Kyuuketsuki Duo: The TV Series Episode 24
Playing with Fire
"Pay attention, Quatre."
"Huh?" I looked up, startled to realize that my attention had wandered. "Sorry, Penny. I guess I got distracted."
"'Sorry' won't cut it in the real world, kid," she reprimanded me. "And distractions are dangerous."
"I'm s--" I cut myself off before I apologized again, and corrected my statement. "I understand."
She looked at me as if she doubted my sincerity for a little while, but with only a warning glance she continued with her lesson. I felt bad being vague with her, but how could I explain that I thought I had felt Duo... doing his thing not so very far from where we were? I wasn't supposed to tell her about the Shinma, or the Guardian. It was slightly ridiculous, really. Treading a rather fine line, even. Although I could understand that it would be difficult to explain where I had acquired such knowledge from. According to what I had learned, it was already common knowledge -- common among the spiritualists, I suppose -- that there were creatures that could feed upon the spiritual pollution of mankind like leeches. The only thing I knew that the regular spiritualist didn't was that they were called the Shinma, and that they had a fairly loose hierarchy of power that Duo refused to elaborate upon. And the Guardianship -- what harm would there be in speaking of it? We were all on the same side, after all, only Duo specialized in Shinma, and had the power to actually destroy them or send them back, rather than just exorcising them as a spiritualist might be able to. Nevertheless, the goal was the same -- to rid this world of their influence. But even if I didn't completely understand it, I would stand by my word to Duo and keep my mouth shut, on this topic at least.
Penny was speaking of something that Duo had only alluded to in passing. I got the feeling that elementals didn't really factor into his worldview. Meiran didn't know too much about them either, but Penny did, and now she was telling me how I could summon one. I never would have guessed that this was within my power, yet it made total sense. For some reason, that realization made me feel as if I were failing Duo somehow. He was always exhorting me to think 'outside the box'. The fact that he was only teaching me the groundwork should have made it easier, because that way, I wouldn't be bound by what was considered to be traditional or even possible. It had to be that way, because he really didn't know any more than I did, and hoped that I could fumble my way to some sort of higher understanding; because of this, I felt as if I should have realized about the elementals sooner. Elementals were power of the earth; spiritualists manipulated the power that flowed through the earth. It seemed so obvious in retrospect.
I listened to her instructions and watched her as she worked, and then it was my turn. Holding my bottom lip between my teeth in concentration -- a bad habit Duo liked to tease me about -- I mimicked her power's actions as best I could. It didn't work the first time, but it did the second, and I was rewarded by a little wisp of an air elemental that glowed a cheerful light blue to my mind's eye. There weren't any eyes on the creature, but I got the feeling that it was regarding me curiously. I felt a little silly for smiling softly at a cloud in return, but I did it anyway. It was kind of cute.
There was a candle lit upon the table. "Make it blow it out," Penny ordered.
I turned my attention back to the elemental, trying to decide how to frame my request. I started by holding my hand out to it slightly, as if it were a puppy that needed to become familiar with my scent. It jumped back a little, but I guess its curiosity won it over because it floated down tentatively to brush against my fingertips. 'Hey, there, little guy,' I greeted mentally, hoping it would pick up on the thought. I couldn't speak mind to mind as Duo did, but I could make my thoughts clear enough to those with the power and inclination to listen. 'Mind doing me a favor?'
"What are you doing, Quatre?" Penny's sharp voice broke through my rapport with the airy creature.
I blinked at her. "Asking it to blow out the candle."
"Asking it? Don't ask it, Quatre. Command it."
I blinked back at the little blue fella before looking back at her. The nearly transparent cloud seemed to shy away from her and take refuge behind the dubious shelter of my fingers. "But that's not very nice," I said, perhaps lamely.
She stared at me for a moment. "Nice? You don't have to be nice to it. It's here to do your bidding."
"That's not true," I protested weakly. I could have given that statement a little more thought. I didn't think she really wanted to hear me say that the elemental seemed to have a personality and consciousness, or hear me claim that it had a mind of its own, just as the Shinma or the demons or the rest. It wasn't just another piece of the power of the earth, and I didn't want to treat it as such. There was a reason why spiritualists could only do so much with elementals; they weren't passive entities, not like the power flows in the earth were passive. They could fight back. Maybe she just didn't see that? But no, she was the experienced one here.... "I mean, just because I called it..."
"Quatre," she said, her tone feigning patience but conveying a certain incredulous scorn. "You are not here to become friends with the elementals. They can turn on you if handled improperly."
Even so. I brushed aside the fleeting thought I had that if Duo were here, he'd happily befriend an elemental or two, and dance among them as the ethereal creature he was. Just because I wanted it to do something for me, didn't mean that I had to be rude. That was just uncalled for. 'Think you can blow out that candle for me?' I asked it kindly, finishing my earlier request. Let her think that it was a command, if that was what she wanted. I saw no reason not to be polite.
It seemed to like me, fortunately enough. After an almost imperceptible wary glance at the woman across from me, it responded to my request with a sort of happy-to-oblige alacrity.
Machiavelli be darned. Sometimes, it's better to be loved than feared.
*****
Paper wards are strange things. I've seen Meiran make them, and I've seen Penny make them, and now I've made them myself, but they still baffle the heck out of me. I understand that they have power imbued in them. I've put that power there myself. I know that it's more than just what's written on the slip of paper, or else anyone could make a paper ward.
What gets me, though, is how it manages to be thrown through the air. How on earth can it stay rigid like that? And how do they stick to things like they do?
I asked Penny. She laughed at me, and told me not to think so hard about things. Magic doesn't follow logical paths, so she said. Don't spend so much of my energy thinking up how -- just do it.
There was something about that advice that just didn't sit well with me. Penny was a practicing spiritualist. She knew what she was talking about. Then again, Duo is a practicing... whatever. He also knows what he's talking about. And so is, and so does, his companion Heero. So why did their advice have to conflict so much?
Maybe things were just different for spiritualists than they were for... whatevers. But even then, things just didn't line up properly. The whole reason why we thought that Duo could only teach me so much was that he didn't know very much about the structured way that spiritualists had to work, and yet there was Penny telling me that it wasn't really all that structured. No, that's not really right. The way of the spiritualist is structured, but the power itself is not. Well, Duo would agree with that, but even so, he has imposed his order upon it.
Or perhaps Heero has. Even after working with that mysterious being, I still don't know very much at all about who he is or what he can do, but I get the feeling that he is the more coldly practical of the two. Therefore, I would not be surprised to find out that it was Heero that decided that power and energy followed certain natural laws as much as any other physical system did.
I have to admit that, without the training in the fundamentals that I got from those two, I would probably have been rather starry-eyed and mystified about the whole thing. With their insight, things made sense that they were the way that they were, and it was easier to generalize what I learnt in one arena to another. Penny never went through as many of the basics as they did with me, but maybe she just saw that I already had them down and therefore bypassed them. I tried not to think about that one too hard, at least, because trying too much to find out what Penny thought were the basics might have led to some interesting questions about my own thoughts and their origins, and I wasn't about to betray Duo.
Still, there were some fundamental differences between Duo's and Penny's styles that I had to reconcile for myself. My two otherworldly teachers taught me to take a step back from the power and control it with a level head and a powerful will. My earthly teacher told me to embrace it, to immerse myself in it and feel its power running through my body and responding to my desires. I figured I could get that issue worked out sometime before I landed myself in some emergency situation.
Our lesson in wards was over for the day, and for some reason, Penny chose to ignite the blank sheets of paper with a swiftly summoned fire elemental. Her casual use of her power surprised me. Even Duo, whose power was simply an undeniable basis of his entire being, chose not to use his power so. Well, perhaps that was just in front of me. Perhaps he was an entirely different creature when alone. And granted, he jumped in and out of shadows quite often, but that was mostly because he didn't want anyone to know where he lived. But regardless of what he did in his own time, he always told me not to let the power become an integral part of my existence if I could help it. I thought for a long time that he told me that simply because he was trying to protect me again, trying to keep me out of this spiritualist business as much as he could, but he did have some valid points that have managed to counterbalance my opinion a little. Use of the power did attract attention, after all. Just because I couldn't sense anyone watching, didn't mean that no one was watching.
I shrugged aside the once-again contradicting approaches to the art, and resolved to find my own style. "How do you manage to summon and command the elemental so quickly, Penny?" I asked instead. "Is it just practice that allows you to do that?"
She blinked at me once, as if she was not expecting me to ask her anything of that nature. "Practice. Yes. Naturally, the more you practice, the more easily it will come to you. Some people also find it helpful to have some sort of focus object that can facilitate the process."
"What do you mean, a focus?" I went through my mental files, trying to think up some examples of what she was referring to.
"Some object that one is accustomed to working with," she elaborated. "With prolonged use, it becomes attuned to your energies, your way of thinking, so to speak, and channeling one's power through it can often reduce the amount of power or concentration needed to perform a task. It can be any sort of object. It's usually something like a stone, a piece of jewelry. An inanimate familiar, in a sense."
"Do you have one?" I asked, hoping I wasn't committing some breach of etiquette by asking. It sounded to me as if it might be a personal sort of question.
She reached behind her back and pulled a knife out from some hidden sheath. My first thought was that that must have been uncomfortable. It was no small little dagger, but still short enough to be fairly inconspicuous. The blade was slightly curved, with some scrawling script inscribed into it that resembled the appearance of wards. Besides the writing, however, the blade looked entirely functional.
She had the blade out only long enough for me to catch a glimpse of the power within it before hiding it away again, but I observed enough for the strange focus-weapon to send a shiver down my spine. "This has been with me for a long time," she said.
"So... it's like, because it's been around for so long, it's already pretty familiar with what it has to do in order to get things done, so you don't have to spend as much time each time telling it what to do. Is that right?"
Penny laughed at me. "Must you always insist on elevating things to a human-like level? Yesterday, you tripped over a rock and then apologized to it!"
"Sorry," I mumbled, knowing full well how she hated to hear me say that. I got the feeling that she was a person from whom apologies were rarely heard. Besides, I didn't apologize yesterday. I just said, 'pardon me.' Could I help it if I had been raised to be polite and respectful to all things, even inanimate pieces of nature? You'd think that as a spiritualist, whose power is tied into the earth and tends towards balance, my behavior shouldn't be a problem. Maybe my mother acted this way, and Father, in that painfully self-contradicting manner of his, tried to instill that in me. "Just call it a bad habit, okay?"
She laughed again, but luckily just let it go and answered my original question. "Yes. Your description is about right. There are other things that I've done to it to make it stronger, more helpful, but that's the gist of it."
*****
It was such a simple thing. I didn't give it much thought. That sort of thing happened all the time. I chided the man's thoughtlessness to myself, but there was nothing more to be done.
But when the driver of that car made a turn without first checking to see that we were walking through intersection, Penny took a much more active displeasure in his actions. She glared at the retreating backside of the car as we finished crossing the road, and then I felt her reach out with her power, grab a hold of the driver's chi, and twist.
"Penny!" I gasped in surprise. I chased after the man with my senses, and was relieved to find that nothing was seriously wrong with him. If she had done something major, the man might have been killed, either from the manipulations themselves, or just from a car accident. I had never imagined that being able to tap into living energy like that might be used to negative effect, not until that moment. I knew it could be used to help people sometimes, that ailments were sometimes caused by chi that was flowing improperly or the like and we could set them right, but at that moment, I was struck by the number of ways a person could misapply that power, and it frightened me.
She turned to look at me, the hard look in her eye contrasting slightly with the guiltless look on her face. "Quatre," she replied evenly.
I just stared at her for a moment until it became clear that she wasn't going to continue of her own will. "I can't believe you just did that!"
"Relax, Quatre. It's not like I hurt him or anything. Just gave him a sudden attack of diarrhea, is all."
"That's all? Penny, I don't think we're supposed to be using our powers for things like this... this petty revenge!" A logical voice inside my head told me that I wasn't supposed to be arguing with my teacher like this, but the moral voice in my head was telling me that this wasn't right.
"That wasn't revenge, Quatre. I was teaching him a lesson."
"God, when you say it like that, it's the same thing. We're supposed to help people, aren't we? To save them?"
"We are saving them, Quatre. And sometimes that means saving them from themselves."
"And what was that just now? Aversive conditioning? How is that a lesson?"
"Some men are no smarter than Pavlov's dogs," she replied scornfully. "These simple sorts of things may be the only thing they understand."
"I refuse to accept that," I shot back, perhaps a bit too quickly.
"You'd better," she responded just as quickly, and the flashing in her eyes made me take a small involuntary step back from her. "The world is a cold and hard place, Quatre. I know you enjoy living in your happy little bubble, where you have the luxury of apologizing to rocks and thinking the best of the elementals, but that can't last long. You'd better crawl out of your shell before something happens that will tear it all away mercilessly from you, ready or not."
She turned away from me and continued walking down the street. I stared at her back for a few long moments before hurrying to catch up with her. Was what she said true? I knew that I had been sheltered and protected, by my father and by Duo, as well. I knew that there were a lot of Bad Things out there. I think Darcy qualified as one of them. But despite all of that, I didn't think that it was necessary to lose all faith in mankind.
Maybe I didn't have to. Maybe I could just hope for the best, but expect the worst. That was what Duo said to me once, anyway. Of course, he may have been referring to a math test at the time or something, but the same idea applied.
She didn't cause any real harm, that was true. She could have, and she didn't. Power used with responsibility. Another theme of Duo's teaching. Coming from anyone else, I probably would have brushed off the idea as being cheesy, undeservedly grandiose, but I could see it in Duo's eyes that he meant it. He really, truly felt it and understood it and labored beneath that burden. I didn't care what bad things Penny had to say about supernatural beings; Duo had a good heart and a kind soul beneath his shadowy trappings, and I was honored to have the privilege of knowing him.
I didn't know how he did it, how he kept going after so many years of dealing with the darker side of human nature, and I didn't know why Penny just struck me as more jaded than he, after only a fraction of a human lifetime.
I didn't even know why I was thinking about this whole thing that hard. I wasn't here to follow exactly in her footsteps. I was here to learn. I didn't mean to just take what I needed from her and then leave, but I didn't intend to absorb absolutely everything she had to tell me.
People have differences of opinions all of the time, just as how she and Duo had different approaches to the power. She was entitled to her opinions, and I to mine. I resolved to stop objecting to her ideas, and just go for the lessons beneath them. That would make things smoother on both of us.
TBC...
if heero can pull a gun out from behind his back, and wufei can hide swords in his trench coat, then penny can pull a knife out from somewhere, too, okay?
just in case it wasn't clear, i'd like to point out that all of the above scenes took place over a week or two, not all on the same day. if i had foresight or something, i'd drop them into separate episodes so you could see some sort of progression, but i don't have that many episodes left, and it wouldn't fit in, anyway. i hope these examples all serve my point, which will be seen in the last couple of episodes. i had to think for quite a while before figuring out what that point was. so i apologize if this seems kinda rough or rushed or something.
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