7:
At the time that they'd made their plans, Calyx had thought it would be a good
idea to meet back at her dorm room after they gathered the rest of the party.
But she hadn't anticipated that the long walk back would give her too much time
to think.
She'd only half-lied to Meimi earlier when she'd said that she must still be
looking for someone she could trust completely. The truth of the matter, she'd
realized at once, was that she couldn't even remotely consider trusting anyone
that completely. Ever.
That was perhaps not the most disturbing part. She had tried to find a reason,
or even a rationalization for such a deeply held refusal on her part, but
nothing in her memories could account for it. She *could* trust people -- right
now, she was putting a lot of faith in Sheila Ten'kai's truthfulness about what
had happened to her, and she had believed that Nataku-sensei wouldn't ever ...
never mind that -- but there was always just a bit of doubt in her, no matter
who they might be.
That was a good thing, she argued to herself, as the three of them walked down
the halls. It meant that she was always alert to the possibility of betrayal,
so that whatever injury she sustained if that happened could be lessened. Meimi
was nuts to let her boyfriend do things like that to her; she'd obviously
gotten pain and pleasure confused at some time in her adolescence. There was no
way in heck that Calyx ever be willing to allow any girl to do any thing of the
sort to her, and she couldn't imagine any girl ever letting her ...
But.
From what Seira had told her about Meimi, she'd been with her boyfriend since
junior high school. They'd had squabbles, but they'd never broken up. On the
other hand, Calyx had gone through five girlfriends in the year since she'd
arrived in Crystal Tokyo, and she'd had more than a dozen back in Averoigne.
And Shari had called her a playboy-type, said that she couldn't trust her.
So what? Her ego rebounded. Commitment was probably highly overrated. And let's
be honest here, she had been looking at other girls all the time. She liked
looking at other girls. Other girls were *pretty*.
But then she thought of the great romances she'd heard about, and remembered
that commitment had always been an important part of them.
But then she remembered that they were called romances for a reason.
It was with a great sense of confusion that she walked the halls. The sound of
running and shouting that jerked her out of her contemplation came as a
tremendous relief, for the first second.
As an irritated looking Sheila rounded the corner in front of them, with Hima
and Vic Stengovitch following closely on her heels, and Hima shouted, "Cheese
it! Campus security!" the relief turned to panic.
"What the hell did you do to get campus security after you?" Ranma demanded as
he easily caught up to his son.
"It's not my fault!" Vic interjected.
"What did *Vic* do to get campus security after you?" Calyx amended.
"We found him practicing for his Demolitions class behind the library," Hima
snapped, breathless. "Things got a little crazy after that."
"If you hadn't distracted me, the whole thing would have blown up nice and
quietly, instead of dragging the bliping academy cops down on all our heads!
It's *not* *my* *fault*!"
"Shut up, will you?" Sheila finally shouted back at all of them. "They were
probably waiting for something like this to happen. If Vic hadn't blown up the
library's arcane studies wing --"
"You heathen lunatic!" Meimi interrupted. "How'm I supposed to study for my
midterms now?"
"-- something else would have happened to get them after us! Shut up and run!"
They led their pursuers on a merry chase through the hallways, with only Hima's
sense of direction between them and several potential ambushes and circular
passages. After what felt like hours, they found themselves in a
forgotten-looking hallway, listening intently for the tell-tale footsteps of
campus security.
"I think we lost 'em," Ranma opined.
Reflexively, Calyx braced herself to run again if the campus cops appeared as
though summoned by that phrase. After a moment, though, it became clear that
the elder Saotome was right. She took another quick look around to survey their
current location.
"So did m'boy give you the word on what's goin' on here?" Ranma asked.
Her nose twitched. What in the word was that smell? And where was it coming
from?
"Dueling society, kidnapped professor, to the rescue, yay team?" Vic answered.
There was a break in the wall just a few feet away, and as she approached it,
the scent seemed to grow stronger.
"And you're in?"
She took a look around the edge of the break.
"Why not? Rescued princesses look great on the resume."
How in the world had they gotten here? And why hadn't she recognized the
passage that led past the strange courtyard, where the caged garden could be
found, before now? Well, at least she knew what was making the smell.
"Well, that makes five of us, plus two slightly over-the-hill mentor figures --
sorry, Professor Ten'kai." That last bit sounded as though Hima was being given
a Very Hard Stare.
She walked towards the garden slowly. The knowledge that she shouldn't allow
herself to get separated from her companions was there in her mind, but it just
didn't seem important somehow.
"Superstitions aside," Sheila replied, "I guess we should start making plans.
Calyx, I -- where is she?"
The garden was much more important. She had almost met with it twice before,
and the third time paid for all. This time she had to open the door and see
what was inside. It didn't make any sense for her *not* to do it; why else
would it be here in her story?
"I think she might have gone down this way." Meimi's voice paused, then
continued in a much more stifled tone. "Eeyuk. What's that stench?"
She reached out to take hold of the door handle.
"Better question," Vic replied. "What the heck is that thing?"
Her hand clasped the metal.
"CHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!"
Calyx blinked, the strange detachment falling away from her mind as she tried
to release the handle only to find that it seemed to have attached itself to
her hand. The door began to slide backwards, revealing a slimy grey orifice in
what she abruptly realized was a single solid object instead of a glassy shell
around a hollow interior. And then she saw the teeth that the orifice had
pulled back to expose.
Of course, she thought strangely. How obvious.
A metallic slithering noise filled the air above her head, and she looked up
just as a blade of some sort buried itself into the top of the thing's mouth. A
second later, a sizzling crack ensued as the blade abruptly glowed
blueish-white. The handle seemed to convulse in her hand before she realized
that it had released her, and she fell instants before the teeth clamped shut
in a similar convulsion.
The blade, she could see from her new position on the floor of the courtyard,
was attached to a chain, which was being held in the hands of Vic Stengovitch.
"I only have the juice for one of those, so somebody better do something else
before this thing sprouts tentacles or some other daft shit!" he called.
She'd known, of course, that Professor Ten'kai possessed superhuman attributes
of strength and speed. But she had only ever seen them used casually before
now, and she had never imagined what they might be like with a towering fury
behind them. The red-haired woman seemed to almost shift in space from where
she had been kneeling beside Calyx to the side of the creature, and her hands
sliced into its sides like a needle through thin fabric. And then she started
to pull the thing apart.
It bled -- or possibly oozed -- red.
Something was pressing against the side of her hip, almost nuzzling it. She
slowly turned to look down to see Chuchu there, visibly trembling. When the
monkey lifted his eyes to meet hers, they were dripping with panicked tears.
"I'm all right," she said, or at least she tried to say. It came out as more of
a gasp than a reassurance.
Her attention now drawn completely away from the monster, she also noticed that
her right hand was being held in both the hands of someone else beside her, and
she was startled to realize that it was Mimori Seira, dressed in the white
habit of a student nun.
"You will be all right," the girl said in a gentle, soothing tone. "Just a bit
of shock and some burns to the hand, but I'm fixing that now. All right?"
And it was. Calyx nodded, still unsteady. "Didn't know you were a healer, too."
Seira's smile was tinged with sadness. "I'm not."
Despite that confusing statement, when Calyx could finally bring herself to
look at her hand, it looked the same as always; a little pinker than usual,
maybe, but it didn't ache when she moved her fingers. "Thank you," she
murmured.
"I think it's dead, Sheila," Ranma noted impatiently from where he stood, off
to the side. "Y'can probably stop beatin' the hell out of it."
Calyx lifted her head to see Professor Ten'kai, her clothes and face spattered
until they were almost as red as her hair, take a deep breath and step away
from the mound of gray-red flesh. The older woman examined herself. "I'm going
to need a shower."
"Somehow, I don't think we're gonna have time. Haneoka, do you know the Lavage
spell?"
"Is that a joke?" Meimi demanded, then gathered from the expression on his face
that it probably wasn't. She gestured at Sheila with the air of someone
flicking drips of water away, and the blood-and-entrails that adorned her
seemed to melt away. Sheila grunted her thanks.
"Gets more like her mothers every day," Ranma muttered in a tone just loud
enough for Calyx to overhear.
Meimi turned to look at her friend. "Seira, what are you doing here? I thought
you couldn't stand the idea of being on campus after dark."
Seira gave her a trembly little smile. "I can't. Not unto my name, but unto
His, be the praise for the strength that keeps me here." The smile trembled all
the way out of existence. "This place *hates* me. This place hates everything
about me."
"So what are you doing here?" Meimi pressed, looking very anxious. "I'm the one
who goes gamboling into insane situations, not you!" She was, thought Calyx,
showing more concern for her friend's well-being than she apparently did for
her own in most cases.
"I knew I'd be needed here, so I stayed in the campus chapel until after the
gates closed. When I went to check on Empyria-san's room, I found that it'd
been broken into --"
"What?" Calyx bleated.
"-- and then I met my little friend here." She smiled momentarily down at
Chuchu. "He guided me to this place, and I did him the service of carrying him
faster than he could probably have walked."
"What do you mean, my room's been broken into? And since when do you know
Chuchu? And you can understand him? And what do you mean my room's been broken
into?"
"Calyx, calm down," Hima said soothingly.
"No I will not calm down! People have broken into my room, I've been almost
killed twice tonight, campus security was chasing me around, and it's not even
*my* quest, I'm just along as backup, why is all this happening to me! Why
me?!?"
"It's not a record," Ranma replied after a moment. "I've almost been killed
several dozen times in a single night on a number of occasions."
She stared at him, open-mouthed.
"As to why you ... you might as well ask why it was Hima who thought of asking
you, why he almost got blown up by Vic, why he was chased by the school cops.
You're just in the right place at the right time." He shrugged. "That's what
heroes are, really."
He turned and looked down at Seira, who was still kneeling by Calyx's side.
"Now as for you ... if this place hates you as much as you say, then I don't
really think you oughta come with us into its heart." He smiled briefly. "Your
mom and dad are on my list of people I don't want to piss off, and that'd do
it."
"You're very wise, Saotome-san," she agreed.
"Nah, just canny. But anyway, that's a whole new problem: do we guide you back
to the gates and get you out, or let you go unaccompanied? Neither one sounds
like a great idea."
"Chu chuchu chu chu chu CHU."
Calyx blinked. "You'd guide her? But ..."
The monkey looked up apologetically, then pulled out a tiny backpack from
behind him, and slowly pulled it on. He bowed, as much as he was able.
"It's time for you to be going, huh?" she gathered, her heart feeling
surprisingly heavy. "I bet this place doesn't like you any better than it does
Seira."
He shook his head solemnly.
"Okay. Then ... I guess you can look after Seira on her way out of here, and
she'll look after you --"
"CHU!" He looked affronted again, but Calyx could tell that there was a joke in
it this time.
"Okay," she said with a smile. "I guess you probably don't need anyone to look
after you." A heartbeat. "I'll miss you."
"I just need to say a few things to Meimi-chan, privately," Seira said, and
quickly drew her friend aside for a whispered consultation.
"After they go," Sheila said into the silence, "I think we ought to head
directly for the forest. Any more interruptions would probably be fatal."
"Sounds good," Ranma agreed. "Would anyone like to argue with the two
over-the-hill mentor figures, thus revealing themselves to be the hidden
traitor?"
"Actually, that would only happen if there were nine of us, including only one
over-the-hill mentor figure," Hima replied.
Ranma rolled his eyes.
Meimi and Seira finished up whatever they were doing to the side, and Meimi
pressed a quick kiss to her friend's forehead. Then Seira bowed to all of them,
picked up Chuchu in both of her hands, and went out the door.
"I still don't know what the heck that thing was," Vic grumbled.
"A friend," Calyx replied quietly.
TBC