Aberrant: 200X - Sadists' Symphony [Mature] [Complete]

[z-Xiao Saori]

She shifted back to herself not long after she arrived on the rooftop. She had considered not shifting back at all, just to see if the form of the Fenghuang would be immune to pain. But while she looked like a bird, she wasn't one, and gradually, she gave up.

Xiao Saori sat one of of Toyko's tallest buildings, her legs dangling over the edge as she rested her arms against the bottom bar of the safety railing. The tears from earlier were gone, her anger and pain finally spent in choking sobs. The worst part about what that man had said, she mused to herself, is that he was right.

She was what she was. Sighing, she pulled her feet back in and stood up. She didn't want to be here alone. It was time to go somewhere with people and lose herself in a crowd. And if she was really lucky, she could find some Ampwells as well.

The American Singing Bar in the Roppongi district was her destination of choice. Largely avoided by the natives of Japan due to the overaubundance of foreigners, it was the perfect choice for the young nova who hated half of her blood.

The bar looked a little dinky from the outside, but some fluke of architecture had given it a narrow front on the street while its interior was much wider. It was a little too dark and a little warm, but it was heaven after the cold street. The tables were packed, but the bartender nodded at her. He knew Saori well; this was one of her favorite places to come.

She leaned over the bar. "Do you have Ampwells?" she asked, her dark eyes beseeching.

"I can't sell it to you," he said. He took in her red eyes and sorrow-filled eyes and folded like a house of cards. "I can't sell it to you, understand?" He poured a small glass of something, then topped it with soda and gave it to her. "On the house. And just this one."

Saori nodded gratefully. It would do for now; later she would find someone to buy her another. It had happened before. She found a table and sat down, peeling off her jacket and pushing up her sleeves. She nursed her drink through two songs, then signed up for a song. It was the cover of "Room of Angel," taking a slow, moody, bitter song and changing it into a fast, hyper, bitter song. She felt better when it was done, and failed to notice how much the crowd liked it.

She switched to "I'm So Sick" by Flyleaf, screaming her pain into the lyrics, moving the audience. Those waiting to sing didn't care. They just listened and cheered. And Saori lost track of time, of place and of herself.

[Tomas Saint-Etienne]

Green eyes watched from the crowd, taking in Saori's expression of pained fury as she screamed the song. A pale hand lifted a drink to perfect lips, their owner tasting the powerful concoction in the glass. That sensation was nothing compared to the angry, bitter storm that roiled forth from the slender, lovely half-Japanese girl as she swayed with the song, lost in the lyrics.

It had been hard to find her. There was an elusive quality to her thoughts, an ephemerality that made picking out their thread from the tapestry of background noise difficult. It had been a challenge, but the young nova had been persistent. Now Tomas sat unnoticed in a dark corner and watched intently as Saori finished her song, blinking as she seemed to wake up from the trance as the baseline crowd whooped and cheered. She managed a thin smile before descending from the stage and returning to her seat.

He considered her in all her fragile pain and glorious anger. Saori was stripped bare to him now - all artful pretense gone, flayed away by her shame at her own desires and the anger she felt at a society that she would always be deemed unfit for. It was a strange sensation, this feeling of connecting with another. He wondered if she felt baselines were as petty as he did. He wondered if he could show her what he had discovered, how pain and pleasure were not to be avoided, but were magical forces that could burn away the humdrum, banal world around them. His eyes settled on the stage as another singer took the mic...

* * * * *

Saori was trying to decide who to apply the right combination of pleading and promises to in order to acquire her next Amp Well when a murmur of amazement rippled through the audience. A slender figure stepped up to the microphone, green eyes glimmering in the lights like faerie gemstones as they looked...

Right...

At...

Her.

The song started up, Blurry by Puddle of Mudd. And Tomas sang. His voice was strong and light, not as perfect as a professional novox singer, but beautiful nonetheless, giving the sombre song a haunting quality.

The main part of the song was for her, the words encompassing the two of them, the connection that he perceived them as sharing. But the chorus...

The chorus was directed at the rest of the crowd, at the world beyond the walls of the club. With his eyes, with his voice he made it an almost-spiteful, cruelly mocking question: Could they take away what had been done? And even as he held the audience spellbound they felt a shiver of unease, as though they themselves would be held to account one day for some crime.

As the song came to an end the audience applauded and cheered, shaking off the unease he had caused with some relief. Tomas stepped down from the stage and moved towards Saori, stopping next to her table and looking into her eyes.

"May I sit with you?"

[z-Xiao Saori]

Whether he meant the song or not was unimportant. He might mean it today, and forget it tomorrow. It didn't matter. His smooth voice carried his statement to her, and Saori heard it. When he came toward her, her eyes caught his, and the hurt was gone. As he asked to join her, she pulled the chair next to her out and nodded. "I'd like nothing better," she said, and she'd never been more truthful in her life.

When he sat down, she leaned over kissed him lightly, just enough to make her heart race. She took his hand, holding it lightly. "How did you find me?" she asked, her eyes searching his as if she saw the Holy Grail in their green depths. And maybe the broken girl did.

[Tomas Saint-Etienne]

He gave Saori a faint smile: knowing and intimate, just for her, delighting in the kiss, taking curious joy in her trust of him. He signaled to the bar and two drinks hurried over to them, the service having been paid for before he had even ascended the stage to sing. Despite his apparent youth, the eyes of the young man were strangely eternal and had brooked no refusal or even questions from the bartender.

The heavy tip had helped, too.

"I listened for your mind, for your soul." He studied her eyes, her lips, as his hand reached up and gently stroked her jawline with one fingertip. "It is one of my gifts. But yours was hard to find. You are so used to keeping your pain inside. Like me." His voice was scarcely more than a breath as his touch trailed fire over her neck and up into the hairline, his eyes locked on hers. "These others, they are a babble of undisciplined thoughts and dreams. You are a silver flute surrounded by drums and trumpets." He smiled now, a pleased expression. "But I found you regardless." He leaned forwards now, brushing his lips over her cheek as his voice dropped to a whisper.

"I could not just allow you to disappear, perhaps never to see you again. I had to find you."

[z-Xiao Saori]

"I'm glad you did," she whispered back, feeling safe and bold and the darkness of the club. And they were not the only ones touching each other in the dark. Other illicit gestures were occurring all over the room - none of them could know that it was the presence of the two novas, inspiring more passion in the hapless humans caught in their drama. The room was slowly descending into a den of passion.

His flattery was everything she had wanted to hear, all of her life. Her eyes fluttered shut as he murmured his need for her into her ear. A soft near-whimper of sound escaped her, almost a sob of relief as she found what had been missing. She had been wanted all her life, but now someone wanted her - not her youth or her body, but her. He could have gone for Knockout, but he choose her.

Her free hand slipped under the table and found his leg. Her fingers began to stroke his thigh, slowly, sensually. She reveled in the spark of pleasure that flared in his green eyes. She wanted to do more than this, but wasn't sure if she should, if he wanted it. To stave off having to make a decision, she nibbled on his ear before whispering, "You know my pain. Tell me yours."

[Tomas Saint-Etienne]

"My pain?" Tomas' eyes filled her vision as he drew back a little, his lips close to hers. He gently kissed her, a brush of mouth on mouth, a flash of heat in the slowly building warmth. "My pain is here." he took her hand and pressed it against his chest. "A hole that before this night was only filled with the woes of others."

"A legacy of humankind's cruelty and indifference. Of don't ask, don't tell mindset and a willingness to ignore those who are between the cracks of society." He was sad, but it showed only in his eyes. The delicate beauty of his face was as calm and unperturbed as ever, save for a faint flush of color under the translucent skin at her nearness, her touch. "They made me different, Saori. Made me see things in an alien way." He sighed, half-sadly and half-contentedly, his fingertips grazing along the outer edge of her thigh.

"I despise them, delight in working mischief on them. I hate their hypocrisy and false righteousness, their shallow conceit and petty sense of control." His other hand ran up her arm, gently trailing cool flame over her skin, a tender gesture that took the chill from his words. "I see that even you are subject to their spiteful ignorance, and my dislike for them grows stronger." He leaned into her once more, his cheek against hers, his words coming in whispers between the soft kisses he dotted on the tender skin of her ear. "Your closeness fills the hole in my heart. Here and now, there is no pain. Only sensation."

[z-Xiao Saori]

In all her life, Saori had never really considered what she could do about the injustice life had handed her. Her soft touches on Skein stopped as his words struck her to her core. She hated what her mother had become for her father - a silent whore. But Saori had seen no other life for herself. As half-Japanese, half-a-person, she'd only had her beauty to sell. She'd only seen one path in her world.

Skein had shown her a new world. No, not a new world - the whole world, and a multitude of paths. The choices were dizzying for a girl who had been trapped by her own blinders. Skein's touch and words continued past her startling epiphany, and slowly they worked their way through her thoughts. With a moan, she squeezed his leg with her hand, rolling her face against his neck. Drowning in the sensations of his flesh and drunk with the knowledge that he understood her, she slipped her other hand under his shirt. It was like she had to touch - and maybe she did.

Around them, the room's mood became more intense, mirroring the growing passions of the young nova couple. The female singer on stage threw off her shirt with a near-yodel, and several men took notice. Now people who didn't have the cover of shadows were openly embracing, groping one another wildly. It was beautiful and terrifying.

Drawing back a little, Saori pressed her forehead to Skein's and whispered, "I didn't know how empty I was until I found you." Please don't leave me. "Show me how you do your mischief," she murmured. "Show me, and fill your heart to overflowing tonight."

[Tomas Saint-Etienne]

Her verbal and silent pleas mingled in his consciousness, blazing a white trail across his soul. Tomas fought for breath, tempted to cast aside all restraint and show her the Darkness that was in him, deeper, crueller and older than mere human 'evil', to make this club a scene of nightmarish lunacy and lust that would horrify and enthrall her...

He pulled himself back from that brink. To do that would not only call attention to him, but repel, perhaps break Saori. Strange that he could be so overwhelmed by the feel of her that he would consider such recklessness. He managed, under the pounding of his heart and the flush of desire that filled every fibre of his young body to bursting, to place reins on himself. Not too much, not too soon.

"It is a simple thing..." He murmured to Saori as he pulled her closer, up onto his lap. She came willingly, her arms around him and her hand stroking inside his shirt as he returned the favor, his fingers slipping under her thin woollen top as his other hand turned her head to parallel his. Pressing his cheek to hers, he looked with her at the room around them, watching the shapes grappling with one another, listening to the breathy moans and sighs and giggles. It was a scene that would not have been strange in the orgies of Ancient Rome, but seemed shocking in this 21st Century karaoke bar. "Look at them all. Look beneath the surface. They would never behave like this normally. They place chains on themselves and believe that such gives them the right to shackle others, even their betters." He felt Saori squirm a little on his lap and turned, flicking his tongue against her ear in gently pleasurable torment. "So now we see an illusion shattered. But how to shatter it further..?"

His fingers gently teased the ivory skin of her stomach, swirling loose spiral patterns there, threatening to dip lower than her waistband on every downstroke. When he spoke, his voice was the soft breath of sin and lust.

"Ahhh... There." He directed her attention to a couple by the bar who were pressed against one another as though trying to meld skins through their clothing. Their hands were all over each other, wildly groping, and Saori could not help but note the difference, the crudity between those touches and the ones she and Tomas shared. Animal lust measured against desire refined into something nearly divine: it was not contest.

"The woman... she secretly desires another. That man's friend, there." He unobtrusively pointed out another sharply dressed man, flushed from drink and the lust pervading the room, who was staring at the two by the bar. "But she is a hypocrite: she is with that man for his family connections, for the promise of a comfortable life. See the engagement ring? She denies her own wants and needs to conform to the expectations on her to make a good marriage. And the man she is with knows it and does not care, sees it as his victory over one who thinks him a friend. If not for us, these two would not be so passionate." Tomas smiled then, his eyes glancing at Saori for a moment before scrutinising the trio. "Now, let us see honest feeling take it's course."

The woman at the bar suddenly pulled away from her partner, speaking harshly, her face scornful. "She realises his cynicism." Tomas whispered to Saori, smiling as he kissed her neck. "Apparently it is fine for her to use him for money, but not for him to use her to score points on his 'friend'. She has her pride, after all. Ah, there we go."

The woman turned, looking around for someone, and a light came into her eyes as she spotted the watching man. She crossed the room in a near-rush and practically threw herself onto his lap, her hands grabbing his hair as she locked lips with him. The man at the bar watched, an expression of humiliated anger on his face, as his trophy bride-to-be practically tore his friend's shirt off, nuzzling against the man's chest. They partially disappeared from view as both slid back on the bench seat, their passion hidden from Saori and Tomas.

But not from the man at the bar. His eyes bulged, his face crimsoned and twisted in shame and anger as he seemed unable to look away, leave, or step forward to stop what was happening before him. "I have given him no other option." Tomas' whispering voice contained laughter as he explained to Saori what she was seeing. "He must watch until they stop. And she... she will regret this in the morning. Ultimately a false friendship is severed, a fake love is revealed, and the only one left the better for it is the man currently enjoying her attentions, though he will doubtless also feel guilty, being fool enough to believe the other man his friend."

The whole time, Tomas's hands had been working their magic on Saori, the fingertips of one stroking the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck under her glory of black hair, the other teasingly slipping in and out of the waistband of her leggings, coming close, oh so close to granting her release before retreating. The green-eyed, dark-haired Lucifer smiled at her, his too-tempting lips forming a question.

"How do you enjoy my... mischief, Saori?" Her name was spoken with careful attention, his tongue and lips stroking the syllables even as his fingers pleasured her flesh.

[z-Xiao Saori]

Saori clung to Tomas like a lifeline, her cheeks flushing as he spoke and acted. She should be a good girl, push him away - but it was far too late for that now. Each stroke of his hand was another capitulation, another link of chain that tightened around her fragile, needy heart. She took what he offered - shame and pleasure mingled until both drove her closer to the brink - drank it down, and enjoyed the floor show.

It was easy to judge them. So easy to feel that self-satisfaction well up in her gut as she watched them cast aside illusions for reality. I am living reality, she thought, her fevered, half-crazed mind cobbling wild thougths together as neurons misfired in the most pleasing way. I have cast aside illusions, and I am giving myself over to the truth. Feeling delicious guilt, she slid her legs open wider, giving herself over more to what she really wanted.

No, she realized, this wasn't what she wanted, not completely. She wanted more. She wanted to see her father pay like this.

But not yet. She wanted to do it herself, wanted to see him caught in the throes of reality. She wanted to see him give himself over to the truth in front of the world.

The image of him caught and forced to submit to reality triggered a burst of pleasure in her, and that snowball triggered an avalanche. Her cries joined others in the club as Tomas held her, allowing her to be who and what she was at that moment. And she gave herself the same, riding to her climax on dreams of humiliating her father.

"I love your mischief," she murmured when she could talk, her voice fuzzy and thick. Her hands slid to the waistband of his pants and sought access. I love you. "Will you teach me? Will you show me how to remove illusion and show everyone their ugly faces under their masks?"

[Tomas Saint-Etienne]

He gently yet insistently kissed her warm mouth as he withdrew his hands from under her clothes. "Not here." he murmured against her lips as he broke the kiss, bringing his fingertips to still her protest. "Soon the baseline police will come, drawn by what they call crime, but we call honesty." He straightened Saori's clothing, his voice a soft lure in her ear. "Let us slip away. I have a suite of rooms where I will share everything with you, where your lessons will begin." It was hard indeed for him to put his satisfaction on hold. Her climax, borne on a tsunami of shame and lust as it was, had more than satisfied the deep dark hole in his psyche, but he wanted more. Much more. He had never before met someone that stirred him personally, beneath the predatory side. He wanted to experience her; aye, and teach her as she asked.

Without more than a murmur, Saori slipped her jacket on and her hand into his. The crys and moans of desire, the giggles of shocked laughter died away behind them as they emerged into the cool, crowded Tokyo night. They darted through the throng, Tomas' green eyes looking back at her now and then as he tugged her along, flashing occasional smiles that were their secret, just for her alone. His hand was cool in hers, his face a moon-pale vision that led her on, a dangerous will-o-the-wisp it seemed as it floated now and then in front of her eyes, the rest of him seemingly made of the stuff of night itself in the crowded, dimly-lit streets.

Now and then he would pause and draw her to him right there in the sidewalk, pressing his lips to hers as his hands slid over her body, making her shiver with delight and shame at how facelessly public this all was. All these people, crowding around them, yet Tomas seemed unable to help but drink deeply from her kiss at these moments, their bodies quivering together. The walk to the hotel did not seem long enough to her...

* * * * * *

They had lingered longer than strictly necessary at the front desk, the concierge trying not to appear scandalised as the two young novas lost themselves in yet another fervent kiss, Saori actually pressing Tomas against the counter and softly moving her hips against his, enjoying the frisson of shame and the wanton feeling she experienced, not caring what the petty man thought.

By the time they had ridden the elevator to the right floor and entered the lavish suite on the other side of the double doors, both novas were so heatedly sensitised they could barely stand the brush of their clothes on their bodies. The bright city lights shone in dimly from the large wall-length window, providing the pair ample view of one another. Tomas' eyes were emeralds set against skin of translucent silver; Saori's flesh glowing ivory that seemed to provide it's own radiance from within as they slowly, deliciously unclothed each other, taking their time despite their mutual hunger for one another.

They sank down together to the bed, hands moving in slow syncopation, the tune not just being played on one corporeal instrument but on two in harmony. She kissed along his collarbone, mewling slightly as Tomas' fingers gently and expertly - oh, so expertly! - touched her, directing her passions, focusing them, teasing her body from brink to brink for what seemed like a torturous eternity. Her moans deepened, became rougher, almost primally guttural as she strained against his hand, her eyes staring in shocked arousal and need into his. Her lovely lips formed words, barely audible through her moans. Smiling like a devil, Tomas dipped his head close to her mouth to hear her beseeching whispers.

"Please... please..." He smiled then brushed his lips against hers, feeling her quiver as he whispered back.

"As you wish." And he kissed her as he had kissed her the first time, with ageless skill and passion, sending her crashing over the precipice into the waves of release.

[z-Xiao Saori]

The rest of the night passed in much the same way. Saori was the instrument of Skein's music, torture and pleasure mixed into one. For the first time, Skein took care not in breaking, but in strengthening, in bringing her through the fires of pain and ecstasy to temper her. Over and over, he brought her to the point of annihilation, then pulled her back to the edge of sanity and instead washed her over with pleasure. What they did wasn't so unusual, but Tomas's gifts turned it from 'just' sex to an experience that converged on the spiritual.

And it wasn't just his body that he used with such immaculate precision; his mind brushed through hers, letting her feel what he felt as he plundered her mind for sensation. With exquisite control, he controlled the sensations rolling between them, careful to never overload her. For the first time, he sought not to punish with sex, but to share and Saori was the willing recipient of this sensual baptism of hedonism. And still that frisson of shame remained, the knowledge that she was being a bad girl, a wanton whore, and still she pressed herself to him with a fevered intensity, wanting more even as she drowned in it.

She wasn't as experienced as Tomas; her fumblings with baselines provided her little preparation with this kind of union. But she willing, oh so very willing, never questioning his requests, or asking him to stop, not even when he caused her pain. She sensed that he was showing her something terrible and beautiful, something that she couldn't - no, shouldn't ignore. Even when he hurt her, she knew that he only did it for her, so that she could join him fully as a partner.

It was only when dawn approached that she began to return some of his gestures. She was limited, but he could sense her keen desire to give him some of what he had given her. And he could feel that dark, obsessive affection for him, a dark tide of emotion that washed through her like warm ink, coloring her perception of him. It only grew as the night progressed, becoming more needy and more devoted with each pleasure - and pain. He felt that she felt loved by him and would return that devotion. She was stripped bare before him and she hid nothing from him.

They slowed as the sun rose, as if the feelings they created in each other couldn't abide the purification of the sun. Saori lay still against him, so willing to continue but unable to ask for more.

[Tomas Saint-Etienne]

They lay in that stillness for a long while as the sun rose above the winter-chilled streets outside, hands moving on one another's bodies in languorous, feather-light touches. Their minds lightly touched also in a transcendental state of spiritual and carnal entanglement. In their dreamlike state, Tomas and Saori resembled nothing so much to each other as darkly brilliant, beautiful Serpents, coiling sensuously against one other in the Dark, awaiting their time to emerge once more.

*You see now, how the layers have been stripped from you and yet you are stronger and purer than before?* his mind whispered to hers. *There is no pain that cannot become ecstacy, no hurt that cannot become rapture. The opposite is true also. This is true freedom, real strength. Those that see it are few indeed: before you, I had never met one who could appreciate this as I do.*

He kissed her deeply, then as their mouths parted his teeth nipped at her lower lip. The mixture of sweetness and pain was minor compared to the transports of sensation Saori had already savored that night, sending a shiver through her naked body as she pressed it against his.

"Now," his voice was quiet, his eyes looking into hers. "Tell me how you first plan to use what I have shown you, my Saori."

[z-Xiao Saori]

His possessive way of saying her name was a heaven all in itself. Her heart pounded in rapture as she gazed into his jeweled eyes. She was indeed his; she had sold herself heart, mind and soul to him from the moment he had shown her how to be free of her bounds. She wondered that she had ever been scared of him, but she now knew it to be fear of that which she didn't understand. Now that she understood it, she could also see how terrifying it could be to the unenlightened. If you leave a bear in the cage long enough, it would stop looking for an exit, and even if you opened the cage, it would not leave.

She ran her hand over his perfect shoulders and snuggled ever closer, even as she raked him with her nails with her other hand just enough to draw forth a shiver. "I have a thought," she said, smiling easily. "My former tutor - his lust for me got him fired, but when I have talked to him since and I know he still hungers for me. I should pay him a visit." Her smile darkened, becoming cruel as she added, "And I so should pay a visit to my boyfriends. To properly say goodbye, of course."

[Tomas Saint-Etienne]

His soul soared, his eyes glittered with purely inhuman joy at her willing and passionate response. He had not been sure before this moment whether or not he had gone too far, whether or not he had simply made her a shadow of herself, a mindless dependant on him like the human woman he had left in a roadside diner.

Now he had his answer: Saori may have been devoted to him, enthralled and darkly obssessed, even. But she had initiative and a will of her own, bringing her own creativity into her new life. He was pleased, with himself and with her.

He let her know this with body and mind, coiling both around her and flooding her with sensation as his lips took possession of hers once more. His pride and dark glee at the notions she had expressed were apparent in every fervent kiss, every burning torment left in the wake of his fingers. It was not a reward, for a god does not reward a goddess for ascending from her human frailty, as though she were a pet that had learned a trick. Not at all. It was a welcoming, a celebration of their shared perspective.

The melody of pleasure and pain rose into the air, but this time there were two conductors, each drawing the rapturous notes from the other, bodies and minds linked with the nearly spiritual purpose of creating a harmony both diabolic and divine. Bodies twisted against one another, nails and teeth raked painfully and bit sharply on sensitive flesh, and yet their passion was not combative or violent. Searing pain was lovingly applied, burning pleasure forced onto nerves already stretched taut.

Giving and taking, taking and giving, they worshipped and desecrated each other as the sun completed it's climb into the heavens, it's light pale and weak compared to the blazing, glorious Darkness that now surrounded them inside and out.