I have multiple reasons for writing this: One, my laptop crashed, deleting half of the new chapter of Perennial Rose. Damn it. Two, Xekstrin mentioned a certain author named .PhaerynTao. in a PM. So I hopped on over and checked out one of her stories. "Egg," in particular, struck me as amazing. The fact that she captured so much in so few words thrilled me, plus the plot was absolutely chilling in an awesome way. So this story is sort of a tribute. Kind of a reversal, too, because...Well, read it and find out.
Song: Brian Adams, "Inside Out." (Thank you, Hermonthis.)
strangers
...
human, adj. 1: of, relating to, or characteristics of man, 2: susceptible to or representative of the sympathies and frailties of man's nature.
machine, n. 1: a constructed thing, whether material or immaterial, 2: an instrument designed to transmit or modify the application of power, force, or motion.
love, n. 1: the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration--in love: inspired by affection.
...
He died in battle.
Sort of.
When they brought word, she refused to believe it. When they sent an envoy out to recover his remains, she refused to believe it. When they brought his body home, she still refused to believe it. It was only at the funeral, when he lay silent and pale in the coffin, did the realization of the end blossom inside her mind. And her first thought was, We will lose.
The war had barely begun. The Aurora Stone wasn't even hers yet. The Storm Engine was half complete. Three months into her reign, and something had already gone drastically wrong. The death of the Dark Ace was most definitely not planned.
The night after his burial, she sat in her throne room and stared at the empty patch of floor before her. A patch of ground once filled by a person. She had her head on the palm of her hand, her elbow on the chair, her entire body leaning gracefully on her arm. Black hair swept across her face. Violet eyes shocked the air with electricity. Her conquest had ended before it had even begun. She knew life wasn't fair, but this...this was just outrageous. To build her life-
A lightning bolt struck her brain and made it shiver with delight. Build.
If she couldn't have the real deal, then she'd just have to make the next best thing.
...
Her quest began on midnight the day after inspiration struck.
She demanded privacy and locked herself up in her workshop, the sounds of a creation blooming through the palace like thunder. Real thunder, meanwhile, shook the outside, rocked the sky, and joined with the rain to create a perfect cacophony. The water trickled down the translucent windowpanes of her room and formed rosettes, sprinkling the glass like some sort of ethereal garden. Instead of being nourished by the rain, however, it was created by it altogether, and come daylight, they would dry up and fizz into steam, leaving behind perhaps a pale white imprint, to be gazed at with annoyance.
She wouldn't notice, though. She'd be working, still.
He would have the same abilities, the same skills. The same physical appearance. The same personality, that air of haughtiness and at times, cynicism that could get him through anything. The lopsided sneer he wore during victory, which was often. She hadn't realized before how well she knew this man, not until she began to run her hands over the material that would serve as his skin and the tubes that would carry his blood.
When his torso and limbs were built, she set to work on the face. Her memory served well; pianist's fingers held the sculpting tools and scratched out, bit by bit, piece by piece, a head that she'd seen for nearly her entire life. But when at last, his empty sockets stared at her, and the hard line that was his mouth frowned at her, she felt something she hadn't expected to feel.
Nervous.
...
They did not match.
She wrung her hands and glared at them. Glared at the jar with viscous fluid and two round spheres inside and made animal-like noises. They were red; they weren't supposed to be red. She could still see his face, with those dark and riveting blue eyes, which could wrench your soul out and dash it to pieces if you weren't careful. And she was always careful...
But red? They seemed to scream of hell and war and blood, which was fitting, she supposed. Like pieces of the sky above her had fallen into his head. But she didn't want anyone to notice the change. Most of the palace didn't know of his demise; the funeral had been small and private and no one, save the Talons with him on that fateful day, saw him fall. Not even the ones they'd been fighting had realized. They'd run before they could see his skimmer plummet before the skyline, never to rise.
Would it be too apparent? She shook the jar, vainly hoping they'd flip around and be blue again, like a mood ring. But she didn't really have a choice, did she? Time was running out. Now or never, wasn't it? She dipped the tweezers into the gel and pulled one gooey orb out, before striding over to his still and lifeless shell, lying with a blanket over his body, only the head poking out. Those two dark sockets, empty and haunting, made her start. She slipped the eye into where it belonged, then took the other out of its jar and repeated the process.
Everything else was in place: the eyebrows, the hair, the nails. Only one ingredient missing. Peeling half of the sheet back, she gazed at the open chest, which revealed clear tubes bearing clear fluid, lying still and stagnant, no force pumping his "blood" through his body. She refused to think of him as an "it," even though that was what he was. A robot. A drone.
She built him for war.
Below the ribs made of metal and the lungs made of a material that felt like leather, was an empty space where the tubes stopped and nothing began. He was missing his most important organ, and she knew only one thing she could place there. Only one. She didn't especially like the idea, but it was that or nothing. And she hadn't worked for three days just to watch her creation fall apart.
...
Obviously, the Talons had been confused when she ordered for the body to be exhumed. She couldn't blame them. But they did it; how could they not? And as soon as the coffin was in her workroom, she had them tossed into jail and threw away the key. This secret could not get out.
She had put a mask over her nose and mouth. Gloves were on her hands and goggles covered her eyes. For the first time in years, she tied her black hair back. In the mirror, she looked like any other scientist, about to get into something messy. To think her crystal lab had become a morgue. She grimaced, but the grimace was invisible. Then, prying the wooden lid open, she stared at his pale and still body once more.
There was no smell she could detect, and he looked dry and weak. Frail. Something she wasn't used to. She reached out with a pair of scissors to cut away the shirt, but couldn't bring herself to do it. Something was wrong, something was out of place.
Gloves, the gloves. They didn't belong; she tore them off and touched the skin of him for the first time in years. Cold. Waxy. Unreal. The scissors flashed and the cloth was gone. Then the scalpel. She gulped against her will. His lean and bare chest waited. White scars drew themselves across the flesh, reminders of a not so distant past. The blade waited. Would he bleed?
Summoning up her courage, which she had plenty of, she sliced a V-shape, running from one collarbone to the other, then straight down between the ribs. Red oozed out. As if it was a dream, she replaced her gloves, then peeled back the skin, all disgust gone and swallowed down with her spit, dangling somewhere in the back of her throat like some big ugly spider. There, sitting where it should be, large and dark red, already beginning to rot, as where the rest of his organs, was his most crucial muscle. She imagined it moving. There was a smell now, for sure, but she couldn't inhale it; her breath was gone. Setting the heart aside, she sewed him back up. The process took about an hour. She noticed for the first time the bloody slit below his ribs that the mortician had cleaned up and sewn most carefully. The thing that ended his life.
The soft fabric of his dress uniform passed between her covered and bloody fingers as she replaced the ripped shirt, then slammed the lid down.
Done.
...
She started the body up with a current. The heart, repaired and cleaned, now pounded inside his chest, which she had sealed for permanence. It would take time for the brain, or the mesh of wire that served as a brain, to start receiving signals. To wake up for the first time.
He was programmed to obey her. Her and only her. No one else.
He would be the only one she could trust. She built him, so she thought she knew him, but she was far from right, as she would soon find out. But for now, he seemed perfect in every way. Clothed in the colors of the nation he would serve with unwavering loyalty, complete with steel headpiece. She stood over him and waited.
A gasping breath. The lungs filled up for the first time. He sat up suddenly, then looked at her. Something inside him registered.
"Master."
And he became hers.
...
Her first order was to stand. "Stand," she barked, and he did. He bent over in a bow, hand on his chest.
"Who are you?" she asked.
He looked at her as any human would have, should that question been given to them. Quizzically. "The...Dark Ace." His hesitation was out of speculation, not that he didn't know. She was pleased.
"And how old are you?"
"Twenty eight." He still looked confused. "Master, where is this going?"
Yes, she had been careful to add in the slightest hint of his old irreverence. It was hard not to. She liked that about him, so long as he kept it under control. "You are dismissed, then."
He looks around in evident confusion as to why he's in her workroom. She's programmed in the memories of his namesake, so that he'll know what to do, how to react, to every situation he could be placed into. In all respects, he's exactly the same. She places her hands on her hips and stares at the door through which he's walked, his movement fluid and normal, casual, wolf-like.
She followed him through the halls to watch him handle the stairs, the darkness, to watch his reaction to other Talons. It was the same as always: a disdainful glare, or no reaction at all, if necessary. Later, sitting in her throne room, granting herself a few hour's rest before continuing work on the Storm Engine, she smiled inwardly at this small victory. Life would continue, and her plans would continue. Things were finally going her way.
...
Cyclonis had to admit, she had not planned for this.
It was two days after the creation; the Storm Engine was coming along, and soon, she'd send Carver out to retrieve the final piece. But there was something wrong with Dark Ace, something she had not expected.
He had not left the palace this entire time.
There were none of his usual spontaneous flights, none of his personal missions to the far reaches of the Atmos. Because she had not ordered him to. What she had not realized was that he could not decide for himself on where to go. People were beginning to suspect, Ravess in particular, that something was out of order. But Cyclonis couldn't stand behind him all day and issue orders; it wasn't convenient for anyone.
She sat in her throne room once more and mulled the problem over. What she needed was a way to monitor him, something to issue commands with. A leash, so to speak, that she could remove remotely and fasten remotely, as well. So once more, she required a small refrain from working on her grand weapon, and returned to the drawing board.
In the morning, she sent out orders for him to come to her workshop; she had something to give him. He showed up right on time with a malicious glint in his eye. Perhaps he'd just tossed some Talon down the trash chute.
In her hands she held a long, almost bone like structure made of lightweight metal, the exact length of his arm. "It's a new weapon," she explained, when he raised a dark eyebrow. A small beckoning gesture was all he needed to walk over so that she could fasten the object to his body; it clamped around his shoulder and wrist with a hydraulic hiss. It moved with him and was virtually indestructible.
"What does it do?" was an obvious question.
"It's a way for me to communicate with you," she said, leaning against the table, fire pooling inside her eyes, anticipation bubbling up like lava. "A monitor, so to speak."
He looked annoyed, but even if he wanted to, he couldn't take it off. It was locked to his shirt, and if he got a new one, well, she'd notice. And punish him. Only she had the key, only she held the power. The flames in her eyes leapt out and danced in front of him, as if to confirm this fact; he nodded and backed out of the room, the metal on his arm flashing. She smiled knowingly and flicked out the lights.
...
She stood in front of the contraption and listened for the mechanic sliding of the doors. The echo of his footsteps.
She stood in front of one creation and waited for the other.
The steady breathing of Raves, the dumb rasp of Snipe, and the dull hisses of the Raptors penetrated her ears. Her own words floated from one dark corner to the other. But not a peep from Dark Ace. Things had gone well, considering. After her monitor had been placed on his arm, she treated him as she had before. As just another person. Another human. Everything he wasn't. She sort of missed the one who lay unmarked in a blank patch of earth behind he palace, but her current one fought just as well, if not better. And that was all that mattered, wasn't it?
Finally, there was the shing of metal on metal, and he had arrived. She stopped speaking and listened.
"That would be my pleasure, Master Cyclonis."
"The Dark Ace. So glad you could join us."
A smile permeated her features.
...
"You can't win, Sky Knight..."
A dark shadow swept across the back wall. He had returned, gliding along, bat like. And then he touched down, the wings snapping into the brace attached to his person. She turned her head a little and faced the boy with ferocity building behind her eyes. The grip on her staff tightened, and she shifted her weight forward. Ready to move. To run. To attack.
The buzz of his sword. A flash of red light. The boy's lying on the ground, his eyes closed, only a few feet from the Interceptor spy. The other three, clinging to the Storm Engine, gasp. He steps beside her, and she inhales the burnt odor of his sword, and the musty smell that his him. Turning, with her voice amused, she says, "You always have to have the last shot." He merely smirks and sheathes his sword, then follows her back to the keyboard, where her fingers dance. The roof opens up to reveal a stormy sky. Violet electricity penetrates the clouds, which begin to swirl in a devastating cyclone.
All is going as planned.
"And then it begins." She is pleased.
"See...," someone groans. "That's where you're wrong. It's already...over." She spins around and fires at the risen Sky Knight, yet misses. Eyes widening in disbelief, she watches as he flies across the now open ceiling, twisting to gather momentum. Dark Ace raises his sword, only to have it broken from his grip. A roar of pain as the light singes his hand, and then he's hurled against one of the support beams. The Interceptor grins.
A few minutes later, it's all over, and the Sky Knight's blade is lodged in the blue stone which flickers feebly before dying. The engine is torn from its base, swept off into the sky, to land in the magma pits miles from here. The Sky Knights disappear, but not before the boy shouts out his name, a name which she will sweep into the archives of her mind for permanence. For the moment, however, she's sprawled on the floor, thrown back by the force of the explosion. The roof is plummeting, support beams sagging, the metal roaring like animals, ready to fall, ready to break at any moment. She looks up to see the Dark Ace, racing not towards the offenders, but her. The feel of his body covering hers floods all her senses, a sensation soon replaced by a darkness that takes over all.
...
She had planned her conversation with him after he woke up very precisely. Had worked out the pauses, the words she'd say, even the breaths and when to take them. But when she did finally slide her own small body from beneath his, and saw the closed eyes, the forced breathing, all of her prepared speech melted away. She grabbed the crystal lying on the floor beside her, envisioning the small tubes that created his body snapping, the bones breaking, the fluids flooding his being. His strength was a fragile one.
Cyclonis raised the steel pillar and watched him wake up and stand with relief. The fact that he had lost, that she had lost, began to faze her less and less. From some unknown place came a feeling she rarely ever felt. Something she couldn't name and didn't think she wanted to either, because that'd ruin it. He looked at her sheepishly and even managed a small grimace when she mentioned his defeat. She couldn't blame him.
When she dismissed him at last, and after making sure his movement was normal, she sat down amongst the rubble in an undignified manner and glared at the red stone sitting next to her. She felt guilty, for some strange reason. He didn't know he was a machine, he didn't know he was just a tool. He didn't realize she built him, not to feel, but to win. And he had failed in that purpose. Did that mean he was invaluable? She had to admit, she had grown strangely attached to the it that was a him. Her hands had stroked his skin, placed his organs, painstakingly arranged his vessels and brain synapses.
He was different from the one before. This Dark Ace had been engineered to be perfect. But in making him perfect, she had, in effect, made him imperfect. Thus...he was more human than she could have ever imagined. Sighing, then lifting her eyes to the sky above her, she stood, dusted herself off, and prepared for the great task before her.
...
Fists clenched. Sweat trickled. The metal was shimmering in the light.
She let the report drop to the ground and watched it float. The defeat at Gale was not expected. Neither was the defeat at Rex. But especially not this one. She had created those Enhancer Stones for a reason: to get those pesky Storm Hawks under control once and for all.
She had pored and perused across the blueprints of Dark Ace. Glared at the white lines on blue paper and frowned. Even pounded them with her hand and roared in frustration. Talons would definitely not be coming near her willingly for a while. She could not, however, find any programming errors, anything wrong with him. Nothing physical. Who knew exactly how artificial intelligence worked? What was certain was that there was nothing her hands could fix.
Cyclonis couldn't bring herself to speak to him. The monitor she'd strapped onto him has served its purpose, but she doesn't believe that could be the reason he's losing over and over again. Either something is wrong with him-which she has no problem admitting-or something is wrong with her.
Now that is an issue she doesn't want to believe.
True, Piper managed to push her away. But she hadn't gained victory, so to speak. The battle was not yet over. One possibility Cyclonis refused to consider was that there might actually be something special about those Storm Hawks.
Her thoughts were burst into by the doors sliding open. She hadn't summoned anyone. Why was...?
His red eyes pierced the darkness and sent her reeling. Standing, Cyclonis had to refrain from screaming. Instead, through tightly gritted teeth, she growled, "What are you doing here?"
He said nothing, and he didn't need to either. Something behind those eyes, those eyes made out of dead, not living, material, those red and blazing eyes that burned with a fire that would never die, told her everything she needed to know. All she could do was sit back down in her chair and shake her head. He spun around on his heel and faded. The shing of the doors, the diminish of his footsteps, and she buried her face in her hands. What was happening? To her, to all of them?
The sky rumbled.
...
They needed to talk. Really, honestly, talk.
She asked for him and he walked into the throne room to see her standing. Her hood down, cloak disposed of, lying on her throne where she should have been. She rarely ever greeted her servants on her feet. The feathers curled and uncurled at regular intervals. Like claws, pulling him in. She stood there and waited.
He arrived early; it was to be expected. The perfection, the abruptness, the stiffness of his actions, they were all things she thought she'd like, things she put into him to make him better. But you couldn't improve on what was already the best. And there lay the fatal flaw. The inhuman humanity of him did something to her nothing else could: it made her fear. It could point to her destruction. To his.
She moved down the steps and looked upon the body she had sculpted with her bare hands. Imagined the heart within him, pumping steadily, sending the clear fluid rocking from head to toe. Her violet eyes seared into him and made him stiffen even more.
"Come." An order. He obeyed immediately. He looked confused, but moved closer. She placed a pale hand on a shoulder that was familiar to her. He was him, yet he wasn't him. He was an object that she had given life, and so he was hers. Hers in all senses of the word. She possessed him, but in a way, he possessed her. "Why?" was her next order. A question, but an order, as well.
"Because." And that was his only response.
"Do you care for me?" she blurted. Something stupid; she didn't do that much.
He was silent, because he had nothing to say. She shook him. "Perhaps."
"Prove it."
He leaned forward, and it was his turn to ask a question. "Why do you ask me to prove something I've been confirming all these years?" All these years, he really does believe he's alive. That he's the human I based him on.
"Prove it," she said once more. After a moments hesitation, she pulled him against her and whispered, "Kiss me."
Another order; he was programmed to obey. He had to. Whether he wanted to, she'd never know. But when his mouth touched hers, she sensed a longing that was taken care of. Perhaps it was just her imagination, more of her own lies, more of the walls she'd put up and painted to suit her own tastes. So that the real world was blocked away. Was she being fair to him? No. Did she care? She pretended not to. She shoved him away and out the door; he looked hurt.
More lies, more twisted, twisted lies, like ivy strangling a tree. It'd fall eventually. But until it did, she'd continue wrapping herself in what she wanted to.
...
It, it, he's an it, she knows he's an it, she knows he's permanent, that he'll never age, that he'll outlive her, the empire, the war. Perhaps one day, he'll just break down. Go to sleep and not wake up, rusting, creaking, the liquid in his veins drying. The heart in his chest shriveling up and rotting at last, a process long delayed.
The pain in his eyes that she had placed there. The pain was self-created. Had she fallen so deep that she couldn't get out?
She hoped not.
He was in her throne room. He was staring at her with a blank look behind his eyes. She was standing in front of him and she was trying to look apologetic. "I'm sorry." The words leak out like viscous muck; the dribble out of her mouth and pause in midair. She's surprised he hears them at all.
A lopsided grin appears on his mouth and is mirrored on hers.
Could it be she's actually be falling in love with a machine?
Unlikely.
...
The great blue wall advanced like a plague, sprawling across her empire, sweeping her work away with one great hand.
The two of them stand on the balcony and look out at the sky. She presses her heart against his and tries to make this moment real. The ivy has won at last; the great oak will fall. She doesn't want it to, but it will. He looks down at her and frowns. It was his turn to apologize, but she swats those words away; they mean nothing. She places a wiry hand on his artificial muscles, and feels him shrug. Goosebumps rise on her skin when she envisions the crumbling palace walls.
She wants him, for once, to be normal, to be human. She wishes so hard, it hurts. As the army advanced, her confusion did as well. She needed him to be able to analyze her emotions and react to them. Ushering him inside, Cyclonis looked into his eyes and remembered the frustration at their wrong color. Now, she had no complaints. Red echoed her heart, echoed the stormy attitude he had managed to keep. She wondered if keeping the old heart had helped or harmed him. She placed a thin and pale hand over the beating organ and pressed herself against him; he had little reaction, except perhaps a small loosening.
He had but one purpose in his life, and that was to make war. Not to love, not to feel. She hadn't thought that'd be a problem...until now.
Stroking the side of his face, she sighed. "What should we do?"
"Fight it out." She expected that answer. She hated that answer. Another kiss, another touch of the lips. He leaned forward for about half a centimeter, then allowed her room to lean back. Suddenly, her hand dove into the folds of her cloak and pulled out with a small metal tab. In a moment of compulsion, she stuck it into the monitor on his arm. It hissed, then fell off of him and clattered to the ground.
"You're free. Go," she whispered. "You are dismissed."
Later, when night fell, the last night to come to Cyclonia under her reign, there came a tap on her chamber door. She sighed and watched it open. He was there, again.
"Master-"
"Shh." Gliding down the dark steps, her eyes shimmering, whether with water or anticipation no one really knew. "Stop talking." He did. Looking at him, thinking that he was perhaps the most innocent of them all, she wondered if he deserved to be captured. Killed. Besides, he couldn't die. They could chop off his head and he would cease to function. Lately, as she fell asleep, if she fell asleep at all, she told herself repeatedly to stop thinking of him as a person. As a...pet. He's a machine. He's something she built to function as a complicated weapon. So why does she feel for this drone more than she did for the Storm Engine? Was it the fact that he looked like a man she once trusted with her life?
Now he was an "it" she trusted with her life.
She felt like slapping herself.
It wasn't even love she felt for him. It was a strong sense of possession; the contact, the relationship, it was all part of a desire to confirm that he really belonged to her. She wanted him to be human, yet inhuman, all at once, as the old Dark Ace had been during the brief period of time he'd served beneath her. And now, as the sun of her empire sets, Cyclonis realizes this is one part she does not wish to fade. Her greatest invention. Even if he didn't win all his battles, he won her. So, perhaps the correct way to say it, was that she was his.
"Goodnight," was all she said, before she pulled out a blade she used for crystals and a dark violet stone from her workshop, stood beside him, and closed his eyes with her fingers. He didn't struggle; perhaps the mechanic part of him realized that her finger was poised above the off button already. Slicing into his chest, past the shirt and the skin and the lungs, she reached the heart and cut into it. There was a dull whirring sound as the blood ceased to flow, and the brain's electrical currents stopped flashing. The shell crumpled to the floor, and she went down with it.
Something inside her died and was born at the same time. She felt like weeping and laughing all at once. She pressed the Oblivion Stone to his chest, and in a puff of dust, he was gone. With a shaky sigh, she stood, the blade dripping with clear fluid. It was over at last, the great love affair between woman and thing. If he was, ever, a thing. He was more human than she was in many respects, yet less in others. So perhaps letting him go wasn't such a loss after all.
She faced the door and waited for her fate. Dropping the Oblivion Stone and the blade and listening to them clatter, Cyclonis closed her eyes. Perhaps, many years from now, should she still be alive, she'd look back on this experience with a hint of nostalgia.
Should she still be alive. What a notion. She repeated those words to herself over and over, mulling. She, like so many others, had always thought of herself as immortal. But no one was forever. Not even a machine could ever be forever.
To think that she could be dead was strange. That her life could be ended, as soon and as fast as his. As it. Ah, the debate continued inside her. She let her fists uncurl and her breathing slow. Waited, waited, and realized that in the end, she didn't know him at all.
They were strangers to each other, master and servant, creator and creation.
Above definitions from Webster's Dictionary.
And yes, I'm sad, because my story is over five thousand words long. I just can't do as much in a short space...Wah.