Unwinding the Immortal Coil

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Both women stopped what they were doing to listen to the random story, and Hegga gulped, then began to squirm.

"Fucking... No, fuck you, fuck this, fuck it all, let me go!" Sure, she'd regenerate, but who would ever want that!? "Let me go! Kina, keep your new dog away from me!"

Kina blinked, then laughed. "He's not mine, I'm just gonna help him kill himself unless he can find reason to stay alive," the woman purred, then drove her knees downward. "Feng, do you want to come over here? I have a very good plan, thanks to you."

"No no no no no no!" Hegga shrieked as she kicked her legs and flailed her arms fruitlessly "Fuck you Kina! I knew you were low but not torture low!" She breathed in deep despite the weight on her back. "Get off, you cunt!"

"Language." Kina sighed and shook her head. Her expression softened. "I wouldn't torture you, Hegga, but I can ask Feng to tell more stories."

"Damnit, what do you want, Kina!?"

Kina's expression finally fell from its near-constant smile. "I want to know why you're here after being gone for so long, and why you're dressed as one of our enemies." Her tone turned to ice. "Why would you betray us?"

"The other option was death! They made me watch them kill my partner when he said he'd never join them! They make me watch when they do experiments on captives to make sure I know they'll do the same to me if I go against them! I already took a risk lying about you two being dead!" Her voice choked as she spoke rapidly. "I made a promise I wouldn't die, Kina! I can't! I can't!"

The Asian's expression softened, but she pressed her knees more firmly against Hegga's arms. "The Council would have had you killed for that, even if I wanted to spare you. Be glad we serve another now." Voice cold despite her expression, she shoved harder again on her knees.

"Nn!"

"I don't know how informed they keep you, but her name is Lady Jade, and she is merciful. If you ask nicely, I can send you to her. You can beg your case. I will testify in your favor because I am her second intelligence officer. She will likely pardon you, and you can join Faust in earning back the trust of the rest of us."

Below her, Hegga shook. "I can't, ok? I can't. They'll find me. Faust could have walked in any time and taken your seer. Anyone can infiltrate HQ!"

"That was under Council rule. Jade's rule is much more secure. Just say it and you will be saved from the Unifiers."

"I can't! I can't!" Hegga began to squirm again. "They'll kill me! They'll kill me!" Her shrieks grew shrill. "They'll KILL me, and they'll only do it after they torture me!" Her voice broke, and she began to cry ugly blubbering tears.

Whack!

Kina's strike to the back of Hegga's head was precise and stopped the blubbering tears instantly and put the larger woman to 'sleep'.

After a few moments, Kina finally looked toward Feng. "Sorry, that was rather ugly." Her usual smile returned, as though nothing strange happened.
 
Dog... Maybe he would join in if she decided to do some torture. Calling an ancient human a dog, what an insolent girl. Though it wasn't like he hadn't been quite squeamish the first few times he had been tortured... At least he assumed those memories were the first few times. Now a days it was hard to make him move a single inch. Sure, he still hated the pain, but it was only for so long they could torture him before they got tired of it. Why give in when you could just wait for the enemy to get bored. It never took too long.

The two girls interaction was quite... Interesting, and telling. This girl was nothing but a pawn in someone's game. No matter what they told her, she would definitely not change sides. He had seen it before. Hurt someone enough and they won't ever dare defying you. Feng himself had been on that end at least once. Even when the man had died, he had still been afraid of doing anything that would be seen as disobedience. That's how much one can control someone with the right tools, and it always take a long time to get over.

He waited patiently until finally Kina was forced to put the girl to sleep, so to speak. "I've seen far worse." He replied. "You do realize she won't get over this before she has seen their dead bodies, right? Though more than likely, it will take much longer than that. When they play around with people's deepest fears, those people won't be able to trust anyone to save them. She's a lost cause until you've gotten rid of the root of the problem." He told the woman. Humans weren't capable to handle too much pain. Eventually they'd break. He had broken many times. There was probably nothing left in him to break anymore. Maybe there was a hint of a past pain in his eyes as he looked at the girl, though it couldn't have lasted for more than a few seconds.

"If you don't wish for her to live in fear for the next few hundred years, I would suggest killing her now when she can't feel it." He suggested. Mercy killings wasn't something he was unfamiliar with. Usually he didn't do it when someone was unconscious except if he knew the pain they bore was too great for most to bear. Usually though, they were awake, aware. He slowly reassured them that they would come to a better place, even though he himself had no idea how true that was. Calming people before they died, was something he was used to at this point. It had been something that had grown on him during the dark ages, when the black death had started to take most of the people he knew at the time. Knowing how much everyone suffered, he cut the suffering short for them. His own suffering from the sickness on the other hand, had not been cut short for obvious reasons.
 
Kina ran a hand along the red wrap over her hair, then slowly stood. "No. We're too few in number as it is. If nothing else, I can send her back and ask someone to provide therapy enough that she can function on a home-only basis." She closed her eyes. "I did the same to the one she mentioned, called Faust."

It robbed them of freedom, and wasn't actually therapy, but it also ensured that they could breed, and the Hunters as an organization would survive. The percentage of Hunter population that used condoms had grown to over ninety percent, and birth rates dropped dramatically in the past twenty-nine years...

Logically, it made perfect sense, but that didn't mean she liked it or that it was right.

"Perhaps she'll even find her mate at home, and she'll heal faster through him," Kina smirked, then looked up towards Feng. "Unless you're into a guro fetish, Feng. I'm sure I could give you a weapon she'll enjoy too. We're all masochists, so as long as you start out nice, I'm sure she'll get into it."

Kina laughed as she rose from Faida's back. "I'm joking," she added, then turned to put a foot back atop Faida, only to see...

She was fading!

A string of Chinese curses spilled from her lips mixed with English and several languages that sounded entirely fictional as she grabbed hold of Faida by the shoulder and began to fade as well. "Feng—" her voice cut off as she grimaced. "I'll be back...!" Almost entirely transparent, Kina began to stretch upward.
 
"I come from times where you would be hanged for the mere suggestion. What an unrefined woman." Feng pointed out. He had met many scandalous women in his days, but never one as this one. She was quite not from this world. Of course she ruled off the suggestion as a joke, but he still had his doubts about that. Somehow this woman seemed like the kind that actually could mean it.

Then the most bizarre thing happened. Kina was fading! Soon she was almost completely transparent and disappeared completely. "Okay... Can't deny that surprised me." Feng mumbled, staring into the woods right at the place where Kina had just recently been standing. "What a day. A suicidal dude who wants to die with honor, a brainwashed girl and a ghost woman. Not quite the day I was expecting."

Sighing, he sat down at a big root sticking out of the ground, creating a perfect sitting place. "Well, she said she'd be back. Guess it's just to wait." And so he did.... At least for a few hours. Once his stomach started to remind him that he technically was a human that needed to eat to stay healthy, even though it wouldn't kill him to skip meals for hundreds of years, he finally stood up and walked back to the town. She should be able to find him there, right? It wasn't that hard to guess that he would go into one of the nearest towns eventually, and to be more easily found, it would certainly be a town he knew they had been in during their mission. It wasn't like they didn't know he had been following them at this point.

Once back in town he rested at a bar, took a drink, got a proper meal, even though it tasted awful, and started chatting with some women whom had approached him. At first they had laughed at his hair because there was a spot completely shaved after his regeneration, but soon they were absorbed into his stories of past wars and adventures, where it wasn't unusual for hair to become cut off at places. Of course they thought it was just silly stories and not truth.

Feng did not particularly care for the women he was speaking to, it was just a way to pass the time while waiting. For once he actually had something to wait for, which meant that he would be utterly bored if he didn't do anything until that damn woman showed up. She had given him some hope to his future death, she'd better keep her word.

Eventually the audience disappeared as the morning sun started to rise at the horizon. Damn it, what was he supposed to do now? With nothing else to do, he'd just take the opportunity to sleep. Not in a bed, that wasn't something he spent money on except if it was freezing cold outside. The grass was a completely fine resting place, and there he lied for quite some time. No matter if he was awake or asleep, he never realized how much time had actually passed, so he could as well be sleeping for a hundred years if no one poked some life into him. Though more than likely his stomach would wake him up after a few days if nothing else.
 
Drake's attempts at finding a new mission in the same place took a whole week at HQ, but only until the morning after Feng's audience left him. Finally though, he held a file, and as he looked down at the immortal he'd been left to follow like a bloodhound, his upper lip drew back.

Feng was sleeping, after what Drake could smell went on? The Hunter nudged Feng with a boot. "Wake up, Feng. Where is Kina?" He nudged Feng again, yellow eyes narrowed. In truth, he would have loved to simply kick Feng up and down the nearest hill for not keeping close to Kina and losing track of her, but... he forced himself to 'be good'.

"Feng, wake up. We need to find Kina," his deep voice persisted, and Drake nudged Feng again with slightly more force.
 
Feng opened one eye and looked up at the guy who was annoyingly poking him with his foot. "Kina... So she didn't get back to you then?" He asked, wondering what had happened to her when she disappeared like that.

"I doubt we'll find her here, considering she disappeared like a ghost together with that girl. Right in front of my eyes, one moment there, the next moment gone. As if taken by the Gods." Feng explained, wondering if what he said was even making sense. Rising from the ground, he stretched his body. This was a very rare moment when he weren't stiff like a stick after having slept on the ground. On the other hand, this was one of the few times someone actually woke him up shortly after he fell asleep instead of him waking up first days later.

"Is it normal for you guys to just poof away like that?" He asked the other man. "Either way, she said she'd be back, so can't imagine something too bad has happened."
 
"So, she didn't leave the same way I did?" Drake sighed and shook his head. "I can tell you with absolute certainty, then, she was probably taken by the Unifiers. If she said she'll be back, she is either incredibly cocky or she didn't want you to worry." The words came out before Drake could stop them. "They have shielding, so unless we can get a very lucky hopper involved, she is likely going to end up dead or tortured." A tightness at his throat was the only indication of his unhappiness.

"Do you know of any other places in this world like the one we blew up?"

It was a stupid question. If this was a trap, and it was, they only had the one base. Drake ran a hand through his hair, then growled. "Damn."

To pursue Kina would likely mean another war. To leave her behind would be to damn her and Hegga to an existence of torture and shame or the death.

"I need to call my boss. This is bigger than I can handle alone. I'm going to need backup, and likely to go to another world. You can come or stay, but I doubt Kina will come back without a rescue, and as the second intelligence officer, she's too important to abandon."
 
What a lying bitch. Didn't want him to worry huh? If that was the case, she was the biggest idiot ever. As if he would be worried over someone he hadn't met before. The only thing that worried him was that he was loosing out on his chance to die. If he had known something bad was going on he might have done something... Not that there was much he could do when they disappeared just like that. Damn it.

"I'll come with you. I can't have her dying on me before she has kept her promise of killing me." Feng stated, clearly a bit bitter that he had been fooled. Usually he was good at telling when people lied. This woman hadn't shown any signs of not meaning it. Though maybe Feng had just been a bit too busy trying to figure out the situation to notice any details in her face or voice.

"I haven't really been traveling enough for the last couple of hundred years to know of any other such strange objects. I only found out about this one because people spoke of a curse of that forest that made it impossible to enter. No other rumors has circulated around here." It hadn't been that he had been curious or anything, it was just that a curse could mean death. Not that any witches had ever been able to take him out with them before. When nothing happened and he couldn't enter, he left the thing alone until the strangers showed up and started walking into the forest all the time.
 
Drake grunted and tossed his portal onto a nearby tree that looked wide enough for it. "Let's go, then. I doubt she'll get herself killed, but if the Unifiers have her, they'll try to turn her against us or they'll perform experiments on her. Anything to get information from her if they find out she's with our intel branch."

He waved a hand for Feng to enter the portal. On the other side, an office with smooth, simple furniture of wood and metal was visible, and a tiny blonde woman in a jacket like the Hunters' sat at the table in front of a flat-screen monitor. Her small hands danced across the keyboard before she paused and looked toward the portal. Inhumanly large red eyes stared out from a pale face, giving the thin-necked girl an appearance more doll-like than human.

"Hunter Drake? You only left a few hours ago. Did something happen?" Her monotone voice offered no hint of emotion. "Where is Hunter Kina?"

"Unifiers, Lady Jade."

The girl's red eyes widened, and her mouth opened slightly. "This relates to the trap they set?"

Drake nodded. "I can only assume. They had a traitor among them. Kina pursued, and then both of them disappeared. Their scent trails disappeared very suddenly."

From delicate lips, a singular word slipped forth: "Fuck."

The blonde went silent and looked toward the keyboard as she drummed fingers against thumbs. "Hunter Drake, remain in the area. Should she escape on her own, I wish a familiar face near. I will handle the rest. Send me a text, should you have more information—" She paused suddenly, then looked toward the portal again before she rose and stepped closer. "Who is this?"

The vampire-bred Hunter glanced toward Feng. "This is Feng. He's a true immortal and tired of it. Kina made a deal with him that if he can prove he really has nothing to hold him back, she'll find a way to kill him. She likely intends to ask a favor of you to achieve that, Lady Jade."

Jade closed her eyes. "I see. In that case, since he was presumably the last to speak to or see Hunter Kina, I would like to conduct an interview." She looked toward Feng. "Come. Join me in my office, Immortal Feng."
 
Even this day was filled with new things. Though he had seen the portal a day earlier, what was inside of it was new to him as he had not taken a very good look the other day. A woman was sitting at a desk, her fingers dancing over letters for some reason Feng could not understand at that point. Computers were a foreign concept for the man. Had hunters not entered his life, he would most likely not have seen one for another hundred years.

"Interview?" He asked, raising a curious eyebrow. "Would that be a beautified version of interrogation?" There was certainly a distinction between them, pretending that it was something else was certainly unnecessary. One might feel threatened by one of the words but not the other, but that was more due to incomprehension rather than anything else.

"Well, if you are going to conduct an 'interview', please stop calling me immortal, I'm already living it, I don't need the constant reminders." He said as he stepped inside.
 
Drake coughed into his fist, but said nothing, though he shot a glance of pity towards Feng as the man stepped through the portal.

The red-eyed and unnaturally-busty girl stepped back to allow him to pass, then stared at him for several moments before the portal collapsed behind him. As she watched him, she stroked one of her braids. Her gaze held a strange directness that looked deep inside the immortal before she finally spoke.

"If you must object to the form of address I offer, suggest something, or I will be forced to use my limited observations of your character," she explained. As with every other time words left her lips, these offered no emotion nor variance in tone, and her eyes seemed not to require the lids that rested above them.

Still, now fully inside the room, the box beyond the letters glowed until Jade's small finger pressed a button on the bottom, and it blackened. She remained quiet for a few long moments to allow Feng time to answer her request for a different title by which to call him, but answer or no, she had an unknown time limit, so moved forward.

"Regardless, I do not perform interrogations, nor do I endorse them. Any Hunters under my command who perform unsanctioned acts of cruelty will be punished severely."

She walked toward a small, plush bench against a wall, then scooted toward one side and rested her hand beside herself for a moment before it joined the other in her lap. "Please, sit. I wish to hear your version of the events of Hunter Kina's disappearance. I hope you will include every detail you can remember. Once you have done so, I may ask a few questions, and then I will return you to the place from which you came."
 
"Though I feel titles being pointless, If you insist on using one, I was once known as a lord. It was a good time of my life I do not mind remembering and just as true as me being an immortal." He sighed. This woman was odd and slightly annoying. He had stayed away from the upper class societies that had decided that titles was the most important way of addressing someone, and now he was there again. Lord Feng... Didn't have quite a good ring to it. What had he been called during that time? Whatever, as if he could remember. Hopefully she would feel it too demeaning to herself to call him a lord and drop the whole title concept.

"Unsanctioned acts of cruelty? You people have quite the harsh interrogations. While I do not deny that they can get bloody depending on the time period and people performing it, it can be just as easy as an interview. Its simplest meaning is to ask questions to get some information." Feng explained. People were so strange, changing the meaning of a word simply because they had seen it used in a certain purpose, but forgetting that its original purpose was quite different. He obliged with the lady's wishes and sat down.

"Well then, after Drake went through that.. Strange door yesterday, Kina decided to search up the person he had spoken to. I'm not entirely sure how she knew someone had been there, but we began to follow her trail into the forest, or rather, she made me follow the trail into the forest. She wasn't hard to find as she was still close by. Pretty stupid of her. There had been more than enough time to get away at that point." She should have been halfway to China at that point, but no, she had barely gotten out of the forest.

"Kina nailed her to the ground and started to interrogate her.... Ah, my apologies, I meant interview her. What was she called again? Hmm... Yes, I think she was called Hegga. It would be better if you ask about the details of the interrogation from Kina. There are too many things I do not understand to represent what happened properly. All I will say is that the girl seemed utterly frightened of your enemies and didn't dare go against them more than she already had by lying to them about the two hunters fate." That was about what he had understood from it all.

"Kina hit the girl so she fainted when she started to panic too much for her to talk to the girl properly. After that, she just became transparent. Both of them. She told me she would be back and in the next moment, they were both gone."
 
Although her eyelid visibly twitched at mention of Kina being rough to get information, the red-eyed girl listened quietly until the end. Her gaze remained forward as she organized his description in her mind until she had no more new meaning to discover behind it.

Only then did she nod and answer. "Thank you, Lord Feng," she replied, then nodded. "Can you describe anything more about the disappearance itself? Any strange sounds, sights, sensations, or scents?"

She refrained from asking if the two stretched upward, or if Hegga's uniform blinked, or if a circle appeared below them at all. Suggesting such things often led to constructed memories rather than truth. Instead, she closed her eyes to await his answer.

Alone on the hill, Drake paced as he clicked his tongue against his teeth.
 
Feng thought about it for a bit. There certainly hadn't been any special scents. Sensations? Only his dumbfounded sensation of aw when something so other wordly happened right in front of him. Sounds? Nothing unusual. Sight... Well, the disappearance itself was quite an unusual sight, but...

"I think... They were stretching upwards before disappearing. As if sucked into the sky." He finally told her. If any other had seen it, they would have believed it was an act of God, taking his children home, or maybe destroying evil. Though this was the time when alleged alien abductions would slowly start to appear in the world, which meant, that was also something it could be confused with. Though it was still to early for Feng to know of this change from God to aliens in peoples beliefs.
 
"Hm."

The small sound was accompanied by a pursing of small lips and a nod.

"Thank you, Lord Feng. The stretching is a more important detail than most people assume." It meant the Unifiers sent the two women to a very specific place, and that narrowed the possibilities immensely. She pulled a phone from her pocket and rapidly sent out a variety of texts. She set it down, then drummed pinky, ring, middle, and pointer fingers each against the thumb of the same hand in rapid succession, but only once each.

"Please forgive the brief interruption. Speed is essential against the Unifiers."

She had something else to ask, now. It was less related to the disappearance, and more closely related to the fact that Faust was not the only traitor, and he'd never mentioned a 'Hegga' when he described what happened in his time among the Unifiers.

"That covers the disappearance, but If you are comfortable with it, I wish to hear your observations and thoughts regarding Traitor Hegga."
 
"I don't particularly feel either comfort nor discomfort surrounding that topic. I cannot care for someone I do not know properly, and at my age, you quit knowing people properly." People could be quite silly sometimes. Why would it cause him discomfort to speak about his observations? Because she was in a panicked state? What did that matter to him?

"I only saw her for a few minutes, so there really isn't much to tell. She spoke of having been threatened and her response to the threats are very... Human. She reacts to the threat of death and torture as any other human would. Frightened and alone, she tried to survive the only way she could, by obliging. I have been betrayed many times for the same reason, and I can't fault them for it. Every human will in first hand look out for themselves. Even so, she did take a great risk by helping your hunters by giving the wrong information to your enemies. That's not something most people in the same situation would do."

"My analysis of the situation from the little I have seen from her is that she has been threatened, has responded reasonably for a human, doesn't dare going against her abusers, but have been quite strong by defying them on a small level. I am also quite certain that it will take at the very least hundreds of years for her to stop looking over her shoulder if she ever gets out of her current situation, just like most humans would die with their paranoia because they can't live long enough to get over it. It is more than likely that she will never work within such a dangerous field again and even if her paranoia disappears, she will probably never be fine. But that's just my thoughts, and I could be completely wrong. I have only seen her for a few minutes, so it's rather hard guessing from that, but the signs are there. "

It was quite clear from his tone that while he was talking from experience, he wasn't sympathizing with the girl. At least not noticeably. After living too long, it wasn't that odd for someone to get the mindset of 'why should I care? I don't know this person.'
 
The woman turned his response and words over in her mind carefully, and before long, she reached a conclusion similar to Feng's. Although she'd witnessed Faust make a shocking bounce back, she realized that such recoveries were har from normal for a person pushed and threatened into a position of powerlessness and servitude.

She had one Hunter who had witnessed the grisly death of the one who forced his ownership onto her twenty-nine years ago. Even now, Rare struggled with nightmares and wariness, always certain that Crow would find some way to resurrect himself. However, even despite her scarred mind, she sought comfort and safety and slowly shed her terrors. No longer did she force herself to wear lolita dresses, but wore dresses that she enjoyed: a blatant broach of one of Crow's rules, as Jade understood.

That Hegga could cover for her former allies was surely a trembling first step. That she didn't flee enough to escape a human leading the search surely meant she intended to be captured. All that remained was knowing if she wished for help or merely felt guilt. She assumed the former.

"Her lie to the Unifiers and to protect Hunter Drake and Hunter Kina combined with her nearness on discovery seems as though she wishes us to find and rescue her." She took a few moments to make a decision. "Thank you, Lord Feng. Your information has been very useful."

She lifted a hand, then paused and looked toward him. "Would you like some form of compensation for your assistance?"
 
"The only thing I wish for is what your hunter has already promised to give me. Just make sure that she comes back with her mind and body intact enough for her to keep that promise." Feng replied, having no desire of getting help from this annoying woman. Maybe he would have taken the shortcut of just asking her to kill him if she didn't have such a tiresome personality. At least Kina was interesting enough to hang around while waiting on the promise to be kept.

"If that's all, I'd prefer to get back home, I haven't eaten yet today, so you can imagine I'm not in the best of moods." It was a lie. Sure, he hadn't eaten yet, but that didn't affect his mood at all. Actually he wasn't even noticing any hunger yet. But excuses was usually better than just saying 'Well, if that was all, I'd better get going. I'd rather not be around you for a single minute longer than necessary annoying woman.' Not that he was afraid of saying it, nor was he above being rude to people, but angering people who had the power of opening doors in the air, thus being able to lock him in there forever, might not be the best idea.
 
"I see," she murmured. As though sensing his eagerness to be away specifically from her, the tiny woman's fingers tapped against the thumb of the same hand, and a portal opened to where Drake rested with his back against a tree.

The corpse-like man stood suddenly, and he bowed briefly to Jade before he nodded to Feng and waited.

"Lord Feng was very informative. It was Unifiers, and they have a confirmed traitor attempting to seek a rescue. For the time being, Hunter Drake, because they may not reappear in the same place, please acquaint yourself with the surrounding area as far in range as possible. I am sending other teams and several Hoppers," Jade explained before she looked toward Feng and inclined her head. "Again, thank you for your assistance. You are welcome to assist with the search, should you wish. Your observational skills and insight would prove helpful."

Red eyes looked between them for a moment longer as she waited to see if either had questions or comments. Drake simply nodded his understanding, trying not to catch her eyes. The faintest hint of pink eased into his cheeks as her gaze bored into him.
 
"I'm sure you can manage without my average skill set. I have no desire to get involved any further in this rescue mission if it doesn't become necessary for her survival, and you'd have a hard time convincing me of that being true should it be. I've been captured and tortured far too many times to purposely get myself involved in these sorts of things." Feng replied and rose from the seat. He bowed slightly before walking towards the portal.

Little did he know that the woman he hoped would one day kill him, might actually drag him into more trouble than it was worth. How foolish of him to think he could follow her to find the cure he so much longed for without getting into their messes. On the other hand, he had never said he would be loyal, and were he to be captured, he had all intentions of getting out there without being tortured, no matter what that meant. It wasn't as if he had any bond to these two hunters, nor did he care much for people in general. If he had to shed some blood to keep his sanity for the next hundred years, it wasn't that big of a deal.
 
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