This was originally a part of my "Playmates" Fanfic, but the two parts were written separately and kept apart on sound advice from my Betareader. That makes this more of a sister fic to Playmates than an actual fic. How you view it is up to you. You can view the two as unrelated if you wish. I was originally not going to post this at all, but it seemed a shame after getting Sarah Frost to spend her time betaing it. Plus, I'm rather pleased with it, so… here you are. Hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: I don't own them so don't worry – I'm fairly sure the academy is still standing.
Enemies.
Scarab Dynasty.
She was fifteen years old the last time she saw him. Roughly thirty Kyrilian cycles and he, twenty-odd. He hadn't changed much, not that she had expected him to. They rarely do.It must have been only weeks before the First Dimension severed contact and the structure of the gnome population disintegrated, for some reason that, like the breaking down of most seemingly sturdy things in this world, was never explained. (Whatever the reason, it was from then on, a hell of a lot more annoying whenever you had to cross a once gnome-filled territory to find yourself the victim of a massively disorganized, and rather embarrassing, onslaught.)
'Does this not count at fraternizing with the enemy?' she says, watching him approach her as she sits on the hill overlooking the power sector. There's been another meltdown of sorts in there, and the whole building looks like it's caught in an indoor fireworks display, which is amusing, if nothing else.
'Since when were you my enemy?' he asks.
'Perhaps I'm not.' She raises an eyebrow at the expression on his face. 'Actually, I think I'm more of a neutral.'
'Neutral?' He frowns.
'That's the way of the Lightning Knight, isn't it?' she responds, calmly, without looking at him. '"The stranger is a neutral figure, neither friend nor enemy, until they give you reason to suggest either one or the other". I could quite happily take you apart if I wanted to. On the other hand, I haven't tried to yet. I have no reason to. Neutral.'
He blinks at her, frowning at her almost perfect recital of the code. 'You'd think you'd been watching us,' he says.
She smiles a little, but reveals no secrets. Her powers of shape shifting are now well developed. To walk amongst the Knights and act as one of their own is easy, provided she is careful about taking on the right guise. It would be no good walking in there as any old familiar Knight and then meeting herself in a corridor. Also it'd be rather useless to appear as one whom nobody in the academy would have ever seen before and thus arouse suspicion of her identity. Instead she observes Knights randomly as they pass her in the streets, takes in memories of their traits and then, when she wishes to create a convincing Knight morph, merges them together, creating a Knight with familiar characteristics, yet unrecognisable as any one in particular. The kind of person someone would pass in a corridor and think "she seems familiar" or "perhaps I've seen him in training sometime," and think nothing more about it.
She's been sent several times, to watch the goings on within the academy, at the request of an acquaintance of her father. She's been told that he's a Sorcerer, and that he has some kind of… claim on her when she's older. She hopes privately that this doesn't mean what she assumes it means. The man doesn't even have skin about his bones –a literal, walking carcass, and certainly not someone she wants to find herself bound to for the rest of her days. No matter how much respect her father has for him, or how charming he is to her when she meets him in the courtyards, each time he arrives at their home. Still, at least his odd requests to send her into the Academy, disguised as one of the Knights, give her time for a little excitement.
'The way you go on you'd think that we were doing something wrong,' he says after a long moment's silence. As awkward as ever, it seems. Obviously he didn't much like long, unfilled silences. 'Everything seems to be against the Knights no matter what they try to do for this world. Why is that?'
'You really have no clue?'
'That's why I want you to tell me. You seem to think you know more about it than anyone else around here. Even Lightning Knights themselves.' He smiles, a youthful smile, but not unintelligent for his age. Not that she was ever below average intelligence herself. 'Where better to look for answers than the person who assumes she has them all?'
'Is this some pre-adolescent attempt at flirting, Lightning Knight?' She laughs. 'Or are you always this naïve?'
He isn't deterred. 'Why is it that they hate us?' he asks. 'You know, don't you?'
She sighs, averting her gaze to the still rather chaotic sight of the power station. She wonders momentarily why no Knights have appeared yet, and why the only one in the vicinity is sitting besides her angsting over his purpose or something, rather than trying to make himself useful down there. Then she remembers the plant is automated, and repair-bots will already be scouring the place, seeking out and repairing the damage.
'To say that they all hate you is probably an overstatement,' she says. Though privately she thinks that it's not a huge one. She has observed them enough from the point of view of an outsider to know what the problem is. Lightning Knights are… different. This world is not one accustomed to their ideal of weapons raised in the name of "peace and justice for our time" (they'd modified it again)whatever time that was supposed to be. In the beginning there was the Sixth Dimension and its sisters and countless peoples surviving, wandering or skirmishing for whatever control they could obtain of the land. Then along came some hero or tyrant (nobody really remembered which he was) who changed the way one man thought, and that one man decided that the world itself was in need of changing. Thus were born the Lightning Knights.
The idealism, the romanticism, they… unnerve people. Anger those not willing to change their ways. Others she meets–more irrationally, she supposes–appear to hate the Knights with a passion. People like her father, and the Buzzbeasts, and the undead Sorcerer who sends her to spy on them whenever he has the opportunity.
'Lightning Knights believe they are doing something special for this world,' she says plainly.
'And what are we doing?' He sounds sceptical. It's only to be expected, she thinks.
It takes her a few moments to consider the rest of her answer.
'Take the Buzzbeasts, for example. They have spent the last…' She hesitates, trying to think of how long it's been. '…The last whoever knows how many years building their society upon survival of the fittest. The Lightning Knight ideal rips apart the very infrastructure of what they know to be normal. It tears up the very fabric of their nature, and leaves then to suffer struggling against their instincts…. and you wonder why people protest?'
He seems to think about it for a while.
'We just want to help. If they call trying to make this world a better place destructive, then that's their problem.'
'Maybe, yes,' she says, 'a better place…for those who follow their ideal. Seeking justice amidst carnage and diplomacy before judgement for all…provided you're a humanoid.'
His head snaps up. 'What is THAT supposed to mean?'
She doesn't tell him what it's supposed to mean.
She shows him.
When he looks away she allows herself to shift into a new form. She focuses her mind on something ugly and from there the transformation is easy. He twists around and immediately leaps to his feet when the Buzzbeast reaches out and taps his shoulder with a thick grimy claw.
She would have laughed, had the thick, lizard-like jaws been capable of it. As it happens, she contents herself with snarling, displaying ten rows of daggers for teeth and sending rivulets of electricity snaking from her jaws. Thick reptilian limbs grip the earth. Her teeth are bared. But she's not attacking. Not yet.
A shock of lightning misses her shoulder blade by a fraction of an inch, but the Buzzbeast skin is so thick it doesn't even feel a twinge of static. The creature's brain is provoked by the attack however, and she can't stop herself. Witha swipe of her claws she knocks him to the ground. Hard. It takes all her effort to control the creatures violent, instinct-driven brain. To keep herself from slashing at him again. To just hold the boy there, as he struggles.
'Let… go!' he gasps, lashing at its face beneath the steely teeth. Shards of blue lightning begin to burst and crackle in his wrists. He aims for her jaws –the only delicate area of the creature's metal-like body. She starts back in alarm, but quickly regains her composure and snarls, then laughs. A freakishly normal laugh from such a bizarre creatures body, as its thick vocal cords are the first to be transformed back into her thin, delicate humanoid ones. She allows her body to sink back into its natural form and leaves the cadet sitting there, staring in shock at the girl who became a monster and then a girl again. A girl who happens to be wiping a patch of blood from her bottom lip.
'See?' she says, shaking out her hair. 'I take on a form that is different from your own, and all of a sudden I'm a threat. If I'd attacked you in that manner while I had been myself you would have chosen to defend before you attacked me. That's the approach people believe the Lightning Knights have, and you've done nothing to change those assumptions.'
He says nothing. He sits there and stares at her.
'Don't just sit there gawking like some kind of toadfish, Lightning Knight.' She laughs. 'I always told you how much my powers surpassed yours, didn't I?' She waits for him to nod. He doesn't. His eyes shift from shock to irritation. She hesitates for a moment, suddenly ill at ease. Then she shifts a few feet away and lies back down on the hillside, looking up into the neon clouds. 'You need more practise, Lightning Junior.'
'I… It's never meant that way. You… just don't see it the way we do,' he says quietly after a moment. To be honest she's been waiting for him to say something like that.
'I think differently.' She shrugs. 'Perhaps that's what makes me the enemy.'
He doesn't speak to her again for another half hour. Staring at the twisting sky, she must miss his movement and the sound of his footsteps. Either that, or he's obviously been lying to her when he says he hasn't learned to fly yet, because when she looks back, he's vanished.
She bites her lip and tastes the blood.
It is three weeks later when the Lightning Knight Academy is razed to the ground.
For all the incredible transformations her world seemed to be undergoing for no clear reason lately, the fall of such an established civilisation as the Lightning Knights is not one she has expected.
It happens just days before rebellion breaks out in the circus sector and the Haunted House appears out of nowhere, smack bang in the middle of the Realm of Darkness. The academy is not far outside the House of Illusion, and she can see much of the unfolding events from her bedroom window. All through the night, the air is filled with the cries of Buzzbeasts and freaks and minions-without-names, recruited by the Sorcerer for the purpose of crushing as many Knights as possible.
The carnage begins at the factory, where the power cables of every station are ripped to shreds, beyond the fixing abilities of the repair-bots, denying the Knights the electricity needed to restore their power. That makes it easier for them to be destroyed, if anything. Picked off one by one. Ripped down at their guard posts and out of their private stations. Spies –other shapeshifters sent by the Sorcerer– unlock the doors and leave open the security gates.
The Lightning Knights are too far away to be heard from the House of Illusion. But everyone can feel their anger and passion and power, shaking the world apart. They're more… organized than any number of freaks could be, even when caught unawares. They might have won, had each Knight not been outnumbered by at least ten to one, as was later reported in the journals.
The night before, her father and the Lord who had sent her to the Academy so many times before to gather what, at the time, had seemed pointless or meagre. She's now cursing herself for not working out the pattern sooner. She had crept downstairs in the darkness, hid behind the doorway to listen to her father talking with his honoured guest about the spilling of blood: "or whatever their kind have instead of it."
It meant nothing to her at the time. Now it makes sense. The kind of sense that makes her heart thud and her blood boil in her ears. She is filled with a knowledge that is as astonishing as it is horrifying She runs to the highest window of the house and looks out into the distance, down the heavy slopes of the hills, past the mining district and the dead power factories and the Lightning Knight territories in District Two far out in the distance.
Electricity and smoke warp the horizon. She opens the window and leans out into the dark; if she listens closely she can hear distant voices and screams, echoing long into the night.
End.
Crit is appreciated and welcomed.