When I first met you, you circled me like a lion.
You looked for a chance then you stole my heart.
-Girls' Generation (SNSD), Lion Heart (translated)
. . .
All alone, on the edge of sleep,
My old familiar friend comes and lies down next to me.
And I can see you coming from the edge of the room, creeping in the streetlight.
Holding my hand in the pale gloom, can you see it coming now?
Oh… I think I'm breaking down again…
- Florence and the Machine (Breaking Down)
. . .
The Red Legend was coming her way.
The Legend had already cut down the Guardians. They fought admirably, to be sure, to protect the creature they cared so much about and still knew so little of. She saw each of the battles, and she knew that they all held back on their attacks- if only by a fraction. The thought amused her as to how they all decided to do such a thing; the Legend was a threat, he wanted to cut her down at the root as he was told to. No one would have known that they held back or choose to fight for another battle on a later date. No one -of course- except her.
In his wake, the Legend had also destroyed the Baby Elves. She did not see this for herself but she had been able to feel them. It was an odd sensation, it was as if she were human again and she had felt the loss of a miscarriage. The odd thought was taken quickly away when she realized that the Baby Elves had a physical form somewhere in an operation that was both quiet and well hidden from the world- surely someone out there would still be able to find them when the time came.
Regardless, she waited for when he opened the doors that led to her chamber, surprising him with her holographic form already in view.
"Are you the Mother Elf?" the Legend questioned as he slowly stepped forward, now feeling a bit unsure of his mission.
"I am." the Mother Elf agreed, her hologram looking fairly pleased and haughty. "And if I'm correct, I already know so much more about you than what you may realize. The basics, however, should be what we touch upon today; your name is Zero, is it not?"
The Legend nodded his head solemnly.
"And you're a Maverick Hunter, are you not?" she then asked. The Legend looked at her as if she had spoken something out of term, the Mother Elf's hologram passed this off with a wave of her hand. "No, no, that's not right is it? That was almost twenty years ago- wasn't it? No… you're with the Resistance now -working both with and against Neo Arcadia- with a beautiful little girl named Ciel as your leader. Ah yes, that's what it was, now I remember."
The Legend looked at the hologram warily as she started to make her way over to him.
"You used to have blue eyes." the Mother Elf entertained as her holographic form then circled around the Legend like a picky vulture. "Now they are almost black; soulless, even. Just like the last time I saw you after that... War..."
"Did you know me... before I was reactivated?" the Legend inquired, choosing to look straight ahead instead of attempting to keep track of her.
"A part of me did, yes." the program agreed, stopping close enough in front of him that his body resonated from the static coming off of her hologram. "Can you feel the same connection I do? That… feeling of having lost something, but now that you have it you still can't imagine that is was there?"
He could feel such a feeling, but he held his tongue. The answer must have slipped between the two telepathically as the Mother Elf leaned in closer. If Tekiya or the Legend's spotter walked in, both of them could of lost their heads from how close the Mother Elf's hologram was to the Legend.
Although knowing this, the Mother Elf simply did not care.
The hologram gave an expression of thinking of something particularly pleasurable as she leaned in to purr into the Legend's ear,
"You may think, darling, that she has brought you into a situation that can only be resolved by war. Or, maybe, you think it might have been him- as seeing he orchestrated all that has come to pass. In both accounts, you would find that your evaluation is false. I am the one that has caused you to fight to the death today. It is with my existence in whole that has created such… devastation into such a small area that has been felt for a generation. Possibly even another…"
Without a warning, the hologram turned around and started to walk away. A little bit of the hologram brushed against the Legend, and he shivered as the static crawled through his body to fire off an emotion that shouldn't have been there.
"What do you want of me then?" the Legend then inquired.
"I'm sure that in the deepest recesses of your electronic brain, you'd remember a certain project." the Mother Elf said, her hologram giving the Legend a side glance from over her shoulder. "This project is what spawned what you knew as the Baby Elves. But there was more to it than just those simple back-ups, their creation was due to a greater projection- an idea that can not be fully created at the time. What I want you to do is to protect the greater outcome; I want you to protect the children."
"The Guardians are already-" the Legend started to say but the Mother Elf silenced him.
"Not the Guardians." she told him. "Not my griffin, not my lycan, not my siren, not my tulpa. No my dear, I want you to protect the twins."
"T-twins?"
The Mother Elf's hologram turned to look the Legend straight in the eye. Her expression was solemn and a bit surprised for a moment before she arranged it to be so expressionless, her hologram nearly reached the uncanny valley.
"Twins." the Mother Elf repeated. "Amalgamates between a human and a Reploid- the perfect fusion of the two species with the best parts of both. Their potentials could rival the forever growing nature of their father, their impression on the world would be as great as their mother's. Do you know what that means my dear?"
"They'd be very dangerous if guided under the wrong influence." he remarked with not much else to say.
"Exactly." she agreed as her hologram moved toward him again. "And although your methods are a bit dangerous, you protect what you feel is important. I like that. I want you to protect them like that. Before you cut me down, it is my last wish, protect my children Zero. Protect his children."
"His..." the Legend contemplated before a sudden memory came back to him.
We still need you Zero, they… they still need you. You can't give up yet because… because you need to protect them. Please Zero, she'll ask the same thing too, I'm sure…
Zero blinked for a moment as he thought back, opening his eyes again to see the Mother Elf's hologram dangerously close to his body. The static that resonated between the two of them was almost overwhelming and enough to allow him to surrender right then and there. The hologram then slowly started to raise her hand to place it against his cheek. At the contact point, the static intensified to a degree that the Legend was half certain that he could feel his electronic brain begin to shut down from the flow.
"You are a very strange program." he told the Mother Elf as she placed her other hand on the opposite side of his face.
"I was a strange human." she said back playfully before looking at him a bit wistfully as he could barely keep his eyes open enough to stare back at her.
"I want to show you something." the Mother Elf then told the Red Legend.
"What?" he questioned, his words coming out slowly as he felt both sides of his electronic brain shut down. She did not answer directly, but the hologram's lips curved into a small, kind smile and she moved forward just enough to give him a kiss.
Suddenly, the nightmare began.
Intoxicating without the entice, unbearable but still manageable, the Mother Elf poured all of her memories into the Legend's still waking consciousness. The worse of it had to have been the idea that he could feel the very emotions she once felt, only making the memories more sensuous to replay.
Her childhood was bright and fun, followed with visions of an imaginary friend that looked all too similar to her later lover. The Mother Elf had filed these memories under 'happy' and 'Over'. She skipped over the teenaged years for whatever reason, a single memory marked 'hurt' skirting just out of the Legend's eye before she pulled him into a memory labeled 'pleasure'.
She made him take the lead role as she remained as she was. The static returned again, but this time in a different way- this time it was addicting, this time was for pleasure on both their accounts. She softly uttered his name, in between of asking for more, and he complied to the call with some amount of teasing. A kiss and a tease, a tease and a long, passionate kiss- it was enough to get her to arch her back, like a cat, a sign that she was enjoying every moment of it. Then he had an idea. Using one hand to place two fingers inside of her, he used the other to traced her spine up and down as he sent little butterfly kissed between, across, and under her rather underdeveloped breasts. For a split second, he thought she was going to tell him to stop -and if she did, he would have stopped immediately- but she didn't; instead her back arched even more, her fists formed into such a tight ball that her fingernails almost broke the skin, and she let out a noise that was a combination of a sigh and a scream. He didn't even fully realize what had happened until he happened to glance down to see that his hand was now covered in some kind of substance that was slowly dripping like honey off of him, and onto the bed to create a small stain. For a moment, he only looked at it before bringing it up to her at her eye range, then carefully adorned her lips with the substance to barely insert his fingers inside her mouth. She latched to his fingers like a nursing colt- tasting her own fluids almost made her emit more. She took his hand and move it out of the way before using her other hand to pull him into a kiss, allowing him to taste.
He wanted more too, but the Mother Elf forced the both of them out of the memory and flew them by many more. That is, until she opened up one labeled 'Sigma'. After that, everything changed. These memories were marked with the words 'fear' and 'uncertainty' and 'loss'. The Legend subconsciously knew what was to come after this set of memories, but the Mother Elf would not let him pull away from the nightmare.
'Death' was only a short section of the Mother Elf's memories, perhaps because they were found instead of created, and they ushered in newer memories labeled 'rebirth'. That was where he could see all of her interactions with her once lover who no longer loved her the same way, the Four Guardians, the copy of her lover to whom some feelings remained but couldn't maintain, and even the doctor she thought she could trust. These memories didn't have their own labels to distinguish them from another, they almost seemed to run into each other and compliment what was already supplied. Only one memory tree was labeled during the area of rebirth, it was marked with the utmost importance; 'Children'. It was there were he could see them, Crea and Prea as Alouette had named them.
Now she knew their names, or, the fact that they did have names. He could feel her sigh in relief at seeing them, knowing that they were being cared for already.
I know you'll protect them in our next lives, won't you, Zero?