Author's Note: Brief note: a kind reader on another forum pointed out to me that "grandchildren" sounds not Nopon-ish enough for Riki.
He made a fantastic point. Therefore, I have unilaterally decided that Nopon grandparents call their grandkids "tinypon."
Anyhow...who likes art? I do.
Renu (an artist I've commissioned on my other story of Shin Persona Evangelion) was kind enough to paint my request for a picture of Dirk and D. It's now the cover art for this story.
D, the proverbial oncoming storm, thinks he's all but inevitable.
Will Dirk succumb? Or will he find a way to the dawn?
xxxx
As Dirk slept, his environment kept on changing.
Sometimes, he was sitting in a familiar theater. Bits and pieces of Aionios flashed onto the canvas, projected without rhyme or reason: a shoddy movie, constructed of disconnected scenes. Yet, the theme was omnipresent: a world of war, where it was kill or be killed.
"Is there a reason you haven't told anyone?" remarked Z, who had been heretofore watching in silence. "The specifics of your dreams? That you keep hearing my voice? That you constantly wonder if becoming D is an inevitability?"
Dirk didn't reply. He knew that to respond, to engage with Z, was to give credence to his very presence. It's just a nightmare. It's just a nightmare. I won't even remember half of it when I wake up. It's not supposed to make sense. So just ignore it.
As far as strategies went, it could have been better. After all, ignoring someone was only effective if they actually took the hint.
Z did not. "Perhaps you fear that potential becoming actual? The very thought that your present will slip away, replaced by something repulsive...and yet, as those around you continue to change, the inevitability keeps staring you in the face. 'Am I doomed to become as I once was?', you wonder. 'Is it all futile?', you dread." As an image of Dirk — clad in white and gray, using his Brightfire Spears to take down a sniper (with brown hair and familiar head wings, why was that such a disturbing commonality?) from afar, even as he bled out from her fatal shot to his gut — died on screen, Z remarked, "If something is inevitable...why resist?"
Dirk snarled.
A different voice — a female's — perked up from a few rows down. "It's because he doesn't know any better," snarked a woman with pale hair; she turned around, revealing a cracked face and crimson eyes. "He's only human, after all."
"Verily, the frailties of the human condition are known to all." A more cultured voice from a few rows behind — a man's — spoke up. "To deny them is to deny reality. Who would be so foolish?"
And then there's these arseholes, thought Dirk with a grimace; X and Y: the original Moebius, like Z. He could remember that much, at least. "Piss off," he growled, even as he knew that they would not leave. After all, he had no control over his own dreams, much less his own nightmares.
Z denied him the satisfaction. "Yet these frailties are why a remnant of Moebius exists; whether it be as a mere dream, or as an unconscious figment of 'Imagination' itself, we serve as an unending testament to that core truth: all humans are afraid of change. Such a rotten edifice, is it not?" Z slowly turned towards Dirk. "You see those around you changing as we speak: the thought of it terrifies you."
Dirk said nothing.
"Deny it all you wish; we will be here to remind you. Just as we remind all those who fall into the depths of despair." As Z turned back towards the canvas, he added, "Do you not agree?"
An armored hand clasped onto Dirk's shoulder. "Yeah," said a familiar voice from the row behind. "There's a certain power, in not caring what others think...doing what you want, regardless of the consequences. Because if the moment is all that matters...why care about the future? Why fear it?" D's voice — so slick with amusement that Dirk could practically hearhis amused smile — slyly whispered, "Because if I'm gonna be honest...squirming the way you are, wailing at how the people around you aren't doing what you want them to do? It's pathetic."
Dirk said nothing. I'm not listening. I'm not listening. It's just a nightmare. I'm going to wake up eventually. Please, let me wake up and forget...!
(He did not wake up immediately. He would have to endure the banal commentary over his past deeds, slowly chronicling his descent into madness.)
xxxx
Sometimes, he found himself around a campfire: a small little thing, providing light amidst an endless void.
There were only ever two people he saw around this fire: both with sun-kissed skin and silver hair; both in eye-catching garb of purple, red, gray, and black. One was male, and the other female. Most tellingly, they each had what appeared to be an Aegis Core Crystal colored crimson: the male's, dangling from a necklace; the female's, hanging from a single earring.
This time, the male was present. Tiny little sprites — one colored a pulsing violet, the other a shimmering emerald — flickered around his shoulders, nestling into the pale fur of his jacket's collar. "The framework with which you view the world...is quite the constraint, is it not?"
Dirk didn't respond. This strange man seemed to love to wax eloquent, because he never so much as acknowledged his questions. So instead, he just listened.
"But I suppose it is only natural: a worldview provides structure. Without structure, information can be nigh-impossible to sift through; without a measure, deriving meaning would be too difficult for most to achieve...and even then, the search for 'meaning' is something that all too many search for." The violet sprite flickered; the man nodded in response to something Dirk could not hear. "Indeed. There is a rather Manichean nature to that dichotomy...though I suppose that word would have little meaning to you."
Dirk frowned. What was he talking about?
"There is a certain attraction to ignoring framework and structure, to simply live by one's own rule. Yet if it is not ordered to those of others, there will be conflict. Meanwhile, one might follow the rules of others, and conform to whatever the dominant structure allows them to be...and yet nonetheless find themselves chafing under those constraints, leading to conflict from a different angle." The green sprite pulsed. With a tired smile, he observed, "Mankind. Its own best friend; its own worst enemy. Observing from a distance helps me provide context...both to myself, and to others who desire it."
Dirk's patience had run out. Tiredly, he grumbled, "...who are you?" As he spoke, his eyes focused on the crimson gem hanging from the stranger's necklace.
For once, the man actually answered his question. "An outsider, now. One who serves as a reminder, much as Moebius now does: the constitution of this new world allows for little else. Yet, even from small inputs, there can be great outputs. Such is the nature of the future: as a certain creator once proclaimed: 'the future should be decided by each and every person of the world'." Both sprites briefly shimmered, and the man looked severely at Dirk. "Although...the past is a framework all of its own. The past provides a means by which one can interpret their choices. Without a past to provide context, can a future truly be chosen in any meaningful sense? That is a lesson that even I had to be reminded of. I wonder...if you will eschew your past, or if you will use it as a stepping stone for something new?"
Dirk bared his teeth at the stranger. "Will you start making some bloody sense?"
"My apologies. I tend to be rather introspective; A is much more blunt and straightforward." With a cryptic smile, the man slowly began to disappear, as the fire began to die down. "Perhaps you will have an answer, next we meet...for yourself, if no one else..."
The fire flickered out, and there was only darkness.
(Dirk did not wake up immediately. He would have to sit within the empty void, with only his own Core Crystal and his own ether — his own Brightfire Spears — to serve as a reminder that he was still there; that he was still himself.)
xxxx
Yet, every time, when Dirk would awake, those nightmares of Moebius...and those dreams of the Red Aegis...would vanish, like mist in the morning sun.
This time...he awoke within the right arm of his father; it was before his parents began to stir, so he spent a few minutes just staring at the ceiling of their guest room.
Listening to their quiet breaths; feeling his father's chest rise from his right hand was resting; lingering in the grip of his mother's left hand, which had latched onto his during the night: a picture of a loving family, taken in isolation.
(He couldn't possibly be D; D was a mistake. D was a monster.)
(Monsters didn't deserve to have a family like this.)
(And Dirk, if nothing else could be said, didn't want to lose his family.)
xxxx
Author's Note: We're going full tilt in Moebius and Alvis becoming the setting's proverbial Nyarlathotep and Philemon.
