Glass

[Charlie Nine]

[24FEB2015]



It was a cool, dark place, the small safe that the woman Charlie called Andrea kept hidden away in the office of her gym. It smelled of manila file folders and stale pastries once hidden from thieving hands. It was drab and dreary and uninspired, an empty buffet table to the eyes and as welcoming as a cold gray firepit.

That was the Red Opal’s opinion, anyway.

It had been home for an infuriating span of weeks since the Decision Makers in the vaunted Outback (the cess pit should have been burned down again) had chosen to return it to the half-breed creeper’s possession. And his response to the undeserved gift? Imprisonment!

Betrayal! It seethed, bathing the confined space with important speckles of angry red light. Abused! Misused! Cast off, after everything I did, I…

The wry humor set in soon after.

Had it coming.

It was easier to admit when there was no one to share it with.

Instead FireStar stewed. For weeks, it refused to capitulate. It’s consciousness glowered like a burning ember, waiting for the appropriate moment.

That moment came in the deepening hours of the night, after the last hands were shutting off the power to the gym and taking their leave, creating a level of quietude as unsettling as it was welcome. Being alone, unattended, was a notion the Red Opal had become accustomed to and, regardless of the positive or negative connotations attached to it, continued to dislike. Through the weakened scope of its extended senses, it could make out the smooth, sibilant rasp of shadows made flesh as the hulking form coalesced and paused its heavy muzzle less than a hand’s breadth from the safe door.

Fiery Rock, the words slammed down with surprising force, more images and ideas than spoken verse, like using a hammer and chisel to write as sonnet on parchment. Dark Child in trouble.

Dark Child?

Yes. Dark Child. Commands your burn.

Commands my b--- I am not a thing to be commanded. I am--

Find Soul Mender. She will help. Will need cold for balance.

Soul Mender? Cold… No. I want nothing to do with that silly little whore. Charlie Nine will die before I debase myself befo--

Dark Child not die. Worse than death. Unmaking.

Worse than--

The Red Opal was cut off again.

Dark Child needs you. Her. Us.

Help.

Find Soul Mender.

…

….

…

I will do this...But thing to command me again and I will burn you to cinders, you dirty, dragon-scaled plague…

There was, unfortunately, only one way to reach out to the dirty little slant-eyed harlot.

The object of your vapid, girlish affections is in beyond mortal peril, little girl. It was an ominous tone, delivered with a heavy helping of dire gravitas and a spoonful of drama. But through the connect of the two Opals, the intent struck far deeper than the churlish words. Act now or find a new idiot to hang from your delicate little arm. Charlie Nine is in…

THE VOID! Co’ba’s rumble was a sudden shock to all when it invaded the connection. VOID HAS BOY!

[JC]

February 24th, 2015

Gone. He was gone, just like that. It was inconceivable, his sudden disappearance from the dueling ring. How does that even happen? It’s not as though he would have gone willingly, would he? Once Jin had recovered from her shock, it gave way to dismay and without further explanation, she too took her leave. At least she knew where she was going, slashing a gap into the shadow realm that butted up against Rhy’Din and its extensions like some twisted carnival mirror reflection. It was enough to clear her head, focus overriding panic.

“Mmk, help me find him.” She murmured aloud, traversing the dark with ease, sidelong attention watching as the temperate island reflection gave way to a more urban landscape. Timing it just right, she emerged three blocks from the high rise that hosted the Chae Fortress of Prostitude and slowed her pace lest she draw attention for her frantic hurrying. Steadying her breathing, she came to a stop in the massive shadow of the tower that loomed over her.

I can’t.

What do you mean, you can’t? Or are you and Red not on speaking terms?

My brother is not in his Keeper’s possession.

Jin pursed her lips. She should have known. Ever since Charlie got it back, she hadn’t felt FireStar’s presence, like he couldn’t quite believe that the red rock had come back to him.

Are you going to lock me up too?

For the first time, Jin thought she detected a hint of worry in IceDancer’s tone. While she had done it before, she never had for the length of time Charlie had kept FireStar away.

Depends are you gonna get--

Interrupted, unceremoniously and without any regard for the previous conversation. The voice tolled in her mind like some ominous spectre bearing news of the worst sort. It annoyed her, until she listened.

The object of your vapid, girlish affections is in beyond mortal peril, little girl. Act now or find a new idiot to hang from your delicate little arm. Charlie Nine is in…

From one interruption to another, she found another intruder into their private little conversation and Jin wondered just how full her brain could get.

THE VOID. VOID HAS BOY.

A beat passed. Then a second and a third. At last a reaction registered and she thought her heart had first leapt into her throat and then dropped like an anchor into the pit of her stomach. If there was ever a time to experience overwhelming dread, that time was now. But other than the knot that had twisted her insides, she was otherwise numb.

Co’ba? I’m at home. Find me and take us there.

[Charlie Nine]

Home.

It was a word that didn’t fit very well within the shifting chaos of the great beast’s mind, an abstract inkling of places slept or prowled or the minutes whiled away in, an unflattering collection of dark, dank holes, shadowy crevices, and gunmetal grey cages with funny white characters painted across them. Captivity and freedom were just different sides of the same coin, with both the Void and the Other places paying court to the perpetual movements and machinations of larger, faster, or smarter predators. Co’ba’s great grey muzzled waved back and forth subtly with in concentration, feline-esque ears flicking in annoyance as he attempted to use near human intelligence to jog an animal’s spotty memory.

It was a warm place. Very warm. And high up, like a mountain. A tall, thin mountain with many, many glowing lights inside, from top to bottom. Soul Mender’s lights were closer to the top than the bottom. She had let Dark Child bring him there at times, through the Void or one of the big holes in the mount--.. WINDOW! It was called window! Within, the girl and boy had laid their legs on him while giving offerings of hot food and little white bits of not-meat the girl called poopcore… popcane… POPCORN! He often slept while they talked quietly or watched the there-not-there people on the box or mated vigorously. Leaving became preferable when the girl started making too much noise, but…

Home!

The image was firmly in the his mind, a vivid assortment of blacks, whites, and greys, coalescing into still-fuzzy detail, but it was enough. The great creature, all scale and fur, fastened it’s two tentacles to the fall and shifted it’s perception, it’s cellular structure, and finally thrust it’s maw through the molecules of the safe door. It caught the Red Opal between it’s teeth and withdrew, leaving the safe unharmed before it’s large body began to dissolve, shifting and…

The air within Jin Chae’s bedroom grew frigid cold and uncomfortably hot in the same moment, a near impossibility, as reality warped, bent, and then righted itself beneath the sudden soundless appearance of Charlie Nine’s sometimes companion, something akin to a great hunting cat the size of a horse, with dark fur, dragon-like scales, and a pair of long wicked looking tentacles sticking from it’s flanks. It appeared face-to-face with the little red-headed asian beauty, it’s obsidian eyes both dead and very much alive, were awash with a cold fire that threatened to create and run away in a panic. It lowered it’s head and butted it against her chest, impatient and hinting at a worry that its expression was incapable of betraying. Once, twice, and the on the third time it lifted the great muzzle. A familiar weight fell into her palm, the small rock warm to the touch and pulsating a bright, angry red.

Urgency. The air was thick with it’s tension.

[Charlie Nine]

Well that was quicker than Jin thought it would be. In any other circumstance, coming face to face with a creature like this would be the beginning of an unfortunate end and an unpleasant death or the beginning of those Japanese hentai videos Morgan would get caught looking at in the public library. Thankfully it was neither and she was of the mind to give the great being a quick scritch when she caught his broad head to her chest. Instead she found herself fumbling to catch the red rock that tumbled into her hand. The blue rock’s instinct almost had her pulling away, content to drop it on the floor but something more important overrode the urge and she curled her fingers tightly around the hot rock. Red in the right, blue on the left, it was a less than fun tug of war on her natural balance but a steadying breath was sucked in between her teeth and she dipped her chin to Co’ba.

“Let’s go.” An arm looped loosely and a bit uncomfortably but the discomfort didn’t compare to what came next. She had always wondered what it was like to be stuffed inside of a pop can just before it was crunched for recycling. Not really, but that’s what came to mind under the crushing weight of the Void as it spread around her. Once upon a time she had been swept through by the whirlwind known as Charlie Nine, whisked from one end and out the other side in a matter of moments. There was no quick escape this time and her introduction thanks to Co’ba was far less gentle than Charlie had been. She hadn’t even had time to get a deep breath before the pair had fallen into the fade and Jin quickly found her lungs aflame and her head spinning. It was getting dark, darker than she remembered but just as she felt it may go pitch black, her chest heaved with a deep breath. Sweet, sweet air.

You owe me.

Us.

Hardly.

Shut up! Thanks, whatever. Where am I going now?

Follow the fiend.

Make haste.

The great cat-like beast threw a snarl over his heavily muscled shoulder, feral ire directed at Jin’s left hand before its focus turned to what lay ahead. Scale and sinew shifted beneath her diminutive weight, like the coil of some great steel springs beneath the sleek armor of his big body, tension ready to be released. Co’ba paused before the first leap, an almost casual consideration the offered time to tangle arms in the thick ruffage of fur (it was fur, right?) around his neck.

Fiend, cat, meat popsicle. Whatever!

The first bounding leap seemed to carry them a few dozen yards and Co’ba landed with a fluid shudder of his body, like a great serpentine undulation that prevented his passenger from succumbing to the jarring force of the impact. Instead it was like riding the rolling wave of a wave pool at some simple waterpark, an almost giggle-worthy experience until he leapt again. The landscape served as a stark reminder that there was nothing for any sane person to laugh about, as darkness and dancing shadow cast a horrifying pall over a wasted and decaying version of New Haven, a place seemingly devoid of life until until dozens of blinking, incandescent eyes presented themselves in fleeting glimpses in the periphery. What could have been a scream or even just the howl of a fell wing echoed in the distance, muted and then given voice again with no beats missed.

Co’ba juked and ducked at one point, a dozen jumps in, the only sign of danger coming from the brief buffeting wind over head. There and gone, the urgency of the moment only truly felt in the Void-beast-turned-mount’s sibilant hiss. The scenery of the Other Rhy’din was memorable only in random moments, a familiar monument recalled more from the subconscious than any true recognition, flashing by in streaks due in large part to the alacrity of the journey.

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.

Is that supposed to mean something?

Van Gogh. The man was passionate. He had the fire of creation in his soul. It’s admirable. I’m trying to inspire the girl.

Does she need the motivation?

Well, how motivated are you to save him?

[JC]

She was torn, caught between wide eyed wonder and the sort of terror that makes you hide your head under the blanket as if that’s going to stop the axe murderer. Natural instincts, the ones she had suppressed for so long while around Charlie, finally bubbled to the surface, tugging at her and willing her to just go home. That it wasn’t worth it, not when it came to self preservation. The war of red versus blue raged on in her mind until finally the need for silence won out.

SHUT UP! Enough. Stop it. Now. Or I’ll leave you both here. Her grip on Co’ba tightened, she took a deep breath of opal created air, and all went quiet. Well, other than the unnatural howls and screeches, a terrifying cacophony that echoed through her ear canals and left a slimy sort of chill along her spine, the sort of aberrant cold that not even IceDancer could shake.

Ears previously flattened against a large head perked as if the great beast had heard the admonishment given the two mystical stones as easily as he was attuned to their own chatter. A crooned purr deep in his throat warmed him further to so named Soul Mender, creating a palatable moment deep within the murky sea of despair that was the Void.

But miles away, Charlie Nine struggled.

So why not just give in?

The question played itself over and over in his mind, cogent thought a fleeting, laughable thing beneath the pressure on his chest and the slowly growing sensation of drowning in something. It could have been so easy, really, latching onto the chilling cacophony that threatened to all put permeate every single cell. It reminded him that there wasn’t a time within the craterous landscape of his memory that he hadn’t existed without someone else at the helm of his ship. Always a voice whispering into his ear. It was what made him nobody and yet, without it, he was still nobody.

Let Us hold you. Let Us take away the choices. She has already moved onto another, yes. The blue-haired one. Maybe the narcissist with the big hammer. May is coming, you know, and who better than to help wash off the body paint? She’s already gone. We are here. Just abide a little longer. You’re already forgetting her. Her smile. Her voice. One last goodnight. Forget the promise you made. Say goodnight…

Promise. I promised, didn’t I? Charlie couldn’t laugh. He could only choke on words formed soundless on his lips and almost as strangled in the breathless recesses of his mind. Jin, I promised I’d stay, didn’t I? A boyfriend has to stay…

A cynic, he knew better. But wasn’t it a nice thought?

I want to keep my promise, Jin Chae. On the backs of a thousand corpses, I want to keep it. He called to her. They are damned. So am I. But I want to keep my promise.

But you won’t. Not now…

If the two of you want to be useful, help me find him.

Knowing they had tested the patience of their wielder to its limit, the typically snarky and condescending tones that would usually follow in the wake of her request never came. She was certain she would hear about it later, how they had done their part by keeping her alive, a splotch of life against a canvas of otherwise forlorn death and desolate decay. Jin was grateful for that much, surely, but none of it would matter if they escaped the Void sans Charlie Nine. After all he was why she was there, why Co’ba had sought her out and brought her FireStar. He was the reason, her reason, and she would be damned if she gave that up without giving it everything she had.

[Charlie Nine]

Everything.

That was a scary concept for a girl so used to having nothing. Jin Chae, the eldest of a line of vagrants and riff raff that spanned the city and even reached its classless roots into others realms, she was a modern day matriarch of a generation of street rats. A baroness of cardboard box castles and pilfered feasts, the sort that would use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. Everything that she was, was so easily encompassed within judging glares of the well to do elite of New Haven. Everything she had, the material and petty things she filled her so called fortress with… it was all so simply taken away. But the poster child for ‘started from the bottom’ had something that couldn’t be learned by etiquette lessons or rubbing elbows with the rich, she had loyalty and a fierce need to protect those who had deemed her fit to squeeze her piece into the puzzles of their lives. The handful of so called orphans, both Chae blooded and otherwise, they were what she valued at the end of the day. And she could not, would not allow them to be taken away. Not without a fight, or other less Dr. Seuss sort of things.

Ahead, I’d say… just past your line of sight. It feels like him. Or it did, it’s not as strong as it was… The conclusion trailed off into the darker recesses of her mind, pushing forward bits and pieces of her fears and nightmares. Everything had been fine what seemed like only moments ago. It hadn’t been but an hour ago that they were upon the Isle, excitement lacing the air as Charlie stepped into the arcane rings, intent on a tower. Jin was proud but that pride gave way to confusion and at last fear when he disappeared right before her eyes. No explanation, nothing.

You mustn’t dwell. Head in the here and now, little one. For all of its calm, cool logic, the blue rock still managed to comfort her. The nod she gave was just as much for herself as it was the encouragement and she hunkered down against Co’ba, intent on getting there as quickly as possible.

So close.

Charlie found himself on a precipice.

Within the dimming view of his mind’s eye, he saw the darkness laid out before him, an abyssal cloud of purple-black smoke that threatened to consume all. He was intimately familiar with it, as much as the outside staring in as the inside staring out. How many times had he danced around the edges of it, like a child playing solo at Ring-Around-The-Rosy, until sociopathic boredom or the high expectations of his handlers coaxed him into diving deep? So deep. How often had be drank the darkness in? How much of it ran through his veins still today?

The dark called to him now more than ever, the strong pull of that new (but strangely familiar) voice in his head, drawing out the life and replacing it with something else. He had so little light in him but his chin lifted and hooded eyes widened in morbid wonder when little motes rose off of his pale skin and drifted towards the black.

He made a promise, but there on the edge…

Something warm drew his attention to the opposite horizon. Light, sweet light. The silhouette of it in the distance like a faint ray of --

“Jin Chae…” He sucked in her name like it was the last mouthful of air. His lifeline.

On one side of him, the darkness. On the other side, the light. The darkness the easier path, the other promising nothing.

Charlie reached for her. Reached for the thought of her.

Little motes, they were but minute pinpricks on a canvas of dark twilight, as though a fire recently extinguished still exhaled embers of its last dying breaths. Remnants of flame, fractured and distorted in this demesne of nothingness were all that denoted the fading soul before her. He was drifting further by the second and she struggled to grasp hold of even a flicker. A hint, it was all she needed. And so it came on the next wisp of wind that caught auburn in an evanescent maelstrom and brushed two words across the shell of her ear.

Jin Chae…

[JC]

“Charlie!” She shouted, her voice caught somewhere between her lips and the veil of artificial life support created by her companions. Her words came back to echo in her ears just as a wall of black snuffed the last hint of light. The last hint of Charlie. Co’ba slammed his paws down, skidding roughly as a harsh snarl tore free of his maw. There was a chomp of jaws, hard clacking of teeth and then a sickening squelch. Jin couldn’t look, not even when backsplash splattered through her hair and across her right cheek. Hot and sticky, carrying a metallic and slightly sour scent, she couldn’t help but briefly consider just how long she would stand in the shower should she make it out of here alive. The thought was quickly interrupted when a sharp jolt to her left jarred her grasp free and threw her from the Void cat mount.

Get up! Get up! Go now! There was no time to waste and once she landed in an unceremonious heap, she pushed herself back up to her feet. A quick glance was afforded to the dancing penumbra at her flank but soon she dug her heels in and took off. Co’ba could handle whatever it was that sought to derail their journey and she only needed to clear what looked to be one hundred feet. Street rat survival kicked in, as if it hadn’t already, and she kept low while making the final dash, a sprint that would put seasoned athletes to shame. Yelling for him was out of the question, not when she was left unprotected like she was but soon she was closing in.

Twenty feet.

Fifteen.

Ten.

Nine.

A flare of white hot fire bloomed within her right hand and spread outwards to light the way in spectacular fashion. The things that go bump in the night took none too keenly to being exposed for what they were and while many went skittering back past the edge of the flame’s light, the din of displeasure filled her ears and beat against her eardrums like a bloodthirsty battle cry.

Eight.

Seven.

Six.

Almost there…

Again from her left, something attempted to broadside her. Only this time, instinct and a little oomph from her friends kept her from literally losing her head. Her arms crossed up around her crown, a brilliant and wide sweeping ignition of fire and ice in all their glory. Fire, her guide. Ice, her guardian. With the pulse of opposing elemental energy, Jin found the downfall of such a display, the air in her lungs stolen as though she’d taken a fist to the gut. She cleared the final five feet in a headfirst baseball slide, diving in a desperate attempt to reach FireStar’s true holder before he faded away. At last her grasp found a hold, ice cold fingers latching around a wrist nearly devoid of a pulse.

“Charlie… Charlie, I’m here.” Jin croaked out, the roars behind her fading into susurrous murmurs. She was vaguely aware of Co’ba approaching, the Void cat victorious in his domination of the other creatures of the Void. If only for now. As the blooms of ice and fire began to fade, she found she could breathe once more and with her next exhale, she tucked the burning red rock into the center of Charlie’s palm and closed her hand around his.

Charlie!

Charlie… Charlie, I’m here.

He looked for her light through the thickening murk of lengthening moments, images of her flickering across the battered landscape of a tortured mind. All around him the darkness roiled and hissed, a manifestation thousands of times more powerful than the Void-taint that flavored his blood. Charlie reached for her, the mirage of a desperate and yet hopeful princess of battles never wanted, a figment of the imagination meant to weaken what frayed strands of resolve he had left. Ignominious but unabashed, he reached for her, having become only dimly aware of the jagged void-strew rocks tearing at the knees he never recalled falling to. Jin Chae was a fading apparition of the most cloying, beautiful light, the last receding memory of a vain attempt at understanding what being a real person was like.

And then a thought, a niggling pinprick that pretended at epiphany struck him.

It will be like I never knew her.

She’ll just be another face. Another piece to some random puzzle that doesn’t matter. One of millions of pieces of rubble we consume and shit back out into the cosmos by the hour.

So I won’t remember-- He had been so focused on one of the few, tightly held real fears that he had almost missed it. What did you call her?

Trash. Detritus. Like every other cheap, forgotten whore that’s been used up. Out of respect for you, we’ll leave her bones on a street corner, in memoriam.

Charlie had never considered himself the type to have hackles, but in that moment, he would reflect on the idea of them later. Because if he had them, they had gone up with a seething vengeance. A measured heated built inside of his chest and in the passage of truncated, hammering-heartbeat moments, it looked to him as though his illusionary Jin was attacked by something, one of many of the Void’s horrors seeking to bear her to the ground and…

...beautiful red-blue fireworks.

They were an incandescent shock to the system, the Red and Blue opals working in unison but never truly touching. Blades of vibrant fire belched forth and slicing black limbs and cleaving a path for the hard, unforgiving hammer of frigid ice. One the axe, the other the chopping block. It was an unbelievable fever dream, certainly, or a lonesome nocturnal fantasy finally come true… only without a sobbing Jewell Ravenlock chained to rabid gorilla, Gren murdering a Puerto Rican hooker, and there wasn’t any chorus line singing songs from Aladdin…

“I’m not going to forget her,” Charlie growled nearly breathless defiance at the Void, unaware that the words were more than just in his head. “[Censored] you, you can’t have her.”

And then there she was, as prone as he was and less than an arm’s reach from him, worried and frantic and beautiful enough to kiss, scrapes, bruises, Void-thing-innards and all. She was warmth and light and… Man, was it getting warm… and…

It felt like his blood was boiling.

[Charlie Nine]

Close your eyes for a moment, Charlie, the Little Boy’s voice was a faint echo in the yawning cavern of his mind.

But you’re…

Close your eyes. I need you clear headed or as close to as possible.

Why…?

I need your brain. We’re going to cut a bitch. With science.

His palm was incredibly hot and there was a sudden bright flash of light. All around Charlie and Jin, the darkness was given form in the pulsing light, like a thousand amorphous humanoid shadows trying to co-exist in a hideous orgy of sludge, trying to exist in a vacuum. It recoiled with the sudden flare at the mercurial back-and-forth of hot and cold. The two Opals worked in concert, like the swing of a pendulum blade to tear at anything everything that wasn’t their charges.

But for FireStar’s holder, everything went dark. Inside his own darkness, where no one else could see the light, was where Charlie Nine hid his best memories:

”Oh, come on,” Jin Chae laughed and butt her head against his shoulder. “Not everyone can have a laser blaster thing like in Star Trek or Star Wars, Charlie.”

She was nestled into his side on the couch, the roll of her eyes illuminated briefly by the bright images on the television screen. One slim arm was tucked possessively around his waist in her lean, a regular occurrence when they were alone and odd for the way it wasn’t often a public display, the other hand plucking pieces of buttery popcorn from the bucket resting between his knees. A soft, happy sound warbled in her slim throat when he stroked at her hair but she was quick enough to scowl up at him when he snorted faint derision.

“Lasers aren’t complicated, you know.” His eyes remained on the blaster battle between Han Solo and the Storm Troopers on the screen. “Mostly deals with light and radiation, in a manner of speaking. Normal light actually deals with a collective of colors, regardless of what you actually see. Laser light is monochromatic, meaning it’s just a single color or the same wavelength. Second, all the wavelengths are in phase. That is, they are all ‘waving’ together. All the wave crests and troughs are lined up. So laser light is coherent. And third, while light waves from ordinary sources spread out in all directions, laser light waves all travel in the same direction, exactly parallel to one another. This means that laser light beams are very narrow and can be concentrated on one tiny spot. It’s called being collimated.

Because the laser light is monochromatic, coherent, and collimated, all of its energy is focused to produce a small point of intense power. It makes it possible to control laser light very precisely…”

“Wait,” she stopped him, dropping a piece of popcorn back into the bucket to stare up at him. “Are you saying that you could use FireStar to…?”

“Yeah…” Charlie nodded, but his smile faded.

“Wow…”

“I’m leaving it in the safe, Jin…”

“We don’t need a laser for anything anyway.” It was a gentle reassurance, offering in a murmur and a kiss buried against his neck…

[JC]

“Oh.”




It was all he could think to say in the moment, eyes closed. Someone was jostling him, moving him off of his stomach and yelling words that he couldn’t understand. When he finally opened his eyes, his pupils were dilated and creased a weak smile for the little Korean beauty who had ducked beneath one of his arms to hold him up with her shoulder. Gosh, she was stronger than she looked…

“It’s okay,” he mumbled dumbly into the disheveled mess of her hair. “It’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna make science…”

The was when Charlie lifted his clenched fist into the air, FireStar clutched tightly into his palm by the determined curl of weak fingers.

Little by little he gathered his will, searching for it in a hundred places at once as if it had abandoned him like scattered grains of sand in a stiff wind.

Small motes of orange-red fire made a light. That light, in the passage of moments, became more defined, darkening into a more intense red. It pulsed where it poured through his fingers, dimming and brightening steadily until it had established a specific repetition. The light finally faded, drawing into itself at a single point at the base of his palm and then…

“Mister Worf, set phasers to kill…”

That was when a thin ribbon of straight light fired straight out of his hand and into the gathered darkness and it began to shriek.

It took everything she had to not double over under the weight of the wail that reverberated off of everything and nothing at the same time. Her ears ached with the sort of gut twisting howl that comes from only the most primal sort of pain but she forced herself to hold her head high to behold the spectacle that was Charlie Nine plus Science. Like something out of a movie, he cut and slashed through the dark, a psychopathic sith with no qualms about destroying everything in his path. It was hypnotic but terrifying and she found herself shrinking away toward Co’ba who seemed unsurprised by the brutality of the dark child he called his companion. An uneasy chill worked its way through her, something of self preservation and a deep-seated need to run, to flee far, far away from the carnage.

It wouldn’t have been easy, but she could do it. She had done her part after all, finding him here. Just walk away, Jin Chae. That easy.

Instead, she took a step toward him, hesitant and unsteady behind the orange glow reflected in her wide eyes. One step became two and then three as the shrieking crested to its apex and began to fall, the destroyed outnumbering the intact.

“Charlie.” She said softly, the low sort of tone that still somehow commanded attention and a need for quiet in order to listen. A splash of gore over her shoes had her lifting her voice, just slightly in hopes of getting through to him. “Charlie, that’s enough. We need to go. Now.”

It wasn’t unlike watching a child using some cheap dollar store laserpointer to cut through the rolling gray smoke of a late fall leaf pile burning. FireStar’s bearer giggled, semi-conscious of what he was doing and drunk on a power he only pretended (in the moment) to understand, listing from one side to the other in a repeated shift of his weight. He waggled his clenched fist like a preadolescent menace, until the searing lines of intense red light danced around them like the globe of some sick, sci-fi disco ball. The landscape around them soaked up the carnage, gelatinous splatters of living, viscous darkness that occasionally created an eerie, gross pattern of alien blood spatter across his clothes and hers. The writhing blackness recoiled further with each strike, its banshee’s wail broken with each cut by a more piercing screech of pain. Beneath the terrible, gibbering wrath of the Red Opal and Charlie Nine, the apex predator of the Void felt something.

It felt fear.

“Zzzt,” Charlie made a child’s silly zapping sound with his teeth pressed together and his tongue hissing-rolling behind them. “Zzzt, zzzt, zzzzzzzzt!”

FireStar’s warnings and prodded suggestions to make good their departure became a droning buzz, reduced to a muted warbling against the din of a sadist desire to lash out. Broken sentences spilled from his lips, clipped recollections and snippets of conversations from what seemed a lifetime ago. Little puzzle pieces dropped to the nearby ears of the very person who had come to save him, tidbits of a child dismantled by heartless doctrine and disgusting science. It intensified his anxiety in the moment and, for a time, the light of the cutting beams flared brighter, a thin rivulet of scarlet running from his nose and over his upper lip.

“I’m gonna,” he declared breathlessly, dark eyes once mad with the moment growing half-lidded beneath the continued assault. It hadn’t mattered that the encompassing dark was in full retreat. “I’m gonna…”

Charlie…

That’s what she called him.

He was one of many, all fallen save for him.

The redheaded madwoman Tara had been the only one to ever ask about the others…

Charlie, that’s enough.

“They’re all gone,” he said to Jin. He repeated it again, to no one. “I’m the last. The last Charlie.”

Charlie sagged. Against her. Against the sudden presence of Co’ba, hurt and bloody, but there.

“It’s not my name,” he told her and hadn’t realized that the laser light show and stopped, that he was clutching the precious dueling prize, the warmth of the opal, against his chest. “I don’t have a name. I’m just a number. No homeworld. No family. Was never born. You have to have a birthday to be born. I have a number. I’m just a component.”

We need to go. Now.

The words registered in his addled, hazy mind in a clipped tardiness, the last stopping his rambling in a sudden stall and had him seeking out her pretty face. It was spattered with little bits of lumpy gore, harkening back to the memory of a naked food fight in the kitchen of his apartment. A post-copulation (emphasis on post) involving hotdogs and baked beans. It was a good memory, sans having to overshare with Andrea when explaining to her why he needed to have the gym’s custodial staff clean his apartment the next day. But this time Jin wasn’t smiling and the revulsion limning features already filled with fear was nothing short of sobering.


“I’m broken,” he confessed finally. “It’s okay if you want to leave me. You’d still be the best thing I can ever remember happening to me.”

And then his eyes rolled back up into his head and he collapsed forward into her arms and the dipped lean of Co’ba’s back.

“I’m not leav--,” he was out before the words could leave her lips, lost to the grunt that replaced them under the weight of the man slumped against her. It was a struggle, getting both of them onto the relative safety of Co’ba’s back, but she managed in time for the predator to take off. To take them far, far away from this nightmare.

“I’m not leaving you.”

[Charlie Nine]

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Tuesday, March 24th.


Twenty-four hours to go.

It was a big deal.

Charlie knew she had cleared her schedule; she had no clients and Andrea had closed off a portion of the gym with the expectation she would want to train with her boyfriend and fellow Opal holder or alone. But he knew these moments made one run hot and cold (no pun intended) and left it up to her. Jin Chae knew that she could look forward to as much or as little space as she needed. He was only a call away. But as the morning stretched into the afternoon and the hazy clouds stood as a gray, opaque barrier to the sun, the call never came. A brief descent from the apartment to the gym’s office for something to snack on (KC and Grace took him grocery shopping once and he was determined, after that to never do it again) informed him that the pretty red-headed Korean girl who held IceDancer had never come in, producing a furrow of the brow and a pensive frown. Andrea asked him something, but he wouldn’t remember later what it was when he ignored it and made the trip back upstairs.

You should go to her, it urged, a suggestion that flew in the face of the opinion the Red Opal once professed for the girl of opposing elements and despite a continued argument about the current disposition of the Little Boy. Go to her, Nine. Ignite the passion in her heart for what’s coming; enkindle her fighting spirit.

“Not yet,” Charlie murmured back and surprised himself when he realized he had said the words aloud too. Not yet. She’ll tell me when she needs me. If she needs me.

There was a smokey arrogance to the scoff. She’s a woman. If you don’t leap into action now, she’ll want to know later why you aren’t a mind reader and didn’t show up hours ago, before she called for you.

Charlie rolled his eyes.

But the dinner hour came and went and there was still nothing. By the time the sun had given up it’s fight and sank below the western horizon, he was staring at her Surprise-Go-Kick-G’s-Ass-Tomorrow dinner: Sushi, crinkles fries, and root beer float. The latter had already melted into frothy slop, surrounded by a new menagerie of paper frogs, fish, and turtles. Staring at them in their silent vigil reminded him of some faithful, soulless thugs keeping guard for a long time master wasting away in his death bed, two-dimensional nobodies about to be set adrift on a sea of uncertainty. How many men like that were unfortunate enough to have their lives ended by him? Unfortunate for them, but just another day of the week for him…

It wasn’t until recently that he’d been stricken with the ideas of sorrow and regret.

He regretted what Jin had had to endure for him, where she had to go and what she had been exposed to for his sake. For his safety and his life. The soft but repeated hammer’s blow of sorrow continued to ring against the weakness he tried hard to bury deep, the worry over what it made her think of him. She had put up with much for the sake of their budding romance, but was it too much?

She burns for you, FireStar told him. Even with my frigid counterpart icing over her heart, there is warmth in her stare when she looks at you. And she warms the damned cold tomb in your center more than I can, more’s the pity. I saw that much when you were, and she and I…

The sudden heat in Charlie’s cheeks produced a laughter that roared like flames inside of his head, leaving him to look away from the little card table full of food and grimace at the shadows.

“Maybe she needs to do this on her own,” he confided in the darkness, as if he expected it to listen. But it was always listening wasn’t it? Waiting for another opportunity to take him home? Perhaps there wouldn’t be a Co’ba or Jin Chae to bring him back. Maybe E... It was a thought he needed to dismiss, so be finished the original. “It’s the first time and maybe…”

[Charlie Nine]

The shadows were suddenly forced to dance beneath the sudden mini-sunburst of light when his phone came to life, showering one corner of the table in color and destroying the silence utterly to the tune of The Little Mermaid’s Kiss The Girl (Jin liked to change his ringtone for her every few weeks when he wasn’t paying attention). He should have leapt for the phone and snatched it up. Instead, he stared, lips pursed like an idiot until it went to voicemail. From there, some KPop starlet (no matter how many times Jin and KC tried to tell him the difference between who was who, he could never remember their names) informed him in both English and Korean that he had a message.

Another minute (or maybe it was two) passed before he picked the phone up and swiped his thumb across the little screen to read it.

Text from SexiestChae694UBB(He needed to stop letting his phone out of his sight…):
meet me at place u 1st taught me 2 jinga

Text from SexiestChae694UBB: plz



“...” He read the text twice, frowning.

Well?

What?

The girl burns for you.



Thirty minutes later…



Ten paces from the rickety boardwalk, he was out of his shoes and socks, the sand still cold from a winter season that just didn’t want to let go and refused adamantly to acknowledge the arrival of spring. It shifted and sank beneath his every step, each grain sending a prickling numbness coursing through the tough soles of his feet until a little unsolicited help from the Red Opal stole away the bite the weather produced until it almost felt like he had arrived on a summer morning.

The chill wind coming it off of the water reminded him that wasn’t the case.

The beach stretched out far ahead of him and around the tiny peninsula, the twin moons heralding another late evening tide that half crashed heavily and half splashed playful against the shore, darkening the sand in an incongruent, wavy pattern that promised no safe haven from it’s touch. The place was empty of landmark save for a single, dilapidated lifeguard’s shack on crooked stilts that didn’t even see much use at the height of summer; a few scattered beach houses lay much farther down the way, including one that has intimately familiar to the pair.

It was farther down the sandy retreat that Jin Chae waited for him, faced away slumped over in a haphazard bastardization of the lotus position, occasionally tossing a handful of sand in what must have been her potential annoyance that he’d yet to arrive. She was in a bright yellow sports bra and black yoga pants despite the weather, though with the Blue Opal in her possession it came as no real surprise. The cold didn’t touch her if she didn’t want it to. The large ring of torches was unexpected though, unlit as if they had long died or were waiting for something…

...waiting for him...

[Charlie Nine]

I’m not doing it for you. FireStar sniffed at it’s bearer in mild contempt. There are better ways to impress a la -- girl. You’ve already shown the spark, boy. Go on, impress her.

Normally his lip would have curled in derision, for such had been their adversarial nature without the Little Boy’s influence. Sometimes. It had been push and pull, high five and backhand since he had taken the Opal up after his retrieval from the Void. Charlie, however, was quickly distracted by the slow rise and fall of her slender frame with even breathing, then the soft hiccup in the serenity when she heaved a frustrated sigh.

IceDancer hadn’t told her theyhad arrived.

It made him curious, but…

Charlie concentrated, smooth features screwing up with the effort…

One by one and at ordered intervals the torches flickered and flared to life, the first flame among them rising to life before Jin’s eyes. She perked up immediately, staring at the torch and watching as many as she could follow suit in her peripheral vision before hopping to her feet unsteadily and whirling around to face him. The look she gave him for the theatrics was a temperate one; she had seen him do for more impressive (or worse) with the Red Opal in the half a year or more it had spent in his care, but her head tipped to the side, her eyes widening with surprise when she sensed…

The look instantly became sardonic when she saw the twin flames of FireStar’s not so subtle amusement dancing in Charlie’s eyes. As if a reminder of something poignant the look transitioned again and made one, if not both, suddenly want to wilt beneath the frosty detraction of her stare. It was a stark reminder of the stress she was under, the stress he had created for her even before someone had finally decided to test her mettle and desire to hold onto the Blue Opal. Had it been KC or Grace, he could have let it roll off of his shoulders with the expectation that they wouldn’t care in a day or two. Melanie or Andrea, he would expect them to accept even if they didn’t understand. Anyone else could have died in a literal fire and he would have shrugged and made himself a sandwich.

“Charlie Nine.” She said his name and he wondered if she was as uncertain as she sounded.

But being so entwined with him, having to wear who and what he was like a second skin sometimes and in a way that had nothing to do with the heated press of sweaty flesh beneath the slivers of moonlight pouring through the window. She deserved more. And in the end, all Charlie Nine could say was:

“Dinner got cold.” And, smooth as he ever was. “Your float melted.”

She blinked. The dark, glassy pools of her eyes became murky with a sudden confusion, as if she had expected him to say something profound to intervene in the long reign of silence that had made a gulf between them after she said his name. But this was Charlie, afterall.

Even Matt Simon has more romantic appeal than you…

“Shut up.” The admonishment was sudden and only half annoyed, and came surprisingly from the little red-head who had bloomed the smallest of smiles.

She was uncertain.

About tomorrow. About him. About the moment.

Or maybe she was certain about everything.

“Dance with me.” It wasn’t a request but a demand, delivered quietly and with the soft moue of her mouth, a muted petulance that would have hidden her need from anyone who wasn’t Charlie or any one of the more perceptive Chaes (if there were any).

“Jin Chae,” he founded himself replying, stammering really in an attempt to find a circuitous route around an issue that had been plaguing him for months. Something that had been lost beneath the din of other problems, other dramas. “I promised you I would train with you. You’ll be ready to fight -- “

“Don’t say that word. Dance with me.”

Charlie hadn’t remembered stepping inside the circle of torches, hadn’t recalled the siren’s call of her voice drawing him deeper into her sphere of feminine influence. It was easy to forget sometimes how much steel the little Korean woman had in her spine and how woefully stubborn she could be. But when she reminded him, it was impossible to forget that it was one of the things that drew him to her.

“Dance with me.” She shoved him, dark eyes staring up into his. Unapologetic.

“Jin, you’re going to fight we--”

A cold fist struck him in the stomach, hard enough to make him want to suck in a breath.

[Charlie Nine]

“Dance with me, Charlie Nine.” There was a hoarse demand marring a voice that was normally so bubbly and when he stared down into her face again, ready to meet her with another hesitant rebuke, he could see the need mirrored back to him.

“I don’t… I can’t…”

You’re stammering. You need to --

Stay out of it.

Small hands reached for his, gathering them up and squeezing until the faintest of tendrils of steam were stolen away by the ocean breeze rolling in. She rose up on the tips of toes painted a sparking pink and scattered with cold, dry sand, arching her back and stretching that last few inches in the all too familiar reach for a kiss and…

“Dance with me.” She said it one last time, in an unspoken need that transcended the more mundane needs of the universe, like the need to get more eggs from the store or the need of writhing bodies beneath the sheets. Three little words that spoke volumes…

...right up until she threw a hard, frigid knee into his ribs.

The kick was a surprise but his lack of preparation did nothing to diminish the amount of force that was put behind it, driving Charlie into a stumbling backpedal that put him so suddenly on his back. In the rapid span of heartbeats it that took him from upright to prone, something clicked inside him. It was neither logic nor one of the Red Opal’s random pearls of wisdom. It was something raw, real, and instinctual. A feeling incalculable or entirely definable. By the time he landed, it all fell into place and the natural inclinations of his muscle memory took over, urging him into a backwards roll that brought him back up and into a forward cartwheel. His bare foot burst into flame with the falling kick, an attack that was met by small arms frosted over with opaque blue-white ice that rejected the heat as easily as the muscle and bone beneath rejected the strike.

“Dance with me,” she said again and her grin was fierce. She pirouetted into a backfist that he caught on a burning elbow, producing a fresh hiss of steam barely a breath before she leapt over the fiery sweep of a leg suddenly ignited. A blast of cold that came with a spinning roundhouse kick that extinguished the torches, connecting with nothing when he tucked and rolled beneath it. A wide arcing uppercut ignited them again and set pillars of exhilarating red-orange flames rocketing towards the heavens.

And so it was that they Danced, a dizzying, spherical mess of brilliant red and dazzling blue against the backdrop of the night. Like contrasting fireflies chasing one another in the night, one never catching the other and vice versa, one never gaining more ground (or giving it) more than the other. In this, it was a perfect balance, a horrible power clashing with iron wills.

Darkness and Light.

Yin and Yang.

Overheating flesh was cooled by her touch. Sweat was burned away into steam by the licking tongues of his flame. Mortal flesh couldn’t carry on this way indefinitely, though, and when the pair finally toppled, it was in a tangle of legs and with his greater weight atop her. Her giggle was exhausted and, for the first time, there was a color in his cheeks that had very little to do with physical exertion.

Jin kissed his chin.

“You Danced well, Charlie Nine.” It was a breathy whisper against his skin.

“You’ll Dance better tomorrow,” he murmured back, all of the tension and doubt from before burned away in the moment.

“Promise?”

Never make a woman a promise you can’t ke--

“Promise.”

Fool.

They’re both stronger than you give them credit for. Better.

Maybe.

You’ll see.

“Charlie?” She called his named with an exhausted breath against the crook of his neck.

“Yeah?”

“I’m hungry.”

“You Chaes love spending my money…”