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At nineteen, we have all the naivety of youth, and when it is coupled with a belief in our own invincibility then truly, we are fools.

Chapter Nine : Innocentius Erarri, where innocents lose their way.

Driving along the edge of the King family estate, past the manor and through the garden, Johnathan tightened his grip on the wheel as each moment he spent staring at the grounds awakened in him a different memory and emotion. Joy, anger, pity, hatred, sorrow. If only they knew the truth. Thought Johnathan. Would the poor of this world still want to be like us? Would they still look upon us with such reverence in their eyes? Better then living out your life as nothing. He reminded himself. Better then being a chimera.

It had been one of the very first lessons that he had learned, that the world was bound by an endlessly destructive cycle fueled by two simple desires. The poor want to be rich, and the rich don't want to be poor. The only real problem with it all was, somewhere along the way, people tended to forget how to see themselves as anything else.

Not that being rich was the source of his actions, oh no. Deep down inside, he supposed that if there was anyone to blame for his behavior, then it would have to be his father. He had been the one who had encouraged him to take up a hobby in the first place. And then harangued him constantly about his lack of effort, his need to find a purpose in life.

Teaching chimeras their proper place in the world. Wasn't that a noble purpose?

Passing under the shadow of the servants quarters, Johnathan started to recall the many times that he had walked through its halls, watching as the servants who lived and worked for the King family went about their daily lives. An unwelcome intruder at best, they had tried politely to get him to leave. The human servants anyway, the chimeras had gradually come to accept his presence and learned to just ignore him.

It was there that he had met Cia for the first time. A fine young feline chimera, so shy, so innocent, so trusting. She had been the first of his many experiments. A servant taken from another's household, he had admired her for a great deal of time. And when he had finally found the courage to approach her, to offer her a place amongst his entourage, she had had the nerve to rebuke him. She had even gone so far as to say that love between a human and a chimera could never truly exist. A cold fury had burned inside him then. He was nothing to her, less then nothing. Even with all the money and power he could offer her, all she had wanted was to lie with someone who could give her children.

She never should have told him no, never should have looked at him with such contempt in her eyes. In the end, she had cried out for Kato to come and save her, until he had grown tired of her incessant whining and silenced her forever.

It wasn't my fault! He shouted into the silence inside his mind. I was the victim, not her.

And then there was his mother, a woman as bad as the rest of them. A conniving bitch she had always been sneaking off to visit her lover whenever his father was away on business.

How well he remembered the first time he had followed her into the servant's quarters.

Thinking it only a game, he had peered through the crack in a door, expecting to find her preparing a surprise for his father when he finally came home. Instead, he had found her in the arms of another man, a chimera no less.

If only that had been the end of it then he could have walked away none the wiser, but no, he had stayed and watched as their naked bodies writhed in ecstasy, had seen the way that he had mounted her from behind, all while she called out the name of some other lover as he did so. Bad enough that she had already betrayed one man, but two . . .

That had been the last he had ever seen of his mother, as well as the last time he had ever had any respect for women.

They begged, they pleaded, and in the end, they were all the same. Ruthless conniving harlots that wanted only one thing anyway. Money. Well, he had learned how to give it to them, in exactly the way they wanted him to.

Hating them all equally, Johnathan longed for the day to come when he would finally be able to extract his revenge. Revenge against the mother who had abandoned him, against the father who was always harassing him, and especially against Kato, for living a life he shouldn't have wanted, but did anyway.

Kato, there was just something about him that bothered Johnathan, he couldn't say what it was, just that there was some, nameless sensation that got under his skin whenever he was around. He could never quite put his finger on why though. All the household servants on the other hand, especially the female ones, they loved him, and all that he had ever had to do to win them over was talk to them.

It was frustratingly impossible to understand. Kato had no money, no influence or power, and yet still they wanted him. Worse, they flocked to him, seeking him out whenever they could, they were content just to be near him. And like a fool, he had never once thought of taking advantage of them, despite the fact that they would have begged him on their knees to spend even a single night in his bed.

What was it about Kato that made him so special? What was it that others could see that he could not? Even though he knew in his heart that it didn't matter, that as a chimera, his life would never amount to anything anyway, still it aggravated him.

Staring out across the grounds, at the garden that could be seen from every window, that had always served to remind him of his own place in the world, as much as he might have hated it, he still couldn't help but appreciate the beauty that surrounded him. Though it was considered to be an extravagant waste of space by the veritable army of chimeras that were employed to maintain it, the garden that surrounded the King family estate was to some an undisputed marvel of modern art. Filled with hundreds of marble statues and more then its fair share of topiary masterpieces, it was a carefully constructed wonderland that stretched for miles in every direction. He just couldn't understand why anyone would want to waste their time staring at a bunch of plants shaped like animals, when it could be used for more important things. But as his father so often put it, matters of status served as a reminder to everyone who saw them that the King family had wealth and power, and even though he was too proud to admit it, the cabins where the gardeners stayed whenever they were too busy taking care of the grounds to go home certainly had their uses.

Johnathan had often brought others to the cabins in order to enjoy himself, and always when Kato was preoccupied playing Go with that senile old fool Morishita. He had even bothered to try it once; he had found it to be a stupid and idiotic game, filled with arcane concepts that served no purpose in modern life. And to make matters worse, Morishita had seen fit to lecture him the whole way through.

Scoffing at the memory of that day, he wondered when people were going to learn. Men like him were born to greatness. Everyone else in comparison, was just common everyday trash.

Sighing as he sought to let go of his emotions, Johnathan tried to turn his attention to the more important matters that were at hand. But it was steadily becoming more and more of a challenge just to remain focused. Reaching for the bag of Dust that Zack held, he spread some of it across his fingers and inhaled. The Dust was helping him think so much more clearly then he could before, to see things in ways that he had never thought possible.

It was such a shame, that Lady had had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, that she had chosen to get into the car. Looking into the rear view mirror, at her beautiful body lying stretched out across the back seat, Jonathan couldn't help but feel a little sorry for her. It wasn't as if it was her fault that she had been the first prostitute he had seen. That he had developed a taste for women with fur. Such a shame really, that he almost considered letting her go, almost. And then he remembered how he had felt when Kato had seen fit to humiliate him in front of his friends.

Feeling his anger returning, the full force of it filling him with a sense of righteous fury, Johnathan felt that he needed to teach Kato a lesson in humility, one that would serve as a proper example of what would happen if he continued to disobey him. Yes, He thought to himself. And that is why I still need her. To help turn Kato into a proper servant.

Everything would be to his benefit, after all, the only reason he was even doing it was to help him learn his proper place in the world.

“Someday, you'll thank me,” He said, “Someday.”

Propped up against the passenger's side door, Kato had been glaring ineffectually at him for the past twenty minutes.

Ignoring the look of contempt in his eyes, Johnathan was tempted to just, reach over and open the door, if only to see what would happen.

Kato's calm detached demeanor had always managed to piss him off. Even the way that he stood. So composed, so collected. So . . . so arrogant! Did he think he never saw it, the way that he was always watching him, weighing him, judging him with his eyes. Wasn't it bad enough having his father follow him around during the day, always making sure that he played the role of the good son, only to have someone else follow him around at night doing it too?

Parking the Cadillac alongside the door to the cabin, Johnathan opened the passenger's side door and watched as Kato's body spilled out onto the grass.

It was as pathetic a sight as any. Panthera tigris altaica, one of the great and noble cats, lying in a disheveled heap on the grass. As it stood, he couldn't even move the muscles in his tail, let alone the complex series of ligaments needed to right himself.

Johnathan sighed. What did it matter. Eventually, even a fool like Kato would be able to realize that the only reason the collar could keep him paralyzed was because he continued to resist it. Once he relaxed, and accepted his subservience to Johnathan's will, only then would it finally release him. Or maybe he wouldn't, maybe he would spend the rest of his days fighting against the inevitable.

Smiling as the idea made him shiver, Johnathan couldn't help but think how wonderful it would be. To watch Kato twist and writhe, until the control circuits in the collar finally gave up and broke. Why, if he did that, then we could even prop him up as a statue. For a while anyway. At least until he starts to smell. Then his struggle would be memorialized forever as a living work of art.

“I can't believe I actually agreed to this.” Opening the door to the backseat, Zack helped to lay Lady out onto the grass. “What we're doing is wrong, she's somebodies property.”

“Exactly.” Said Johnathan with a kind of manic glee. “She's property. So who's going to care what we do to her? No one, that's who.” Licking his fingers he smiled. The Dust that was still clinging to them heightened his senses, making everything he felt so much more enjoyable, but he was going to need more of it. Much more of it.

Cursing himself for wasting so much of it on that bitch chimera, he hated the fact that in a moment of weakness, he had actually considered letting her go. But even she was going to learn. He was a King, and Kings were meant to be obeyed.

“What about him.” Zack pointed at Kato, a barely contained fear in evidence on his face. Even lying prone along the ground, he was still quite fearsome. “I don't know about you, but I don't exactly feel like being hunted down in the night by a horde of angry chimeras.”

“Relax Zack.” Said Johnathan. “Kato here won't talk.” Leaning down, he used his fingers to force him to smile. “Will you now?”

Growling low in his throat, Kato snapped at Johnathan's fingers. It was all he could do as he struggled to overcome the collar's debilitating influence.

Snickering as the sound became a strangled sort of cough, Johnathan just thought. What a stupid waste of effort that was. Kato, the collar can only use your own strength against you. Your just too dumb to realize it. “You see. With that collar around his neck, and this remote that I have, he has no choice but to obey me.”

“Then at least, make him go somewhere else.”

“No!” Johnathan glared down at Kato. “I'm going to make him watch us enjoy her, so he can see what its like to be a real man.” Nudging Kato with his foot he said. “Now get up.”

Kato's arms twitched.

“I gave you a direct order.” Kicking him in the ribs, Johnathan shouted the words. “Now get up!”

The collar forcing him to rise to his feet against his will, Kato's body responded with all the grace of a broken doll.

Spitting on the ground Johnathan said. “I want you to stand here on this spot.” Pointing to the blob of white phlegm he added. “And you can't move.” His gaze traveling across Lady's body, he began imagining all the things he was going to do to her. “Until I'm done.”

There was a brief flicker in the collar's control circuit as it registered the order and it was done. Until Johnathan either canceled the order, or fulfilled its conditions, Kato would be unable to take any action that contradicted his will.

For the briefest of moments, Kato's eyes met Lady's, and a look of shared pain passed between them. As an unspoken understanding, it transcended the mere limits of flesh and blood. Their's was a destiny decided for them the moment they had been born chimeras, a life synonymous with a slaves.

Railing against the invisible cage that held him in check, Kato fought to find any crack, any weakness that would allow him to break free from the collar's control. He refused to let it end this way, to let them have their way without a fight.

His body spasming violently as the collar found itself engaged in a war for total control, he began moving forward. An inch at first, and then another. He even managed to lift his hand. But always it brought him back, back to the point of no return.

Watching through the haze of Dust fueled hallucinations, Lady even felt herself mentally cheering him on. He was fighting against the collar's debilitating influence, struggling just to reach out his hand. Seeing him resist with all his might even managed to give her some small measure of hope. Here was someone who would never surrender himself to the will of another. Who would never give in despite the darkest odds.

Could she herself do any less?

Though knowing what was going to happen next brought her little real comfort as she felt herself being carried into the house and laid out onto the bed, it was all she could do just to mouth the words, “Thank you.”

Feeling her legs being spread as he removed from her the last traces of her dignity, Lady felt nothing but pity for the monster who called himself Johnathan. For bereft of even the need that spoke of tender longing, and the desire to connect to all that which was human, his touch was coarse and cruel, as focused on its intent and purpose as any master of their craft could ever hope to be.

That she still wore clothes didn't matter, of what use were they when there was nowhere left that was safe? Her body had been the one thing that she could truly call her own. And now, that too was being taken from her.

The irony of it all was like a knife twisting inside her heart.

And then came the worst revelation of them all. For in fighting to free herself from him, she found that her body had become little more than a prison, for no matter how hard she tried to resist, to run, to twist and pull away from the hands that held her down, she found that she could summon no real strength.

It was all she could do to separate herself from the moment. To simply lie back and let it happen, all the while imagining that she was somewhere else, that she was with someone else, anything to keep herself from being overwhelmed by the pain.