Mania and the Executioner (15 page)

“Okay, that’s good enough. I think you can competently defend yourself against anything beside
s a god so tomorrow we will move on to trying to use your power. Chezarei, go see if you can help Sara with dinner; it might be a good idea for you to learn to cook for Cole! Cole, show me the silencer.” Tia says.

Cheza and I both head
up the stairs, but we split off at the top: Cheza to her room, and me to Sara’s to fetch my gun and the silencer. Cheza passes me in the kitchen with a smile as I head for the stairs. I go down the stairs while screwing the silencer on. I find Tia in the gun range.

“Here it is.” I say.

“Good, but that isn’t really why I called you here.” Tia replies.

“Why go through all this? Does it have something to do with Cheza?” I ask.

“Yes. So far, the only time she has used her icy powers is when she was in a Drive state, one which was activated by you getting shot in the neck.” Tia says.

I
am really not liking where this is headed.

“Tomorrow, when we come down for training, I want you to keep your side to me at all times. I’ll have Chezarei explain how she entered the Drive state, and then I’m going to take this knife and throw it into your neck. The reason I’m telling you this is be
cause if you even flinch, there’s a chance I will end up severing your spinal cord, thus killing you. How quickly can you regenerate a severed trachea?”

(About 6 minutes; during which, your blood will enter the type of stasis that
occurs when you are critically injured)

“Airi says about six minutes. My blood will go into that strange hibernation mode like it did after I got
shot on the plane.” I tell her.

I knew I wasn’t going to like this, but at least this way Cheza won’t
have to get physically injured to use her powers.

“Good. This should be enough of a fatal feeling to force her into it. Just make sure you pull the knife from your throat before you pass out so it doesn’t become truly
fatal.” Tia says.

“Okay, it’s a plan I guess. Well, let me show you the silencer.” I say and then I fire ten rounds down range.

“I have one problem with it, however: it isn’t silent enough. I need a ranged weapon that is truly silent to the point that I can kill an enemy with his friends directly in front of him, without said friends knowing what happened.” I tell her.

“What about a thrown weapon? Like knives…or spikes would probably be better.” Tia says.

“Throwing spikes?” I ask.

“Yeah, you could make Sic spikes and throw them. I think we may actually have some throwing spikes.” Tia says as she walks over to the melee weapon side of the armory. She opens a drawer and pulls out three objects t
hat are reminiscent of six-inch metal pencils.

“With a strengthened throw, and a bit of accuracy, you can make a kill shot from relatively far away.” Tia says as she grips one of the spikes in between her
thumb and index/middle fingers.

Tia
throws it into the front wall, roughly one hundred feet away. I run over to it and I find that it is halfway buried into the concrete, all while done silently. This is something I could work with.

“You could make Sic spikes and use those. If you get accurate enough, you could use something more like needles and by hitting the right spots, you could non-lethally immobilize your opponent. Sara has a book on acupuncture or chi-flows or…something, that you should read and then you should practice using the rubber dummy over there.” Tia says while pointing to the rubber figure of a
male torso on a stand.

“You can practice throwing the spikes while I allow Cheza to try and use her power without having to force her into the drive. I was thinking of giving her like half of an hour before I resort to throwing a knife through your neck.” Tia says with a slightly sadistic smile.

I go upstairs and ask Sara for that book. I read about different nerve points and, with the help of Google, I learn that I can hypothetically use a needle to pinch a nerve to cause temporary paralysis. I could also use a needle to cause incredible but non-lethal amounts of pain. This information could be really dangerous for me to have…especially for any enemies that I feel the need to ‘play’ with. Wait, do gods even have nerves? I now know that they don’t have hearts or internal organs in their torsos. Once I get accurate enough, maybe I’ll try them out on Tia; after all, she will be throwing a knife through my neck tomorrow.

…

Chapter 12: Hellraiser + Sonic

[May 25th]

I wake up at 7am the next morning, take a shower, and dress in black shorts, a black tank top, and even black boxers because there is no sense in ruining my clothes that actually show blood stains. I walk down the stairs and into the basement an hour before Cheza’s training so I can practice with the spikes a little before I become incapacitated. I try to make some pencil-like spikes, the kind Tia showed me last night, but they aren’t heavy enough to fly correctly when made of silicon carbide.

A
memory flashes through my mind, of Lucy Liu throwing a spike through a Shoji paper door and into a wooden support beam, and stops on the image of the spike imbedded into the beam. It’s a scene from Kill Bill Vol. 1 and the spike looks like it would be the perfect model; it is an X-shape in the back that narrows into a point. There is also some red embellishment on the back, but I don’t think it is necessary.

“Thanks for the assist Airi!”

(You are welcome, Master)

I cr
eate five of these spikes and try throwing them. They have the mass to fly straight, but I keep making them spin; I guess the Adroit part of my Drive either doesn’t consider the spikes to be weapons, or doesn’t work on weapons that I’ve made. After about half of an hour, I finally get the hang of it, after discovering that I was just releasing the spikes at the wrong point.

T
he magnetism of the plates in my jacket works entirely based on the individual discs. My Sic blades and gun will not stick to my skin because they have too much mass. The spikes, which have the same mass as the discs, stick to my skin; so instead of holding onto the spikes to throw them, I can just stick them to my index finger and then whip my hand forward. At the exact moment that my hand cracks backward, the forward kinetic energy breaks the magnetism and propels the dart forward. I find that it works the same way if I stick a dart to each of my fingers as well.

I am going to have some
serious fun with this! I start making four inch long needles (that I can make five of for the cost of one dart), when Tia and Cheza walk down the stairs.

“See! I told you he would be down here!” Tia says while Cheza glares at me.

“You scared me…” Cheza says quietly while pouting.

“You know that you can always figure out where I am by using the connection right?” I ask.

“…It’s early and I’m not thinking clearly so leave me alone!” Cheza says, becoming angry at me to hide her embarrassment.

“Anyway, look what I can do!” I exclaim as I stick fo
ur spikes to my fingers and whip my hand forward. All four spikes stitch up the dummy that is about forty feet away, with only about eight inches separating each spike. I’m sure that there is an equation there somewhere about the distance that separates each of my fingers correlating with the vector path of the darts. That’s definitely something I should figure out later; maybe I’ll be able to get up to four kills at the same time.

“Well that
is pretty fucking impressive! When I showed you the spikes, I thought that figuring out how to throw them correctly would keep you preoccupied for at least a couple of days!” Tia exclaims.

“That issue was fixed when I figured out that Sic objects of low mass stick to my skin. I’m going to see how needles work now.” I inform her.

“Alright, Chezarei and I will be over here working on the use of her powers.” Tia says in a way that blatantly sounds like she is up to something, but I don’t think Cheza notices. They walk to the center of the mat and get to work.

After about twenty minutes of getting the hang of throwing the five needles, I know that the end is coming soon. The training dummy is in the back left corner, so I walk forward until I am
standing directly in front of it and completely parallel with Tia.

“So explain to me again
, what happened before you entered your Drive state?” Tia asks, meaning I’ve got about thirty seconds to try this out.

I’m twenty-five feet from the dummy when I slice my wrist open and quickly drag my fingertips across the incision
before flinging my hand out towards the dummy. I do this rapid fire for twenty seconds and then I admire my work. The dummy (and a fairly large portion of the wall behind it) looks like the nine month byproduct of Hellraiser and one very pissed off hedgehog.

“So the shotgun blast severed Cole’s arteries?” Tia
inquires. Oh boy…

“Yeah.”
Cheza explains in a haggard fashion. Here it comes…

“Do you mean like this?” Tia
rhetorically asks with an uninflected tone as she whips out her combat knife, which I still have no idea where she keeps, and flings it into my neck.

‘Well, this is unpleasant.’
I think as I fall on to my back with blood running down the sides of my neck; I knew wearing black today was a good idea!

I start choking on my blood as I hear Cheza cry out my name
while screaming it in my head; I respond to neither. One: because there is a fucking knife through my larynx and two: because it would defeat the purpose of getting a fucking knife through my larynx!

‘Damn this hurts!’
I think as I reach up to pull the blade out of my neck, only to find that it is slightly stuck in one of my vertebrae. So here I am, tugging on this knife that is refusing to come out while it hurts like a son of a bitch with every pull. I feel my left arm losing the strength needed to yank the knife out.

‘
Well this is a stupid way to die! Of the three gods I’ve killed and critical injuries I’ve sustained in battle, I die from a staged fight.’ I think as my vision fades.

(What if that was her goal all along?)

“No, Tia wouldn’t do something like this…she wouldn’t kill me in a staged fight on purpose…right?”

(Wouldn’t she?)

“Tia is my friend…my teacher…my sister! I trust Tia! She wouldn’t betray me like this!”

(But is she truly trustworthy?)

Resisting the compulsion to view Tia as an enemy is becoming difficult.

“SHUT THE HELL UP YOU BITCH! YOU ARE NOT GOING TO TURN ME AGAINST TIA!”

I feel something cold burning my forehead and the blade freezes in my neck as it is pulled free.

…

Chapter 13: Uninflected Tones

I wake up
to find that my head is in Cheza’s lap with one of Cheza’s hands resting on my chest and the other entangled in my hair. I open my mouth to ask what time it is, but no words escape me so I open the connection between our minds.

“Hey beautiful, what time is it?” I think. Cheza blushes slightly and smiles while she plays with my hair.

“It’s almost noon. No more of this nearly dying stuff for training, okay?” Cheza thinks and I smile at her.

“Alright, I promise. Did it work though?” I think.
Cheza responds by cooling down her left hand, and then it starts freezing my chest.

“Ouch
! Cold cold cold!” I think.

“Sorry! I guess I don’t have total control over it yet
…” Cheza thinks.

“No
worries; I’d be more surprised if you did.” I reply.

Tia comes in the room, which I just now realize is Cheza’s room. The thing that throws me off is that Tia has a large gash on her arm.

“Umm…what the hell happened?” I try to say, but my larynx is still on its lunch break.

“Cheza, could you translate for me please?” I think.

“Sure, I’ll translate.” Cheza says aloud. “…Okay, Cole is saying that you are a bitch and he doesn’t want to see you right now.”

“Hey! I didn’t say that!” I think.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that Cole. I didn’t even consider the possibility that knife might get lodged in your vertebrae.” Tia says.

“…Cole says that he doesn’t care and that you should just leave.” Cheza says.

“CHEZA!” I think.

“Oh fine…always have to ruin my fun…” Cheza grumbles. “Cole was really asking what happened.”

“Well, let’s just say that I’m never going to try and force out someone’s powers again; and I discovered that frozen skin does not heal quickly, even for gods.” Tia says.

“Alright, just give me the play-by-p
lay.” I think and Cheza repeats.

“Well the knife goes into your neck, Chezarei sprints over and yanks
it out, which freezes while she is touching it, and then she flings it at me. I could have easily dodged it, but I was curious so I turned it into this glancing shot. It did this much damage but it also shattered on impact with the wall. She ran over and grabbed one of the Sic blades while I grabbed a kukri. I’m still much faster than her so I dodge and block to avoid any more damage. However, the kukri blade freezes and chips a little with each parry. Finally I just take a hard swing at her attack and when the swords hit each other, they both shatter: the kukri, down to the handle and the Sic blade, completely. This experiment has gone on long enough so I try thinking of ways to snap her out of it. I’m about to resort to rope when I reveal our plan and remind Chezarei that we need to help you. Thankfully this snapped her out of it, and here we are.” Tia explains.