sigelphoenix

Title: In the Blood
Characters: Sae, with mentions of Reika, Ichiro, and Gunnar
Warmakers Adventure: 21
Word Count: ~1600
Summary: The night of the Higa clan's attack on the Guardians, Sae feels some disturbing changes.
Notes: Following this adventure, Sae gained the first level in the Bloodclaw Master class, a class which grants an animalistic shifting ability. In other words, Sae now becomes a crazy catgirl once a day. She didn't have this ability during the time of this fic, but for flavor purposes I am assuming that there are hints of the ability prior to its manifestation.


The second night after the arrival of the Guardians in Tokyo, they come under attack. Reika blasts a mental message out to all of them in the middle of the night, waking them up with an announcement of danger.

Sae rolls out of bed, her body lurching to respond to the sudden threat. The jolt from sleep to battle readiness feels strange, and she nearly stumbles as her legs move in burst of speed that she isn't prepared for. Her heart is pounding oddly, too, as if she were already in the middle of a fight.

But she doesn't have time to puzzle it out - their families are in danger. She grabs her weapons and runs out the door.

***

As she emerges into the hallway, Sae watches as the first spellcaster to attack them dies - electrocuted to death by Ichiro in a single, powerful attack. She laughs, then - a laugh triggered by surprise and relief, a release of the confusion and panic the ambush stirred in her.

But there is also pleasure in that laughter, a pleasure that rose too quickly when she watched the woman's painful death.

***

The spellcasters flee the Guardians' retributive onslaught. After several seconds of hurried searching, Sae catches sight of them on the roof of the hotel. Gunnar carries her up there, perched on the flat of his sword.

The spellcasters lie in wait for them. The brunt of their magical attacks hit Ichiro and Nariko, while another spell hurts Gunnar - hurts Gunnar, which means that the same spell probably would have killed any of the others.

It makes perfect sense, then, that they will die by Sae's swords.

She launches herself off of Gunnar's sword, dodging their spells to tear savagely into their bodies. She cuts the head off of one man with a single blow. She has never done that - should not be able to do that - but feels her arm propelled by a burst of unnatural strength, so that her swing cuts cleanly through the spinal cord in an uninterrupted arc. Two of them are dead before she catches her breath enough to demand that the third one surrender.

***

At that moment, she remembers something Ichiro said to her, the night of her confession to Gunnar. With everything else that happened that night - good and bad - she got distracted, but she remembers his words now.

You disturbed your sister when you fought that ice devil, did you know that?

Sae knows that Reika isn't entirely happy with Sae's role as a Guardian - with the violence that her role as Conqueror entails, and the eagerness with which she inflicts it. Part of her thinks that Reika is just too soft-hearted, and even if she doesn't like the violence, it's a necessary part of their mission.

Right now, however, as she stands over the gutted and beheaded bodies of the spellcasters, with the remaining survivor trembling before the wicked curve of her scimitar, Sae finds it harder to hold to that idea. She doesn't look at Reika, because she doesn't want to see the look on her sister's face right now.

***

Ichiro, Reika, and Gunnar have trapped the leader of their attackers in his getaway car. They are interrogating him right now - though, with those three involved, interrogation is likely just as terrifying as battle. Sae leaves them to it, doing a quick sweep of the dark streets to make sure there are no other assailants lurking nearby.

The police are showing up in swarms now, making her surveillance difficult. But it's unlikely the Guardians will get attacked again, now that they have so much armed backup, so Sae lets herself relax. She walks idly among the police cars, rather than prowling.

Her reflection, glimpsed in a dark car window, makes her stop short. She leans toward the window, staring hard. For an instant it had looked like her eyes were ...

But no, there is nothing strange in her reflection. There is dirt on her face, and blood, but it is her face, looking the same as always.

After one more, uncertain, look, Sae walks away.

***

Ichiro warns the other Guardians about himself.

He has inflicted a mixture of intimidation and vicious manipulation upon the leader of their attackers, the Higa clan, in order to neutralize the threat they represent. He discloses his actions to his teammates, and warns them that he can do worse. That he can be more of a monster.

The others frustrate him by seeming not to heed his warning. Sae isn't sure if they actually accept whatever he will potentially become, or if they just don't believe that Ichiro could be that ruthless - if they think that it isn't possible for someone who is a fellow Guardian, and their friend.

As for Sae, she thinks it is.

***

Ichiro reserves an entire floor of a new hotel for the Guardians and their families, since their old rooms are barely intact. Sae waits outside of the room that has been designated as his.

She wants to tell him about the Yucatan, and how she and the rest of Team Alpha emerged from the temple ruins to find men shooting at them. And how she picked up a gun, and there was no feeling of a line being crossed, because she knew then that she had no lines - she was just going to protect herself, and more importantly Reika, and whatever it took to do that - whatever new weapon or power was needed - she would use it unhesitatingly.

This feeling hasn't changed since that night. The only difference is that now she's ready to do the same for the other Guardians, too.

She knows he could do the same - only not with a sword, but his other powers; not inflicting upon their enemies death, but cruelty. And she might not fully understand his behavior, but so long as he puts Reika and the other Guardians first, she would accept it.

She wants to tell him these things - or at least some of them - but as always, the words don't sound right. Her thoughts don't fit into her voice, and she can't get her feelings through to him, through his doubt of her and his belief about himself.

What she does tell him is that she isn't afraid of the monster he might be. Tells him, and tells him again. Because she wants him to believe that she won't be scared of him. Because she wants to believe that a monster isn't something to be afraid of.

***

Reika decides to follow Ichiro to talk to him in his room, so Sae is alone when she returns to the twins' new room.

She doesn't bother to turn on the light, using the faint glow of the moon through the curtains to see by. She picks her way around the beds, over the suitcases salvaged from their room at the demolished hotel, shedding weapons and coat as she goes. When she gets to the bathroom, her hand hesitates over the light switch, then drops.

In the darkness, the bloodstains on Sae's skin and clothing are capable of being - if not ignored completely - at least mistaken for smudges of dirt. And blood can be washed away - her body, perhaps, restored to a normal appearance. She shrugs out of her clothes, letting them fall to the floor. Her pale skin glows faintly against the shadows of the bathroom, making it easy to find spots of blood and wash them away.

She could accomplish this more easily by getting into the shower, and washing it all off at once. That's what she meant to do, at first. But now she can't seem to turn away from her reflection. She doesn't know why she wants to keep looking. She doesn't know what she hopes to find - or hopes not to find. She only knows that her gaze is locked on the image of herself in the mirror, peering at her eyes, her face, her hands. Looking for ... she isn't sure what.

Sae's body is made for fighting, for protecting the ones she cares about. That also means that she is made for killing, and she accepted that a long time ago. Even when she found out that her body comes from the Hashimoto clan - she accepted that too. Her father told her that she could choose how to use her powers, and she believed him.

But Yanagisawa Otonashi probably assumed that the only thing to worry about was whether Sae chose to use her power for good or evil. He didn't say anything about what would happen if her body acted without her choosing at all.

***

Sae stood like this once before, months ago after the battle at the Ise Shrine. Then, she had only been looking at the wounds she received, and how they marked her body as different. She had only wondered how others would see her body, never thinking of her body and herself as separate things.

That was before she had mistrusted any of the power she developed, back when her abilities had only been a pleasure to discover and use. That was also before she had learned that her body did not come from where she thought it did.

"My name is Yanagisawa Sae," she whispers. "I am the daughter of Otonashi and Mizuki." She wills these words to be true, wills herself to believe them. But they seem to get swallowed up in the shadowy corners of the room, powerless to affect her body. Her blood.

"I'm not afraid of monsters," she says into the dark.