by L. C. Mawson
“I would rather just keep an eye out for any monsters,” Hate muttered.
“Well, I suppose I can’t argue with that,” Vengeance said with a sigh as Love urged Sleepy on.
Vengeance tried to talk to them occasionally as they made their way to the nest, but Love couldn’t make out what he was saying over the sound of her blood rushing in her ears as she became more and more uncomfortable with her close proximity to Hate.
Though, by the fact that his attempts didn’t last particularly long, Love suspected that Hate was just as unresponsive.
When they finally reached the nest, Love had to suppress a sigh of relief.
She jumped from Sleepy as fast as she could, barely turning back around to say, “I’ll try not to be too long,” before hurrying into the dark sanctuary of the nest.
Love quickly found the masked woman waiting for her. She had to assume that she'd heard her approach, as she was standing facing the door, as if anticipating an arrival.
“Do you wear that mask all the time?” Love asked as she approached.
“Not usually,” the woman admitted. “In fact, I’m surprised that the Aspects here wear them at all. They were designed to filter out toxins from the environment, which none of the genetically engineered creatures create.” She shook her head. “Regardless, I’m glad that you came back. I wasn’t sure that you would.”
“I wanted to talk to you about my powers,” Love explained. “I have been having some... difficulty with them. Since you have the same powers and seem to have no trouble controlling them, I thought you might be able to help.”
The masked woman nodded. “I can indeed. I was a little surprised when you failed to stop those monsters the other day. You described it as ‘difficulty’. Does that mean that you used to have better control over your powers?”
“Yes,” Love confessed. “I used to be able to bond with entire nests, just as you have here.”
“I thought so, after seeing your bond with the creature you ride. It would have been odd if that bond had merely been a fluke.”
Love shook her head. “Not a fluke. At least, I don’t think so. I haven’t tried to form another bond that strong, but I have definitely managed to form simpler ones with entire nests before.”
“If you have managed that kind of control before, it should be simple enough for you to manage it again. Teaching someone how to control these powers from scratch is difficult, teaching them to refocus is far easier. So, what was your focus before, and why isn’t it working now?”
Love sighed, folding her arms. “My focus before used to be the Aspect of Hate. She was... She was my girlfriend. She wasn’t the first person I focused on, but focusing on her was what made my powers so strong. Probably because she’s the opposite Aspect from me. And now that we’ve broken up, I’ve lost that connection, as well as any form of romantic love to use as focus.”
The masked woman turned to the creature beside her, scratching it behind the ears. “You know,” she said, “I never had a lover to focus my powers on. I spent most of my childhood in solitude, interacting only with my father and his advisers. I knew that, when I came of age, a suitable husband would be chosen for me, and I never sought to find a romantic relationship outside of that. It certainly isn’t necessary to unlock your powers to their truest extent. And while working with the opposite Aspect can help to focus your powers – even to the extent at which it offsets any potential danger brought about by that kind of bond – it isn’t necessary to gain the level of control that I have. That you used to have.”
“Can you teach me?” Love asked.
“It is simply a matter of refocusing,” the woman explained.
“I’ve tried. When I first tapped into my powers, it was my love for my sister that did it, not my love for Hate. But I couldn’t do it. I... I couldn’t love my sister enough to protect her...” Her throat stung as her fists banged at her thighs. “What kind of sister does that make me?”
The masked woman stepped a little closer to her, before speaking with a soft voice. “It won’t be a lack of love behind your difficulties,” she explained. “You were chosen to be the Aspect of Love. You wouldn’t have been chosen if you didn’t have an inherent ability to feel love more intensely than anyone else with Rena blood on this planet. The problem won’t be that you don’t love your sister, the problem will be other emotions clouding your judgement and preventing you from focusing on that love. For an Aspect of Love to have full control over their powers, they must get rid of any fear or doubt that would cloud their mind.”
Love bit her lip, folding her arms tight across her chest. “How am I supposed to get rid of any doubt when I’m not even sure that I can use my powers anymore?”
“You have to believe in yourself.”
Love let out a bark of disbelieving laughter. “Believe in myself?” she repeated back, her words heavy with sarcasm. “What kind of kid’s movie bullshit is that?”
The masked woman waved a hand to indicate to the tame creatures surrounding her. “I’m the one who can still tame nests. You came to me for guidance, and I’m giving it to you. I cannot help you if you do not listen.”
Love shook her head. “No, I refuse to believe that it’s as simple as that. If it were, I would have already managed it. I wasn’t unsure of my powers until they stopped working.”
“They may have initially been clouded by something else, but once they failed you, doubt will be the most likely factor preventing you from regaining the power you once had.”
Love shook her head. “This was a waste of time,” she muttered before turning around and storming out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Love didn’t speak to the others as they made their way back to the base, refusing to answer their questions.
As they returned, they saw Justice and Loneliness heading out of the base.
“How did it go?” Justice asked.
Love shook her head. “She won’t be of any help. I don’t think we can rely on my powers to help us.”
To everyone’s surprise, tears immediately began to stream down Loneliness’ face.
“No, no, no, no, no!” she said quickly, shaking her head and waving her hands in front of her face to obscure it from the others. “I’m sorry,” she said, her words slurring together as she wiped the tears from her face. “I really am. This isn’t anything to do with you, I promise. I swear, it’s just the hormones.”
Love nodded, believing that without her current state, Loneliness wouldn’t have burst into tears like that.
But that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t have been upset. Just that she would have been better at hiding it.
And she had every right to be upset. Without Love’s power, the odds of them taking the city were significantly reduced. And while Loneliness had said before that she didn’t want to put too much on Love, the arrival of someone who might have been able to teach her how to regain control of her powers had probably given her hope.
Hope that had now been dashed.
“Come on,” Justice said to Loneliness, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You’re probably just hungry. You always have meltdowns when you’re hungry.”
Loneliness nodded in agreement, giving Love a strained smile before turning away.
Justice gave her brother a meaningful look, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she expected him to make sure that Love believed Loneliness’ excuse.
Love didn’t give him the chance, however, as she instead stormed off.
“Where are you going?” he asked after her.
“For a walk,” she called back, refusing to turn back to look at him or slowing down.
She heard a pair of footsteps following her and, assuming it was Vengeance, just ignored him, though she didn’t speed up.
To her surprise, when her tail caught up with her, it was Hate, rather than Vengeance.
“What do you want?” Love spat, not wanting to deal with her.
Hate gave her an unamused glare.
“I just wanted to know exactly what the woman said to you. You just said that she won’t be of help. I want to know exactly why things went south. You weren’t in there that long, but longer than if she'd just outright refused you, and you went in optimistic. So, what went wrong?”
Love sighed. “She agreed to help me. She said that I needed to ‘refocus’ myself.”
Hate frowned. “Didn’t you already know that?”
Love nodded. “I did. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.”
“Did you tell her that?”
Love nodded again. “I tried to, but she seems to think that I just haven’t been trying hard enough. That the only thing holding me back is a lack of confidence in my abilities, as if I didn’t have complete confidence in them before they failed me.”
Hate frowned. “Are you sure that your lack of confidence wasn’t why they failed you in the first place?” She asked quietly after a moment.
Love raised a confused eyebrow. “They failed me in the first place because... Well, you know...”
“Did they?” Hate asked, putting her hands into the pockets of her jacket and tugging it down. “I mean, did they fail you because things between us were... Well, you know... Or did they fail you because you thought they wouldn’t work while things were...”
Love frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Hate sighed. “What I’m saying is, maybe it wasn’t that things weren’t great between us that made your powers fail. Maybe they failed because you began to doubt that they would work while things weren’t great. And the more they failed, the less confidence you had in them.”
Love shook her head. “That sounds like a very convoluted way to look at it. I mean, when I used my relationship with you to focus my power, it makes sense that it would stop working when things stopped being good between us. Adding all that extra stuff to it just seems like making it more complicated for the sake of being complicated.”
“Not if viewing it this way helps you to tap into your powers again. You accessed them before we got together, remember? You should still be able to access them now, regardless of how things are between us.”
“Maybe,” Love conceded. “But even if I can tap into the basics of my powers, you were the only reason I was ever able to relocate nests...” Love sighed, shaking her head. “But I suppose I shouldn’t dwell on the past. Even if I can never get my powers to that level again, I can still help if I can tap into the rest of my abilities. Hopefully, that will be enough for everyone to be able to get the monsters out of the city.”
“Hopefully,” Hate said before turning around and heading back to the base.
Love just stood in the middle of the road for a few moments, before letting out an exasperated sigh.
At least Hate was talking to her, she thought to herself. If nothing else, that was a positive.
A few moments later, she looked up and down the road, trying to decide whether she should walk any further, or if she should make her own way back. She didn’t exactly feel tired, but she probably shouldn’t stay out all night, or wander too far from the base on her own.
Before she made her decision, she spotted another figure approaching.
As they got closer, they morphed to mirror her, revealing themselves to be Empathy.
“Hey,” Love said as her sister approached. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“Shouldn’t you?”
“Good point. But I have insomnia, and it’s not as if I was back at the base for you to absorb it from. As long as you’re around other sleeping people, shouldn’t you sleep just fine?”
Empathy nodded. “Usually,” she agreed. “I wanted to talk to you about the masked woman.”
Love folded her arms. “There's not really much to say.”
“I know, but if she is here because of your connection to Jia... Well, I have that connection too. I just want to know a little bit about her and see if there are any more details about why she’s here.”
“I haven’t been able to get an answer from her, apart from that she’s here to observe us. Why exactly that is, or what she’s looking for, she hasn’t said.”
“Maybe I can go with you next time. I mean, I know that the creatures have been stopping anyone else from getting into the nest with you, but maybe they won’t do that with me. And if I can get close to her, I can use my powers to figure out more about why she’s here and what she wants.”
“You might be able to,” Love agreed, “but I’m not sure that there’ll be a next time. She wasn’t exactly helpful when I went today, and I definitely don’t want to go back tomorrow.”
“Even if you don’t go back to learn more about how your powers work, even if she can’t help you there, she has to be here for a reason, so I doubt we will have seen the last of her.”
Love sighed. “You know, I’m afraid you might be right.” She shook her head. “Come on, we should head back and get some sleep.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The next day, Love approached Vengeance as he prepared Jealousy, Pain and Empathy for another day of scouting the city.
“You coming with us?” he asked.
Love nodded. “If the masked woman can’t help me figure out how to regain control of my powers, I might as well keep trying on my own.”
“Fair enough,” Vengeance agreed. “And as much as we need as many hands building the wall as possible, being around Hate is probably the last thing you need for your powers.”
“Probably,” Love agreed.
“Plus, I won’t say no to Sleepy accompanying us.”
Love grinned. “So now it all comes out. You only want me around for my giant monster, don’t you?”
Vengeance grinned back. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Love, Empathy and Pain climbed aboard Sleepy’s back while Vengeance and Jealousy hopped aboard a Rena bike.
They made their way across the city, knowing that they would spend most of the day travelling. They had mapped almost the entire city and the few unexplored patches left were often quite far apart.
They slowed as they approached new, uncharted territory, not wanting to miss anything in their haste. Mapping the city would be useless if they missed the location of a monster nest, or something equally important.
The environment also ended up slowing them down, with more and more crumbling buildings taking up space along the road.
Sleepy moved more than easily through the rubble, but Love had to be careful in steering her away from passages that would be large enough for her to creep through, but would probably give the Aspects riding on her back a bump on the head.
Whenever they reached an area without rubble over their heads, Sleepy would stretch out her wings impatiently, making it more than clear to Love that she wanted to take to the sky.
Love kept her grounded, however. They already had aerial views of the city, they needed to map the ground instead.
As they moved through the rubble, however, Love heard a growl behind her, causing her to spin around, only to see a creature with jet black scales behind them, just like Sleepy.
That wasn’t good. Sleepy was a Dreamer, and they had the power to put people to sleep, giving them terrible nightmares.
If these creatures had that same ability, they likely wouldn’t be able to fight them.
Thankfully, Jealousy and Vengeance were wearing helmets, so they could probably mute the song that put them to sleep, but that would do no good for Love, Pain and Empathy, who would be completely defenceless and reliant upon the other two to get all of them out of there.
Love turned back to look ahead of her, only to see more of the creatures approaching.
They were surrounded.
The monsters were all growling, and Love felt her chest tighten, no longer able to draw breath.
Realistically, their only hope was her tapping into her powers to get the creatures to leave.
But that seemed so ridiculously impossible that she had to suppress a manic bark of laughter as she drew h
er sword, ready to defend herself the old-fashioned way.
Of course, just as she was thinking of how impossible it was, all of the monsters bowed their heads, as if she'd used her power on them.
The others all turned to her, but she was already looking for the masked woman.
Within moments, she saw her, striding straight towards them, the creatures parting as she went.
“So this is your solution, then?” she asked Love as she stood before her, her hands on her hips. Her sharp voice was enough for Love to know that there was an unamused glare behind her mask. “You wouldn’t listen to me and learn to regain your powers, so you decided to deal with your failure by hurting these creatures instead?”
She waved her hand over the creatures next to her, and Love felt a pang of guilt as they looked at her sword with baleful eyes.
Love lowered her weapon.
“You come into their home, try and take it from them, and when they try and defend it, you punish them with death. Are you truly so distanced from your power that that seemed like a good idea?”
Vengeance frowned at the woman. “If you’re so bothered about protecting these creatures, why don’t you move the nests?”
The woman turned to him. “These creatures were here first,” she told him firmly. “If you wish to usurp them, you will do it yourselves. I will not do your dirty work for you.”
She turned back to Love. “However, if you wish to return and listen to what I have to teach you this time, you may be able to handle this without me.”
Love suppressed a sigh. She didn’t want to go back, only to be told more nonsense about believing in herself, but when she looked to the others, she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. If the masked woman was going to stand in the way of them driving the creatures out by force, Love’s power remained the only thing that would allow them to reclaim the city.
She had to learn to use it again, even if it meant giving the masked woman’s nonsense another try.
“Fine,” Love said. “I will return to you tomorrow.”
