No subject

in many ways contradictory picture. Hers was a world in which the 
greatness of the British Empire had waxed rather than waned after the 
second world war, a world that hearkened back to an era he wished with all 
his heart had never died. And yet it was a world that stood upon the very 
edge of ruin as the twentieth century neared its end, and the Empire and 
its allies raced a brutal, stalinist USSR savagely for military dominance, 
while a fanatical, Maoist Red China bided its time and hoped each would 
destroy the other, and an isolationist, nominally neutral U.S.A. watched 
and did nothing, as the world teetered upon the very brink of cataclysmic 
nuclear war.

Joanna herself was from the beginning an impossibility, given her 
circumstances: a magnetic, street-wise virago with a heart laced with pain 
and grim determination: a martial artist and an accomplished singer and 
player of a dozen instruments: a fighter and gang-leader, cold and utterly 
ruthless where necessary, yet fiercely protective of those she considered 
her friends, and with a savage determination to escape the life of 
deprivation that was all she had ever known.

The only child of immigrants to a poor catholic area in the inner Sydney 
suburb of Darlinghurst in the Dominion of Australia, she was beaten 
mercilessly as a small child by parents who could not have cared less 
about her, until at last on her ninth birthday, when her father had tried 
to turn the almost daily physical abuse into something more, something had 
erupted suddenly from the helplessness and the fear, and she had driven a 
knife at his throat to send him crashing screaming through the bathroom 
window of their tiny eleventh-storey flat, to a broken, bloody end in the 
alley behind the tenement in which they lived.

It was that cathartic moment, Johnathan decided, that would forever change 
her. Gone was the quiet, bookish child who would simply bear and endure, 
and escape whenever she could. In her place was born a girl of rage and 
ice, and a primal, indomitable will to survive. From that day forth, he 
determined, she had set herself to pay her mother back a thousand-fold for 
every day she had suffered.

By the time Joanna had reached her eleventh year, Marina Elizabeth 
O'Reilly lived in perpetual terror of her daughter, unable to pretend even 
to herself that she could control her in any way: surrendering nearly all 
the money she made from selling herself on the streets, while her 
daughter's hatred and revulsion were a constant fear from which she could 
never escape, and a reminder of the ruin she had made for herself.

Meanwhile, Joanna spent her days winning back the self-confidence her 
parents had tried to take from her, with a frigid, ruthless determination 
that had every child she knew either in wide-eyed awe, or terrified of 
her, and almost every teacher desperate for her to be placed anywhere but 
under their care.

Joanna's twelfth birthday, Johnathan decreed, saw her make her first real 
underworld kill. He was a dealer five years her senior, who had tried, 
none too subtly, to convince her that it might be in her interests to sell 
for him on the streets and at her school, and especially to those stupid 
enough to think that a ‘little guttersnipe like her’ could protect them. 
In fact, she might sell something else too, he had leered. Johnathan took 
great pains to detail the object-lesson she had made of him: to have him 
plead and beg and scream for death before she left him and his bodyguard 
bloody, broken ruins as a warning to anyone else with the same idea.

But someone had seen: a small, wiry Japanese man, trained with superb 
discipline in the Art, who had come to Australia to escape his own past 
and tragedy, and who drank to hide all he did not want to remember. 
Horrified at what she had done, he would have called a dominion patrol. 
But he saw her slip silently into the deeper shadows, and he heard her 
cry.

So began her training with Hideo-sensei, her first real adult friend, and 
with it, the building of a fierce, unbreakable morality that otherwise she 
might have lost.

Like all those of her circumstances, Johnathan's anima grew up too 
quickly, her reputation for summary justice and unrelenting brutality 
towards dealers, pimps, whores and any underworld pig-swill that dared so 
much as look in her direction, soon so infamous that they either avoided 
her, or set a very high price on her head. She gave no quarter: beating, 
and when possible with impunity, killing anyone who dared threaten her or 
her friends, with a savagery and inventive flare that had soon even the 
worst of the Sydney underworld either too terrified to consider touching 
her, or wondering how she might be blackmailed or coerced into becoming an 
asset.

So she grew in Johnathan's mind, a girl just a little older than himself: 
an avenging bean-sidhe almost eleven inches taller than his own pathetic 
5'1": an impossibly, devastatingly beautiful amazon with long, lustrous 
flame-red hair and blazing emerald eyes: a primal, desperate dichotomy to 
his own failings and perceived helplessness. Yet she believed herself 
physically unattractive, and would, save for rare moments and to very few, 
reveal almost no overt emotion, other than an iron will and a boundless 
determination to see that no one of the very few she truly cared for 
suffered as she had done. Supremely confident in herself and her ability 
to overcome any adversity, she was certain that, no matter what, she would 
shape her own destiny.

Only when she was alone and far from prying eyes would she allow the mask 
to falter, to reveal all that the world could never see, seeking 
desperately through her music and the fighting arts she loved, or in the 
boundless reaches of her imagination in the small hours when none would 
see the pain or the tears, something beyond the cruel deprivations of her 
circumstances.

So, over nearly two years, had grown the anima Johnathan had created, and 
the finer points of whose history now held his attention as he sat, 
staring moodily at the note-book Pentium on his lap. He was trying to 
decide just how much of her story to include in his first true attempt at 
a coherent full-length fantasy novel, only recently begun, to the further 
detriment of his final year of schooling. Joanna, of course, would be the 
character shifted from her world to the universe of magic and gathering 
darkness: someone far more fitting than himself to be the pivotal 
character in the story, yet close enough to him still for him to 
understand that, in every way that mattered, it would be his ideal: the 
supremely confident self he could never hope to be, that would make the 
journey.

Not that Johnathan had any desire to be female; indeed quite the reverse. 
He knew himself already more than hopelessly smitten by his creation; that 
was part of her appeal, and almost inevitable, given the circumstances in 
which she had come into being. She had become to him an unattainable, yet 
longed-for perfection: someone lost and lonely as himself, but who, 
despite their differences, would understand him, and would, could she but 
exist, be the friend and confidante he would never have.

Johnathan sighed. His parents were talking quietly in the front of the 
car, as usual ignoring the small, frail youth with too-thick glasses and 
quick, nervous movements who had been such a disappointment, but who could 
for the most part be placated with enough of an allowance to buy virtually 
anything he could wish.

Johnathan wished that they would just shut up for five seconds. It was 
proving impossible to concentrate with all their mindless prattle about 
lord Rutherford's dismissing of his butler, or what lady Madeline had worn 
to the ball at which he had been forced to waste the evening, and which 
had put him in one of the worst moods he had known for some considerable 
time.

Their speculations as to why their son was such a hopeless incompetent 
when it came to girls, also weren't exactly doing anything to improve his 
temper. Naturally, no girl had been interested in him, nor could he have 
cared less about any of the young so-called "ladies" with whom his parents 
seemed determined to match him, and see one day that he spent the rest of 
what he was certain would be a thoroughly miserable life. He was a 
hopeless dancer in any case, and usually an eloquent speaker (if nothing 
else, his years of reading had given him that), he seemed simply to lose 
all ability to think or react in a coherent fashion when a girl spoke to 
him.

"...and I just couldn't believe Johnathan this evening!" his mother was 
saying, her sharp, annoyed tone making him more furious by the second. "To 
think that he could be so disgracefully rude, when it was perfectly 
obvious Mariane was willing to dance with him."

‘Willing to dance!’ Johnathan fumed silently. The vindictive little cat 
had been trying to show him up in front of all her friends, just to see 
him squirm. He had heard the giggles, and seen the pointing. And if his 
mother thought that he was so damn stupid that he didn't know what was 
going on...

For a moment he glared furiously at her back, before jerking his eyes back 
to the note-book.

That did it! He was in just the right mood to give Joanna the additional 
abilities he had planned for her, far sooner than he had originally 
intended.

Johnathan moved his hands to the keyboard; and the machine flashed another 
battery warning, and a moment later, went dark.

"Baka! Baka! Baka! Baka! Baka!" he swore savagely under his breath.

Manga and Anime were a recent experience for him, discovered in part when 
he had been researching various martial arts disciplines for Hideo, but 
one that had become already something of an obsession. And being still a 
strict and practicing Roman Catholic, and so not prone to swear, he had 
begun to use such terms, especially within his parents' hearing, who were 
convinced they meant something much worse than they did, and so would 
become furious for nothing, much to his satisfaction.

With another glare at them (after all, if they had not distracted him, he 
could have had more written), Johnathan packed the note-book away, and 
sighed again. He consoled himself with the thought that they were almost 
home. At least then, once he had bathed and dressed for bed, he could 
settle in his room, and under the pretence of some homework or other 
needing to be finished before school camp that was to begin tomorrow, he 
could get back to the epic again.

 				     * * *

"...and see that you put the clothes *outside* your bathroom door!" His 
mother's voice was the cold clipped tones of righteous indignation. "I've 
told Sonya not to take them if you don't. Then when you have no uniform 
tomorrow..."

I'm going to kill her! I'm going to kill her so much! She'll be so dead 
they'll have to find every ancestor she ever had, and kill them too, just 
to make up the difference, Johnathan thought helplessly.

"All right! All right!" he said, his small weedy voice almost shrilling. 
"Do you think you haven't told me that every night this week?" he 
continued in a mutter. "Baka! I said I'd take them down myself; what's the 
matter with you?"

"Don't you use that tone of voice to me, Johnathan!" she snapped, her own 
voice, he noted furiously, although not raised nearly so much as his, 
still managing to carry far more volume and authority. "And stop glaring 
and muttering to yourself. If you learnt a little courtesy from all that 
reading, perhaps Mariane might have been a little less displeased with you 
tonight. Not that I blame her; your behaviour was unforgivable!"

Oh, for heaven's sake, will you just shut up about Mariane! he thought 
wildly. She's a vicious, narrow-minded, shallow, vindictive, nasty 
little--

"Johnathan?" his father thundered. "Are you ignoring your mother?"

Johnathan gave up, turned, and shot upstairs. His parents heard the 
slamming of several doors, then faint sounds as Johnathan banged things, 
as he prepared for a bath and bed.

"I'm going to kill you both!" he raged helplessly. "I'm going to kill you, 
and make a pact with the devil to bring you back, just so I can kill you 
again and again. And then I'm going to..."

He stopped, a little shocked despite himself. And anyway, what was the 
point? He had better things to do.

Gathering up his pajamas and dressing-gown, Johnathan left his room, 
restraining himself from slamming that door as well, and made his way to 
the bathroom, which no one but himself and the few friends who had stayed 
very infrequently had ever used.

Some half an hour later, and hoping he had used enough hot water to see 
that at least one of his parents would have a cold shower, Johnathan left 
the spa, and, just to be sure, spent another ten minutes washing his hair. 
Satisfied at last as he felt the water beginning to turn cold, he finished 
drying, and dressed quickly for bed. If he was lucky, he might get an 
hour's writing done before his mother sent Andrews up to see that he was 
in bed.

He was not lucky.

Just how old did they think he was, he thought as Andrews left and he 
settled himself under the blankets. "Nearly seventeen, and they treat me 
like some baka ten-year-old!" he fumed to himself. "Gods! I wish I was 
anywhere but here!"

With a sigh, he reached for the note-book again, trailing its supply as he 
settled himself more comfortably, and switched it on.

"You're going to get a power-boost, my wild bean-sidhe," he said softly as 
he called up the historical information he had begun recently revising for 
his anima. "I'm in a particularly bad mood, and you're about to benefit. I 
hope you appreciate it."

And smiling, he began to write.

 				     * * *

It was so dark, and more deadly cold than he had ever imagined he could 
endure. Johnathan shivered again, staring through the icy, cloying fog, 
trying desperately to see his way.

"Please, Azusa-chan! You can't do this!" the cry came again, a faint, thin 
sound, surprisingly precise in the cloying, stifling dark. "Don't you 
understand? It's your complement; she's controlling you through her. 
Azusa; please!"

‘How does this fog carry sound like that?’ he thought numbly, searching 
vainly with eyes that could barely see an inch before his face. Damn him 
losing his glasses!

"I have to find them before Viko closes the gate!" he kept saying over and 
over again to himself. "I *have* to! If I get myself lost here again! God! 
Please; I couldn't stand that; not again! Please; I have to find them!"

But the insane, maniacal laughter tore through the terrifying, numbing 
cold, and he knew he was out of time.

"Save what strength you have left to scream!" The voice was lost and wild.

Johnathan turned, trying with a last desperation to find a path towards 
the sound. Then suddenly he knew he was not alone, and in the next instant 
something hit him, and the world exploded in stars and pain, and he was 
plunging down, down into a ruinous nothingness that was for ever.

With a choked half-scream, Johnathan tore himself awake. The room was 
pitch dark, and his heart was pounding wildly, his hands still clutching 
desperately at the blankets as he wrenched himself into a sitting 
position, his stomach still clenched in a tight knot of fear.

He had suffered from nightmares and the far more terrifying night-terrors 
for as long as he could remember, and was more or less used to at least 
two of the former and one of the latter each month. But this one had been 
one of the worst he had had for a very long time.

Shifting, he lay down once more and curled on to his side, knowing that 
the best thing to do was to try to calm down and go back to sleep. But his 
heart continued to hammer savagely behind his ribcage, and the cloying, 
nightmare horror of the dream would not go away.

For almost a minute he remained, while an irrational, senseless horror 
grew on him, and a frozen cold crept slowly down his spine, until at last, 
both angry and increasingly alarmed, he rolled on to his back, staring 
upwards into the pitch blackness of the room. His heart seemed to be 
racing more frantically with every second, and a rising panic was 
beginning to claw savagely through the horror of the dream.

What was the matter with him? Why couldn't he calm down, or slow his 
wildly-racing heart.

Then his pulse lurched and skipped in a violent, arrhythmic stumble; and 
suddenly the horror of a moment before became a nameless, leaping dread.

He was having some kind of heart-attack.

Numb with terror, he froze, helpless panic dread leaping higher and hotter 
with every passing second, while he remained where he was and did not dare 
to move. But at last with a convulsive lurch, he hurled the covers aside, 
and half fell, half stumbled to the floor. He had to get help; if he 
didn't, he would die.

His breath coming in great ragged gasps, Johnathan lurched desperately for 
the door, feeling wildly in the dark for the handle. He missed it and 
nearly fell. Then he was out, reaching for the hall light, even as he 
tried to shout frantically for help. But the switch clicked in vain, and 
through his wild panic terror, Johnathan realised just how dark the house 
truly was. There was no power.

Shaking, numb with fear, he turned, trying desperately to call to anyone 
who might answer him. But his voice was no more than a choking, broken 
gasp, and he knew through the cloying, nightmare horror that no one could 
hear.

Staggering, half sobbing with primal fear, Johnathan lurched blindly along 
the passage, certain in his terror only that cold water might slow his 
screaming pulse long enough for him to call somebody. He reached the 
bathroom, and flung the door aside. But a wave of giddiness and nausea 
crashed over him, and he clung shaking to the door, sick with the 
certainty that it was too late. A roaring seemed to be filling his ears, 
and the numb, frozen cold was spreading like ice through his body, robbing 
him of all sense and reason, and leaving nothing but blind, all-engulfing 
horror in its place.

With a last effort, Johnathan lurched desperately into the room. But even 
as he reached the basin, pain like fire exploded in his chest, and he 
pitched forwards, his head striking the tap with a crack that seemed to 
fill the world. Then he was somersaulting into a leaping, soaring 
oblivion, his world exploding into ice and searing pain as he plunged 
down, down into a surging, hungry blackness that gaped wide to receive 
him.

And horror was everything; and he knew no more.

 				   ** ** **

Notes:

 				   ** ** **

Well, there it is. The main problem with the original Ch. 2, was the end, 
which was a joke, and the attempt to write some passages too much as the 
seventeen-year-old Johnathan might have done, which didn't work, and just 
made the writing look god-awful!  Fortunately, it was easy enough to fix, 
and the thing's a hell of a lot better for it.

Craig