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Behind Rai Dei's eyelids, a muddy perception of his world played out.
The pounding of blood, the drumbeat of life. Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump.
Sleep so corroded by nightmares that he lost all desire to dream.
With reality and horror tightly intertwined, it was hard for Rai Dei to discern consciousness from unconsciousness. However, there was one surefire way to tell them apart, and it hurt.
The pain was always there in different severities, often splitting through his brain as bad as an electrocution, or sometimes as mild as a pulsing electrical current. The pain usually got worse when someone moved his body in this state. He was rattled, jostled, and pushed. Manipulated into place. Colors were muted and unclear as they passed over him, if he could even see them at all. His sense of smell went from stale to sharp, prickled by blood and something chemical.
At first, two voices floated in and out of his consciousness— one he knew better than the other. Was he hallucinating the name that inhuman anomaly, that man-shaped thing, referred to Chapel as?
If your solution is to kill... then stay out of this, Wolfwood. Rai Dei definitely heard that with clear ears. Even so, what of it if Chapel wasn't forthcoming about his identity? He was lying to both parties anyway. All the better to hunt down and eternally torture Vash the Stampede if he's psychologically out of sorts. No time to dwell on why anyone, let alone someone who works for Knives, dared to interfere with Rai Dei's pursuit.
Unless Chapel got in his way, which he had not prepared for.
Wolfwood! Wolfwood, stop! He's still alive! We need to get him help! Before Rai Dei lost his battle with consciousness to something as mundane as gunshots to the head, that was the last thing he heard in his ringing ears. This "Wolfwood" began to scream back at him, especially angry about getting his gun knocked aside, but tinnitus closed over Rai Dei's hearing like a vindictive swarm of worms as he blacked out, and that was it.
Briefly, Rai Dei came to in the cramped side car of a motorcycle. The engine roared like blood, growling in effort as it struggled to keep up with the reckless way it was being driven. Iron, motor oil, and cigarettes made for a nauseating mix, but it was nothing against Rai Dei's hardened senses. Compared to the miasma of mass human decomposition wafting off a pile of corpses, it could even be considered pleasant.
However, the smell was not why Rai Dei inhaled to try to scream. It was the harrowing pain, and the lack of fight in his body as he was held in place. His back was pressed to the chest of someone else, with one arm wrapped around his abdomen, and another hand roughly supporting his head. Before Rai Dei could breathe out his anguish, one hand moved to cover his mouth.
"Shit," came a quiet hiss behind his ear. "There's no time. Can't have Spikey seein'. Sorry if this kills you. God, I tried." The whisper was only audible due to the force within it; it was otherwise lost to the whipped up winds the motorcycle was inelegantly cutting through.
As the last vestiges of energy in Rai Dei's body lashed in a desperate attempt to escape, a minute pop was the only warning he got before burning acidity filled his perception, splitting out from the oozing gunshot wounds in his head.
Rai Dei didn't try to scream— sounds gurgled out of him involuntarily, as if from a human cut uncleanly by a hesitant blade. Another hand covered his mouth and nose and gripped him in a tight seal, unflinching when Rai Dei attempted to bite and kick his way out.
The last he saw of Vash the Stampede was the tails of his red coat fanning out in the wind as he turned his head towards them. One green eye shifted into shock, the bike lurched dangerously, and yet again, Rai Dei was dragged into unconsciousness, like a sinner brought down to hell.
In the present moment, things become a little clearer when Rai Dei lurches awake beneath a flashbang of bright lights. A hospital? His first instinct is to fight, but his thrashing attempt to get out of the sterile bed he's been placed atop of sends a shock of debilitating pain through him. At that instant, his body locks up, half from the pain, half from the shock of what he sees before him.
A young man with short, dark hair stands a few feet away from him, so startled that the clipboard in his arms seems to have cracked. His visage is so familiar that Rai Dei chokes on the name he wants to call the young man— Salam. Forgive me. Though I am not deserving of it, have mercy on me, Salam.
"You're awake! I knew it! They said you got shot in the head, but your wounds don't look that bad, and they didn't even find any bullets during the surgery, like they dissolved into thin air or some– Are you okay?"
In Rai Dei's ensuing coughing fit, the young man rushes to get him a cup of water. Rai Dei takes it so readily that he doesn't realize that the water has some small, floating particles in it until his last sip. His last swallow is an involuntary gulp of horror.
Brow so furrowed that his head gains an extra ache, he asks the young man, "How many Plants does this town have?"
"Huh? Oh, just one, sir. But you can probably tell by the water, it's not doing too good... I keep thinking, if only that man would come back..." the young man answers, sounding equal parts concerned and confused. At least he doesn't sound like Salam, but his face, hair, and stature are uncannily similar. Just one plant? This is all too eerie, too familiar.
Handing the cup back to the apparent hospital nurse, a bead of cold dread runs down his neck as Rai Dei tosses the blanket aside. "I am leaving at once."
"You can't!" The young man frantically steps in front of him. If Rai Dei had his blade, it would take less than a second to cut him down. The thought makes his pulse throb anxiously. He cannot be here, it's too dangerous for these townspeople to be near him.
"Where is my sword?" Rai Dei asks, trying to stand up. The yank of a tube in his arm and an extra pull of pain makes his knees buckle, thwarting his attempt.
The young nurse looks uncomfortable. "Well... We do have it... We have a protocol for this, though, so you can't have it back until you're discharged."
"Then discharge me. Now." Rai Dei finds himself on the edge of fear at the way his body is responding. He should be hardened against this, but his strength has been thoroughly sapped, and his mind is weak enough to let flashbacks of Salam and Rim, the other townsfolk he used to protect, and their ultimate gruesome demise affect him still. All those brutalized corpses were his responsibility, yet he pushed himself to move on, as he could not live with the burden of their humanity clawing into his shoulders. He told himself he traded his humanity to become a hardened, demon-hunting weapon long ago... So why... Why...?
Rai Dei's breathing becomes hurried and shallow, and his muscles start to clench up. Beside him, a monitor starts to beep frantically.
The young man, alarmed in his own right, reaches into his pocket to press buttons on a small device. "How am I supposed to discharge you when you're having a panic attack?! Shit, shit–" He rushes to the door and yells out of it, "Help! I need help!"
A flurry of motion and tension makes Rai Dei's sense of time hazy, so he is unsure how long the commotion of nurses setting him up for sedation goes on for. But he does remember asking one thing before the chemicals claimed his consciousness.
To the young man: "What is your name?"
Out of all the nurses, he is easily the most frantic. "Reza! Okay? Now have a good sleep, please sir! This is my first week here!"
"Reza..." Rai Dei weakly utters before passing out.
When Rai Dei comes to again, his consciousness rouses sluggishly, slowly. He is alone again, like he always has been. It gives him a long moment to think. In the time it takes for him to properly rise to sit up, he has already formulated a plan.
After tearing off his monitoring equipment and ignoring their warning beeps, pain becomes his secondary concern when he finds it so difficult to walk, only able to manage by supporting himself against the wall. If only he had his sand skates, this would be easier. Even still, the faster he can get out of here, the better. After what happened to Dominique the Cyclops and Monev the Gale, there could already be another Gun in town with orders to kill him for his failure. Not here, it cannot be here, not this town too... Considering this, Rai Dei moves towards the hospital front desk in a burst of adrenaline, like there's a bomb strapped to his chest.
The woman at the front desk looks beyond frightened as Rai Dei raises his IV stand to a threatening height. Even though he is shaking, rattling the metal. "Give me– my– sword," Rai Dei demands, huffing through grit teeth. "I will not–" he wheezes, pausing to collect himself, "–harm you with it. I will– I will leave this town immediately."
From behind him, a voice calls out. "Just let him go. We can't hold him back. Give him his clothes and skates too. If he tries anything, I will shoot him."
Only able to turn his head slightly, Rai Dei sees an unfamiliar woman in a doctor's coat with her hand on her hip, sporting an eyepatch and a scar across her throat. He fully believes that she will at least try to fight him.
Shaking his head, Rai Dei returns, "No need. I will take my things... and go."
Rai Dei turns back to see the terrified receptionist holding out his clothes, while his sword and skates sit on the desk. The doctor grabs his clothes instead, but allows Rai Dei to take his sword and skates. The skates are heavier than he remembers. His blade feels just right.
"Let me help you redress," the doctor offers, to which Rai Dei gives a curt nod. In their matched stares, there's an unspoken understanding, something deeper than words. An acknowledgement of character strength, of willpower, perhaps. Was this woman his doctor? His surgeon? Nevertheless, her unflinching, no-nonsense conviction reminds him of strong women he's known before, like Dominique and Rim. Vaguely, he wishes for this woman to prosper, and to not meet an end as hellish as theirs. It's startling, though— empathy should not pang at his ribs like this anymore. He's already in enough pain.
The woman guides him into a nearby empty room. Rai Dei is stiff and painful, but otherwise too weak to resist the doctor’s calloused, assistive touch as she removes his IV and helps him get dressed.
"I'm Dr. Christina Bayani. Your surgeon," she states, folding Rai Dei's clothes over her arm as he leans against the wall. Rai Dei simply grunts in response, trying to will his pounding head to stop swimming.
"I've heard a lot about you," Dr. Bayani continues, holding up Rai Dei's hakama pants and aiding him as he steps into them. "Rai Dei the Blade. You're even more impressive than I thought."
Rai Dei freezes. What is this? The doctor's tone is even and calm, not hostile. He silently continues to cooperate.
"That surgery— it's the strangest thing. It doesn't make sense, how healed your wounds were. The deepest was in your shoulder, but the bullet went clean through. I didn't find any bullet fragments at all, but you should have had something in your head. It's like your wounds were starting to seal up entirely..."
With a start, Rai Dei remembers some sort of acid being poured into his wounds when he first came to, jostled around in that motorcycle side car. It was Chapel's voice in his ear. Could it have actually been medicine? If so, why use it on him? “Can’t have Spikey seein’”, Chapel had said. Was it all to get on Vash the Stampede's good side? Play the long game with Vash's suffering? Or something else altogether?
Rai Dei is so lost in thought that he doesn't realize he's just about fully redressed. The doctor has circled around in front of him, looking him over. "Do you have some special abilities? Superhuman, something like that? You would have to, in order to survive those wounds, and to take them down, I bet..."
Pausing as he redoes his obi belt, Rai Dei looks at her quizzically. "Who, exactly, are you speaking of?"
A pained twitch of a smile comes over her lips. "I'm glad I got to talk to you and be your surgeon after all, even if I can never repay the favor in full. You're the man who killed the bandits that hunted and tortured my family and I. So, thank you."
Suddenly, Rai Dei can't recall how to finish the tie in his hands. He doesn't know how to respond to this— really, he never has when receiving these kinds of thanks. Especially not now, with so many spirits dragging behind him of the people he could not save. The more he ignores them, the more they seem to haunt him.
"No, no... I surely did not do enough." He clears his throat, but it still feels raw. "I have to go now," Rai Dei declares as she helps him put on his vest.
Dr. Bayani sighs, sounding resigned. Still, she assists Rai Dei with getting his skates back on. "You know that boy, Reza? He's like a little brother to me. He's really upset that you're leaving. You could at least say goodbye."
"There is no time to waste," Rai Dei says, frowning. Seeing that young man again would only interfere with his plans. It’s bad news that he seemingly has an older sister figure in his life, too. "My mere presence endangers you all."
"I beg to differ," she quietly disagrees, her dark lashes downcast. "But I understand."
With the doctor acting as a chaperone, Rai Dei is escorted out of the hospital. She points Rai Dei in the direction of the next town, and explains what he'll find there. He thanks her and makes sure his skates are warmed up enough before pushing forward. As the flames melt the sand into glass beneath his feet, he tries to bask in this final feeling of weightlessness, of soaring. Instead, his mind keeps drifting back to the pain, to Reza and Salam, to Rim, and to the tears in the eyes of Dr. Bayani as she waved him goodbye.
For a while, Rai Dei had his mind made up: the Jigenzan Ittou style ends with him. Teaching it to others only causes misery, and using it to protect them does just the same. After all this— his failure to kill Vash the Stampede, the strange behavior of Chapel-Wolfwood, this bizarre déjà vu of a hospital stay— he has come to the conclusion that Jigenzan Ittou must not only end, but be the very thing that ends him. Perhaps the style was always cursed; thoroughly contaminated to begin with. There is only one way to stop it.
Since he awoke, he began to concoct a new iteration of the technique that is self-directed. Jigenzan Ittou: Black Hole. The enemy Rai Dei must evade and subsequently crush is himself. With the way he has designed this in his head, he should have no chance of survival. He has one shot to prove his mastery of the Jigenzan Ittou style, and it must be perfect.
Finally, Rai Dei makes it outside of town. Unsheathing his sword, the two low suns reflect off the metal in beams of orange and red. It's beautiful, strangely so.
"Glorious," he suddenly remembers exclaiming to Vash the Stampede as they fought. If only I could experience that thrill once more...
No. His head must be clear and focused, even if the pain makes it hard to concentrate. He takes a deep breath, centers himself. Rai Dei's feet fan out into position, nearly frictionless on his skates.
But his mind is too jumbled and weak, so he resolves himself to sit down to meditate. This must be perfect, after all. So he takes a while to think.
"Rai!" a voice calls out from a short distance away, cleanly snapping his concentration in two. "Raaaaiiiiii!"
His eyes shoot open— only the people in Salam and Rim's town called him 'Rai' alone. None of them survived, so who is–
Oh no. It's Reza, the last person on the planet he wanted to see. The only souls who could stand to witness Jigenzan Ittou: Black Hole are himself, Millions Knives, and for the eternal suffering of it all, Vash the Stampede.
"Rai, I found you!" Reza shouts, dropping to his knees right in front of Rai Dei. He hunches over, trying desperately to catch his breath.
"Why are you here? Why did you follow me?" Rai Dei asks, feeling unnerved and intruded upon.
"Because you have to come back! I know what Christi said, but even she knows you're not done with treatment yet! You could die out here!" When the young nurse looks up, his eyes are puffy from crying. Why is he so upset? Does he not know that can rub off on people?
Rai Dei swallows any hint of emotion, becoming too aware of his sword hand resting on the hilt. "I am not coming back."
"Please, please." Reza clasps his hands together. "I'll start begging. Just please come back. I can't go through this again so soon."
Rai Dei lifts his chin. "Again?"
Nodding furiously, Reza explains, "On my first day, my patient ran off while I should have been watching him and he... he... The cops can't even say if it was an accident, murder, or a suicide yet, but he... They found him dead." Openly, he starts to weep. "And I didn't... When I saw he was missing, I didn't go after him. I feel so guilty. So I thought if I came after you, maybe I could– I could save you. It's– it's so stupid. I'm selfish, and plus, you remind me of that man from my childhood, so this… It just hurts too much. Please, sir, please. Come back."
The sand between them is dotted with tears, streaming from Reza's slumped form. This is all too much, Rai Dei cannot handle any of these wild, high emotions, especially as they make his own flare. At the same time, he knows in his soul that he cannot cut this young man down.
However, one thing in particular jumps out at him. "Who is this man that I remind you of?"
Reza shakes his head. "I... I barely remember him, but he's a hero. When I was a kid, our Plant was sicker than it is now, and he came, and it was fixed. The town was full of life and resources again. He had tall blonde hair, and a big red coat."
Rai Dei feels like he's been shot all over again. He cannot possibly mean The Humanoid Typhoon. This cannot be. In addition, we are nothing alike. An uncanny imitation of a man who refuses to kill, yet still brings about suffering and destruction, and a man-turned-demon who can only survive by killing others before they kill him to hone his blade, sharpen his technique. Whether we kill or not, I suppose we have the suffocating winds of suffering that we rise in common.
Reza wipes his eyes, sniffles, and looks him in the eyes. "If you're going to go, th-then why don't you keep an eye out for someone? Look for that man, and tell him we need his help again. The older folks are dying, and the babies hardly have a chance. If you do, I'll make sure you don't have to pay the hospital bills. I’ll beg Christi, I’ll work for free, I’ll do anything. I promise. Please, sir, I'm really desperate. I know it's pathetic, but–"
With his shaking sword hand, Rai Dei slowly reaches out. His hand makes impact more roughly than he meant to, but still, he persists with patting a wide-eyed Reza on the head.
Rai Dei does not know what kind of face he is making when he tells Reza, "You may be right. No more crying, now. I will return briefly with you. Just for a little rest, and then you can tell me more about this man so that I may hunt– rather, track him down."
At first, the crushing hug Reza brings him into feels like a jab through the heart. In Rai Dei's quest to mitigate the suffering he causes, he only created more. Luckily, there is something other than a human that he can hunt and pass on this suffering to instead. If Vash the Stampede spares him again, Rai Dei's two options will be to drag him back to this town and make sure he does as he's told, or, if he is uncooperative, demonstrate Jigenzan Ittou: Black Hole for the first and final time before Vash the Stampede's very eyes. Far away from this town.
Either way, the young man who looks so much like the boy he could not save will not suffer, and Rai Dei may experience one last thrill of facing an opponent like The Humanoid Typhoon.
As of now, Rai Dei's perception of the world plays out in a warm, vivid sunset as Reza sobs in his arms. Worms fly overhead and slink through the sand nearby them, busily buzzing and gaining back their evening glow. The sand has that warm, settling smell to it, often carrying its saltiness through the air and into Rai Dei's lungs. With every passing moment, the emotions lodged in Rai Dei's throat loosen.
Things seem so clear that Rai Dei may, if only for just a moment, allow himself to dream again.