I Own You

“Are you gonna stop pacing, Pretty Boy?” He asked me and I looked over at him.

Dvar sat there coolly at his desk like he didn’t care. Like he was unconcerned with me getting punched in the face soon.

Yakuza war was his thing. Clearly he excelled at it… he was still here.

Stronger than ever.

“You have another death card.”

“Death card…?”

He rolled his eyes, “Meridian… Right. They don’t tell you anything. Yeah. A death card. Clones have those,” He paused, “Some clones have those. Most are disposable. It’s why you’re here… after you got the shit killed out of you, I mean.”

“You can just buy us another soul?” I asked.

“Not quite. If you die and you’re recoverable… the important bits can be…” He lifted his hands to point at me as he shimmied playfully in his chair, “regrown.” That clever smile followed.

“I hate that you’re enjoying my existential dread.”

“I do this a lot,” He smiled, “It’s always your first trip through the looking glass.” Maintaining that alluring calm.

“Any sympathy for the fact that my face is different, asshole?”

“Your face is why I spent the money to have your lungs repaired,” Stern. Suddenly sharp.

“… That’s not -… I..”

“Just say thank you,” Dvar cut. A quiet ghost with a scalpel.

“Thank you,” I blurted the words out quickly, staring at him.

The way he could turn it on like that.

Murderous intent. It jarred me.

And then he softened just as quickly.

“You’re welcome,” he smiled. A charming devil again.

All while my pulse thundered away in my neck. My entire fight or flight response telling me to run and hide.

I actually had to take a deep breath. My amber eyes drifted away as mandarin filled my nose.

“Alright… well… in the category of questions unanswered. Firepower. You can get me a punch cannon, we’ve already got a dharma blade. I don’t have any hardware though, man. I’m not Silence anymore. I’m…” I swallowed.

“Say it…” He said, standing up and tugging his shirt into clean position.

“…Your property now.” I avoided his eyes.

“Good boy.”

Fuck. I smiled, my eyes tick-tocking around his office.

“Anyway… I don’t have hardware.”

“We have two choices,” Dvar said, as he walked across his office to the wooden door to the left, “One,” expecting me to follow.

So I did. Right up to the door as he walked in.

My amber eyes processed the space. Moving around it, studying every corner. I recognized its vibe right away.

A meditation room. It was small. Intimate. Room enough for two on either side of his meditation table. A small, wooden centerpiece with a circular bowl on it.

It was made of stone.

Dvar rolled his broad shoulders and slipped out of those expensive loafers, sliding them to one side with his foot.

I looked down at my feet at the same time he did.

“What’s with you and the sneakers?”

“You gotta take everything from me, man?” I asked, looking up at him. Way up at him. My mouth twisting to one side.

“No… I’m just curious. The last few versions of you seem to really like them. Just wondering why.”

“I dunno…” I said, shrugging. “It just felt like something I could be alright with that didn’t seem to… disturb anything else?” I said, maybe asked? Offering him a shrug.

He nodded, then let his steely eyes roll up to my face.

“You gonna take them off or what?”

“Oh! Right,” I said, suddenly realizing he brought them up because I was in a meditation room.

They should be off.

“You really have no idea how to read the room, do you?” Dvar asked, his head tilted a little as he played with one of my braids. Admiring me.

“No sir…” I said, throwing back a weapon of my own.

“Mm… Alright, Pretty Boy,” He warned with a finger, “You know I like it when you call me sir.”

“I know,” I said, avoiding his eyes as I looked over at the meditation table.

I felt him studying my face.

“What?” I asked, feeling the tension.

He was staring at my mouth.

Dvar offered an almost playful smile as he positioned himself on one side of the meditation table, drifting down into a comfortable Indian style sit.

I sat down and childishly unlaced my Chuck Taylors.

All the way.

I’m not messing up my shoes when I go to put them back on. I hated that.

Then I sat them next to Dvar’s.

For a moment it seemed kinda… weirdly taboo? Kinda hot?

I wasn’t sure.

The expensive, professional loafers of a guy who could be a billionaire for all I know, sitting next to my collector’s item Chuckies.

Like a dime store sex story.

The wrongness of it kinda made me bite my lip but I crawled over to the place opposite Dvar.

“Sometimes you’re adorable. Other times you’re just annoying. I don’t know how to reconcile that.” He said, still projecting the hypnotizing spell of his calm.

I actually really liked being around it.

It was so opposite my chaotic energy.

My mind was always a storm.

I sat Indian style and looked at him, wondering what it must be like to be inside of that head.

To know what it was like to be clothed in immense power.

“Sometimes you sound like you’re complimenting me… but then it finishes and I realize who the fuck I’m talking to.”

“Funny.”

“Not joking. You’re really mean sometimes.”

“I like to bully you.”

“I know.”

“Good,” He said, wetting his lips curtly. Suggestively as he studied my face.

I could tell he was fetishizing it again.

Imagining me doing… God knows what.

“Good? You’re happy about being a jerk to me. Cool.”

“Pretty Boy.” He warned.

It instantly let me know my mouth was starting to endorse a check my rear end wasn’t prepared to cash.

Yet, apparently.

That thought hit me kind of hard.

One day he was definitely gonna stick more than his fingers in my mouth.

“Sorry,” My amber eyes moved around the space avoiding him then.

I started to lightly rhythm out a beat on my thighs with my palms as the silence drug on to a place I couldn’t tolerate.

My head was jazz. Crashing. Kinetic whirlwinds of thought that sent my eyes anywhere in his meditation space. Begging for stimulus.

Like I needed it.

“Pretty Boy…” He said again. Softer.

“Sorry…”

“Just be still…” he said, reaching under the small table to grab a small dark blue cone.

He placed it into the bowl, reached down again and struck a match, lighting it.

Incense.

Oh.

“So I tried that for a while. It doesn’t really work for me,” I said, squinting at his meditation bowl.

“Pretty Boy,” he warned.

I snapped my eyes back onto him.

“Okay,” I whined.

“Close your eyes,” he said, closing his own.

“Are you about to kiss me, dude…?” I squinted.

He laughed.

“You just have to, don’t you?” He asked, his steely eyes opening to not stare… but regard me.

“I have to what?” I balked, my eyebrows wriggling about, not really sure if I should be mad, annoyed or furious he was laughing at me.

“Talk!” He snapped. I jumped. He was still smiling a little so I knew I was safe.

“Sorry, man. I was ju-…”

He cut me off, “CLOSE… that,” he calmed himself, “adorable talk hole and just… try to calm your mind. Alright?”

I stared. Caught.

I nodded stupidly, feeling like an airhead.

“One last thing,”

He sighed.

“I appreciate you avoiding every curse word you wanted to say just then,” I said, genuinely impressed. “I felt that.”

“Any time, Boy-Boy…”

“Boy-Boy… That’s new,” I balked with my eyebrows this time.

“I’mmonna slap you.”

I snickered and closed my eyes.

“Alright, chill-chill-chill,” I said.

“I’m gonna chill slap you,” He said Dvar-serious and I cracked up laughing.

“You bein’ funny now?” I asked, surprised.

“You flirting now?” He asked back.

“Whoa… hey…” I said, one eye opening.

“The reason you keep getting your ass kicked is you won’t shut the fuck up and listen. Not to me… To you. To The Self. Inside. That’s what I’m trying to politely tell you.”

My other eye opened.

“A simple ‘class is in session’ would have been fine.”

“Class is in session.”

I closed my eyes.

“I’m going to ask you a few informed questions. When you were out… after the Wok and Roll. Did you see anything?”

“You mean…”

I felt a thrill in my chest.

“When you died, yes,” Dvar confirmed.

This was a defining moment…

I either tell the truth and sound crazy or lie and… lie.

“Like… what? I mean I had… memories. If that’s what you mean.”

“That is not what I mean,” I heard his voice. It was genuinely serious.

“Promise not to laugh?” I asked, my eyes still closed, smelling his cologne.

Fuck he smelled so good. I was hyper aware of it with my eyes closed.

Fear and unique, blind, stupid interest mixed with safety.

I need therapy…

“Mm,” That Oyabun power in his quiet tone.

It made me not want to lie.

“I saw something I don’t think I can explain. Like… something. An it… was there.”

“A presence.”

“Yeah. Like. The presence.”

“The presence…” He repeated, softly. In reverence.

“Why?”

“Because you’re the first you who knows what I’m talking about when I say… the presence.”

“What?” I asked, my breath almost catching.

“I don’t know what to call that… I just sensed it. That you’d seen… it. Felt it. Whatever the hell it is. You’re aware of it now. I knew the moment you woke up. I have known.”

“How?”

“You ask a lot of questions the others didn’t. About you. About the self… you have existential dread. That’s a remarkable consciousness-like thing, wouldn’t you say, Pretty Boy?”

“You’re… saying I’m the first me that’s conscious?”

“All things are conscious. It isn’t a question of if, more of… to what degree.”

“That’s… I dunno how to take that.”

“Better than you should.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That w-… yeah, Uno. I know.” Dvar sighed.

“Oh, you were intentionally being cryptic.”

“Clearly.”

“Wasn’t that clear, I didn’t get it.”

“You’re functionally retarded.”

“That’s a harsh way to define autism.”

“You don’t have autism.”

“Right… I’d have to be human for that.”

“You’d have to be human for that… Right.”

“So since I spawned from machines… does that make you a robosexual?”

“What?”

“I watch a lot of cartoons, man.” I admitted.

“Stop talking,” Dvar said.

“Okie-dokie.”

I smiled. Because I knew he couldn’t see it.

“I ordered your collar,” He said in the darkness of my vision.

“I know…” I answered after a fashion.

“How?” It was Dvar’s turn to ask.

“Starting to know the man,” I answered. Honestly.

He was quiet for a moment.

We both were.

“What you felt… That is what you seek when you meditate. Awareness. With it brings more power. Power comes through The Self. From the One Logic. The power of the Dharma Yog comes from it. That’s why, beyond just your face, I chose you.”

“Because I’m conscious or because I know the One Logic?”

“Because you are conscious. And you know the One Logic is too. That, I think, is the fundamental secret. That it is conscious.”

“Yeah…” I said, quietly taking that in. Remembering the feeling of that thing that was.

What if the One Logic found God…? Wait, is that a stupid notion?

This is why I hated meditation.

“How does that help me do my job?” I asked, completely not understanding the moment.

“Hardware,” He finally said. And I got that he was giving me a simpler answer.

“Yeah, channeling rings and bracelets. I don’t have any,” I answered, “Look… I get what you were saying, I’m just saying… can you… give me some time to settle into it? Realize, you’re telling me I’m a conscious appliance. And you own me.”

“I have a lot of respect for where you are. You have to accept that you are what we all are. Minus the ability to enforce it.”

“That’s… it’s a fucked up reality, man. I’m fine with it. I just… I gotta sit in it a while. Y’know?”

“That’s why I moved on. Resonance. We need to address your crippling inability to stabilize it.”

“Yeah. That. I’ve never been that good at it.”

“No. But… if you learn to use your resonance through hardware,”

“I’m not a channeler. I got shields, shock bursts, that’s about it. Ghosts channel. I wasn’t a full on ghost.”

“You’re missing my point. If you’re more able to harness resonance, that means you’re stronger than Lakshmi’s clones can ever be. If you can ever learn to quiet your mind. Back to my point. Your Dharma Yoga is entirely one sided.”

“You’re not wrong. I only play on one side of the ball. Defense.”

“Right. You’ve got more resonance than them. So you will learn to do both. Resonance protection and resonance casting.”

“I hate meditating.”

“In life, we only do what we want to do and what we’re forced to do.”

“You forcing me?”

“What do you want?” He asked me.

“If I’m fighting Yakuza Bosses and shit? My own hardware. That means a ship to go get it. And if I gotta go back through Indo Japan, permission to beat the shit out of Wullorie.”

“Wullorie’s dead.”

“What!?”

“Old save file,” He explained. “You became a you when you woke up in my transport.”

“Holy shit… That’s kind of a fucked up place to kick start somebody.”

“You always have a mouth. I figured I’d start it with a good hard smack in it,” Dvar chuckled.

“Asshole…”

“Do you want to learn to channel resonance or not?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Back to doing what you want or what you have to,” Dvar reminded me.

“Which is it?” I asked, getting annoyed.

“I own you.”

“… You could just say I have to.”

“Why is property telling me what to do?”

“I’m sorry, is that a thing n-..”

Before I knew it my soft lips molded to the shape of his. His finger was curled against my chin, turning my mouth up into it.

I gave it up sweet out of surprise, breathing in mandarin orange peel.

Our lips sealed together and he let them slowly break apart with an erotic, hollow click.

My eyes were open wide.

My lips were slightly moist.

He was staring into me with devious delight at my horror.

I was frozen in time.

I just kissed a man.

And our eyes were locked.

“You overzealous son of a bitch,” I whispered.

“Your lips are really soft,” That controlled, elegant bastard said simply, still inches from me.

“…Thanks…”