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Diving under the bed before Mommy could come into his room and catch him, Kenji took out his prize to look at again—he’d never managed to get his hands on Mommy’s pretty red bandanna before, since she had always managed to get it back before he could get to his room and hide. Giggling softly before shushing himself so that she wouldn’t be able to find him so easily, Kenji peeked out from under the edge of the covers that hung off his bed. Mommy was always telling him to make it. When Kenji would point out that the bed was huge and he was too tiny to make it right, she would just laugh and tell him that he was right. Then she would help him make it, because she was so much bigger. Now he wondered what it would be like to see Mommy without her bandanna—it would be kind of fun to see what she looked like with her hair down for once. When the door to his room slid open, Kenji scooted back almost to the far wall of his room. He could hear her talking, wondering where he was, and clapped his hands over his mouth so that he wouldn’t give himself away by giggling. In the end, after she had left his room laughing for some reason, Kenji crawled up to the edge of his bed and peeked out. The door was closed, and he was sure that he had seen Mommy walk out about a minute ago, but she could be really tricky about things like that. Kenji had learned that it was always best to make sure that Mommy was really out of the room before he came out of any hiding place. Looking around, and then crawling to every place under his bed so that he could get a clearer view of his entire room, Kenji found that she really wasn’t anywhere in his room with him. Poking his head out from under his bed, Kenji smiled—maybe he had really won this time. When the door slid back open, he dove back under the bed fast enough that he made the covers flap. Looking back, he saw that Mommy had come back in—she had probably been waiting just outside his door. He was still happy that he’d managed to get back under the bed before she could come back in and catch him, since Mommy could always buy another bandanna, after all. Scooting all the way under the bed until his feet touched the wall, Kenji turned and against it. He knew now that no matter how far Mommy reached under his bed she wasn’t going to be able to catch him and pull him out. Kenji giggled as he saw her hands reach under the bed, stopping just short of him, and then disappear again; he giggled louder when she started trying to get him to come out. First she offered to make him some riceballs, and then a plate of warm brownies. Daddy liked Mommy’s brownies too, Kenji remembered. Maybe when Daddy came home again, she could make him some. Kenji decided to ask her to do that, right after she went away. When she lay down on the floor, grinning at him, Kenji grinned back… Kenji held up his prize—the bandanna that he had just won—and looked at the spreading fire. It would have been kind of pretty, if it hadn’t been so hot. Mommy seemed to like it, since she was sitting in the middle of a big patch of it. He just wondered why she was crying—if she was happy to be there (and she had to be since she was smiling), then why was she crying? Kenji was confused. He tried going over, wanting to sit next to her and ask why she was so sad, but the fire was too hot for him. And, when he looked up, Kenji could see her shaking her head at him. Maybe she didn’t want him to come and sit with her, he thought, though he still wondered why she was crying. Maybe the fire made her eyes hurt. Backing away, since the fire was starting to spread across the floor toward him, Kenji looked back up. Mommy was still crying, but now she
looked almost happy. Kenji was more confused now, but as he
backed away from the spreading fire, he saw that that was what
seemed to make her happiest. Looking up at her face again, he
saw that she looked like she was trying to point him somewhere.
Turning to look But as the fire started spreading across the floor again, Kenji thought that it might be a good idea for him to be as far away from the spread of the fire as he could get and saw her nodding at him from her place in the doorway of his room. Smiling and nodding back, Kenji climbed up onto his bed, pulling up the covers so they wouldn’t catch on fire, too. He yawned—the heat was starting to make him sleepy. Slumping down on his bed, his fingers still curled around Mommy’s red bandanna, Kenji’s eyes slowly closed. The air smelled funny and hot, and he noticed that it was getting harder to breathe. As his awareness slipped further and further away, he wondered why Mommy was screaming… XxXxX Imakarum pulled out of his son’s mind with the mental equivalent of a sharp snap. He had known, of course, that Kenji had been a witness to the fire that had claimed Miaka Murakami’s life, since he had found the boy near her, but he had never suspected that Kenji had actually been a witness to the last moments of his own mother’s life. I’m sorry, Mi-mi; I didn’t know. -Masaki, have you forgotten that Miaka had expressed a pronounced dislike for that particular pet name?- -Lord Alkanphel? Was I projecting again?- -Only to me, Masaki.- -I apologize for that, my Lord.- -No need, Masaki. I think that the others are finished by now.- And indeed, when Imakarum looked back at the other members of the Council of Twelve, he found that they were all exhibiting the signs of returning to their own minds after a prolonged bout of telepathic contact. He did not yet know just what the reaction of his fellow Overlords would be—not after all they had seen in Kenji’s mind—but he still hoped that it would be favorable. After all, Kenji would not be joining the Council of Twelve, and the boy still had not the slightest inkling of the full power that he possessed. Also, the fact remained that Imakarum did not intend to teach Kenji about the power that he had gained, at least not beyond the basic things that he would need to know to survive as a Zoalord. "It seems that the little one is even weaker than we first thought," Lord Luggnagg said, looking down at Kenji with mild amusement. Imakarum, after he mentally checked up on Kenji, found that his son had lost consciousness some time ago, probably due to the fact that he was barely used to having one person—himself or Lord Alkanphel—inhabiting his mind. Having eleven of the Twelve Overlords all looking through his mind and memories had obviously been too much for Kenji to handle. Imakarum had been worried about that, but in the end there had not been any viable second option. "I will be back shortly," Imakarum informed the rest of the Council, concentrating. Teleporting Kenji back to their shared room, Imakarum removed his son’s shoes and the bandanna before settling him down on top of the bed that they had shared. Setting the shoes down by the table on the left side of their bed, Imakarum set Miaka Murakami’s old bandanna on top. Concentrating again, Imakarum teleported back into the Celestial Hall to await the judgement on his son. |
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