Whole Burn Chapter 00: And So The Sun Rises, an air gear fanfic

Title: The Holocaust
Posted:
Rating: T

Summary: "Stolen. Reborn. Forgotten. These were the words that created us." They all began to say. "A group of people who shouldn't exist. Created to accomplish what could not have been. We fight in the name of the one and only Sky King." Then they disappeared, flashing one last horrific grin at the once strong leader of Group Volcano.

Disclaimer: I own what I own, nothing more, nothing less.

CHAPTER 00
"And So The Sun Rises"
CHAPTER START

The eyes of the end were watching Cokefire.

He didn't take notice of it, no one ever did. The end came like an exploding firework. The noise and bright lights would alert you of its presence, and then within a blink of an eye it would be over. All that you would be left with was the realization that nothing was the same anymore. That nothing would ever be the same anymore. It was probably why no one ever knew when the end was near. No one wanted it to be near, and you only ever took notice of the things you considered important and interesting. The end, in every person's mind, was merely a thought or concept. It was far from happening, and far away from them.

The eyes silently followed Cokefire's progress and tracked him as he turned the corner and headed straight towards a vacated baseball field. It was six in the evening, and he was supposed to have been at the Group Volcano meeting thirty minutes earlier. He had forgotten all about it, and was now running late trying to get to their territory. The others would not start without him though, so he had no need to worry. How was one supposed to discuss the fate of any type of group without its leader present during the meeting?

It had been pouring, clearly. There were puddles all over the place. The one mercy of the wet and dreary evening was that Cokefire had managed to pack his rain gear. At least he didn't have to worry about getting into any unnecessary accidents, thus delaying the meeting further. Earlier, he had tried to contact them with a call. He wanted to explain that he would be late, that he had forgotten, but no one had answered. Deciding that it would still be rude to not inform them; however, he did send a quick message saying that he was on his way. No one replied either, so Cokefire assumed that his second-in-command's phone had died.

That had been fifteen minutes ago.

Walking up the staircase that led towards the stands, Cokefire decided to tie his unruly black hair into a low ponytail. His black locks were wet, due to the rain, and it irritated him. "Sorry I'm late," He called out, looking at the ground as he tried to finish up the final twist for the band to tighten. "I was entertaining a crowd on the street and forgot all about this." Cokefire smiled when he looked up, expecting to see the eye rolling of his subordinates and the loud complaints of his second-in-command about how he had just forgotten to begin with. Only silence returned his greeting, and the smile vanished from his face when he saw the reason why.

His hands took hold of the railing in front of him, in hopes to keep him steady. Cokefire's knees were shaking badly, and his mouth had fallen open in shock. Only horror reflected in his eyes as he stared at the mess that had become of their base. "Ho—how…?" His legs budged and gave way, making the magician land on the ground. Hands gripped the railing harder, and Cokefire closed his eyes and looked away. When he opened them again, nothing had changed. Whatever he was seeing, it had happened. Whatever he was seeing, it was real.

Bodies were scattered around the diamond. All were turned over with their heads all facing the soil. The dusty playing ground beneath them was damaged, reflecting skid marks. Some spots were wet, while others were burning. It didn't make sense, but at this point, nothing made sense to Cokefire. The horror in his eyes gave way to fury, and the magician stood once again and jumped down to help his subordinates and check for any—he hoped there wouldn't be—casualties. Whoever had done this would pay, whatever their motive was.

Getting closer didn't do him any good.

There was blood on the walls, with the old Pepsi and Toyota advertisements all drenched in red. All of his team mates were motionless, but it comforted him a little to see the slow and steady rise and fall of their backs. Dangerously slow, but they were breathing none the less. It's better than death, Cokefire thought to himself.

Nearing the play area of the batter, he accelerated his Air Treks at the sight of his second-in-command. The man was face down, like the rest, but his legs were twisted in such an odd angle. Cokefire noticed bone sticking out near his ankles—or at least where his ankles she have been—and he also took note that most of the others near him had their arms and legs bent in ways that shouldn't be possible even for the best contortionist in Las Vegas. It only added fuel to the fire that was building up in the pit of his stomach.

"Dan!" Cokefire shouted, kneeling down beside the man. "Hang in there!" He tried to turn him, but released him immediately when he managed to take hold of his subordinate's arm. His shoulders were dislocated, and he risked more damage if the leader moved him without thinking or without caution. It wasn't the only reason though. When he had lifted Dan, he had seen exactly the extent of torture the attackers had done to him. All the blood that continued to flow out of his body, it was frightening—disgusting, even. Despite it all; however, Cokefire had seen the source.

It wasn't even something that could be called a gash. It looked more like a giant whole.

"Look at that, Leo!" The voice made him jump, made him turn around to guard the barely breathing body. He had his arm stretched out wide, trying his hardest to cover as much of Dan as he could. "He's trying to help the crippled bird fly again!" There were five of them behind him. Cokefire found it too hard to believe it. It had taken just five of these—what he assumed were—kids to bring the forty members of Group Volcano to their knees? Not even the current Sky King would be able to do that with just five people. Not even Sleeping Forest, at least not without casualties.

They stood on the horizontal railing near the stands, the same one that he had gripped moments before he found the crumpled state his team mates were in. They varied in heights, and they all wore masks that covered the top halves of their faces. The only thing about them that shouted 'team' was the caramel colored leather jackets that they all had atop their various shirts. They also possessed an aura that Cokefire realized was all too familiar to Sleeping Forest. The original Sleeping Forest that Spitfire had told him so much about, during his time as a second-in-command.

"He's the leader," The one in the center answered. Cokefire assumed that he was Leo. If the answer didn't tell you who he was, the lion like mask that he wore was a dead giveaway. "He has to help them, even if they're way beyond it." The girl who had originally spoken laughed, she stood at the far right. She wore a mask that resembled that of a bull with horns, and she also had a grin so wide that you would never think that a massacre had happened just a few feet away. It angered Cokefire all the more.

"Remind you of someone, Leo?" Another voice spoke, a boy this time with a mask that looked like a crab. "Then again, I don't think we're that bad." He continued on, turning his gaze directly towards Cokefire when he spoke the next words that escaped his mouth. He too, said it with such a happy and wide grin. "We'll still be able to ride tomorrow. Our wings are still pretty functional."

"What you say is true, Cancer." Was Leo's reply. "But there's no helping your intelligence." The other three in their group, all seemed like girls, laughed at the joke. Even Cancer himself released a chuckle, and it added to the already pent up frustration and anger that Cokefire was trying hard to hold back. There was no use attacking them if they were as strong as they seemed, so his only chance was to get them to leave him alone so that he could call for help. Kogarasumaru was somewhere nearby. Kazu would be one phone call away.

"Why did you do this?" Were the only words that the Flame Rider couldn't hold back. He needed to know more than he wanted to, and the answer was important to him. It would decide whether or not there would still be a corpse to find after he and his fellow Group Volcano members were done with them. "Tell me."

The girl with the mask of a bull was suddenly in front of him, with the four other members still standing far away from both of them. The railing was gone, and Cokefire wondered if she had destroyed it. She moved so fast, faster than any rider he had ever seen—even Kazu. It was less than a blink of an eye, and she had managed to cross more than fifty feet of land. "Do you really want to know?" She asked, sweetly. The girl seemed so innocent, and he probably would have believed her act had the evidence not been lying in front of him. Literally.

"Why is it that Taurus gets to show off, but I can't?" It was another girl who spoke this time. Her mask had curled horns atop, and from the front, it looked like a sheep of some sort. "It's no fun to just stand in the audience and watch." The girl in front of him, or Taurus as she was called, smiled wider. She lifted her finger and signaled for him to wait, turning around to face the sheep masked girl. Cokefire had a feeling he already knew what name she used.

"Don't worry Aries!" Taurus called out. "You get your turn when we take down Kogarasumaru! Group Volcano is mine!" Aries waved her away, with Leo shaking his head at both their antics. The other two just continued to watch on, and Taurus turned her attention back to Cokefire. "Sorry about that," She began. "Now, do you really want to know why we did this? Cause I could just, you know, take you down and finish this. I'm in the mood to go to bed early." Cokefire spat on the ground in front of her, barely hitting the pink colored air treks that she wore. She frowned at that.

"I don't think this is the time to be telling stories, Taurus." It was the final girl who spoke now, with a mask that glistened under light like fish scales. "We don't have a lot of time, and it's beginning to get dark. Just finish him off." Taurus sighed in defeat, but smiled and gave the scaled masked girl a thumbs up without even turning back to look at her. That apologetic and pitying gaze that she gave Cokefire offended the leader to the pits of hell. How dare she think that she, someone far younger than him, could take him down with just a snap of a finger.

It gave him a lot of reassurance that the others wouldn't be interrupting the duel.

"Do I have to ask him for a match, Pisces?" She turned her back to him then, and Cokefire took the opportunity to attack. He had planned to use his speed and trap her, wrapping an arm around her neck to take her as hostage and then see what the other four would do. There was no point in thinking any further, because by the time he had reached the spot where she should have been standing, she was no longer there. No one had even warned her, and she had gotten away with just a millisecond to spare.

"That wasn't very nice, Coke-kun!" Her voice echoed, and Cokefire tried to turn when he realized that she was directly behind him, but he tripped when he realized the ground where she had once stood now contained a small whole. He fell backward onto the ground, with Taurus standing above him with a wide smile. Her honey brown braids fell past her shoulders and framed her face, and she twisted her head slightly to the left. "You're gonna have to pay for that." She continued, with Cokefire's heartbeat suddenly increasing. How could such a petite girl be so terrifying?

He didn't catch any of her movements, but he did know when she began to attack him. Her air treks barely hit him, but the impact that they sent spoke volumes. Cokefire felt like his skin was being burned from the outside by a harsh wind that only Taurus controlled. His skin was being torn, his clothes turning to ash, and when, finally, his back landed back on the ground, the girl played her final attack. "You didn't even try to fight back." Taurus sighed. "Then again, I didn't really give you the time did I?"

Taurus placed her pink air trek above one of his legs. "Time to clip your wings, little birdie."

Cokefire didn't know what she was doing, but he felt like his entire right leg was on fire. The wheels that he felt atop him were rolling so fast, tearing his skin open and practically revealing his bones. He screamed and he screamed, because no heat that even Spitfire generated felt so intense. When it stopped, he had tears in his eyes. When he felt the other air trek land on his left leg, the screaming continued again. Above him, Taurus just kept staring at his face with the still wide grin she managed to keep. The blood spots on her face did nothing to dampen her spirits.

When the burning sensation stopped once again, he took a look around at his fallen subordinates. He had failed them all. He hadn't avenged a single one of them. The tears hastened their fall, and when he finally did manage to stop them and muster the courage to look down at his legs, they just came right back. "Ah…Ah…AHH!" Cokefire shouted, realizing that he no longer even felt his legs there. The pain went with the pink air trek that she had removed from his skin, and Cokefire realized that the reason behind it was because he no longer had his lower legs attached to him.

"Wha…wha…why?" He sputtered out, turning towards the four that stood in the stands. A moment later, Taurus had joined them on the stands once more. All of them turned to him, and all of them sincerely smiled at him before taking a bow. It was an introduction performance, a warning of sorts for the other teams that a new one was going to tear them down. The question remained though, why were they doing this? What reasons did they have?

"Stolen. Reborn. Forgotten. These were the words that created us." They all began to say, standing straight after finishing their bow. They sounded like they were in a trance, yet the seriousness of the words did not escape him. The threat in their voice did not escape him either. "A group of people who shouldn't exist. Created to accomplish what could not have been. We fight in the name of the one and only Sky King."

Then they disappeared, flashing one last horrific grin at the once strong leader of Group Volcano. The only sign they had been there at all were the many fallen and mutilated bodies, and the yellow and orange sun sticker that had been placed atop the mark of the team they had just single handedly annihilated. The word 'Holocaust' was situated in curved, orange, letters in the center of the oddly bright and cheery looking emblem.

When Cokefire's eyes finally closed, the darkness finally taking him, so did the eyes of the end that had ended him.

CHAPTER END
"Arriving at one goal is the starting point of another."
—John Dewey—

Interesting PROLOGUE, am I right? Didn't that sound less convincing? Oh well. I personally enjoyed writing it, though it did take me a while to actually start it. I am not going to be giving any spoilers here, so you're all gonna have to be curious about Team Holocaust on your own for a while. I'm just gonna tell you that I went over my science books to come up with something for their techniques, and I had limited sources so the explanations in the future may not all be 100% fact. They do have a scientific base though. Which should show how serious I'm taking this fic and how much I love Air Gear. I really do, you know.

To those who might be religious, I chose the name Holocaust for an important reason. I find it fitting because it means whole and burn, which will be important once we reach the chapter where that gets explained. I just wanted to explain that I am not pro-Nazi or pro-Genocide. I am very much against such things, and will protest to my very grave if someone even thinks that I do. To Germans, I don't hate you either! I just didn't agree with some of the stuff your ancestors did. I'm sure that you don't either.

Leave a Review, please! It would really be a big help. It would get me more excited and write faster. Also, if you want to see what the emblem looks like, go to my twitter "reignstein" and you'll find a picture there.