Shana's Return Flight

“Still worrying about which major to choose, I see.”  She said stepping out from behind my bed.
I nodded.  She knew my thoughts better than I knew myself.  She beamed and sat down at the foot of the bed beside my sprawled-out body and sweetly ran her hand through my hair.
“You’re cute when you worry.  Don’t ever lose that.”  she told me. 
I looked back at her and frowned.
“Does this mean you’re developing a liking for men?”
She removed her hand from my hair and to her side faster than I could blink.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she told me.  “I hate most men, and I wouldn’t be hanging out with you if we didn’t once share the same body.”
"Maybe you're developing a liking for weak men," I said pointedly.     
“I wouldn’t be hanging out with you if you were weak. I think of you as a spiritual equal."

"Then how come you won't have sex with me?"

She blushed but I could sense that the thought of sex was equally arousing to her as it was to me.

"Come on now Yujik," she said to me.  "I've told you already that I'm not attracted to me."

"Why is that?"  I automatically asked her.  The instant I had spoken I regretted having asked the question.  Shoot, that blunder cost me the argument.

"Well as you know..." she started what I knew would be a long description of her Earthly life as a man.  She'd probably throw in morals and describe her sexual preferences towards woman in detail, and then she would tie it all up with a well-formed conclusion that would finish any possible argument.  I decided to cut her off before she started.  *☩

"...between the choices of abiding my moral code and engaging in indecent behavior that would only amuse you ephemerally, I being a delicate creature raised on honor cannot exist go against my-"

"Look Shana!"  I interrupted her, "I sense a dimensional disturbance, oh, it’s a monster!"

She stopped in mid-sentence, and raised her hand throwing up a fuzetsu spell that would freeze time for other creatures in the vicinity.  Then she drew a cloak from mid-air, pulled it on and from a pocket drew out a katana which shone glowed with crimson flames that flowed over the sword from the sword's hilt.

"Yujik where is it?"  She demanded turning her head left and right, scanning and rescanning the room.  "I can't sense anything!  This is serious; could it be blocking my senses?"

I managed to keep on a solemn expression.  "You're probably right.  It was just a moment ago, but it vanished when you turned around.  It was a big turtle with red hair, horns and spikes on it's back."  I said describing Bowser from the Super Mario games.

"This is major, I'll have to meet Jake and ask him to redouble my threat-detection training.  Gosh I thought I had sensing down." She stared at the sword in her hand, with red eye-brows furled and looking rather worried.  She started thrusting it slowly against dust-bunnies on the carpet as though making sure it worked.

I almost laughed.  Boy, despite living through wars, betrayals, and training on critical thinking, Shana was sure easy to play tricks on with sometimes.  I blotted out the thought in case she became suspicious and tried to read my mind.

"Yes you do that tomorrow.  Meanwhile, let’s get back to the topic at hand.  You were saying something...?"

"Um, well..." she stammered distractedly.  "I seem to have forgotten my argument.  What were we talking about again?"

She seemed to be distracted and was having regrouping her thoughts. 

I smiled openly, proud of the success of my tactic. 

"Well I was saying that since you are in a woman's body you have all of the same biological functions, and even desires as other women." 

I moved quickly onto my next argument before she could form a response.

"And since you lived once in my same body, doesn't that entitle you to show me your body, being as we're both equals?"

"Actually," she said stopping me, "when I say we're equals I mean we're equals in fate.  That doesn't mean we're equal in ethics, and I've changed so much in a thousand years that it's absurd to think we're equals in any kind of power, intellectual or material sense. 

"When I say we're equals, I mean that you were--and could still be--my equal
Suppose that your spirit wasn't inadvertently cloned several months ago, and that instead of training a clone, your original spirit was taken and trained in the Fictional Worlds, just as Jake intended.  If that happened, it's likely that you would think just as I do me and have all of my abilities.  But that didn't happen, you were not trained in a prison for over a thousand years, and you are certainly not my equal in wisdom."

Her words took me back and I felt a mixture of shock, betrayal and most of all anger.  She had told me that she thought of me as an equal, but now what she was saying was that she had lied-she thought herself to be far superior.
This wasn't good for my plans to bed her.  If she wouldn't think of me as an equal there was no was she would ever bare her breasts or let me play with them, much less caress her even more intimate nether-regions. 
Shana soon surprised me with a manner more frightening than her words.  She spoke with a stern and frigid tone coupled with a fiery expression, rather like a mother who has reprimanded a child for demanding a toy a few too many times. 

"I know you want to make-out with me, but the fact is that you are still immature and need much more development emotionally.  Your very morals to even consider making out with me prove that you're still not my physical equal, and certainly not my type.  It'd be like making out with a kid.  I can't do it, it's too weird, so don't even try to tempt me."
As she finished speaking she did something weird.  She deliberately shoved a delicate looking hand beneath her robe and explored her waist in a rough way.  She only did it as a joke, and she grinned at me for the split second that she did it before removing her hand and collapsing backwards onto my bed. 
Before she did this I had felt guilty for not treating her with the respect she gave me and certainly deserved; but in response to her brief act I could not help but laugh. Sometimes its hard to take Shana seriously when she teases me seconds after giving me a stern lecture.  Maybe she developed these strange quirks and mannerisms during her years of mental and physical conditioning at the hands of her tyrannical master.  I know that if my life had been as rigorously controlled as hers, I'd take every chance I could to break loose from authority and act like a childish.  I'd want to breakaway even if it meant undermining my own authority.
I took another look at her.  She was lying at the foot of my bed with her feet crossed and facing the other direction.  Long red hair draped over her breasts and she now wore an expression of remembrance.  Just what she was remembering I had no idea, since she seemed to spend half of her days remembering people, alien worlds and lessons from the past.  Even at school rather than study she'd sit and remember things, wearing an expression as one whom day-dreams. 
"What are you thinking about?" I asked her.  She didn't answer me, she was too distracted by something from the past, perhaps a foster mother from one of the apocalyptic worlds to which return was impossible.

"Look, I won't be able to understand you better if you don't talk to me, and if I don't understand you, you won't consider me your physical equal.  So won't you please talk to me so we can get closer to having the sex?" 

I was actually joking but she didn't seem to hear me.  Instead she was gazing away at a distant window.  I knew one way to get her attention.  Using the opportunity of her distraction, I tried moving a hand slowly a hand toward her thigh.  I was almost there and decided I would slap it before she woke up, but as my hand approached her thigh, suddenly her thigh wasn't there anymore-she had lifted her leg above my hand, and brought the foot down so as to stomp on my foot.

I winced from the brief but searing pain. Pulling my hand back, it glowed from what could be a third degree burn in the shape of a foot.  The pain left and I grinned knowing that Shana would heal it, that's why I was surprised when I looked up and saw that she was glowering at me.

"How could you?" she demanded, standing barefoot on my bed and peering down at me with puppy-dog eyes.

I chuckled, "It was just a joke Shana, and you should know that."  Actually I was surprised that she didn't read my mind, she should have known that I was actually joking.

"That’s not the point!  After all that I've said to you, over all the days that I've watched over you, you still did something immature and base.  How can I trust you with magic or my most precious inner-secrets when you can't even control your hormones?"
"Shana..." She wasn't listening; she had sprung from the bed to the doorway not even aware that she was clutching my pillow.  Damn she's fast.
"Really, it was a joke," I repeated, unnerved by the trails of light—indicative of potential magic energy—which were beginning to encircle her. 
“I don’t care anymore Yujik!”  She looked furious and waved her hands in an intricate pattern rather than to face me.  “You’re just an insensitive pervert and I’m ashamed that I was once just like you.  I can’t look at you anymore so I’m leaving for good.” 
She paused with her hand movements and took a hard last look at me.  I didn’t know what to say, I knew that she was impulsive but I didn’t think she would actually leave me.  Not after she had been here so long and came to care for me.
“I don’t know what I ever saw in you,” she told me flatly.  “I thought you were virtuous; the person I would protect and relearn my forgotten memories from.  You were supposed to help me remember my identity, and I thought that you would bring back sentimental memories.  Instead I’ve found that you’re a hollow shell, with bland memories, only concerned with your own well-being and that we have no common ground. 
“You were supposed to be the rock on which I based my life.  When I found out that you were still alive I decided that was going to come back to you after I beat off Jake’s enemies, and I was going to start a home, live with you and be happy,” she said sadly. 
Was this really Shana?  Was she actually planning on staying with me forever?  I didn’t know that, and I started to feel sorry for her suffering.  If only she’d told me how much I mattered to her, then I might have let myself care for her a little more.
“But I see that this world is utterly flawed and not as nostalgic as I imagined.  Even though Earth is supposed to be the only real world, I think the people of the Fictional Worlds seemed a little more real.  At least there we have some considerate people and a little thing called loyalty—a kind of honor which doesn’t seem to exist on Earth.  I plan to return home and live out my life protecting friends there.  You can stay here and wallow selfishness, idleness and in your riches—you’ll soon find that your bank account has a mysterious deposit every month.  Thanks to me, you will have enough money to live out a nature life-span without ever working. 
“This is goodbye Yujik!  Even when I’ll think of you, I still won’t come back because it hurts too much.  After all my efforts I failed to improve you.  Even my temper never roused you to find a purpose or to truly care for….or even love me.  Not even just a little…just a little…Bye.”  She looked away and continued weaving her arms to finish her spell, leaving me at a loss for words. 
The balls of light consolidated around my door and flashed red.  When the red faded a large castle door materialized in my bedroom doorway, dislodging the normal door from its hinges and causing part of my wall to collapse with a heavy thud.  She pushed the door open and a warm aroma gusted in, along with the voice of a foreigner delivering a sales pitch in a melodic language.
The glimpse I caught of this other world was very beautiful; it had clear blue skies, an oasis covered with a carpet of red and brown leaves.  Besides this was a long expanse of desert stretching toward the horizon where three brick pyramids could be seen in the distance.  A little closer was a steel-gray pyramid that reflected the light of…two suns, and a crystal creek that lazily worked it’s way to the oasis, (or was it a lake?)  At the fore-front of the image a dark-skinned merchant was lying in the shade of a palm tree, apparently selling a number of purple rugs.  He turned, saw Shana on the other side of the portal and waved calling out her name and something in a language which he apparently expected her to understand. 
Then Shana disappeared through the portal briefly becoming part of the image on the other side.  Then the viewfinder was covered as the castle door closed and sealed-up behind her, and then the door disintegrated into a pile of sparks and glowing embers. 
Deciding that she’d need some time to cool off, I went to retrieve a broom and began sweeping up the debris she had left from her spontaneous exit.  Later, when I finished I would fix the door and then try to compose what I would say to cool down Shana when she returned.  She would return after all—she said she cared for me and obviously I wouldn’t be able to tell her how much I liked her if she didn’t come back.      I can’t do magic or anything you know.
“Yes, she’ll definitely come back.  I’m not worried.”  I said to myself while depositing a plastic bag full of still smoldering debris in the garbage can.  “We’ll just give it a few days and when she gets back I will ask her to live with me.”  Smoke continued to rise from the garbage can and I felt embarrassed for speaking aloud.

To be continued…?
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Apendix:
*☩ Shana still thought of herself as a man, even though she was in a woman’s body.  Actually, she said that she was once me, but our being was duplicated and from then on our memories were separate.  While I slept, a copy of my essence and memories was placed in a girl’s body and she was forced to explore an alternate dimension.  Not a universe, but a multiversity populated by myriad worlds covering every theme in Earth’s history.  During this time she met parallel Napoleons, lived as a Chinese Empress, studied the arts of war across all time and trained until she had mastered the art of pyro-kinetics.
This dimension she spoke of had worlds that were more than alternate time lines of the Earth.  Characters from Earth fiction also made their homes here; including, Shakugan no Shana, the Simpsons, Pokemon, even movies like the Graduate, Columbus, Memoirs of a Geisha and It Happened One Night.  In these worlds the characters existed with souls just as special as humans on Earth.  She said that she had made friends with creatures of all sorts, and had studied many texts, some alien and some human, expanding her knowledge through the millennium.  She became intimately familiar with the entire literature of Earth, while even learning to ideas not native to Earth.  This training included how to use magic not native or enabled on Earth.  She had become a skilled martial-artist, ninja and an emissary while I slept through a night.
In total, she explored a few thousand worlds and lived several thousand years.
Author’s notes:
8/12/07 Remake
This is part of a story arc which I’ve developed in my head.  I haven’t decided whether to type the whole story yet though.  The character Shana’s appearance, abilities and attitude is loosely modeled off of the character from the Shakugan no Shana series.  (The reason for this is explained in the rest of the yet-unfinished story arc.)  Yujik is modeled after myself.