I hate Mondays: Part 5
Lunaryon
Dual Aurora Wave
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Beneath MCAT HQ
There is a room nestled down in the furthest corner from the stairs on the lowest level of MCAT's main headquarters building. It was originally built to be a vault for another organization before control of the complex was ceded over to MCAT. Dr. Atsuko Chiba has heard only vague explanations of what was meant to be kept in the vault. Whatever it was, it never arrived. But as MCAT's agents started combing Japan in search of hidden Yokai reservations, offering jobs and freedom to those willing to join the public government, they found a use for the vault.
Sooner or later, MCAT's growing authority and power will become impossible for the Onogoro Ministry to ignore. The vast majority of the yokai living at the headquarters are not fighters. Some are, in effect, internal refugees living in the compound while their paperwork is finalized. Others have fully joined MCAT, but like her, are very much not combatant field agents. They, like many human employees, serve as liaisons and social workers, secretaries and file clerks, cooks and janitors.
MCAT is a government organization with a large and ambiguous mission, dealing with 'strangeness' in the strangest year Atsuko can remember in her life. There are always more jobs to be completed, more positions to be filled by those who do not fight.
And so some of the most heavily fortified, most mysterious rooms in the compound's buildings have been modified and furnished, turning places like this vault into safe rooms. A place where noncombatants- especially children- can stay in case some disaster befalls MCAT's own headquarters compound. As is happening at this very moment.
The weight and bulk of the building around them distorts the sound of distant alarms. Occasionally, Atsuko hears the sound of running feet as soldiers, mages, and yokai rush back and forth.
She knows that some of them are on patrol with the special goggles derived from her own greatest achievement, the Velvet Door. They're searching for any No-Faces that might be using the opportunity to sneak in. She's not sure how well the goggles will work, but any hope is better than none. Meanwhile, others move around, making sure that the building's exterior walls are defended, and that the many projects MCAT works on here remain properly contained and sealed. Still others must no doubt have other missions she does not know, or cannot imagine.
Just as everyone else is doing what they can in this crisis, so too is Atsuko. Slowly rocking back and forth, MCAT's resident therapist and psychologist cradles one of the youngest yuki-onna children. She hums a tune, farther off-key than she'd really prefer, but the little girl in her arms seems to find it soothing all the same.
After a time, the girl makes a fond cooing sound with a slight undertone of moaning winter winds, twists to give Atsuko a bracingly cold hug, climbs down out of her lap, and toddles away.
Which leaves Atsuko alone, without a distraction, to sit in the corner and put her mind into order.
Truthfully, she's terrified. There can't be that many people with a bone to pick with MCAT, but all of them are bad news. Wizards and monsters, and nothing Atsuko can do anything about. The best that she can do is care for the children and help some of the yokai cope with their trauma. It's something, but it doesn't seem like much when whatever's going on outside is more than entire platoons of soldiers can handle, big enough to roar like a movie monster and stomp hard enough to occasionally rattle the light fixtures even down here.
To be sure, Atsuko and the children, be they yuki, oni, or human, are in the very back of this, the heaviest and most secure of the makeshift safe rooms. There are multiple sets of controls rigged to seal the doors, one of them within easy reach of Atsuko's own hands. She, or one of the other adults, will almost certainly be able to seal the room before anything dangerous could get inside.
But that seems so small, compared to the scale of the dangers that must be raging overhead.
Atsuko tries to turn her mind away from the seeming uselessness of her work in this particular moment, to the work itself. At least there, she'll be on familiar ground.
She sifts through her memories of the stories and legends of the yuki-onna people that Yua, one of the Icewind clan's elders, has taught Atsuko. Stories connect people and cultures together. If Atsuko could recall the right story, perhaps she could do a better job for some of the children here.
Or perhaps, if she can sift through what she's learned, properly correlate the contents of her mind, she can piece together a way to help her well-meaning, hapless, distressed assistant.
Because Yuko Yoshida is…
The sixteen year old girl stands near the heavy metal door to the safe room. Her trembling hands clutch the giant fork she uses to control her magic. Atsuko doesn't even need to see Yuko's face to know that the girl's eyes are tearing up in terror and panic. But then, Yuko is the one that decided to stand guard at the door, and refused to let any of the actual soldiers take her place.
Anywhere other than MCAT, that would have been nearly impossible to pull off. Yuko's still four months short of seventeen. And she doesn't even look as old as that. She's pale and petite, with what figure she has being lost in the oversized clothing she prefers. Years of malnutrition- or something close- and lack of exercise have left her seeming closer to twelve than sixteen.
Here, well… she looks like a supernatural creature. And the guards have gotten used to people and things that are stronger than they look and stranger than they can imagine. Though, now that she thinks about it, maybe they've taken that a little too far in Yuko's case.
Yuko's from a sleepy little community- Sakuragoaka, if Atsuko remembers the name rightly- in the northern mountains outside Aomori. It sits on the border of one of Onogoro's yokai reserves and sounds like, in effect, an Onogoro village… but an unusual one. Yuko shows effectively no latent prejudice against yokai, unlike nearly every other Onogoro-raised human Atsuko's come across. Which Yuko herself is aware of, and attributes to Sakuragoaka itself being different.
Which is one of only two pieces of good news for Yuko's situation, given that it lets the girl at least begin to cope with the other piece of good news.
Atsuko hasn't learned all the details surrounding Yuko's family life, but the girl's been chronically ill, to the point of weeks-long hospitalizations, for most of her life. Any infection, any injury beyond the slightest scratches, could turn life-threatening, forcing her into the hospital. But each time she went to the hospital, the ongoing signs of malnutrition would grow worse, regardless of what was done for her diet. Public doctors never came close to solving her problems, and from the sound of it the village's Onogoro mage-doctor had no better idea.
In May, Yuko's seasonal cold turned into bronchitis. This time, she was transferred to a hospital in Tokyo with a reputation for providing, at least, a better degree of stabilizing care for 'inexplicable' illnesses.
And that reputation drew Sailor Moon to the place shortly afterwards, at MCAT's own behest, to try and cure a young girl suffering from a particularly adaptable and persistent magical illness. By her own words, Sailor Moon seems to have gotten… carried away… and the entire hospital was bathed in magical healing light that cured and repaired everything that it touched.
Yuko, like the rest of the patients, was abruptly freed of the illness that had brought her there- the bronchitis was gone instantly. But unlike any of the other patients, she sprouted a pair of curled horns and a long, sinuous tail. And, after a brief examination by MCAT's own people, it became apparent what vital nutrient Yuko had been missing all this time.
Magic.
To seemingly everyone's surprise, not least her own, Yuko is what Atsuko's heard called a 'thaumovore.' To survive, let alone to thrive, she needs to feed on magic, and it's lucky for her that she was regularly exposed to at least some magic while being raised as human in an Onogoro community, before her recent changes.
Atsuko has heard it said both that Yuko is distantly related to the gods, and that another word for what Yuko is would be 'succubus.' Whether there's a contradiction there, or simply something to think about, is a question Atsuko's had little time to worry about. She's a busy woman, working very long hours. Because over and above her duties as staff therapist…
Beyond that, there's the project.
Atsuko's studied dreams for years now, working long hard hours with her- partner- Dr. Kosaku to develop a machine for the recording and viewing of dreams. But coming to work for MCAT has given them an accidental breakthrough. It was Yuko herself who revealed to Atsuko that 'succubus' didn't feel like a fit as good for her kind of yokai as another word she'd heard, though she hasn't said from where yet. The term she prefers is "dream demon."
It fits.
Even with only a few weeks' practice, the girl seems to have a knack for connecting to the dreams of others. And from a wider-read, lateral-thinking perspective, that magic isn't just about dreams. It's about forming connections to the symbols and concepts within them.
Thanks to Yuko's help, Atsuko's made more progress on her research in the last few weeks than in the previous five years.
Atsuko realizes, at last, that her thoughts are spinning uselessly as she sits there, waiting for everything to start coming down around her ears. She'd realized, intellectually, that working for MCAT meant being at ground zero if the organization's enemies came after them. But as always, being intellectually prepared for something and having it happen are very different.
For a moment, she racks her brains, wondering if there's a way to use the Prototype to help defend against whatever is happening. But the machine is still several modules short of the full design she plans for, missing critical processes, and even that incomplete system is far too bulky to be carried around as a weapon of some kind. It's partially disassembled, besides.
And what good would diving into the dreams of one of the attackers do, anyway, if they are awake and hostile?
Atsuko takes a deep breath and stands up. If nothing else, she can go talk to the children and help make sure they can process and cope with the fear that they must be feeling even worse than she is.
Yua can feel Nadare trying to get a grip on her weaving. The boy- well, he's grown now- he's strong, even if he doesn't have the technique that comes with age and long practice under the constraints of enervating heat.
But strong is what they need right now; the mist surges upwards. With less control over the fog, Yua struggles to peer through, but… is that machine faltering? Stumbling, somehow, in the air.
Maybe they don't like sleet, or sleet doesn't like them.
One of the buzzing mechanical demons falls from the air. Another, another. It's still not doing much to help Dwig, but it's something.
Then the sky flashes white, lighting up the mist above them.
Yua stiffens as the hissing crackle passes overhead. Magic, unfamiliar magic, fierce magic. Magic oddly cool against her senses, like the morning dew in the winter. White lights bloom across the skies above the fog. Fragments of strange things clatter down, thumping against the paved ground around her. Yua covers her head, as though caught outside in a summer hailstorm. But the fragments are so small. Harmless, really.
And just like that, there are no more curses slashing down from the skies. No more of the strange unnatural buzzing the metal Saimyōshō seem to keep themselves in the air with. She glances upwards, again consciously asserting herself over the fogbank, looking for a sign of them. They're… gone?
Even as Dwim roars and manages to trip up the enemy furnace-spirit he's been wrestling with, Yua stares into empty air, recalling a story. A story she knows must be distorted from any true grounding in facts, but one she cannot resist. Something pieced together from a chain of whispers, taken from the handful of flighty free spirits and other creatures that have made their way to the Kagoshima reservation without being caught. A story that she's told, secretly, quietly, to the children anyway, for nearly three hundred years now.
One day, the Imperial Ministry will do one cruel thing too many. They will trample one more garden than they should. The heavens will turn against them. The skies will cease to show cruelty to the spirits, even in the terrible searing heat of summer. They will extend their merciful hands, white as the snow, and smile upon the spirits once more. The Lord of Kyushu shall shatter his chains and march forth with a terrible wrath. Yahata of the Eight Banners, known to humans as Hachiman, will return and shelter the bruised and weary spirits beneath his hands. His terrible bow will sing once more. In that season, the dawn will come under a crown of sun-bright stars. All evil will be swept away with a fire that Onogoro knows not, and a justice that Onogoro knows not, for both are far beyond its reach.
If it isn't true, then it ought to be. It ought to be.
Could that… could that be coming true?
The mechanical Saimyōshō are gone!
Well, none are still overhead. As she wills her sight to pierce the mist, she notices dark specks dropping towards the ground… elsewhere. None left to descend on her, on Nadare, on Dwim.
But then the furnace-spirit roars in its strange, one-note voice.
"NAKEWAMEKE!"
Clouds of sooty smoke pour out of the thing's visor, its joints. Dwim had gotten on top of the thing and was raining down huge haymaker punches, without much result Yua could see, but now he recoils, coughing, and the monster throws him off itself… And the smoke rises, spreads.
Burning off the fog.
Yua leans into it with all her heart, and she can feel Nadare doing the same- the boy always was a fighter. She tries to hem the monster in, to damp its flames, but here, now, on the very summer solstice, Fire is ascendant and Ice is at its weakest. The furnace turns on her, looks at her with that smoky eyeless gaze that she can somehow feel through its barred visor. And she can do nothing, nothing-
Dwim roars as the fog dissipates entirely, and tackles the thing from behind.
"NAKEWAMEKE!" The creature sounds slightly alarmed as it staggers forward awkwardly. Yua can't imagine how Dwim bears the touch of the thing, and maybe even he can't for long. His feet thump to strike the pavement and he lashes out with his fists, sending the thing rocking forward, tottering off balance-
And oh. Oh no.
Grim-eyed, Nadare is striding closer, drawing some kind of talisman from the belt he wears now as part of MCAT's livery. He can't possibly be thinking of attacking, hand to hand, a monster that can withstand an oni! So few paces away, too few, he levels the talisman in front of face, and Yua only realizes it's one of the new guns just before-
Nadare forces himself to stay calm and careful and above all not shoot Dwim by accident. He angles the pistol up and wills the power of ice into a delicately rune-engraved bullet.
He pulls the trigger.
A flash of white and a spray of sparks obscures his sight picture. Silver meets rust-tinged steel with a sharp clang.
Both the first ammunition he trained on, from Britain, and the new supplies, from America, take magic well and carry it to an enemy in a flash. But there's a limit to what they can break through. And a monster of enchanted, warped steel, driven by whatever energy fuels the furnace of this 'Nakewameke' is somewhere beyond their limit. Or his limit. Or both.
The Nakewameke turns to glare at him, or at least to turn the pressure of its faceless regard on him. Down at him; it's three meters tall and close enough to loom. Snarling as if he's part wolf-demon, Nadare forces down the impulse to flee like frost before a wildfire. He's this close for a reason- he doesn't want to miss.
Nadare drives all his magic into the weapon and pulls the trigger again and again. Though he's hardly the most practiced with this kind of weapon, though his hands twitch with the stress of battle and jerk against the recoil, he tries to aim for the glowing red diamond beneath the grille set in the monster's chest. Sparks fly again and again from the Nakewameke's head and chest. The sharp pops of gunfire, clangs of impact, and conflicting crackles and sizzles of fire and ice magic merge into an almost mechanical noise. The furnace-monster twitches and recoils a bit, growling and waving its arms like a bear stung by hornets.
But finally the slide clicks open. Nadare reaches down, fumbling towards his belt… and realizes he forgot to stop and grab spare magazines. Like the instructor said.
Sheer terror reaches him, then, and paralyzes him for a moment, but-
"NAKEWA-"
"GOTCHA!"
Dwim shouts in triumph, lunging forward, twisting to put his momentum into a kick that sweeps the monster's legs out from under it! The Nakewameke goes down with an enormous iron clatter, but immediately roars again and starts pushing itself back to its hands and knees.
And then a sudden, mighty wind washes over them all.
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