Disclaimer: For once, I can claim ownership. Erik is mine! Everything else belongs to Square.
Author's Note: This is a rather twisted idea I had the other night, and I couldn't get it out of my head until I wrote it down. Is it interesting enough that I should continue? I know I need another long story like I need a hole drilled through my head, but what do you think?
METAMORPHOSIS
Prologue
For the first time in years, the sky was grey and heavy with rain. That perfectly suited the mood of the young man named Erik who was standing awkwardly at the crowd's edge.
He stood by himself, as if the crowd sensed he was different from them, that his thoughts were as dark and stormy as the clouds rather than celebratory.
Ironic, really, since this was a funeral. They bodies had already been laid to rest, with great difficulty, into the hard ground, and the occasion had somehow become a festive occasion. People from all walks of life had gathered; citizens who had lived their whole lives in safety, scientists who had worked ceaselessly on the defeat of the Phantoms, military men and women whose lives had been lived in danger; even those who had barely escaped the New York catastrophe had all gathered.
Huh. I could teach them a thing or two about survival. They make pushing their way through a crowd and trampling innocents in their efforts to save their own hides sound like a noble deed. Erik eyed these survivors, gathered at a place of honor, with thinly veiled contempt. He shifted his weight, wishing he could sit down but knowing he couldn't until the ceremony was over. He'd spent the last two years in zero-G on board the Zeus Station, and his damaged muscles could barely support him in normal gravity.
They should let me sit. I'm one of the scientists who supposedly escaped the Zeus before a madman blew it all to hell. Another "hero." No one's ever bothered to mention we were evacuated, not escapees!
Instead, he was forced to stand with the other Zeus Cannon survivors, honoring the brave Captain Gray Edwards and the squad who had died for him. While Erik admitted that Edwards's sacrifice had been a genuinely noble deed, the things Erik knew made the captain's demise seem more like a waste.
A stage had been set up, and at a podium, some general was droning on about the virtues of Captain Edwards and his Deep Eyes squad. Erik ignored him, his eyes sweeping the tables set off to the side, searching.
There. Wearing an elegant black dress was a small woman sitting next to an elderly man. Her face glistened with tears as she listened to the general's elegy. She didn't look like a hero, Erik thought, just a frail human woman who had lost all those she held dear. As he watched, the woman buried her head in her hands, and her companion patted her shoulder.
Dr. Aki Ross. Dr. Sid. Two people whose names were on the tongues of every person, two who had won places in the hearts of every war-weary man and woman of this world.
There was silence for a moment as the general finished his speech, then Aki composed herself and walked onto the stage. She thanked the general for his touching speech, then moved on to her own emotional monologue. Erik saw many people around him wipe tears from their eyes. Erik himself was affected, though not in the way the others were. She sounds so full of pain… Could he have been wrong?
Aki's speech shifted into a presentation of a plaque commemorating those lost in her efforts to save the world, set here, in the old Central Park of New York City. She shed tears for those who had died in the fall of New York, and Erik couldn't help but think of another who'd been lost, who none would mourn for. None would weep for a traitor.
A clap of thunder made Aki jump, and that heralded a downpour the likes of which none had ever seen. I don't see why the scientists think this will help; the ground's too hard for the water to soak in and be of any use. Erik smiled slightly as the crowd began to scatter. Plus, this was badly timed. Why did they think their little storm would wait until after this was over? Just because they created it…
The crowd hurried towards the buildings that had been cleaned and set aside for the occasion, splattering through deepening puddles and crying out whenever lightning flashed across the sky.
Erik waited for the bulk of the crowd to leave, then limped towards the plaque. Despite his exhaustion, he wasn't eager for the press of bodies in the building; it made him all to aware of his body's own shortcomings.
Mud splattered his silver environmental suit, so like the one Aki had worn, and his thick, dark grey jacket that identified him as Zeus Station personnel clung tightly to him, but he ignored the discomfort. He paused by the plaque, lifting his face to let the rain sluice through his long auburn hair, and to splatter against his glasses. Beautiful, he thought.
He turned to the plaque, his fingers tracing the words carved on the surface. FOR THOSE WHO DIED TO GIVE US PEACE, it said. Beneath it, the names of the Deep Eyes squad who had helped Aki were engraved. Below that was another message about the loss of New York.
Erik's fingers touched the wet stone, the tips tracing the letters H-E-I-N in the water, and watching as the rain ruined his own little epitaph. None but himself would ever warn the man. None would even realize what he'd been trying to do for the planet.
An eerie cry sounded from somewhere, and Erik froze. A Phantom… His heart raced as he recalled the worst time of his life, when he'd lived in constant dread of that cry… But it had sounded wrong somehow. It had almost sounded like it was coming from the disturbed earth below him…
Erik turned around, his legs nearly giving out under him in the process. He nearly fell again when he saw the figure in the rain. She stood ankle deep in the rainwater, arms uplifted. Her black dress clung tightly to her body. Dr. Aki Ross seemed not to have heard the cry. Perhaps he had imagined it.
Aki's eyes opened and met his. She smiled, a sorrowful smile that tore at his heart. She had been through so much, yet lived on. He admired the bravery, the strength of will that let her go on living.
And he deeply regretted that he had to kill her.
