Six Years Ago

The scar on my face pulled at my eye but it was a reminder of the price I had paid. I considered it a small price to pay for the knowledge.

The other price was worse. The memory of pounding a man’s head into the pavement until it was no longer recognisable. The memories of the copies I had absorbed were so fresh in my mind. There was no escape. I had not found a way to tell my brain that what was done was not me, it had been someone else’s nightmare.

It felt like a movie being played again and again, complete with the unbearable rage the duplicate had felt as he pounded another humans head into the cobblestones. The pain of my eye bursting open and a knife being raked down his face tearing a ragged valley over his cheek bones. That one helpfully came in stereo. I had experienced it and so had a copy that I had absorbed. I was healed now but the memory of that pain was never going to leave me.

I was splitting my time between meditating, trying to understand the decision I thought I had made that day, talking it over with Sensei and talking with Valkyr who had stayed with me after the healing. We had spent days talking over what I had done and what had been done to me. About what I had become and who I was still trying to be.

I still thought of myself as Yuudai but more and more that name did not suit. I know that I was still Seeking. I had made the jump from being a copy to being a Super but I still don’t know what that meant, of what I was. But the name Seeker or Yuudai did not seem to fit my skin any more.

I know I had already broken the promise to not create another however the memories still swirling in my mind were enough to discourage experimentation by themselves. The only way I was going to understand this Super was to try and create new copies of what I wanted but the part of me that still thought of itself as a copy was reduced to howling, impotent rage at the idea. Creating a new version and killing it, again and again just so I could control the power? Would I be doing it for himself or because it was my Mission? I could not find a way out of this maze.

It was not just the memories that were keeping me awake at night either. I was no longer a copy. I also now understood that I could not solve the worlds problems but I had decided that I would do my goddamn best to help who was in front of me.

That sounded great in my head, in the spur of the moment. Spending days thinking about it raised questions that I could not ignore.

Does that mean I was willing to kill again and again to understand my Super? Did I need to do that or was that the Levi Prime in me waking up and nudging me, of needing to be stronger than anyone else? The meditation was helping me try and move on from the horrific memories that were now fighting for every spare thought.

It was not just the fact that I had killed people, but that raw wound brought back the deeply buried and long thought drowned memories of my legs being broken by the crazy cult of Levi’s.

That seemed like a life time ago but the snapping sound had begun to wake me up at night again. It had to wait its turn for all the other fresh hells though. Yes, Valkyr had been there again to heal me but that did not erase the event from my mind.

As if summoned by my thought Valkyr strode into my little room without knocking. I looked at my friend, taking in his beautiful frame. Valkyr had also managed to find a monks habit somewhere along the way. A man with that white a skin wearing a Japanese Buddhist shroud should look like an idiot, that they were playing at dress up. As usual Valkyr looked the stunning.

“Hey.” He called as he walked in “You made it out of your room today?”

I unfolded my legs and sat comfortably on one end of the futon, gesturing to the other end.

“No, Supposed to be spending the day with Sensei but…..” I trailed off.

Valkyr watched him, knowing full well that look on his friends face. Valkyr sat down on the other end of the futon and took a moment to breathe in the incense that infused the air, gently being stirred by the wind though the closed shutters. He did not know exactly what his friend was going through but the self-loathing? The hatred of who you were and what you felt? Valkyr knew all too well what that was like. Valkyr had spent many a time thinking back to the day they met and begun their odd friendship.

Valkyr had met a whole platoon of different Levi’s back then, they were a plague at the time. Levi Prime had gone for his great leap forward and created so many copies for so many different reasons. But as usual he had not really thought it through. Instead of trying to understand what he was doing and what he was creating, trying to get a copy and find its strength and assigning a task to that, no.

This was Levi Prime. A lazy idiot. He just created a copy and spent a minute to see if it was homicidal or insane. Not giving off the vibe it was ready to skin cats and eat small rodents? Perfect! Head out and learn how the worlds financial systems works! Also come back to me in a year with all that knowledge so I can kill you and learn it without lifting a hand myself.

It was amazing that so many of the copies returned. It was equally amazing to Valkyr that so many of the copies didn’t go flat out crazy and kill themselves or try to kill Levi Prime.

Meeting the Seeker or as he called himself, Yuudai now, was something else. He was the first copy of Levi Prime that seemed to think for himself. Okay, sure, he spent a lot of time thinking about how he could drink himself to death but at least it was something new. He was not like those fucking weird Levi cultists, he was not actively insane and above all… well he was fun.

Now though? Seeing what he had become, seeing what he had gone through? He looked at his friend sitting on the edge of the futon, his eyes sunken and hollow but a smile still trying to fight its way through. Valkyr loved this man, had seen him at his worst and was incredibly proud of what he was trying to do now.

Yuudai cleared his throat “How went the photo shoot?”

Valkyr shrugged “It was okay, the photographer couldn’t speak any English and my translator was questionable. At one point I was perched on the back of a chair for some reason?”

Yuudai chuckled “I thought you would be good at that, you know, the whole bird thing?”

Valkyr scowled “I am not a bird, idiot.” Yuudai was one of the handful of people that knew Valkyr’s Super and the only one he allowed to make cracks about it. He continued “So no session with Sensei today, not made it out of your room. Still off the booze though?”

They were both dying for a drink but had held strong together. Being up here in the mountains made it a bit easier for Yuudai but it was still brutally hard. All the old habits of spending time with Valkyr had come roaring back. Coupled with the insidious whispers in his mind that just one drink would be enough to take the edge off the memories…. Yuudai knew it was never just one.

He nodded and they both sat there in silence for a minute or two, enjoying the company and the sounds coming from the rest of the temple complex.

Yuudai broke the stillness first “I have been thinking about my Super. It still feels weird to say that I have one, but I am stuck. A part of me wants to learn more, to figure out how to control it, to see what its limits are and what I can do. However the only way I can see me doing that is to create copies of myself. I don’t know how many I will have to make to really understand what I am doing or if the end goal is even possible.” Yuudai was shaking his head without realising it like he was trying to shake the ideas out. “So what do I do? Let another tribe of guys wander the world aimlessly like I did? Or do I commit genocide on a personal level and murder every one that comes out?”

He trailed off at the end there, Valkyr could see just how much pain this question was causing him. Valkyr waited him out, Yuudai had more to say he knew.

“What about you Valkyr? I know your Super is not all sweetness and light. How did you manage it? Did you just transform again and again and what? Work at a hospital and just miraculously heal everyone who came through?” Yuudai stopped shaking his head and looked up in shock “You know what? I realise now I have never even asked you! God, I am such a good friend…”

Valkyr smiled at him “You never asked because I never let the conversation get any where near my Super. I don’t like to talk about it.”

Again the silence stretched.

Valkyr didn’t like to dwell on the past but it would be good to tell someone and Yuudai was his friend.

“My Super didn’t come on until I was into my 20’s. I was not always like this…” He gestured to himself “I was the same height, sure, but I was like a new born foal, all limbs and elbows. No muscle, no coordination. The acne was the worst, it cratered my whole face.”

Yuudai’s eyebrows were doing their best to climb right off his head “What? You…What?” He started laughing “Wow, I would love to have seen that!”

Valkyr just glared at him “It’s not funny, I had never even kissed a girl at 21. I was a mess. I tried everything but I seemed destined to live in a basement for my whole life or maybe join a travelling circus. On my 22nd birthday I was out at the pub by myself having a quiet pint of self pity when the room started to get really hot. There was a chap at the bar who started to stumble and clutch his head. He begun to scream, the whole bar stopped to stare at this man, the heat was getting worse and worse.” Valkyr paused, the memory playing back in vivid detail in his mind, the heat, the smell…the pain.

“He exploded.” Valkyr said simply with a shrug. “It was a nova of fire and fury. I pieced together what happened afterwards. The fire burnt everything including me. That was when my Super was awakened. I healed, I healed faster than the fire could burn me and I transformed into what you have seen before. I was left standing there, my body had gone into overdrive and healed everything it thought was wrong. I freaked out. I had no idea what had happened and I was there in my other form, I had wings for fucks sake! Huge wings! I tried to run but my body was so different it was like trying to marionette while blind drunk. I got out of there and back to my flat and on the way my body reverted from my avian form but I was changed. I had become exactly as you see me now.”

Valkyr paused to try and make sure Yuudai understood what he meant. “Exactly like now.”

Valkyr took a long breathe and continued “I have learned over the years to exert my healing to other people by touch but it only works in my avian form and becoming that feels so….” he shuddered “alien. I can feel my thoughts changing, I see the world differently, I feel separated from humanity. I used to stay in the avian form as I can only heal myself like that and also, the whole flight thing.” Valkyr’s voice took on a note of wonder “The first time I flew was magical. It still is, but I have learnt that that….thing… is not me. It is something else. Something I don’t want to be….” His voice drops, as does his head “Something I am worried that I will be forced to become.”

Yuudai frowned at him “What do you mean you will have to become that?”

His friend sat there, his head bowed for a long moment before raising it and meeting Yuudai’s eyes. “Because I am getting old. To stave off the ravages of time on this body I have to change to my other form. Before I could change once every few months for an hour or so and then revert and all the aches and pains would be gone. Now? I have to change every few weeks and stay in the form longer and longer.” Valkyr breathes in deeply “Each time it gets harder to change back. One day I am sure that I will not be able to understand why I would even want to.”

Yuudai suddenly felt ashamed, he had made his friend change into his other form to heal him without even understanding what was at stake. What it cost him to do this each time. He cleared his throat “I am sorry my friend, I am sorry for what I have made you do.”

He had not finished speaking before Valkyr was shaking his head “No, it is always my choice and I have made it willingly.” He tried to grin but it came out a little strained “So that’s me. That’s why I look so damn good. Its not exercise or eating right, it is becoming a bird person every now and then. Best diet ever.”

Yuudai’s eyes widened suddenly “Wait. How old are you then?”

Valkyr just smiled at him “That is something I am not ready to answer. Even to you.” Valkyr shrugged “I need to keep a few secrets for myself.”

The ringing of the bell to call for dinner interrupted them. They looked at each other and decided to avoid it.

After the final toll faded Valkyr continued “That’s my tale, it does feel better for telling someone. What about you, did it help at all? What are you going to do about your Super? What are you going to do when Levi Prime comes looking for you? You are not going back willingly are you?”

Yuudai felt a jolt run through him. He had not even thought about that since he had manifested his Super but he knew the answer in his bones. “No, that fucker will never get me. He is going to have to come himself and I will not go without a fight.” He nodded grimly. Something clicked in him. It was the part of him that he had ignored for so long, the part that stubbornly kept him going, the part that had been beaten and buried.

He was not going to die to let someone else learn what he had gone through hell for. His knowledge and power was earned through literal blood, sweat and tears. It was his, fiercely his own creation and no one was getting it. The only way to stay out of the clutches of Levi Prime was to learn how to control what he had. He needed to understand, to learn. He looked around at lodging, smelt the air and listened to the mountains.

He couldn’t do it here, he could not defile the memory of this place.

“I am going back to Arcadia, Valkyr. I need to learn what I can do.”