Another cold morning, and as becoming a habit in the last few days, a blue-haired girl sat upright in her bed and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Stretching, she moved to push off her thick blankets the rest of the way and get up, before something next to her in the small room caught her notice, and she decided to hug her blankets close to her chest and flush crimson instead.
The boy priest, sitting at the desk no more than two feet or so away from the bed, continued to scribble things into a ledger. There was a cute girl sitting next to him trying to hide the fact that she was wearing only the thin and not-incredibly-decent nightgown that he had found somewhere and given her a few days before, but the sun hadn't yet dawned on the day someone could actually tell whether he noticed or not.
The girl sat there blushing, and doing nothing else, for quite some time. This, too, was becoming a habit.
After it became more than adequately obvious that the boy wasn't going to react in any meaningful way, the girl quietly got up, tiptoed around his back, gathered her clothes from the top drawer of the dresser, and sneaked off to the bathroom.
Closing the door, she sighed a breath of relief. That boy just somehow managed to rattle her nerves in a new and different way almost every time she saw him.
She moved toward the bath, and was quite surprised to see that the small tub was already filled with heated water. Funny, it didn't seem like the boy had already bathed today. Given his mussed appearance at the desk, it was more like he had been working all night. Which meant... he must have drawn up a bath in anticipation of bathing soon... or that she would bathe soon....
Oh whatever, it meant she didn't have to heat up the water. As for the reason, it was just another of his little considerations, probably. The boy was like that, helping people when he could, but doing it like he never noticed he was doing it. She gently eased herself into the bath and relaxed in the warm water.
A few minutes later she rose again, and slipped into her usual clothes, a nun's habit she pilfered quite a while ago from this church, freshly washed the day before. Frowning a little from the inconvenience, she tied a bow with a length of yellow ribbon, the lengths of ribbon that was now her oldest possession, onto her tail and arrange it so that it was hidden from sight.
Her tail. He had to know about it, if he had carried her to bed that night. But he didn't say a word.... But he did say he wanted to let her choose to talk about those things....
He really was a nice person, wasn't he?
As she tied back her hair with more ribbon, she idly wondered what he would think of her wings.
And threw away that thought immediately. She didn't dare hope that he would understand. That was far too much to ask for.
"So, today's Sunday. The flock will be here for services, and I'll be busy for most of the day. What are you going to do?"
The girl gave it some thought. "I guess I'll go out for the day."
The priest gave her a questioning glance. "I'm sure they'll love to meet you. Don't you want some more people to talk to?"
She shook her head. "It's not that I don't want to meet them, but... I don't think it'll be a good idea. For now, at least."
"Alright, if that's what you want to do."
And that was that. She spent most of the day wandering through the woods. The cold breeze of November didn't bother her, and she absentmindedly meandered around trees to her heart's content.
Maybe she did want a little more human contact. After all, being with the boy did give her a lot of enjoyment. There was only so much a person could take of being alone, of enjoying the stars and the breeze, before she felt the need to talk to someone human again. Wouldn't it be better to make more friends? And if someone like that boy could stand to be around her, surely there must be more people like that in the world? It's been so long since she had tried to live like a normal person...
The sound of footsteps in the brush far ahead brought her back down to earth. She gasped as she realized that she had wandered too far from the church, and was now quite close to the border of the village.
She heard the sound of men talking, and heard the words "church" and "monster" spoken by a number of men. That could only mean one thing. Those were the same words she heard when that party of men from the village came and wrecked the church while the boy was away!
She quickly moved back in the direction of the church. Thankfully she was faster than a marching group of villagers, so she could get there in time to warn, but could she do it quickly enough that something could be done?
The priest looked up from the passage he was reading as she threw open the double doors to the church and ran (awkwardly, she realized, since she wasn't much of a runner) down the aisle to the pulpit where he stood. The parishioners gathered on the pew watched her in surprise, but she couldn't spare them any attention as she breathlessly explained what she had seen to the priest.
The priest gave her a concerned look as they both ignored the shocked gasps that came from the parishioners at her news. After a moment of thought, he seemed to come to a conclusion, and simply told her to stay out of sight while he tried to reason with the villagers.
So she did, hiding against the wall and watching from one of the windows as the priest went outside, past the gates, and waited for the villagers to arrive. Arrive they did a few minutes later, and she watched as he spoke to them. She couldn't hear what was said, but the people he was speaking to seemed to get angrier and angrier, until at last one of them seized him by the collar and threw him onto the steps leading to the doors.
She couldn't stand it anymore. It was really her fault that all of this was happening. She didn't want any of it, but she couldn't let the boy that had helped her get hurt again.
The villagers, and the priest, all turned their attention to the church doors as a girl came out. From behind her, some members of the flock tried to restrain her, but she ignored them as she helped the priest to his feet again.
"And who's this lass? Eh?" one villager asked.
"A friend of mine, that's all," the priest replied.
"A friend? And one we've never seen before? That's not much of an answer, priest!" The villager moved to seize the girl, who backed away at the look of hostility on his face. The priest moved to block him, and neither noticed when the girl shuddered.
As priest and the villager started to yell at each other, she tried to block out their voices with her hands over her ears, but the sound still came through, and she continued to shake, until at last, the girl fell to her knees as she crumpled as if in some terrible pain. The priest looked back at her in surprise, as did the rest of the villagers, not knowing what was happening.
The animosity in the air was too much for her to bear, and from her back, a blurred shape of darkness grew, until it covered her body, moving like heavy cloth that hid her from view. The dark figure rose up again, taller, like some demonic thing cloaked in its own darkness. From within the depths of its hooded "head", two dots of fiery red shined evilly.
The villagers quailed under those dots of red. The priest drew back with a unreadable look on his face.
The dark figure swept its... gaze? over the people before it, before orienting on a particular man in front of the crowd of villagers. With a deafening, wordless roar of anger, a giant clawed hand burst forth from within its... robes? and reached toward the man, who appeared frozen in his tracks.
"Get out of the way!" shouted the priest as he tackled the larger man. The two of them fell to the ground as the giant, dark hand scratched an impressively deep furrow in the ground where they had been a moment before.
The priest jumped to his feet, and screamed to the others to run. The villagers obeyed, fleeing back down the path they had come from as fast as they could. The dark figure, seeing its prey escaping, lunged forward with frightening speed after them, but was stopped as the priest jumped into its path and somehow forced it to a halt. The figure screamed in anger, and swept its arm across to bat the offending person out of the way.
The priest flew like a rag doll before hitting the ground hard. An instant later, he rolled, and came back onto his feet again, the same unreadable look on his face. The church courtyard was already deserted. The villagers were nowhere in sight.
Seemingly angrier than ever, the dark figure gestured with a hand, and a dark sickle-shaped object flew forward with blinding speed, almost slicing into the priest's back as he dropped prone onto the ground, before arcing off into the sky.
The priest pushed himself up again, and very slowly raised open hands toward the dark figure to show that he wasn't going to fight.
His overture of peace was wasted. The figure gave another deafening roar of frustration, and he tensed, ready to jump out of the way of any attack.
He was surprised when the ground beneath him buckled, and a blazing circle of light surrounded him. He fell forward into the ground at his feet, and could only watch as darkness exploded upward around him and enclosed him, trapping him in a black, impenetrable coffin of shadow.
The dark figure rippled for a moment in agitation, before withdrawing, from somewhere within its robes, a huge bow. It drew the bow back, and released; six bolts of flame slid through the air like serpents before colliding with the dark coffin suspended in the air.
The explosion was, strangely, more felt than heard.
The figure rippled again, this time more violently, until at last it gave a shriek and collapsed. The darkness that was its body convulsed, and shrank and flowed inward until there was nothing left except a small, blue-haired girl curled up on the ground.
She got up, and ran to the priest, who was lying in a crater a small distance away, his clothes burnt beyond recognition, his skin completely untouched.
"I'm so sorry! I didn't want any of this to happen, or for you to get hurt! I can't help it when something like this happens! Please believe me!" she wailed.
"How is he?" Yamanaka asked. Her husband and the rest of the parishioners gathered there looked up as the girl returned. Outside, the sun was setting.
She sighed, and rubbed away some tears. "He's still unconscious. I-I tried to talk to him, but.... This is all my fault! If I could only control myself, this wouldn't have happened and he wouldn't have been hurt! Everyone would have been able to live in peace if I hadn't come here!" She broke into sobs again.
"There, there, child. It's not your fault... I'm sure the Father won't hold it against you," Yamanaka's husband said, then looked up. "Where's Sachi-chan?"
The girl turned toward the door to the caretaker's quarters. "She's still with him...."
"I better bring her here before she starts bothering the Father's rest."
The father left, and the rest of the parishioners gathered closer around the communion table.
Soon, one of them spoke.
"Look, right now we have to think about what to do. The others have probably returned to the village and spread the story already. We have to come up with something to say to them to smooth things over."
The gathering murmured in agreement.
The girl shook her head. "I... I don't know how I can possibly explain all of this to everyone in the village. Wouldn't it be better for me to leave? I mean, if I go, nothing has to happen, right?"
"If we don't have you with us to explain it, no one will believe anything we say, you know," one of the other parishioners replied.
"I guess so...."
The young mother smiled at her. "Don't worry, we're here to help you."
The girl was about to thank her, but the sound of a door closing made the all look up, as Yamanaka's husband came back with little Sachi in tow. His face was pale, and the girl noticed that he was glancing toward her nervously. "What's wrong? Yamanaka-san?"
"Something you should see." The father thrust something at her, a plain manila folder. She gingerly took it, and glanced inside. In it was a few sheets of paper, official looking documents.
"What is this? Where did you get it?" she asked.
"It was on Father Saotome's desk, in plain sight."
Confused, she took out the first page and looked at it more carefully. It was just a simple piece of paper, no official letterhead or anything. So she read the first paragraph.
Subject was acquired in the Rhône-Saône river valley near Valence by a detachment of Hospitallers, engaged in a class-4 suppression action against cultists of the . The subject is female, of young age (no birth records were found after extensive search), of abnormal hair and eye coloration for individuals of the region (blue and red, respectively). The reason for her presence in the area was not conclusively determined, and given the modus operandi of the , she was determined to be under small but significant risk of capture by pagan individuals. Until such time as new information is received, as precedent dictates, the subject has been transferred to the authority of the Holy See for protection and further observation.
It took her a moment to think about what that meant, but when at last her mind made the connections....
"No... it couldn't be... he couldn't be one of them...."
The folder fell from numb fingers as the girl slowly backed away, her eyes blank. Soft murmurs of denial passed from her lips, and she shook from a chill only she could feel.
"What's wrong? What's wrong?" someone, she couldn't tell whom, asked worriedly. She couldn't scream. She couldn't stay. She had to run away! Away from here!
Whirling, she made for the doors on the other side of the nave.
And stopped.
The others followed her gaze across the long room, toward the figure leaning, arms crossed, against the closed double doors that led outside the church.
Shadows covered the figure's face and body, and the only thing that could be seen was the curiously bright glint of a silver cross hanging from its neck.
The figure came forward.
The girl fell back. "It's you... you...."
The light from the sky outside touched the figure's face, showing a cheerful, honest smile. He nodded. "No matter how far and how hard you run, you won't escape us. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is."
"Why won't you leave me alone? I haven't done anything. I haven't hurt anyone else. Please leave me alone!" she cried as she dropped to her knees.
The young priest, dressed in a new dark shirt with white collar plainly visible, sighed. "If only we would, maybe you'd finally have some peace, right? But we can't do that, and you know why. You've always been a bright child. When you ran from us, you already knew that this was what would happen." He was halfway down the aisle now, while the girl was still collapsed on the steps up to the chancel. "Please don't cry. It won't help, and...."
The parishioners stepped between them, blocking him from the girl. She looked up in surprise, as did the priest, as they protectively shielded her. "Father Saotome! What are you saying!? What are you going to do!?" Sachi's father cried.
"That girl is something that does not belong in the world. I am here to remove her from it, that's all." Even saying it, the priest's smile stayed bright, like the glow reflecting off the cross hanging from his neck. "The rest of you don't need to know any more about it. Only... that it must be done." His eyes hardened a little, and his voice did too. "This isn't something for you to see. Take that child," he gestured to Sachi, "and leave. Go now, and pray, and this will be nothing more than a dream come morning."
Little Sachi looked at him with fearful eyes. Even a child could see that he should be feared. The priest's eyes softened again. But his tone did not. "Leave quickly, children. You might wish to save that girl, there is already nothing you can do."
"Look, please Father. We don't know what any of this means, but surely you can't harm this child?" Yamanaka pleaded. Trust a mother to say those things.
"I can, and I must, and I will." He took a single step forward. "Last chance."
The rest of the villagers exploded.
"Y-you can't be the same boy who lived among us for so long!"
"Are you really a man of God!?"
"How could you even think to do this!?"
"Who are you!? Who are you really!?"
The priest slowed to a stop again only a few meters away from the steps. He slowly stroked his chin with hand, letting his smile, the same light-hearted grin that he had given so many times in the past, fade away.
"Who am I? If you really want to know, then I want to know something too."
The villagers and the girl shied back in confusion.
"It's only fair after all. You see, I don't know you," he nodded toward the girl, "and I don't think you've ever had a name while you were under our care. So... if you tell me who you are, then I'll tell you who I am. Does that sound fair?"
The girl, bravely trying to keep from shaking, slowly stood up and stepped forward, ignoring protests of the rest.
"I... I'm Dizzy."
The priest nodded. "That's a cute name. In that case," he gave a polite bow, "pleased to meet you, Dizzy. As for myself...."
He casually slipped a pair of white gloves from a pocket and slipped them on. From nowhere, he withdrew a Bible, a small, black book with a cross woven in gold thread on its cover. Outside, fierce winds began to blow, and dark clouds covered the sky.
"As for myself, I am Judas."
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Fri, 17 Dec 2004 03:58)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.