A\N: Stripped, by Shiny Toy Guns. Just...Shiny Toy Guns. It's...WOW.
A\N by Tommy: Yeah, I'm on loan from ilion-aria, so I thought I'd explain for Pinky. She found Shiny Toy Guns, a very cool band, and came up with this. Enjoy! :)
From a certain point of view, it was almost vulgar.
The humans who died, the blood and guts and gore, the people reduced to nothing, was enough to send most people away from it. And the sheer vulgarity, the audacity, of trying to rebuild the 'normal' world within a dome, and hiding it away from any other survivors?
But that was only one point of view.
There was another.
From that point of view, a small, foolish group of humanoid animals, the predecessors of monkeys, climbed out of trees and began looking around. They made a few key decisions, lost their hair, and became human.
The observer, had he watched, would have seen cities rise and fall, empires begin and crumble to nothing, seen a tapestry interwoven with a thousand histories and variances. He would have seen the most beautiful and complex dance, the emergence of a sentient race.
And then, in a single instant, he would have seen it destroyed.
A child, alone and flinging herself helplessly at the bars of her cage, screams as she is dragged away from a computer, holding a vital firewall. Quickly it spreads. The damage is done, and slowly the virus infects everything.
Of course, it is revealed. By that time, it is too late.
Society crumbles.
Towers are destroyed by technology Earth will not have for decades. Twilight falls and as the buildings collapse, so do the people, driven into the nuclear wastelands that were, once, their first homes and are now utterly ruined.
Night falls.
In the sunset, a pathetic attempt is made by the survivors to bring back light. They cage themselves and cower in fear, and think they shine brightly by doing so.
They are not. The twilight only darkens for the attempt.
The watcher would, here, be forgiven for turning away. This is the end. Sentients have destroyed themselves before, doing just this. There is nothing left to see.
But a shooting star flares.
Bright. Noble.
A person.
A young woman who, as she escapes with her father and servant, realizes that she should not be carried by him, but rather walk, and share his load. A few hours later, the flare becomes brighter, as she questions the things that once defined her.
And as her father dies, she flares into life.
Hours later she is followed by a second flare, of a man who finally becomes a hero. In a few days, a downed pilot becomes the Red Ranger.
They are the first sparks.
As the night falls, the sun left a few bright sparks. They are not many, but they are strong, and they begin to train, to prepare, under the guidance of the child who released Earth's downfall.
Then three more sparks emerge.
A brooding loner who knows nothing; a happy-go-lucky thief turned hero; a femme fatale with a detachable hand.
And, in turn, one of those sparks has a false memory, which then unveils two more sparks, brightly-lit insane Twins who light the one, last spark meant to emerge.
The child who engineered the night becomes the spark that fights it.
These sparks take a moment. And then, in the core of the Universe, on a level so primal they do not realize they do it, they clash.
And the clash brings light.
The light fades.
Then it is reborn.
Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Not a heartbeat, but a struggle, the first, ultimate struggle, of life to emerge on a harsh, unwelcoming planet, of hope against despair.
And then it catches, and Earth flares into life.