Ch.11: Antigone
The next day, I triggered into Rio's EX, and he said loud enough not to be taken wrong, "Teela will die soon", then collapsed on the step we were on. As I tried to shake him awake, the trees above seemed to say "it's your fault, it's all your fault" while I furiously glared at them, trying to get that feeling of intense guilt out of my head. Rio had been collapsing far sooner than I had originally expected – he had a distinctly strong mind before. However, this side of his EX had never been attempted before, so it might be that this EX's energy reserves had been lowered to support his other EX reactions instead because his precognition was never needed before. I stopped short when a sudden thought crossed my mind: had someone ELSE been using Rio's EX for other reasons?
I shook the thought from my mind. No one else knew except for Instructor Azuma and I. And why would Instructor Azuma want to use Rio's EX in the first place? To tell when he would die? Rio's EX had only a span of several days ahead – not several years.
And at the same time, I detected a lack of…something in the last statement. It was quite possible Rio could see far into the future. I couldn't be sure because I had never attempted it. However, right now, it was more important to get Rio awake and out of here before someone thought I knocked him unconscious in a fight or something. Knowing my reputation around G.O.A., however, that would not be the top thing I would be penalized for – I appeared too peaceable, too pliant, so I did not have much fear of being thrown out of G.O.A. for a simple fight. Plus, I could influence Rio's mind to testify for me, if the need ever arose.
I shivered. Another guilty thing I could do. I had learned so much in the past few weeks that I had begun to itch to use them. However, I restrained myself – I did not want to get caught reading someone's past thoroughly just because I felt bored.
I could feel someone's eyes on me, suddenly. I looked down and the very source of Rio's prediction was standing at the foot of the stairs, eyes shimmering lightly in the dim light, and her hair flowing regally behind her like a robe someone would wear to see the king with. On seeing I had noticed her, she took the steps two at a time to me, and picked up Rio still lying slack in my arms. I was too speechless to say anything; had she heard? If she had guessed my intent with Rio, I wondered what she would do with that information. Get me evicted? Possibly, especially if she suspected that someday I would surpass by very, very far.
Tagging behind her, she one-handedly palmed the combination for Rio's door (I wondered how she got that) and entered the quiet quarters of my clumsy, and seeing his room, messy older brother. Clothes had been strewn about, some food that Rio had somehow managed to sneak past the Cook (or asked for personally – I wouldn't be surprised if he had a separate diet in the room) had their wrappers on the floor, and the bedsheets looked as if it had been a snow avalanche off of the bed instead of being folded neatly. If I had been here solely to admire Rio's apparent disorder, I would have laughed. However, I was not, and when finally Teela was finished tucking Rio in the bed and arranged his shoes by the nightstand, I followed her out of the critically bombed pigsty and into the nearby hangar, where our Ingrids were kept in tip-top shape by our repairers. We stopped in front of hers, the Goddess Ernn Laties, and just stared up into that benign face the held so much compassion, and so much mercilessness.
My throat felt dry as I looked at her. She reminded me of Teela herself: quiet but caring, doing things only for the necessity of the planet and of G.O.A. Teela was selfless – she gave all she had to the battlefield, to provide protection for those who needed it, and saved none for herself. I know she would dive headfirst into a Victim to kill it if it would save even one young boy or one elderly grandpa, just if it would save anyone. Faintly I wondered what she, as a ruler of a country, would be like. I could see her, cruel and beautiful, and throwing troops to the battlefield, wishing always she were them, instead of commanding from the rear. She would dare not get close to any of her soldiers – when she received news of their deaths she would be devastated on the first wave. She would have been intelligent, as a queen – she would fragment the army into small, small groups and tell their commanders to use them wisely. This way she had many, many able and intelligent commanders as well as herself. Teela would have made a ruthless queen. Yet all who looked upon her and her deeds could only say she was a miracle worker, even though all the people she sacrificed.
A beautiful, terrible queen. The thought made me shiver. Would I become like that when I became leader of the Goddesses?
Teela was not one for words. I touched her arm lightly and the thoughts sparkled under my grasp. She was warm, loving, like a sister denied her brother for too long. She remained distant from everyone so that when she lost them, she would not grieve and lose her focus in battle. Yet, I knew I piqued an interest in her. She knew, somehow, already, that I would protect Zion and G.O.A. better than she ever could. And she revealed something rather strange to me – that when she closed her eyes, I was always there behind her eyelids, looking down at her. She needed to protect me at all costs so that I could save Zion and all its inhabitants, she said. Again, there was that selflessness, knowing that I would do nothing for her tomorrow, or the day after the next, when in battle she would be cut off, and I would do nothing to retrieve her.
I would die someday, she said. And if I die, what happiness! She gave a soft mental sigh. Time has taken me too long from the ones I promised to live for.
I gave a start. That's one of the Old Planet's Greek plays, isn't it? 'Antigone', a play on a girl who sacrificed herself to bury her disgraced brother.
Teela gave a soft smile. Of course. I should have known you paid more attention in History class than you did in piloting class. You had your brother to depend on for that.
I gave a rather sullen silence after the mention of Ernest. It seemed everything I said, everywhere I went, my brother was my ghost, haunting me in the people who knew me. Even my talks with Rio somehow always seemed to turn to my passed-on brother, as much as I tried to turn it. She seemed to sense this, and said softly, "Even I can sense the difference between you, though."
"How so?", I asked. Teela's EX had nothing to do with mental abilities, this much I knew. So unless she was very, very good at reading people, she could not tell what differences there were other than physical differences. But apparently this was her talent, reading people, even blank faces like mine, for she acknowledged her lack of information with a nod and a hidden look.
She gave a vague look before she started. I don't think anyone had ever heard her talk so much before. "You are different because of your driving force. You strive to be different from him, even though you know it is him who should break your mold. Ernest Cuore strove to fit into the molds that people provided for him, fitting their comfort zones. Perhaps that could have been used to manipulate people, yet he was unsatisfied with what greed could offer him in favor of what true, honest relationships could offer him." She gave a smile and bowed her head. "You are ruthless in your power, now. You hold much of it, and though you want to live by the same pure standards as your brother, you cannot. You want more. You want to make this world your own. What would you not do for an elixir of life? You could rule forever and ever on this planet, until someone dared to kill you. But they would never succeed, would they? You would always be on the alert, and even when the whole world was against you, you would always have the upper hand, the last ace to play. The people would fear you, respect you for what you have done to them. You understand the human need to fight, and you would satisfy it. You understand the human greed, and you would give all who deserved a dose of either poison or candy. You understand that everyone needs this and that and you strive to satisfy everyone's needs, knowing all the time you have been satisfied as well because your only need in life is to know you are helping someone."
"You are the same as your brother in that aspect. However, you are the opposite of your brother otherwise. You are all that you brother strove not to be."
And suddenly I was horribly, horribly angry. But I kept my EX in check, and even though I could see her eyes widen when my hair turned a sudden green, flickering like a broken lightbulb, I reined it and threw it to the back of my mind. Hate, an emotion absent and unfelt in my brother, burned deeply in me. That was another difference, I guess. It used to be unfelt in me as well, but time and power had changed that. It changes everyone, doesn't it? Only one person seemed to escape that, and that was my brother Ernest.
And for the first time in my life, hate coursed through me towards that one person I had always, always trusted, always depended on. His betrayal seemed to grow on me, and with it I defied him. I would become the leader of the pilots, that I took for granted as his goal passed on to me. But I would not, would NOT thank him for it. He brought this upon me like a plague of locusts, and I never wanted it. He thrust me into this position I never desired, and now, for the first time, I hated him for it. It burned hot inside of me, as if a dam of lava had suddenly burst and now heated every corner of me. The liquid felt like it had been burning to be let lose.
The alarm bells rang. I ran to Reneighd Klein. And before Tune or anyone else could see, I slapped the cockpit door as hard as I could, almost as if I tried to leave my fingerprints there for all time. I hated this machine. I hated this position I should have wanted, that my brother left as a legacy for me to fit into. But I found now it didn't fit me. I wanted more. I wanted what my brother promised me, a position as the leader of the pilots, as the sole hero that saved Zion from all Victims and survived through thick and thin times. I wanted to be the ruthless commander who used his troops to achieve victory, and didn't care about how many million lives were lost in an instant. The sky could cry blood and black feathers, and this hate, this hate of living, this hate of everything that made up this world, the hate of my brother and his best friend, off somewhere laughing in hell because of my frustration in living. "We have only a little time to please the living, but all eternity to love the dead", said Antigone a million times on the Old Planet.
I was angry at Teela as well, but that disappeared when she died. A sort of heartfelt goodbye was said when her body was sent out. Beside me, Yu looked dead on his feet. It had been the third sortie in two days. He was tired, as I had been. My heart went out to the silent, solitary pilot and his repairer sister. Rio had slept all through this sortie, exhausted from his overtaxed EX. My heart went out to him as well.
Though this time the Goddess had left no loose ends to be cut off like when I had been promoted to pilot (the Goddess had to withdraw from the battlefield from sheer lack of firepower), there still needed to be a new pilot. I was not surprised when Instructor Azuma chose number 88, my friend Zero Enna, to become the new pilot of Ernn Laties. I could tell many officials had lifted eyebrows when a fourteen-year-old was promoted to be the new pilot. However, I think Instructor Azuma felt he needed to reward me a kindness, and instead of letting 89 come up, he chose 88 instead. As Zero came bouncing into my room, I smiled and chatted with him like it was nothing. For a little while, I found relief with his cheery attitude and his exclamations of excitement at his promotion. I could smile genuinely, for a little while.
For a little while, I forgot he might be someone I sent out into battle and let free. He might die because of me. But that was for the good of Zion, for the good of the people. And though my personal feelings, my personal greed, paid a bit of influence in my decisions, on the outside I was still only fighting selflessly, like Teela, for the good of Zion. And as Zero bounced back out of my room to check out his new, finally personal, quarters (Goddess pilots didn't share rooms), I could hear his excitement. Then he faded from memory as I took a few tentative steps down the hall. Stopping in front of a door I had only stepped out of a few hours ago, I hesitated only a moment before I knocked three times and palmed the door open.
"Rio?", I called to the messy room, and made my way carefully around piles of dirty/clean Agui Keimeia uniforms (I couldn't tell which was dirty and which were clean) and half-eaten food. I looked softly, almost affectionately, down at my new-now-old brother. Giving his shoulder a little shake, I tried to jolt him awake, to tell him what he had missed. To my surprised, he did not wake, just continued to slumber peacefully. And while that made a touching scene, somewhere in the back of my mind I was worried; Rio should have awakened by now. Overly using an EX should not have tired him out this much. At most, it should have knocked out a person for no more than an hour, no matter how extensively long it had been used. Against a voice that told me just to ignore it, I went to the nurses at the sick bay and told them to check up on him. A little more wearied than usual, I made my way to the cafeteria. I brought a tray back to my room (special privilege of Goddess pilots), and after I was finished mechanically eating, brought it back to the Cook, who gave it a good scrutiny and then gave a weird look. I knew what it meant; I usually finished half my tray and dumped the rest. This time, I had actually downed the whole thing.
It made me think of Rio. It made me think of the prediction he made, that I would kill him. Was it possible? Would I truly do such a thing? A voice in the back of my mind reminded me that I had somewhat "caused" Teela's "accidental" death, but I shoved that from the back of my mind as Zero came into the cafeteria, looked around for a moment, and stomped over to me.
Surprised, I cocked my head at him. "Zero? What seems the matter?"
Zero pointed to the now-closed door, in the general direction of what he thought to be the hangar door to where Ernn Laties was kept. "That GUY! You know, that other pilot? He practically threw me out of the hangar! Said he didn't want me snooping around again. He's just mad I fell into the cockpit of his Ingrid the first time!"
My whole body seemed to tremble. "What?", I managed to say. "Who is this?"
Zero threw his hands up in the air in an exaggerated gesture. "That GUY, whatisname, that pilot of that Ingrid with green and blue on it." At my nonplused look, he continued exasperately, "the one I fell into the first time, you know? Erts?"
But I was already running towards the door, Zero and all thoughts of his promotion to Ernn Laties forgotten. I realized now, just who it was, just who must be back. As I skidded to a halt in front of the hangar door, I lifted my hand to palm it open –
– And it opened to reveal my brother's best friend, apparently back from whatever mad escapade he had gone into. He looked as he ever did, his hair frazzled and his posture bordering on arrogance. My eyes widened in horrible realization as he gave me a good look. He knew. HE KNEW WHAT I WAS DOING.
"Erts", he said conversationally, coming to lean casually beside me against the wall. I tried my hardest not to stare at him, trying to will him away when I knew it was futile. I scrambled for ideas: to wipe his memory of all that had been G.O.A., of Ernest, of me, anything. I couldn't decide what to do – it was as if a million life threads had been laid out before the hag of death to cut, and she couldn't decide which to cut first. I trembled, I cursed mentally, but it did no good. HE wouldn't be afraid to evict me. He had no ties to Zion, except as a protector to it. But he had no emotional ties to it, no personal ties. He wouldn't hesitate to get rid of someone who had become as ruthless as I had become.
"Garu", I managed to say, and my voice stuck in my throat.
/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \
Author's note:
Whew! That was tiring. But, it's a better chapter than the last two. So, enjoy. Things are heating up, aren't they? Oooh, I love this fic...I get to twist it around all I want. *gives an evil laugh, then coughs* Sorry, got carried away. Anyway, I kinda thought of making Erts just kill Teela right there and then when they were talking, but then decided against it. I could make him very, very evil and make them throw her body out into space without a coffin, saying she was a traitor, but I don't think Erts is that heartless just yet. Mark my words: JUST YET. That means he might in the future...oops! Giving too much away, I am.
As for all the references on "Antigone", I read it in English class, so I just had to put that in. I love the quote "We have only a little time to please the living and all eternity to love the dead". I kept repeating it in my head as I wrote this.
Andrea Weiling
The next day, I triggered into Rio's EX, and he said loud enough not to be taken wrong, "Teela will die soon", then collapsed on the step we were on. As I tried to shake him awake, the trees above seemed to say "it's your fault, it's all your fault" while I furiously glared at them, trying to get that feeling of intense guilt out of my head. Rio had been collapsing far sooner than I had originally expected – he had a distinctly strong mind before. However, this side of his EX had never been attempted before, so it might be that this EX's energy reserves had been lowered to support his other EX reactions instead because his precognition was never needed before. I stopped short when a sudden thought crossed my mind: had someone ELSE been using Rio's EX for other reasons?
I shook the thought from my mind. No one else knew except for Instructor Azuma and I. And why would Instructor Azuma want to use Rio's EX in the first place? To tell when he would die? Rio's EX had only a span of several days ahead – not several years.
And at the same time, I detected a lack of…something in the last statement. It was quite possible Rio could see far into the future. I couldn't be sure because I had never attempted it. However, right now, it was more important to get Rio awake and out of here before someone thought I knocked him unconscious in a fight or something. Knowing my reputation around G.O.A., however, that would not be the top thing I would be penalized for – I appeared too peaceable, too pliant, so I did not have much fear of being thrown out of G.O.A. for a simple fight. Plus, I could influence Rio's mind to testify for me, if the need ever arose.
I shivered. Another guilty thing I could do. I had learned so much in the past few weeks that I had begun to itch to use them. However, I restrained myself – I did not want to get caught reading someone's past thoroughly just because I felt bored.
I could feel someone's eyes on me, suddenly. I looked down and the very source of Rio's prediction was standing at the foot of the stairs, eyes shimmering lightly in the dim light, and her hair flowing regally behind her like a robe someone would wear to see the king with. On seeing I had noticed her, she took the steps two at a time to me, and picked up Rio still lying slack in my arms. I was too speechless to say anything; had she heard? If she had guessed my intent with Rio, I wondered what she would do with that information. Get me evicted? Possibly, especially if she suspected that someday I would surpass by very, very far.
Tagging behind her, she one-handedly palmed the combination for Rio's door (I wondered how she got that) and entered the quiet quarters of my clumsy, and seeing his room, messy older brother. Clothes had been strewn about, some food that Rio had somehow managed to sneak past the Cook (or asked for personally – I wouldn't be surprised if he had a separate diet in the room) had their wrappers on the floor, and the bedsheets looked as if it had been a snow avalanche off of the bed instead of being folded neatly. If I had been here solely to admire Rio's apparent disorder, I would have laughed. However, I was not, and when finally Teela was finished tucking Rio in the bed and arranged his shoes by the nightstand, I followed her out of the critically bombed pigsty and into the nearby hangar, where our Ingrids were kept in tip-top shape by our repairers. We stopped in front of hers, the Goddess Ernn Laties, and just stared up into that benign face the held so much compassion, and so much mercilessness.
My throat felt dry as I looked at her. She reminded me of Teela herself: quiet but caring, doing things only for the necessity of the planet and of G.O.A. Teela was selfless – she gave all she had to the battlefield, to provide protection for those who needed it, and saved none for herself. I know she would dive headfirst into a Victim to kill it if it would save even one young boy or one elderly grandpa, just if it would save anyone. Faintly I wondered what she, as a ruler of a country, would be like. I could see her, cruel and beautiful, and throwing troops to the battlefield, wishing always she were them, instead of commanding from the rear. She would dare not get close to any of her soldiers – when she received news of their deaths she would be devastated on the first wave. She would have been intelligent, as a queen – she would fragment the army into small, small groups and tell their commanders to use them wisely. This way she had many, many able and intelligent commanders as well as herself. Teela would have made a ruthless queen. Yet all who looked upon her and her deeds could only say she was a miracle worker, even though all the people she sacrificed.
A beautiful, terrible queen. The thought made me shiver. Would I become like that when I became leader of the Goddesses?
Teela was not one for words. I touched her arm lightly and the thoughts sparkled under my grasp. She was warm, loving, like a sister denied her brother for too long. She remained distant from everyone so that when she lost them, she would not grieve and lose her focus in battle. Yet, I knew I piqued an interest in her. She knew, somehow, already, that I would protect Zion and G.O.A. better than she ever could. And she revealed something rather strange to me – that when she closed her eyes, I was always there behind her eyelids, looking down at her. She needed to protect me at all costs so that I could save Zion and all its inhabitants, she said. Again, there was that selflessness, knowing that I would do nothing for her tomorrow, or the day after the next, when in battle she would be cut off, and I would do nothing to retrieve her.
I would die someday, she said. And if I die, what happiness! She gave a soft mental sigh. Time has taken me too long from the ones I promised to live for.
I gave a start. That's one of the Old Planet's Greek plays, isn't it? 'Antigone', a play on a girl who sacrificed herself to bury her disgraced brother.
Teela gave a soft smile. Of course. I should have known you paid more attention in History class than you did in piloting class. You had your brother to depend on for that.
I gave a rather sullen silence after the mention of Ernest. It seemed everything I said, everywhere I went, my brother was my ghost, haunting me in the people who knew me. Even my talks with Rio somehow always seemed to turn to my passed-on brother, as much as I tried to turn it. She seemed to sense this, and said softly, "Even I can sense the difference between you, though."
"How so?", I asked. Teela's EX had nothing to do with mental abilities, this much I knew. So unless she was very, very good at reading people, she could not tell what differences there were other than physical differences. But apparently this was her talent, reading people, even blank faces like mine, for she acknowledged her lack of information with a nod and a hidden look.
She gave a vague look before she started. I don't think anyone had ever heard her talk so much before. "You are different because of your driving force. You strive to be different from him, even though you know it is him who should break your mold. Ernest Cuore strove to fit into the molds that people provided for him, fitting their comfort zones. Perhaps that could have been used to manipulate people, yet he was unsatisfied with what greed could offer him in favor of what true, honest relationships could offer him." She gave a smile and bowed her head. "You are ruthless in your power, now. You hold much of it, and though you want to live by the same pure standards as your brother, you cannot. You want more. You want to make this world your own. What would you not do for an elixir of life? You could rule forever and ever on this planet, until someone dared to kill you. But they would never succeed, would they? You would always be on the alert, and even when the whole world was against you, you would always have the upper hand, the last ace to play. The people would fear you, respect you for what you have done to them. You understand the human need to fight, and you would satisfy it. You understand the human greed, and you would give all who deserved a dose of either poison or candy. You understand that everyone needs this and that and you strive to satisfy everyone's needs, knowing all the time you have been satisfied as well because your only need in life is to know you are helping someone."
"You are the same as your brother in that aspect. However, you are the opposite of your brother otherwise. You are all that you brother strove not to be."
And suddenly I was horribly, horribly angry. But I kept my EX in check, and even though I could see her eyes widen when my hair turned a sudden green, flickering like a broken lightbulb, I reined it and threw it to the back of my mind. Hate, an emotion absent and unfelt in my brother, burned deeply in me. That was another difference, I guess. It used to be unfelt in me as well, but time and power had changed that. It changes everyone, doesn't it? Only one person seemed to escape that, and that was my brother Ernest.
And for the first time in my life, hate coursed through me towards that one person I had always, always trusted, always depended on. His betrayal seemed to grow on me, and with it I defied him. I would become the leader of the pilots, that I took for granted as his goal passed on to me. But I would not, would NOT thank him for it. He brought this upon me like a plague of locusts, and I never wanted it. He thrust me into this position I never desired, and now, for the first time, I hated him for it. It burned hot inside of me, as if a dam of lava had suddenly burst and now heated every corner of me. The liquid felt like it had been burning to be let lose.
The alarm bells rang. I ran to Reneighd Klein. And before Tune or anyone else could see, I slapped the cockpit door as hard as I could, almost as if I tried to leave my fingerprints there for all time. I hated this machine. I hated this position I should have wanted, that my brother left as a legacy for me to fit into. But I found now it didn't fit me. I wanted more. I wanted what my brother promised me, a position as the leader of the pilots, as the sole hero that saved Zion from all Victims and survived through thick and thin times. I wanted to be the ruthless commander who used his troops to achieve victory, and didn't care about how many million lives were lost in an instant. The sky could cry blood and black feathers, and this hate, this hate of living, this hate of everything that made up this world, the hate of my brother and his best friend, off somewhere laughing in hell because of my frustration in living. "We have only a little time to please the living, but all eternity to love the dead", said Antigone a million times on the Old Planet.
I was angry at Teela as well, but that disappeared when she died. A sort of heartfelt goodbye was said when her body was sent out. Beside me, Yu looked dead on his feet. It had been the third sortie in two days. He was tired, as I had been. My heart went out to the silent, solitary pilot and his repairer sister. Rio had slept all through this sortie, exhausted from his overtaxed EX. My heart went out to him as well.
Though this time the Goddess had left no loose ends to be cut off like when I had been promoted to pilot (the Goddess had to withdraw from the battlefield from sheer lack of firepower), there still needed to be a new pilot. I was not surprised when Instructor Azuma chose number 88, my friend Zero Enna, to become the new pilot of Ernn Laties. I could tell many officials had lifted eyebrows when a fourteen-year-old was promoted to be the new pilot. However, I think Instructor Azuma felt he needed to reward me a kindness, and instead of letting 89 come up, he chose 88 instead. As Zero came bouncing into my room, I smiled and chatted with him like it was nothing. For a little while, I found relief with his cheery attitude and his exclamations of excitement at his promotion. I could smile genuinely, for a little while.
For a little while, I forgot he might be someone I sent out into battle and let free. He might die because of me. But that was for the good of Zion, for the good of the people. And though my personal feelings, my personal greed, paid a bit of influence in my decisions, on the outside I was still only fighting selflessly, like Teela, for the good of Zion. And as Zero bounced back out of my room to check out his new, finally personal, quarters (Goddess pilots didn't share rooms), I could hear his excitement. Then he faded from memory as I took a few tentative steps down the hall. Stopping in front of a door I had only stepped out of a few hours ago, I hesitated only a moment before I knocked three times and palmed the door open.
"Rio?", I called to the messy room, and made my way carefully around piles of dirty/clean Agui Keimeia uniforms (I couldn't tell which was dirty and which were clean) and half-eaten food. I looked softly, almost affectionately, down at my new-now-old brother. Giving his shoulder a little shake, I tried to jolt him awake, to tell him what he had missed. To my surprised, he did not wake, just continued to slumber peacefully. And while that made a touching scene, somewhere in the back of my mind I was worried; Rio should have awakened by now. Overly using an EX should not have tired him out this much. At most, it should have knocked out a person for no more than an hour, no matter how extensively long it had been used. Against a voice that told me just to ignore it, I went to the nurses at the sick bay and told them to check up on him. A little more wearied than usual, I made my way to the cafeteria. I brought a tray back to my room (special privilege of Goddess pilots), and after I was finished mechanically eating, brought it back to the Cook, who gave it a good scrutiny and then gave a weird look. I knew what it meant; I usually finished half my tray and dumped the rest. This time, I had actually downed the whole thing.
It made me think of Rio. It made me think of the prediction he made, that I would kill him. Was it possible? Would I truly do such a thing? A voice in the back of my mind reminded me that I had somewhat "caused" Teela's "accidental" death, but I shoved that from the back of my mind as Zero came into the cafeteria, looked around for a moment, and stomped over to me.
Surprised, I cocked my head at him. "Zero? What seems the matter?"
Zero pointed to the now-closed door, in the general direction of what he thought to be the hangar door to where Ernn Laties was kept. "That GUY! You know, that other pilot? He practically threw me out of the hangar! Said he didn't want me snooping around again. He's just mad I fell into the cockpit of his Ingrid the first time!"
My whole body seemed to tremble. "What?", I managed to say. "Who is this?"
Zero threw his hands up in the air in an exaggerated gesture. "That GUY, whatisname, that pilot of that Ingrid with green and blue on it." At my nonplused look, he continued exasperately, "the one I fell into the first time, you know? Erts?"
But I was already running towards the door, Zero and all thoughts of his promotion to Ernn Laties forgotten. I realized now, just who it was, just who must be back. As I skidded to a halt in front of the hangar door, I lifted my hand to palm it open –
– And it opened to reveal my brother's best friend, apparently back from whatever mad escapade he had gone into. He looked as he ever did, his hair frazzled and his posture bordering on arrogance. My eyes widened in horrible realization as he gave me a good look. He knew. HE KNEW WHAT I WAS DOING.
"Erts", he said conversationally, coming to lean casually beside me against the wall. I tried my hardest not to stare at him, trying to will him away when I knew it was futile. I scrambled for ideas: to wipe his memory of all that had been G.O.A., of Ernest, of me, anything. I couldn't decide what to do – it was as if a million life threads had been laid out before the hag of death to cut, and she couldn't decide which to cut first. I trembled, I cursed mentally, but it did no good. HE wouldn't be afraid to evict me. He had no ties to Zion, except as a protector to it. But he had no emotional ties to it, no personal ties. He wouldn't hesitate to get rid of someone who had become as ruthless as I had become.
"Garu", I managed to say, and my voice stuck in my throat.
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Author's note:
Whew! That was tiring. But, it's a better chapter than the last two. So, enjoy. Things are heating up, aren't they? Oooh, I love this fic...I get to twist it around all I want. *gives an evil laugh, then coughs* Sorry, got carried away. Anyway, I kinda thought of making Erts just kill Teela right there and then when they were talking, but then decided against it. I could make him very, very evil and make them throw her body out into space without a coffin, saying she was a traitor, but I don't think Erts is that heartless just yet. Mark my words: JUST YET. That means he might in the future...oops! Giving too much away, I am.
As for all the references on "Antigone", I read it in English class, so I just had to put that in. I love the quote "We have only a little time to please the living and all eternity to love the dead". I kept repeating it in my head as I wrote this.
Andrea Weiling