Reality shifted, to a place unknown.
Clive found himself standing in a deep puddle of shadow. It stretched out, beyond the furthest reaches of his vision, and instead of fading along the horizon's vanishing point, it spread out and also coated the sky, spreading through the air, like every atom within this dark black world was just another aspect of the shadow. It was hard to look at, because the land had no scope, nothing to vary itself with. It was simply everything, and nothing, all at once. Clive was immersed right in the middle of it. He pressed his heels into the floor underneath his boots and felt that the ground was solid and cold like one great big block of stone positioned underneath the darkness.
The air was difficult to breathe, and as he turned around to see where he was, no change in his vision was made. He blinked a few times. It made no difference whether his eyes were open or not. He had never been in a place so dark before. This unnerved him more than it should have, it felt like he was existing solely in a dream. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called out into the darkness for a voice, anything, as long as it didn't leave him alone. "Catherine!" He cried, "Kaitlyn! Virginia! Gallows! Jet! Ravendor…" The echoes of his voice answered him back seconds later, carrying with them no reply. He was alone. Clive lowered his hands. "Luceid…" He whispered, as an absolute final resort.
Like a thin layer of water, the shadows rippled like liquid without volume around his feet and the ends of his coat, cold, and silky. Clive knelt and tried to cup a small portion of the shadow into his hands, a tiny pool collected within his half-clasped palms, a deep black sea, with thin wisps of dark smoke flitting around it. Like water, the darkness escaped his hands via a small crack between his fingers and drained away, the drifter feeling no dampness at all from the vapor fluid. It was like the darkness had no physical form at all. This was, this must be his dream world, so much like the places he had walked through before. Clive felt fear seep into his body from the notion, and he stood up and looked around, wishing for a light. "Please, tell me. What am I… supposed to do, Luceid…?"
"What right have you to speak that name, when you choose to live in such ignorance of your own true identity?" Said a gruff voice as somebody grabbed Clive by the shoulder and spun him forcefully around, strong fingers digging into his coat and the area that had previously been a severe bite wound. His shoulder flared in pain momentarily, but it disappeared as the demon looked up, clenching his fists in surprise. He made eye contact with his assailant and Clive tore himself away, stepping backwards and tripping, landing in the shadow and sending up a cloud of the pitch black vapor.
It seeped into his clothing and made him feel awful, except that he was too consumed with surprise to notice this. "It is you!" Clive cried, struggling to his feet but staying on his guard. "I know you! You are the one inside my head, telling me what to do! You are the one who has been torturing me!" The drifter coughed on a little bit of the smoke that he had inhaled, and took another step back, making sure not to fall down this time.
"Boomerang Flash, at your service." He said with an alarming amount of courtesy, nodding his head in greeting. "It is about time I got a chance to speak with you, face to face." Smiling in ambiguous intent, he raised one hand and said something quietly, hushed and arcane. Around them, the darkened sky erupted with faint pinpoints of light, masses and masses of stars illuminating the dream world, into thousands of separate and beautiful constellations. Lowering his hand, he gripped the sword he had been leaning on, making a slight noise from the motion because he was decked out in full battle armor. Clive knew from previous experience in one of his other dreams about how heavy it was. It took a demon's strength to walk around in armor like that. "You have questions, don't you? Go ahead, ask me while you still have time. That is what I'm here for."
Clive thought awhile to measure Boomerang as a potential danger to himself, but concluded that if the knight had wanted to injure him, he would have certainly done it while his back was turned. The drifter knew that he may as well trust the older demon, for now, at least. In any case, he had better start his questions out small, to see exactly how much Boomerang knew. "Where are we?" Clive asked. "I know I have been here before, in some kind of a dream. There, I heard voices and saw things that did not make sense…" He focussed on Boomerang's weapon. "And that blade was there as well…"
"This is the dream world of humans." Replied the other demon idly, like it was information that anybody should know. "It is also your subconscious. This is where your soul wanders, when your body is asleep. In here, it is very, very easy to forget anything, sometimes everything. Do you ever get that feeling right after you wake up when you are between asleep and awake, in both worlds? That is your conscious recollection of the world of dreams. I don't really belong here, I'm no dream-demon, my body is that of metal." He rapped on his chest plate for emphasis. "And my sword, I'm not surprised that you remember her… I'll explain about her later, alright?"
"Why are you here?" Clive said tiredly. "How can I go back? I have to go back. They need me there." He had a thought, and blurted out the next question. "And why am I a demon? You are one yourself, you must know! Tell me now! Why are you in my head, Boomerang? Why is all this happening to me?" This was a large volley of questions that Clive had shot out at Boomerang, but the drifter wasn't in a good mood for a question and answer session, and knew that he had to get out of here fast. His body was vulnerable in the real world without a soul to control it. He wondered exactly if it was safe.
"All those questions are tied together, and I can answer them, all at once. I need to explain to you now, the truth. You deserve to know. But Clive, what I am about to tell you will be very hard to accept, you might disbelieve me, or you might take it even worse. Let me ask you; can you handle the truth?" The look Clive gave Boomerang seemed to be an answer enough, and probably would have been punctuated with cuss words had it been spoken aloud. "I see." Continued the knight, "Right then. Listen well. First, let me use something as a simile, or a metaphor. Something…"
The metal demon turned around slowly, taking with him the thick ancient sword and tapping it on the ground, resting both his hands upon the golden tip of the handle. Clive felt unconditionally restless as he watch the figure in front of him deeply exhale, searching for words to say. "Your Professor's Filgaia Theory." The Quarter Knight said out of the blue, "How the world is a single life entity. Do not say anything now, Clive. Just listen." The drifter immediately shut his mouth, just about to say something then and there. Clive absently wondered how Boomerang knew that he was going to speak, but instead, continued to listen. "I assume that you understand the basic elements of this hypothesis, the lithosphere, earth and fire, the atmosphere, wind, the hydrosphere, water, and the biosphere, life itself, all combine to create a living habitat that can sustain organic existence."
"Yes," Clive interrupted, "It is a harmony that assures continued survival of the life on Filgaia." He shook his head. "But what does any of this have to do with me? Is there any special significance that I am not properly grasping?" Thinking for a second, he added; "And how did you come to know such things? How do you understand the works of Berlitz and I?" Boomerang turned his head, just enough so that Clive could see the glint of one crimson red eye in the darkness. The older metal demon smiled, exposing his sharp little fangs. Suddenly, Clive wished that Boomerang could have chosen to wear his battle helmet, looking into those frightfully knowledgeable eyes was disturbing him. It felt as though he was being whittled away into nothing.
"I usually wouldn't have cared," Boomerang admitted freely and gruffly, "Except that you made me care, Clive Winslett. Don't look so shocked and shut up, I am not done explaining yet." He tapped the sword upon the invisible ground again, and instead of just ambient noise, a fragment of the inky pool disappeared, revealing a small patch of dirt not unlike the once Clive had just been standing on back in the real world, from only a few minutes ago. The drifter crouched and touched the patch of dirt uncertainly, but felt it's mass and volume, a proper existence. But, this just could not be real. Was this a replication made in his own dream word? Boomerang faced Clive and drew a perfectly round circle in the dirt with the tip of his blade, nearly taking up the entire space of area. When this was done, he buried the end of his sword in the precise center, and spoke again.
"If the planet is like a living body, and it's physical aspects are similar to skin, bone and organ tissue, then let me ask you, what is the nature and purpose of a conscious soul? Why would such lengths be taken to engineer a being who can think for themselves, who can remember and learn?" Clive shifted to a full attention and blocked out the annoying inner voices in his mind, what the older metal demon was saying was far too interesting to just skim through. Maybe this might hold his answer? Boomerang scratched a line in the circle, bisecting the shape in half, but at an odd diagonal angle. "Filgaia, like any other living planet, has a bloodstream." He waited for this sentence to sink into Clive's mind, and pressed onwards. "Blood, flowing across the surface, merging, interacting with others, and creating more of the same. Does this description remind you of something else?"
"It does. Moving and interacting, making more and working towards a goal. People…" Clive breathed, catching on. "You are talking about people. So, you tell me that the Filgaia Theory can also apply to life itself, and that seemingly futile life on an evolutionary scale can still hold a higher purpose? Amazing." He freely admitted with a long exhalation of breath, he had never thought of it that way before. Boomerang's ideas were truly fascinating. In fact, Clive knew that he just had to know more. His scientist's curiosity was getting the better on him. Could this be the absolute truth?
"The Prophets did not see things in this way. They only saw the little picture populated with humans and demi-humans. Not once, did they consider the entirety of Filgaia as a singular whole. Their ideals were doomed from the start, evolving every person individually would have never worked. Like cancerous blood, the rest of the human species and the planet herself would have purged them from her body." Boomerang jerked a thumb at himself, and then at Clive. He smiled ironically, drumming the fingers of his free hand upon the leather grip of his sword. "I will tell you this. You and I are also a part of this cancerous blood. I, upon my own home planet, accepted my fate readily, however, you did not receive any choice. The fault, I'm afraid, is all mine. But I will explain this later. For now, I will continue. Here is a simple question. What does blood do in a living body?"
Clive had studied biology before, he had a fair idea of the answer that Boomerang was searching for. Instinctively, he looked at one of his wrists for the scars they bore, and still, they had not faded away. Unlike the blood that he had so readily tried to purge from his body, those scars probably wouldn't go away. He sighed. "Blood transports iron extracts and other minerals in the body to different areas for sustenance and continued existence." Clive said carefully, "It also regulates the flow of chemicals in the body. Blood and people… Blood and life…" He raised a hand to his chin and mused over Boomerang's metaphor, trying to discern the trigger. "They are one and the same. A transport, a method of regulating life throughout the planet! Just like a circulatory system!" His eyes clouded over with confusion. "But then, what is it that a life must carry that is so precious to Filgaia itself? Not life, as life was built for that purpose, so what else? I don't understand…"
"Memory." Boomerang said so simply to that it almost embarrassed Clive. "Experience. Emotion. Thought. Creativity. Desire. Courage. Hope. Despair. But above all, memory. Filgaia wants, and has, a soul. This is brought about by collective thought from the life-force trailing across her surface, discovering and imparting knowledge, teaching, and living. The memory that a human collects in their lives also forms similar recollections in the minds of their close friends and associates, and that is how memory is transported, just like chemicals and blood. This is the hidden part of your Filgaia Theory. This is the wisdom that you have never known. The memories that have grown and spread, at the point of a physical termination of the body, are released into the ether, and sustain the planet, her aura, her soul. Filgaia's memory is her soul."
The drifter wished fervently that he had brought his notebook along, this was just so fascinating! Clive was dumbstruck. Suddenly, it all made sense. Eerie, yet wonderful sense. His hand twitched as though there should be a pen or a pencil within it, and he desperately tried to record this information into his long-term memory. If her were to survive all of this, he'd have to write a paper about Boomerang's words, no doubt about it. The Quarter Knight continued, cutting even more lines into the circle, representing the bloodstream that flowed through the planet. "Like blood, a spent life does not terminate utterly, something else survives past that phase of death, and is recycled, rebuilt, to continue onwards in another form or guise. You can call it reincarnation, if you will. Now, from the memories lost in their previous life, the small soul upon the planet is now anew, after a process of revitalization, and must build new memories over the ones that have been taken. However, there is always a small mark upon a used soul, a shadow, like an imprint of the former lives you have led. They can resurface in dreams, over traumatic experiences, and in other ways. You, Clive, your current self is a definite result of this process. "
"Boomerang…" Clive whispered, horrified. "Are you telling me that my dreams are-"
"Previous reality." The knight finished up for him. "Memories from nearly two thousand years past. You have a very old soul, Clive Winslett." He smirked in an almost evil manner, like he was going to enjoy saying what was on his mind next. "This is the way that the world transpires, you and your professor were nearly on the mark. Nearly. Now, my friend, let me tell you about the current life I have been living as a result of this renewing process. You may find this interesting." He placed a hand on his armor-plated chest. "In fact, it will explain the reason why I speak this way, and why I know so much. I hate science, but I learnt it because of you. You are the reason for my presence here, and unlike what you choose to think, I am not possessing you. Nothing of the sort. I have been here all along, hidden, within the recesses of your mind, from the very beginning."
Clive sunk to his feet, clutching his hands to his head. "No, stop. Shut up. You're lying! You must be!"
His words reached a crescendo as he spoke them, loudly, clearly, so that Clive could hear every single syllable and be forced to comprehend. Boomerang closed his eyes and began. "I was sent to Hell." He chuckled, and it sounded horrible coming from the metal demon's lips. "The fires burnt me and made me suffer, I endured the agony for countless years, writhing, screaming, having every single layer of my soul stripped away and destroyed. But I never forgot the first moment of my entrapment into the burning region, what that serpentine devil said to me as it dragged me into the pit. 'Atonement through the suffering of one's own sin, to be empathetic, to experience that which you have inflicted upon others, an irony which will be a salvation.' I never forgot. And finally, after two millennia of contemplation and refinement of my sword art, I recalled Luceid and my promise to her, and knew that I must atone." He spread his hands, leaving his blade to be stuck neatly into the ground. "This is my atonement."
He wants to atone… Clive thought amidst the jumble of revelations and confusion running around within his mind. His head was hurting through all the sudden information, and it scared him to know that this was the truth that he had been searching for. Atonement through suffering? Whose? …Mine? My suffering? He wants Luceid back, so why is he stuck onto me? Why is his past my previous reality…? Oh gods… gods no…
The Quarter Knight nodded, and knelt down to Clive's level, where the newly-made metal demon was nearly shivering in fright. It looked like he was finally getting the picture. Boomerang smiled. "I wished to find out what it was that makes a human function. Why a human desires to protect." In the dirt circle in front of him, he drew a small humanoid shape resembling a man with a darkly skinned finger, absently illustrating his case. "With this desire, I was at last reborn. Listen to me, Clive. Listen to this. I was born into a human's body, of a male persuasion, about thirty years ago on the planet of Filgaia…"
"Shut up…" Clive moaned, "Just shut up…"
The elder metal demon did nothing of the sort. "I was homeless, destitute, from the first day I was born. As an orphan, I managed to survive through pity and cunning in the township of Little Twister, and at the early age of about four or five, I began to gather other children around me, for protection, and for companionship. This became the beginning of my first gang. I tried to be a good kid, morally, at least, so when I picked up another child just outside the town with a strange accent and an unusual weapon, I let him join as a permanent member of the gang. He did well, until the accident many years after, when he tried to take his own life. I took that bullet for myself, and I bear a scar upon my arm in doing so. I became a drifter and an archaeologist, while I also married one of my oldest childhood friends and had a daughter with her. Tell me, Clive. Who am I?"
"No…" Rasped the drifter, shaking his head. "This cannot be true! I am not you! I'm not!" He looked up into Boomerang's cold and apathetic eyes, gritting his teeth as he suddenly felt an intense loathing for the other demon, fiercer and more powerful than he ever could have imagined. The stars swirled around them, in thousands of little constellations, but they were easily ignored. "We are nothing like each other! How can you be me?! I hate killing! I hate battle! I am Clive Winslett, not Boomerang Flash! I am- I mean, I was human!" He dropped his hands to his sides and they sunk into the inky pool of darkness slightly, where the shadows rolled over them without relent. "You're wrong…" He whispered, losing his anger to an overwhelmed weariness.
"It is true that we have practically nothing in common…" Boomerang reasoned with a hint of revulsion and pity in his voice. "But that means nothing. I had a choice when I was reborn. I had to atone myself through becoming my very own antithesis, my opposite. For the moment, I had to quench my desire to fight and become docile, kinder, less haughty. My desire spread to a different area of expertise, the desire for the knowledge of the past. This is why I became an archaeologist. As time passed I became a different person, and the memories of the thousands of battles, the hunting of the Executioner, were lost. I was Boomerang no longer. I was human, I was Clive Winslett. This is what I needed to tell you, the truth of your past."
"You speak to me in dreams, you show me my past memories…" Said the drifter softly, calming down a little. "But for what purpose? Why? Am I not wiped of these memories for a reason? Why do you uncover them yet again? And," He added, "If I am you, how can you speak to me as Boomerang singularly?" His head spinning, Clive tried his best to make out the wisdom imparted upon him, separating what he believed to be fact and fiction. The concept of reincarnation was not foreign to him, in fact, it was a theory often used in certain Guardian-based religions, but to meet one's own former self from the past, and to have such a reaction, it was just too much. "Wait, may I get this straight?" Clive asked, "Was I you in a previous life?"
"Yes." Said Boomerang solemnly, "You are the reincarnation of my soul." He pulled his weapon from out of the ground with an effortless movement, and held the end of the blade with his other free hand. Turning the sword this way and that, it caught the reflections of the stars in it's body and glittered like an unearthly light. "How else could you have wielded a blade forged only for me, out of my connection with Luceid. Only two people can wield this blade. You and me. And," He persevered, "I speak to you like this because your mind purges my existence here. You still cannot remember all of the past, and even so, you would not have understood it. To make up for that, your subconscious allowed me to be recreated in your mind as a split personality, to guide you until you were ready to accept the truth. Are you ready now, Clive?"
"I… I became a demon not because of the curse, but because I was one in a former life? Because I am remembering my past?" A force flashed through his mind, a wave of memories, and Clive winced, trying to take them all in. They spoke of his true self, of his thousands of years living as a part of the demon race. He knew then and there, that although he had been a human for almost thirty years, he had survived as a demon for far longer. His soul was a demon's soul, and nothing could change that. It made him feel sick. "When Luceid bit me, some of those memories decided to come back… and it triggered the return into a demon body. I understand now. I see."
"That was not the beginning." Boomerang inputted. "Even before that, you were attempting to remember. When you came back from visiting Ka Dingel and the dark spear was released into the world, did you not begin to dream of your recent past? Of the incident with Berlitz? That tower, the place of your previous death, woke up part of your mind, and set it back into a recall, but that was not enough. The night after you saw the blue menace, Siegfried, or should I say Zeikfried, didn't you spend half the night thinking back to the moment when your professor died? These things were keys into your past, and though you did not understand them, you tried to remember. Seeing Luceid on that Halloween night and letting her taste your blood was the final straw, the last barrier, and you could not hide from the truth."
Clive sat back, exhausted, but also making sense of Boomerang's words. "I am me." He said carefully, reaching deeply into his mind. "That is all I need to know. I was Boomerang, but now I am me." He wiped his face with the back of his hand. "I need to think of this some more, but now is not the time. I have to save my family, I have to save my friends." Glancing up, he saw Boomerang finally in an entirely different light, and he couldn't hate the demon so much, not anymore. Even a demon such as himself had tried to mature throughout the ages. "Listen, Boomerang. If you are me, then you know what I must do. I have to go back and save them. I have to save Catherine and Kaitlyn!"
He felt a point suddenly touching the middle of his throat, sharp and deadly honed. Clive froze, and followed the length of the blade all the way up to the demon that was holding the sword. Boomerang smiled grimly. "We have but one soul." He said. "But there is you, the present, and there is me, the past. We cannot, truthfully, coexist together for much longer. It is straining our mind even as we speak. One of us must die. This imbalance is keeping us rooted in our dream world, we must stop it. Clive, you know that I will always fight for my life, against anybody, even my future self." He looked serious, focused. Boomerang wasn't bluffing.
The drifter swallowed hard, knowing that he had no weapon to retaliate with. Also, how could he kill somebody who shared the same soul as himself? Wouldn't that be suicide? This was too confusing. Then, before Clive could come to a conclusion, Boomerang raised his free hand and closed his eyes, concentrating. A new shape appeared in the vastness of space swirling around them, solidifying into a perfect replica of the Dark Guardian Blade. It was remarkably accurate, it looked exactly the same. Boomerang dropped the weapon at Clive's feet. The Quarter Knight narrowed his eyes. "Show me your sword art, Clive Winslett! Show me what thirty years living as a human has taught you! Show me the passion of your desire, the power to protect! If not for yourself, then for your family!"
Picking up the weapon by it's leather-bound hilt, it came as a surprise to find that the weapon was so heavy to lift, though it was still unmatched in it's cold blue beauty, frosting in the shadows, yet gleaming from the reflective starlight. When he touched the blade, Clive could feel the spirit of the sword climb up through the metal and touch the aura existing in his arms, tentatively, like it was trying to remember an old friend. A moment passed, and he got the sensation of those tendrils of spirit tightening around his own, holding them both together, melding them as one. It was indescribable. Taking a deep breath, he stood up and hauled the weapon up into attack position one, struggling with the heavy weight. "You want me to-"
"Fight." Replied Boomerang, mimicking Clive's posture. "Fight for your family's future."