Human fear was the ultimate pleasure for her.
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But...
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But now was not a good time. If she killed this man here, she would leave evidence behind. And even if she drove this man to the height of fear she would never get any real pleasure from it. She would have to exercise forbearance.
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She acknowledged the urge as one of ravenous desperation; it would eventually demand release.
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But not now.
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“Are you okay? You look pale?” she said,
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shifting her tone and looking at the intern with concern. “You’ve had so many emergency patients recently. . .are you drinking vegetable juice?”
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“Oh, the one the assistant director keeps hyping?
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Honestly, it’s just not my thing,” he said, obviously relieved that she’d changed the subject. He looked like he’d escaped within inches of his life.
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Makiko, of course, knew that that was precisely true.
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Makiko became aware of that principle shortly after she began her activities. The depth of flavor to the fear was not even comparable.
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In the last three months, she had already taken apart the skulls of five people, and every one of them had looked to have an incredibly strong will. Checking up on them later was easy since the media was reporting their information in great detail. It appeared that all of the girls had unusual personalities. Their youth might’ve had something to do with their apparent fearlessness.
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Makiko had little interest in pondering the matter further. It was transparently obvious, after all. She did not need to look hard to find additional prey. She could find her victims just by wandering around town.
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Almost none of them were men. She began to
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suspect that the kind of strength she sought might not be a male trait. Men typically started shaking with fear instantly, ruining their taste. There were scores of tall, physically imposing men who, when confronted by Makiko, were no stronger mentally than an average three-year-old. The few who were unafraid were severely lacking in mental stability.
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But the nice part about the unstable ones was that they were quite easy to control.
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She could toy with the long term patients, nibbling at their fear, and none of them showed any inclination to fight back. It was so easy. However, such low-hanging fruit did little to sate her hunger. They were more like a snack-not truly satisfying.
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All the weaker people did was fuel her desire to find the real thing.
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But I must figure out something to do with the bodies...
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She attacked when the urge drove her to it, and the aftermath was rather gruesome. If she didn’t keep a low profile, whoever had made the medicine would eventually notice.
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I must do something...
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There had to be a good way to dispose of them.
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She had to think of something safer. She needed a technique, like the contraception methods used during sex.
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And she would have to frame someone else for the earlier murders. The media and police seemed to believe the killer was male, so she could easily find an appropriate scapegoat. That would keep anyone who could threaten her from hunting her down.
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She chose her course of action carefully and cleverly.
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But despite her cunning, she still was unsure why the medicine had granted her new powers...along with these violent urges.
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There may have been some distorted fate, a
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massive, unstable tendency behind the uncanny birth of Kisugi Makiko, who might well have remade the world...but there was no one on Earth who knew about it.
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At least, not yet.
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walked in.
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Her mother met her at the door. “You must be tired. I’ve drawn you a bath.”
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“I’ll eat first.”
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They sat down at the table, just as they always did. On TV, a news anchor was providing the latest updates on the Skull Dissection Murders.
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“My, how terrifying. Makiko-san, you really
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have to be careful out there. Such a terrible thing, and only happening to girls...” her mother shivered dramatically.
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“Yeah,” Makiko said, absently.
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Ironically, Makiko was the source of her aging mother’s weakness. The idea that anything might happen to her beloved daughter was a source of un-bearable fear.
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It would be so easy, so very simple. All she had to do was tell her mother the truth, and it would destroy her world.
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It was so easy Makiko had never bothered.
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"........."
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Occasionally she would glance at her mother’s profile as they watched TV, and wonder what she would taste like. But she’d never done anything more than wonder. So far.
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The news shifted subjects, and the president of some other country came on screen. He was surrounded by a small army of imposing bodyguards.
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"........."
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Makiko could detect every one of their weaknesses. A single threat could make them all her slaves.
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Recently, Makiko’s abilities had begun operating on a greater scale, well beyond individual weaknesses.
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She could now see holes in the policies of a large corporation, for example. Humans did not live in isolation, but in communities, and she had learned to detect what the weaknesses of those groups were.
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She used her newfound skills to place several organizations under her thumb. She began to use them to gather information for her.
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Including some clues as to the medicine’s creators.
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It would not be long before she’d be able to determine the weakness of an entire nation just by looking at its president.
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What would it taste like when an entire nation screamed, writhing in fear?
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Maybe something even larger existed, an existence beyond her imagination.
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"............"
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She said nothing to betray her thoughts, simply moving her chopsticks as her mother shook her head and complained about the state of the world.
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It was not yet time for action.
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“If iron are a warrior, born to fight,
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then the object of your life’s purpose
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exists only within the enemy.”
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-Kirima Seiichi,
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Isolation and Faith
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3.
✦ ✦ ✦
Kisugi Makiko sat in the hospital examining room by herself, looking at a file concerning a certain individual. There was a headshot clipped to the side, and the file looked like a patient’s chart at first glance.
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However, this person was not staying at the hospital.
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In fact, she had never even been there.
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She was just a girl Makiko had seen on the
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street.
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She had been in a coffee shop, comforting a crying friend. It seemed her friend had just been rejected by a boy. But this girl was not comforting her friend with blind pity and meaningless reassurances. Instead, she patiently explained that while the boy had certainly handled it badly, her friend was partially to blame for the breakup as well. And her friend accepted the explanation. Makiko was impressed. Most bro-kenhearted girls were much too upset to listen to any explanations regarding why they had been rejected. A casual observer would not have noticed, but Makiko could tell this girl was extremely intelligent, and very persuasive.
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And very strong.
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Astoundingly so.
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Imagining her quivering in fear was so exciting Makiko almost attacked her right then and there, but she managed to restrain herself.
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She arranged for one of the men under her control to investigate the girl. She was surprised to discover she was still in junior high. Shes only thirteen! The youngest victim so far had been a high school junior.
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This special girl’s name was Suema Kazuko. As with Makiko’s other targets, she had a reputation for being unusual.
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"........."
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Makiko could feel the desire welling up inside her just from looking at the file. But if she killed someone this young, the news would be all over the story. The police and the media would go on the warpath, and whoever made the medicine would certainly notice.
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She would have to be careful.
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She would have to make this girl her first carefully calculated Victim.
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The intercom on her desk rang. “Doctor, your patient is here.”
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“Okay, send them in.”
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She put the file away, and started playing light music, creating a relaxing atmosphere.
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“Listen to me, Doctor. Everyone is saying bad things about me. All the time!”
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“I think someone is following me...”
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“...er. ...no, well...um.”
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As her patients babbled on with the utmost seriousness about their absurd problems, she said nothing. She just sat in silence, smiling reassuringly. She was quite efficient as she handled each one. In the past she had tried to be as nice as possible, but now her counseling was brisk and businesslike. Strangely enough, her patients seemed to like it better.
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One patient said to her, with bizarre cheerful-ness, “Just between you and me, the world’s about to end.”
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“Oh dear.”
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“Yes, I agree...it’s a shame. There is a terrible evil lurking in the world, and it is starting to move,”
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he said with the utmost sincerity, but he was oddly upbeat.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Hmm. . .but why is it going to destroy the
✦ ✦ ✦
world?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“That’s why it was born! There’s nothing else for it to do. It’s merely following the instincts it was born with. It’s destiny!”
✦ ✦ ✦
He didn’t seem to mind the dire fate of man-
✦ ✦ ✦
kind.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I see. How awful. I don’t suppose there’s any way we can stop it?”