Chaos Precip

He has an office, of sorts, in the building. It is rimmed in windows, high up in the tower, and the windows are often open; causing high-speed winds to scream through fairly regularly. He doesn't have a chair, preferring to float above the floor crossed-legged as he works at the desk. Small notes, fastened with glue, or tape, or post-Solution variations on the same cover every available surface. They range from finish the Slug report to DID YOU EAT TODAY? in a variety of handwritings, including his own.

The door is always open if he is in there. Xaldin has developed a claustrophobia that must be experienced to believe. They do call air that doesn't move dead air, after all, and for all that he hurts and hates, he is not yet ready to die.

He was settled behind his desk, writing last thoughts on the Shibuya slug incident in a fine, beautiful hand that used paper as efficiently as possible. Mouseasaurous Rex, the small kitten he has most lately been carrying, played on the ground with a string of ribbon left by someone at some time.

I fear it as much as I love it, or perhaps it is the other way around. It would be easy to let go, of pain and fear and suffering, and to stop fighting the pull of the Storm. I could be at peace, cast off this body and become more, but also less. I see her, in the beauty of the storm she is dancing. Her edges are already gleaming with electricity, her hair is too bright to look at. The sound of the Storm picks up her laughter, and I have never heard it so free.

It seems obscene, suddenly, that I should be caging such a spirit, bringing it down, forcing her into shape and matter and mass when my deepest and most hidden desire is to dance alongside her for the moments until the last of my body sloughs away into nothing.

It is the look on her father's face, kin to my long lost and buried mother, that forces me deeper into the storm, to hold onto the molecules of self that attempt to slip out and join her in her dance. The tears on his face as he babbled what had happened, as he clung to my armour and bawled like a child. We don't go into the Storms. We don't risk someone who has survived for someone who will not. That is not our way, we are too precious to lose.

But this is my mother's cousin, and I am powerless before him. However I am told different it was my hand which destroyed the world, and my hand which took away all that these people, my living kin, knew and loved. How can I stand before them and refuse?

I remember her when she was an infant, squalling, red, and ugly. They placed her in my armoured hands and they bid me hold her. I did not want to, not such a thing as a baby, but the second that she was in them she ripped what was left of my heart out of my chest and grasped it between hands which were suddenly the most beautiful I had ever seen.

My cousin, my little miracle, I watched her grow and I was proud of her at every step. When she falls in love I will make certain that her man is as good for her as mine is for me. I will, because I will bring her out of this. I will not let her dance herself away.

She hasn't seen me yet, perhaps she won't until far too late. That would be for the best, in the long run. I realise that in the Storm I do not hurt, not as I have hurt since the world fell. Not since I became Air and Air became me. I reach out to her with gloved hands, I pull her close to my chest and still her dance, I hold her even as her electricity seeks to destroy me in order to let her become one with the Storm.

I subdue her until she is weak, and I fold her into the black that will be hers for the rest of her days. I pull gloves onto her arms, I force boots onto her feet, I swaddle her in a coat too large for her body and I fix the mask in place.

She may be crying, I dare not look. She may be cursing me, I dare not hear. I love her, more than any child I have sired, and if her hatred is the price of her life I will pay it.

I leave the storm, and I know I have left more of myself within it. I fear, this time, it was part of my heart.

Shibuya isn't a big town, and it's not a powerful town. It's not a centre of commerce, because it only has one really saleable item: cloth. The people there make enough to eat, and buy what they can't make. Enough stay that it's a thriving town, enough leave that word of their cloth has spread around.

And right now it's completely under siege. There are about two hundred people boarded up in the mayor's house-slash-offices, with all the food they could grab and all the weapons they could find. The post-office is in the same building, so that's where they've got cleared out for people who are coming in to help.

There is nothing so sad as a highly fashionable person in disarray, and Kitanji Megumi is one of those poor souls. Four days ago he was perfectly coiffed from the smooth long hair to the points of his shirts down to spit-shined shoes. Now? The coat has been passed off to a little girl who ran to safety wearing nothing but a nightshirt, his shirt to someone else, his trousers are stained with blood and spilled food, and his hair is in the sloppiest ponytail it's ever been in, and crackling with electricity. His voice, however, is still even and calming as he talks to his people.

Outside the infected people stagger around feeding and attempting to get in, stymied by the lightning rods surrounding the mayoral house, and static hops between them, arcing white and violent whenever something gets too close. That's what has kept Kitangji's people safe, and that's what has him worn to a gaunt shadow. He's a Master, not an Adept, and four days of continual working has drained him.

"Thank you for coming." he said to each person, "I am not a fighter, I have to trust you each to know how you can best help."

She'd decided the best way to spread the word about the situation in Shibuya was to hold an open meeting, and that had been her first mistake. The whole floor was an open room, full of tables and chairs and people. Very few of those people wore the black coat signaling an adept, but that wasn't the problem. No, the problem lay in the fact that some people simply couldn't seem to understand why they were going to help the beleaguered town.

"I understand you're new here Griz," Larxene sighed. She could feel the sparks gathering along her skin and only the firm, earth aligned hand on her shoulder kept her from truly losing her temper, "But that is not how the Organization works. We help and we enforce when some places are intolerably cruel, but we do not annex or demand people align themselves with us. We are NOT taking over Shibuya and if you continue to insist upon it you will be removed from this room and from employment here. Do I make myself clear?" The truly startling thing was that Griz's opinion was not alone in it's avarice...just the loudest.

Some of the people in the room wanted to control the cloth trade out of the infested town. Some just wanted more resources and taking from a town with so few high powered people seemed just fine to them. Some saw themselves as nobles in a growing kingdom and it was only right that others should serve them. Larxene, well, she was contemplating spot frying the people annoying her but it set a bad precedent and there were far more good and worried people in the crowd than bad. It was simply the nature of people to be greedy upon occasion.

She took a few deep breathes to get the sparking under control and nodded. "Now, thank you Annias for the idea on a medical team. I'd like you to assemble a group for transport as soon as you're able. Tannim will be tracking down the town nearest to Shibuya for setting up triage units and getting the transport sketches to our Space teams. Stores will be sending materials for tents and food supplies for away teams and evacuees." They had stores set aside for emergencies like these, as it wasn't fair to ask a town to suddenly host an unknown number of refugees and rescue workers.

"I'd also like at least one volunteer, preferably more, to interview and study the survivors. This is the second time this particular kind of critter has shown up and it seems to always strike isolated towns with little to no high powered individuals. I'll need a report on the patterns this critter exhibits and the relative intelligence these patterns show." Because field reports from hunters tended to explain how to kill things very well, but they didn't always cover the other aspects that might prevent or contain further problems.

Larxene,

How are you doing? How are the kittens? Princess Pretty Paws isn't the best of mothers, so be certain to check in on her regularly. We should be getting back in a week or so. The landscape out here would bore you silly, there isn't really anything to see or poke your nose in. I kind of like it, though. The heat is comforting, and I can see for miles. Not that I have any doubts but that you would all track me down if I attempted to move away, but still; it is a beautiful place.

You know how Nevada passed away a few years back? We finally met his replacement. She was obviously raised by him, paranoid child that she is. She goes by Brea; and has self-appointed as bodyguard to the young Lightning in 42.1.A section C-16 of the last report. Half the time she looks like a steel bitch, the other half she looks like a wounded bird. She's staying with Momma Pierce out on the Pierce Ranch.

The boy is just as paranoid, if I didn't know better I'd think that he was Nevada's get. He's devoted to the women in his family, and completely loathes anyone he thinks might be a threat to them. It's cute, like one of those Chihuagekos that came through a while back. Less poisonous, however.

Let me know if you want me to bring anything home.

Love,
Xaldin