The Proposition of Protection
Crouching in the shades of the trees which cast their usual evergreen shadows on him, he looked at the tall white building in disinterest. He suddenly sensed her. She was right below him—her scent made him aware of her presence. He could tell without looking that her lime green eyes were gazing around the barren, moonlit landscape with indifference— something was different about her this time.
She always came out around this time of the day: night. The reason why she always came this time of day was a mystery to him...
Not that he cared or anything...
However...
She reminded him of someone...
A person from his memories that he could not recall...
A person who was with him when he was still human...
...
A shadow passed over the moon.
He didn't know when it started — no — he couldn't remember when it started. The aching pains, the droning headaches, the outbursts of unexplainable anger; he guessed it started when —
—The coffee cup crashed onto the floor mimicking the sound of chime bells blowing in the wind. An arrange of white , glass petals were scattered on the bland, marbled floor. Black liquid flowed between the dangerously sharp pieces of glass, staining the once unblemished ground. Three pairs of eyes stared at the monochrome mess in surprise. The black liquid quickly began spreading across the floor, but the pairs of eyes would not glance away from the flowing rivers of coffee.
Slowly as if in an unbreakable trance, the one who had shattered the cup of coffee in the first place began to slowly collect the glittering shards into the palm of his hand. Slowly, slowly, one-by-one, the porcelain fragments on the ground began to disappear, leaving only a pool of blackness on the surface.
"S-Six?"
Her voice rang out clearly above the white silence — now only one pair of eyes [auburn] lingered on the remnants of the shattered cup.
The green clad man carefully slipped on a stoic mask and hid his soul behind his shaded glasses.
"My hand slipped."
His reply— his excuse— was curt and hollow. Clutching the fragments in his hands, he turned around and began walking towards the trashcan to dispose of the mess. Then he heard it.
Drip.
He didn't feel it. He heard it. The small stream of red that ran down his enclosed fists soon became a scarlet droplet that fell and discolored the pure floor. A soft plopping sound filled the air as liquid made contact with solid. His brown eyes flickered behind his tinted lenses. Tightening his resigned mask closer to his face he glanced behind his shoulder and found two pairs of eyes boring into him — no one paid heed to the miniature lake of black on the floor.
Maroon eyes, faded evergreen eyes : they bore into his skin.
He was ,however, a wonderful actor; he flinched as if in pain and made his fingers twitch slightly. Then, pulling his scarred hand closer to his waist he began walking off.
"Uh, Six? You're bleeding..."
The phrase was no more than a faint whisper that was carried off by the untouchable wind. The adolescent's maroon eyes prodded the green man's back, awaiting a response.
None came.
The young eyes then shifted to the coffee stain on the ground, before it returned to the forest green suit. The teen cleared his throat and began to restate the phrase.
"Six —"
" I know. I can feel it, okay?"
The lie slipped from the older man's lips, his voice sounding irritable and...frightened. The stoical man's mask was beginning to fall off.
A soft padding sound of gentle feet walking across a hard floor resounded in his ears. He didn't have to turn around to know that it was herwho was behind him. Her warm presence began to quickly melt his frozen mask. He had to get out of there. Fast.
"I can wrap that up for you..."
Her voice was soft, but powerful — it was filled with pity. PITY? He didn't require pity! He wasn't weak or easily broken. How dare she imply such a thing?
"No. I can do it myself. I don't need your pity!"
His voice suddenly ruptured the stillness of the area. His mask had fallen for a second, revealing the ugly emotions that were bubbling inside of him. The mask was placed firmly upon his face once again, when the man had realized his stumbling mistake. Six cleared his throat slowly with a small cough.
"I can handle it myself. Thank you for your concern."
His voice flowered over the sharp atmosphere and smoothed away the hard edges of the uneasy ambiance hat hung thickly in the air. The green agent then strained his ears and heard ever-so-softly a sigh of relief from the maroon-eyed teen. As the sigh escaped the adolescent's lips, Six began striding away in a calm, yet hurried pace . His objectives were simple: escape from the teenager, and escape from her.
Down the twisted, painfully white, labyrinth of halls he went, not stopping even for a momentary breath. The shards of glass still clenched tight into his hand— he did not release them. Their sharpness pressed into his palm... But he did not feel a thing! No pain, no prick, nothing. Why?
Then he saw it. The looming white sliding door that stood guard to his room. As he approached it, it moved aside as if it was a loyal servant waiting to welcome its master into its home. A cool draft of air brushed across his face and he stepped into the darkness and comfort of his room. Another whoosh of a breeze signified that the door behind him had closed.
Peacefulness.
Letting out a long, deep breath, he pulled of his stoically mask. Then everything began flowing out. All the emotions that had been bottled up since that morning: anger, fear, confusion, and misery.
Out of spite he threw the collection of plaster shards onto the wall, causing them to shatter upon impact and sprinkle upon the ground [ obviously creating an even bigger mess than before]. He stared at the shards for a moment, eyeing the tinted red that was blemished their whiteness. Slowly he raised his hand that had held the glistening shards and watched as streams of scarlet streamed down. He stared. And he stared. And he stared.
Why?
He ripped of his glasses, the last obstacle that withheld his true emotions, and threw the against the wall. His shades chinked the wall with a small thud and fell onto the ground with the pile of sparkling flakes of glass.
Why?
The confusion buzzed in his mind. Uncalled for emotions bubbled in his core. His eyes grew hazy and became unfocused.
Why what?
Why...he had dropped the cup?
No...that wasn't the correct question...
The appropriate question was...
Why was he acting like this?
He was always so controlled , never letting his emotions get the better of him. Now though, his emotions had suddenly erupted like a volcano and his stoical mask could barely manage to hold that plethora of expressions in.
He fell backwards after tripping over his own clumsy feet. His back collided with the floor, sending a powerful shockwave throughout his body. Sudden silence filled the room. The quietness pulled on his mind and lured him into a comfortable sleep. He didn't move or attempt to get up. He simply lay there, his breath droning on heavily and sweat streaming from his forehead.
He. Had. To. Tell. Someone.
He. Had. To. Tell. Someone. That. He. Could. Not. Feel. Pain. But. Felt. It. At . The. Same. Fucking. Time.
An image of a kind woman with beautiful slanted, green eyes flashed into his mind.
No... he couldn't tell anyone. If he did tell someone, she might be the one hurt the most.
He knew the truth in his heart —he was becoming a monster. An Evo.
Yes, that was probably when it started. Now as he looked back at the blurred memories in his mind, he realized that back then he should've told some before it was too late. Before he became...this... Oh, the unnamed people that he had hurt. The people who he couldn't remember anymore. He wanted to remember them all, especially her. But alas it was too late, those memories we're buried somewhere deep inside of his mind. They were buried in an unreachable place... However, he still remembered that smell. He still remembered her blissful smell of sorrow on the day he had turned—
—"EVO..." the woman spoke softly, her lips trembling ever so slightly. The scent of sweet lemons caressed his senses [it was Her scent]"You're turning into an EVO, Six..."
The man did not answer because he had sewn on so carefully and delicately his stoical mask of perfection. He didn't dare peel of his mask and reveal his true emotions to her due to the fact that he was currently on a mission assigned my Providence. His mission? The usual, dull, humdrum, kind of mission of course : take down an EVO or soon to be his own kind to be exact.
Heavy silence weighed down the air. Even the once boisterous adolescent who sat in the back of the army truck was now solemnly silent.
The green agent turned away before he was stopped short by the woman's tight grasp around his wrist.
"Why didn't you tell us?... ME?"
Hurt resounded quietly in her voice. The 'indifferent' man slowly turned towards her.
Brown irises met lime green irises. The pairs of eyes bore into each other, tempting the other to look away. Nothing happened.
A sudden shifting sound came from the back of the truck. Both gazes brown and lime green turned to meet embarrassed maroon eyes.
"- - -, explain yourself." the green agent demanded while raising a thin eyebrow.
The adolescent was now standing in a very awkward and sexual position in front of the stationed meeting table.
"I...err..." the teen muttered in a shaking voice, "Practicing?"
A ghost of a smile met the green suited man's lips. The man was snapped out of his stupor by a sudden tingling on his face. His shaded eyes shifted from the teenager to the woman. Her arm was outstretched, her hand flat and red from smacking...HIM.
"- - - - - - - ..." he called her name quietly in an even voice.
The woman slammed both of her fists against the taller man's chest which resulted in close to no reaction. The man simply stared at her with an unchanging expression.
"Err...If he's going to go EVO..."
The adolescent's voice spiked the quiet atmosphere. The teen looked from the warm -eyed woman to the stoical man.
"If he's going to go EVO..." he repeated after clearing his throat, "I can just cure him and then there will be no problemo!"
The woman glanced up at the stoical man then back at the hotheaded teen. She shook her once, then twice.
She turned away from both the man and the teen as she bit her lip and buried her sad eyes in her hands.
"I-I need time to think this over..."
The woman's grief-stricken voice lingered in the room while her body was swept out of the army car and out into the morning breeze.
"Incurable? It can't be..."
The adolescent had once again spoken up in a shaking voice.
The green man ,however, had yet to loosen his emotionless mask and walked briskly to the mission control panel and studied the mission log carefully as if none of the events before them had happened.
"Six—"
"We're almost finished with our mission. After this short break, we'll round up the EVOs and ambush them... Then we can talk about 'this small problem' later..."
"SMALL PROBLEM? SIX, no offense, but this is a large problem!"
The adolescent's sudden burst of anger had caused Six's stoical mask to be shaken off of his face for just a moment. The teen's mentor glanced at him with a somber look, before he once again slipped his mask on.
"S-Six—"
The army car suddenly began rocking back and forth with short, yet tremendous force, sending sudden electrical jolts through both of the men's bodies. The car felt like it was about to fall into tiny ,unsecure pieces.
The adolescent was the first one to react surprising and shouted a single word that became imbedded inside of the green agent's mind.
"EVO!"
The green man and the orange teen flew out of army truck as the wretched word echoed in the air. Bright, quavering light stung at their irises as the afternoon breeze lapped at their clothes. The air was still; the ruckus and rumbling had stopped.
Then there was a cry of pain — more precisely her cry of pain. The sound rang out clearly in the heated air, quickly followed by the resonation of bullets and carnage.
He moved with disturbing silence across the still desert sand in an attempt to find her—
Who was "her"? Who was "her"? Who the hell was she?
Her soft image graced the very edge of his mind—it hardly scraped the surface...
Then there was that boy, the teenager, who also nagged at his mind viciously.
He couldn't remember Her face—their faces. He only recalled the agonizing pain of becoming a monster and the uncontrollable rage he had felt when he had first opened his new EVO'd eyes to the world . He had felt such—
—Pain. It had entered his body so suddenly, flowing rapidly through the atoms in his body.
Shattering. It felt like his entire body was dissolving into tiny , incy-wincy, bits of shattered pieces.
A numbing sensation slowly encroached upon his body.
His fingers numbed first.
His pale, long fingers peeled away to reveal bubbling blackness.
Then came his arms. They began to melt away to reveal dagger like splinters that protruded in every direction.
His legs became heavy as thickness began to cover them completely. The weight of it all had caused him to go into an unbearable crouching position.
His face— it was the last to go...A black substance began to crawl onto his face, covering all of his shocked features.
A mask, it was a mask that had begun to form over his face.
How ironic... He had always worn an invisible mask of apathetic emotions almost naturally. Now though, it was as if God was playing with him and decided to forcefully put a physical mask of impassiveness upon his face.
He couldn't help but smile slightly at the sweet, yet bitter irony.
...
The last thing he heard was the reverberation of his shaded glasses splitting into two pieces and the sound they made when they tumbled towards the ground.
The last thing he saw was HER. The last thing he saw was her lime green eyes streaming with wetness before the darkness took his humanity away.—
—How had it happened, again? What had severed the chains of his humanity and sent him spiraling into this life of monstrosity?
Oh yes—he remembered now— it was her. It was always her. She always had been the downfall of him. The tiny pieces of memory alighted in his mind like a flurry of snowflakes.
She was shaken and someone frightened; he didn't want her to be shaken or frightened. The EVO was heading for her with a killing intent; he didn't want the EVO to kill her. He pushed her soul away from the bridge of certain death; he pushed his soul right in front of the decider of life [ the so called "God" who had apparently decided to "spare" him]. She was alive, he was "dead". All of that had taken place in the few short seconds before and after the EVO had lashed out at her.
A loud jarring sound shook him from his thoughts. He grimaced. His irritation was as clear as the stars that twinkled in the sky. His thoughts immediately went to the woman. He glanced over the rotting branches just to find an almost empty spot in the place where she once stood. The gray cloud moved away from the moon, allowing the crescent to shine its full radiance. Something twinkled under the shade of the tree and a memory flashed through his mind.
There, right in the spot where she had been standing lay sunglasses. More specifically sunglasses that were taped right on the nose bridge in the middle. They lay there, untouched by the creeping night and frosted wind. He squinted at the shades carefully.
His eyes had no recollection of ever seeing such an item, but... his memories and heart did.
Jumping down from his perch in one fluid motion, he landed next to the green shaded glasses with a soft thud.
Gently picking them up with careful nails, he clenched them tightly in his monstrous fists.
One, single word escaped from his mask.
"Holiday..."