to-one, but I hoped it hurt like a bitch.
Bong!
But not was much as the quick kick that meet the side of her skull. Her Titan was already becoming fragile with the way its surface rippled and that stupid sound it made.
“Aaahh!” she cried out in pain like anyone else would. There was nothing particularly special about the way nobles screeched.
Crack!
Or the way their bones fractured.
“Haahhh…”
Or the way air left their lungs.
Flavia Lexus was learning the hard way just how pointless her Titan was against me. I was already stronger than it, and being faster too was a death sentence. I was flying all around her, knocking her back and forth, sending her into death spiral after death spiral. At one point she began to fall and I knocked her back up into the air like a sport ball.
She didn’t feel exactly what her Titan felt, but she what she did feel had to be close because her blood covered her, and there wasn’t a pore that wasn’t bleeding.
After I had knocked her back into the sky, she had caught herself in the air, and stared down at me as she caught her breath.
I let her have that. I crossed my arms and waited, making sure she could see my smirk, let it infuriate her. Why rush this? I was enjoying having a punching partner I didn’t have to worry about killing. Her death sentence was signed, and there was no one to save her, but there was no one to spoil it for me. Not even…
Where was Koki while I was fighting Flavia? You’d think he would have jumped in to finish her off or make me do it, but he was nowhere to be found. He tore through her men with a finger, surely they weren’t giving him trouble.
Those were the thoughts I let distract me when Flavia made her one clever decision of the night.
While the nobles of Diadect Lexus knew the Titanifying, even fewer had mastered it. Turned out there was a trick I didn’t know to prepare for until Flavia dropped it on me, literally.
As I was thinking I noticed a shadow being cast over me. I looked up and I was staring at Flavia’s Titan falling on me, but she was not in it. Through its distorted shell I could see her aiming her hands, ergo, her cakra at me, all with a mad grin on her face.
I thought to myself, As this would stop me, and held out my hand to catch it.
When it made contact my elbow nearly broke! Without warning, the thing had packed on the weight of a planet and hit my face almost immediately. It was on me and dragging me towards the town below!
Flavia had to have gone mad, if this thing was too heavy for me to push off, she was pooling her all into it. She didn’t have the massive amounts of cakra I had, but she definitely should have had enough to destroy a planet. She had to be giving it all to this… to this…
Was it a bomb? Was it supposed to crush me or explode on impact? Either one might work. If I couldn’t push it, how was I going to save myself from it slowly crushing me.
I was between a hardlight rock and an actual rock as I was about a dozen seconds from the ground. The strength I could muster slowed it down but not enough.
I yelled at myself to think. I couldn’t concentrate enough to blast thing away, and I couldn’t get a grip on it to push it up. This was one of those moments old people always talk about. ‘Great arrogance got me into this mess and it was going to take me out.’
Then I tried the one technique that didn’t need much concentration, just energy, perfect for my situation.
I focused on the Titan, and started to let my cakra flow through me and into it, just like I would with any of the dummies and the guy I… like the dummies I set on fire.
In that moment, I hoped the Titan would work the same way.
It did not.
At first, the Titan seemed to swell, taking my cakra as it had Flavia’s. My hands clawed at its surface over the perceived mistake, but then it started to harden, grow, and then balloon so fast, I couldn’t react. It didn’t set itself on fire, no…
KABOOM!
It exploded in my face instead.
The surface I touched held up the longest, it was the last of the Titan to explode, which sent most of the fire and flames across the sky, but there was some left for me.
There was a second explosion that hit me harder than I would have liked to admit. It sent me to the ground, and before I knew it I was blind, deaf, and dumb to the world.
I tasted dirt and smoke on my touch, immediately coughing before coughing some more. My vision struggled to come back to me as I was surrounded by nothing but this brown fog. It took several seconds before I could make out the dark shapes that would reveal themselves to be rubble, and myself to be in the middle of a crater.
I would leave that part out when I told Poppy and Lemon about this later.
While my sight recovered quick enough for me to gawk at how my clothes were intact before the loud ring made me cringe. It wasn’t like a bang or some bell, it was a shrill cry that wouldn’t stop.
Then more joined in, followed by the sounds of groans, cries, and struggling people. As the fog cleared I saw that while my impact was deep, the force shook and collapsed buildings all throughout the town. People were trapped, looking for loved ones, and trying to wake up others. There were maybe a couple hundred people here who had been dragged into the fight between Flavia and me…
Sucked to suck I guessed. I didn’t pay much attention to them. I got up, cleaned myself off, and tried sensing for Flavia’s power to make sure she didn’t get away, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I couldn’t sense her here, quite the opposite.
Fragments of cakra were scattered everywhere, and I felt her everywhere. “Don’t tell me, she got away…” I growled to myself as I floated out of the crater, and started looking around into the buildings.
“The fire hit her first,” I thought out loud, “she must have been hit, then she would have fallen down. No one way she could tank that.” I tried to reassure myself that I hadn’t failed, but as I went looking for her body across town, the idea that I had fucked up began to settle in.
I tried to avoid the locals, but they kept waving to me, calling to me, looking to me with this expectation of help. The fact that they expected help from me, was strange to say the least.
I… I kind of saved the town, the planet even, I guess. It would have been eradicated, and they likely saw the big scary thing come down on top of me. It was a mildly safe assumption to think I cared about their lives more than Flavia.
A wrong one, of course. I wouldn’t be caught dead killing Flavia for anyone but myself, but I guess that doesn’t matter at the moment. I didn’t have a Flavia to kill it seemed.
“Please help!” I heard a girl scream, and the footsteps that followed.
“Ugh,” I groaned. Was I approachable? I always prided myself on being unapproachable, but everyone still felt the need to fucking talk to me.
They asked me for help, again and again I ignored them. I had to find Flavia’s body. I knew the fire consumed her, but it was an old adage.
Double-tap.
I couldn’t assume she was dead until I confirmed it with her corpse, which meant ignoring the peas—
“Please help me,” I was asked as someone grasped my arm, even as I floated above the ground. I turned, full-tilted, ready to clown this girl’s head off until I was looking at nothing. I had to look down at the purple girl with gigantic fin-like ears to find her.
As I looked down at her I finally noticed just how small her hands were, yet she gripped me so hard. She was probably too young to realize that she shouldn’t have just grabbed me, or too young to care.
She tried dragging me as she begged, “Please my sister needs help!”
“Sister?” I asked.
“My little sister, she’s stuck under the building!” she yelled. I was more in shock by the fact that this little thing was someone’s big sister. It’s not her job to be taking care of someone when she was… what? Maybe twelve?
“Where are your parents?” I asked her, wondering why no one had taken this kid away from me.
“I don’t know! Who cares, help me!” she said as she tried to pull me long, which was easier said than done. She pulled me until she slipped and fell right on her butt.
She had to let go of me then. I took my first step, trying to ignoring her piercing cries.
I looked for flames, or active smoke, something that would point me in Flavia’s direction, then I heard the girl scream, “Please!”
It was hard not to look back, too hard for me, and then I saw her there. The tears and the snot were something I was familiar with, but it was hard not to look at the way she raised her hand towards me, like… like I was kind of lifeline.
There was something… something eerily… forget it.
Her head fell and so did her hand, letting her devolve into sobbing sighs, surely about how she failed her little sister and something like. It was her job for some unfair reason and she failed, she…
“Oh fuck me,” I think I said, or thought, or something. I felt so completely done in that moment. They were going to hound me now.
She didn’t pick up her head until my feet were right there in front of her. She looked up slowly at me, with nothing but shock.
“Don’t just stand there, show me where she is!” I yelled at her. That spooked her, and she struggled to her feet. She nearly fell back and I grabbed her to yank her back up. “Come on!” I yelled again, I had somewhere to be, and she nodded before she started leading the way.
As I followed her, my walk was faster than her run, and I had to float to keep from passing her by. Others came to ask for help, when they came up, I made sure they knew not to ask me for more help by letting cakra flow through my eyes. The threat of death always worked. Should have used that on the girl before she led me into that house, or maybe an orphanage of some kind.
It wasn’t a trap or anything when I walked in. There were other kids here, some adults, crushed and left for dead, but most seemed to be on the outside. Most appeared to escape when the building collapsed. Apparently these girls didn’t.
Explained this girl’s limp that I just noticed.
I followed her through the halls and when she got to the stairs, she stumbled. I finally took a good look at her limp and realized that there was a bit of bone sticking out.
She had such a bad fracture, and still limped all around looking for help. She came so far, and she didn’t cry until I told her no…
Did she not clutch it when I knocked her over? How did I not notice that?
Her hand struggled to grip the railing and pull herself back up to her feet. She let out this anguished cry and the first tears of pain came out. When her hand went back to the ground because she couldn’t get herself up, I wasn’t sure what her tears were from.
I kneeled down and picked her up. She let out another cry of pain, moving to cradle her in one arm as I pushed hanging debris out of the way with the other arm. I didn’t even have to ask, she pointed me to the right floor, then to the right hall, until we got to the right room.
We found her little sister, with the bannister on top of her stomach, with this empty look in her eyes, just staring up at the ceiling.
“Anni!” the girl in my arms yelled as I set her down and she crawled to where her sister laid down. I thought the girl was dead until her eyes followed her sister with a glaze over them.
“Ha… Haru?” she whispered, in a voice so soft, as her sister cradled her face.
Haru told her, “I’m back, I brought help, we’re… we’re going to get you out…”
Haru, the girl I’d brought all the way here, looked to me, and I struggled to hide the empty expression on my face.
I moved to lift the bannister, easily doing so but…
I moved Anni’s body slowly out from under the bannister, into the light. This window let it creep in and get her in the eyes, but she barely reacted to the light’s touch.
Haru looked up at me and struggled to say a word.
“You came far to find me, you can tell me what you want now,” I told her, and I felt this wave grip my chest. It was as if I had just went to hard on Poppy or Lemon in a sparing match, but a million times worse.
It was hard to breath, and struggled to swallow all while this purple fish girl dipped her head towards her sister, whose eyes barely registered her.
“Can you save her?” Haru asked me.
She couldn’t possibly know… couldn’t possibly think…
No, she lived here on this planet, she had to know what the Pyrie could do, what the Pyrie taught strangers and that I was a stranger… that there was a chance that I could…
But I couldn’t…
I burned every doll, I turned the oxygen into fire, I burned out that man’s cakra, I… I burned him alive. I couldn’t heal the girl.
But she was going to die anyway, she was fading away, if I failed… if I failed what would she feel?
After everything Haru did in a few minutes for her sister, it would be for nothing for a few moments where Anni didn’t know for sure she was there. That’s… that’s not fair.
That’s not fair.
‘The world isn’t—’
I fucking know that its not and it never was, but this… they were just unlucky to live on a planet, and in a town, that was… that had…
I… had to try… I should have…
My hand wavered, shaking, slowly moving over Anni’s body, and I tried. I tried to let my cakra flow through my body, become one with me, and it did so effortlessly, but when I tried to find hers…
When I tried to find Anni’s, it wasn’t like the dummies or like the dying man. There was nothing. There was only one thing in all the universe that didn’t have cakra. The rocks had cakra, the stars had cakra, people and plants, animals in the sky and in the sea, we had this thing that only few of us could use. But one thing didn’t.
Those that lived, but lived no more.
I didn’t know when it happened, when Anni’s eyes were just staring, rather than looking at her sister.
I took my hand back as I looked at Haru, who watched and waited, unwilling to speak. “It’s… it’s too late,” I told her, “she’s already gone.”
I saw the life go out behind Haru’s eyes. You can see when someone checks out, when the thing we all call our ‘drive’ stops working and it’s just auto-pilot.
Haru’s head and eyes fell on her sister and she looked at Anni the same way Anni looked up at her. There was this emptiness in the room, a black hole that swallowed matter more important than stars.
I looked to the ceiling, to the walls, to the… I was looking for answers, but when I looked to the windows I found more questions. Why did this happen, why did this have to happen?
There, in the window sill, I saw my master Koki, small, short, and standing in a place where he could cast a long shadow.
He… couldn’t he have…
It didn’t matter, it was all gone now. It was time to go back to what I was doing, that’s how one moved on.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer, he only pointed. “Flavia is in a flaming crater, the last of her people in the town. You go, I’m better able to help these children now.”
I looked to Haru, whose arms had gone slump, and let her sister’s body fall from her arms to the floor. Koki was right, I was of no help.
I stood up and walked to the window sill, barely able to slip by him. I stopped halfway to look at him, and he looked back at me. Our eyes locked, and I had this overwhelming feeling to say something despite having nothing on the tip of my tongue.
I should have asked how long he was sitting there. Where had he been? Why had he not helped me? Why did he… did I…?
They were meaningless questions that would change nothing of what’s already happened. The past has never changed before, and it never will.
I flew out of the window and looked in the direction Koki pointed me in. I saw the smoke flickering and dying out from the middle of the crater. It took only a few seconds to fly there. The flight was meaningless.
The crater around her was black, charred by the fire I sent back at her. I could tell then when I was up close that it was less a crater — not from only the lack of an impact — but from the blackness that perfectly encircled her. The only thing that wasn’t charred was the skin on Flavia’s face from what I could see, but that was still burned.
I landed with a thud, and she could turn her head, but not the arms and legs that were covered in third-degree burns. I expected fear, but I didn’t get that when she looked away and looked up toward the sky.
I walked over and cast her in my shadow, which drew her eyes to me again. Her lips formed a fine line, as she looked away as if that were the only thing she could stand doing.
“Tell me, Calcutta,” she said, her lips working perfectly, but her lungs less, needing to breathe between her words, her final words, “you walked through the destruction we caused…
“Did it… did it ever occur to you that if you hadn’t attacked me the way you did… the way you always do… they wouldn’t have been hurt.
“I wonder… if that’s how it always was when your father sent you after planets. To think… I’ve always wondered what you looked like on the battlefield… the vids didn’t do the monster that is Calcutta Sha justice.”
My mouth struggled to open with just how tightly the two parts of my jaw fell together. What did move was my foot, and so graciously sat in the center of her chest… and pushed.
“You…” I muttered, and gasped, “you!”
I squeezed my hand so tight as I tried to contain myself, but I just sort of screamed “Aaahhhh! You should have never come for my sister!”
God, what the hell was I saying?
“Do you hear me?!”
I should have just killed her in silence.
“I told you you’d die for that!”
I shouldn’t have said anything as my foot crushed a hole through her chest.
“And now you will!”
“Cal?!”
My neck twisted to the air, where Lemon floated there with someone I didn’t know yet. He was looking down at me, horrified for some reason. I had killed hundreds in front of him before, in ways just as violent as this, but his jaw was agape and his eyes stared.
Then he turned his back on me, grabbed his friend’s hand, and flew away from me.
Me… I stayed where I was.