The World is Quiet Here

yap; If people have to die, they die my way.
stuff; Gus, Mylene, Mira, Spectra. AU-esque, apocalyptic, character deaths.
disclaimer; I do not own Bakugan.

It is a daze.

This is the shining moment that is already dull; the last second in which the present can breathe its last as the future takes its place.

This is the atrocious beginning to a pitiful end; the last few pages of a novel ripped out and edited, a much more drastic alternative in its place and a shadow of a sequel in its promise.

This is the climax that is already on its inverted dénouement, the rare case in which no clever twist allows the heroes to rise against their tumultuous challenge.

This is his moment, and it is pure oblivion.

Look up, up, up.

There's the sky, stained with carmine anguish, sable specters, and the smoldering golden sliver of the last light of this day, setting behind one of the few buidings left. It's too beautiful, too exquisite for precise comprehension, but he knows enough to understand that it is the colours of his dreams that the sky is painted in.

His breath catches in his throat when his eyes land on the figure – splendid and still – who holds the sun in his hand, and there is no way he can drink in this magnificent sight in the ticking time left.

Carmine anguish, like the disappointment that he cannot linger much longer, spreads through shredded fabric as quickly as the inferno's glee, and spirals of those dainty sable specters are scaling down his wheezing throat, snatching away a few seconds of breath at a time.

A humble finale, to be overlooked within the rubble and pools, and he wants to think that he has never been happier. After all, this is moment he had been living for.

Subconsciously, he tries to lean forward, eyes trained on the excellence so far above him; fingers quiver in the air in hopes to grasp that dazzling dream. They fall with a sharp gasp and scramble helplessly at the jagged piece of wood, debris that he had unfortunately been in the way of, speared firmly through his chest.

He can't go any farther, can no longer stand unfailingly at his master's side, and that is the part that hurts the most.

The hand stops its struggle for freedom and clings loosely to the shaft of the wood as his eyes flutter shut, the imprint of the resplendent vision spinning against the black. Though he hates himself for it, he can no longer look up, and he can no longer soak in the sight of triumph.

With his eyes shut, he can hear the clamour and despair shaking the air – all of it worthless. The groan of another wall toppling, wreckage falling, the hell dragon's smug howls of domination, a single short scream of horror – no, frustration? Hatred?

He thinks, hazily, that it should be a scream of joy.

And he can't bear these sounds, useless sounds, any longer. Screw a modest death, when he has strained for this minute for years.

He thinks, selfishly, that he deserves to open his eyes one last time and lose himself – the world, his soul, these meaningless sounds – to the moment.

With a tenuous breath, a dizzily pained smile, and the bitter tang of blood on his lips, Gus Grav slips away from his wounded body in an unnoted peace.

She's so high above the ground that it is dizzying –

– and it is still not high enough.

The smoke curls around her feet, her cape is ruined by ashes and crisped gashes, her fingers are shaking (from disbelief, fear, rage), and she's still forced to look up just in order to catch a glimpse of the man who has destroyed her every ambition.

There still has to be a way, one desperate way, for her to climb up there and throw him down from his fiery throne, take it for her own; then she can climb forever, no one in her way…

But it doesn't matter how much her heart yearns for it and tries to convince her that it's not too late. Her eyes tell her that the spindly structure he's poised upon and the shorter building where she cowers are too far apart, her quivering legs insist that she has no strength left to make the distance, and her mind tells her that only a hopeless creature would risk everything on this moment.

Isn't that exactly what she has been reduced to though?

She has no support, no "partners in crime"; no king, no prince, no teammates, and no imbeciles who had dragged her down – but at least followed her same goals. There is no one left to turn to, to impress, and to tolerate; if things had been different, she would be grateful, for she has been stripped of her pride, power, and confidence, and her ugly desire for control is now laid bare.

Glancing down, she sees that her feet are already absentmindedly drifting towards the edge of the roof; the toes of blackened boots dangle above the street, stark against the swirls of flickering flames and –

– rivers.

Thick crimson, in steady trickles, flowing through the widened fissures in the street. At points it spills over, dying the concrete glistening ruby. It's a sick curiousity that causes her eyes to follow the streams until they land on hulking, broken figures, one or two of them still stirring feebly before shuddering, stilling.

At least she can take a spiteful comfort in knowing she isn't the only one to have lost everything.

But alas. A horrible phrase, she decides – it's incredibly archaic, and doesn't suit the situation – when her eyes move again. She's never satisfied with something that contents her, not when she still has to look up so high.

He's still standing up there probably gloating to himself, the bastard and she's still standing down here no, she was meant to be so much more, she was supposed to have her own lofty throne and she cannot allow this.

It's childish, but the shattered bricks and mortar are everywhere, free for the taking – it's useless, but the rock is already in her hand – and she probably won't be heard, but her abhorrent yowl still rings in the air as the stone curves ferociously through the air, spinning and burning and falling

down, down, down.

Feet stumble and land on nothing but air, and fingers try desperately to find a handhold that she would never be able to grasp. A shriek is cut off by sheer incredulity, the baneful image is replaced with fire, smoke, and ash, and widening cobalt eyes watch the rock clatter hopelessly to the ground.

The wind whistles ironies in her ears, and all she can do is to let them deafen her.

Plunging towards the blazing pavement, Mylene Pharaoh succumbs to her own rapaciousness and twists her head towards the sky – aglow, ardent, twinkling; untouchable, unreachable, and breath-takingly silent.

Perfidy.

It echos in her mind and falls upon nothing but stunned nihility.

Rationality follows; perfidy isn't the right word for this.

But that's such shallow rationality. She has to remember; he's made it clear that this (chaos, hysteria, devastation) was what he desires, what he had planned from the beginning. She should have seen it coming when the mask had first fallen away, when she had first been renounced. If anything, it was she who had committed this perfidy, to herself.

It's pointless to call out his name, when as far as he is concerned, her existence has been erased – he's in his own world now. He's on the one side of the roof, ablaze in his own grandeur, and she's on the other side, ready to be devoured any minute.

Her hand reaches forward feebly, as though on its own it could drag her towards him and stop these brutalities, and her voice is still croaking, begging that he turn away from this nonsense and look at her.

He doesn't move. She's too much on the outside, he's too introverted, and oh god, don't let it all be lost, they had been so incredibly close…

How could someone so stationary still be alive?

Brother, brother, look at me. Tell me, please… this is a nightmare, right?

There it is; she can receive only masochistic comfort, and all that brings is the comfort of indefinite delusion. But that is no comfort – no end, no life, no heaven for her to cling to…

Her eyes cloud over, and her body curves into itself as she shakes, trying to cough out the smoke that has crept into her mouth; eyes turn forward again, weakly trying to look up –

but instead of ruin and phantasms, they catch her reflection.

It's blurred in the opaque glass, twisted behind flames and haze; but it is there, a pale semblance that has been fractured – captured – within the lacerated pattern of jagged cracks; a pair of black goggles, snapped clumsily in half, lacking the left lens, and huddled just a few feet from the heel of a heavy boot. They seem so much larger when not hidden beneath untidy hair.

There it is; the end of her delusions. Her voice breaks into one last choked whimper that's carried away by a far-off, brief scream and rumbling bellows of her enemy's monster. There is nothing left to say.

Mira Clay can only simmer in her own silence and bewilderment as the fire overtakes her stone-still body, eyes forever trained on the one who can't hear her.

He gazes outwards – onto the tumult, onto the blaze, onto the void – with a pensive eye, and waits for the strike of a chord; a victory tune, a herald of trumpets and percussion announcing his celebration. But all that sounds is his own soft, disbelieving breaths, and a hollow rhythm of thud – silence – thud – silence – thud, ringing somewhere in the empty space of his chest.

Idly, he runs his tongue over his teeth, stance meditative and his visible mechanical eye flitting, tracing the curve of the sun retreating, melting into the ground, the crags and chalky wounds of the city, the craters and mountains mutilating the roads…

The taste is right. Success is as sweet as he always imagined it to be – molten sugar spreading and tingling across his tongue – though the aftertaste of stinging salt and burning ash was unexpected. But it's no matter, because it lingers for only a second before fading.

The view is right. He can see the world for miles from his pinnacle, can see the fruit of his labours, and the disorderly signatures left behind by his delighted instrument of annihilation. He can see that it is all now his.

So it's interesting that he still feels a little bit of displeasure.

For once, there is no one – no one faithfully at his back, no one charging rebelliously against him, no one pleading with him from the side. There are no allies ready to forgo their lives, no enemies determined to dissolve his aims, no broken hearts looking to be mended. Instead, there is wreckage, death, and crushed glass beneath his heel.

With casual curiousity, he realizes.

He is no longer apart of the world he had known; he has burned every bridge, divided himself from the contemptible past, and now watches it from the embrace of the heights, from the precipice overlooking madness. There is nothing left for him to do but forget the forlorn wane of echos reminding him of all that he has left behind.

A wry smile twists the corner of his lips, and Spectra Phantom listens to the cynical chuckles slowly filling up the vast soundlessness.