[Sodium_noir] Fever Dreams in Gotham

[Spikey]

[OOC - Not sure how many of you remember this but there was a player (AstraKiseki) applied almost two years ago now who was underage and we spoke about what to do about that. I decided in the end that to allow someone under 18 to subscribe to the list was wrong because as a community you all kind of rely on the age limit to be able to tell your stories. What I did do however was to enter into private correspondence with the player to create some joint posts for their Changeling: the Dreaming character (Sachiko). These take the shape of snap shots through her life as she slowly awakens to her nature as one of the Fae. This then, is the first of those joint posts. It takes place five years before present day when Sachiko is 12 years old, about two years before the Unseelie Court at the Isle of Crabs Funfair burns down. ]


Sachiko Muni
Eshu to be
Gotham
5 years ago


"Miss Muni..."

Sachiko promptly shushed up, blinking gold eyes up at Mister Anka.

"...It's not summer vacation yet, and I *know* that's not what you are doing
for your application to that good private school you are applying for. I'll
let you sing Pokemon songs after you have your application done.
Understand?"

Sachiko nodded gravely and opened her mouth-

"And no songs from games. The last time you did that, Miss Jang had a fit
over what you were singing!"

Sachiko nodded demurely and returned to her work, hiding a smile as her
Study Hall teacher shook his head, smiling as well. It is nearing the end of
school, and she couldn't wait! Her mom and dad were letting her go to the
Funfair with Isaac that day. She squirmed, glaring at the clock across the
sunlit room and willing it to go faster. After having no luck with a sigh,
she reached for her pencil and froze, not even blinking.

Instead of the standard No. 2 pencil that was chewed up half-way that Isaac
let her borrow that day as she dashed off to school, a sword lay before her.
It wasn't like almost all of the swords in her books, covered in jewels and
bright gold. Oh no, it was just a sword with a well-honed edge. It reminded
the girl more of Captain Carrot's sword. It was good for killing, not for
looking pretty and being a 'hero's sword.' The only adornment was on the
cross guard. It was a beautiful compass rose and made Sachiko's eyes widen.
It looked... familiar.

Minutes passed silently, the girl refusing to blink or look away, in fear
that she would lose this sight. Finally, her body decided for her, and
blinked. The sword was gone and Isaac's pencil remained. Sachiko sighed and
got to work, her mind spinning wildly on its feet as she thought about that
compass rose.

"Hey, Sachiko, what's up?"

Sachiko glanced up at the shining face of Li, one of the several Chinese
students in the class. "Nothing much, Li. I need to work." Sachiko answered
in Japanese; feeling like Li had purposely spoke to her to annoy her, an
unkind and untrue thought.

"Well, you were really spacing out a moment ago, and I nearly told Mr. Anka
that you hadn't blinked for a while." Li answered in the same language, his
face slightly frowning. "I'll leave ya alone."

Sachiko nodded gratefully and returned to filling out her application. Time
finally got the message and sped by.

RIIIIINGGG!

Sachiko quickly gathered all of her things and ran out of the school, nearly
bowling over several of her peers as she ran out laughing like the pre-teen
she was. Her parents had chosen her school because it was close to home yet
in a safe part of town. If she got lucky, she would be at an even safer
school next year.

Up, up, up the flights of stairs for once as silent as a ghost without
realizing it, studying the pencil in her hands and
hoping that it would become a sword again before she got home. She sighed
and looked up, blinking. The door to the family's apartment was open just a
little. Even during the hottest months, her mom would never open the door...

Sachiko frowned for a moment and slipped in...

Something odd warned her to tread carefully. A small perhaps, or an absence
of sounds. The house didn't feel like it ought to, didn't quite feel as
familiar as it always had in the past. There was an atmosphere and Sachiko
began to wonder if there'd been an argument, or if she was in trouble.

As she moved through the house towards the Kitchen, her hairs on the back of
her hands began to tingle. The coppery smell reminded her of when her father
prepared steaks for a bar-b-que. This was perhaps the last time she would
fail to recognize the smell of fresh blood.

The scene that she walked in upon was an assault on her young mind. Images
rather than a viewing. The bodies on the floor were broken. Torn. Wrong. The
blood was everywhere and copious. The man stood over her parents with a
meat cleaver in his grubby hand just seemed to stamp himself onto her mind.
His smile was too wide, his teeth too bright. Like one of those TV
evangelists gone wrong or the presenter on some
nightmare quiz show. He looked up at her slowly, the smile never wavering.
His face and tattered leather clothing stained with the blood of her
parents.


Sachiko's lower lip trembled and a single tear trickled from both of her
golden eyes. "Okaa-san?" She whispered. Her eyes went wider and wider as her
body began to tremble. The pencil fell to the floor with a metal clatter,
making both the child and the murderer look at the sword on the ground.
Sachiko was the first to act, luck on her side and a wretched and loud wail
on her lips. She hefted the sword, her eyes filled with rage.

"How- dare- you- you-you-" Sachiko sputtered out, the loss of her innocence
and her parents burning in her words. Sachiko let out a scream and swung the
sword with her eyes shut, trying to burn out the images with tears. Her ears
heard an oddly familiar clash of metal on metal, a sound that she remembered
with hot winds and desert winds long ago. Her eyes opened to another world.

The Murderer filled her vision at first, he was so real. So visceral. Like
some dreadful Oni he burned himself into her vision. What had been patchy
ginger hair was now thick gloopy strands of red. He looked like he'd used
her parents' blood to spike it up. His eyes burned like a starved dog she'd
known in the neighbourhood. Until the Animal welfare had rescued it from its
neglectful owner. Even then it had bitten the rescuers.

His mouth was huge, in a less horrific situation he might have resembled a
muppet or something from sesame street. The awfully wide jaws housed rows of
needle sharp teeth. Yellow and vicious looking. Piercings and chains dotted
his face, ears and any piece of exposed flesh. Had Sachiko been in her right
mind he would have frightened her half to death.

But she wasn't, and the Redcap saw that. Surprised by her ferocity he backed
away. Raising an arm with a length of chain wrapped around it in a foolish
attempt to parry the sword. The blade slid off his greave but broke the arm
and the Redcap howled like a bone chilling wind. His screech ran right
through Sachiko and unbeknown to both of them, carried to her friend next
door.

Sachiko's smile was as wild as a pirate in the midst of blood-lust, and a
trail of pink sakura blossoms trailed from her dark hair. She raised the
sword with both hands to end the murderer's- no, that wasn't the word,
Sachiko's mind whispered, the bastard was a Redcap - his life, when
suddenly, a coffee-colored hand grabbed her slender wrists and the other
hand tore the sword from her numb enraged hands, speaking some strange words
as the speaker flung the sword away. Finally the words became understandable
as the rage cleared.

"No," they said "if you end his life, you will lose your own, little one."

Isaac. That was who did it. Isaac was stopping her. Sachiko nodded and
looked at the redcap, looking startled and bug-eyed. Sachiko raised her
hand, now trailing sand and radiating desert heat, feeling much calmer as
she imagined the murderer away from Gotham city. Away from her. Just away.

The Redcap sneered a fang filled grin as her untrained and unconscious
Cantrip took effect. Giving him a burst of speed and the doorway through
which he fled. Behind him the wall of the House simply faded from view and
Sachiko could see the outside, its colours suddenly much brighter and more
defined. Every petal and ever mote of dust seemed to glisten with the
brightest of primal colours. The remaining light was dappled across the yard
like the first light at the dawn of the world. How light would look in
paintings if God were an artist. How Light looked in her Dreams. The light
that was the Tuatha de Danu.

The Redcap spun impossibly fast, becoming little more than a blur. Moving
like speeded up film, while the world around him moved in slow motion. His
thick red hair, glistening with her parents' blood, stuck to his scalp as he
dashed through the opening and with one final and vicious look over its
shoulder, was gone.

But the fear wasn't. The Fear that creature instilled in her was bone deep.
Cell deep. Her very atoms quaked in terror when he looked at her and her
stomach flip flopped like when she rode a fairground ride.

The wall snapped shut again like an iris, like a gaping wound. Isaac was
there holding her, and the warmth from his body helped dispel the fear. A
little.

"he's gone" her friend said. "For now. I'm .... I'm sorry Sachiko ..."

Sachiko stared at the sword then back at the green eyed man holding her. She
never understood why he had skin like creamy coffee, freckled with cinnamon,
and eyes so green, even as he tried. "How come it's a sword again?"

"Again?" Isaac frowned for a moment, and then chuckled. "Oh. When did you
see a sword before?"

"When I was about to grab it before school ended." The little girl answered.
She knew why she was so calm; it always happened when she had the questions
bubbling up in her. Then, something shivered up her spine and she begun to
remember answers to questions she hadn't even thought about.

The scent of blood became more and more familiar, but in her mind, the smell
of sea spray mingled, and Sachiko, no, Sakura, let out a half-muffled laugh,
shaking her head ruefully, pink petals falling out of her dark hair as she
began to think of how similar they were. Pity she hadn't had time to do more
to the Redcap, but she was still young, and before, she had been in her late
teens when she had lost her innocence. Sakura had lost the family she knew,
and Sachiko almost all. Isaac was still there and another memory rushed
forth, of more magical times and desert sand.

In both her memories and her mortal form, the childling bowed, a
long-forgotten voice speaking and her own voice answering "As you desire,
Sultan, I will deliver this on the breeze."

"Not on the breeze, for my enemies could hear it, Tomoyo."

Sachiko's voice laughed. "Never fear, I will guard and guide it to what will
be its new home."

Isaac was amused, as much as he was worried. He took Sachiko by the
shoulders and led her to the bathroom,
away from the distressing scene in the kitchen. Towards what he assumed
would be a wonder in the mirror. A distraction while he took care of that
Redcaps devastation.

He presented her with her reflection. Her new reflection. It took a moment
or two before she became
re-accustomed to the twin sights. Seeing both the Waking world and the world
of Dreams at once and learning to focus on one or the other. Slowly the
Mortal Sachiko moved to the periphery of her vision, still there but
overlaid with her true face.

The focus point, the one thing that remained the same were her eyes. A pair
of golden eyes, like the sun, shined out of twin faces. Her features
flickered in between the half-Western half-Italian features of her mortal
self and the sharp Japanese angles of her fae mien. As an Eshu, she looked a
lot like mama, and the thought made a smile and a frown war on her face. At
least now she could carry more of Kasumi within her, but that also
remembered her that she and her papa was gone. The sense of loss was, as
most sensations were becoming, oddly familiar.

The ashy, sulfur scent of gunsmoke made its way into memory as well. The
little girl stared dumbly at the dead body before her, a bloody stain
blossoming around the edges of what looked to be a clean hole though the
chest. She dropped something in her hands, something metal, and looked up in
the mirror, and her eyes bulged.

She was dressed like a femme fatale in the movies her papa liked watching
when he thought Kasumi and her were asleep. She was definitely of pure
Japanese descent now; although she could see another double image in the
mirror. She was taller and a beautiful lady, with bobbed black hair in both
forms, but only the fae had the golden eyes then. Her clothes were modern
for that time, but the Eshu self wore a kimono. The same feelings of grief,
anger, and confusion welled up within Amy, but she could also feel the
relief bubbling up as well.

This was another Chrysalis in Gotham, years before. This was from when she
was just little ol' Amy, orphan Amy, abused Amy. Amy who remembered Sakura
alone, and fought back against the man who treated her the way he did. She
had reached for the gun, and shot his heart out, just like he had done to
the innocent she had been. Then she took his saxophone, and headed to the
club to play. She had watched him play so many times, how hard could it be?

Sachiko grinned. In that life, it hadn't been that hard. She had haltingly
explained that the man got shot (not mentioning who did it) and that she was
his replacement. She had been good enough that the owner hadn't said
anything. Then again, the fact that the man had been a changeling as well
probably helped.

Sachiko peered at herself more. In mortal form, her hair was almost black.
There was a hint of brown that made her think of her mother's coffee. Papa
liked his just about the same colour as her skin. Kasumi had complained that
it was just cream with a drop of coffee in it. He would just stick his
tongue out and would leave for work. As a fae, it was as if all of her
Italian blood had flown into her eyes. Her hair was now very dark brown, so
close to be called black, reflecting little rainbows back, and her skin was
a flawless porcelain.

Sachiko was never going to forget this. She grinned ear to ear, pushed back
her hair, and let out a giddy squeal. Her ears were softly pointed, and yes,
she remembered something else. Her face blushed a cherry red, remembering
someone nibbling on those points long, long ago. A name floated just out of
reach, the name of someone she had loved.

Someone whom she would love again if she met him again. Sachiko shook those
thoughts out and returned to the living room to see the damage. Most of her
was terrified, but her pragmatic mind urged her to go and check on Isaac,
and help clean up the mess.


Isaac was bent over the rapidly cooling bodies of Sachiko's parents, his
voice raised in song. A Dirge for the passing of an elder that had once been
popular in Athens. A celebration of life as much as a mourning for death. He
had not yet moved them, or even touched them, and the image of a Satyr
crouched beside the blood and senseless waste, singing, was a little too
surreal to be upsetting. He finished his song and lowered his head, turning
towards Sachiko.


"Death is simply a doorway little one" he said without actually meeting her
eyes. "They have passed beyond our world, but that does not mean that their
journey is over. Only that we are no longer a part of it. It really is an
awfully big adventure they have gone on. But for us, there is the mundanity
of the real world. The Autumn procedures of reporting the murder and the
answering of endless questions. We should perhaps take a moment to prepare
our story?"


Sachiko pasted a watery smile, Sakura getting her bearings within her young
mind. "Who needs to know? I'm sure with a little bit of trickery, we could
fool them into believing they haven't gone. A quiet parting of ways for us,
since papa's siblings left before him, and oka-san was disowned for leaving
Japan and marrying papa." Sachiko tossed her black hair, shaking out more
cherry blossoms. The smile blossomed fully, much more mature, and Sachiko
knew she was liking Amy more. "I'm sure I remember the way I did it before,
in 19." Sachiko frowned. "1924. I was subtle then, and I know you are better
at that. Could you do it?"

"I'm not so sure little one. We are no longer outside of the waking world
Little one, we must live inside of it. To permanently trick the entire the
entire world that your parents are still alive is beyond us now. It might
even have been beyond the Old macicks. We have to choose our battles now
Sachiko, and this isn't one I'd choose if I were you. How many people did
they interact with every day? How many people knew them by name, by face?
How many people are expecting them to be here?"

Sachiko frowned. "Not the entire world. Mama preferred to stay home or
wander the city. Papa was a professor, but he turned in his letter of
resignation after a student tried to hurt him. He was planning to write a
book on his favourite subject, since we could live on his pension from
grandfather's will. So, other than the grocer and the landlord, not many.
And, they won't question it if I am the one to appear and pay. And just
until I turn 18." Sachiko tossed her head.

"That would be simple, would it not? A little bit of cleverness, and I'm
sure the police have enough to do. Everyone knows that Mama and Papa made
you the emergency contact, if they can't be contacted." Sachiko sighed,
looking mournfully at her mother. "The police has enough to worry about, I
think." She hummed a few bars from the music Amy had played, a mournful
dirge for her innocence, an annoying recurring theme.

"And the bodies?" he asked. "Where would we dispose of the remains of your
poor dead parents? The People who raised you and loved you? Your parents
were murdered Sachiko, by a vile man who also happened to be a Fae like you
and me, but by a man all the same as far as the police are concerned. There
is no need to hide what happened or cover up the fact that they are dead.
There is no need to deny your mother and father a decent burial. You have
nothing to hide!"

His voice seemed to betray a growing unease. He was worried, perhaps for her
sanity. The shock of the loss and the severity of her Dream Dance might well
have unhinged her. He'd heard that could happen, that the truth could all be
too much for some and the Mortal half fractured and was lost to insanity and
after that, quickly undone again. He hoped the Child's strange behaviour was
simply shock and not the loss of a Fae soul to the ever dwindling Glamour
of the world.

"A new vista lies before you Sachiko, but we have to close the doors behind us. Whenever we can function within the Autumn world the way it expects we should do. It is less dangerous for us, and for those we associate with. No Motley or Court is going to look kindly on a new Changeling who leaves trails of blood needlessly in her wake. At least, none that we ought to frequent!"

 

Isaac's sharp words froze the cherry blossoms half-formed in her hair, and the darkness blinked in the childling's eyes.  Her eyes shut and she took an unsteady breath.  Her voice roared as the smell of gunsmoke and sakura blossoms spun up as if in a storm.  Her body radiated desert heat. "Amy, Sakura, and who else is in there, GET OUT!  I'm not you, and damn it, I'm SEELIE!   I won't dishonour whom I hold dear!  Leave your cold memories of Winter behind and influence me not!  I am Yumei Hikari, and I will not become Amy Kage or Sakura Arashi again!  Not of storms, and not of death!"



Sachiko fell to her knees, taking deep breaths, obviously thinking of what Isaac had said.  "That is the rub.  I can not go to an orphanage, and people would take me away from Gotham.  I know I don't want that.  You do not have enough to raise me, and I intend to bury them, in the way they desire.  But, the police will not allow me to live alone here, even with you protecting me."



She looked at the blank eyes of her mother, stared into them.  "Amy and Sakura had nothing, but I have help.  They were much older when they remembered, and had lost much more than I.  I will not lose what I have now.  But... mama did mention that in the event of both of their deaths, you were my legal guardian... but is it written?  Was Papa prepared?  Because I get everything if they die."



Sachiko stood and shut her golden eyes, thinking, trying to remember with her crystal memory, as her father proudly called it (though he didn't like it when she had learned some rather impolite words from when she and some classmates went to Little Italy...), where they would have placed a final will and testament.



While the newly Chrysalised Fae hurries off to find the paperwork, looking in the places her parents stored such things, Isaac chewed over the possibilities. In the end, the answer was obvious. Malone!

 

"I have a friend Sachiko, he used to be a Police man and well, he's a Troll too. I think he can help us. I think he will be able to smooth things over and keep you away from those Banal ... Do you know what Banal is? Yeah, sure you do, you pretty much came out of the dance with a full set up didn't you? Very strange. Well, yeah Malone and the Court of Miracles, I think that's the first call after we call the Police."

 

Sachiko nodded vaguely, as she checked in the small box her mother hid things.  And, yes, there it was, a pile of papers, written in both Japanese and English, and one in banal legal jargon.  "I know what banal is, somewhat.  And it's not that strange to remember that much when you have as many memories as I have, hm?"  She waved the papers up, sandwiching the 'official will in between the Japanese and the English ones.  "I got them."
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