Something Wicked This Way Comes
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Now, Sophia Giamonna had left the poor gangster for the greener pastures of the Caribineiri and Michelo's sister (that didn't stop her from running a small, very effective, underground operation herself). So redheaded ex-husband was naturally able to say, "I've been left for another woman" in his quests for the company of a woman. She was a fair woman, blonde with honey colored eyes. She didn't look entirely Italian, so despite her prime family heritage, she'd been saddled with the black-sheep son of a nightmarish gangster.
Michelo hadn't tried very hard to keep her anyway.
For four weeks, he hadn't gotten a single visitor. He knew that his gang was probably busy fighting a war to keep their territory. And it was a blessing not to receive contact from his family; he was glad to be merely ignored as punishment rather then kidnapping and torture. Someone, probably his sister, had sent clothes, but no notes attached. He was allowed to wear his own clothes here.
"One by one, we march on in,
the hell of battle now begins,
tomorrow morn' we do it again.
Does anyone really care?
I love old wartime cadences, don't you? The only thing Americans were ever good at. Defreakify soon,
Sincerely yours,
Lete."
The ex-soldier had never been terribly eloquent, but short notes were bad. Michelo racked his brains to decipher a meaning from Gulf War II cadences, but his mind was a liquid in his head. Chips of reason and thoughts drifted within, but as the madman got further and further from the carefully constructed patterns and chemicals that buttressed his failing psyche, something as important as finding carefully planted meaning in his lieutenant's message was little better then impossible.
Even on his good days,the gangster had his minor hallucinations. The smell of his ex-wife's (goddamn her!) hair in the riot gas; the sound of his dead brother's voice from the bang of a gun; The hard press of his father's hand on his back when he tried to sleep.
And then there was the insinuating jaundice stare of the very sentient (in Michelo's mind) Neros Gundam.
He was mostly aware of fact and fiction and when his senses were just fucking with him with few exceptions, but now they were getting worse. He'd fall asleep and wake up drowning in the Tiber, then see Lete's small, sure hands grab at him from the surface of the water. Only when his face broke the surface, he'd be in the plush room again, gasping for air as if he'd really been drowning as the sensation of water faded. Sometimes, he'd relieve the fatigue of battle, feel his feet hit the cement as he leaped out of a truck, guns blazing. The heat and heaviness of old ballistic armor plates actually caused him to sweat in real-time, his fingers trembled with real lactic acid buildup as if he really were gripping an automatic rifle, trying like hell to shoot a driver before he could turn and unleash a wall of lead on Michelo and all his friends.
And then there was the sweetness of an orange orchid, the blend of tart and sweet, poignant and blood-red on his tongue. The warm weight of his older brother on his back was assuring as they leaned against each other, while he pretended to be a vampire as the red juices ran down his chin. They both shared their father's prominent canine teeth.
When Michelo awoke from something like that, he could almost cry.
In between fits of insanity, the hours of monotony were so frustrating, he'd lose his temper and try to destroy the beige madness, kick it in the teeth and break free. And he never could, no matter how strong he was. Without the fits of rage, Michelo would probably had been taken to a normal cell. But rage he did. And he'd do it hours on end. Just scream and yell and kick at the walls. The kicking was the worst part. The entire floor would quiver when his feet touched. Nobody was brave enough to sedate him, but he usually worked himself into exhaustion, so they would sedate him after the fact to prevent another rage.
This institute was a waste of time; little better then a holding cell until Neo Italian government officials came to clean up the mess that was Michelo Chariot. Most doctors would give him a try, only to want reassignment after only one or two sessions. To most, he was considered a hopeless case. His often violent reactions to his nightmares made observation too dangerous. They had to stop when he'd kicked right through the bullet-proof glass that was supposed to protect the doctors from the violently insane. Then they forgot that CS Riot Control agent worked both ways, so desperate were they to stop this terrible berserker.
Depending on who you asked, CS gas was either great white hell, or the best sinus medicine known to man.
Michelo himself whined softly though clenched teeth, now deceptively docile. He'd looked like he'd been crying his eyes out, but that was the effect CS gas usually had on people. He snorted, producing a cord of snot that managed to touch the floor while still being attached to his face. And there it stayed, white and bubbling with the same consistency as rubber cement, until Michelo wiped it away. Then it stuck to his hand, still stuck to the carpet.
"See this, doctor? That's sick. Look what you did to me."
His doctor was, in Michelo's eyes, a wicked man. After all, he put a face to the misery the redhead was in.
"Look what you did to me." The doctor's nose was broken.
Michelo shrugged and flapped his hand until the goo broke off with an almost audible snap and slipped to the floor where it coagulated.
"How are you feeling, Michelo?"
"I want a stiff drink. And a cigar." Michelo resisted the urge to wipe his teary eyes, lest he rub whatever CS particles on his hands into his eyes and restart the misery. CS loved water.
The doctor smiled, "You know how bad those things are?"
"You know how much I care?"
The doctor shrugged, "Tell me about what you see when you have these visions."
Michelo grinned wickedly, "I dream about rape and murder and arson and burning. And I cannibalize infants and I worship Satan. And it was all because of horrid abuses suffered during childhood. Please take pity on me."
"Satanic Ritual Abuse For The Win. Sarcasm isn't going to help me help you." Ironically, his voice was monotone.
"I've told you what helps me."
"Self-medication is common among the ill. We have much more effecti-" "Fuck you and fuck your fucking chemical straitjacket!" Michelo threw the sofa before the doctor had realized he'd stood up.
The doctor left the hospital in an ambulance.
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Meanwhile, In Neo Hong Kong, Wong Yun Fat thumbed through reports of disqualified gundam fighters. There were only a very few, and most of them were horribly weak or had horribly weak gundams. But the first one to be taken down caught him by surprise.
Now, Neo Italy had the bad enough luck to never finish in the top half of the gundam fight since they won it in 27, but finishing dead last wasn't like them either. Most attributed it to a curse, but Wong didn't believe in such rubbish.
Their fighter's profile was impressive. There was very little personal information, the fighter was in the witness protection program, but the biometrics were outstanding. For someone that had finished dead last in the gundam fight, he was in the top twenty in terms of a matrix of fighting attributes, including fighting prowess, physical fitness, and, of course, aggression.
There was a very poor picture of the fighter, a cross between half-cocked and half to the floor. His red bangs covered enough and the angle was poor enough to confuse even the most advanced facial recognition software. The retinal data was plain missing, and the fingerprints were intentionally poor, ghostly things. If Michelo wasn't who he said he was, it would be very hard to find out who he really was.
"Master, I want you to try this one. He seems…interesting."
The former King of Hearts stepped forward and observed the data with disdain, "The criminally insane usually are."
"But that's okay, I'm equal opportunity. Neo Italy has plenty of information they don't want to tell us."
"It was unlucky of him to have my pupil as his first opponent. I'll see what I can do."
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Figuring out that isolation never really helped the mentally ill, Michelo was given access to the day room to interact with the other patients. Later, Michelo would be unable to remember exactly what that day room looked like, only that he was playing checkers the entire hour of his life he spent in there.
Michelo was losing to a guy that thought aliens were trying to control his thoughts.
Said man had a tinfoil hat to block their reception.
"K-k-k-king me!!"
Michelo grumbled and turned the black piece over. Then he jumped a piece, causing the tinfoil man to jump three of his in one turn.
"You're a cheap bastard!" Michelo accused, pointing. Tinfoil man laughed, which enraged Michelo to the point of flipping the table with a swipe of his hand. He stormed out of the day room, never to return.
The orderlies, wary of the fact that he was well out of their league and unwilling to gas an entire floor of well-behaved patients, let him leave.
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The institution grounds were rolling hills of grass, dotted with wildflowers and lined with sunflowers cared for lovingly by patients who found solace in the peaceful art of gardening. Michelo trampled those plants and more as he walked to the main gate.
With his back against the wrought iron, he looked to the expanse of endless grass, then the institution itself. Michelo had more freedom in prison. He pulled the collar of his jacket up to shield his ears but refused to shiver. The Italian stared past the stone walls to the mountains, trying to use them to figure out where he was.
Sensitive ears picked up the nightmarish sound of a gundam falling through the air. The shock wave of its massive bulk hitting the ground knocked Michelo into the fence, temporarily paralyzing him and he landed on his hands and knees, bowing to the gundam. The evil creature was sinister looking and clawed. The pilot was famous. A purple martial artist uniform, long, silver braid, and a thick mustache. It was the Undefeated of the East, Former King of Hearts, twelfth gundam fight winner, Master Asia. He pointed to the astonished man.
"Michelo Chariot, right?"
"Si."
"C'mon kid, I'm bustin' you outta here.Wong sent me. Say hello to my Master Gundam."
"Hello to my Master Gundam."
Michelo's faith was born anew, someone out there still answered prayers. Without delay, the Italian seated himself on the palm of the gundam and the two were off.
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Riding on Master Gundam's hand, Michelo tried to think nicer thoughts, or at least recall better memories, but all he could think was how much of a sellout he'd been. Belchino was wrong, there was nothing honorable in becoming Gundam Fighter. Then again, there was nothing honorable in being Michelo Chariot. In fact, if any family in Neo Italy found out who had single-handedly cut their numbers in half, there would be nowhere in the human-controlled space that he could hide in.
There was a roar off in the distance; Michelo's life in military academies trained his ears to detect when mobile suits were launched. He looked to the Master Gundam's head, yelling to the wind and gundam machinery, "They're sending the cavalry!" and hoped that the old Master could read lips.
To keep dangerous patients from escaping, the hospital had outdated Neo Italy mobile suits that the government had auctioned off to afford their newer models. Just Benelli Novas, named after an Italian shotgun. On their backs were large anti-MS assault rifles that pivoted around a fixed fulcrum on the back. They were petite and sleek, painted black, with large feet and arms that housed missiles, or net guns in this case. These Benellis' shoulders were painted white, and the insignia of the military medical services for Neo Italy, An 'A' covering an "S" in a circle with narrow, gold wings. On the other side, was the crowned gold stork of the rescue units. They also had funky cool Roman helmets.
Master Asia didn't have to read lips to know what Michelo was saying, he heard it too; he knew that the hospital would be looking for their patient and the dark gundam that let him out. Master Asia didn't know the mountains as well as the Benelli pilots and it wasn't long before a couple of them showed up to stop Master Asia.
"Fermata! Consegnere Michelo Chariot, o useremo forza!" warned one of the pilots.
"What did he say?" Master asked.
"He said to turn me in or he'll kick our asses." Michelo called.
"Hm..we'll see who's beating who..." Master Asia said, throwing Michelo into the air. The shocked escapee let out a long, loud string of Italian, English, and even Japanese swearwords.
The Master Gundam destroyed the two Mobile suits by wrapping his beam cloth around the guns and heads of the Benelli's and pulled. The cloth tore the Benelli'she weapons and heads clean off. He reached over and caught the riled Italian. Michelo gasped for air, hand over his heart, head down. This position made him look quite feminine.
"Come now, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Master scoffed.
"No, but you could have at least told me what you were going to do before you chucked me into the air. Damn near had a heart attack!"
Master Asia continued to flee the mountains.
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Night fell somewhere outside Milan, Neo Italy. An old martial arts sensai and a escaped mental patient sat before a campfire. The Master Gundam stood silent watch, and the campfire cracked merrily under a pot of coffee.
"Tell me about yourself, Michelo." Master said, sipping black coffee.
"I was going to ask you that, Master." Michelo safely assumed that Master Asia knew a lot more about him then vice versa.
"You first."
"Well..." Michelo said, putting down his coffee. His eyes were fixed on the fire, its light accented his facial features and made him look like a corpse, the light dancing in eerily in his eyes, "I was a mob boss, until I was dethroned by Domon Kasshu; an apprentice to you, if I'm not mistaken. Other then that, I'm just a cocky punk from Earth."
"I see. And you no doubt seek vengeance against my pupil?"
Michelo was unsure as to what to say to that...he did want revenge, but Master would no doubt abhor the idea of helping out someone who was so hell bound to kill his prodigy.
"I'll take that as a 'yes'." Master Asia said.
Michelo peered at the elder man across from him over his coffee mug, wondering what he was hiding. But the geezer's face was set in a meditative pose, eyes closed, face relaxed. Michelo could get no hint out of this man; he could defiantly not trust him. The Italian decided to regard the man with suspicion, going along with the man's game.
He did rescue you, right? Michelo asked himself. It was not if he had too much of a choice. He was an escapee and the hospital would turn Neo Italy upside down looking for him. It also did not seem likely that a man would go to the trouble of helping a person escape just to kill them.
"Tell me...Master." Michelo ventured again, "You said Wong sent you, what is his interest with me?"
"You're a powerful fighter..."
Michelo scoffed, "Not nearly powerful enough. First casualty of the gundam fight...Mussolini's gonna freak when he finds out about this."
"Well, we have a cure for that..."
"And what would that be?" Before Michelo could stop him, Master struck him squarely on the forehead with his belt, knocking him unconscious. The near boiling coffee spilled to the ground and spread across the dirt like a black infection, soaking the back of its owner's arm in itself.
Master Asia picked the man up easily, "You're far too trusting, Michelo Chariot. Had you known my intentions, you wouldn't have been anywhere near my fist."
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When Michelo awoke, he was in a bed, without his jacket or shirt. Oddly enough, he was under the covers, but still had his boots and gloves with him. It seemed as though the person was too impatient with the dismantling of his boots, and didn't even bother to contend himself with the gloves. The brain abhorred nothingness, so the darkness crawled and swarmed before his eyes and the redhead feared blindness. He felt around, feeling a motel-bed. With his feet, he found the edge and managed to find the ground too. He stood up and walked slowly to a wall. Groping blindly, he found curtains and pulled them open.
The moon was so full Michelo was almost drowning in its light. Silver filled his vision and sparkled in his eyes, causing Michelo to turn away to the black of the room. When his eyes adjusted, he looked out. The scenery outside looked post-apocalyptic, with ruined buildings jutting out, puncturing the starry night sky. Stars? In a city, the lights would mask any stars. Where were all all the people? He scrambled for a light switch, and didn't find one.
Now he was really worried. He had no idea where he was, and the already, his mind was concocting the worst possible scenario. He was in the possession of not the Chariot Family, he was Don there, but its parent organization, the Liguori Family. He feared that the former King of Hearts had been paid to turn him in. The best he could hope for in that case would be for an honorable death. The worst...he didn't even want to THINK of the worst. He'd end up like Giovanni Ugolino. That poor bastard's memory haunted all men initiated into the honored society. Rumors floated around Neo Italy like ghosts.
Someone opened the door, and Michelo readied himself to go out with pure defiance. In the event that he was taken down, he would bite off his tongue and bleed to death.
"Welcome to my playground, Michelo."
Michelo spun around on his heels, "Yes, Satan?"
Wong chuckled, "I'm not the Devil, Michelo. I'm the man that controls the Devil."
"Who are you and where am I?"
"I'm surprised you didn't recognize my voice." Wong said silkily, "It's me, Wong Yunfat."
The ultimate authority himself.
"And what do you want with me?" Michelo asked in a low voice, grouping for a knife or handgun that wasn't there.
Wong smiled at Michelo's discomfort, "I'm going to have you reinstated into the Gundam fight."
That raised an eyebrow, "Under what conditions?'
"That the fight was an invalid one; because Neo Japan technically invaded Neo Italy, it was an act of war. And as a gundam fighter, you had every right to defend your nation. Therefore, it was not a gundam fight match so much as a skirmish between Neo Italy and Neo Japan. The Laws of War and the Gundam Fight Regulations govern two very different conditions."
Complete and total bullshit if Michelo had ever heard it. But whatever Wong said as long as he was ruler of the colonies was gospel. Nobody would like it, but nobody would say anything ether. Not even to each other.
"And what do you get from all of this?"
"You. Come with me, I'd like to show you something."
Michelo slipped on the now torn shirt he'd worn the night of the gundam fight's beginning, when the beginning of the end of Michelo Chariot fell to Rome just a month and a half ago. The madman followed Wong into the light. This place was trashed, carpet torn, floorboards missing, light buzzing and dying. The mossy-haired man looked terribly out of place. Michelo looked right at home.
The building had obviously collapsed at one point; Michelo felt them descending deep underground. The light dimmed and out of his coat, Wong produced one of those lights that doubled as maces; Michelo couldn't remember what they were called, just that they hurt when your head was bludgeoned with one. Going deeper still into the ruins of a business building, Michelo noticed the sheer number of rats here. He was used to seeing rats back home, but he couldn't help but he creeped by these things..something was not right about them...Michelo could hear their squeaks before they were caught in the rays of Wong's flashlight. At first, they moved too fast for even Michelo to see, but as his brain found patterns to their movements, he caught flashing glimpses of them. Their bodies gleamed in the light like metal and their red eyes were glowing with danger.
"What's up with those rats?" Eyes furrowed, the Italian searched for the trick.
"I'll show you soon enough." That arrogant smile never left Wong's face.
The floor died away to rubble-strewn dirt. The redhead followed Wong through the cataclysmic ruins, going deeper and deeper, until Michelo felt the cold that came from being underground. The only light in this nightmarish place was Wong's tiny flashlight. His migraine wasn't getting any better, and looking up at the ceiling, couldn't help but think of the thousands of tons of cement and steel, barley supported, hanging above their heads. It wouldn't take much to collapse the building. Being crushed would be a mercy compared to slowly dying in the stone coffin this building could make...
They came to a plain metal door that Michelo might have overlooked had he been here alone. Though down here, alone, Michelo doubted he'd stay sane enough to look for a door.
"This, Michelo Chariot is the ultimate machine to match the power of God; the Devil Gundam!" Wong said, triumphantly, opening the steel door.The wall gave way to a underground cavern of insane proportions.
But that wasn't what was interesting about it.
Devil Gundam. When Michelo saw it, he couldn't have picked a better name for such a thing. It was huge, a cavernous monster. It emitted a hellish fiery glow and seemed like the Abyss of Hell, right out of the Divine Comedy.
"Cane' Dio..." Michelo gasped, his blood turning into ice water. He brought his hands to his face to cover the look of utter shock.
It was such a terrible sight, Michelo could have sworn it hurt him physically and he instinctively snapped his head away and shut his eyes tightly but couldn't help but look again. He stared directly into the eyes of that evil thing. Wong watched Michelo's already beady eyes grow wide. He watched the pupils shrink until they were pinpricks, then disappear completely, leaving only dead, empty wooden irises. Any tension that wasn't keeping Michelo standing straight relaxed completely, and his face was as blank and white as a refrigerator door.
As fascinated as he was horrified, Michelo stepped toward this monster of a gundam. This titan of a Gundam. It seemed to be looking right at him. Through a haze of metallic colors, Michelo walked past Wong as if in a trance. Where he would normally stumble slightly on the loose patches of gravel, there was only a perfect, steady balance. His bangs didn't so much as dip as the body walked calmly over roughly hewn rock, the feet judged subtle elevation change and the knees compensated. He was gliding.
He came to the very end of the ledge he was standing on and it was only the sound of his feet brushing rocks down the face of the cliff that kept him from completely stepping over to his death. He stepped back, fearful of what he might have done had he not come to his senses.
He shook his head to clear it and his eyes returned. The colors sparkled and danced in his vision, then faded. Michelo rubbed his temples to get the stuffing out of his head. Then he looked around, keenly aware of that dangerous temptation front and center. The cavern was bathed in hellish light, and Michelo forced himself to avoid the eyes no matter how strong the urge was to look. All around him were ugly brown mobile suits that stared at the monstrosity as if in worship.
"Look at me." A fiery whisper in his ear demanded. Michelo shut his eyes tight and turned his head away. His heart pounded in terror, but he was drawn irresistibly to the voice. Moth to a flame. Sinner to Satan. He was directly ahead of it, the mechanical, cold eyes stared him directly in the face, boring into his skull, reading his every thought. The headache he'd had in the room was pleasant compared to the hellfire agony he was enduring now.The scarlet haired man felt his knees quiver and for the first time in almost ten years he was actually experiencing paralyzing, cold fear. He was completely struck dumb.
"LOOK AT ME."
Michelo's neck turned and his eyes opened wide. The sight took his breath away and he stared directly into its eyes. His pupils shrank away and his eyes were wooden again.
His legs gave out and he fell to the ground as if in prayer, unflinching as his knees slammed into sharply cut rock. His eyes never broke from the monster's.
"Michelo...your revenge...what will you do for it?" He couldn't talk, couldn't even scream. Cold sweat beaded down his face. The voice send new spasms of pain coursing through the madman's body. He covered his arms to keep warm, because despite the heat from the fires below, it was unbearably cold. His body lost the ability to maintain any warmth. His fingers dug into his skin, releasing blood that flowed freely down his arms. Michelo didn't feel the harm he was inflicting on himself, his head was too preoccupied with being too fucking scared to think.
"Michelo Chariot, are you trembling?" Wong asked himself.
"You asked, and now you shall receive." The voice hissed, "He who cares most of this decaying Earth..."
It was true, he did say that, but he didn't expect this to be the answer to his prayer. The idea of the Devil being the one to answer prayers seemed abhorrent to nature.
Michelo's hands trembled with fear, other than that, he was still.
It reached deeper into his head; the white fire in his head became an iron hand squeezing his brain, squeezing out thoughts and memories.
And another squeezed his ribcage, then pulled it open, trying to operate his lungs. Michelo's own rhythm was just off enough to make it agonizingly painful. The ground rolled and waved, swirling before him as oxygen failed to reach his brain and his blood darkened. And yet, it felt as though the most important thing Michelo could ever do was to resist, to go against the flow of IT. So he fought, breathed against the rhythm. Their wills canceled and Michelo found his lungs paralyzed, his heart making knife-like, jarring movements to pump thickening blood. A black shadow loomed over his mind, something like impending doom.
There were white sparkles dancing and the world was spinning.
"We'll see each other again." it promised, and as it crawled out of his mind, the world lost focus and the last thing the cardinal haired man saw before succumbing to the gundarium tyrant's will and collapsed into overwhelming darkness was Wong's amused face.
Michelo's chin tilted toward the ceiling, his arms relaxed-having been liberated from the whims of his mind-, his eyes rolled back in his skull, and before he could give himself a concussion, leaned back to rest against Wong's crouched body. Without a will to resist, the redhead's body gladly gave its rhythm to the Devil Gundam. His lungs synchronized and his heart fluttered to get in step. Consciousness might have returned, only the Devil Gundam hadn't willed it. What little color Michelo had returned.
It returned to the madman's shattered psyche, tasting carefully, sifting through compiled memories. Brains could be likened to computers. In the middle of the twentieth century, research gave proof that brain's functional structures are continually modified to generate and maintain memories. Electrical signals delivered to certain brain areas had long-lasting effects on connections among nerve cells. Unfortunately, the brain, albeit a very keen processor, wasn't very discriminating and it had no 'spam filter' for imaginary, modified, or coerced memories.
Everything Michelo could remember, like movie plots, books, rumors, dreams, and false perceptions were stored, like every other human, right beside memories of his tenth birthday, the first time his heart was ever broken, and his first confirmed kill. And it was difficult to distinguish real from fake.
Of course, it never really had to completely fake memories to make a monster out of this human. The transformation from man to beast had already been done, when he was a young boy. Soft clay to be molded by the hands of society and culture into a hardened, adult shape. The human was a dream, a cell of humanity turned into cancer, eating away at what it could.
It was very careful to ensure isolation from things the human sincerely cared about; evil as he was, Michelo did indeed reserve special others in the limited chambers of his heart. A snap of electricity here and there subtly rearranged neurons to associate ugly emotions to things strong enough to keep the human away from anywhere his associates might be. It stimulated production of adrenaline, a key factor in creating strong associations, to make an evil memory stronger then a good one, a memory to make his self-perception an negative one instead of a positive one.
A poor, fame-hungry psychotherapist couldn't do what the Devil Gundam could with a little time. Even as it couldn't truly talk to the human at the same level as another human, he'd do with just being unable to forget every evil he'd ever done or been victim to.
Michelo lay as if dead.
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Since Wong was physically unable to carry a full-grown man any length of distance, he instead had the purple-clad martial artist pick up the fallen man.
"I don't suppose you want to encapsulate him?" Master Asia asked.
"No. Michelo Chariot has a very distinct purpose for which we'll have better use for him if we wait for a later time to infect him." Wong said, chewing on a stick of pocky,"DG cell recipients have a notoriously short life span."
"So, what do you want to do? I personally think we can do much better then this...thug."
"I don't think we can, Master. Any skill he lacks as a fighter can be easily compensated for. This man will easily be brought to our point of view. You watch, I'll have him willing to do whatever you say. Even kill."
Master's eyes narrowed, but he kept any thoughts to himself, "Where do you want him, then?" Then his glare became intense as he looked at the avian youth in his arms.
"Wong, he's not breathing." he said a matter-of-factly with a touch of urgency to his voice.
"What?" Wong demanded. It was true. Michelo Chariot's chest did not expand or contract, something that accompanied respiration. Master set the fallen man quickly but gently, laying him out straight like a corpse. Then he pressed two fingers against his neck.
"He's gone into cardiac arrest."
"Impossible!"
Master Asia had nothing to say to the comment, nor did he have the mouth to do it, as he administered CPR.
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As circulation to the brain was nonexistent, Michelo received hallucinations. They say that the bright white light that accompanies the brink of death is the light to the other world. Michelo preferred to think of it as the results of chemical reactions that take place as the brain shut down. It was not that he didn't want to believe in an afterlife, rather, he really did, it was just that after so many brushes with death, he didn't like the idea of divine retribution. Unlike most Catholics, he didn't like the idea of God being that close and his life being this far from the Christian ideal.
He saw himself on a stone peak bathed in red light, Master Asia administering CPR; Wong was little more then a startled bystander. He heard them speaking Chinese, a language the cardinal-haired man was not familiar with. As the seconds of non-life passed, he saw a figure that reminded him of a ninja, except with a Germanic aspect to him. He was hiding out, somewhere in the stone crevices and Michelo normally would have spotted him, except with the terrifying sight he had come in contact with.
A flash of white.
Suddenly, he wasn't in a satanic cavern with a body shutting down permanently, he was walking with his twenty-year-old brother, Antonio. Both carried trumpets. Antonio looked much like a modern Michelo, with a beaky nose and cadaverous skin tone, but his eyes were yellow and his hair was short and spiky and highlighted blue and black. He had a short black goatee and small wire glasses. His primary clothing choice was gray and he accented it with neon. Multicolored reflector tape all over his pants and a orange radiation symbol on his shirt.
Michelo was fifteen and his black hair was just now starting to grow back from military academy. He walked slowly in annoyance as his older brother skipped circles around him, singing.
"Who do birds sing so gay? And why they await the break of day? Why do they fall in love? Why does the rain fall from above? Why do fools fall in love? Why do they fall in love?"
It was a stupid song, one that had been remade by at least four hundred artists in the past three centuries.
"I hate that song." Michelo said.
"Of course you hate it." Antonio said touching Michelo's nose and leaning in close, "You wouldn't know a damn thing about love. You're completely heartless."
A flash of white.
Then he was holding the cooling, sanguined body of his falling brother. He wasn't dead yet, but he would be in three days without ever waking up. His jaw was shattered, his glasses had fallen to some obscure corner, bullet wounds riddled his chest and arms. One could actually see quivering arteries burning with pain in the exposed air. One of his saffron eyes was sealed shut with congealed blood.
"-face it, Michelo, this is the end. Look at my chest, better yet, look through it." He cackled, then coughed, spitting blood on Michelo's chest.
A flash of white.
He was an adult, blue jeans, long red hair, and the title of 'Don' to his name again. He was walking down a colorless hall up on the Neo Italian colony, at the Neo Italia Istituto di Ingegneria Meccanica. He had arranged with the top brass who arranged with Neo Hong Kong for him to receive his gundam early in order to train with it under normal gravity and Earth scenarios. Everyone knew there was another reason for it, but nobody said anything. He was in a good mood again, just had a good cherry slushie. He walked down the hall and a short Neo Italian official struggled to keep up with Michelo's considerable stride.
"All right, signore Chariot, before you go, we'd like to introduce you to your flight crew. Now, I know it's a small one, just two people, but Neo Japan's only got one person on their crew!"
They reached the end of the austere hallway and came to a transparent orange door that swished open. Sitting in the small waiting room was a man and a woman, both about his age. The first was a gaunt man with serpentine eyes and a black business suit. The other was a Caribineiri woman in her dress black uniform.
"Meet Romano Christiani and Lt. Sophia Giamonna."
A flash of light.
The thought of impending doom. For years, Michelo really hadn't really stopped and thought about death. And though he made many references to it, never really thought about an afterlife. Well, he was thinking of one now. Bright green warnings, red lights flashing, the circuits overloading one by one as the Shining Gundam's energy coursed through the wires of the Neros Gundam, frying circuit after circuit, sensitive interments on the cockpit snapped and exploded without warning, sending noxious,tangerine fumes into the cockpit along with the dangerous smell of chemicals, burning rubber, and almonds.
Where there's smoke, there's fire.
Michelo wondered what was going to get him at this rate, explosive cockpit fire or poison from the bowels of his own gundam.
Glass shattered around him, causing the Italian to instinctively protect his eyes. The pockets of hot air from the cockpit malfunctions combined with the air being supplied from the outside via vents and swirled his carmine hair around like the banner of an unholy army.
The temperature of the cockpit soared as Michelo looked terrified at the rival gundam. Then, as if by strange magic, the jewel colored readouts and graphs before him met in the center and morphed into a hologram of a torn photograph, the one that Andre had seen.
Michelo's mind had completely shut down at this point and he was acting purely by instinct. He couldn't even maintain proper Cosa Nostra dignity that befitted a man of his stature as this Neo Japanese martial artist demanded he supply him with answers as to the whereabouts of the man in the photo. The energy of the Japanese gundam acted like an artificial sun as Michelo's hair was purged of most of its color and his skin darkened by a few shades.
And before Michelo knew it, it was all over.
He landed on his back in time with his gundam, against the gunmetal ring that was the controls for the gundam as the Neros Gundam's body slowly cooled and died. He didn't know how long he lay there, feeling about as much as his gundam did at the moment.
"At least you didn't lose your life; I spared you, Michelo Chariot."
