...Because I don't think I MarySued hard enough the first time
Classes start up again in less than a week and I have assignments that need to be done beforehand. I've been updating pretty quickly (for me) but that's going to slow down soon. Not just because of classes, but this story is also coming to an end and I don't yet have an idea for my next one. Regardless, I hope everyone has a Happy 2013.
I do not own Gurren Lagann. I do, however, own Kimi, yet another nameless character, and what may be the world's softest and warmest blanket.
Viral was flat on his back on a platform beneath Enki. He was performing basic routine maintenance before his next mission when something not so routine happened. He was reaching for a wrench that was out of his sight and he knew was out of his reach, but he was stubbornly reaching for it none the less. Yet suddenly it was placed into his palm. He looked over to see the older Princess smiling at him, her clothes and parts of her skin covered in grease. She had probably been wandering around the ganman hangar for some time.
"Princess Kimi, what are you doing here?"
"You don't have to call me Princess, Viral. I come here all of the time. I enjoy looking at the ganmen. Is this one yours?"
Viral frowned. "Yes, this ganman is mine. It's called Enki. You know what a ganman is?" He couldn't believe it.
"Yeah. It's what you and all of the other beastmen use to stop the bad guys, right?"
Right, not right. How was he supposed to know? If the humans were scum that the Spiral King wanted to eradicate, why did he have a human lover and human daughter? Yet he also had his whores and an artificial daughter. It was easier to ignore the implications, and just listen to his master's orders.
"You shouldn't be here, you know. It's dangerous with all of the heavy equipment. How did you get on the platform anyway?" It was an electronic lift, with no ladder.
"I climbed on Enki. You looked like you were having trouble, so I wanted to help."
Viral sighed and pressed a few buttons on the lift's control panel, lowering it to the hangar floor. How had she even managed to do that? Even experienced beastmen had trouble maneuvering on their own ganman, let alone someone else's. "That was thoughtful of you. Now please leave. It would be very bad if you got hurt." Lordgenome would have his head!
She pouted. "I won't get hurt! I know how to be careful! I'm almost seven years old!"
Well, damn. She was technically a year older than him, even if he had been created in his early twenties.
"Princess, I insist," he said with a small amount of bite in his tone. He went to grab her, not roughly, but his intentions to gently but firmly and guide her out went astray.
"Ouch! Let go!"
He didn't need to be told twice as he could already smell the blood mingling with the scent of grease. "Princess, I didn't mean to."
She looked up at him, tears welling in her eyes. "Bully," she snapped before walking away from him, cradling her injured arm, but not bawling.
He looked at the blood on his claws. Then he looked up at his mammoth ganman.
Humans were so fragile, the ganman seemed like overkill. Yet they were so resilient. A contradiction. What was a human?...
Viral walked along the beach, picking up and examining a small piece of beach glass. It was an unusual shade of blue, and had a hole in the center. Possibly part of a bottle neck at one point, he mused as one of his subordinates informed him that the census had been taken of the whore village, and that they were ready to depart upon his orders. He slipped the piece of glass into his pocket without thinking about it. It wasn't until he was headed to the king's throne room that he realized he had taken it with him. He stopped in his tracks for a moment to watch the sunlight glint off of the still lustrous piece of glass.
"Hi, Viral."
Blue eyes that matched the bead in his hand stared up at him happily, his past offense apparently forgotten by her. He still remembered, though.
"Greeting, Princess."
She pouted. "I told you not to call me that! I don't call you Prince Viral, do I?"
"I'm not a Prince, though."
"But you are my friend. And friends don't need titles! What are you holding?"
He didn't answer for a moment, caught off guard by her declaration of their friendship. He didn't consider himself her friend. What was this strange child thinking? "It's beach glass," he explained, getting on his knees and displaying it in the palm of his hands.
Kimi looked at in wonder. "What is a beach?"
"A beach is a bunch of sand by the ocean." Anticipating her next question, he continued, "The ocean a big collection of water that tastes salty and, on a good day, is the color of… well, this color," he referred to the bead-like glass.
"Wow. If someone else had told me about the existence of a thing such as the ocean, I never would have believed them."
He looked between the blue in his hands and the blue of her wide eyes a few times, before finally conceding to his impulse. "Why don't you keep it as a memento?"
"Really?"
He nodded, and she happily accepted the small, unintentional gift. He stood, and politely excused himself to continue his duty of reporting to the Spiral King. She addressed him again, though, causing him to stop in his tracks and turn around.
"Viral, what is a memento?"
"It's an item that reminds you of something else," he explained quickly before returning to his mission yet again. Not once did he question Kimi's unconditional trust or quick forgiveness. She was just a ridiculous human child, after all, no different from the ones her father often ordered his loyal beastmen to kill…
"What's all the fuss about, sir?"
"You didn't hear? Her Royal Bitchiness pushed the Spiral King's buttons one too many times! He's going to put the filth and her spawn in crates and dump them over a cliff, just like he always does when he tires of his daughters. I wonder when Nia will be joining her older sister?" General Thymilph finished with a laugh as he sauntered off with the rest of the crowd filing down the hallways of Teppelin.
It took Viral a few moments to realize what he had just heard: Kimi and her mother were going to be killed today.
He rushed into the crowd, ruffling plenty of feathers as he jostled his way to the throne room, which would apparently act as a pseudo-execution chamber. He managed to shove his way to the inner ring of the circle that had formed around the throne. The soon-to-be-deceased were there as well. Kimi was off to the side slightly, being held in place by a rather oafish looking Cow-beastman, and her mother was directly in the center of the circle, gagged and bound. And who should be the one shoving her into her coffin but her lover and father of her child, Lordgenome.
The crowd of rowdy beastmen cheered all around Viral, but he remained quiet as he watched the scene unfold, thinking about the whole situation. Lordgenome was his master, and as such unquestionable, but this didn't sit right with Viral. If indeed the mother deserved to die, then why was Kimi here, being made to watch before she suffered the same fate? He knew Lordgenome despised self-awareness in his children. Would her mother's death make Kimi self-aware because she would question what happened after death, and what her role in existence was?
The child wouldn't necessarily think that, reasoned Viral. But, then again, Viral knew Kimi was a curious child, and if her father had noticed this he probably realized as well that she would ask sooner rather than later.
But this execution method seemed rather… cruel. Of course, Viral killed dozens of humans on a regular basis, yet this seemed different. It was, as he saw, torturous, as they would have to wait and die slowly, either by suffocation or starvation; he didn't know how tightly the box would be sealed. At least with ganmen there was a sort of civility in the fact that death came quickly.
He looked at Kimi then. She was wide eyed with horror. It appeared to him that she was so traumatized she wasn't even crying.
The Cow, enjoying the spectacle of the woman vainly struggling against Lordgenome, seemed to forget himself and let go of the young Princess, who remained where she was for a few moments. She was so transfixed by the sight in front of her she had lost awareness of the world around her for a few moments. But self-preservation prevailed, and the moment she realized she was free she quickly and quietly ran out the carelessly opened throne room door, the echoes of her mother's muffled screams following her down the halls.
Viral saw this, and said nothing even as the crowd cheered with joy for the woman's inescapable death and anticipation of the imprisonment yet to come. He couldn't understand why he remained silent. It was his job to fulfill the Spiral King's wishes, and right now his wishes involved killing Kimi, but he let the little girl escape anyway.
Her escape was noticed eventually, however. "Where is my daughter?" Lordgenome's commanding voice silenced the cheering as confused beastmen glanced around. "Find her, and bring her back here. I will deal with your punishment later," he threatened the now sheepish looking Cow.
Viral joined the search. Due to the sheer number of beastmen in the crowd, it would be impossible for even the beastmen with the best sense of smell to track her until they moved far enough away from the crowd. And they would only be able to pick up the scent if they had gone in the same direction she had, which meant having a good idea as to where she would try to hide in the first place. Viral had not only seen her exit, but was fairly certain as to where she was going, scent trail or not.
He managed to lose the other trackers by taking a more direct, less traveled route to the ganman hangar. It didn't take him long to find her hidden in Enki's cockpit.
She cowered; obviously afraid he was going to take her back to her father. He considered it for a minute. It was his job, after all, and he had never disobeyed the Spiral King. And yet…
She seemed to recognize him then, and she hugged him for all she was worth, as though her life depended on it. This was the 'yet' that had him stumped. She trusted him and believed he would be able to protect her. It was an impossible choice…
"You have to leave. There's a vent in the wall that will take you directly outside."
"What about Nia?" she choked out between sobs.
"Your sister will be fine." For a few more years, at least. As long as she doesn't ask about you. "You have to go. There are people outside, people like you. Find them, and tell them you're lost and that your parents are dead, that the beastmen killed them. Do not let them know your father is the Spiral King."
"Why?"
He scowled as he carried her to the vent. "You'll find out. Now go, and don't look back," he finished, setting the seven year old down and removing the vent's grate. She quickly jumped up again and hugged him.
"Thank you. Goodbye," she whispered, and as she turned away, the glint of the glass bead caught his eye.
She disappeared into the vent and Viral replaced the grate. He then proceeded to remove her scent from the area and himself using grease and polish. No one would be the wiser.
This middle road had been an acceptable solution. He wasn't directly defying the King by escaping with the Princess himself, since the monarch wanted the girl dead and she would probably perish within a day or so underneath the desert sun, and he wasn't betraying his conscience either, since she had a better chance for survival in the desert than she did in Teppelin. He pushed Kimi to the back of his mind, satisfied. She was no longer a part of his life, no longer his concern, no longer an inconvenience, no longer a friend…
His concern, inconvenience, friend, life. It was all so contradictory. What was a human?