Chapter 16 Memories Revisited

Lightning flashed outside again, lighting up the small room with the small race car bed and the little boy, sitting up in bed with the blankets pulled up to his chin. Lightning struck again, lighting up his face as it shot towards the window. "Mommy…" the little boy let the whine slip from his mouth, barely audible.

Lightning struck again, "Mommy!" He hollered, as he pulled the blankets over his head and shivered.

Minutes past by and his door didn't jar. He heard no rushed footsteps in the hallway as he usually did in a storm such as this. The boy worked up the courage to uncover himself and step from the confines of the bed to find his mother and father.

Taking his best friend teddy with him; he pulled the blanket back down and stepped from the small racecar bed. The cold carpet rubbed his foot as he stepped down, the small night light in the corner of the room giving of just enough light to show the door handle and the drawings on the wall. The drawing he had made of his mother and his father, their house and pets, his parent's Cores.

He took a few cautious steps past the closet and the gas pump dresser, lest he wake the monsters that undoubtedly lived within. He reached the door and pulled it open, whimpering "mommy?" once more as he stepped into the hallway. He looked to his right, down the hallway. He saw the faint outlines of two doors and the catwalk which crossed over the living room downstairs. He turned to his left and entered the bathroom; he stepped onto the cold tile and turned the corner. He reached his hand up and felt for the light switch, he couldn't find it. He stood on his toes and reached again, finding it just out of his reach. He did a quick hop and flicked the switch up and on; the light flooding the bathroom and flowing down the hall.

He preceded down the hall, past the first door, mom's sewing room, and entered the second door; mommy and daddy's room. He stood just inside the doorway, looking into the room toward the large bed. "Mommy, I'm scared, can I sleep with you tonight?" he said softly, hugging his bear tightly, hoping for a positive response.

No response.

"Mommy? Daddy?"

Still no response.

The little boy climbed up onto the tall bed with some effort, he shuffled his hands back and forth, looking for the only ones who could possibly comfort him right now. Lighting struck once again and lit up the bed from the window. The boy saw that his parents were not in the bed; he dropped his head down onto the pillow and sobbed. "Mommy, Daddy, where are you?"

Dropping his bear on the floor he ran from the room. Heading across the catwalk and ran down the first flight of dark stairs, when he reached the landing in the middle of the staircase he looked out the window as lighting struck one last time.

He saw his mother sprawled on her back on the lawn, blood staining the grass. Her eyes wide open and her fists clenched.

The little boy also saw his father to the right of his mother and lying face down on the driveway, blood flowing from the body down to the gutter and down the street; fists clenched as well.

The boy started to let out a bloody scream but the voice never came, his eyes rolled back as he went into shock and succumbed to the fear. He fell to the floor of the landing and blacked out.

"hey, we got a live one in here! Just a kid, maybe eight or ten years old."

"must've been their kid. Wow, he must've seen them through the window and passed out or something like that. Well, we better check for a name and relatives. Its gonna be quite a shock for him when he wakes up."

The little boy was awake already and was listening to the conversation but stayed quiet with his eyes shut. He didn't want to wake up, he didn't want to think of what he saw last night, he didn't want to see it again; but as soon as he thought about it, the sight flashed back into his head and left as quickly as the lightning that illuminated it had. He gave a quick jolt and almost fell from the arms of the man that had just picked him up.

The man looked down at him and knew what was happening. He said softly, "c'mon, its time to wake up…"

"Time to wake up…"

Time to wake up….

Time to wake up….

Time to wake up….

"Time to wake up…"

"Its time to wake up…." He heard a soft female voice.

"Please wake up… please… it's been too long, we need you Xero…." The voice sounded as if it was about to cry.

He opened his eyes, his vision was blurry; he blinked a few times and about thirty seconds later the blurriness was gone. He looked up at the white ceiling and his eyes followed the ceiling down to the wall. His eyes followed the wall crease over to the window, the sun flowed in from the open shades.

He felt pressure on his right hand and arm; he lifted his head and saw a woman holding his hand and her head resting on his arm, crying.

He could recognize that hair anywhere, "Blaze?" he said weakly.

The head raised but the crying didn't stop, in fact, as soon as she looked at him, with his head above the pillow on its own strength, she sobbed even louder and flung her arms around his neck and latched onto him.

He reached his arms around and returned the hug for a moment before pulling Blaze off of him. He pulled her head back to eye level and asked maybe the single hardest question that he could have asked her, "What happened?"

She laughed, "do you have any idea how long it is going to take to answer that question?"

He didn't laugh, "I don't care, the last thing I remember seeing is a bright light shining through diamond feathers."

"well, if you want to know right now I better call Morrow in here." She pulled out a cell phone and started dialing. She was still whipping tears from her eyes when the other line picked up, "Morrow, this is Blaze, he's awake…"

A fully audible "what?" resounded from the phone, follow by the promise to be there in ten minutes. Blaze put the phone back in her pocket and turned to Xero again, tears still in her eyes.

He looked at her, "what?" asking as if he didn't know what she was looking at.

"Xero, what did you dream of?" she asked, very nonchalant.

"what do you mean, what did I dream of? Isn't that a little bit of a personal question?" he replied.

"Well yes but I have heard that people relive parts of their life when they are asleep for so long. The longer they are asleep, the more they relive."

"asleep for so long?" his interest was peeked.

"Xero, you've been in a coma for just over two years. A lot of things have changed, you'll see soon enough." She twiddled her thumbs a little bit, "but before Morrow gets here to help me explain it to you, I wanted to know what part of your life you relived, if you did at all." She looked at him again, a small smile pricked at the corners of her mouth, but she still had those tears in her eyes.

"I relived the same twenty minutes over and over again. The night my parents were murdered. As soon as I would wake up in the dream, the dream would start over; if you could call it a dream, tsk, more like a nightmare…." His eyes drifted away from Blaze's face as a look of horror came over her. Blaze looked away quickly, realizing the wound that she had just poured salt into.

"Sorry to delve further but I thought you said you were only about two weeks old when that happened?" she asked softly.

"I guess not, I didn't remember anything about the night regardless. So I didn't remember if I was a month old or eight years old. I was told what had happened a few years after it had occurred, so I just thought it would've happened a long time ago." He looked up at Blaze, "It doesn't matter how old I was really."

"I guess not." She said quietly before letting an awkward silence fill the room.

Minutes later Morrow stormed into the room, and the room's attention was drawn to the door with him. "Xero…" He had the biggest smile anyone had seen on him in a long time, "how ya feeling buddy?" he asked, "anything sore or still broken?"

"not that I know of…" Xero sat up in the bed, reaching behind himself to put the pillow up on its side so he could lean back onto it; but before he could rest himself back on the pillow Morrow launched across the room and embraced his lifelong friend in the greatest of bearhugs. Xero attempted to reach his arms across to pat Morrow on the back but Morrow was squeezing the life that he just regained out of him.

Morrow finally let go and backed away from Xero, his face red from lack of air, and sat on the chair Blaze had pulled up for him.

"well Xero, we're both glad that you are back; we have missed you very much, as well as missed your abilities."

"my abilities?"

Morrow continued, "Well, never mind that, we will come back to that later, right now I'm sure you want a run down of what has happened over the past two years, am I right?"

Xero nodded and folded his arms over his chest.

"well, after our encounter with Cataclysma in the plains, it never went back into hiding, it surged forward with Mirage on its back. With the help of Cataclysma, Mirage was able to quite literally destroy all the other corporations and the earth government, one by one. And so mirage is in control of the entire planet basically. After mirage took power, Cataclysma struck out on its own for a while and started hunting down the ravens, and with Mirage in control, there was no way to register new ravens, and so eventually what happened was when Global Cortex was devoured by Mirage, the garages fell into disuse." Mirage paused for a minute and scrunched up his face as if thinking of what to say next. "the remaining ravens were quick to salvage what was left of the underground areas of the garages and close them off from the outside world using some of the old stealth AC tech and such."

Blaze cut in, "this was all Morrow's idea, and he was the one that found and united the ravens. And so he was made their default leader."

"wait," Xero pointed a questioning finger at Morrow, "so you are in charge of all the ravens in the world!"

He nodded. "Seven-hundred Thirty-two ravens in fifteen different, hidden garages." He sighed, "but I'm afraid they won't stay hidden for too much longer."

"why not?"

Blaze answered, "Mirage has started mass producing AC units for all its pilots instead of MTs. They have a standard AC battle unit now, and they have more of them. It is harder to fight a group of battle ACs than it was to fight a group of battle MTs." She looked frightened, as if she had had the experience before. "you remember the old frighteners? That is the same kind of thing that is happening now! Cataclysma roams the planet and wherever it goes, it never leaves without leaving mass destruction in its wake!"

"has anyone tried to fight it yet?"

"a few brave ones have tried," Morrow replied, "but without your weapons to destroy it, the entire planet is all too powerless to stop it." Purposefully not mentioning what happened to the 'brave ones'.

Xero remembered a small detail from the last battle, "wait, it's not exactly an 'it' anymore, is it? It's a 'her', how did Nydem of all people find and come to pilot that thing?"

"that is still a mystery to all of us. But one thing is certain; she does have Dash well on her side. Dash has become her right hand man, the only one she trusts. And rumor has it that the two of them are… well, you know…" Morrow made a hand gesture.

"I get the point Morrow." Xero rolled his eyes. "But what happened to Rev and the weapons?"

"well Xero," Blaze said, "its hard to tell any raven this, and this is especially hard for me to tell you, but… Revolution was destroyed by that last attack by Cataclysma." She put her hand on Xero's. "the wings and swords were found by Tyre a few hundred meters away, and the wings were wrapped around the cockpit sphere, the only remains of Rev, I'm sorry."

Xero tried his best to hide his shock. "What did happen to Tyre?"

Morrow shifted in his seat, "well Xero, this is where your 'abilities' come into play, you see, Tyre found the weapons after the battle and he took them with him."

Xero suddenly became very angry, but before he could say anything Morrow put up a hand, "he did leave a message for you Xero; after he picked out your cockpit; he handed it to me and told me to keep you alive. He also said that he was taking the weapons with him to Matthews's house and that once you wake up you should come and get them back."

"But how am I supposed to use them without an AC! And with Mirage controlling everything AC related!" Xero was very angry again.

Blaze stood, "I'll go get the nurse so we can get some drugs in you to get your legs working again." With that she turned left at the door and headed down the hallway.

"Hey calm down buddy, I can lend you my AC or I'm sure that any raven would be perfectly happy to lend you his or hers. Everyone on this planet knows who you are and all of them were patiently waiting for the day 'the one who wields the great weapons' would wake up…."

"tsk, is that what they call me?" he laughed, "is that seriously the best they could come up with?" Morrow joined in the laughter.