------------------------------------- Kyuuketsuki Duo Shinma Pellectae -- The First Chapter ------------------------------------- I stretched my arms lazily in the bright springtime sun, my dark clothing soaking in the light which penetrated deep into my marrow and almost had the effect of chasing away all of the shadows and darkness in which I have been immersing myself so lately. I needed that -- a bit of humanity, a refuge from the Shinma trappings that I had agreed to wear. I have agreed to do the work of my family for the Shinma; there was no agreement on my part to become one of them. I was not so delusional to think that I could carry out my task without developing my newly awakened Shinma side, but I was not so submissive that I would give into it so easily. No, I will remember my humanity, will fight to maintain it as much as I possibly can, as long as it takes, and I will remember why I have agreed to this bargain. It was my humanity that led me to give my humanity up. It was ironic, my sudden liking for the crisp, cool morning air, and the bright, exposing light of day. Before -- for now there is only before and after for me -- my primary love had been the darkness of night, its soothing silence and cool caresses, not this daytime world of light and life. Perhaps there had been more Shinma in me than I had ever known. ::Let us begin.:: His mindvoice interrupted my pleasant basking. It tasted of metal, all silvery and rich blue, a sweet medley of power and secrets, with a dash of fire and ice for spice. It has come to dominate my life in these last few weeks since it happened. It was, at times, my only anchor to this existence which has become my reality. I still have not been able to decide whether my whole life before this was just a dream, and only now have I waken to reality, or if all this is a dream, and at any moment I shall awake to the sound of Sister Helen calling me down for breakfast, and so I am hesitant to label my current existence. Maybe my whole life, both before and after, has been a dream, and I shall never wake, trapped for all eternity in an endless world that will only get stranger as the days go by. Reality certainly could not have been determined by these recent times, gripped as I have been with fever dreams, physical infirmities, wild mood swings, and unpredictable fluctuations in power. He says it shall pass, says with certainty that it is merely my body still adapting to the sudden changes of that night, and that I shall reach an equilibrium soon. I wonder how he knows. Have the Shinma so often in the past made it a habit to convert humans into Shinma? I must ask him one day, only it seems as if this is territory that I have already covered. The question has been asked and answered, whether in 'reality' or in one of my more delusional states, or perhaps both at once, I know not. Perhaps I shall recall how he answered. He. There is only one other in this, my existence. Him. Heero. He is there when I wake in the morning and from there through practically every facet of the day, teaching me this business of being a Shinma. He is surprisingly good at it, as if he has tread down this path before, a reconnaissance mission that lets him know what my fairly human mind can yet conceptualize. I do not overly question his motives for guiding me, for I think he does not know them well enough himself to answer. It is enough that he is here. I turned my face from the light and obediently joined my mentor in the shadow of a great tree. Today, I would learn to identify the presence of Shinma. It is a skill I had thought that I might learn immediately, as it is at the very foundation of what it is that I must do: locate stray Shinma and return them to the Dark. I asked him about it, the chronology of my lessons. He responded blandly that if I had learnt how to locate Shinma first, without knowing how to protect myself, that I would surely have gotten myself into some sort of trouble, and he didn't want to be bothered with having to save me. He's probably right. But I like to think that I detected the slight flavor of humor in his mindspeech that day. Or maybe it is just another of my delusions. No matter. I will pretend that it exists, regardless of the reality, and work to draw it out, for it is a hint of humanity within a normally stoic and inscrutable Shinma. If he has taken it upon himself to instill me with the nature of the Shinma, then it is only fair that I be allowed to try to humanize him in return. It passes the time, as well as helps me keep in touch with my own humanity. ::Stop that.:: He stopped mid-sentence to deliver me his reprimand, interrupting the lecture on preliminaries that I was only half-listening to. "Stop what?" I replied, all wide-eyed and innocent. He looked pointedly at my hands, currently juggling three glowing spheres, each one containing a magical flame. "What, this?" I grinned at my disapproving guide. "You told me to practice control. I'm practicing control." My eyes glinted with good-humored challenge, daring him to remonstrate me for inappropriate behavior for a guardian, or some such other spurious excuse. Any sort of reaction would satisfy me, a small victory in my war against whatever it was that I was fighting. I was only doing what he had requested I do. There was no way I could get into trouble from that. He may have been a hard taskmaster, but he was fair. He surprised me by tossing his own swiftly formed sphere into the mix. The sudden addition to my ball configuration threw me off, and a few wild juggles later, my orbs fell and burst, mirroring my shattered concentration. His own orb followed its natural flight pattern, and bopped me on the head during its descent, before he recalled his energy. ::Practice more.:: Not the response that I had expected, but certainly a positive one. Perhaps he had decided to join me in my little game. That would certainly make life more interesting. ::It would seem the time for lecture is at an end. Come.:: He beckoned me with a mental gesture, and I set my musings aside and opened my mind to him. I have become accustomed to the brush of his mind against mine over the last few weeks. He has dipped his mental fingers into the mire of my mind many times, soothing fevers, calming rowdy powers. He has also adopted the teaching method of showing me directly inside my mind how to do something, and then withdrawing to a discrete distance to observe my attempts at emulation. I found it to be a most efficient teaching strategy, for there are so many concepts that the human language is unable to adequately describe. In the realm of mindspeech, whole ideas can be imparted with a single burst of concentration, with no worry as to whether something might have been misrepresented. There is also only truth, mind to mind. I appreciate the truth, and know that whatever other bizarre things might happen, it shall always speak the truth. His familiar mental presence skillfully wrapped itself around my senses as he guided me through the lesson. Without words, he showed me where I was now, where I wanted to be, and the path between the two. There is a sweet, horrifying simplicity in the act of separating oneself from one's body. A simple leap of faith, and I would be free of my corporeal form to wander the energy currents, but before I could make the short hop, he reined me in and sternly imprinted upon me the need to remain anchored in my physical body at all times, lest I wander too freely, too far from my self. I acknowledged the warning, and then I was off, sailing through the currents in a manner I vaguely remember from that night. The freedom was exhilarating, but terrifying. I hardly needed his admonishment to remind me of my tenuous hold on my body. It was easy to see how this heady feeling could be addictive, seducing the unwary into straying too far, leaving behind only a mindless, near lifeless husk of a body. It beckoned as the sirens do, enticing me to leave behind all worries of corporeal existence, to desert whatever I considered to be my reality, to be freed even from the bother of figuring out what my reality was. I heard the song all too well. Even as frightened as I was of losing myself, I felt the liberty calling me, and firmly restrained myself from giving in. I had a job to do, and to surrender would be an easy out. And I suppose I am too human to ever truly enjoy being divorced from my flesh. The Shinma live incorporeally for most if not all of their existences; I don't imagine they would have the same difficulties as I. I gained a position of stability in my new state, and awaited my next set of directions, ignoring the call of the wild as if I were a passerby walking swiftly down the street, desperately ignoring the piteous cries of the helpless, wishing that I could do something for their plight, but too frightened to do anything. He gave me the impression of a Shinma signature, and with new focus I swept my mind through the local surroundings in search of such a signature. It was truly easier to concentrate now that I had a purpose for being where I had no natural right being. I got a feeling from the north, and followed it, across the overpopulated field of wildflowers, through the grove of stately oaks, over the small gathering of placid pheasant, and down the river to where it narrowed into a cheerily gurgling brook. The land there had gathered the waters into its embrace and detained the crystal clear liquid during its journey in a pastoral little pond. But innocent and pure as the idyllic scene was, there was a taint on it, and it polluted the waters with its unclean presence. I tossed a query in the direction of my mentor's mind, unable to pinpoint the source of the disturbance, but received no reply, and knew from that that the answer must be in front of me, so I looked deeper into the waters, willing them to give their secrets to me, and I saw. There was a stray lurking in the waters. From the residual energies lingering around the pond, its method of operation seemed to be one of luring nearby human prey to it with illusions of temptation, lifted straight from the victim's mind. When the prey approached the calm waters, no doubt the creature would feed. I fixed the location in my mind, and recalled my mind to my body. When I presented my findings to him, I received no praise, but I expected none. I was doing as I was supposed to do. I received no praise for performing up to his expectations, and that was how it should be. I also never received harsh words for failing at a task, only stern reprimands and demands to try again, so I suppose in the end it all balanced out. ::Shinma Pellectae,:: he identified for me, and I carefully tucked the name away in my head for future reference. There is no true power in a name. The name itself is unimportant, but the idea it embodies is. When one can definitively identify something, one *knows* it, knows its parameters, its strengths and weaknesses. A name, and all it represents, can give a psychological edge as well, against those creatures that would prefer to remain shrouded in anonymity and secrecy. Take that away, and one takes away whatever shields they might have been cowering behind. I acknowledged the name, and felt his mind withdrawn from mine, the lesson ended, and it left me feeling curiously alone and empty inside. There was a peculiar intensity in his touch, a sharp brilliance of his mind's color, and again I felt a distant pang of guilt for having been at least partially responsible for it being sealed away from the world behind a cold, lifeless mask. But he insisted that there was nothing for me to feel guilty about, and so I lifted my eyes to his, and pretended that all was right with the world. "Lesson success, then?" ::For now:: "For now?" ::Now that you have acquired the target, you must perform the main part of your duty.:: My eyes harden at the prospect, and my mind chills down to a no-nonsense business level. "I will return the stray to the Dark. Ryoukai." --- (1) Ryoukai -- acknowledged. _________________________________________ This piece of fiction is the intellectual property of the little turnip that could. The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property of someone else. The author can be con- tacted at jchew@myrealbox.com. This has been an entirely automated message. http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html last modified : 10/22/2000 01:18:08 PST