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Chapter Eighteen -- Family Matters

The catamaran pulled out smoothly from the jetty, and Miyatsu swung the wheel to head it north. Then he looked to where Montaro and Mieko were sitting, their expressions just a little too innocent in the moonlight. Miyatsu sighed. He raised his voice to be heard above the hiss of the waves and drone of the engine.

"All right, you two. You can stop shielding now."

For a second nothing happened. Then two figures flickered into visibility. Hideaki and Hanako both had sheepish expressions on their faces.

"How did you know?" Hideaki asked.

"Do you think I'm a human with no sense of smell? I knew you were following when we left the house."

"Oh. We didn't think of that."

Miyatsu shook his head in resignation. "If you're that set on coming, you may. But you have to stay on the boat when we get there, do you hear me?"

Both the children nodded.

"We knew you were there, as well," Mieko commented to her siblings.

"Oh, you did, did you?" Miyatsu said, trying to look grim and failing. "You didn't think to mention it?"

"No. We were sure you'd know too, Dad. I slipped a note under Grandma's door so they'll know where we've gone." She hesitated, looking uncomfortable. "And I said why we'd gone. Only I didn't say that you'd -- had a vision. I said you'd spotted Mum's psychic signature."

Miyatsu nodded. "Well, I did. In a way." He stared at his four children, so much trust in him, so confident that he knew what he was doing when he himself wasn't at all sure. He rubbed his eyes wearily. "Or I thought I did. But what if I'm wrong?" he said desperately. "What if it turns out that I was just dreaming? I'd have built all our hopes up for nothing."

"Then we'll turn around and go home again," Montaro said. "But we'll still be together." He stood up and went to where his father was standing by the wheel. "Would you like to sleep some more, Dad?" he asked. "You still look worn out. We can call you when we get there."

Miyatsu looked at his son in surprised gratitude. Montaro looked and sounded so much more mature than his age, even given the accelerated growth rate of their species. For a moment, Miyatsu's heart swelled with love and pride in his children. They had accepted his decision to go charging off on what could still turn out to be a fool's errand, chasing after a vision that might have been brought on by the broken heart of Pershan Syndrome. Not only had they accepted it, but they'd joined him in it.

Even if -- even if Aiko truly was dead (and Miyatsu swallowed hard against the desperate fear that he might have hallucinated the whole encounter), these children were her legacy to him.

He nodded acceptance and stood to one side, letting his son take the wheel. Even though Miyatsu doubted that he'd be able to sleep for the three hours until they sighted the mainland, still he decided he may as well go on down to the cabin and rest. The catamaran was in good hands.

*

Miyatsu managed to doze on and off over the next couple of hours, lulled by the constant drone of the catamaran's engine. When he finally awoke fully, the cabin was in darkness. He wondered what time it was.

Lazily, he reached with his mind towards the light switch on the wall. He flicked the switch using telekinesis and gasped in pain. He sat up suddenly, his eyes wide, the sharp needle-like pain still stinging unpleasantly inside his head.

He breathed deeply, then got to his feet slowly. Turning on the light had hurt. Gazing around the small room for something light to manipulate, he reached with his telekinesis for the pillow on the bed.

"Aaargh!"

He dropped to his knees, his paws at his forehead in raw agony as jagged shards of pain sliced across his brain. It felt like sandpaper being rubbed over his mind; he fought not to retch.

Over the next few minutes, the pain eased enough for him to get shakily to his feet. A horrible fear gripped him. In his desperate search for Aiko's body, had he completely burnt out his psychic powers?

But as he managed to focus his still-watering eyes, he realized the pillow lay beside him where it had dropped onto the floor. And the light had come on. So his telekinesis still worked, but caused him acute distress to use.

Facing the cabin's mirrored wardrobe door and steeling himself, he tried to shield from light. With a flicker, his reflection vanished, and Miyatsu breathed a sigh of relief. That wasn't painful and it was easy to maintain. He must have overextended only his telekinesis this last week, levitating more or less continuously while he searched the globe. He dropped the shield and his reflection reappeared in the mirror.

But this presented a problem. Aiko had said she couldn't walk. Stubbornly, he clung to his vision and the conviction that it had been real. If he was wrong, he'd deal with it later, somehow he'd deal with it. But for now, he was going along with it, to the extent that a rescue attempt had to be planned.

So. She'd said she couldn't walk. He'd been assuming he'd levitate her out; but what if he couldn't? He'd carry her in his arms if he had to, but he was still weak physically as well as psychically, and wasn't sure how far he'd get or how long it would take. And he wanted to get her safely back on board the catamaran and headed home before it was discovered she was gone. It could take hours if he had to keep stopping to rest. He frowned, frustrated that he couldn't achieve something that his four eldest children could do so easily...

Something his four children could do so easily.

The recollection of the four of them assisting him home after his emergency psychic SOS rose in his mind: Montaro and Mieko with their arms under his shoulders, supporting him strongly, Hanako and Hideaki levitating themselves and adding their adolescent telekinetic power from underneath to help bouy them up. Miyatsu had been faltering when they'd found him, his tail skimming the surface of the sea as his exhausted powers flickered. But working in concert, the four children had achieved something that Miyatsu could no longer manage alone: transporting a weight heavier then themselves several kilometers safely back to Shima.

And Aiko was small, and weighed little...

He hesitated, arguing with himself. The children weren't kittens anymore, but neither were they adults yet, and the urge to protect them from danger was strong. But how dangerous was it really? To all intents and purposes, they'd be invisible to both human senses and scanners and could cast the light shield around their mother as well while they stretchered her out and back to the boat. And the crux of the matter was that he couldn't manage this by himself, not anymore. He really, really needed their assistance.

Miyatsu climbed the short flight of stairs leading to the deck. Mieko had taken over the wheel from her mate; Montaro was curled up with his two smaller siblings over by the mast. Hideaki and Hanako were asleep, but Montaro opened his eyes and pricked his ears forward as soon as his father appeared on deck.

Miyatsu felt his eldest children's greeting fill his mind with warmth. Montaro stood lithely without waking his younger brother and sister and joined Mieko and Miyatsu at the wheel.

"I tried to persuade them to go down to the cabins to sleep," Montaro explained. "But Hidi-kun wanted to stay on deck. And Hanako-chan wouldn't go if he didn't. So I let them stay."

"We're almost there," Mieko said, her eyes fixed on the glow of lights ahead. "That's Kagoshima. But I don't know how to navigate us to Raikatuji wharf."

She moved aside and let her father take over the wheel.

"You've done a good job, both of you," Miyatsu said after a moment, his eyes also on the lights of Kagoshima in the distance. "But I have to ask more of you. I've exhausted my telekinesis over the past week. I can't levitate at all, not so much as a grain of sand, without pain. A lot of pain."

As his two children's concern flooded his mind, he shook his head. "I don't believe it's permanent. It happened once before, twelve years ago in Shanghai, when I contracted Pershan Syndrome the -- the first time. But now I have the problem of getting your mother safely away without her abductors finding out at once. She told me in the vision, or dream, or whatever it was, that she can't walk. She'll need to be carried. I was going to levitate her, but with my telekinesis so depleted... " And he trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid.

Mieko and Montaro were listening avidly, their tail tips flicking restlessly.

"We could levitate her!" Mieko said enthusiastically. "Like the way we helped you yesterday, Dad!"

"And we can cast a light shield around ourselves and Mum," Montaro added.

"That's what I thought as well," Miyatsu agreed. "I don't think we'll run into any danger, not if we're all invisible. We can just avoid any humans we come across. But I don't want to leave Hideaki and Hanako on the catamaran by themselves. They still need adult supervision and support. They'd better come with us. And they can help too."

He hesitated, but the children had earned his candour. "I didn't thank you properly for coming to my aid yesterday," he told them seriously. "I was almost done when you showed up. I would have drowned out there, all alone. Thank you. And thank you for coming with me tonight, for trusting me so much. If -- if Aiko is truly dead, well, you children will be my reason to stay alive -- "

Before he could say anything more, both children had enveloped him in a group hug. Mieko was crying and Montaro was not far off it. If the truth be told, Miyatsu was feeling none too steady either, although how much of that was due to Pershan Syndrome was unclear. He rested his forehead against the tops of their heads affectionately.

Finally he disengaged from them, looking towards the lights. The mainland was perceptibly nearer. He took the wheel again and steered the catamaran for the Raikatuji Centre's wharf.

*

All five of the family had shielded from light and now stood by the door of the entrance into the Raikatuji Clean Energy Facility. Miyatsu was keeping track of his children using his cat sense of smell: the two younger children were by his right side, with Mieko on his left and Montaro bringing up the rear.

A sign stenciled onto the glass door showed that the facility was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Through the door, they could see a single security officer sitting at the reception desk, watching a re-run of last season's GMA circuit match on television.

"Stay close," Miyatsu told the children in a low voice. "I'm going to open that door. When I do, you have to get inside the building before the human can get to it. Hold hands so you don't trip each other up, and wait for me over by that far door." He paused for a moment as he listened to them organize themselves into a line. "Are you ready?"

A couple more scuffling noises, then there came a soft chorus: "Yes, Dad," "Ready, Daddy."

Miyatsu had a page torn from a magazine held in one paw. Now he reached up to the light sensor which activated the door. He dropped the page, which became visible again as soon as it left his touch and fluttered to the ground. The glass door slid back smoothly, and Miyatsu felt the movement of air as his children hurried through.

The security officer glanced up and lifted his eyebrows in surprise when he saw nobody. Miyatsu slipped inside as the door was closing again, whisking his invisible tail up and out of the way just in time.

The officer came around the desk warily, one hand on the stun gun in its holster on his belt. The door slid open again at his approach. He relaxed as he saw the slight breeze outside had blown an old magazine page up against the door, activating the sensor. He picked the page up, crumpled it and threw it into the wastepaper bin next to the desk before settling back to watch the match.

*

Due to being operational all day and night, the facility had many shiftworkers about, either at their workstations or walking along the corridors. The invisible family needed to dodge more than once as groups of humans nearly walked into them. Despite this, they reached the elevator without mishap and still undetected.

Miyatsu studied the buttons as they entered the empty elevator before pressing the one marked "Level 10." As the lift started down, the family one by one flickered back into visibility.

"Be ready to shield again when we stop," Miyatsu told the children. In the bright light of the elevator, their eyes were wide, their ears pricked forward alertly. All four faces had an air of excitement with no hint of nervousness.

Miyatsu envied them their childish sense of adventure. He himself was becoming more and more anxious. What would he do if, after all this, he found only empty corridors? The fact that the underground labyrinth existed had so far kept his flagging spirits up; he couldn't have imagined all of this, could he? But doubt still niggled in his mind...

Mieko's ears went back in sudden surprise. She grabbed her mate's hand. "Montaro! Do you see what I see? Tell me I'm not imagining things!"

Montaro gasped. "Dad! I can see Mum's psychic signature!"

"What?" Miyatsu had been so immersed in his thoughts that he hadn't bothered to engage his psionic power, but at his children's words, he did so.

And there, yes, over there, was a faint smudged glow of blue-green light! Miyatsu focused on it hungrily, closing his eyes for a moment in order to see it more clearly. When he'd been searching so desperately, he'd swooped to investigate any light that remotely resembled Aiko, only to be disappointed time and time again. But this was unmistakeably her, his mate's soul, gaining strength and definition as the elevator descended, shining like a beacon for her family to follow!

The lift came to a smooth halt and the door slid open, but the family didn't bother to shield anymore. Their psionic power was fully engaged, and the corridors ahead were empty of any sign of life, apart from a muddy yellow soul hovering near the blue one. They didn't need directions now. The children hurried to keep up with their father, who had dropped to all fours and set off up the corridor at a fast, loping run.

*

Miyatsu skidded to a sliding halt before a heavy metal door which marked the end of corridor South 10, his expression managing to be both eager and frustrated all at once. He rose up onto two legs again and turned to his children as they came panting up behind him.

"I don't dare try to unlock this door with my telekinesis," he said. "Montaro, Mieko, do you think you could focus your telekinetics onto the lock together and break it?"

The two eldest children glanced at each other uncertainly.

"We -- we can try," Montaro answered. He reached for Mieko's hand and together they faced the door.

"On three," Mieko murmured. "One... two... three!"

Looks of intense concentration appeared on their faces. The air seemed to thrum briefly as their adolescent psychic power lashed out, merged, and focused on the door, pushing, wrenching, searching for any weakness in the metal.

With a sound like a gunshot, the door was blasted off two of its hinges and swung open a few inches before sagging drunkenly on the one remaining hinge.

Montaro kicked it open the rest of the way with one strong foreleg, and they were through the last barrier between them and Aiko. With a casual wave of his hand, Montaro lifted the yellow soul that was Nurse Rin into the air, holding her suspended off the ground. At her shriek, he clicked his fingers and her mouth snapped shut, muffled sounds of fear and outrage coming from her.

But Miyatsu was already at Aiko's bedside, gathering her in his arms, sobbing with relief, unable for the moment to speak coherently for the emotion hammering through his body.

The children clustered as close as they could, adding their joyful feelings until the air itself seemed to shimmer with happiness.

"Oh, Miyu!" Aiko was crying, too. "I knew you'd come for me!"

Miyatsu drew back a little. He rubbed his cheek tenderly against the top of Aiko's head. "My little mate, my heart," he sobbed brokenly. "Oh, Aiko, my Aiko! You're alive!"

"We're going to carry you out!" Hideaki said. "We came along to help Daddy!"

"We're going to shield you from light and all go home together!" Hanako added.

"They've done a wonderful job tonight," Miyatsu told her huskily. He glanced at the various monitors beeping away as they registered their patient's vital signs, fear clouding his face. "What has Sakaki done to you, my Aiko? All these machines... "

"Miyu, I've been sedated and can't move," Aiko said. "Please, please take that needle out of my arm. I want to get out of here before -- before Sakaki decides to come back and finds you -- "

Miyatsu's paws were shaking so much with the force of his emotions that he couldn't grip the small needle. Instead it was Mieko who turned off the drip before taking the needle between her human-shaped fingers and deftly removing it from her mother's arm, swabbing the small bleeding spot left behind with a tissue. She then busied herself removing the heart-rate and blood pressure monitors, each one as it was removed eerily going to a flat-line monotone.

Miyatsu flinched; the nightmare he'd been living the past week had included that sound every time he'd tried to sleep, the memory of his soul-mate arching off the bed, her eyes fixed to his in mute agony as she died, and all he could do was watch helplessly...

It was faked, he told himself, trying to calm the desperate hammering of his heart that the sound evoked. My Aiko is here, warm and alive and coming home to Shima. It was just pixels on a screen.

"What about her?" Montaro asked, indicating the nurse who was still making stifled sounds of fury in mid-air.

Miyatsu glanced across at Rin and felt a roll of anger at Sakaki's accomplice. He took the sedative bottle on its mobile stand and rolled it over, gesturing to his son to lower her.

Miyatsu extended his claws and held one paw threateningly in front of her face, the claw-tips lightly touching her cheek. Rin's eyes had gone wide and terrified in her pale face.

"You allowed this to happen," he snarled. "You let my mate be brutalized and tortured and did nothing to stop it."

He took her arm and jammed the needle into the vein at the elbow, using his extended claws to clumsily turn on the drip. "Let's see how you like it."

Rin's struggles against Montaro's psychic hold slowed, ceased. Her body went slack and her eyes rolled back. Montaro let her slump unconscious to the floor.

Miyatsu turned and went back to Aiko. Slipping one arm behind her back and the other under her knees, he picked her up, smiling down into her eyes.

"When I tire, you can take over," he answered the unspoken questions of his children. "But just for now I need to hold my mate in my arms."

*

Aiko was safely tucked up in bed in the catamaran's main cabin, having been efficiently shielded from light and stretchered out of the Raikatuji Clean Energy Facility by her family. They had managed to exit the building when the glass door opened for a large group of employees finishing their shift. The whole family had marched out in their wake.

It was a tight fit, but the family was now squeezed into the smallish cabin. Miyatsu sat on the edge of the bed, holding Aiko's hand, and looked about at the children with pride. The catamaran rocked gently at its mooring.

"I have to ask one more effort from you tonight," he told them. "I need you to take your mother back home to Shima. I can't come with you; I need to stay here a little longer."

"What?"

"Why, Daddy?"

"Come home with us!"

"Why do you have to stay, my Miyu?" Aiko asked quietly, already guessing the answer and dreading it.

Blue eyes met brown seriously. "I know now how Sakaki really feels about me," Miyatsu answered. "I know he hates me. But he can't be allowed to do what he likes to my family without consequences. This ends tonight."

Aiko couldn't feel his emotions anymore and realized he was shielding. She had a little strength returning to her body now, and she clutched his paw tightly in fright.

"Please, don't take him on tonight, my love! You're still weak, he'll kill you!"

Miyatsu shook his head. "I have to have this out with him. He'll try to wipe all of us out once he realizes you're gone."

"Miyatsu, no! We'll radio ahead to Shima, get Mum and Dad to call the police. Let the human police deal with Sakaki! Please come home with us... "

She trailed off, knowing that stubborn look meant he wouldn't be swayed. He held her hand against his face in apology and licked her palm, his tongue curling about her wrist tenderly.

Still holding her hand in his, he said, "You know Yutaka and Kagami will never hear the radio at home. They'll only think to check it when they get up in the morning and find us all gone. And if we went to the police here on the mainland, how many hours would it be before they act? They'd waste time taking statements, getting their precious facts, when we know that the moment Sakaki finds you've escaped, he'll flee. And once he's on the run, he becomes so much more dangerous, not just to me, but to you and all our children. Who knows what he'll do once he knows we've thwarted him? He still has money and contacts all over the world. I don't intend to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder and jumping at every shadow."

Aiko stared at his hard expression. "Miyu, you're frightening me! Are you thinking of killing him? He's sick, not thinking right with the drugs he was taking."

Miyatsu put one shaky paw to his forehead wearily. "I -- I can't kill him," he said tiredly. "He's still my brother. But he needs to answer for what he's done, Aiko. Drugs or not he's responsible for his actions. Let the children take you home, and when you get there, call the mainland police to come and pick him up. I'll keep him in his office until they arrive so that he can't slip away in the meantime."

His mental voice continued in her head for her ears alone. Please understand, my little mate, why I have to do this. I'm not going to run from him like some scared animal. We have to settle this business face-to-face.

Aiko could see his mind was made up. She nodded slowly, her face working as she tried to hold back the tears she could feel threatening. "Oh, be careful!" she whispered. "Come back to me on Shima afterwards! Don't let him -- h-hurt you, please!" The last word was a sob.

Miyatsu gathered her in his arms again, holding her tightly against him.

"How can I live if anything happens to you?" she gasped against his chest, hearing his thudding heartbeat and wondering wildly if it would be for the last time.

He rubbed his cheek lovingly against her forehead. Live for our children's sake, my heart. But I must do this, if only for my own self-esteem. As a... man.

*

Miyatsu stood on Raikatuji wharf staring out to sea long after the catamaran had disappeared from view and the drone of its engine could no longer be heard. Finally he turned with a sigh, jumped down to the sand and began to trudge towards the treeline, over the top of which towered the glass and concrete block that was the Raikatuji Building.

Miyatsu was certain that his office would be the first place Sakaki would come to in the morning, still several hours away. And if he decided instead to visit the Clean Energy Facility, Miyatsu would still see him arrive, as this area was the main access-way to the beach. He took up position behind the thick trees screening the stadium, where he had a good view of everybody coming and going while remaining unseen.

He thought about the impulse that had made him stay here while his family continued on to Shima. It was complex. He knew he should wait until he was stronger, but perhaps perversely, he wanted to face Sakaki without the safety net of his major psychic power. Just the two of them, each no stronger than the other. Equals.

Not only that, but Miyatsu had the uneasy feeling that if he put off the confrontation he'd never again have the courage to face the man he used to think of so fondly as his brother. He needed the impetus of his anger to carry him through this. His anger at what Sakaki had done to Aiko. And of what he'd tried to do to Miyatsu.

He hadn't lied when he told Aiko he couldn't kill Sakaki. But Miyatsu needed the truth from Sakaki for once; he needed to hear from his own lips how much the man hated him, however painful it might be. He wanted to strip away the mask of easy charm and super confidence and expose the real Sakaki underneath. Only then could Miyatsu allow the emotional scars to heal. Then perhaps he could sleep without waking in gut-clenching dread from dreams of a flat-lining monitor.

Dawn was still some way off and it was getting chilly. Miyatsu curled himself into a heat-conserving ball on the ground and settled himself to wait for the sun to rise.

He didn't see the moonlight reflecting off a pair of alert eyes a little distance away, carefully upwind and sitting behind some discarded boxes between two smelly garbage skips.

*

Mieko had the wheel, her gaze fixed on the horizon as the mainland receded swiftly behind them. Hanako was still down in the cabin with their mother, but Hideaki emerged onto the deck after a little while to keep his older sister company.

"Will Daddy be all right?" he asked finally, wistfully.

Mieko flicked her eyes to her little brother. "Yes." Her tone was positive.

"But he's still sick, Mieko-chan. And he can't use telekinesis."

"Dad's strong," Mieko answered. "Remember the times Mum told us about how he beat Sisyro on the circuit when he had Pershan Syndrome? Mum said he was only skin and bone and fur, and his telekinesis had gone then, too. But he still won the match!"

Hideaki looked around. "Where's Montaro-kun?" he asked in puzzled tones. "I thought he was up here with you."

Mieko smiled smugly. "That's another reason I know Dad will be okay. After we left, Montaro shielded from light and levitated back to the beach. He'll make sure Dad comes home to us!"