The Daughter

Narrator: Karma

The man looked down at me, in his white mask. It had two thin holes for eyes. He wore an intimidating immaculate white suit.

“I understand if you’re not comfortable telling me to my face. Fine. Do you have a preferred way of giving your testimony, child?”

I thought and hesitated. I was terrified.

“Umm, do you have a camera? Could I record a video explaining it?”

The room was almost completely white, the surfaces of every object inside and the floors and ceilings were covered with a strange substance. It looked as if they were coated with fresh paint in beautiful artistic swaths. Not in one single stroke, but thousands of strokes overlapping each other. I could even feel the white creeping onto my clothing. The suit I’d been given had been completely bleached with the stuff. It had a strange texture, like chalk dust. The man before me, SafeZone, generated the substance like he was a radiator giving off heat. Just standing in a room he could slowly coat everything inside. Once it was in his power’s grasp he gained the ability to warp its properties, and shape it as if it was alive. I’d also figured out the hard way that he had some kind of precognitive knowledge about his zones.

I was at the heart of SafeZone’s territory. The White City, so named because it was an entire neighborhood covered in his power. No Cape could siege it. No precognitive could sense what was inside. No assault would break it. 60 foot walls like those of an ancient castle surrounded the buildings inside, and at one end was Safezone’s lair. A fifteen story fortress, with me locked in a room on the penthouse floor. If he wanted, I figured he could probably have all four walls and the ceiling squeeze in on me until I was pulp.  I was completely at his mercy.

And I deserved it.

“Fine.” He said, turning away from me towards the door. “Explain everything to me. But I want you to understand this. I will hear you. There is a part of me that already sympathizes with you. But if you do to any father what you have done to me. I will assure there will be no quarter, no pocket of the world where I will not find you and make you pay for what you have done.”

I could use my power right now. I could disappear, vanishing into my mirror dimension. But he’d know. He’d predict every move I'd make. And when I’d inevitably have to reappear, I didn’t want to be on the other side of that threat.

I was so busy looking up at the slats where his eyes should be that I barely noticed the switchblade he was pointing at my neck.

“Now. Give your testimony.” He folded the switchblade and put it back into one of the inner pockets of his pristine suit. White and oily black with his power, a texture unpowered fabric could never hold. 

He stalked out of the room. The door closed and locked on its own, he didn’t pause his stride at all. A camera moved on the wall, as if to alert me of its presence. So he’d had one here the entire time. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Ok,” I looked up to the camera’s lens. “I’ve had a rough couple of months. Let’s start from the beginning. My name is Kitai Takahashi, but I’ve been going by the Cape name Karma. It all started when I still went to high school.”

My voice was shaking, but I couldn’t stop now.

“I’d always been kind of loud. A braggart, if you will. I wanted to be the coolest person in the room. Fuck. It hasn’t even been that long but I think back to how it was and I think I was just a normal kid. I had pretty strict parents. I loved to show off. Then I ran my mouth. Insulting some people I maybe shouldn’t have. I got into an argument with a pretty popular girl at our school. Ms. Tạ Khâu. Your daughter. I didn’t know that she was your daughter, obviously. No one would suspect that just because she was rich that her dad was a supervillain. But still. Uh. I just thought she was a popular, rude, rich girl. She wasn’t even that bad. She was always refined. Didn’t exactly keep to herself but she kind of reminds me of you.

She, uh. I made fun of her at lunch. She didn’t let one of my friends, Suzie, sit at her table. I thought that was insulting so I antagonized her. We got into a big argument, calling each other names. I kind of played it up, she didn’t like it at all. It wasn’t obvious that she was with a gang until a couple of days later some of the older Vietnamese guys in school beat the shit out of me. Upperclassmen with good marks. I take it they were members of your organization?

I got my ribs kicked in. Bashed. But they didn’t stop. And it didn’t stop the days and weeks after that. It was just more, more, more. Bullying, side-eyeing, taunting. Every time I even spoke to Tạ, later in the day someone would beat the shit out of me. I tried to go to the school authorities but you put a stop to that, didn’t you. They’d never want to make themselves look incompetent in front of you, and they’d never help an enemy of their master’s daughter. My dad tried to help me, but that’s what he said after nothing happened. He said no one would act against the King.

I think everyone knows that we live in your Kingdom, as long as we’re in this part of the city we bow to you. So, yeah. It just got worse and worse. One day my friends turned on me. They saw the way I was getting beaten and they didn’t want any of it. So they kowtowed to her. I guess it worked, I was the one who always pissed her off most. They didn’t really become friends with her but they stopped getting targeted and then I was alone.

I got dragged back into that situation again and again, and I’d go back home to my dad and he wouldn’t understand. He’d blame me for her problems. No one would listen, no one understood. I prayed every night. I’m not really a good person. But I believed in karma and I knew that someday, somehow it’d come back around and she’d get punished for all this and I’d be ok.

My dad was a taxi driver. Just an innocent man. But everyone got suspicious of him after he tried to get your daughter in trouble for me. Then, something happened. I don’t really know what or why but something went fuck up and one of your enforcers thinks he’s a spy for Web, or the Feds. He went to one of your warehouses to apologize, goes to one of your crews and then the leader cuts him in the face and makes him kneel down. He puts a knife to my dad’s face and they make me kneel and watch. And my dad’s in just the same position as I am, getting bullied just like I was and then he gets out a gun and shoots the two guys. He tells me to run and I do and he tries to fight the other guys in the warehouse. I get out and then he’s gone. And I just snap. I wished I could have gotten him out of there. I wished I could finally have something good…And then I got my power. And it just fell into place. I had to be my own Karma.

I collected one of the knives that the guys who attacked my dad used. He got three men before they shot him. There were another five left, and I killed all of them. Uh, you probably already know, but my power lets me disappear into another dimension when I feel pain. I call it a mirror world, I can still see and hear fine but it’s like there’s a filter over everything. Whenever they tried to shoot me I’d just disappear into thin air, and then reappear right behind them, about to put a knife in their back. It was easy.”

I shook one shuddering breath and then kept on with my words like a runaway train.

“Then I went to Tạ. I knew she’d be vulnerable when she left the White City. I knew where she would be, at Augustino’s prom party at a club downtown. Because his dad works there. Because his dad is one of your negotiators, isn’t he? I wasn’t invited to prom with them and after all the shit that happened that day I was still pissed off.

I found Tạ on a balcony at the club and I watched from my mirror dimension. Augustino and her were talking. She tries to ask him out and he rejects her. I almost felt bad for her, getting let down in that beautiful dress, on prom night. But it also felt like karma. She deserved to get shunned for all the shit she did just like she shunned me. I think my original plan was just to embarrass her, or maybe kick the shit out of her like her goons did to me. But honestly I could have left then and felt satisfied.

But then I see her pick up her phone and call someone. She calls you. She went on this angry, jealous, bitter rant against Augustino and then she asks you to ruin his life, just like she ruined mine. She wanted to erase his social standing for rejecting her. Just like she did to me for standing up to her. But that pisses me off so much I can’t even think and then before I realize it I’m out of my mirror dimension and I have a knife through her chest.”

I took an uneven sigh.

“And she sees it’s me, I wasn’t wearing a mask. And I know that even if she lives it’ll make my life hell and so I grabbed the knife out of her and just kept stabbing until I was sure she was dead. Just in case. God I got blood all over my clothes and everything.

Then before anyone could find me, I disappeared, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go so I just ran back to my empty house. And then things were calm for a little while. I hid and I pretended like nothing ever happened. My dad was gone, but no one came for me. I went to school the next day and she was gone. No one cared what she said. She stopped bothering me. It was a good day.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about her body laying down, bleeding on the balcony.

It was another couple of days until one of the guys tried to beat me up. He looked angry. He said he’d ‘teach me a lesson’ for being so happy when everyone was mourning.He tried to punch me and I disappeared. I couldn’t let him know I had powers, so I took a knife to him too. Put him in a dumpster. 

I looked down at him and I just completely lost it. I just shrunk down and cried and…and then I came here. I came here for karma.”

The door swung open under its own force as SafeZone re-entered the room. I had sunken, laying against a cabinet in one corner of the room where the camera would see me. SafeZone crouched down, putting his arm on the cabinet and looking down at me.

“Then The Negotiator brought you here, and you agreed to come with him.”

“Yeah.” I sighed, defeated.

“You were friends before your spat weren’t you. Me and my daughter?”

“Yeah, we were. I mean we weren’t super close. But that’s why I was so mad about my other friend. Suzie. I don’t know if she even cares about me anymore. But that’s what originally hurt so much, right. She wouldn’t even let us sit with her, even though we were supposed to be her friends. ”

SafeZone seemed to consider it for a second as he stood up “ I believe I know what day it was. I had told her that she needed to conduct herself better. That she had taken our privilege as an excuse. Just because we held power, she thought she could do whatever she pleased with it. Undisciplined. I hate that lack of consideration and selfishness.” 

He sighed, then continued. “She took that to mean choosing a better inner circle. Hurting others in order to fit better into my expectations. Disappointing.  My warning still applies. I do not want you to hurt anyone like this ever again. Do you understand, Karma?” 

His tone was always strict but his voice became more direct, he put an edge to it and emphasized my name at the end of the sentence. I could imagine him whipping out his switchblade as he spoke.

“Yes, I understand. Seriously. I promise, I promise.” I was stumbling over my words. “I’m so sorry. I…I…I meant to…Not, not that I’m. It’s…She didn’t need to die. Even if I just hit her…I could have. I…I’m sorry.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “I understand.”

What? How could he understand? 

“I pity you immensely, Karma. I pity you for your failure. I pity you for your lack of discipline. I pity you for the way the system I built hurt you. My daughter was…undisciplined with the social power she wielded. She scorned you and others because she was irresponsible. Because she thought that making herself the enforcer of social hierarchy would make her more like myself. This is not the truth. She dishonored you, and in doing so she dishonored herself.”

For a second I thought he would stop there, but then he wheeled around to face me.

“Your actions are just as wrong, if not worse. The life of a human is sacred. That does not mena I do not butcher. It does not mean I will not hesitate to kill you should you step out of line or attempt anything like this in the future. It means that I neve kill without reason. Without thought and deliberate choice. Prayer before if possible, or prayer afterward if time does not permit. There are many in this world who waste the gift their life has given them. The opportunity. They degenerate into something lesser than what humanity can be. You are young. You have made mistakes, horrible mistakes which you may never atone for…but you are also much like my daughter. Desperate to assert yourself. Quick to action, even wrong action, because of your self-assuredness. Even quicker to fall back into self-destructive paths. She could have stopped her treatment of you. But she did not because it was easier for her to recurse in these cycles rather than own up to her failure.

You chose to turn yourself in. Of course any man with sense knows that in this territory I am king. But that is not what the law says. You could have turned yourself in to the police, or the Vanguards. I’m sure they would be happy to send you to Censor or the Shark Tank. Perhaps you could even convince them you did no wrong. I am an enemy of theirs after all and you did kill five of my men. But no. You came to me, the one who you wronged. The man who does not believe in such barbaric useless methods as permanent imprisonment for punishment. I would much rather kill you, and have it be clean and over. Especially because you’re a parahuman. Yet you risked that all anyway. Why?”

There was a pause before I answered. “Because I’m sorry. Because whatever the Mayor might have said I didn’t hurt them I hurt you. I killed your daughter and then I killed the son of one of your men, I’m presuming. And, honestly I think maybe somewhere deep down in there I know that I don’t deserve mercy.”

“What you are deserving of and what life is best suited to give you are two very different things, Karma.” He was quick to respond. “Now, you have no father, no mother?”

I nodded. He went on, seemingly like he already knew what I’d say.

“For the past few days you’ve been squatting at your former home, eating?”

“Whatever was left in the fridge, and school meals.” I said

“I see,” he sighed. 

“You took my daughter from me. In an indirect sense, I took your father from you. I will adopt you, Kitai. You will take on my family name, Khâu. You will adopt the responsibilities my daughter left behind. But let it be known there is a short leash for you here. You are not to leave the White City unless ordered to by me. And you are to return as soon as I order you to if ever you leave. You’ll be given room here in the penthouse. You will address me as Mr. Khâu, father or sir. Do you know vietnamese?”

“No, no I’m japanese. My family is japanese.”

“Hmm. Then I’ll get you her old tutor and he shall teach you our language. No good member of my family does not speak it. I will instruct you to use your powers for my purposes. I will train you to use them responsibly. Is that understood?”

“Yes. uh…Yes, sir.” I responded and he barely seemed to notice as he barreled on with his words. His speech dripped with conviction.

“I will give you one chance to reject my offer. Should you reject me, you have three choices. If you wish to be trained by me, be a cape under my employ, but not a member of my family I will find a suitable candidate for your family in the White City. You also may return to your meager place in the White City, and understand there will be consequences should you ever use your power or attempt to leave. Or your third choice. A duel with me. I do not mean to brag, but a confrontation with me, here in the White City, means almost certain death.”

“Um..What? Umm.” He wanted to adopt me? Why? What the hell was going on? When I surrendered I was almost certain that I’d die.

“Do you have a question?” he replied, his speech flat and efficient.

“Why would you make me your daughter?” 

“Did I not explain my reasoning?”

“I. I don’t understand.”

“You are in desperate need of a teacher. Someone to discipline you. Someone to show you the right path. Your father, who could have fulfilled that role, is dead. And with your power, that relationship matters more than most. Trust me. I know what can happen to a young parahuman who is without vision, guidance, or support after they trigger. Frankly, it has already happened to you. You’ve gone down a dark path. If I do nothing, this will not be the last of your murders. Which is why I cannot let you go. But secondly, you seem genuinely regretful. You did not want to do this, or at least you do not want to be the person who murdered Tạ and the young man. You feel monstrous for what you’ve done. That much is understandable. A good point in your favor. Along with, as I said, the usefulness of your power. Thirdly, you remind me of her. In all the ways that matter. And I dearly wish you had not taken her from me. You are a poor imitation. But I would rather have a poor imitation than no daughter at all.”

I stammered. I couldn’t comprehend it.

“You triggered- gained powers- some days ago. I know how painful that is for us. As I said, it does not forgive your actions. Nothing I do will un-do my daughter’s death. However, perhaps I can do something to improve the world. I can mold you such that you will atone. Perhaps, some good can come of this, not just another child dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” I managed. “I’m so sorry. Mr. Khâu.” 

I stood up and we were inches away from each other. I don’t know who initiated it, but we pressed against each other in a hug. 

“I know,” he spoke softly. “I know…and my given name is Chínhvǎn.”

It felt so strange. This man who I feared. This man who I thought would kill me, who’d threatened to kill me. I could tell it was genuine though. I don’t know if he loved me like a daughter, but he was here and no one else was. And I could tell in every fiber of his words that he was honest. He wasn’t kind. He wasn’t peaceful. He wasn’t warm. But he said that he would take care of me, and he was honest.