Pain Case

Part XII

The new sun rises

another day to ponder

the swift angel nears

Those who come to kill me are often boring to me because I can't be killed.  I can see assassins coming and I know my own kind like I have learned this new found respect for the word undead. In movies, a zombie was grotesque and not cognoscente of what he was or his world but I still recognize my world, I simply feel nothing for it.  I wish I could understand what feeling bored was but I feel no emotion at all.  I see tasks and I complete them.  I get very little joy out of anything save the slaughter of my enemies and even then, it's more of a remembered emotion than a granted one.

I am exhausted with this lifelessness and wish that all those years ago, I had accepted a partner to cut my head from my body so as to see my permanent death.  Death is all I want now and I await the person who can give it to me but nobody is powerful enough.  I had a German Oculous (The name I am now giving to our kind so as to know what to call them) shipped in for my final defeat but he was slain at the tip of my sword by having his head cut off.  An Indian Oculous had learned how to regenerate her head but somehow fell short when I cut her in half...

Some might call me evil but I am the culmination of pain.  Pain caused me to flee my country to build this army and as the soullessness withing me started to settle, everything began dwindling and disappearing forever.  Now, not even anger remains, only perfect resolve and the ability to see all electronic signals and people while calculating and listening to the heartbeat of mother earth.

I heard them from across town now as they boarded the train. They were rushing towards me with the intent to kill me and this time, I would let them.  It was my fate to end this way as it was my own hand that did it the first time, and now another with a Bowie knife intended to cut my through the heart and kill me the same way I had tried to do. Thank god for this angelic creature that would take me away from this life.

I had come full circle.  A man dies; he is reborn; soullessness takes its toll; his ruthlessness brings success; his ruthlessness brings empty success; soullessness takes its toll; he is reborn into emptiness; he awaits his death.  In my own way, I am what a recent letter called "a pain case."  It was from the two who come to see me now.  An American who must have thought he was quite cleaver thinking that it was great pain that caused me to be who I am.  If only they knew it was death and weariness.

They were close now, practically outside of my building and climbing the steps.  In my last moments, I knelt and with no passion, for I was dead, I said prayers to the Shinto deities that I might be granted a place by my ancestors once the living part of my soul was diseased.

The door burst open and a fire fight ensued.  My guards were not Oculai so they had no chance.  It was magnificent.  So much so that even though I did not change positions, I watched from an omnipotent stance as the two men ran up walls and dove from the ceiling, crushing and massacring my guards.  It was truly spectacular.  What a sight to see the progeny of the eye destroy like such vicious killers.

In fact, something stirred in me and I, all of a sudden began to feel great joy and delight at the deaths of my vicious body guards.  I felt it so strongly that before I knew it, I was bounding off the walls and slaughtering my own men and anyone I could find on my way down to meet my would-be assassins.  I hadn't felt this great since... I'd never felt this great.  I suppose I might have questioned it were I still afraid of death but I felt nothing other than this drive to go and meet them.

People were cut in half in front of me and my walls smeared with the blood of my mercenaries.  my swords took off like butterflies hacking people into bits as an arm flew towards a window and crashed right through it.  Like a late Goya painting, there were so many strokes of red and black and it all was simply 美しい!

Someone must have notified the police because I heard sirens below.  What fanfare!

As I neared the bottom floor,  I saw them with my own real eyes and I should have felt terror but I felt excitement and anticipation and all of a sudden I realized I was feeling what I expected them to feel: an anticipation of meeting me.  Before I knew it, however, the American was close to me and he stabbed for my gut.  Ha! What an 素人.  His aim was to stun me, to put me to sleep.  He wanted to capture me but I had feeling once more, if only for this moment and I grabbed his hand and shoved his knife into my heart.

As I lay bleeding incurably, I heard the two men speaking.

"Вы идиот! Даже мы не можем рисковать прямого ранения в сердце."

"I'm sorry! But I didn't do it, he moved so fast I could not help it."

The American hit me in the face and yelled, "What's the secret to unlocking our true potential?"

"Скажите нам информацию, прежде чем умереть!" said the Russian.

As I lay dying, I felt remorse for those I had killed and I felt fear for these boys knowing the truth.  They knew that I was an Oculous because of my weakened state but they could not even read my mind.  I would not curse them to what I had lived.

"私はあなたの魂、私の子供たちを救うために死ぬ。" I said as the blackness overtook me.

For a good while, there was nothing.  No time, no feeling, no dreams in this long, black sleep but they must have removed the knife because, like before, the nanites brought me back.

As I awoke, something had changed.  I was still without remorse as I had been before but as I stood, all those around me stood as well.  Like puppets, they seemed to mimic any emotion I had.

Emotion?  Could it be?  I had emotion again but they were my own.  My sense of keen training was back and I felt better than my days in Japan.  I saw the American and the Russian in front of me and could sense everything they felt and read their every thought.

I began to laugh in a loud maniacal roar and spoke, ""馬鹿！あなたは私にあなたの個人の能力を与えているように見えるが、私はまだ、これらよりもはるかに多くのです!"

I began to walk towards the door where the crowds and police awaited me.

"さあ！私の哀れ弱虫" I said.

[We obey.]

This was knew.  They spoke in my head.  Perhaps I could speak in theirs...

[We escape this country tonight and head to the far east]

[We obey]

As I looked out on the crowd, they all stood lifeless like they were in awe of a god.  I walked down into them and grabbed a megaphone as they all turned towards me and kept staring even as I climbed the stairs of my building to address them all.

With my head down and thinking of what I would tell the crowd, I finally thought of it and I looked up and out into them.

"従う!"

We go to the West

unto invasions Far East

my Japan is doomed.