deus ex machina - chapter 15/?
Title: Deus Ex Machina - The Instruments of Fate
Chapter: 15/?
Pairings: Ohmiya, OhnoxOC, NinoxOC, AibaxOC + other background pairings
Rating: G - 13, rating will go up
Disclaimer: I do not own Arashi
Beta: r_tenou
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14
Chapter Fifteen - If I Die
Tell me where you are tonight and is everything alright?
Do you remember what I said, while he’s sleeping in your bed,
Now you smile hard cause I don’t smile much so far,
And is he everything you need?
Is he everything I couldn’t be?
Does he make everything match better,
Bring you all the shiny weather that you want
And is he everything, everything I’m not?
If I die, you won’t be so close to me,
And I won’t be the one who sticks around,
If I’m awake, see you won’t go to sleep, I promise,
And I won’t be the one who lets you down,
No I wont let you down
Sachi was curled into Aiba’s chest listening to the steady thud of his heartbeat. Even at rest Aiba’s body was still working harder than the average humans. His breathing was deep and even but completely at odds with the thump under her ear which sounded like someone had hit fast forward the audio track. He vibrated with energy; though whether it was his healing powers of the simple joy of being alive, she couldn’t tell. Sachi wanted to have these last few peaceful moments with him as she waited for Nino to make his move.
Call it intuition or a touch of precognition; call it anything, but Sachi had known since leaving the library that Nino was going to do something stupid. It was far too quiet inside his room for someone who’d made that big of a scene only minutes earlier and even though Aiba had told her not to worry, that Nino would eventually wind himself down and everything would be okay again, Sachi wasn’t convinced. Nino was reckless - she could tell be cause she was reckless in the same way; that much emotional turmoil in one night was enough to send anyone over the edge and she was worried, for Aubrey’s sake, what he might do to himself or to someone else.
Sachi had been in Nino’s head before. Though at the time the situation was lighthearted, his mind was still a dangerous place where darkness gathered in the corners and cracks, building upon itself until the shadows has taken on a life of their own. Sachi had been afraid while she was inside Nino; and for a girl who didn’t scare easily that was saying something. But that was how people who’d experienced a lifetime of pain were mapped out. Even though her brief stint in Aubrey’s mind had been like riding a rollercoaster on LSD, there were dark corners in her head too. Nino was just far more upfront about it. He reveled in the darkness, let it consume him and drive him. In Nino’s mind, he himself was part of the darkness, so why fight it. Like father like son; as far as Nino was concerned evil may as well have been mapped into his DNA. He’d already doomed himself without even hope of redemption. The only time he’d ever lifted his head from that dismal outlook was when he thought of Aubrey.
“Why do I always have to be the only one who understands these idiots?” Sachi whispered to Aiba’s closed eyelids. “Why can they never just help themselves?” But she didn’t mean it at all. This was her family now, after a lifetime without one she wasn’t about to let anything happen to this one.
The telltale scrape of shoji doors alerted her and she crept quietly to the doorway she’d deliberately left open and peered around. There he was, predictable, looking completely strung out. There were dark circles under Nino’s eyes, hair standing on end, looking so unbelievably frail in that moment that Sachi pitied him. He tried as quietly as possible to slide the door shut behind him but his movements were jerky and he was making a lot of noise. He got about two steps before Sachi was beside him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” His whole body went rigid as he rotated to face her.
“To the kitchen,” he tone was scathing, “Got a problem?” He was trying to glare a hole in her face, Sachi was sure of that, but she endured the crazy eyes he was giving her patiently.
“You need to dress like a ninja to go to the kitchen?” She asked mildly as she gave an elevator sweep to his black on black ensemble. If his usual black motorcycle jacket over tight fitting black jeans tucked into boots with good traction wasn’t enough of a dead giveaway, the suspicious looking gloves he was carrying were.
“I like black,”
“You’re wearing shoes in the house.” Nino let out a frustrated little huff.
“I don’t have time for this,” he hissed, “Don’t you have better things to do right now?”
“Oh, is there some really pressing business in the kitchen?” Sachi asked sarcastically. “What are you really doing Nino? It better not be anything that will hurt Aubrey more than you already have today.” Nino scowled and she could see the beginnings of a nasty purple-yellow pattern spreading over his chin where Aubrey had punched him earlier.
“I’m leaving alright? Aubrey will be thrilled. Now she and Ohno can be all over each other all they want. I don’t give a fuck.” Leaving? Sachi fully knew he was going to do something stupid, but she wasn’t expecting him to run away like this. It made her want to hit him too, just on principle. “Now you can either get out of my way or I will move you. Which do you prefer?”
“Are you an idiot?”
“What?”
“Are you and idiot?” Sachi repeated angrily, “How the hell does ‘running away because I’m too immature to deal with my own problems’ fall under the category of not hurting Aubrey?” Nino made to snap back at her but she cut him off ruthlessly. “If you think leaving, or getting yourself killed, or whatever it is you are doing will be better for her then you are even dumber that I thought. She will blame herself She will be inconsolable. She’ll probably try to chase after you. Even if the two of you are too stupid to see that she very obviously loves you, the rest of us aren’t.” Sachi was already imagining Aubrey’s face when they would have to explain to her that Nino was gone. First she would cry, which would be bad enough - Aubrey crying was one of the worlds greatest travesties; but then after that she would just be hollow, the way she was when she’d first come into Sachi’s life.
“She doesn’t, I mean, she can’t right?” Nino’s voice was thick as he looked at the floor and once again Sachi pitied him. Why was it so difficult for him to just be honest with himself? Or to be brave enough to ask the person he should be asking that question to?
“Believe me, she does. So just go back in your room, take your weird spy gear off and get some sleep okay?” For a minute she thought he might listen to her, but when he looked up again there was only panic in his eyes.
“It’s not that easy.” Sachi felt a thrill of foreboding run down her spine. “I can’t see it anymore! I can’t see the future.”
For one tense moment Aubrey was worried Sho had no idea what she was talking about. He bit his lip in confusion, eyes darting around the garden in quick paranoid flicks as if searching for listening phantoms.
“Where did you hear that?” He hissed, gripping her upper arm rather roughly. He was actually kind of hurting her, which was almost as shocking as his vehement tone. He even shook her a little when she just gaped at him in response, an action so un-Sho like that she gasped a involuntarily.
“This time - Johnny,” Aubrey said wrenching her arm from his grasp, “but I’ve heard the term before.”
“Johnny?” She could see his brain start working at top speed as he pieced together the rest on his own. “He said something to you, didn’t he? Why didn’t you tell me before?” As he reprimanded her, Aubrey had to blink away the double image of her father, overlaying Sho like a ghost.
“Aubrey, why didn’t you tell me before?” She was seventeen and like all important conversations she had with her father, she was angry. Also as usual, her fathers scolding voice sounded bored. He wasn’t even really looking at her; instead, he was busy shuffling through the mountain of papers on his desk, making that frustrated clicking sound with his tongue that she hated. She stared at the back of his salt and pepper head and tried to imagine the mechanical parts moving inside; someone as cold as Adrian Belacqua had to be more machine than man.
“You don’t really seem interested,” she muttered, picking at the torn knee of her jeans. For some reason she could never bring herself to shout at her father; not even in the face of his flat out indifference after she announced she’d been planning to move across the world without his knowledge for the last six months.
“It’s probably better you go anyway,” he finally produced from the pile the chart he was looking for and started scribbling on it in earnest. He wasn’t even going to look at her, she realized; he wasn’t even going to stop working for two seconds. She crumpled her acceptance letter in her fist. “I trust you have your Visa arranged already?” he asked.
“Of course I do,” her voice was barely over a whisper as she struggled to hold onto her control, kicking and bucking inside her like a horse that didn’t want to be saddled. “I wasn’t even going to tell you I was going.”
“Then why did you?” There it was - that hint of amusement. He shook his head a little but his hand didn’t stop as he deftly filled in the patient chart and moved on to the second page, checking the brainwave output against the diagrams framed on the wall. They sat in silence like this for several minutes, the only sounds being the efficient rustle of paper and the hammering of her furious heart. She couldn’t take her eyes off the back of his head, the only view of him she ever saw anymore. Finally he asked, “Is that everything then?”
“Yes,” Her voice broke as the tears spilled over. She dropped the crunched up ball of paper at her feet. What had she really expected? She looked at the door - the one she was forbidden to open. Seventeen year old Aubrey could not remember that at one point she had seen inside; she had no idea she’d ever opened the door. That memory, along with a time her father had loved her had been stolen from her without a trace long ago. She’d never been curious about it since, only looked upon the door with contempt; because whatever her father did love in this world, it was on the other side of that door. She looked at it now and felt an itch across the back of her neck, like a multi-legged insect had just skittered across. “That’s everything.”
The next morning her father was gone forever - his study empty and the cursed door hanging open. On the other side lay only an empty closet.
“Aubrey! I said, why didn’t you tell me?” Aubrey shook herself, trying to fling away the memory that shot through her like a jolt of adrenaline. She’d been thinking about her father far too much since coming to this house. She’d done everything she could to push him from her mind since moving to Tokyo and thought that she’d succeeded; but this place, this house, and these people brought him to her mind like a fever. He used the same words, but Sho didn’t sound bored or indifferent as her father once had; rather, Sho was concerned.
“I’m sorry. So much happened between then and now. I -” She was at a loss for an excuse. Why hadn’t she told anyone? Why hadn’t she at least told Nino? She already knew the answer: he would worry - not just worry but overreact and do something irrational. She had believed that in this place they were safe from Johnny; maybe they were and maybe they weren’t, but it was plain to her now that this was about so much more than their immediate safety.
“It’s okay, don’t even worry about that now. Aubrey, what did he say to you?”
“He quoted Julius Caesar at me and then asked me to come on a treasure hunt.”
“A treasure hunt? He used those words exactly?” She nodded and Sho cursed under his breath. “This is bad, come on.” For someone as clumsy as Sho, he was in sure, unhalting motion now, towing her through the house insistently. He tugged her along as he frantically banged on every bedroom door he passed on the way to the library; one swift pound of his fist each, hard enough to rattle the door frame. He didn’t pause to even call an explanation to anyone, not that it was needed; as upset as they all were it was the kind of urgency that wouldn’t be ignored.
The library was as it had been left earlier: Ohno’s diagrams still covered the mirrors, the electrodes that had once monitored Sachi carefully were in a tangled mess, the stool she’d been sitting on before was still overturned by the table, and at Aubrey’s feet was one drop of dried blood, dark on the hardwood, that must have leaked from the corner of Nino’s mouth when she’d punched him. She stood over it, transfixed by it’s almost prefect roundness and felt the guilt of earlier wash over her. Why hadn’t she realized she was getting in the way of Nino and Ohno before?
Sho rushed past to the bookshelves and began pulling books off in earnest, barely pausing long enough to let his eyes sweep the titles. In seconds, Aiba, Jun and Ohno had filed through the archway looking alert and worried. Jun didn’t dare make a snide remark when he saw the growing pile of books at Sho’s feet and even Aiba looked subdued without a trace of his usual sunny disposition.
“We have a problem,” Sho said without looking up.
“Yeah,” Aiba interrupted, “Sachi isn’t here -”
“Again?” Jun growled looking heavenward with a roll of his eyes, “What is it now, a photoshoot? A press conference?”
“Nino isn’t here either,” Ohno said quietly. That did cause Sho to halt long enough to heave a book at the mirrored wall in frustration and let out a string of obscenities so colourful and inventive that Aubrey hadn’t even heard half of them. Luckily he’d been holding a paperback and it bounced off the mirror harmlessly with a dull thunk that caused everyone to cringe.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he shouted. Ohno shrugged his shoulders, looking so infinitely miserable that Sho could have been a bomb going off and it wouldn’t have impacted him the slightest.
“They have to be together then,” Jun said.
“I tried to listen but his thoughts-” Ohno shook his head helplessly, “his thoughts weren’t making any sense. He’s snapped. And he was blocking me, he’s never done that before.” Aubrey couldn’t breathe. Sachi was gone, Nino was gone; Nino was gone. If something happened to them, if something happened to Nino... Aubrey would never be okay. Nothing would ever be okay again. She sucked in one ragged, whooping breath but she still couldn’t get enough air. Her mind was to busy swimming with the possibilities to focus on silly things like breathing right now.
“Aubrey, don’t -” Jun was wrapping his arms around her, pressing her to his chest and rocking her slightly like someone would do to a small child. She turned into this arms and hyperventilated into his shirt as she willed the white hot stab of panic to out of her body. He stroked her back and let her ride it out. “We’ll find them.”
“Unfortunately,” Sho’s tone was murderous, “our problems are a little more serious than Nino and Sachi. Johnny knows where they are - The Mortalis Machina.” The room irrupted into frenzied shouting. The mug covered in multicoloured space invaders that Ohno had been clutching like a lifeline slipped out of his fingers and shattered on the floor but no one spared it a second glance; they were all to busy trying to talk over one another even though they were all asking the same question: How?
“Wait!” Aubrey shouted louder than any of them effectively silencing the library, “Just what does that even mean? What are they? Why are they so important?”
“They... Wait-” Sho pulled the oldest looking book Aubrey had ever seen from the bottom of the teetering stack he was making, spraying books everywhere. The cracked leather spine barely held it together as Sho reamed it open and started flipping through pages with very little regard for how they were all but disintegrating under his fingers. With a triumphant grunt he found the page he was looking for and thrust the decaying tome into her arms. She looked down at the two page full colour illustration that was older that time and almost dropped the book. She’d seen this picture before, as a child in her father’s study.
The boy depicted still looked every inch a prince to Aubrey. His face boyish, his golden hair wavy and long. Around his forehead was a circlet of silver that encased a single crystal making his brow look noble. His body was protected in glittering diamond armour and his sword of glass shone in the illustrated twilight. She’d seen this picture more times than she cared to remember.
“The Sword,” Sho said pointing to the blade, “The Shield,” The armour, “The Stone,” the circlet crown. “These three things are what Johnny is after.” She could remember the rest without any help, her father had told her enough times. Three magic objects that only the worthy bearer could wield. Only now, with a sickening lurch, Aubrey was realizing the magic was really psychic energy. Her father had know about this. He had know about this world. She slammed the book shut.
“It was just a story,” she whispered, practically begging Sho with her eyes to tell her he was making this up. “Just a fairy tale.”
“I’m afraid not,” Sho said taking the book from her before she damaged it and began accosting the shelves again. “They are very real. The Mortalis Machina were forged by the first psychics as keys.”
“Keys?” Aubrey echoed weakly.
“Keys,” Sho nodded, “To The God Machine.”
“The God Machine?” Aubrey said incredulously, “As in Deus ex Machina? As in ancient Greek Gods? As in destiny? Are you shitting me?”
“I wish I was. With the keys to The God Machine Johnny can control everything. There is nothing he wont be able to do, no life that he wont be able to touch. He will be unstoppable. And then the world as we know it will cease to exist.”
Chapter: 15/?
Pairings: Ohmiya, OhnoxOC, NinoxOC, AibaxOC + other background pairings
Rating: G - 13, rating will go up
Disclaimer: I do not own Arashi
Beta: r_tenou
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14
Chapter Fifteen - If I Die
Tell me where you are tonight and is everything alright?
Do you remember what I said, while he’s sleeping in your bed,
Now you smile hard cause I don’t smile much so far,
And is he everything you need?
Is he everything I couldn’t be?
Does he make everything match better,
Bring you all the shiny weather that you want
And is he everything, everything I’m not?
If I die, you won’t be so close to me,
And I won’t be the one who sticks around,
If I’m awake, see you won’t go to sleep, I promise,
And I won’t be the one who lets you down,
No I wont let you down
Sachi was curled into Aiba’s chest listening to the steady thud of his heartbeat. Even at rest Aiba’s body was still working harder than the average humans. His breathing was deep and even but completely at odds with the thump under her ear which sounded like someone had hit fast forward the audio track. He vibrated with energy; though whether it was his healing powers of the simple joy of being alive, she couldn’t tell. Sachi wanted to have these last few peaceful moments with him as she waited for Nino to make his move.
Call it intuition or a touch of precognition; call it anything, but Sachi had known since leaving the library that Nino was going to do something stupid. It was far too quiet inside his room for someone who’d made that big of a scene only minutes earlier and even though Aiba had told her not to worry, that Nino would eventually wind himself down and everything would be okay again, Sachi wasn’t convinced. Nino was reckless - she could tell be cause she was reckless in the same way; that much emotional turmoil in one night was enough to send anyone over the edge and she was worried, for Aubrey’s sake, what he might do to himself or to someone else.
Sachi had been in Nino’s head before. Though at the time the situation was lighthearted, his mind was still a dangerous place where darkness gathered in the corners and cracks, building upon itself until the shadows has taken on a life of their own. Sachi had been afraid while she was inside Nino; and for a girl who didn’t scare easily that was saying something. But that was how people who’d experienced a lifetime of pain were mapped out. Even though her brief stint in Aubrey’s mind had been like riding a rollercoaster on LSD, there were dark corners in her head too. Nino was just far more upfront about it. He reveled in the darkness, let it consume him and drive him. In Nino’s mind, he himself was part of the darkness, so why fight it. Like father like son; as far as Nino was concerned evil may as well have been mapped into his DNA. He’d already doomed himself without even hope of redemption. The only time he’d ever lifted his head from that dismal outlook was when he thought of Aubrey.
“Why do I always have to be the only one who understands these idiots?” Sachi whispered to Aiba’s closed eyelids. “Why can they never just help themselves?” But she didn’t mean it at all. This was her family now, after a lifetime without one she wasn’t about to let anything happen to this one.
The telltale scrape of shoji doors alerted her and she crept quietly to the doorway she’d deliberately left open and peered around. There he was, predictable, looking completely strung out. There were dark circles under Nino’s eyes, hair standing on end, looking so unbelievably frail in that moment that Sachi pitied him. He tried as quietly as possible to slide the door shut behind him but his movements were jerky and he was making a lot of noise. He got about two steps before Sachi was beside him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” His whole body went rigid as he rotated to face her.
“To the kitchen,” he tone was scathing, “Got a problem?” He was trying to glare a hole in her face, Sachi was sure of that, but she endured the crazy eyes he was giving her patiently.
“You need to dress like a ninja to go to the kitchen?” She asked mildly as she gave an elevator sweep to his black on black ensemble. If his usual black motorcycle jacket over tight fitting black jeans tucked into boots with good traction wasn’t enough of a dead giveaway, the suspicious looking gloves he was carrying were.
“I like black,”
“You’re wearing shoes in the house.” Nino let out a frustrated little huff.
“I don’t have time for this,” he hissed, “Don’t you have better things to do right now?”
“Oh, is there some really pressing business in the kitchen?” Sachi asked sarcastically. “What are you really doing Nino? It better not be anything that will hurt Aubrey more than you already have today.” Nino scowled and she could see the beginnings of a nasty purple-yellow pattern spreading over his chin where Aubrey had punched him earlier.
“I’m leaving alright? Aubrey will be thrilled. Now she and Ohno can be all over each other all they want. I don’t give a fuck.” Leaving? Sachi fully knew he was going to do something stupid, but she wasn’t expecting him to run away like this. It made her want to hit him too, just on principle. “Now you can either get out of my way or I will move you. Which do you prefer?”
“Are you an idiot?”
“What?”
“Are you and idiot?” Sachi repeated angrily, “How the hell does ‘running away because I’m too immature to deal with my own problems’ fall under the category of not hurting Aubrey?” Nino made to snap back at her but she cut him off ruthlessly. “If you think leaving, or getting yourself killed, or whatever it is you are doing will be better for her then you are even dumber that I thought. She will blame herself She will be inconsolable. She’ll probably try to chase after you. Even if the two of you are too stupid to see that she very obviously loves you, the rest of us aren’t.” Sachi was already imagining Aubrey’s face when they would have to explain to her that Nino was gone. First she would cry, which would be bad enough - Aubrey crying was one of the worlds greatest travesties; but then after that she would just be hollow, the way she was when she’d first come into Sachi’s life.
“She doesn’t, I mean, she can’t right?” Nino’s voice was thick as he looked at the floor and once again Sachi pitied him. Why was it so difficult for him to just be honest with himself? Or to be brave enough to ask the person he should be asking that question to?
“Believe me, she does. So just go back in your room, take your weird spy gear off and get some sleep okay?” For a minute she thought he might listen to her, but when he looked up again there was only panic in his eyes.
“It’s not that easy.” Sachi felt a thrill of foreboding run down her spine. “I can’t see it anymore! I can’t see the future.”
For one tense moment Aubrey was worried Sho had no idea what she was talking about. He bit his lip in confusion, eyes darting around the garden in quick paranoid flicks as if searching for listening phantoms.
“Where did you hear that?” He hissed, gripping her upper arm rather roughly. He was actually kind of hurting her, which was almost as shocking as his vehement tone. He even shook her a little when she just gaped at him in response, an action so un-Sho like that she gasped a involuntarily.
“This time - Johnny,” Aubrey said wrenching her arm from his grasp, “but I’ve heard the term before.”
“Johnny?” She could see his brain start working at top speed as he pieced together the rest on his own. “He said something to you, didn’t he? Why didn’t you tell me before?” As he reprimanded her, Aubrey had to blink away the double image of her father, overlaying Sho like a ghost.
“Aubrey, why didn’t you tell me before?” She was seventeen and like all important conversations she had with her father, she was angry. Also as usual, her fathers scolding voice sounded bored. He wasn’t even really looking at her; instead, he was busy shuffling through the mountain of papers on his desk, making that frustrated clicking sound with his tongue that she hated. She stared at the back of his salt and pepper head and tried to imagine the mechanical parts moving inside; someone as cold as Adrian Belacqua had to be more machine than man.
“You don’t really seem interested,” she muttered, picking at the torn knee of her jeans. For some reason she could never bring herself to shout at her father; not even in the face of his flat out indifference after she announced she’d been planning to move across the world without his knowledge for the last six months.
“It’s probably better you go anyway,” he finally produced from the pile the chart he was looking for and started scribbling on it in earnest. He wasn’t even going to look at her, she realized; he wasn’t even going to stop working for two seconds. She crumpled her acceptance letter in her fist. “I trust you have your Visa arranged already?” he asked.
“Of course I do,” her voice was barely over a whisper as she struggled to hold onto her control, kicking and bucking inside her like a horse that didn’t want to be saddled. “I wasn’t even going to tell you I was going.”
“Then why did you?” There it was - that hint of amusement. He shook his head a little but his hand didn’t stop as he deftly filled in the patient chart and moved on to the second page, checking the brainwave output against the diagrams framed on the wall. They sat in silence like this for several minutes, the only sounds being the efficient rustle of paper and the hammering of her furious heart. She couldn’t take her eyes off the back of his head, the only view of him she ever saw anymore. Finally he asked, “Is that everything then?”
“Yes,” Her voice broke as the tears spilled over. She dropped the crunched up ball of paper at her feet. What had she really expected? She looked at the door - the one she was forbidden to open. Seventeen year old Aubrey could not remember that at one point she had seen inside; she had no idea she’d ever opened the door. That memory, along with a time her father had loved her had been stolen from her without a trace long ago. She’d never been curious about it since, only looked upon the door with contempt; because whatever her father did love in this world, it was on the other side of that door. She looked at it now and felt an itch across the back of her neck, like a multi-legged insect had just skittered across. “That’s everything.”
The next morning her father was gone forever - his study empty and the cursed door hanging open. On the other side lay only an empty closet.
“Aubrey! I said, why didn’t you tell me?” Aubrey shook herself, trying to fling away the memory that shot through her like a jolt of adrenaline. She’d been thinking about her father far too much since coming to this house. She’d done everything she could to push him from her mind since moving to Tokyo and thought that she’d succeeded; but this place, this house, and these people brought him to her mind like a fever. He used the same words, but Sho didn’t sound bored or indifferent as her father once had; rather, Sho was concerned.
“I’m sorry. So much happened between then and now. I -” She was at a loss for an excuse. Why hadn’t she told anyone? Why hadn’t she at least told Nino? She already knew the answer: he would worry - not just worry but overreact and do something irrational. She had believed that in this place they were safe from Johnny; maybe they were and maybe they weren’t, but it was plain to her now that this was about so much more than their immediate safety.
“It’s okay, don’t even worry about that now. Aubrey, what did he say to you?”
“He quoted Julius Caesar at me and then asked me to come on a treasure hunt.”
“A treasure hunt? He used those words exactly?” She nodded and Sho cursed under his breath. “This is bad, come on.” For someone as clumsy as Sho, he was in sure, unhalting motion now, towing her through the house insistently. He tugged her along as he frantically banged on every bedroom door he passed on the way to the library; one swift pound of his fist each, hard enough to rattle the door frame. He didn’t pause to even call an explanation to anyone, not that it was needed; as upset as they all were it was the kind of urgency that wouldn’t be ignored.
The library was as it had been left earlier: Ohno’s diagrams still covered the mirrors, the electrodes that had once monitored Sachi carefully were in a tangled mess, the stool she’d been sitting on before was still overturned by the table, and at Aubrey’s feet was one drop of dried blood, dark on the hardwood, that must have leaked from the corner of Nino’s mouth when she’d punched him. She stood over it, transfixed by it’s almost prefect roundness and felt the guilt of earlier wash over her. Why hadn’t she realized she was getting in the way of Nino and Ohno before?
Sho rushed past to the bookshelves and began pulling books off in earnest, barely pausing long enough to let his eyes sweep the titles. In seconds, Aiba, Jun and Ohno had filed through the archway looking alert and worried. Jun didn’t dare make a snide remark when he saw the growing pile of books at Sho’s feet and even Aiba looked subdued without a trace of his usual sunny disposition.
“We have a problem,” Sho said without looking up.
“Yeah,” Aiba interrupted, “Sachi isn’t here -”
“Again?” Jun growled looking heavenward with a roll of his eyes, “What is it now, a photoshoot? A press conference?”
“Nino isn’t here either,” Ohno said quietly. That did cause Sho to halt long enough to heave a book at the mirrored wall in frustration and let out a string of obscenities so colourful and inventive that Aubrey hadn’t even heard half of them. Luckily he’d been holding a paperback and it bounced off the mirror harmlessly with a dull thunk that caused everyone to cringe.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he shouted. Ohno shrugged his shoulders, looking so infinitely miserable that Sho could have been a bomb going off and it wouldn’t have impacted him the slightest.
“They have to be together then,” Jun said.
“I tried to listen but his thoughts-” Ohno shook his head helplessly, “his thoughts weren’t making any sense. He’s snapped. And he was blocking me, he’s never done that before.” Aubrey couldn’t breathe. Sachi was gone, Nino was gone; Nino was gone. If something happened to them, if something happened to Nino... Aubrey would never be okay. Nothing would ever be okay again. She sucked in one ragged, whooping breath but she still couldn’t get enough air. Her mind was to busy swimming with the possibilities to focus on silly things like breathing right now.
“Aubrey, don’t -” Jun was wrapping his arms around her, pressing her to his chest and rocking her slightly like someone would do to a small child. She turned into this arms and hyperventilated into his shirt as she willed the white hot stab of panic to out of her body. He stroked her back and let her ride it out. “We’ll find them.”
“Unfortunately,” Sho’s tone was murderous, “our problems are a little more serious than Nino and Sachi. Johnny knows where they are - The Mortalis Machina.” The room irrupted into frenzied shouting. The mug covered in multicoloured space invaders that Ohno had been clutching like a lifeline slipped out of his fingers and shattered on the floor but no one spared it a second glance; they were all to busy trying to talk over one another even though they were all asking the same question: How?
“Wait!” Aubrey shouted louder than any of them effectively silencing the library, “Just what does that even mean? What are they? Why are they so important?”
“They... Wait-” Sho pulled the oldest looking book Aubrey had ever seen from the bottom of the teetering stack he was making, spraying books everywhere. The cracked leather spine barely held it together as Sho reamed it open and started flipping through pages with very little regard for how they were all but disintegrating under his fingers. With a triumphant grunt he found the page he was looking for and thrust the decaying tome into her arms. She looked down at the two page full colour illustration that was older that time and almost dropped the book. She’d seen this picture before, as a child in her father’s study.
The boy depicted still looked every inch a prince to Aubrey. His face boyish, his golden hair wavy and long. Around his forehead was a circlet of silver that encased a single crystal making his brow look noble. His body was protected in glittering diamond armour and his sword of glass shone in the illustrated twilight. She’d seen this picture more times than she cared to remember.
“The Sword,” Sho said pointing to the blade, “The Shield,” The armour, “The Stone,” the circlet crown. “These three things are what Johnny is after.” She could remember the rest without any help, her father had told her enough times. Three magic objects that only the worthy bearer could wield. Only now, with a sickening lurch, Aubrey was realizing the magic was really psychic energy. Her father had know about this. He had know about this world. She slammed the book shut.
“It was just a story,” she whispered, practically begging Sho with her eyes to tell her he was making this up. “Just a fairy tale.”
“I’m afraid not,” Sho said taking the book from her before she damaged it and began accosting the shelves again. “They are very real. The Mortalis Machina were forged by the first psychics as keys.”
“Keys?” Aubrey echoed weakly.
“Keys,” Sho nodded, “To The God Machine.”
“The God Machine?” Aubrey said incredulously, “As in Deus ex Machina? As in ancient Greek Gods? As in destiny? Are you shitting me?”
“I wish I was. With the keys to The God Machine Johnny can control everything. There is nothing he wont be able to do, no life that he wont be able to touch. He will be unstoppable. And then the world as we know it will cease to exist.”