11-19-02
Sound
*AN: Based on A Legacy of Amadeus*
Fight fire with fire, or so the old adage runs. But neither R. Dorothy Wayneright, nor the entire city of Paradigm, had heard it. No matter-the tongues menacing her knight in dirty armor at that point were not of flame, but of sound, shredding sound which was slowly disassembling the Big O and pounding mercilessly on his mind. She stood, helpless, in the cut-away house, like a doll in a diorama, frozen in a plebeian action, a demonstration of everyday life. And this was indeed her daily routine-she had become quite accustomed to standing on the sidelines, watching his life be threatened, watching him let his armor, his protection, his megadeus, slowly be sawed at around the edges like a gradually fraying rope. The cord had never yet been fully broken, and it was always restored to full strength by Norman just in time for each successive battle, but these facts did nothing to alleviate her distress. She could only stand observant, internally writhing with concern but being unfamiliar with human manifestations of the emotion such as twisting one's fingers into knots.
She stared intently at the struggle for a moment, then averted her gaze. Being a practiced megadeus-watcher, she could tell which one was winning and which was losing. He was losing.
She looked pointlessly at her hands.
At that moment, she mused, Roger's hands held the throttles of the Big O tightly, and their palms in his leather gloves were soaked with sweat. Instro's, in the process of compelling the sonic beast to indirectly destroy her soul, were articulating in ways more violent than they'd ever been intended. He was destined to be a musician, not a warrior. But that madman...that madman had created a monster out of a pianist...
A pianist! Perhaps she could help with this battle. Quickly she seated herself at the piano, and without further ado began playing. Her knowledge of acoustics and the carriage of sound down hillsides was limited, but she could hope that if she pressed as hard as she could, on every note, maybe, just maybe, Instro would hear and heed. She dared not glance back at the battle for fear her efforts were ineffectual; instead, she kept playing, and pressed each ivory, every ebony, even harder. She felt a sense of urgency of deed unknown to her since the subway, and had she been human it would have swelled in her chest and throat enough to cause her to choke with the fear. Still she played on.
She was waking Roger up, she was waking Instro up, she was saving Roger from the final sleep she feared he faced in the form of his friend. For the first time she truly realized how easily he might be taken from her, how simple it would be for the shrieking sounds emanating from Instro's megadeus to make him bleed, make him weep, make him fall as Soldano had. Thoughts such as these, had she been human, may have caused her to cease playing and run to the edge of the fissured floor, to scream his name for all the eternity contained in the cold gray sky and desolate forest to hear. But as she was neither human nor weak, she only played on, pressing her very soul into every keystroke, pedaling the chords to hang and clamour out over the hill, into the audio receptors of Instro, to save her incarnate dream.
She abruptly became aware that she no longer needed to fight to be heard above cacophonous battle clangs. She continued playing as she turned to look over her shoulder. Instro was holding his megadeus immobile, listening intently to her melodic spell. Roger emerged in time from his cockpit and began talking to Instro, but she couldn't hear the words. The distance and distortion of sound by the wind was not an issue for her; it was mere function for her audio receptors to distinguish even the most garbled of human speech. But her mind's desire to decipher his words was powerless to her heart's obligation to merely listen to the music he wove with his voice. Sometime between then and the final destruction of Instro's hands, she stopped playing; somewhere within the space of time in which Roger rebuked his friend for that action, she stopped thinking; somewhere within the millisecond in which the sonic walking-stick was leveled at her she realized that though she had saved his fragile life, hers was in jeopardy as well.
In the moment after that, when the husk of a long-dead tree crushed Instro's master, the sound it created was the most beautiful she had yet heard. She, though impervious to most things, had just been spared that which would have succeeded in tearing her as brutally away from Roger as Instro had detached his own hands.
In the moments and days after that, she demoted the tree's crash to her second-most-beautiful sound. First place now and forever became filled by his voice. His voice, his laugh, his chuckle, any sound he made, she treasured, because it was made by him, and he was alive, and he had beaten the odds again, and her daily routine had closed with its regular ending, instead of with snow falling on spilt blood, and she was still functioning and able to hear him, and all was well with her world.
Of course, she indicated none of this by her expression, as she was unfamiliar with human manifestations of exhilaration such as giddy laughter or reckless, impetuous kisses. Instead she merely stood by Instro at the piano bench and listened to the music, and all that it had saved.
Sound
*AN: Based on A Legacy of Amadeus*
Fight fire with fire, or so the old adage runs. But neither R. Dorothy Wayneright, nor the entire city of Paradigm, had heard it. No matter-the tongues menacing her knight in dirty armor at that point were not of flame, but of sound, shredding sound which was slowly disassembling the Big O and pounding mercilessly on his mind. She stood, helpless, in the cut-away house, like a doll in a diorama, frozen in a plebeian action, a demonstration of everyday life. And this was indeed her daily routine-she had become quite accustomed to standing on the sidelines, watching his life be threatened, watching him let his armor, his protection, his megadeus, slowly be sawed at around the edges like a gradually fraying rope. The cord had never yet been fully broken, and it was always restored to full strength by Norman just in time for each successive battle, but these facts did nothing to alleviate her distress. She could only stand observant, internally writhing with concern but being unfamiliar with human manifestations of the emotion such as twisting one's fingers into knots.
She stared intently at the struggle for a moment, then averted her gaze. Being a practiced megadeus-watcher, she could tell which one was winning and which was losing. He was losing.
She looked pointlessly at her hands.
At that moment, she mused, Roger's hands held the throttles of the Big O tightly, and their palms in his leather gloves were soaked with sweat. Instro's, in the process of compelling the sonic beast to indirectly destroy her soul, were articulating in ways more violent than they'd ever been intended. He was destined to be a musician, not a warrior. But that madman...that madman had created a monster out of a pianist...
A pianist! Perhaps she could help with this battle. Quickly she seated herself at the piano, and without further ado began playing. Her knowledge of acoustics and the carriage of sound down hillsides was limited, but she could hope that if she pressed as hard as she could, on every note, maybe, just maybe, Instro would hear and heed. She dared not glance back at the battle for fear her efforts were ineffectual; instead, she kept playing, and pressed each ivory, every ebony, even harder. She felt a sense of urgency of deed unknown to her since the subway, and had she been human it would have swelled in her chest and throat enough to cause her to choke with the fear. Still she played on.
She was waking Roger up, she was waking Instro up, she was saving Roger from the final sleep she feared he faced in the form of his friend. For the first time she truly realized how easily he might be taken from her, how simple it would be for the shrieking sounds emanating from Instro's megadeus to make him bleed, make him weep, make him fall as Soldano had. Thoughts such as these, had she been human, may have caused her to cease playing and run to the edge of the fissured floor, to scream his name for all the eternity contained in the cold gray sky and desolate forest to hear. But as she was neither human nor weak, she only played on, pressing her very soul into every keystroke, pedaling the chords to hang and clamour out over the hill, into the audio receptors of Instro, to save her incarnate dream.
She abruptly became aware that she no longer needed to fight to be heard above cacophonous battle clangs. She continued playing as she turned to look over her shoulder. Instro was holding his megadeus immobile, listening intently to her melodic spell. Roger emerged in time from his cockpit and began talking to Instro, but she couldn't hear the words. The distance and distortion of sound by the wind was not an issue for her; it was mere function for her audio receptors to distinguish even the most garbled of human speech. But her mind's desire to decipher his words was powerless to her heart's obligation to merely listen to the music he wove with his voice. Sometime between then and the final destruction of Instro's hands, she stopped playing; somewhere within the space of time in which Roger rebuked his friend for that action, she stopped thinking; somewhere within the millisecond in which the sonic walking-stick was leveled at her she realized that though she had saved his fragile life, hers was in jeopardy as well.
In the moment after that, when the husk of a long-dead tree crushed Instro's master, the sound it created was the most beautiful she had yet heard. She, though impervious to most things, had just been spared that which would have succeeded in tearing her as brutally away from Roger as Instro had detached his own hands.
In the moments and days after that, she demoted the tree's crash to her second-most-beautiful sound. First place now and forever became filled by his voice. His voice, his laugh, his chuckle, any sound he made, she treasured, because it was made by him, and he was alive, and he had beaten the odds again, and her daily routine had closed with its regular ending, instead of with snow falling on spilt blood, and she was still functioning and able to hear him, and all was well with her world.
Of course, she indicated none of this by her expression, as she was unfamiliar with human manifestations of exhilaration such as giddy laughter or reckless, impetuous kisses. Instead she merely stood by Instro at the piano bench and listened to the music, and all that it had saved.