AN: Plot bunny attack!

§§§

The screech of brakes was surprisingly loud in her ears. The sight of Luke lurching to his feet on the road opposite, knocking over his chair was the last she remembered as she felt the impact – one that drove all the air from her lungs and seemed to rattle her very bones.

The last thing she registered was the overwhelming amount of pain— then, nothing.

§§§

Voices reached her, and she was suddenly aware. She had no way to gauge her period of unconsciousness, only a sense that it had been a long, long time.

A voice was sobbing, and an older one was comforting him softly. Others were conversing discreetly, and a stab of uncertainty hit her when she realized, it was not English, but she understood it anyway.

Her hand twitched involuntarily.

The voices hushed, and one close to her ear rose.

"Koujaku-nee?" (1)

Something soft and silky brushed across her face.

With a startle she was awake, and disoriented from the memory and sensation of the crash, her vision swam for a few seconds.

When the world righted itself, Koujaku saw that the room she was in was poorly lighted, the drapes across the wide windows drawn half shut. The air was musky and the furnishings were oriental, from the folding screen in one corner of the room to the dressing table to the tables and chairs. The bed she was on was a grand redwood four-poster complete with an elegant bedside table, and in one corner of the room there stood an instrument that she had only read about in her course studies – a guzheng.

But once the haze on her mind cleared, she shot upright, not hearing the startled squeak from the boy hanging off the edge of her bed and looked around, really looked, for Luke. He has to be here, he has to be.

But he was not, and her posture sagged.

There was a tug on her sleeves, and she looked down.

The boy, from the tousled hair and puffy cheeks, had been sleeping with his head on the bed. He had grasped her sleeve with both his hands, and was staring up at her with teary eyes.

"Nee-san?"

She blinked down at him, uncomprehending.

Who is he?

At her silence, the others pressed in worriedly.

"Koujaku?" said another male, his black feather fan covering his worried frown.

"Koujaku-onee-sama?" said a girl with rose pink hair, orchid orbs shining with worry.

Behind them a red-haired man with a goatee sat on a chair with a tight-knit brow and imposing glare, his red eyes never leaving her. A lady with drawn-back black hair watched on silently.

§§§

There is something very wrong with Koujaku, Hakuei thought as her three cousins swarmed the girl. Did it happen again?

Koujaku had been complaining about headaches recently, and when she went to sleep three days ago she simply didn't wake up. Nothing woke her, and after the second day Kouha refused to leave her bedside. The others had taken turns accompanying him, and the reason they were all gathered there (with the exception of Hakuryuu, he had lessons) that day was Koujaku's sudden convulsions. Spasms racked her body, her red hair clinging to her neck and face from sweat. She had then shuddered violently and went still. They had feared the worst.

Right now though, Koujaku looked absolutely lost as Kouha fussed over her, blinking in confusion at Koumei's string of questions.

Then, as Kouha reached to pull her into a hug, she leaned back from his hands and stared at him as though he was a stranger.

Hurt and confused, Kouha sat back and fell silent.

"Who…are you?" said Koujaku, slowly and tentatively, as though testing her own voice. She brought up a hand to cradle her head and her eyes flicked around to stare at all of them in turn, taking in their various degrees of shock.

There was a beat of silence.

Koumei lowered his fan slowly.

"What?" said Kouha eventually, staring at his sister, "What do you mean, you don't…? But, you're—but Koujaku, you know me!" At the bewildered look on his sister's face he seemed about to cry again.

Kouen rose from his seat and started to walk to the bed.

His hand moved to the hilt of his sword that's always hanging off his belt and as he drew it, Koumei and Hakuei leaped at the same time: one to cover Koujaku's eyes and one to stop the sword from leaving its sheath.

"En!"

"Kouen-dono!"

"At least explain it to her first!" Koumei said with a sigh. "What will she think, her own brother brandishing a sword at her?"

"She said it, she doesn't remember anything yet," Hakuei exclaimed, "You can't use Phenex, Kouen-dono!"

With a tsp, Kouen dropped his hand from his sword and stood awkwardly where he was, staring out the window.

Koumei released Koujaku, who stared, shaken, at Kouen, a sort of recognition in her red eyes. Hakuei approached the bed cautiously, while Kouha leaned into the bed and curled into a ball.

§§§

She was freaked, but she hid it well.

Who wouldn't be, waking up after a car crash to a room of strangers looking like they walked out of a costume drama shoot.

Her head hurt. Names popped in her head, jumbled and without a face to match.

(Kouha, Koumei, Kouen, Kougyoku, Hakuei, Kourin, Hakuryuu, Hakuren, Hakuyuu, Gyokuen, Hakutoku-tei, Koutoku-tei, Judar, Glasya Labolas, Gyokuen-dono)

Luke's startled and semi-horrified face flashed through her mind, she seemed unable to remember anything other than the crash. Then her head gave a sudden throb and, with the force of the truck, a horrible squeezing pain grasped her and she doubled over, gasping for air.

She must have cried out because the next moment she felt suffocated by the presences.

Her ears were ringing harshly, everything was tinged with black, then just as suddenly, the (phantom) pain was gone, and when she looked up, she recognised the room and the inhabitants, and realised that it had happened again.

Kouha was hovering over her, hands wringing the air with desperation, but not daring to reach out and touch. She realised she was curled into a ball and made a conscious effort to relax.

"Kou..ha? What's happened?" Koujaku looked to her brother, fully aware of how weird she sounded.

The periods of amnesia after a vision (and the vision itself) where she lived the last moments (or periods in their life like what she just had — something called a 'university course') of somebody else had been increasing, with their memories following her, jumbling her memories and causing her family worry. It had become harder and harder to grasp onto her version of reality, and convince herself she had not been in a fatal situation. Recent nightmares, as she had come to dub them, had her disoriented and not knowing who she was.

Kouha let out a whoop of joy and hugged her tight, behind him Koumei let out his breath in a whoosh, bringing his fan up to hide his face. Kouen relaxed visibly and went back to his chair (no her chair, this was her room) and Kougyoku smiled brilliantly. Hakuei sat on the bed and patted Koujaku's hand comfortingly.

"What was it this time?" Koumei asked at length.

Kouha had nestled himself between her and the bed frame, combing his fingers through her messy red hair and putting it back up into its usual style, humming tunelessly.

"A…a girl, around my age, attending lessons in a school. I sort of lived her life for…a few years? then one day she just," Koujaku swallowed thickly before continuing, "died. Violently."

Koumei winced, "and you lived through that?"

Kouha poked his head in her vision.

"Yes."

"Ow," he supplied, pricking the back of her head with her golden hair pin.

Koujaku gave him a mild glare.

Kouha patted her head and hugged her again, "At least you're back now."

§§§

Judar watched the flurry of black rukh depart from atop Koujaku's chambers and wondered once more what the heck do they want with the girl. What importance does she have? Sure, the 25th djinn Glasya-Labolas had a unique ability, even for djinn, and the girl conquered him, but she's part of the Kou Empire so doesn't those old men from the Organization have absolute control over someone like her?

Maa, ika, he thought idly, staring up at the evening sky from his recline on the roof. (2)

§§§

The nightmares, they're becoming a problem for Koujaku Ren.

They have always been there, like a particularly clingy shadow no light could erase. From young, she remembered living portions of other people's lives, returning to her world disorientated and confused nine times out of ten. Back then, the visions hit her whenever they liked, however they liked. She could be playing with Kouha, and she just dropped like a rock; she could be sewing with her tutors, and she just slumped, the needle puncturing where it went; she could be playing on her guzheng, and the sound stopped, then Koumei or her servants comes rushing in to find her collapsed on the floor. It got better with age, yet worse. When she was younger she just blacked out, getting flashes, never really living till their deaths, so her uncanny connection to the dead was not yet revealed. She wakes up a little dizzy, nothing more. As she got older, the vision decreased, but their intensity increased in sick inverse proportion.

First, she watched the deaths, waking up pale and shaken, then she started experiencing them. The pain, the terror, the helplessness. All those came with death. After extra bad visions during her early teenage years — where her persona died horrible, vicious deaths like chopped at the guillotine, bashed to death, burned at the stake — she half expected to see the fatal wounds on her body when she looked in her mirror.

Then, she started experiencing the feelings, having the thoughts of her visions. The deaths came, still, unnatural and jarring, all the more unbearable.

After that. she started to retain the memories of the personas, and things just spiralled downwards. She would wake up, much like how it had turned out earlier that evening, not sure of who she was (whether she was Koujaku Ren, Second Imperial Princess of the Kou Empire or Julia or Elizabeth or Lieselotte or whoever she was at that time), phantom pain tingling in her senses as she tried to make sense of the familiar-yet-foreign situation of her room, and the time lapses are getting longer. She's also starting to channel some of the personality of the dead, like her sudden craving for sweets, she never had a sweet tooth before then.

Adding to the increasing duration she was out, she was an open target. One stabbed-to-death vision and one traitorous backstabbing servant and a very close call later she dismissed all her current servants and trusted only her siblings. Kouha became so paranoid he camped out in her room for a month.

The only upside was she didn't get them as frequently.

It was no wonder she was so thin and pale, and conquering a dungeon was a miracle in and of itself. But Judar seems to take a liking to her, and rose the 25th dungeon for her, even going to the length of finding a teacher in swordsmanship for her and somehow managing to drag Kouen away from his archives to spar with her, once a week.

Her trip to the 25th dudgeon was a passive one, with Koumei lazily teleporting anything of harm away from the group as they advanced, the most dangerous thing they countered being leeches. Glasya-Labolas was a different matter.

He had great black wings as wide as he was tall, golden eyes with pitch black iris, strangely dog-like face, yet still handsome. His jewellery glittered whenever he turned, necklaces and bracelets tinkling as he surveyed Koumei and Koujaku and their followers.

"Who shall be king?" he boomed, wings flaring a bit as he studied one Ren after the other. He saw Koujaku, scrutinised for a while, and did a double-take.

"Let Koujaku, I'm not interested," said Koumei with a yawn, dispersing his equip, ignoring the djinn.

"Give it to Koumei-nii, I'm not aiming for King," said Koujaku, wondering about the djinn's reaction.

Glasya-Labolas looked stunned, then chuckled, "One would see the familial similarity immediately. A pair of demotivated kings. Hmmm. I think I'll take the girl, Dantalion is a lazy ass I do not feel like working with, plus she's an interesting one." He chuckled again, turning to face Koujaku and grinned. "Little girl, lucky day. I look forward to working with you~," and slipped into her purple bracelet.

"Koujaku, grab what you want and let's go," Koumei went off rounding up soldiers, who were expecting a bit more of a fight.

§§§

A few years back Hakutoku-tei died, making her the Second Imperial Princess, there was sudden explosion of visions when Gyokuen became her father's wife, where she lay miserably in bed for a week, headaches and fever and phantom pain and very real trauma attacking her senses.

Interestingly, Gyokuen-dono stood up for her whenever Koutoku-tei thought of marrying her off, spinning some kind of lie about her usefulness to the Empire being better unmarried and a general than married off to some distant place where no one could care for her when another of her episodes happened — like Koujaku believed half of that shit. Her sisters (whom she was not close to, thank you very much) was all married away at the tender age of 12, leaving her the lonesome girl in the palace, with the occasional very shy glance Kougyoku sent her, and a sister Hakuei who was very busy with military work.

So, Koujaku busied herself with history from Kouen, playing and training with Kouha, studying strategy with Koumei, researching about her odd visions whenever she could. When she turned 15, a remarkable age to still remain unmarried (Hakuei aside, Koujaku has seen the looks Kouen gives the girl), she was made general, and had significantly less time to wander around playing hide-and-seek with Kouha.

Then one day, Judar pops up, offering to train her for Full-Body Djinn Equip. That time Kouen only two djinns, Koumei didn't care shit about his Dantalion but he could do it, Hakuei couldn't do it with Paimon, Kouha didn't have Leraje yet and Kougyoku still a missable smudge along the corridor. But she accepted, thinking maybe Glasya-Labolas would help her with her vision problem. Judar feigned cluelessness whenever she brought it up, and whenever she and Gyokuen-dono crossed paths the latter would smile with that unnerving smile, causing her to suspect the Organization knows something.

§§§

(1) Koujaku — 红雀, chinese read as HongQue, english meaning is 'Red Peacock'. Doesn't break the Kou family tradition. And yes, I did get the name from DMMD Koujaku~

(2) Maa, ika — Hmm, whatever

So…background established. Now onto the real hard part of characterisation. I hope it made the hints clear enough. She's not going to be a Mary Sue though, so don't worry.

Tell me how you guys feel? ^^

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