Gregor the Overlander Fanfic
Too Bright the Sun
Gregor was annoyed. It was bad enough when strangers he passed in the street had gawked at him, but even Angelina and Larry? Not just his friends, but nearly the entire school seemed to be eyeballing him all day long. They gossiped about him when they thought he could not hear them, but his hearing had become sensitive during his time in the Underland so Gregor ended up hearing enough to grate on his nerves all day.
During the summer he had suddenly disappeared, as had his mother and youngest sister, and he had missed the first few months of school. At the time he had been fighting in a war with the specified job of killing a gigantic, psycho rat called the Bane. Telling the school, however, that he had spent the beginning of the school year in the Underland, a place deep below the surface of the earth that no one knew existed, would have gotten them all sent to the mental hospital. Instead, the story was that his mother had fallen ill, true enough, and, as his father was still in poor health himself, also true, they had sent Gregor and his two younger sisters to live with some relatives in Virginia. His parents were still debating moving to Virginia now, but with his grandmother in the hospital it seemed unlikely to happen.
Gregor had missed some additional school time in order to heal the wounds he had made himself on his hands in breaking the sword that had belonged to Sandwich, a supposed seer who's prophecies where revered by the Underlanders. Though, Gregor had his doubts where Sandwich was concerned. After his most recent experiences with Sandwich's prophecies, Gregor was certain that the seer had been nothing more than a man who had locked himself up in a room to right nonsense on the walls. The Underlanders took his writings very seriously though, and he would have lost respect with them if he had knocked their little savior.
"Not," he thought, "that I'll ever get a chance to go back." He wanted too. He had friends in the Underland that he missed greatly, and he was worried about them. They had just ended a war with the gnawers, the underland's term for rats, and it looked like they were headed strait into another with the cutters, giant ants that inhabited lands in the east of the Underland. In the mess that had been the official offering of surrender from the rats to the humans that had led to the bonding of queen Luxa to the rat's official delegate, Ripred, Gregor had broken Sandwich's sword, thereby ending his role as "the warrior". He was no longer needed in the Underland; not that his mother would have let him go even if he had been.
But, there was a heavy cavity in his heart where something, someone, was missing. He kept a picture with him at all times. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he had taken that picture with Luxa, their weak smiles twinged with sadness. It had been just before Gregor had flown off to the city wall to fight the Bane, a battle they both believed he would die in. He would liked to have kept the one that had been taken at Hazard's, Luxa's cousin, birthday party, before the war with the gnawers had started. Luxa had coxed him into dancing, and someone had gotten a snapshot of them during a step where Gregor had to pick up Luxa and twirl her around before setting her feet back down. It had been fun, and you could see the joy on their smiling faces. It was a happy picture from a dream that was far too short. He had let Luxa keep that picture, and he had taken the sad one they had taken later, after the happy dream had been shattered.
The war had left him scared inside and out. Nightmares of falling to his death plagued him at night. Since bonding with Ares, a strong black bat that had saved his life on his first visit to the Underland, Gregor had lost his fear of heights. But Ares had died in their fight with the Bane, and now the dreams had come back more vivid than they had ever been before.
During his adventures with Sandwich's prophecies, Gregor had discovered that he was a Rager, someone with an inborn instinct for battle. One that made the person a deadly force in battle, but was hard to control. Gregor did not even remember what had happened many of the times he had used his rager instincts. It was like he had been possessed by someone else during battle. Gregor had been learning to control this ability during his time in the Underland, and he had succeeded slightly. He was now aware while he raged, and he had learned how to recognize and activate the rager sensation. However, he was far from being safely in control of his ability; and had yet learned how to turn off the rager sensation at will. Ripred, a Rager with full control of his ability, had warned him to be careful when he returned home; he was dangerous. He could easily end up killing someone whether he wanted to or not. Gregor was still scared when he left the apartment he shared with his parents and sisters that something would set off the rager instinct and he would hurt, or kill, someone.
His entire family was struggling, emotionally, physically, and psychologically. In their sorry state, it seemed ridiculous that money should be important at all, but the reality is that life will keep moving forward, if you are ready to or not. Reality will always rear it's ugly head sooner or later, and for them it seemed like it was going to be sooner, rather than later.
Gregor looked for whatever odd jobs a twelve year old could do to help bring in a little money. His dad was even looking for work; although, with his health, he was unlikely to find any. The suit case full of things he had taken from the museum that could potentially be sold for money had already been emptied of anything of value. If it were not for Mrs. Cormaci, a neighbor whom knew all about his family and their troubles in the Underland, Gregor did not know how his family would have managed at all. When his father had gone missing for nearly three years, his mother had had to provide for the family on her own, and Gregor had taken responsibility of taking care of Lizzie and Boots. Their father still suffered from relapses of an illness he had picked up from the Underland and did not seem to be able to completely get ride of, and that was aside from the psychological damage from his time as the rats prisoner of war. Their mother had had to work even harder to support three ailing adults and three growing children. After going missing for nearly a year, his mother had been fired from her jobs as a waitress and as a receptionist at a dentists office. She was searching for work, but until she was hired they had no income. Mrs. Cormaci was pretty much supporting his entire family financially, and Gregor found himself wishing, as he had for years, since the time his father had first gone missing, that he was old enough to have a real job.
Unfortunately, Gregor was only twelve, and it was required by law that he go to school. So, here he was in school, wearing long sleeves and pants, both of which where too small for him, in order to hide the many unexplainable scares he had acquired in his recent adventures. But, he could not hide all his scars, and some of them were evident in the nonphysical changes in him. Grief still cloaked him like a shroud, and his smile took visible effort. He was sensitive to light and sound; his father had to write a note to the school to get them to allow him to wear sun glasses in school. At some point Gregor had stuffed kleenex into his ears muffle to lesson the sensory input his sensitized ears picked up. Thankfully, his over grown hair mostly hid the little while pieces of tissue in his ears.
It was lunch and he was sitting with his friends, Angelina and Larry, like he normally had at school, in another life. A life before he had learned to kill. He caught his two friends exchange worried looks.
"Gregor, are you sure your OK, man? I mean, you don't look so hot."
He was almost surprised his friends had managed to wait this long before asking. He had been expecting them to interrogate him the moment they saw him. Which they had seemed ready to do, that was until they ran up to him and finally got a good look at him, at which they had backed off and left him alone.
"I'm fine, guys, really." He dredged up a smile for them, but it only seemed to make them more concerned.
"Gregor, what happened to you over the summer," Angelina asked, her forehead creased with worry.
In P.E., Gregor handed over his parent note to be exempt, and rushed to the bleachers where all the kids in casts or with bad asthma sat watching the rest of the class play basket ball. Before, Gregor had been on the track team and had played saxophone in the band. Now, it was too dangerous for him to be on the track team. Wearing shorts would show off the scars he had gotten fighting cutters in the Vineyard of Eyes, which were too strange to explain away. He did not want to involve himself in any physical activity, anyway, in case it set off his rager side. The noise in band was too painful for his ears. Just as well, since as he did not have the heart to participate in either activity.
Instead, as the days went by, Gregor spent his time after school trying to make a few bucks. Usually, he did not have much luck. It was on one of those usual, unlucky days that he found some high school boys bullying a boy who looked a little younger than Gregor himself. He tried to walk away, to avoid violence at all costs, but when one of the teens started to punch the boy, Gregor lost it. He Raged. A tree branch was in his hand. The first boy was on the ground, motionless, unconscious but not dead. He could control this. He could aim for non-life-threatening points. His enemies where so weak, so helpless. Gregor found himself smiling as he played with them and lapped up their fear, their terror.
Gregor blinked. Lizzie was having a panic attack, and Boots was screaming at him.
"Stop! Bad Gregor, Bad Gregor! Gregor stop now! Bad! Bad! Bad!"
His victims ran, leaving behind the unconscious miscreant that had started betting up the little boy. The boy Gregor had been trying to protect was huddled, terrified, in the bushes that lined the park. Gregor bent down to check the teenager's pulse. In his panic, Gregor had a hard time finding the boy's pulse. Finally finding it, and feeling a soft breath on his cheek when he leaned his face over the boys mouth, Gregor fell back on the ground in relief.
"He's alive, he's alive," he kept chanting to himself.
The was a rustle in the bushes behind him; Gregor leapt up ready to fight. The scared child he had rescued took off running, wailing in fear as he went.
Lizzie and Boots walked towards him wearily. It hurt him to see that fear in their eyes; even more to know that that fear was of him.
Lizzie swallowed, fighting off a panic attack. "Is, I..s...is he...de...dead?"
"No," Gregor shook his head. "He, he's alive"
Lizzie nodded, still trying to stave off an attack. Boots was wailing.
"Boots, Baby, it's OK. It's all over. It's OK now." He picked her up in his arms and bounced her up and down, stoking her hair. He took Lizzie's hand, "slow breaths, Lizzie, I'm me now. Everything is fine." He held his sisters to him as he calmed them down enough to lead them home.
When his parents saw them, they launched into a tirade of panic.
"What is it; what happened?" "Are you hurt?" "Where were you?" "Where you attacked?" "Was it the rats?"
"No, I," Gregor gave up. Handing Boots to his mother, he grabbed a paper bag, sat Lizzie down, and got her to start her breathing into the paper bag. When Lizzie had calmed down enough to manage on her own, Gregor left his family in the kitchen and crawled into his bedroom.
What had he done? He could have killed that boy, and the others...That was the worst part. Gregor had enjoyed it! He had liked hurting them; he had reveled in their fear. Gregor clutched his pillow to him and buried his face in it.
He wished he could talk to Ripred. He would understand; he had gone through the same thing.
What was Gregor doing up here? He did not belong in the Overland. He did not belong anywhere, but at least in the Underland there were people who knew, who understood, there was Ripred.
God, what was he going to do? Surly, the cops would be looking for him now. What if his family got in trouble because of him? His family could not afford a layer. Hell, they could not afford a train ticket to the court house. Even if the cops never did find him, what if it happened again? There was no way he could go through the rest of his life without witnessing violence.
It had taken Ripred years to learn to control his Rager ability, to be able to turn it on and off at will. If it had taken that scary, killer rat so long to master it, it would take him even longer. And then, wasn't there something about rats learning faster than humans. Gregor remembered Ripred mentioning something like that when Gregor had dumped the baby Bane on the old rat after the "prophecy of Bane" fiasco. They certainly grew up faster, the Bane had gone from a shivering pup crying for its mother to a twenty foot mass murderer committing genocide with an army of gnawers behind him in a matter of months.
Would Gregor ever be able to control it? Would he turn into a monster that enjoyed hurting and killing others?
"Am I already a monster," Gregor wondered. His walls did not answer him.
