Against the Wind
by Rhea Logan
Sequel to Absit Omen and Desperado --Brilliant minds don't go unnoticed, Watari learned after his death. Pulled into the Mother Project soon after, he let his ambition loose. Thirty years have passed, the deal is long gone. But is it? Enma believes otherwise.
This story draws on the few canon facts known about Watari's backstory. That would be parts 56-58 of Yami no Matsuei, published in Hana to Yume. So, a fair warning: since there's no real backstory besides the hints, I'm writing one. In regards to the story as a whole, if the manga is ever finished, you will be probably best off treating this as an AU; of sorts, at least.
The story proper is written in 3rd person; the prologue is in the 1st because it made more sense that way.
Warning: Violence (chapter 1), psychological mind games.
The music: Dead Can Dance - Summoning of the Muse. As always, e-mail me if you want it.
Legal stuff: Yami no Matsuei is not mine. If it were mine, I wouldn't be writing fanfiction.
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Against the Wind
Prologue
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I was born. I lived. I died. It was that simple.
Ambition must have been my middle name; inherent or not, it was always there. And so, in the flash that is your life you're supposed to see upon your death I saw not what I had done, but what I hadn't.
Frustration was alien to me, back then. I had the curiosity of a child and the patience of a saint, at least where work was concerned. That was what drove me straight to the fire with no fear of getting burned.
I always knew that when it was my time to go, it would be spectacular. And so, when I did get burned, it had to be all the way down to ash.
At the age of twenty-four, my sentiments on dying were nothing short of fury. I wasn't ready to let go and, if I had anything to say about it, it wouldn't end like that. By the time I had exchanged the first greetings with Enma DaiOh, I had a perfect plan. I would use this time, how much of it he was willing to grant me, to do all I would have done, had that lab not exploded and taken me with it.
The offer was superb; astounding, even. Unlimited equipment, life as long as I fancied, in exchange for committing myself to a project that, even in its early stages, had already tickled my sense of feat.
It was that simple.
Soon enough, I was caught up in what had to be the work of my life – afterlife – whichever. The project was enormous, with me as its head; in both the figurative and the literal sense. The sheer amount of power that came with it was overwhelming. Not the administrative power, either; when I first merged with Mother, and I saw myself do the things I could have only dreamed of doing while I lived, I became a whole league of my own. Far ahead of everything I'd ever thought was possible.
My body and my mind – a shrine in its own right to the scientific glory of success.
The inherently restraining calls upon the ethics of the Project were a calculated risk. While my mind had powered Mother, and I had used that vast capacity myself to experiment at will, those who dared raise questions outside of the spectrum of interest vanished, never to return. To me, it didn't matter. For all I knew, they had moved on to work elsewhere and it never crossed my mind that you could be more dead than you already were.
It's ironic that even after death – or especially then – it is invariably an intrinsic human trait to be blind, once the right buttons are pushed. And I still saw myself as human, if one of a somewhat altered sort.
In the end, there were three of us left; the masterminds behind the Mother. Hinote Katai - a quick, brilliant mind and my second-in-command in one highly experienced and dedicated person. Tategami Yukiko, or my partner in crime as called her in jest, whose knowledge and connection to Mother took the Project to a level I would not have achieved on my own. Finally, myself; Watari Yutaka, the Chief Researcher of The Five Generals.
As the Project progressed, we had grown close enough to almost read each other's minds. We played deep, Yukiko and I, each time going a step further as we synchronized with the system that was no longer merely something we worked on. It was life at its best. It defined us, until I could tell no difference between being in and out, except that being out left me regretful of the wasted time.
When the request of the ultimate synch came in, there was no doubt it had to be where we had been heading all along. To me, it was nothing short of the final step – I was about to go where no human had gone before me. She had hesitated; I hadn't. It would be like always; only deeper, stronger, more profound and so much more rewarding. We would reach our final goal, I told her, our lives would be complete. It was brilliant. It was that simple.
Or so it seemed, until the raw sensation of my body burning in places I didn't know existed woke me up from slumber. At least I had returned, they told me; Tategami had no such luck. The ambition that drove us had me end up exploited to the fullest; now bound in the lab that used to be my own, once - for reasons I hadn't understood until a lot later, when the pieces of the puzzle started falling into place. That was a lesson I learned the hard way: Mothers might be sweet on their children, but the rest of the family can go bad while you're not looking.
That day was marked with a realization that dawned upon me like a bucket of cold water. I should have seen this coming.
It was never that simple.
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Author's Note:
The rest of the story after this happens post-manga. If you want to know what happened directly after the Prologue, though (which would be approximately twenty five years prior to Against the Wind, tied to it in terms of the plot), read Absit Omen. Link in my profile. Enjoy, and don't hesitate to let me know what you think. :)