The Council of Terra - Part 5

⛓Pigmentation⛓

TW: 18+ | Slight Descriptions of Violence | Mature Language

PT 394, Dimension Y-062

Hestia Lorenz

The sun cut through the rusted open window next to the bed Hestia laid in. Once her mother’s. Last night she quickly fell into a deep sleep. Perhaps the spirit of her mother laid with her in that bed that night. Thoughts of her Mother flooded her mind as she slowly got up. The last thing Rhea wanted was to leave her child at such a young age, and yet, fate willed it so. Fate? Or bad luck?

She slipped out of the room. Across the way was Terra’s old room, Enzo and Petra were still sleeping when Hestia peeked in the door. She wandered down the hall and into the living room. At the end of the hallway, there was the kitchen to the right and the living room to the left. Hestia’s lingering anxiety about Petra made it so she stayed put inside the house, and yet, there was still so much to see.

Ideas of exploring the house quickly exited Hestia’s mind when she saw something protruding out of Enzo’s backpack. After a brief look at other belongings, she found it. A baseball bat! When it rested in her hands, she felt the energy return to her body. She lightly swung the bat, making a garish woosh sound as she disrupted the air.

“Hey.” A voice caused Hestia to recoil in embarrassment. She saw Enzo standing in the hallway she had just come from. “Did you used to play ball?” He asked.

She regained her composure. “Yeah. I used to play, but I wasn’t very good.”

“Pff, sure. Why don’t we play ball, then?”

Hestia responded with puzzlement. “Isn’t Petra still asleep? Won’t we get in trouble?”

“For playing a game of baseball? Don’t kid around. Let’s go! You lead the way. It’s your town, isn’t it?”

They left the house with haste. Enzo slung his bag over his back and led the way. Hestia recognized many of the landmarks in the small town as they walked. As a kid, they came to Terra’s old house every weekend as a sort of ritual. The small town setting was comfortable, and for better or worse, many of Rhea’s friends and family lived in the same area. Hestia grew to know and love the small town, despite not understanding the meaning that Terra held to her family, aside from her being her deceased grandmother.

The town held much of its appeal, aside from the remnants of red matter that had come from Radio’s attack. Luckily, the beauty came from it being a ghost town. In a roundabout way, the town was better like this. Nobody in sight.

The baseball field was spotless. No red, rocky material. As ‘normal’ as it could get in the dead world. There was a convenient bucket of baseballs near the pitching mound. Enzo hustled over. Hestia arrived at home base, gripping the bat anxiously. As she set herself up to bat, she felt memories flood back of her last time batting. She had only dreamed of touching a bat since that day, to reclaim the honor she lost that day.

Now, the wind was dead, the trees quiet, the dust stationary.

“Strike one, Hestia’s out to lunch!”

Hestia regained her composure. She had swung without even thinking, and long after the ball had flown past her. “Focus. Eyes up. I don’t care if nobody’s watching.” Hestia’s subconscious shouted. With one swing, she sent the ball into the woods. It bound over Enzo’s head, and maintained its trajectory until it landed over the fence.

“Hey! Homerun! You were just being modest.” Enzo congratulated her.

They played for a couple more rounds switching places between batter and pitcher until the bucket of balls was empty. Afterwards, the pair walked through the town.

“I don’t think I can ever play baseball again after being embarrassed like that. I had no idea you used to play.” Enzo commented. He looked at Hestia with beaming eyes.

“I haven’t since I was inducted into the council.” Hestia responded, upon falling into a silence, she felt Enzo’s need for answers surrounding the council, and continued. “The council kept me safe for…about fourteen years now. I was never allowed to leave because of the danger that it meant. If I left, there was an increased chance of being found by DRU. Since the council remained unknown by them, I had no choice but to stay. I was like a caged animal. A shining beacon of hope for all Terras. Of course, they treated me well, kept me fed, all that. One day I just…couldn’t handle it. So I left.”

They sat down on the side of the road while Hestia continued her story.

“Why’d you leave? I mean, it seems like you had it good there.”

“One of the skills I learned was tattooing. Many of the Terras there had been branded with the mark of a phoenix in some way, they wanted to wear it with pride. It was my job to beautify them. Every once and a while, I’d screw one up, and they’d get pretty mad. Usually I’d have to deal with Little Terra. She was the one who led the council, the one with horns. I was relieved of my duties, and I basically became her pet. She never had a family of her own, so I guess she wanted me to be like a daughter. Doesn’t help that she lived in Hell for years after her death in her dimension. So, she was pretty brutal.”

Hestia rolled down a side of her shirt to expose her shoulder. There was a gnarly burn mark that had been left there. Presumably by Little Terra.

“God. I’m sorry about that. All the more reason we have to keep you away from the council.” He insisted. “Hey, sorry to change the subject on you, but you said you were good at doing tattoos, right?”

Hestia stifled a laugh. “Yeah. What about it?”

Enzo pointed to the tattoo shop that sat a bit further down the street. Somehow, the lights still worked. For Enzo, it was just like the simulation, as Hestia shed their belongings, he took his shirt off.

“W-what are you doing?” Hestia stumbled over her words.

“I want you to ink my back.”

Unlike the simulation, his back was featureless. As a member of the Yakuza family known as the Kubota clan in nineteen eighty-eight, it was a rite of passage for someone like Enzo to have a tattoo inked on his back to signify his devotion to his family.

“You know I was grown in a lab to become someone similar to Terra’s husband, right?”

“Yeah. You were in a simulation for most of your life, right?”

“That’s right. I grew up in Kabukicho, Japan in the nineteen-eighties. I was part of the Yakuza. We consider ourselves “Gokudo”. It means something like “the extreme path” to English speakers. I was pretty much indoctrinated into the Yakuza as soon as I went to Japan.”

“So that means you had a tattoo, right?”

“We call them Irezumi, for Yakuza, we were to keep our Irezumi hidden unless we wanted to show it as a form of intimidation. I was inked with Kazunosuke, my sworn brother had Miuranosuke. They were warriors who worked together to defeat the nine-tailed fox, Tamamo no Mae.”

“Okay Mr. Mythology expert. Do you think you can describe to me what this Kazunosuke looks like? I’ll have to draw the design myself, then we can get to inking.”

The two were able to find a large paper that they scaled to Enzo’s back to begin the drawing. Enzo guided Hestia through the process of drawing Kazunosuke. Her lines were gentle, elegant, yet powerful. The Irezumi stayed faithful to the style of old Japanese myth. The image was of Kazunosuke using his bow to pin down the felled Tamamo no Mae, its nine tails radiating behind him like a fire closing in, while a composed Kazunosuke stood atop it, prepared to deliver the final blow. Despite being defeated, Tamamno no Mae had an evil grin on its face. Perhaps it had an ace up its sleeve?

“Do you seriously want to put this on your back?” Hestia asked.

Enzo was already laying on the hydraulic chair with his hands crossed by his head. “I trust you can do it. If you screw up, it only adds character.”

As Hestia started, she questioned “Why do you want me to do this so badly?”

“If nothing else, it’s important for me. Symbolic, I guess. Sorry. It kinda feels like I’m using you for my own means, honestly.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind at all. The hell is so symbolic about this?”

“I think about it as giving the middle finger to the guys that want me to be like this Tempest person. I had my own history, my own life that was nothing like his. This ink on my back isn’t just about devotion, it’s about stating a point. Even if my life was a simulation and nothing was real to someone like you…It was real to me. I’m not letting anyone take that away from me. Don’t you understand?” Enzo barely reacted to the pain that came from the constant incisions the tattoo tool made. He was hyper focused on the conversation.

“I guess I’m like…The only one who can understand. I’ve spent my whole life being compared to immeasurable odds. If I wasn’t as much of a legend as my grandma, I may as well have never existed. If I had one wish, it would be for that pressure to be alleviated. It would mean no council, no comparisons, maybe even no Radio.”

They sat in silence while Rhea traced the ink onto Enzo’s back. Everything was illustrated, but his back lacked color. The transaction felt different for Hestia than other pieces. It wasn’t a command, not like a job. It was a true collaboration between artists. Enzo with the knowledge of his culture and Hestia with the skills. The buzzing of the tattoo pen filled the room, Enzo was bombarded by the vanilla perfume that Hestia used on herself. Hestia turned off the pen before she was able to fill in the eyes of Kazunosuke to check over her piece.

“Enzo. They’re here, I can feel them” Hestia suddenly blurted.

“The council? How’d they find us?”

Hestia used her attunement with the Power of Olympus to sense where they were. It led them closer and closer to Terra’s old house.

“Get a move-on! We can’t afford to lag behind! If worst comes to worst we’ll grab Petra and duck out with the biosphere stone.”

“We can’t do that Enzo…” Hestia stood with her head down. Slowly catching up with Enzo. She held something up in her hand, as if she was presenting it to Enzo. The biosphere stone. Enzo kept calm, he came to Hestia and tried to take it from her hand. She moved so the stone was out of his reach. “My goal wasn’t to get taken to DRU, Enzo. You should know that as well as the next person. I need to leave before you or the Council take me away. DRU are idiots, the Council and I know that well, so I’m going to start a new life.”

“There’s only one reason why you must be telling me all this. You know how to fly under DRU’s radar.”

She nodded sullenly.

“But it means you’d turn into a murderer.”

________________________________________________________________________

Petra Sampson

A faint whirring accompanied Petra as she stood in front of Terra’s old house with her blade drawn. The hair on Petra’s bare leg was baked off. The blade was made out of a resistant metal material that housed liquid plasma; upon activation, it could cut through anything in its path.

“Did you hide away your children? I can’t believe a vampire would care to protect anyone.” Little Terra stepped forth with the two from earlier following closely behind.

Petra stayed silent. She simply raised her blade.

“If you want to fight, this will not end well for you.” she taunted. Her eyes were as dead as the annunciation in her voice. Petra didn’t understand. The youngest, lifelike Terra had no traits like the legends she had heard. However, she could smell it.

“You’re a demon. More demon than human at least. Who gifted you with the horns?”

“My master, Satanael.” She responded as she pulled a staff from her side. “Stay back, you two. I’ve been waiting to put this one in her place.”

Petra held her blade at attention as Little Terra approached her. They quickly engaged in a clash. Petra rebounded as she realized her staff matched her own blade’s heat. It became engulfed in a bright red hellfire.

Petra played to her own strength. Blocking and deflecting blows from her attacker. Little Terra spun and flourished her staff, turning an otherwise predictable set of motions into a hard-to-telegraph display of flames. As she kept up a stone wall of defense, Petra began to see this. With a block and a final push, she repelled Little Terra with a fluid kick to the head. “Somebody’s been forgetting about their training.” Petra taunted.

Little Terra took a latent book from her side. On it’s faded cover, it read “Artemis”. She recited a combination of words foreign to the English language. Petra was suddenly hit with a dizziness. She lost sight of her opponent, who became difficult to read.

“What did she do to me…?” She questioned, all while swearing at herself.

Little Terra held her staff up to her side, ready to smash Petra’s head in.

Crack!

As she swung, the staff was broken directly in half.

“Ow! Ow! That smarts!” Hestia was recoiling from smashing her hand into the flaming staff, now shattered on the ground. Her hand glowed red with the Power of Olympus.

Hestia spoke through her pain. “Now you can’t even take me home! I broke your only way out of here! Stop hunting us. I’m going to do what I want. I’m going to have a life.”

Petra broke through the group of confused Terras, she joined hands with Hestia and Enzo.

Finally, Red Phoenix snapped. She let a piece of her armor fly. Piercing through Petra’s back and out the front of her stomach. It left a clear and significant hole. Blood spattered onto the two as they jumped down to grab her hand. Petra’d been paralyzed by the blow. Followed up by another. Another piece of armor flashed through her upper body. Like she was slowly aiming closer and closer to her heart. Before the next armor piece could fly, they locked hands. Without thought, in a flash of yellow, they disappeared.

“You just had to face her by yourself.” Red Phoenix taunted.

For once, Little Terra’s eyes had a life to them. “I understand. This is not a game anymore. Call the council, we’re going to be leaving this disgusting dimension.” She uttered through gritted teeth.