A/N: A short fic based on an idea proposed by Mintsui. Set sometime after GGX2. I suppose you could call it AU, unless Ishiwatari-san is as demented as his fangirls. XD
…And really, who'd be better suited to lead such an army than the Holy Order's killer hero?
Command
A drop of water slipping from somewhere high above broke the still blackness of the cave and clinked into the shallow pool below, its whispering echoes like an ocean's roar in the utter silence far beneath the earth. The underground paths, once untouched by man, now suffered on occasion the pressure of booted feet and the harsh introduction of unnatural light; but even so the cave spent the majority of time in the same primeval silence it had enjoyed since planetary movement had stretched it into being. The deep cavern was carved masterpiece. Smooth deposits, the work of ages of evaporation, formed a forest of gnarled boulders and jagged stalactites that wrapped around the breathing darkness; in every direction the dead air flowed out through a honeycomb of narrow passages, their twisting paths seeming without end. Most of the ropelike tunnels were no wider than a man's torso and not even half as deep; a thousand tons of rock sagged heavily into the open spaces and hung there as precariously as if the subterranean arteries were made of mud, seconds from collapse. Even at its greatest part, ceiling hundreds of feet up and unseen, the cave seemed like a slowly closing mouth crushing the air inside with cracked and rotten teeth. Lost to sight and sensation, the closed space and the pressure of the stale atmosphere were a claustrophobic's nightmare.
Ky liked it that way. The lightness night was peaceful in its way, and the natural quiet soothed him. Kneeling noiselessly in a depression of the sandy ground, the former knight was conscious of little beyond the dust at his fingertips, the moisture soaking through the knees of his trousers, and the murmur of his own heartbeat. There was no need for speech here, or sight. What he was seeking could not be seen with the eyes; the stimulus of vision was an unnecessary distraction. He could only reach out for it with his mind and wait for it to swim into his grasp, an eyeless fish.
Another wayward droplet broke his concentration with its loud coreward plummet. Frowning, he covered his ears; already sensitive, they had become so attuned to the absence of sound that even a single stone's fall was a clashing blow to the eardrum. As the ripples of the pond stilled, he struggled vainly to return to the motionless state he'd attained in the hours before, regulating his breathing and focusing on the void pressing against his eyelids. The self-induced trance was broken, though, and awareness flooded back into his body. The sheer weight of the leaden air; the stiffness in his legs; the tiny rocks digging into his nailbeds, the wetness of his clothing, the ache in his temples, and the lonely old fear of the dark. Now there was no way to draw himself away from reality of his situation: that he was a prisoner in his own body.
The cave would be beautiful by moonlight, he thought determinedly, ---or by firelight; Ky imagined the oyster-shell slickness of place bathed and exposed by alternating sources of illumination and almost smiled. But such a display would seem a violation of the sanctuary in which he was already an intruder…and in any case, he preferred not to look at himself whenever he could avoid doing so. The cave was a wonderful place to hide from himself, the man reflected bitterly as he stood; and an appropriate lodging for someone seeking release from the accusing gaze of the world. Ky brushed his filthy palms on the clean fabric of his uniform, taking a perverse pleasure in dirtying it as he did so. Wandering, his seeking fingers encountered a thick stalagmite taller than himself, and he leaned against it, feeling a fragile crystal break off and shatter on the contoured stone below. Feeling very alone, Ky stood motionless as his thoughts drifted free of purpose, presenting him with scenes that were printed indelibly on his mind. The images of shame that had led him to this place filled him like an unstoppable tide: memories of green and gold, fighting after nightfall against a thousand steel-clad enemies wearing a forgery of his own face, the distant amber of a streetlamp a mocking beacon of salvation calling out to the empty street while he carved a path alone through a river of oil. The tanned face breaking in an unkind smile, saying silently, I told you so. A heavy hand on his shoulder as he turned and stared up at someone he'd never met and could never quite remember; he couldn't be sure if it was before of after he fell, or if it had happened at all. Shoving roughly away from the rock Ky strode confidently into the pitch-black hollow, stopping as he reached his previous position and flicking out one half-gloved hand. Electric blue light blossomed from his fingertips and danced among the rocks, smooth and milky pale or gray and crystal-encrusted; shadows made false holes in the irregular, pebble-strewn ground and lent a sickly cast to Ky's own pale skin. He followed the stone conduits and grooves with his eyes, trying to pierce the darkness beyond. The salty deposits of minerals winked like small, pale stars against a velvety sky, but Ky, unseeing, passed them by; placing his arms against a rough wall he stood silent for a moment before crumpling to the ground, still glowing with eerie light. For an indeterminable time, he sat, staring out into nothing.
A familiar smell assailed him and his head snapped up. "Mother?"
And it was she. Smiling gently, she turned her head slightly, a playful light in her eye. They were sitting on the swing together, the old bench swing that was suspended by knotted rope from a massive and ancient oak. A warm summer breeze teased the wild, pale mess of Ky's hair and flirted with his mother's hat as they rocked gently back and forth; her bare feet just brushed the tips of the long grass that she'd asked be left uncut for their pleasure. Staring up at the swaying trees, his face dappled in sun and shadow from the glowing leaves, Ky couldn't remember a better feeling than this; Mother lifted her arm, and he happily burrowed closer.
"Have you been good?" she asked with a knowing smile. Ky struggled to put on his most endearing face before replying.
"I'm always good, Mother," he said, grinning impishly.
"Is that so?" she replied amusedly, brushing a stray fly away with a lazy wave. "I believe I've heard your father saying something about little boys who never put their toys away and don't know how to help with chores. In fact, I believe I've seen such a boy myself."
Wondering if he was about to get in trouble, Ky stared up at his mother with the most innocent look his blue eyes could muster; but the woman only laughed once. "Don't give me that face, you," she scolded, and ruffled his hair once before tucking it behind his ear. She ran her fingers gently alone his skull and picked out stray bits of leaf left over from his earlier forays into tree-climbing, and a low insect hum soon filled the June air like a lullaby. So they sat, and they rocked. Neither said anything further.
The sounds of the bugs faltered for a moment, and Mother's hand ceased its stroking. Turning to see what had captured her attention, he found his mother seemingly lost in thought, gazing out across the garden. Then she pitched forward off the swing into the dirt, her back a gaping hole of splintered bone and punctured organs that spilled out into the untrimmed lawn like garish ornaments. Ky screamed and leapt from the swing, falling to his hands in the grass and skittering away in horror. A black beetle crawling on a dandelion stem met him face-first while he scrambled and he stared at it in revulsion before batting it away. Rising to his grass-stained elbows and torn by fear, his eyes darted everywhere in panic; but the garden was empty save for him and his mother's corpse, and the distant voice of a cheerful bird. Another beetle, shiny as boot leather, crawled curiously onto the still body; as Ky watched it was joined by several more button-like crawling creatures. The unseen insects from before began to buzz again, and the rising cacophony was maddening now. Feeling a great emptiness well up from within, Ky staggered to his feet, unable to tear his eyes from the cherry-red splashes in the grass, the wild patterns flung out like cracks from where his mother had fallen. Looking down at himself, he found that he, too, was covered in blood, his hands stuck together and his hair matted with it. The horrible feeling caught in his throat and stuck there, unable to get free, until he thought he would die from the pressure. Then in burst out in a flash of white that burned away his vision, the terrible feeling of helplessness and pain at seeing his mother's body carved up like a Christmas ham.
When his sight returned, he found himself in a dark cave lit only by a faint, blue glow that seemed to emanate from his own body. Disoriented, he raised a hand to steady himself against the rock wall, which was badly cracked and gouged with deep, parallel grooves. Seeing his fingers splayed out before him he couldn't help but recall what and where he was; and the waking nightmare of his mother seemed old and dull next to the one he was living, he thought as he stared at the digits, each of which terminated in a long, bone-pale claw. A familiar thrill of pleasure and terror crawled down his spine as he allowed himself to examine the changes that had been forcibly wrought on his body. Ky knew how powerful he was, now; he knew that his hands could bend steel or destroy nations. He even allowed himself to think, sometimes: How wonderful if I were free, how many people I could save! He let himself believe, when he could, that he could still use this damned power to help people, could use it to become a better policeman, a better leader; that he could use it to change the world. He knew better than that, though, and was always overwhelmed by the disgust he felt at the sight of his own body: the sharply curved talons and the thickened pebbly skin of his joints; the extra teeth and crumpled, useless wings. Most of all he hated the feeling of the power that flowed inside of him, because it tempted him; all his prayers could not block out its call completely. And when it held him, it ruled. Ky gazed dispassionately at the ruined wall before him, knowing he had destroyed it but having no memory of the event.
I am an abomination.
It was true, he realized; thought it was no fault of his own, he was a monster now. He had little control of himself and drifted from day to day in a haze of memory and illusion. Since the day of his defeat at the hands of an army of robots, he had only spotty recollections of events; his clearest memory was being bound, swearing, to a cold metal table surrounded by masked faces, an impressionist's blurs of color. Somehow he had known what they were going to do to him but had been unable to fight; he had struggled uselessly as the foreign energies pumped into his body and filled it with their poison. There was a gap between the time of the battle and of the operating room: who had brought him there? Who had done this to him? He couldn't even be sure if the same people who'd sent the mechanical warriors were responsible for his current state. Whenever he tried to remember names, faces…they slipped away from him like ash. He wasn't even sure he wanted to remember, for sometimes in his dreams images came to him, terrible things that he knew he must have done. Visions of blood and of widows screaming as he cut down rank after rank of soldiers; and in his dreams, always a distant sense of pleasure, a soft, drunken veil that covered his recollections. He could hear a voice speaking to him in these dreams, telling him things; things like troop positions, coordinates, statistics…Giving him orders. The former knight had always been a good soldier, and good soldiers follow orders; but the dreams grew worse and worse with every order he carried out. Though he knew they might hold a key to his shattered memories, Ky just couldn't bring himself to pursue these dreams, and hated himself for his weakness. He was no longer worthy to carry the sword of the Holy Order.
In a moment of clarity, he knew. These moments were growing further and further apart; moments when he could focus, could think. When he was not being commanded his mind ripped into a tattered quilt of old wounds and rancid memories that made no sense, and he drowned in his own power, confused and not knowing if it was night or day, or even where he was. He was being used, and for a terrible purpose; this he was sure of, even if his mind danced around the details without touching on them.
I have a responsibility to the people I am sworn to protect. I must not allow myself to be used as a weapon to harm the innocent.
Even though inside him somewhere a small boy was crying, Ky had never let doubts stop him. He folded his fingers together, forming a spiky column with his claws. Ky braced his other arm against the wall and raised his hand to plunge it into his throat.
His hand was halfway to its destination when ringing filled his ears and tingled at the base of his skull. Half sound, half sensation, it poured into him like champagne, fizzing pleasantly as it formed words: Stop. Finish your task. Come above. Shuddering, Ky froze; the white-clad warrior's hands fell to his sides, and he straightened, walking to center of the room and kneeling in the depression. With his mind clear, it was an easy task to reach out to raw energy that flowed through the node here and bend it to his will, diverting power to the regions where his troops were arrayed and buoying their strength; and it was a simple matter to replenish his own energy until he was fairly bursting with the natural magic that had been gathering here for centuries. The cave burned with the foxfire glow of that ancient power, tongues of cold flame licking up along its toothy stalagmites and pouring into dark crevices. Ky reached along the ley lines to feel the minds of the Gears who were his soldiers, and was pleased to find all were ready for battle. He stood and turned to leave, pausing only to collect his sword where it leaned silently at the mouth of a wet, sloping tunnel. A shadow passed over his face; like a cobweb in the corners of his mind, something about this weapon made him uncomfortable. Perhaps it was time to get a new sword? As he climbed the long path back to the surface, sending showers of rock back the way he came, he grew excited, feeling the presence of the one whose suggestions he followed and hearing the thoughts of all whom he commanded, with complete unity of purpose. A small grin curved his lips at the prospect of imminent battle as he took a deep breath of the fresher air blowing down from outside, eyes sparkling; always a creature of war, now Ky was its slave and master. The mark of the Gear on Ky's forehead glowed golden in the shadows of the cave's entrance as he walked out into the mid-afternoon sunlight, his hair catching the same color from the rich rays of the sun. Below the dangerously narrow ledge he now stood on, a hundred thousand Gears stood ready for battle, pawing restlessly at the soft valley soil, and a hundred thousand more lurked at the edges of his mind, already in their spots as the left and right wings of the pincer. It was an excellent strategy for the terrain they would be approaching, and Ky smiled, as did the man walking towards him, who put a hand on Ky's shoulder to show his approval.
The fallen knight paused briefly, inhaling the scent of the fertile land and smelling the promise of rain in the air. He let the light breeze fill his ash-gray wings, stretching them thoroughly before turning his full attention to the matter at hand. With eyes calm but teeth bared in a feral grin, Ky raised his sword to give the signal, letting his consciousness flow out into those he commanded as his controller watched impassively. Shifting his gaze to the hooded man, Ky was struck suddenly with the realization that there was something he had to do, something important; what that was, though, he could not recall. His hand twitched once of its own volition, but he paid it no mind, and shrugged: Now was the time for battle, not foolish reminiscing. His slitted gaze consumed the miles, staring across the wide grassy plain to the west as his troops moved out, while beside him watched his own commander; a man with a face that was neither young nor old, whose warm brown eyes were poorly matched with his crocodile smile.
It still hasn't been betaed. omg ; ; Any takers?