Story Title: I Want Out
Author: Picklesticks
Genre: Generator Gawl
Rating: G
Summary: Nekasa remembers who he is
Warnings: SPOILERS!! Also, shamless mixing of dub and original dialogue. I just picked whichever line I liked better at the time. Shounen-ai subtexts Koji x Ryo, Kanae x Takuma
Notes: Yes, I am obsessed with the whole [INSERT SPOILER FOR 4TH DVD] thing. What gave it away? Maybe His Eyes and this?
Archive: Yes, just tell me first please. (As if. Still haven't found GG fics anywhere but FF.N. So frustrating)
Disclaimer: Not mine. They'd be doing more naughty things if they were. Please don't sue, I'm just a poor college kid.
The world around me is mad. I am mad. No, I am sane. Everyone, everything around me is mad. I am mad. The world, the mad world, is driving me mad. All around me is fire, noise, destruction. It is the end of the world, the death of all things we know and hold dear. I'm hearing the death throes of humanity, the last flails before everything turns to light and heat and we are no more. The ground heaves, tilts, sways… no, it's not the ground… I'm sitting somewhere… not my lab, no, not my familiar lab, my home, surrounded by the papers, disks, computers, models, and early animal subjects of my research. I'm… somewhere else… I see fire, explosions, lightning filling the sky… hear screaming wails, cries, death… is that thunder I hear? The beating of gigantic wings? Is it the Angel of Death, come to bear us all away? The lightning does not end. It is a steady presence, electrifying the air, illuminating the sky in wavering, flickering, blue-tinged light… it fills this town… Oju, yes, that's the name, Oju… with eerie shadows… it makes ghosts of living people… or are they ghosts?... is this what dying sounds like? All the noise, all the deafening noise, is going to crush my head… do I feel blood pouring out my ears, or is it just my tortured imagination?... The lightning grows stronger, it's pushing my face in… the sounds are like hammer blows to the sides of my head… I'm going to collapse under this pressure, my head will crumple like a tin can, like a piece of overripe fruit, mashed to a pulp by the incredible forces outside, by the thunder and roar of the dying world, the light spearing down to impale Oju like a fallen soldier… I'm going to die in this hellish maelstrom… My head will implode like a shattered glass, collapse under all the pressure…
No, it will explode, burst outwards from the pressure inside it. Images… faces… names… voices… thoughts – memories? … people… events… What is happening? Who are those people? Why do their voices babble in my ears? I can't make sense of them… I don't understand… What do they want with me?... I recognize them… but I've never seen them before in my life… something tells me I know them, they are my friends, but what… who…? Something horrible is going to happen… I caused it… caused what? What's happening?
Image. Standing in an observation room, I glance at my research partner, a young Japanese man with an impossible cascade of green hair… I've seen him before… research partner? I've never done research with him… He came to my lab one day… with that blond boy… The thought whirls away before I can pursue it to the end. Something about that blond boy…
Image. I'm lying on the ground. It's summer, I can feel the sun bathing my back in gentle heat, but everything hurts… my head throbs… where am I? Who am I? A voice whispers in my mind, two words, seemingly meaningless…. Include cells. The memory whirls away…
Sound. Young voices. I am speaking… "Way to go, Koji." But that's not my voice! Someone else beside me. "Ooh, she likes you." A reply, in a deep, calm voice. "They all do." Who are those others speaking? What was that I was saying? Was that me? I don't remember saying it… or was that my memory of it? Now, finally, at the end of all things, am I remembering everything I lost? Everything that my desperate research could not uncover, am I now regaining only to die with it?
My head is going to explode. I clutch at it with my hands… I can feel the bones of my skull pushing outwards, expanding, unable to contain the whirling tornado of images loosed from their imprisonment… they're flying around my mind now… I can't make any sense of them… I press harder, forcing my parietal bones into place on the sides of my head… they were trying to fly outwards… Images. Voices. Memories. Ideas. Faces. Emotions. They rise and burst in my mind like gigantic blisters, spewing their contents into my conscious with no rhyme or reason… "Every human being has 23 pairs of chromosomes, totaling 46…" Hands flying over a keyboard… Auge. "This is all my fault…" "How much longer does he have?" A gigantic metal hand grips my body, crushing me… I scream in pain…
My head is spinning, throbbing, threatening to explode outwards from the pressure within, threatening to crumble inwards from the onslaught of stimuli… babbling voices, crackling lightning, the spinning, baleful orb of blackness that hangs over Oju…
A deep voice is speaking. Deep, familiar… I know him… I turn my head for a moment to see. A young man, mid- or late twenties, with dark, bottomless Japanese eyes, face framed by black hair… I know him… His name floats just out of my grasp, in the maelstrom of my mind… who is he?... I've seen him often. He's Her assistant, Her agent. Sometimes, if She is busy, he is sent to watch over me, to see that I am not disturbed. The Japanese man with the dark, unreadable eyes… he's sad, though… I don't know how I know it, but it has seemed that he is always sad… What is his name?
Names whirl through my head. Some I know. Ryuko Saito. That's Her. Yukio Saegusa… One of my colleagues, I hardly ever see him… Takuma Nekasa… That's me… right? Suddenly I am unsure. Is that my name? I don't know. I'm torn loose, whirling like a leaf in a hurricane, as an onslaught of faces and names tears through my brain… a quiet girl with pink hair…. "Gawl! Look out!" "Ryo! Koji! Get out of here!" The blond boy who kept haunting me in my lab… his face glares at me in accusation. "Do you know what you're doing? Do you have any idea what you'll do? You have no idea!" he howls in my ears.
I remember… my lips form the words. "Have you discovered the include cells?" I remember saying them… why? Why?! I never said them! He said them to me! But my lips and tongue remember forming the words, my throat remembers the desperate urgency behind the question… my hands curl further into my hair as I remember gripping the collar … my collar… I remember staring into the wide, mad eyes of Nekasa… but wait, I'm Takuma Nekasa…
"Takuma?" It's him again. That cool, deep voice… what is his name?... K- K- it starts with a K…
A brilliant flash of light bursts in my eyes, shooting agony to my brain. I scream, louder and louder, my voice, my self swallowed by that brilliant, all-consuming light…
Memory- thought. It's a time portal… he's opened a time portal… I can still succeed! Come with me… Koji… Hands clasping… come, we can still win… we jump… hands clutched, keep us together, but instantly we are whirled apart, hands gripping, sliding, releasing… I'm screaming… Koji… Koji!
"Takuma. Are you all right?"
I glance up, into those fathomless black eyes. "K- Koji?"
Silence, punctuated by gasps.
"I'm glad you remember me… Ryo."
I've been here before, I've lived this before, I know this… but it's different… I remember… I remember those words, but not spoken to me…
Memory-sensation. "I'm glad you remember me… Ryo." No. No, that can't be. I can't be… him. My hand reaches out to grip Koji's wrist, hanging on for dear life… I… No… "This is crazy… it can't be…" I moan…
"This is crazy… it can't be…" a soft, weak moan behind me.
Koji's talking… voices around me… but I am cast back into my own mind… not a maelstrom anymore, not a whirling, formless morass of memories, faces, names… no… now the pieces fall into place, and everything makes sense, terrible sense… Oh God, what have I done?!
"I remember…" I murmur softly. "I remember everything."
The exact words I now say are engraved on my brain. I almost feel I am reading from a script… the script of history… It's so easy… I have no strain to find the words I need… I remember too well standing behind this seat, listening to the man I had plotted to kill recite the journey that led from me to him. I remember… too much…
I finish speaking, and Kanae-Koji takes over. I try to listen to his words, but the swirling memories that surround me drag me back down. I am buried in the past… the present… the future…
"Do you know of a professor Takuma Nekasa? Is he still pursuing his research?"
"But the higher we climb, the further we fall, Professor, and I'm afraid of heights."
Koji, standing in front of the window, his uniform jacket and shirt off, tank top revealing the powerful muscles in his shoulders and arms.
"Ryo, what's wrong?"
Wow… a bicycle. A real bicycle. Never thought I'd see one of those…
"I guess in a way it is our fault. If we'd never come back, then Natsume would still be alive."
My shoulders shake gently as I hold back sobs of frustration and agony. Everything is going so wrong!
Koji's hands slide up my back. "Ryo…" he murmurs softly. "Oh, Ryo…" Gently, he begins massaging my shoulders, fingers targeting the taut clumps of muscle. "I know, it's hard, it hurts… We'll make it," he whispers intensely. "We will succeed, Ryo. I swear it."
A nightmare. A ghoulish caricature of myself stands before a bank of computer displays as Gawl twists and screams before me. My blond hair is lank, and my eyes are round, staring, mad… I look just like…Like Nekasa.
I want to scream. I want to tear my hair out. I want to fling myself out of this helicopter and end my pathetic existence. I became the very thing I hated! The very thing I fought against!
"The vortex is starting to stabilize," Kanae says sharply. "We don't have much time left. We'll fly in low over the ring tower and touch down on the central spire. I'll leave Gawl to all of you." He glances at me. "Takuma, take care of them."
I nod in assent. "All right. Just be careful." I just found you again. Don't go and do something stupid and heroic and suicidal now.
Koji – the younger Koji – speaks up. "What about you? What's your part?"
Koji-Kanae smiles and looks out the side window. "I have to have a little conference with my boss."
I gasp despite myself. "What?" Koji, how can you do this? You know you can't defeat her… She's a Phase Five, damnit! She'll kill you with no more effort than she'd need to swat a fly. I just found you again, after twenty years – I don't want to lose you! Not like this – not so soon!
But what can I do? I'm a scientist who spent the last two decades obsessively searching for the things that would spell the world's destruction, a weak, mind-shattered wreck of a human being. All I could do would be to stand beside he who once was my dearest friend, die alongside him.
The thought fills me with a sudden peace. Yes. Die alongside him. Expiate all the wrong I've done. All my life, as Kudou Ryo and as Nekasa Takuma, I've worked unwittingly toward the destruction of the world. Now I can work against it. At this moment, this crux in time, I can undo all the ill I've done, can take back all the work I've done for Kubere by preventing that future from ever happening. I can erase the comedy of errors that comprises my life. And I can die alongside my dearest friend and companion. What more could I ask?
We bring the helicopter down on the roof, and open first the door nearest Her. With Koji-Kanae leaning out that door to catch her eye and distract her, I slide open the door on the other side, setting the body of the chopper between Her and Gawl, and give Ryo a push.
"Go! Move! We can't hold her for long!"
Ryo hesitates a second. "We? You're staying? But that's…
"Suicide. I know. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters if you don't wake Gawl up in time. Go!"
The three leap out of the chopper, and I go to the other side, sliding the door open to stand beside my Koji for the last time.
"You stayed," he says softly.
"They don't need me to go with them." And I need to be with you. "Besides, you wouldn't be able to defeat a Phase Five generator on your own, my friend," I reply, equally quietly. Of all the brave things you've ever done, this is the bravest. And the stupidest. And the most necessary.
"It's been eight long years since you stood by my side like this." His eyes are soft as he glances at me.
"For me, twenty, but either way it's been too long." And even longer since I lay by your side, but there's no time for regrets now. Our part is simple: stall Her!
"Ready?"
"Yeah."
I have not generated for twenty years, but the moment I feel the power take me over, it is as though those two decades have never been. My weak, fragile human body is replaced by a powerful melding of metal and flesh. I am freer, stronger, more alive than I have ever been before, not only because I am in my generator form, but because, as I take it, I feel the weight of my life lift from me. Everything is simple and peaceful, everything is clear. There are no more decisions to be made. I have one task to do, one little thing that needs to be accomplished. Responsibility has lifted from my shoulders, and it's like taking a breath of fresh air. How ironic, when I am about to die.
We leap forward, side by side, knowing it is suicidal, knowing that two Phase Ones were nothing but toys to a Phase Five. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that Ryuko Saito concentrate on us, on destroying us, and ignore the three teenagers clustered around Gawl.
Never in my life have I experienced agony on this level, agony that feels as though it is going to rip my flesh from my bones, turn me inside out, leave me splattered against the concrete in a bloody, formless mess. We are toys in the hands of Generator Saito, toys that can writhe, and scream, and through their agony distantly know that they are winning, that their foe is concentrating on them, distracted from the real battle being fought. We pick ourselves up from the ground, shake a little, then gather our strength and rush her again, shrieking wordless, formless defiance. Easily, she blocks us, one fist gripping each of us, holding us above her head as she delights in the power she has. Then we are flying, flung through the air to crash into the helicopter. Sparks leap, and touch the gas that has leaked from the already-ruptured tank. In an instant, we are engulfed in a brief flare of flames. I help my friend, my partner, my other half stand, and we again charge, feeling now the agony of our burns on top of the pain already screaming through our over-abused bodies. Saito laughs, and continues our momentum, launching us over her heads to sprawl in a helpless heap. I don't know if I can stand again. I don't think I can. My pain is too great. This is the end.
I look to Koji. With Generator vision, I can see beyond the blank face of his Generator form; the human face beneath it meets my eyes one last time.
"Koji." I mouth my words, knowing that my form cannot speak, but knowing that Koji, my Koji, can see my lips and read what I have to say. "I'm done. I can't take any more. I love you."
His eyes pierce mine. "I love you, Ryo."
Then the entire world turns to white light, and I know no more.