Attention: editied version.
Hello, and welcome to book two. The prologue was short so I added it with chapter one. I am kicking this one up a notch which means more emptions, sex, and violence, but I will be putting funnier moments in this as well. The title of this is taken from a book called, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John LeCarre'. If none of you all don't know who he is, just check out, "The Constant Gardner."
This one is already looking better than the first, and I am constantly editing it as I go along. I'm satisfied with this one thus far, so give me feed back...lots of: tell me where I need to improve, tell me if I am too descriptive and how I can solve that problem. The story that I have in my head is sad, but I want to glue readers to it to tell it.
Disclaimer: I acknowledge the Sega Characters to their original creators and also the characters of the comics and SATam to their aurthors, and they are not my own.
So now we take a look briefly at Aleutian's past...one in which he wants to forget. As I go along in this when I come to his moments in this saga, I can't help but feel what I am doing to him is wrong. But this story and way I see it can happen with the current ways of the comic and all, is sad in how I can see in bring out this character and this "what if" thing. So as I take my leave to the readers, all I can say is this from the bottom of my heart...
"I'm sorry, Aleutian. I truley am."
The Guardian Who Came in from the Cold
by: Mauser
"I hurt myself today...to see if I still feel," –Johnny Cash
Prologue:
The Day of Fury:
The cozy living room was briefly illuminated when a bolt of lightning showered its mythical white light over the scattered decor. Light from a table lamp filtered through the cracks of a lone door to the room, casting just enough glow to show the back of a white sofa. With the lightning came the wind and the rain, assaulting the small house that seemed naked in the middle of the woods.
Darien happened to be a rather short Overlander-- being five foot, eight inches, but he could tower over the average Mobian. However, that was if he wasn't at the mercy of one. His eyes never left the gapping hole of the barrel he was staring hard into, casting the full weight of his emotions to the dark figure that held as he tightened the ball he consumed himself in. With the pass of another flicker of lightning, he could see the fresh scars of a very enraged echidna under a large brimmed hat, wanting to kill the world.
And Darien happened to be next on his list.
"Why Aleutian? You think my death will solve anything!?" he cried as he desperately plead for his life.
"YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HER!" Aleutian bellowed out at him, his black coat still dripping from the foul precipitation of the chaotic day. "Instead you ran like the rest of the traitors!"
"But I didn't take the money. I left 'cause I knew what was going to happen, and I was afraid for my life."
"But you didn't tell me or my Emi-La! WHY!" the raving echidna demanded.
Darien just lowered his head down over his knees, encrusting himself more into a ball within his muscular arms, ready to accept the punishment that he didn't deserve. "I'm sorry Aleutian," he whimpered out, "if my death will satisfy your cold heart, than do it. I could have let you died if I didn't go when Mathias asked me to, so keep that in your conscious."
"I would have been better off if you did...and so would you, Darien!"
With a tightened face, Aleutian placed the cold steel silencer shroud two inches from Darien's head, and placed his finger over the trigger.
There, he slowly began to squeezed it:
"Daddy?"
The sear from Aleutian's pistol was half way from releasing the spring that drove the hammer home to the firing pin when the echidna snapped his head to the right to see where the tiny whimpered voice came from. It was a little girl he gasped internally, her golden hair draped across her shoulders, standing in the middle of the door frame that Aleutian failed to see open, holding a stuffed brown teddy bear in her left hand.
"What are you doing to my daddy?" she asked almost in tears.
Aleutian's mouth started quivering, his eyes widening from his narrowed gaze. If Darien wanted to, he could have rolled over into Aleutian's legs and taken him down, but his attention was also on his daughter with his thoughts of accepting death vanishing with another flash of lightning.
Darien winced when a sharp click snapped over his head. When his eyes came to after shutting them, he realized that he was still alive.
With a hard deep breath after de-cocking his weapon, Aleutian shakingly holstered it into his shoulder rig before kneeling beside the hard breathing Overlander. "Tonight, you hug your daughter," came Aleutian, choking back his emotions with a shaking, seething voice. "Tonight, you hug her like you've never done before in her existence. For tonight, she has saved you from myself." His last phrase coming out as a deep sob.
He stood up, taking in one last look at the petrified little girl as he slowly made his way to the wooden door. He slammed it behind him as he walked out into the dark, pouring rain.
Darien's daughter quickly came to her dad's side when the dark stranger left, wrapping her arms around his broad back with her teddy bear still clutched in her small hand. "Daddy who was that?"
But the answer only came in mumbles, as she couldn't make out her dad's words over the howling wind with the pounding rain drops on the window...
"...I'm sorry Aleutian..."
Echoes of Autumn
by: Mauser
"Aleeuuutiiaan..."
He focused on the palms of his red furred hands, but his gaze soon shifted through them down to the golden, brown leaf littered ground, seeing his sleeves from his jacket almost blending in perfectly with the backdrop. He didn't know where he was, or even why he was there where he stood. His eyes twitched back and forth as he shifted his head up, scanning his surroundings and trying to get his bearings. He met a wall of trees all around him, their branches still covered with dead yellow, brown, and golden leaves. With the passing wind that fluttered his dreads around his head, goose bumps crept up under his silk furred skin. It wasn't that the chill was causing this feeling in him, but he didn't hear any sounds from birds or that of any other wild life for that matter. Just the trees.
As the winds howled passed him, he fixed his gaze on his muzzle To his utter surprise he didn't see the long trailing scar at the center of his snout that would have disappeared down and over his cheek. Feeling his face with his hand, his muzzle felt as smooth as the day he was born. Having the joy mixed with surprise of discovering that his blemish was gone, Aleutian quickly felt behind his right eye. Those scars were gone as well. Jabbing his chest next with his open hand and gazing at it with his stunned eyes, the long slash wasn't visible anymore either. And the last thing he grabbed was his half torn dread on the left side of his head..
It was whole.
"Aleuuutiiaan..."
The echidna snapped his head around to the right, his face expressionless as he searched for the feminine voice that was calling his name.
"Who's there?" he called out.
"Aleuuutiaaan..." came the voice again, trailing the last syllable out with the wind.
Pivoting his whole body around, Aleutian found himself starring down a narrow twisted path that was alined with trees. He took a step forward as he stared down the path; searching hard through the waving trees for who was calling his name.
"Aleuuutiaan..."
"Emee?!" Aleutian called out, finally realizing who the voice was. He couldn't miss the sweetness of it.
"Aleuuutiiaan..."
Certain that her voice was coming from his pointed direction, he took off running down the path, his hands pumping back and forth as he sprinted across the ground.
"Emee, where are you?" he called out again with excitement, smiling between his panting breaths.
"Aleuutiaan..." this time her voice sounded as if she was taunting him, as if they were playing a game.
"Emi-La, come on babe, show yourself. It's me; your Guardian," summoned Aleutian in a playful laugh.
"Aleutian..." came the voice again, but this time it was to Aleutian's left. He stopped quickly and swung his eyes around, observing that her voice was close, but it didn't have that playful tone anymore.
"Emee?" he called out again, his baritone voice mixed with worry and playfulness. Aleutian pointed himself to the last direction of her voice and jogged his way through the small thicket. After about four yards, another cumbersome trail appeared before him.
"Aleutian!..." she demanded with a hint of a shrill.
"Emi-La, I'm over here," he replied with a flat voice.
Hearing nothing over the moving air, he again took off running but slowed himself as he became entangled with the low lying branches of the wood work. After he freed himself, his progress was met with some resistence as he lumbered over downed branches and exposed roots.
As his path became less with obstacles, she called again, but her sweet voice sounded worried:
"Aleutian..."
"Emee...I'm over here!" Aleutian blurted out, hoping his raised voice would carry over the howling wind to her. Quickening his pace, the alert Guardian raced along the beaten path, thrusting his hands up and down with every hard step.
"ALEUTIAN!!!" the voice screamed over the wind. Aleutian realized to his horror that it was the same blood curtailing scream that Emi-La had called out to him when she was facing the lone black Swat Bot.
He pumped faster through the winding trail. "EMEE!" he screamed out, his voice distorted as he pushed forward through the trail.
His journey quickly ended when he stopped at the edge of a small meadow that was a sea of fallen leaves. Aleutian was still breathing in hard as he scanned the open field and tree line. As he took in a long breath to slow himself, he stopped cold when his eyes came upon someone in the center of the field. Curiosity consumed his psyche as a puzzled, gapping look stretched across clean face. With a lasting step, he cautiously crept into the meadow.
To his trembling surprise within the third step, he suddenly realized that the lone figure was...
"A child?" he gasped at himself as he stepped closer. With his widened eyes, Aleutian could see the child was but an infant even with its back turned to him. As the wind picked up a little more, the child's red hair started to flap in the breeze and danced around his yellow pajamas. Then, Aleutian muscles locked him into place as the baby slowly turned around to face him. It was a boy echidna. Aleutian's mouth dropped as his eyes were met by the sight of the young boy that was suckling on his thumb. He traced the child up and down with his blue eyes, his gaze only stopping when he saw two protruding spikes coming out from the knuckles of the baby.
The child soon popped his thumb out of his mouth and exchanged it for a smile. "Aluushan," he slurred out, holding the smile out until it eerily faded.
Aleutian just stood there, his hands becoming soaked with sweat as he stared at the child that laid before him. With a hard swallow that sent a fast moving shiver all around his body, he began to take a step towards the baby when he felt the warmth of another person beside him.
"Aleutian," came a calm cool voice from his left side.
With a slow turn, Aleutian pivoted himself around to see who it was. His eyes met a figure in a long, flapping black coat, his chest bearing body armor, and his head covered by a wide brimmed fedora with a red ribbon that ran around the base of it. To his horror and surprise, the face under the hat was his: the scars, the stubbed lock; it was that same cold, dark face that looked mad at the world. He felt as if he was looking into a mirror, seeing his darker-self in the reflection.
The dark echidna lifted his arm up, extending a large black pistol out and pointed it right at Aleutian's head. Before Aleutian could dive out of way, he saw the tendons of the other echidna's hand twitch as he pulled the trigger.
Aleutian shot his head up from the pillows of his bed, breathing in his reaction from the worst nightmare his mind had ever produced. Emi-La's voice, along with the young child's, all went away with the image of himself replaced in his mind. The sun tried desperately to creep in through the white shades of the darkened room, but all Aleutian cared about was himself at that moment, sweating and quivering with emotion. As his eyes became clear, his gaze became fixed on the mirror across the room. Seeing the same dark echidna from his dream at the other end, he reached up and felt along his face, tracing his scars with the reflection of himself in the mirror. His body began to tremble as the realization of his reality came to full bare of who he was.
Himself.
Reaching over to his right, Aleutian felt for the wooden box that lay on the table stand beside his bed. Flipping the cover up, he plucked a magazine out from the blue velvet lining, and started flicking the cartridges onto the floor with his thumb, every round thumping as they landed on the carpet. He counted every one of them as he pushed them out of the magazine until he stopped with only one still being held in by the lip of the metal stick. Aleutian then grabbed the cold steel-framed pistol out of the box and slammed the magazine up into the well. Gripping the handle with his right hand and placing his left hand across the slide, he racked the lone bullet inside the chamber of the weapon.
With a deep breath, he placed the protruding threaded barrel up to his temple and placed his furred finger on the trigger.
He raised his head up, meeting his eyes with his mirrored self again. Aleutian tensed his hand around the polymer grip and tried to pull the trigger back, but he met resistence with himself as he stared hard into the mirror. His face tensed with frustration with himself, his twin scars behind his right eye molding into one as his eyes twitched. Tears soon fell down from both as he fidgeted the pistol around his temple.
Then Aleutian's blurred vision fixated on his mark of Guardian, piercing the white mark into his brain that helped trigger his next thought. With a fast motion of his hand, he pulled the gun away from his head and pointed it at the mirror, driving the trigger towards the handle as he screamed with rage and frustrations. Aleutian didn't hear the shot, but he did fell the gun jump in his hand as the slide locked back over the empty magazine. The mirror shattered as the nine millimeter bullet impacted, sending glass shards to the floor and on top of the wooden dresser that it rested upon.
Exhaling his rage from his lungs, Aleutian dropped the pistol on the floor and placed his hands over his face. With that, he began to cry.
Locke shot up from one of the sofas in the living room when his slumber was shattered from the report of Aleutian's gun. Quickly shaking the fog of sleep from his head, he got to his feet and ran down the hall to his son's room. With a hard thrust against the door with his shoulder, he forced himself in. His senses were met by the sulfur smell of gun powder as he took in the surroundings. Stopping at the bed, he gasped at the image of his son crying in his hands with a black empty pistol on the floor beside his bed.
"Aleutian!?" he screamed in horror as he ran over to the bed, embracing his arms around the chest of Aleutian.
As he held his crying son in his arms, he toured his eyes around the dark room once more. Channeling his senses with his sight, Locke felt the room was filled with enormous pain, and he needed to get Aleutian out of it. "Come on, son. Lets get some fresh air," he requested, tugging on his son's bare body to get him going. It worked. Aleutian started to move out of the bed, throwing the white cotton sheets away to his side as he stepped onto the floor with his bare feet.
Locke supported Aleutian over his shoulder as they made their way out of the room and down the hall. As they crept closer to the end of it, Aleutian stuck his hand out and started grasping at the pictures on the wall. He tried to snag the lone picture of Emi-La, but he lost his grip to it and ended up sending it to the floor. He tried for another, but his shaking hand along with his forward motion to the end of the hallway just pulled more pictures down to the floor.
Locke quickened his pace to the back porch. When he cleared the excess wall that divided the hall from the kitchen, he felt his son tense up in his arms. He glanced over to Aleutian and saw that he was hyperventilating, his breaths increasing and rapidly exchanging the oxygen in and out of his lungs. As Locke moved faster towards the double doors, he heard Aleutian stop breathing altogether. He was still conscious, but his face showed that he was trying desperately to suck in the precious oxygen.
With a hard pull, Locke tore a door open and raced outside to the rising sun. "Breathe Aleutian. Come on, breathe!" he shouted to his son, almost as a plea.
All Aleutian could hear at that moment was his name being called out by Emi-La. Her sweet voice echoed to him as Locke dragged him to the railing that overlooked the long drop to the beach. Aleutian's stomach tightened as his lungs met harsh resistence with every fleck of air that he tried to breathe in, but oxygen would never inflate them.
"Breathe, son!" Locke hammered out.
"Aleuutiaan..." whispered the female voice of Emi-La.
"Breathe, ALEUTIAN!"
Instead of inhaling, Aleutian projected his stomach contents out onto the tall grass, doing it twice over at that moment. With a hard deep intake of air, Aleutian moaned to the orange rising sun, his jaw trembling all the while. Soon, his whole body began to quiver as his knees collapsed from hard shudders that sent him to the wooden deck. Locke helped slow his decent to the ground as Aleutian was overcome by his emotions. The elder echidna wished that he had help from either Knuckles or even his ex-wife at this rate.
Placing his left arm under Aleutian's legs, Locke picked his son up off the deck and guided him over to the swing that hung to the left of the door facing the sunrise. Easing him onto it, Locke released his clutches and had the swing care for his son. With the shivers increasing, Locke raced back inside and grabbed the covers off the couch that he had called a bed that night. Quickly making his way back out, he draped them over Aleutian.
"Aleutian, can you hear me?" he asked. The reply he got was only a whimpered moan.
He paced back and forth around the back porch, trying to gather his thoughts as to what was happening to his eldest son. With each passing second, his thoughts slowly became organized.
"I need Archy, and now!" he seethed out to himself. He knew that the Fire Ant could help him, and that it was only a matter of summoning his old mentor.
Locke dropped down to the ground, crossed his legs, and placed his hands over his knees. With a hard deep trance, his mind raced back across the ocean to Angel Island, over the fields and across the valleys to the Lava Reef Zone to Archimedes. "Archy, I need you, now!"
His concentration broke when Aleutian moaned through his shivers. Locke quickly sprang up to his feet and touched his son's arm. "Aleutian, what's wrong. Are you cold? Are you in pain?" he asked with a sharp concerned voice. All he got were more moans in reply.
A puff of smoke suddenly exploded on Locke's left shoulder. As the purple cream dissipated, it revealed a deep red, four armed fire ant with an Aussie hat on top of his head. "What is it Locke, I was..." Archy stopped cold when he saw Aleutian swaying on the long swing. "The lad? What's going on Locke?"
"I was hoping you would tell me?" Locke cried out as he looked over his shoulder. "I don't know what powers are possessing him right now."
Archy twitched his antennas along with his tweezer claws over his mouth. "I saw most of his powers get drained Locke, this is something else..."
"...Thy Aleutian is purging," came a soft spoken voice from behind the two.
On instinct and training, Locke swung his left arm out, pivoting his body around to give more force to his swing to the threat that spoke behind him. Locke's anticipation of his arm hitting a soft, fleshy object disappeared when he felt his upper wrist being crushed with what felt like two fingers being wrapped around it. A fraction of a second later he felt himself losing his balance from whoever it was that had a solid grip on his wrist, and was now yanking him over with his own momentum. He stopped half way from going face first into the wooden deck when he felt his elbow lock against a soft, furry object. His idea of a counter-strike vanished when his palm was pushed into his wrist. With the commanding pain pushing him backwards, Locke found himself in a sitting position on the wooden deck in a heartbeat.
"And a good day to thee as well," came the voice again. What Locke's eyes saw when he looked up was a white rabbit whose ears were dangling behind his back with his face showing discontent. The rabbit's fur had black blotches around his face and what Locke could see of his body. A large patch of black was also over his right eye, which was green, but his left eye happened to be a sky blue. He wore no shirt to speak if, but instead, an opened brown leather aviator jacket that extended down above his waist. What the rabbit had for pants were more like a white robe that ran down each leg, cinched to his waist with a black knotted belt. On his left side was a brown, fully covered holster with a hilt of a pistol only visible as a shadow under the flap. And between the belt and his pants, a black woven handle of a short sword.
Locke felt his arm being tugged as the lop pulled him up from the wooden ground. Archy held on to the side of his dreads as the echidna was helped off the ground. Locke met the rabbit nose to nose as he regained his footing. With a hard stare, the black and white lop twitched his nose, making his whiskers dance around a bit. Still holding Locke's wrist, he reached up with his left hand and drank from a white saucer. Locke realized that his fast assault was countered with only one arm from the lop, and he did it without even spilling his drink that laid in the other. "Can I help you with something!?" he seethed out as he tried to pull his arm away.
"Yes, thou can hold my empty cup," calmly replied the rabbit, flipping Locke's wrist over and placing the saucer in the his hand.
Releasing his two fingered grip from around Locke's wrist, the lop glided his way over to Aleutian, his large shoeless feet not even making a creak as he moved across the wooden deck. He softly knelt down by the swing and focused his two toned eyes on the shuddering echidna, tracing his hand over Aleutian's head and around his scars.
"Keep your hands off my son!" Locke barked out, stepping forward to put action to his words.
"Now he is your son?" came the rabbit with a hint of shock in his voice, rising up and turning to met Locke's stiffened eyes yet again. "Only rejecting the dire help that he needs from a friend is in this evolution that thou stakes claim to his son," said the rabbit. "Thou selfish wants precede thee."
Locke's mouth gaped open at what the lop eared rabbit said. "How do you know of me?" he questioned harshly.
"Why, Aleutian has spoken of thee of course. I wanted to venture to see the true you with my own green and blue eyes, hoping that Aleutian was only rebelling against the father, but the image that thee has brought forth to me rings true," replied the rabbit in his own unique matter-of-fact way. "Tell me, Locke the Liar, does thou selective mute insect still hold his tongue?"
"What on Mobius did you call me!?" bellowed Locke as he balled his fist, never minding at what the rabbit just called Archimedes.
"'Locke the Liar,' I said. That is who thee is." said the rabbit in the form of a statement rather than a question.
"You take that back, sir! You don't even know who I am!" Locke shouted at the lop. The rabbit just stood his ground, not even showing a hint of defensiveness.
"Archy, who is this guy?" Locke asked Archimedes through telepathy.
"A threat, mate. Keep your wits about you with this one," replied the red fire ant, still hanging onto Locke's shoulder.
"Why should thy take the truth back. After all, you lie to thine own family."
"I had too, to help protect them..."
"...And the fruits of thy labor has fallen from a poisonous tree, and has stricken my friend and pupil with a plague that I alone haven't been able to cure," he coldly said, waving his left hand over at Aleutian.
Locke rolled his fists in anger, crushing the lop's saucer that still laid in the open palm of his left hand. The white pieces of the shattered ceramic saucer fell to the wooden deck at Locke's feet.
The rabbit just twitched his nose again as he gazed hard into Locke's raging eyes. "I see why thee lies. You cannot stand the pain of truth," he stated, pausing before he spoke again. "That makes thee weak!"
The lop pivoted on his large feet and glided towards the doubled door entrance of the house with his arms slightly waving at his side. Locke marched right behind him with Archimedes in tow on his shoulder. The rabbit took a sharp right turn and made his way to Aleutian's fridge. With the same speed he used to open it, he closed it just as fast with a look of disappointment scribbled on his face; there was nothing in it.
"You, Mute Fire-Ant!" the lop called out, pointing to Archy, "Go back outside and mind my pupil," he ordered to Archy, pausing briefly as he sniffed the inside air of the house before he gave his reason, "thee has thought about death today...his own. Aleutian needs to be watched."
Archy jumped off Locke's shoulder and ran out the door. Locke, himself, was standing in awe before his former, tempered self, reemerged:
"Who– who are you," he stuttered out.
"Oh, my apologies for not being cordial to the likes of thee. I'm Lopper, but thou can call me Mr. Lopper," he told Locke in a boastful voice, placing his right hand over his chest as if giving a salute.
"What type of name is that?" ask Locke in a gruff voice.
"The very name that has placed victory in thy favor over thee," replied the shrewd rabbit, sporting a sly grin around his face. He quickly turned and walked up the two steps that lead to the living room. There, he darted to the left and stopped at the first fallen picture on the floor in the middle of the hall. Lopper's expressionless face frowned as he gazed down at the picture of Emi-La and Aleutian. The two looked inseparable at his vantage point. But Death had dictated differently.
"What do you know of Emee, Locke the Liar?" he asked, his tone softening as he picked up the picture from the blue carpeted floor.
"Emee?" Locke repeated, his voice even.
"Thou son's reason why he thought of death this morrow," the rabbit explained as he held up the picture in front of Locke. The Guardian took it from the soft white hands of the rabbit and studied it.
Lopper picked up the other downed pictures and hung them back on the wall, taking great care of Emi-La's lone picture as he placed it back in its spot. He then gently placed his left hand over the picture and traced her locks and her silk scarf down over the glass. He too, missed her.
"It was only a matter of time and pain before thy Aleutian took upon this one way path. Why Mathias is not here for him is beyond me."
"Because the Dingo is no longer with us," replied Locke, still gazing at the picture in his hand.
"You lie," said Lopper in an eerily calm way, quickly turning towards Locke with his hands behind his back.
Locke's long face looked up briefly before going back down to Emi-La and his son. "Aleutian torched his house last night. I saw it with my own eyes...no one came out from it."
Lopper's blue and green eyes narrowed as he turned around and stepped inside Aleutian's office. He floated to the bookcase on the right side of the room and counted the volumes of journals that he had told Aleutian to write over a year and a half ago. Only counting four of the different colored books, Lopper sighed at the disorganized room and exited it. He darted left into the hall and proceeded towards Aleutian's room. There, he found the empty pistol on the floor along with the eleven unspent bullet,s and the lone empty brass casing. Then the lop navigated his eyes around to the right, overlooking the room before stopping at the smashed mirror. A bullet hole dotted the wall behind it.
With another mournful frown, Lopper maneuvered himself over to the pistol and picked it up, ejecting the magazine out of the handle as soon as his white hands felt the release lever at the bottom of the trigger guard. He then knelt down onto the floor, after placing the weapon on the bed, and began to pick up every live cartridge before placing them back inside the magazine. Lopper then placed the magazine back in its place inside the box, along with the pistol after he closed the slide and de-cocked the hammer.
He made his way back to the hallway, seeing Locke still standing in the middle of it, studying the picture in his gloved hands. "Thou wonders of her?" Lopper asked.
"Where is she?" Locke said, his head still lowered at the picture.
With a lasting look, Lopper lead Locke back outside, passing Aleutian and Archimedes as they rode the swaying swing. The sun had risen further up, its bottom edge still hidden by the horizon of the ocean as the two Mobians turned to the north. Achy followed them with his sight as they rounded the silky grass covered bluff. He shuttered and shunned himself as he realized where the lop was taking Locke. The Fire Ant did speak to Locke about Emi-La, but he didn't tell him of her death and Aleutian's fall from grace. And now, he was paying a bitter price for not going against his word to Mathias. "You should have said something to him about that day, mate." he scolded at himself. For many around Mobius that day was a grand new beginning...but not for Aleutian.
"He's lost Locke," came Achy's words from that day that echoed in his mind, his eyes resting on Aleutian.
"She was my best pupil, and I miss her very much. She could light up the dark side of the moon with her smile, and she was a guiding star to thine Aleutian," said Lopper as he and Locke looked over the tombstone of Emi-La. Only her name was chiseled in the stone along with the date of her passing: Day 164, 3235. At the very bottom though, was a small phrase that read; "I love you." Locke knew without a doubt that it was put there by Aleutian.
"What happened, Mr. Lopper?"
"Emee died in Aleutian's arms on a field of battle with no name," Lopper began with a deep sigh. "Most warriors usually can go on after a loss like that, but..." he paused for a brief moment as he placed his hands behind his back, "Emee lost her life along with many others on a field of battle for a traitor...actually many traitors." Lopper then turned to Locke, his ears dangling around in the gentle wind. "Thy son was betrayed over greed, and Aleutian lost the one that truly mattered to him because of it. If she hadn't died, Aleutian would've returned home like so many of us wanted him to."
Locke stared at the grave of his son's equal, realizing just how hard it must have been for Aleutian, and how hard it was going to be for him to get his son out from the darkness. "Where is this traitor now?" Locke seethed out between his teeth.
"Dust in the wind," literally stated Lopper unbeknownst to Locke, "along with a few others. And if thee wants to know that part of the story, one must look to the Muted Fire Ant."
"What do you mean?" came back Locke.
"I believe Archimedes saw the whole act," Lopper replied coldly.
And with that, the rabbit glided closer to Emi-La's gave and knelt down beside it. Placing his right hand on top of the stone, he spoke in a gentle voice to Emee:
"Hello my pupil. We miss thee at the side of Aleutian," he began. "Do wish thou was here for him...he needs you more than all of us," he sighed out. Then his expression went a little lighter. "But do you see thee who is over thy shoulder," he said as he gestured to Locke with his head, "That be Aleutian's father, and I am confidant that he will bring your lover back to us."
Lopper and Locke made their way back to the swing where Aleutian was lying . There, by his side for once in the lops eyes, was Archy, stroking the blemished marks on a sleeping, shivering echidna. Lopper showed his disgust with the fire ant as he frowned in his direction before he strolled back inside the house. As he approached the small steps again, he glanced at the back of a couch and saw Aleutian's duffle bag. Grabbing it, he placed it on the small table that separated the kitchen from the living room and unzipped it. He sifted through it until his hand found the blue journal. Opening it, Lopper quickly ran his hands through the pages, looking at the last entries in the blue book. He came upon the entry where Aleutian wrote about finding his brother. Then he read on through the voyage that Aleutian took with the Freedom Fighters, the Chaotix, and Knuckles. The last entry that he could read from Aleutian's disjointed handwriting was the downing of the two scout bots.
Overall, Lopper's thoughts on Aleutian started to slowly change, recognizing that his pupil maybe well on the path to coming in from the cold. What he said to Emi-La's resting place was true, and he hoped Locke and Archimedes would see to it.
Curious as to if Aleutian had discarded his black coat and hat, along with the weapons that even Lopper considered were below Aleutian when he got them, the lop made his way over to the closet. Lock stepped around the table just as Lopper pulled the door open. His face slowly lit up with a smile when he couldn't find the dark clothing that was supposed to be used for rainy days and not looking like an executioner everywhere one went. The Aleutian that he remembered and halfway taught and trained, wasn't like that. What friends the scarred echidna had left, felt the same way as the modest but deadly lop did.
"One other thing, Locke the Liar," Lopper called out evenly.
"Do you have to keep calling me that?!"
"Until thee thinks that thou has deserved a better name with actions...yes," replied Lopper bluntly. "But...one other thing, Locke the Liar. Emee was caring a child when she died."
"What?" Locke gasped in as he braced the wall beside him. "Did my son tell you this?"
"No, but I saw it in his eyes when thou told me of her death. But, nevertheless, what I have seen here this morning, shows that Aleutian is well on his way out from the cold. The Guardian has already tried the easy way out. Now it is up to thee Liar and the Muted Fire Ant to help him find the road out of the woods."
"Why not you as well..."
"...Because, it is thou mess to clean up, not mine. The Goddess knows that Thy has tried hard, but the signs and stars have shown me wisdom that it will be his family that will help Aleutian. He needs someone that doesn't understand him over the ones who do. Aleutian knows what his friends and mentors will say to him, but those who don't know him, they will have a different point of view that he needs."
Locke nodded at Lopper's words. "Archy did tell me somewhat about her and that Aleutian was in love. But he didn't tell how much my son loved her, and that she had perished."
"Why Thy say the ant is a mute. If thou ant had spoken, you would have been here by his side a heart beat away, and Aleutian would be doing much better." Lopper then walked up to the lightly bearded echidna. "Thou has my profound wishes on your success. Thee can succeed where we've failed."
With an everlasting look from the blue and green eyed lop, Locke watched Lopper walk past him, seeing the white painting of a griffin on the brown jacket, and under it, the word, "Freelanders" written underneath it. He soon followed the rabbit back outside.
Lopper knelt down one last time to Aleutian, rubbing his right hand across the echidna's deep scars. This made Aleutian slowly open his glazed over eyes. He moaned as he turned his head away after seeing the two tone eyes of Lopper. The rabbit just smiled when he saw the reaction:
"Don't worry my pupil. I'm not here to give thou grief. We will have our talk when thee comes back."
Lopper stood up and looked over at Locke, then down at Archimedes. "Again, my profound wishes to thy's success." And with a nod of sympathy, he glided off the wooden deck and disappeared as he rounded the side of the house, not even making the wood creak as he passed.
Locke turned to Archy after seeing the cotton balled tail of Lopper disappear around the house, his eyes narrowing at the fire ant. "Who was that?" he breathed out.
"That mate, is one scary rabbit," replied Archimedes forthwith.
Not pleased with the answer, Locke stared hard at his old friend. "And how so?"
"You know the ninjutsu that we have you Guardians shy away from?" Archy returned.
"Yes."
"Well, that bloke uses it as an art and a way of life!" Archy exclaimed almost in shock.
"But he looks as if he can't possibly possess the capabilities or mind set to use it..."
"...Then he has already won the fight. He plays by deception and there is more under that fur coat than meets the eye. Aleutian knows more about him than I do, but I'm always alert when that rabbit is around."
"Yes, and how does my son know about him?" Locke bitterly asked.
"Because, Lopper picked up where you left off. He trained him Locke, and Aleutian's way of fighting is the style which we like for you to shy away from," Archy replied.
"And how do you know him?" asked Locke, narrowing his eyes even further.
Archimedes stared hard into the cold blue eyes of his friend, "Remember when Athair came to you, to tell you that he found Aleutian?"
"Yes!" Locke remembered that day quite vividly: his great grandfather coming to Haven with the news that his son wasn't dead like they thought. Locke did search for him when he discovered Aleutian's note the next morning after he had ran away. But only after picking up the mute signal from the hand held computer at the bottom of the sea did he bitterly concluded that Aleutian had drowned in the frigid water.
That was until Athair came.
"When you sent me after Aleutian to bring him back, just before you left Knuckles alone to go to Haven; Athair told me where he had sent Aleutian and Emi-La. It was Lopper's home and school, unbeknownst to the two," he pointed out. "I did reach the lop's place, but only to find that they had already left to return back to Mathias's place."
"And so you tracked them down there, but only to come back to me..."
"...Without him, only with his emboldened distrust of you," Archy replied.
Locke turned his profound attention to the now fully risen sun. He crossed his arms over the railing and thought hard at to how he was going to help Aleutian. This Lopper was correct: his labors brought forth fruit from a poisonous tree. But could he start anew? Frankly he couldn't. The seeds were already grounded with roots and it was nearly impossible to bear better fruit.
"But the tree is still young," Locke pointed out to himself. If a young sapling was in poor soil to grow, one could move it to a different part of the ground and replant it. But Aleutian's original home was too volatile to start regrowing:
"But this is his home. The very ground I stand on now is his home. But it, too, is laced with danger and pain."
He thought hard about his mess, watching the gulls fly back and forth from their entrenched nests around the bluff. Locke witnessed one fly out from a cradled ledge, swopping down before it caught a thermal from the ground, rising up before it touched the low tide beach. The gull hung in the air for a moment before a mild gust of wind ruffled it feathers, making the gull look as if it was shivering in the cool breeze as it turned and flew back to its nest in the bluff. And that was when it came to Locke's mind.
He put what he saw into perspective about his son's situation. The gull leaving his home resembled Aleutian, his small fall before his rise, and then hanging in the cold wind. But the way the gull went back home was almost the same way it left it...and that was how Aleutian needed to go back.
"Archimedes," Locke called, "do you remember where Aleutian had met Athair?"
"Kinda', somewhere at the edge of the Badlands. Why?" asked the fire ant, already getting an idea of where they where possibly going for the next couple of days.
"Good enough," Locke replied. With his thoughts organized, he knew what Aleutian really needed to do...tell his past to his father. He needed to open up to someone else, like Mr. Lopper had pointed out. And with his shoulder to cry on if Aleutian needed it, Locke would also train him to regain his powers.
His kind needed him to.
Please review: desperate here. This is an revised version with a little more descriptions mixed in, but not by much. Hope you enjoyed Lopper...one of my better characters.