GARO Fanfic - A survival affair, 2 (1)

 

Chap. 2: Siege (part 1)

 

The beauty of Nikko Park can not help but inspiring all the thirty students. Three teachers help the students, who are spread across different locations, trying to depict in their sketchbooks their personal interpretation of any aspect or point of the park.

To leave the city for a day is refreshing to Kaoru, being far from the bustle of the school. And far from everything that reminds her about the horrors. However, the beautiful landscape has got a disturbing nuance. Why does she think that there are more shadows than the ones projected by the trees under the sun? She shakes her head to drive out her suspicions and walks to one of her favorite students, sitting on a bridge, in order to see if she has finally discovered what she wants to draw.

She has almost reached the bridge and sunny light floods her, but the darkness is upon her. Horrors, here? Slowly, she comes to her student and looks at the picture: two human figures, one standing and one seated, the latter one with a lump on arms. Why has she chosen to draw people?

Across the bridge, Kaoru discovers the models: a couple with a baby. They both are watching at her, and the one who sits rises, annoying the student. Kaoru sighs. She does not want her students to suffer the faintest damage at all, so that, once again, she resigns to becoming a mobile restaurant.

Kaoru crosses the bridge without haste and without pause to stand in front of the couple. She has already succeeded in controlling the energy output and the appearance of the appendages of her fingers, allowing her to lead them to a quieter place, behind a thick clump of bushes. The two Bariri expose their belly, and yheir satiety node swells and projects forward to receive their food. But when the weary girl turns around to leave, a woman's voice stops her.

“Wait! You must turn our son on”.

“What ...?”

Kaoru stops herself by coming to her aid some memories of Meshia. The Bariri are something like marsupials: the child is formed inside the mother but there is not a key moment of birth, the child goes in and out until it finishes its developement, when it is too large to return into the womb. At that moment it needs to get its first independent “meal” by Meshia, the usual food seasoned with the blood of the Queen herself.

The small being lies for some days unconscious and on the verge of cell death. Kaoru can not do anything for it, nor want to.

“You know I’m not Meshia, my blood doesn’t work. Why don’t you return into your world? Her body is still able to give you what you need”.

“How long?” the man asks.

“We knew we risked much inprocreating, but you know that we have to adapt to living here. We need our Queen”.

The tone of the woman is so full of threats, and Kaoru discovers that she is able to know what they are thinking. They are not sentimental and do not worry that the child can die, but they are genuinely involved in their own survival and that of their species.

They are testing her. Depending on how she reacted, they will devise a plan to kidnap her and force her to resume the role of Meshia. They know she is not, but the only thing that matters is to do what she did before: to be available to them. She can read their fears about she, once converted, could to rebel and destroy them. They know that they could not sedate if necessary to keep her submitted, because Meshia’s soul was ripped with part of her mind, and she wouldbe, Kaoru herself, the only mistress of their lives and their deaths. Still, it is better than risking extinction. The couple must attend a meeting of "Beekeepers in crisis" tomorrow, which will report the response by the one who was twice the guest of the Queen.

A tremor runs through Kaoru’s body understanding the seriousness and extent of the conspiracy. Error: Bothe Bariri have realized it.

“In response to the part of Meshia that is in you” the man says, “that we're asking. But if we have to force you, we will. We are willing to destroy the Temple of Darkness to keep you locked in our world forever”.

Kaoru fights taking advantage of the fears that she have just discovered.

“Don’t you know what happens to humans when they lose hope? Not only they can lose the instinct of self-preservation, but also don’t mind destroying whatever. How could you avoid that I might kill you all before killing myself?”

“ So, a massive flight into your world was needed. And we’d have to adapt to eating humans. We have the right to survive and no one, not even you, will prevent it!”

Suddenly, a hand of the woman is thrown into the air, trapping a reckless wasp, and raising it to her mouth. Kaoru, welcoming the distraction, simulates a discovery.

“Ye that make away bees!”

“Too bad they’re so small. We’re trying to keep some to raise them, but when hunger hounds ... And their queen is exquisite!”

“Because of that” the woman adds “we have to move to the cities. Kiva’s children prefer them. I'll never understand how theyt can like human flesh”.

“Because Kiva was human in his origin”, the man says, “stupid half-breed!”

“Delicious stupid half-breed” the woman points.

Kiva’s children, the normal horrors born from the union between the dark and haunted Kiva and the bewitched Meshia. Because she could not intevene actively in their development, they were born sterile. Now they become the favorite dish of the Bariri, and are in danger of extinction.

But the Bariri do not want to be extinct, and they need their Queen to activate their children. How could someone with such knowledge as Meshia to create a world so dependent on her own being? What a mistake! However, the answer comes under the form of a memory: Meshia knew that she had escaped from death and thought she would be eternal. But even more. She was determined to become a goddess, and made the world at her own image: evil, violent, manipulated to such levels that prevented the free development of life forms created by her. And so, their future destruction was decided.

Unfortunately, humanity has become the last resort of these beings without a world, and they are not ready to deal with it neither physically nor spiritually. The Makai ones are required to discover themselves and spread in any way, lest they betray their protective mission.

And she, what can she do? Only deliver herself at the hands of doctors, give up her free life, and to pray it helped.

If the Bariri do not kidnap her before.