From within the campship sat Yoshi on stiff red cushions in a white room. Before him rested several of his weapons sprawl out on a white table, covered by a red rim band. Examining each of them very carefully; he hovered over a black and grey rod, a white and pink gunslash and a cyan colored talis; weapons all usable by a Force such as he. Though has hardly used the card like weapon before, the one given to him being destroyed by Tuhina a long while ago though he doesn’t remember, he still felt the need to bring it out for this very specific occasion. His decision could mean the difference between saving someone’s life and never finding it again.
He doesn’t know what to expect from this mission. He doesn’t even know how his encounter with the clone will ultimately go. As a force, he could resort to powerful techniques to cripple the darker, in case they were too powerful, but he feared that power as well. If used too much, he could accidently kill it. Thank to this fear, he also couldn’t bring out his more powerful equipment either, as he wasn’t confident in himself enough to hold back. So the man came up with a lie, a lie to think of something to say to the creature and how keep the darker alive, and a lie to allow him to think and prepare himself for what lies ahead.
After exiting their jump to the planet of Naberius, Yoshi told Kazamir that he needed some time to sort out his gear, check if he had brought everything he needed and make sure he had the healing supplies for in case someone gets hurt; all to give the space cowboy his space and the illusion that he was trying to act professional. Though Kazamir knew better, as did Yoshi, to the man’s surprise the dewmen agreed and granted him that space. Since the pale skin dewman was well aware of Yoshi’s memory warping, and after years of knowing him, he strongly believed that the human couldn’t possibly plan anything spectacular with what few minutes he had and thus could not harm his goals. Offering a simple smile, the dewmen left to give the hollow and purposely unwelcoming room entirely to the space cowboy. A silence room, where even the sound of a pressurized door easily drew Yoshi’s with nothing standing in the way to block his vision.
Floating on by in his direction, a knightly helmet shaped mag flew above the table and displayed a series of simple symbol arts in front of Yoshi’s face. After replaying them twice over to make sure it’s master got the message, Yoshi gathered that his mag could not find any more weapons in his bank and chose to return. The three weapons on the table were all he had to equip.
In light of this news, Yoshi leaned back and stared at the ceiling. This information sort of surprised him. Since he had a handful of katanas stashed away, he figured he would have been smart enough to also collect all sorts of other trinkets as well. Or maybe I do have other stuff stashed away and he just doesn’t remember, he said in his head, planting a finger on his chin.
Yoshi shrugged to himself and went back to examining his choices.
“Oh well,” he said out loud. “These will have to do then. Thanks, mag man.”
The mag rolled forward in acknowledgement and took its place by its master’s side. It watched invisible pressures set in and make Yoshi start to procrastinate, where he placed a finger on his ear and stared at his mag, saying,
“Guess I should check in just in case, huh?”
The mag nodded. It couldn’t argue with his decision.
“Aiko,” said Yoshi, flipping over his talis several times for some odd reason. “How’s it looking out there?”
“Since this is a rather odd request to undertake, and since not many ARKs go down to hunt a lone darker clone, you and Kazamir will be inserted manually via dropship to the planet Naberius. Elm will be you pilot for today. I will let you know when you should board the B-02,” informed a woman. “If you are in need of any other information, do not hesitate to ask.”
“Thanks,” said Yoshi, smiling to himself. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“Reinforcements will be on standby should the need for them arise. That is all.”
Yoshi nodded and dropped his hand to pick up his gunslash. Lifting it up to place it on his back, he gathered up his rod and talis to store them away, making the two remaining items evaporate into blue misty triangles.
“Right,” he grunted, standing up so he could walk towards the portal door. “Well now that we know, let’s go check up with Kazamir.”
On the way, the space cowboy smiled at his mag and gestured forward, but the moment he reached the door, he suddenly stopped. Out of nowhere his feelings started to overwhelm him. They made him excited, nervous and impatient. It also made him feel scared. The answers seemed so close. What if everything went wrong? This isn’t a drill or simulation. He was only going to have one chance to get this right.
In an effort to calm himself, he tightened both sweaty palms into fists. A few deep breaths were taken in to slow his heart rate. As he stood there in from of the door, his mag hovered around wondering what it can do to help. It would use a monomate, but that wouldn’t help him feel better, only more energetic. It could rest on his head, but that may make him feel worse. Since it couldn’t think of anything, it chose to take his mind off the situation by opening the door and pushing its master outside, into a hold where a large pool could be seen at the end of the room.
“Finally prepared, I take it,” said Kazamir, who gazed out a window at the lush planet below.
Yoshi shuddered and took a step forward.
“Almost,” the man of teal hair responded, trying to sound tough and serious. “Mind telling me more about the client order you have for me?”
Kazamir turned his head and slyly smiled at his human friend.
“Same old silly, Yoshi. Like a dumbass— always waiting until the last minute to for the finer details.”
Surprisingly to Kazamir, instead of reacting with the usual naive and apologetic response, Yoshi glared at him.
“Just tell me what you need me to do already,” the cowboy said sternly.
The dewmen snickered and waved open a small screen for them to look at. “Maybe if you knew how to read, you wouldn’t have to ask. But since I’m such a nice guy, I’ll tell you anyhow.” Kazamir pointed to the gunslash on Yoshi’s back. “I want you to kill the darker clone with a gunslash. Preferably right under the chin, like a finisher,” he added, pointing a finger under his throat.
“That’s oddly specific. Any reason why you want me to do that?”
“It’s not every day you get a darker clone. I just want to see what happens, and if you can pull it off.”
“Right,” said Yoshi, crossing his arms in suspicion. “You’re not trying to talk all formal like for once.” He narrowed his eyes and added in a darker tone of voice, “It’s creeping me out.”
Kazamir walked over and shook Yoshi by the shoulder. “You didn’t complain when I talked like that in our little visit on Lillipa. So what’s the problem now?” he asked. “I think you need to relax a little. After all, it’s not like I’m forcing you to do something uncomfortable, or holding ulterior motives.”
Yoshi didn’t respond. He only continued to leer. In their awkward silence, a door opened up and drew their attention to Elm who now joined them in the room. In his hands, Yoshi noticed a small trinket dangling from a chain. A small silver chip covered in a translucent case with gold prongs exposed and jutting out.
“Yoshi, and friend,” the shave headed pilot greeted, bowing slightly to each of them. “We are clear to launch. So please board the transport whenever you are ready.”
Kazamir let go of Yoshi. “Excellent,” he said, walking to the telepipe. “I’ll be on the transport if you need me.”
“What’s with the chip?” asked Yoshi.
Since Yoshi had asked, Kazamir stayed inside the telepipe and decided to listen.
“You still have the necklace I gave you, do you not?”
Yoshi reached into his suit and pulled out a simple necklace of wooden blocks. On every block, various symbols and marks could be seen etched into every tile, and in the center of them all was Shiomi’s family symbol in the form of a silver object.
“I do,” the human responded. “Why?”
“Ms. Shiomi wanted you to wear this as well, as another good luck charm.”
Yoshi took the small silver chip from the pilot and searched for a spot to put it in. Thanks, he said. In the background, Yoshi could hear Kazamir laugh just before he vanished in the portal, and though the human wanted to glare at the man for mocking him, especially since he looked a bit silly fumbling around for a good spot, he missed his chance and accidently glared at Elm instead, who bowed understandably.
Yoshi looked back down with rosy cheeks and witnessed the chip’s chain snap into place. Reveling in his small victory, he took the time to examine the chip and see what it contained. Right as he opened a small window full of corrupted information, he felt a shockwave run through his body. His eyes widened in revelation and managed to hit his head against the nearby window pane. In his head, he could see a familiar hand, his hands. As he collapsed onto the cold metal floor, he could hear the shouting of an angry man just before his death to a familiar looking gunslash. His gunslash. This was a memory of him killing someone.
“I didn’t mean to,” Yoshi found himself uttering, clutching his head in fetal position as if he had just made a terrible mistake. “It shouldn’t have ended that way.”
“Yoshi,” said Elm. From the floor below, where the transport rested, Elm stared at the man from underneath the transparent floor panel. “It would be best if we stopped wasting time worrying about the things we can’t change and focus on the things we can.”
The space cowboy shot upright and looked around. He placed a quivering finger against his ear and said with a shaky voice, “I’m on my way.”
Not a word since was said after that. Though Yoshi and Kazamir sat in the same elongated space together, Elm’s ship being built around delivering a speedy medical crew with the space needed for their equipment, the two merely knotted their arms and looked away from each other. Through tiny windows, they view the approaching planet instead; watching clouds whiff by, sea of blues, greys, browns and greens grow in size and their nearing destination; a damp forest full of fog and fallen logs, and the perfect place for their awaiting villain; edge closer and closer. When dropped off, Yoshi had to look up and squint to see the barely visible figure of a ship drift off into the abbess. As a result, Yoshi ended up backing up and bumping into Kazamir. Not catching his attention then and there, he patted Kazamir’s shoulder and looked around, saying,
“So how do you intend on tracking this clone anyways.”
Yoshi could see the dewmen pull something out, but he couldn’t make out what it was. All he could see was a red and green light.
“Don’t worry, Yoshi. I have it covered,” said Kazamir. He pulled Yoshi close and pointed outward, northwest of them. “She’s this way.”
“A she huh?”
“You can’t expect every mark to be male.”
“I know. It was just unexpected. Watch out for that rock by the way.”
“You’re a force. Stopping making our lives difficult and use zan to blow the fog away.”
“That’s going to be a lot of wind needed, but alright.”
Yoshi shot out a readied hand and summoned a large gust of wind to clear out the area they stood in. “It didn’t clear much, but at least I can see something now,” said the human, smiling at his now visible dewmen friend.
Kazamir, whose face did not smile or show any sign of humor, was not as amused and replied, “Just keep clearing the fog.”
“Okay okay, sheesh.”
So Yoshi did, in what seemed to be an endless trail of bark, fallen leaves, dirt and dead grass. They continued on until they reached an ordinary looking and distant cave. A small cave, rounded in opening, in a hillside covered in dirt and tree, with no signs of hiding anything suspicious inside. He didn’t want to believe that there would be someone hiding in something so plain, but according to Kazamir, she was in there. Something further proven by the sudden roar emitted within.
“Amazing,” Kazamir whispered. “To think she could detect us this far out. She knows we’re here, but she doesn’t know who.”
“You say it like that matters.”
“It will to her. Never before has she run into such a great warrior like you.”
Yoshi scowled at Kazamir.
“Shut it, Kaz,” he barked.
In response, the dewmen placed a hand on his hip and hummed victoriously to himself. “Still not one for flattery I see?” he asked, raising a hand with the question. “Oh well, since my humor would only be lost on you, I’ll stop. Now hush. She comes.”
By the cave, a woman wearing a badly torn and bloodied lab coat stumbled outside. Black in hair, tan in skin, with no signs of physical modifications, Yoshi would have easily mistaken her for a fellow human were it not for the overwhelming black and red aura licking the edges of the cave’s portal. Now fully exposed and seemingly taking her time, Kazamir stepped in front of Yoshi and nicked his head in her direction.
“Well, there she is. You know what to do.”
Yoshi frowned and gazed past him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew this person. He still also needed answers from her. The woman glanced up at him. Her burning red irises, the ones he’d seen in his dreams, stared back at him. It was as if she knew he was looking at her at this very moment. At the top of her lungs, she screeched at the sky and charged at them. This wasn’t the woman he used to know, he thought to himself. He didn’t know how he knew, but his gut told him he did. By instinct, he drew his gunslash. In heart however, his body told him not to. He couldn’t pull the trigger.
“Well,” complained Kazamir. “She’s coming this way. What are you waiting for?”
Yoshi pulled his head backwards in regret. He placed both hands on his gunslash’s trigger and closed eye. He still couldn’t shot. Even though she aimed to kill both of them, running at them with great haste, he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
“What are you waiting for, damn it? Shoot her already!”
Her voice started to echo in Yoshi’s brain. He could hear a sweet song and the echoes of forgotten conversations. Her voice was gentle and kind. Surely this couldn’t be the woman before him now. His body started to vibrate. His arms began to shake. In his hesitation, Kazamir place a hand of his own on the trigger and said before pulling,
“If you can’t kill her, I will.”
The gunslash fired. In slow motion, Yoshi watched as an object of eye blinding neon blue drift across the air. His eyes slowly grew wide in fear and his heart locked up. His mouth opened to scream but no sound came out. This isn’t what he wanted. He knew he had to stop it. He didn’t prep or aim it in an area that would do the least damage. So he used the power of diga to prevent the accident. A decision he would come regret the moment he did it.
Instead of using a wall or a shield to stop his shot, he chose to engulf it with earth energy, in hopes that he could stop the bullet. At first it looked like it worked. The photonic bullet slowed down. But then he realized that it didn’t stop it either. Instead, the earth energy became one with the bullet and when it impacted Tuhina’s chest, the bullet exploded leaving a sizable hole where her heart once stood.
“No,” Yoshi cried.
The visions came clearer. He remembered everything now. As the woman fell, he could see her beautiful face smile at him before his very eyes. With all his might, he ran up to her and slid onto his knees. It brought him to tears seeing her lay on the ground as she did. In an effort to save her, he threw up a moon atomizer. When that didn’t work, he casted out a large wave of resta. That didn’t work either.
“It okay, Tuhina,” Yoshi sobbed, bringing out a doctors bag out of nowhere. “I read the books. I know what to do. I can still save you. Don’t worry.”
He put on a pair of gloves. He stared into the bag and saw all sorts of tools he didn’t know how to use. Since a clock was ticking, he knew he didn’t have time to sit around and choose. So he grabbed whatever look the most convenient and when he turned back to Tuhina, he stared into the hole and couldn’t help but shake in fear of the truth. He didn’t know what to do.
“It’s okay,” he cried. “It’s okay. Hang in there. Please don’t leave me. Not again.”
The whole time Tuhina had been watching at him as he panicked and shivered next to her. In a graceful and fluid motion, she grabbed onto his hand with both of her own to stop him from making a fool of himself and to place something into it at the same time. Another chip.
“It’s not your fault. I’m not like you anymore,” she said softly. As Yoshi cried, refusing to acknowledge the truth, she pulled him closer and added, “But thank you for trying.” Yoshi tried to speak words, but couldn’t. “Elder has her, Bitol,” she continued, pulling even closer with a hand on his cheek. Knowing that her time was up, she kissed him, finished, “Please, save her,” and closed her eyes.
For one last time, Yoshi saw her smile before it melted away into black and red mist.
Suddenly a clapping noise sounded behind Yoshi. Before Yoshi could look behind himself, a pulse of a blue kind knocked him off his knees and shut down his mag. His line shield too.
“Bravo. Bravo, Yoshi. This is even better than I expected it to be. The hopeless, stupid, braindead idiot failing to save the one he loved. Marvelous. Breathtaking even.”
“Why, Kazamir?” Yoshi asked, putting the chip away.
“For all the suffering you made me endure over the years.”
“I thought we were friends!”
“We were never friends, Yoshi. Ever since I first met you, I hated you. You who brought nothing to our little group. You who were only brought in because Reinhardt needed a little friend.” Yoshi could feel spit hit his face. “You’re a disgrace to the Grindenwald Mercenaries, Yoshi. You always were a disgrace.”
Slowly, Yoshi got up and peered into Kazamir’s soul with a look that could kill.
“If you hated me so much, then why did you ever bother to help me?”
“Did you honestly think I gave you a robot partner out of the kindness of my heart? No, Yoshi. It was supposed to kill you and leave my hands clean of you blood. Every time I made a move, your precious Leanna would stop me. Oh, how I wish I could murder her too. Her, you and the rest of that family of hers. It’s such a shame too. The robot came so close with a blade always hovering above your throat. But because of your meddling and her self-awareness, it unfortunately broke free of that, forcing me to keep an appearance and watch as that damn tin can saved itself.”
“My mother is not a tin can.”
“Your opinions won’t matter once I done with you. It will die just as easily as you will. But don’t die too soon. I want to see you suffer some more, starting with this. Did you ever want to know who killed Arethusa? Want to know why she vanished in the first place? That’s because I killed her. Hahaha! How does it feel to be such a failure of a father!?”
Yoshi instantly drew his gunslash and shot at the dewmen from the hip. The pale skin man dodged the bolt and unsheathed a thin black blade from his arm. Charging at each other, both blades clashed and retreated. They swung again and missed, nicking Yoshi in the cheek. Eagar to end Kazamir quickly, Yoshi stuck again but Kazamir parried the blade away, knocking Yoshi off balance, and went for a killing blow. Right when he was about to strike Yoshi’s torso however, the human rammed a palm into the dewmen’s overreaching face and blasted him away with a majestic dark burst of megid.
Blood oozed out of the dewmen’s mouth. Kazamir wiped it away with the back of his wrist and smiled.
“That’s right,” he growled. “Use your techniques. You know you can’t best me with a blade alone.”
Feet skidded across the dirt. The two dashed at each other again. Every time they clashed now, Yoshi pulled the trigger for an extra kick. At first it caught Kazamir off guard, costing him a sleeve and chunk of his armored legging, but soon he began to adjust and was on even ground again, pushing forward as well this time. It wasn’t before long that Yoshi lost a bit of his glove and parts of his chest piece. They swung low, making the other roll or jump. They struck high, forcing overhead parries and retreats. Eventually Kazamir’s blade found itself jammed into Yoshi’s arm.
Scared of how the dewmen was going to pull the weapon out, the human blasted the purple suited man away with a cone of rabarta. Trading hands with his weapon, he struck at the dewmen as he shielded his face from the hail of razor sharp ice. Kazamir fell backwards to the tip of Yoshi’s blade and the blast that reinforced it. But like Kazamir, so did Yoshi.
(/)
Coming from within the blanketed forest rang a sniper rifle and the bullet that penetrated Yoshi’s leg. Not hesitating to keep the man down, the sniper rifle fired again, breaking the blade stuck in his arm. Yoshi cringed on the floor wreathing in pain. As Kazamir tried to sit up to see what was going on, a revolver was fired, placing a bullet into his leg too.
“Oh no, no, no. I can’t have you running away,” Kerri cooed, walking towards him with a pistol aimed at his other leg. “Not when I finally have you in arms reach. Shh, it’s okay. There’s no need to be afraid,” she said, taking a seat beside Kazamir. The dewmen struggled to move away, but she shot his other leg.
Kazamir roared in pain. “Kerri,” he cried. “Don’t do this.”
Seeking help, he looked to Yoshi to see him on the floor, his suit swelling up oddly for some reason.
“Oh, are you still worried about Yoshi?” Kerri asked with the barrel of a second pistol pressed against her lips. Refusing to wait for his answer, she unloaded the rest of the gun into Yoshi’s back and then used another. After firing her last round, she lowered the pistol and smiled to the stream of blood coming out of one of the holes. “He won’t be a problem anymore. In fact, you can say he met an unfortunate accident. Such a shame, but that’s what he gets for refusing to keep his promises. He really had it coming to him.”
Kazamir, filled with fright and dismay, laughed nervously as he switched between Kerri and Yoshi.
“Now let’s go, my little Kazzypoo. We have so much to catch up on. Oh so much.”
“Yoshi, help me,” Kazamir chocked. He reached out to the fallen human, but the human didn’t move. “I know you’re still alive, Yoshi. Yooooooshiiiiiii.”
Soon Kazamir’s despite voice grew distant and the two of them vanished behind the fog wall of the forest, never to be heard from again. Starting to lose what little consciousness he had left, Yoshi’s vision faded in and out. Lying on the floor where Tuhina disappeared, he clutched onto a ring box and the flora she rested on. Then, if an angle came to save his life, a cloak of green showered on top of him. In the blink of an eye, he could feel his wounds heal and his body recharge with energy. Immediately he gasped for air and sat up to scan for his savior, feeling sand and dirt leak out all over his body. Before he knew it, someone hug onto him tightly and rocked him around.
“Oh thank goodness,” he heard Leanna say behind him. Yoshi was speechless. He didn’t know what to say. He could only sit there and listen to her say, “Grandma’s here,” over and over again.
Still shaking in his boots, Yoshi slowly looked to the newman woman of green hair and whisper in a hoarse voice, “What’s going on?”
“Me keeping my promise,” Leanna replied, following the trail left behind. “He always did want to see her again, face to face and he got that wish. Now has must pay the price for it. Such a dreadful smelly girl, that one. I would never want you to be seen near her.” The newearal picked Yoshi off the floor and escorted him away. “Come now, let us leave this place. I take it you found what you came for?”
“Yeah. I guess I did.”
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Don't get me wrong though, I liked it quite a bit.
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