Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 00:34:39 -0500 Reply-To: NancySSCH@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: "N.L. Cleveland" Subject: Final Repost Aloha Ch 1.1-7 ALOHA c1994 N.L. Cleveland Chapter 1 p 1-7 (total length of Chapter 1 is 77 p.) This story was originally posted in July 1994. I am reposting as a result of too many requests for me to individually resend. My apologies if you have already read it. Please be patient on requests for resending. I have a finite amount of time available and I prefer to write, not repost. Comments, suggestions, always welcome. Enjoy.... The katana sung in his hands, the long, slender sword's curved edge keening a note of warning as it flashed across the pale sky, slashing a deadly arc through the balmy morning air. Jonathan Raven exhaled, breathing out with the thrust of the blade, slipping the lethal point past the defenses of his imaginary opponent, then striking down the next ghostly foe with the blunt back of the sword, completing a full happo-giri, cutting in all eight directions, as he moved fluidly through the complex sword kata, the almost instinctive ritual of the mock combat easing for a moment the tension in his shoulders, neck, spine. The grass was cool and moist, tickling the bare soles of his feet as he spun in a lethal dance across the level, even lawn. He glanced right, then left, his eyes sweeping past the broad expanse of empty beach that dominated the view. No threat there. Instead, he focused his gaze on the thick stands of bamboo and flowering trees that edged the vulnerable sides of his small Hawaiian estate. Probing the shadows. Seeking a hint of alien motion, a shape that did not belong among the lush greens and browns of the foliage. All week, this sense of being watched. He'd checked, doubled back and confused his trail, whenever he left his home, looking for evidence someone was watching, was following. But there had been nothing. Nothing to pin down, just a feeling. Were his nerves giving out? Were his instincts, which had kept him alive when so many others had died, losing their finely honed sensitivity? Or were they sensing what was not in fact there, pushing him over the boundaries of sanity, into paranoia? Even the familiar moves of the ken-jutsu kata, the most challenging of several he'd designed himself to tune his sword skills and mental concentration to higher levels, one he had mastered flawlessly uncounted thousands of times before, now seemed strange, awkward, as if performed on stage before a hostile audience. Sweat gathered and ran down his back, as he sought release from his inner demons, and his outer, in the fast, precise motion. Sought to free his mind, in the purity of action and disciplined movement, from his constant churning thoughts, and could not. 'Ski said take vacation. Maybe his old friend was right, but not in the way he meant it. The grizzled ex-Marine's idea of paradise, a hot tub full of giggling, flirting beach bunnies, was not what Jonathan needed, or wanted. Maybe it was time to go back to the wilderness. For a month or so. To cleanse his soul and find his inner balance again, in a simple struggle to survive off the land. To leave this fruitless, frustrating search behind for a while. Maybe it was even time to give it up. Jonathan paused, the blade at rest, suspended in mid-air at the apex of a killing stroke, and considered. The constant tension was wearing him down, never knowing if a new lead would reveal his missing son or alert the Black Dragons to his presence and Jonathan's search. The driving urgency to race these unseen competitors to the quarry, lest they snatch the boy away before he found him, never knowing if they were even aware of his progress, or if they just waited and watched, planning their revenge. The bloody memories washed over him, the slaughter he'd begun, but not entirely finished, at the clan's compound in Kyoto. He still felt an unresolved mix of anger, shame, triumph and regret when he thought back to that day. He'd known them all, intimately, from years of training and working and killing together, learning their assassin's trade and earning their trust, only to take his final revenge, betraying and murdering as many of the Black Dragons as he could find, in a wild paroxysm of calculated rage, on the very day he was to become a full member of the clan. Revenge. It had been his goal, his life's ambition, since he'd found his parents mutilated bodies lying in a pool of blood in his family's Tokyo apartment, sprawled cold and lifeless on the bedroom floor, executed by the Dragons as a warning and example to all those who tried to interfere with their illegal operations. Foreigners, agents of the international law enforcement community, as his father had been, or innocents, Japanese civilians, like his mother, it made no difference to the cold blooded killers from the assassin's clan. He'd been 12, on the cusp of manhood, just starting to think about the choices he could make in life, playing child's games and dreaming about what he could become. All his choices had narrowed down to a single vision, that day, and his entire life from that moment on had been dedicated to one cause, the elimination of the Black Dragons. He'd spent his teenage years in an obsessive study of the martial arts, delving as deeply as he could into the dark, publicly shunned disciplines, learning the ryu of the ninja, the secret techniques murder and misdirection. Seeking out every scrap of information about the secretive, quasi religious Black Dragon clan. Making himself into the perfect recruit. Better than the perfect recruit. He had to be outstanding. They'd never accepted a westerner, a gaijin, into their ranks before. Never accepted someone who was not of pure Japanese blood. Calling in old debts, old contacts and friends of his parents for help, he'd built a new identity and shaped a new character for himself, as the bastard child of an anonymous American serviceman and a careless, nameless Japanese call girl, abandoned on the streets to fend for himself. Then he had disappeared into the Japanese underworld, learning to steal, and to hurt, and to kill, to attract the Dragon's attention, gain entry to their clan, and prove to them he was worthy of their trust. He'd done whatever it had taken, to prove himself, sold his conscience to seek his revenge. He'd used that grudging, hard won trust, parlayed it into priceless training, sitting at the feet of the masters of death, learning the fatal skills of the ninjutsu, handed down in the clan for centuries. And he excelled, pouring all his dedication and energy into perfecting each new discipline, performing each new task set to him with deadly efficiency, passing each test of his commitment, ability and loyalty to the clan, while he damned his soul to an infinity of hells for eternity with the blood pouring over his hands. But he didn't care. He had a burning, all consuming mission. That was all that mattered to him. His father's Christian teachings of submission and humility meant as little to him now as did the code of honor of the Bushido, the Japanese warrior way, his mother's family had valued. He would do what ever he had to to achieve his goals. Break whatever laws, human or divine. His obsession with excellence, his athletic prowess and his icy composure in completing the ugliest assignments, caught the eyes of those in power and drew him ever further into the inner circles of the clan. Ultimately he was sponsored by the most feared sensei of the Black Dragon hierarchy, taught privately the hidden knowledge and secret techniques, the okuden, that made him more than the equal of the Black Dragon's most elite killers. Made him, they thought, their ultimate tool, their implacable and unstoppable agent of terror against their rivals. In fact, what they had created was the instrument of their own deaths. And he used all that they had taught him to design a plan that would lead to their complete and total destruction. But on the day of his revenge, in the midst of his carefully planned vengeance, something had gone wrong. His stomach twisted as he thought back to those bloody scenes. It had all begun as he waited in the small anteroom off the ceremonial hall for the formal beginning of his acceptance into the clan. He'd turned calmly to his smiling sensei and had killed him with a sudden, silent blow to the throat. The expression of pride in his best student's accomplishments was still fixed on the man's face as he fell to the floor, life fading from his puzzled eyes. Hooded, armed, Jonathan had slipped out of the foyer and spread death and confusion from the shadows, employing all the lethal skills of surprise and stealth, using poison gas, explosives he'd rigged months before, and naked steel, to devastating effect. He'd stalked through the smoke filled compound, among the burning rubble and half-burned, torn and contorted bodies, killing everyone left standing in his path, fueled by adrenaline and rage, feeling nothing but a grim satisfaction. Until that girl. That damn girl. Some clan member's daughter. She'd been maybe ten, just a tiny little thing, in a flowered kimono, staring up at him with huge wounded eyes as she knelt over the huddled bodies of her family. He'd raised his blood stained sword, ready to kill her too. Then he met her gaze, saw her lips trembling in fear as she faced him and did not run, did not beg....and he stopped. Shocked into self awareness, unable to continue hiding in his berserker's rage. The facade he'd erected cracking, leaving him raw, naked, vulnerable to grief, to sorrow, to all the human feeling he'd denied in himself, feeling all the pent up emotion wash over and through him, for the first time in years. He'd been unable to kill her, or to continue hunting down survivors. He saw himself, mirrored in her eyes, saw what he had been, what he had done and planned to do, and saw, at last, the price others were paying for his single minded quest for vengeance. He had become what he hated most. He still felt the sick rage and shame, all twisted together, that her presence had stirred in him. It hurt, to think back to that day. He'd pushed it all deep down into his mind, buried it as far as he could and still it nagged at him, a question he'd never really faced. Not resolved. Not even yet. Had it been worth it? His whole life had been twisted, shaped and forged into nothing but an instrument of revenge. On the altar of that jealous god, vengeance, he'd sacrificed first his lover, then his only child, his chance to have a family, his chance to explore what he could have become in another, more normal world. And for what? The perpetual memory of that girl's eyes, staring at him over the lifeless bodies of her father, her brothers. He'd fled from the abbatoir that had been his home and training ground for years and the stage for his revenge play. He'd run instinctively, running from himself, using all the skills he'd learned from the Dragons, covering his tracks and leaving Japan, never to return. Disappearing this time to his father's country, the place he'd been born, but barely remembered. America. He'd wandered, aimlessly, living off the money he'd plundered from the burning compound as he'd left. He was without purpose or meaning to his life, floating across the world, not trusting himself to choose or to be anything, anymore, ending up almost by chance in Washington, looking up an old friend of the family, Luther Williamson, a diplomat he'd known as a child from his father's work in Japan. The man had made a special effort to seek out the grieving boy, after his parent's funeral. Had offered the younger Jonathan a home, if he'd wanted it, a new family. He'd turned his back on the offer, then, consumed with his bitter rage and quest for vengeance, but he had remembered the words and the intent behind them, and cherished it, in his heart. Now, he'd found himself pouring out the story of his life to this quiet, sharp eyed man who seemed to know how to ask the right questions, questions that pulled out of him what he'd never shared with anyone , not since he'd cut all ties with his first sensei, to follow his youthful vow of revenge. It was like talking to a priest, he supposed, and finding absolution, or at least understanding. There was no condemnation in Williamson's eyes, when Jonathan finished. No horrified exclamations at the litany of death and pain he'd left in his wake. Instead, he'd asked Jonathan what he wanted to do next, with his life, and at Jonathan's helpless shrug, Williamson had arranged an introduction to a deputy at the Agency. Jonathan's skills and his parental connection gave him an automatic in, despite the reservations some of the other executives there felt over his past. He'd been invisible, during his years after that working as a free lance assassin with the Agency, hiding his guilt and shame in the mantle of duty and country. Turning off his mind, learning not to ask questions, just to obey orders. But the ugly reality of killings, piled on killings, broke through his defenses once more and he was forced to look again at what he had become, to call himself to account for his life and his work. He sickened of the covert, unacknowledged executions of living, vital men and women for reasons "of policy" that he never fully understood. He forced the Agency to let him go, holding the threat of exposing damaging information about the current director and past Agency terminations over their heads. That was his route out. Since coming to Oahu he'd intentionally established a public profile. Two times, since then, emissaries of the Dragons had come after him, to make him pay in blood for what he had taken from them, in death. Two times, they had failed. Two times representatives from the Agency had crossed his path as well. He'd taken care of them, and ensured there would be no repeats, in his last conversation with the Director. Or so he thought. And until now, there'd been nothing. Nothing, except this constant, growing sense of unease. Were the Dragons back? Was this a new tactic? What was their plan? He understood, rationally, that killing the Dragons hadn't brought his parents back, didn't fill the empty hole in his life that their deaths left. He paused in his mental litany. This part hurt the most. He flinched from the thought, but the logic was inescapable. He'd had to face it, his parents would be horrified at what he'd become. And now, were the Dragons after the one last thing he had left, from before, from Aki? He would never know, not until the boy was found. All he had was a name, and a description. He'd never even seen the child, only discovered his existence years later. Aki, the child/woman who had been his first and only love, had stolen mysteriously and abruptly away after their brief bittersweet experiment with passion. She had hidden from him the fact that she was pregnant, and had borne a son. She was the daughter of his first teacher, his sensei, and surrogate father. He had known her since they both were children. Together they had tasted love for the first time, and Jonathan had let it fall careless, from his hand. He had not followed her. He had not even tried to seek out where or why she had gone, then. He was busy. Busy with his plans for revenge, and glad in a part of him that she had left him so that he did not have to lie and leave her. It was only years later, years after news of her death had reached him, that he had discovered that she had also taken something besides his love, something besides his broken heart, when she had first disappeared. She had also taken his unborn son. And had hidden him away, as if knowing that the Black Dragons would be coming after Jonathan. Hikari was the child of his heart, of his youth, before he had stained his hands with the blood of innocent and guilty alike. Before he had become an assassin, a murderer for hire. Jonathan knew he was probably idealizing the boy, but the search for him had become almost a quest for personal redemption. Locating him would be like recovering a key to his past, to what he had been, before the Black Dragons had ripped apart the fabric of his life. He wanted that boy to have what he had lost, to hold onto his ideals and his innocence, to be allowed to be a child, and to grow into a man, without his life being marred by tragedy, distorted by vows of revenge and death. But actually finding the boy....that seemed more and more unlikely. All these dead ends, all these false leads, false hopes. He only knew that Aki had sent the baby to Honolulu. To friends. To be raised as their own son, in secret, far from the vengeance of the Black Dragons. Who this foster family was, he did not know. He didn't know if they were even still alive. Only that they had been here. But what he knew, the Dragons knew as well, so his search, his quest, was also a race. A race for life, or for death. He had come, to look, to see if he could find one teenage boy, half Japanese, half American, and offer him a father. And along with that, the constant threat of death. A dubious gift. But one he hoped the boy would accept. Would want. He had to believe it, anyhow. It was all that kept him going, at the moment. The belief that the boy would want to be found. Would want to know who he really was. He'd met hundreds of youths, so far, in this search. Their faces, their lives, their stories, had started to blur together in his mind, each new lead bringing a sharp moment of hope, each face to face encounter, the bitter taste of failure. That last boy, Jari, had seemed so possible. And the chemistry between them had been so wrong. The boy had been so full of rage. Of pain. Any kid living on the streets can get that way. Jonathan had seen it before, he'd see it again. But that personal twist, that was the problem, the hook he couldn't get past. Jonathan had chewed the question over and over, and still was no closer to an answer. And the reflection of that question, if he was still alive... His mind raced down the familiar path, following the same inevitable chain of ideas he'd run through a thousand times before. The bitterness rose up in him again. Perhaps it was time to leave the Islands, to draw the hunt away. To end it. Forever. To return to Japan and finish what he had begun, so long ago. One way or the other. Jonathan completed the last three movements, katsugu with the shoulders, katate-waza with the wrists, and finished the kata in hiza-tsuki, ending on his knees as he'd begun, the blade sheathed, held at his side. He closed his eyes, smelled lemon blossoms, the light sweet fragrance drifting towards him from the gardens. The tension was still there. He breathed deeply, and began again, exhaling as he moved into a modified iai-jutsu, launching his attack from the ground, drawing the blade in a single lethal stroke, then rising to his feet and advancing across the flat lawn, fighting a horde of shadow assassins in his mind. Half his mind. The other half still worrying over his constant, endless search. =========================================================================