Chapter 98: Chapter Forty-Six – At Least For Now

My eyes shot open just in time to see a large cat with long hair leap onto the bed beside me. I stared at it in surprise as it regarded me with its heterochromatic eyes blinking at me knowingly. Its long tail wrapped around my wrist as it promptly climbed onto me and began to knead its paws into my chest, purring loudly.

“S-Sayuri?” I asked hopefully as the cat continued to knead me lovingly.

“We have an agreement at the moment,” a voice said from the door. A moment later a figure emerged, stepping fully into the light. I cocked my eyebrow at the girl curiously, giving her the once over. She was smaller than I was by a good 10 cm but was quite honestly, gorgeous.

Her dark eyes stared at me from beneath long black hair, her bangs recently and expertly trimmed. Her cheeks were rounded, her eyes slanting slightly upward, giving her a catlike appearance. Her body was thin and petite and covered by a long dress which flowed behind her gently as she moved hesitantly into the room. My scowl deepened as I waited for her to finish. There was something familiar about her I couldn’t quite place.

“She behaves herself and keeps a low profile and I don’t put her in a cage.” The girl’s voice was quiet, soft, and somewhat high-pitched, sounding nearly as adorable as Ashvallen’s.

“I see.” I did not.

The girl sat a short distance away and regarded me for a long moment before rubbing her eyes and sighing.

“You have no idea who I am, do you?” She finally turned to me fully.

“Of course I do!” I lied.

“Mmm?” Her lips pursed adorably.

“I know who you are,” I waved her concern away breezily. What difference did it make? A gorgeous girl was talking to me which was good enough in my book.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the girl fixed me with dark eyes. “You weren’t supposed to survive. You broke, literally, every rule.”

“I don’t care,” I shrugged, settling back onto the bed, and petting the cat I was choosing to believe was Sayuri lovingly. “I’m tenacious like an Arctic Fox.”

“I was thinking cockroach but that works, too, I guess,” the girl shrugged. Oh, yes. She was familiar. I peered at her for a long moment before my eyes widened.

“Oh my GOD! You’re Carrisyn!” I gasped, pointing the hand not absently stroking the cat at her and extending my middle finger vulgarly, waving it for emphasis.

“See?” She sighed irritably. “I knew you had no idea who I was. And my name is Akira. I told you that.”

“You killed me again! You unbelievable bitch!” I growled, ignoring what she’d just said.

“I apologized for that,” Akira tried to point out.

“After you’d already done it! That doesn’t count!” I raged. “What are you even doing here? Shouldn’t you be winging your way on the backs of flying monkeys somewhere to avoid having a house dropped on you?”

“Was that a Wizard of Oz reference?” She cocked an eyebrow quizzically.

“You are…you’re just…” I sputtered impotently, unable to get the right words out. “Fuck you! It was the best I had! Go away! I don’t want to talk to you!”

“Well, I need to talk to you,” Akira shrugged, settling back into the chair as if to say, “what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t care,” I snarled.

“Yes, you do,” She nodded.

“No. I most certainly do not! Go away!” The girl reached beneath her dress and pulled out a silvery vial filled with dark red liquid. I glared at her as she sat on the chair and peered at the vial intently. I could almost hear the tick of the clock on the wall as the heavy silence grew oppressive as it lengthened. I stared hard at her, my body getting itchy in anticipation. “Fine! What is that?”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk to me,” Akira glanced over at me slyly.

“Fuck you!” I repeated. “What is it?”

“What I went to the other world for,” she held it up to the light and peered through it curiously. “This is the thing that will save my sister. It would have saved others, too, if you hadn’t screwed everything up.”

“Sorry I didn’t play by your little unspoken rules you never clued me in on,” I sputtered sarcastically. “I was too busy getting killed by a traitorous bitch!”

“This is the healing ability you were gifted when I pulled you into that world,” Akira marveled. “The last vestiges of it. At least the last I could get.”

“What?” I stared at the vial curiously. “It looks like blood.”

“It is blood. The last of the gifted blood in your heart,” Akira shook her head and dropped the vial attached to a leather string back under her dress.

“That’s fucking gross,” I pointed out. “That can’t be sanitary. Besides, if you needed it you could have just been like ‘Hey! I need some blood! I know you’ve bled all over the goddamn world already but a bit more won’t hurt, right? Hey ho! Hey ho!’”

“I wouldn’t have ever said that” Akira shook her head in disapproval. “Besides, it had to be from your heart.”

“That’s even more disgusting, but I don’t care,” I reiterated angrily. “You got what you want, and I got away from your psychosis. I’d call it all mostly even. Fuck off.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the Elf queen you’d invited into a body you had no rights to?” Akira fixed me with a steely gaze.

“Oh! We’re talking about body rights, now? Really? Why not ask Ashvallen about her body rights or any of the other people you decided to violate the body rights of?”

“It was a soul transference,” Akira pointed out.

“Like I understand any of that shit,” I huffed. Akira sighed and sat back, and a long silence descended over us.

“My sister was born with a congenital heart defect,” Akira began to speak quietly. “She was never supposed to live into adulthood. When my parents died when I was five and she was barely a year old I swore I would take care of her. My dad’s mother was the only family we had left, and she took me in, but not her.  I looked Japanese but Mirai? She was different. She had blonde hair and dark purple eyes. Truly some genetic throwback no one could explain.

“I was too young to protest and while I was brought back to Japan, Mirai was sent to a series of abusive foster homes in America. Eventually, after the people in her last home when she was 8 nearly killed her, she was sent to an orphanage. Meanwhile I was raised in the home of my grandmother who was very wealthy and extremely traditional. Mirai was a freak to her. Mirai wasn’t Japanese. Mirai had to have been born from a dalliance with someone else, though my mother never would have done that.”

I wanted to tell her I didn’t care. I wanted to yell at her to go away again but I couldn’t bring myself to. The tone in her voice had changed. It was softer, melancholy. Filled with regret and memories she couldn’t suppress. I petted the cat idly and listened to her as she talked.

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“I was forbidden from contacting her. Forbidden from even discussing her and, I don’t know, maybe it’s true that absence makes the heart grow fungus, but I eventually forgot about her altogether.” She shook her head, her long black hair swishing back and forth ruefully. “I forgot about my promise. I forgot about my sister.”

“I became successful and wealthy after college,” Akira continued. “I took over for my grandmother in her companies when she got too old to continue and took over for good once she died. My companies thrived and expanded but there was always something there. Something missing. I found it one day when I went back to finally clean out my grandmother’s home after her death. A photo of Mirai and I when I was young. A photo of a blonde baby with smiling eyes and myself sitting on the dock in San Francisco.

“All of a sudden, memories came flooding back in. Memories of my parents and us. Memories of nights we slept at the hospital wanting to be there in case Mirai didn’t make it to see the dawn. Memories of my promise to take care of her and, of course, memories of how I’d broken that promise.

“I figured I’d lost my chance to ever make that promise a reality,” She sighed and leaned back wearily in her chair. “Naturally I tried to find her and, surprisingly, it was quite easy. Mirai was not only still alive but had thrived on her own. She had become a successful game designer, selling her first game to a company by the time she was 16 and moving on to eventually found her own game company. She was wealthy and successful, nearly as much as I was. But she was not going to last long. I knew. She said as much in her interviews. A doctor she knew had managed to keep her alive, but it was a matter of time.

“It was around that time I met Bailey and her group. Her theories on alternate universes and magic intrigued me and her access to mystic abilities finally made up my mind. I would use my surprising affinity for the mystical arts and go to a different world and find a way there to heal my sister.”

“Sounds like a fairy tale to me,” I muttered before realizing I’d just spent months in that same fairy tale. Akira must have noticed my realization because she smiled smugly.

“I found what I needed. There was a spell I could use to harness someone’s power and bring it back to this world. The chance of ever finding that person was so remote as to be laughable and the costs associated both magically and in time and money were mind-boggling. But any chance to save my sister and, I guess, try to assuage my guilt, too, I had to take.

“In exchange for my patronage, Bailey’s group agreed to find and protect the people they thought might work in the off chance I was successful.” She dropped her head onto her chest sadly. “I was so fucking naïve back then.”

“Huh?”

“I thought I would perform the spell and if it didn’t work, I’d simply send them back and no one would be the wiser. The spell requirements were…invasive, to say the least. But I had magic and power and was convinced I could save them. I couldn’t. The requirements needed killed most of them. The spell killed the few who survived the initial procedure.

“Just like it killed you,” She raised her head and stared at me, her dark eyes boring into mine. “But then you came back to life. I didn’t know how at first, but I knew I’d found the person I was looking for.”

“Oh. Lucky me,” I muttered bitterly.

“To finish the spell I needed the Rose Chamber, the book, and the talisman. Once I had all three, I could return and save my sister. Unfortunately I’d become indebted to the Prince and Eliana both. The rest, obviously, you know.”

“So you never intended to bring me back?” I asked, more than a bit miffed.

“I didn’t think I could,” Akira shrugged. “Honestly, everything was theory. The spell was designed to transfer abilities, not for soul transference or any of the other layers I had to pile onto it. We both, in my estimation, had an equal chance of dying, blinking out of existence or any of a million other horrors.”

“And you did it anyway?” I shook my head. Akira shrugged in response.

“That’s some high-key nuclear bomb ‘fuck it’ testing shit right there,” I shook my head in a mix of disbelief, grudging admiration, and horror.

“You’re not wrong,” Akira agreed.

“So why am I here? And not in an existential ‘why are any of us here’ way, either.”

“I still don’t really know for sure. But my theory is that as you gained access to Elven magic and it burned away your human blood you became more resistant to the spell that would…well…kill you off, I guess for lack of a better word. Not to mention you had the queen’s powers, at least some of them, as well. When I cast the spell and withdrew the last crystal left in your heart and…you know…killed you, your magical defenses activated.

“What should have resulted in you returning dead to your body resulted instead in you dragging Ashvallen’s body and soul back as well so…the long and short is, you broke everything.”

“As I plainly intended,” I grinned at her in what I judged to be a sufficiently infuriating manner. “Wait! You didn’t come here to finish the job, did you? Because I am warning you right the fuck now, I will go 110% Super Saiyan on your ass.”

“I…have no idea what that is,” Akira stared at me blankly for a moment. “But, no, I’m not here to ‘finish the job’.”

“Then what are you here for?” I demanded suspiciously.

“I guess two reasons,” Akira ran her fingers through her hair nervously. “First, I wanted to tell you or, well, I guess there aren’t enough words but at least try to tell you how sorry I am for everything.”

“Hmm?” I regarded her suspiciously.

“I…nothing I did was ok. I tried hard to not let myself become a monster and became one anyway. I tried to make myself feel better for all of the stuff I did, but no excuse will make anything I did all right. My reasons aside, I shouldn’t have done any of it and I’m so very sorry.”

“So you say,” I muttered under my breath. “And what’s the second reason?”

“I’m here to tell you I wasn’t lying,” Akira stood and walked over to me. “And to ask if you might one day forgive me.”

“Huh?” I asked, recoiling slightly, absently noting that was actually three things.

“I didn’t lie when I told you I fell in love with you,” Akira’s eyes found and held my own. “I’ve done what I set out to do, thanks to you. I’ve saved my sister or, at least, I will. My guilt won’t ever really go away. Not over forgetting my promise to her and certainly not over what I’ve done to everyone. Especially you. But I want to try to make it up. If you’ll let me.” I stared at her blankly, not quite understanding what she was saying.

“Uh,” I managed stupidly. She bent down and brushed her soft lips against mine. Her hair smelled like passion fruit and vanilla, and her breath was sweet and soft against my cheek as she pulled back slightly to capture me with her eyes again.

“Will you give me a chance?” I stared into her eyes for a moment before glancing down slightly to where her dress had slipped open revealing her skin beneath the fabric.

“I can see your nipples,” I pointed out, a thrill passing unbidden through me.

“You can do a lot more than look if you say yes,” Akira purred.

“I…actually respect that a lot,” I murmured, a slave to my baser instincts. “I’m not saying yes to any of this. …I’m just not saying no, either.”

“I can live with that,” Akira nodded with a lopsided grin. “At least for now.”

“Can I touch your butt?” I whispered huskily as her lips brushed against mine once more.

“I’m not saying no,” Akira grinned at me, her dark eyes twinkling.

“How coy the ex-countess is,” I murmured, a smile tugging at my lips. The hand not attached to the IVs reached around to stroke the round cheeks of her butt beneath her dress. “I can live with that. At least for now.”

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