Prologue, "Kore no Yume
wa nanimo…" ("This dream is nothing…")
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two bright beacons blotted
out the shinning stars of the night, illuminating the dark sky with their
artificial
glow. The spotlights scanned the dark perimeter of the
sterile government complex with a hungry
vengeance, but the subject had not yet escaped the building.
Soldiers were mobilized in the hundreds as they swept through the corridors,
armed to the teeth, prepared to give their lives to that cause which they had
been sworn to so long ago. They were not told what the emergency was when they
were jostled from their sleep; simply that there was a dangerous unit loose in
the complex. Detainment was necessary by as much force as needed. A simple task to remedy. Yet, sleep would come easy for them
all once they dared to stare death in the eyes.
"I don’t want to kill
anymore..."
The
blood, the slick, red stain on his crimson armor. Green hair turned scarlet with the lives of his
opponents. The soldiers, human and cyborg alike, were
torn apart by the robot with the white-glowing eyes. Electricity sparkled
through the air as he charged his battery cells, preparing to face and destroy
the next wave of fools with extreme prejudice. Training routine became instinct
as the beast literally tore his opposition apart by rearranging the
gravitational fields surrounding their beings. There was only one word in his
mind: escape. A voice reverberating over and over in his head, a voice telling
him things that his mind did not want to hear…
"Let’s go!"
shouted a captain around the corridor corner. "We don’t get paid to sit on
our asses and watch things blow up! We have an enemy---"
Silence suddenly ensued as
the armored soldier came into view, the officer followed by a dozen of his
garrison. The robot cocked its head in innocent confusion at them, unaware of
the gore that draped his armored body in a dress of sheer terror. Unaware of the sparkling black orbs that circled his body, physical
manifestations of his control of the surrounding gravitational field. He
saw none of it, none of them, none of the real world. The only reality was the
voice in his head, telling him ever so calmly to run away. Telling him those
strange tales that terrified him straight to the heart, things he wished he
could be ignorant to. And the crimson mech doubled
over in the dark room of his mind, covering his ears in a futile attempt to
blot out everything that he wished were lies, unaware that his shell continued
to rain down its wrath upon that government military director; tearing into his
chest with bared teeth. All the robot could do was scream,
wishing that the nightmare would end itself.
"No more...they didn’t
deserve to die..."
...
...
...
He didn’t want it to have
to come to this, but the "Edge" unit was out of control. Apparently,
his new program couldn’t take the weight of training that was expected of all
soldiers, human or robot. The prototypes had had little progress as of late,
all of them ending in a horrible tragedy. Why should he have expected any
different out of this one? Wishful thinking, nothing more.
Strange though how this unit ‘chose’ to erupt in its anger in the middle of the
night when it should have not even been activated. Fool humans. They probably worked
this one to death, constantly worried about tests and progress, selfishly
thinking only of how they could better their own lives with their playthings.
It would be up to himself to put an end to things. Again.
"Yuusuke,
Vomisa. Come. I have a job for you."
Two androids covered in
full battle armor suddenly melted into the room. The one named Yuusuke had fiercely malevolent eyes, absent of irises and
completely white. His hair flowed past his shoulders in long, dark waves that
resembled an ocean of black night. In the dark shadows that blanketed the room,
he was little more than a silhouette. The one named Vomisa
was taller, with blond hair that fell just above his shoulders. His golden
armor sparkled with blue hues in the shadows, stretching what little light that
entered the chamber into rays of water. An eerie aura of coldness spread about
his being, the hardened attitude of a warrior experienced from many a battle.
"We are here at your
command, Toy-sama." Yuusuke
answered for the pair, his blank eyes obediently tracing the ground in loyalty
to his master.
Toy shifted in chair, the
shadows moving to keep his face in the darkness.
"I had hoped that this
new system I designed would be a success," said Toy. "However, it
appears that there is an error has appeared in the programming. The prototype,
Edge, has lost control. You are to eliminate him."
Elimination. The answer to every problem, wasn't it? Existence had
always seemed to trouble his poor creations…
Yuusuke and Vomisa saluted in
response, easily accepting their master's wishes, unquestioning in the methods
with which to fulfill them.
"As you command,"
said Yuusuke, bowing deeply to take his leave, Vomisa following in kind. The two were gone as quickly as
they had appeared, and Toy took the liberty of leaning back lazily in his
chair. Beside him, his ‘enforcer robot,’ stood in the shadows. Infinitely
strong and completely loyal, it was the only thing Toy ever trusted completely.
However, he did not need to waste such energy and power in this situation. Energy. And time. Such precious
commodities that he could not afford to loose, especially now.
"Another
failure," said Toy absently as he stared up to the stolid face of the
enforcer. The enforcer simply stood silently, holding its huge battle staff
with the single limb on its upper torso. It remained motionless, but Toy
expected nothing less from his creation. Always silent, always there to comfort
him with that strength that he had built into its body so long ago. But what now? Another prototype finished, another chance
gone insane. How much longer could he hide behind the curtain of power before
it was too late?
He turned to face the front
of his vast chambers once more, eyes searching blindly for the answers in the
darkness.
"Another
failure..."
...
...
...
"I just want my
freedom."
...
Yuusuke and Vomisa touched down in
front of the facility to find most of the internal chambers destroyed. Yellow
flames curled upwards towards the heavens as the two began their routine
inspection of the fighting grounds.
"Ch," muttered Yuusuke as he kicked aside a charred corpse. "Clean up
work. Damn renegade units, what does Toy think he can do with working on them
anyways? It's a waste of time."
"Just keep your mind
on the job," said Vomisa, eyes scanning the
perimeter. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can return to
headquarters. I have no intention of staying out here all night."
A sudden crash drew the
attention of the two, both turning towards one of the main facilities. Stone
and steel crumbled to dust as their structural integrity buckled under the
shifting fields of power. Gas lines and electrical wires erupted in small
explosions as the wall fell to the ground like a jigsaw puzzle. In the midst of
the rubble stood the Edge unit, eyes glowing white with anger, body crouched
over like a hungry predator. Flames had fallen everywhere from the explosion,
and as his eyes sought out the newcomers, his newfound prey, his let loose a
deafening roar that shook loose the stars from their place in the universe.
Vomisa cursed under his breath as he let his cells charge up
with energy, preparing for the first pass.
"This shouldn’t be too
hard," said Yuusuke as he did the same, letting
the power manifest itself as a fiery red aura and cracking his steel knuckles
in arrogance. "He was still in training when he went berserk. I doubt this
will be too much trouble."
Edge picked himself up from
the rubble like a primal animal, his endless gaze howling at the moon. His eyes
continued to give off an eerie glow, his mouth hanging open in a half smile,
laughing at the world as some unknown force pulled the strings on his empty
shell. The wounded terror let loose a voiceless scream, a silent wail that
crawled over the unseen network like a plague. A flash of light abruptly
illuminated the darkness of the beast. When the haze cleared, he was no longer
in Yuusuke’s line of vision.
"What---?!" said Yuusuke in surprise. His internal scanner searched wildly
for his target but could find nothing but corpses. "Fast little sonuva---"
A sudden scream filled the
night sky as Yuusuke looked up towards the stars.
Silhouetted against the clear globe in the sky, Edge fell in a kamikaze dive
towards his opponent, the air about him crackling with energy discharges. The
horrible eyes no longer held the tint of curiosity and wonder that had been
present upon the immediate arrival of Toy's minions. Now they were filled with
something far more malicious, a hate, an anger of that
which he stared upon. And in those narrowed slits of loathing was a myopic
intelligence whose orders were pure and simple. Kill. Kill anything,
everything, destroy and solve the problem so that he would be safe.
"Damnit
Yuu!!" shouted Vomisa,
knowing all too well that his associate was too stunned by his quick moving
adversary to protect himself in time. He charged his hands full of kinetic
energy as he leapt up into the sky to meet Edge head on. A flash of golden heat
burst from golden mech’s fingers and flew toward the
descending figure as Vomisa desperately gambled what
the consequences may be. Edge’s smile could be seen in the glinting light of
the three moons...
...
"Kono
bakemono..."
...
Vomisa’s fireball suddenly dispersed itself in a burst of
fiery sparks, the fields around its creation having pulled free the delicate
threads of the velocity of its particles in motion.
"What---!"
exclaimed Vomisa, but he was cut off as Edge grabbed
his head with a clawed hand. Using the momentum of his decent, the psychotic
monster drove Vomisa’s cranium into the ground with a
force that rendered a deep crater in the fragile dust. As the green-haired mech slowly stood up from his assault, his arms hanging
limply in the cold air, he whirled about just in time to see Yuusuke’s flaming fist drive towards his skull. It never
reached its target, and Yuusuke’s hand began to
twitch violently before him in sporatic spasms of
pain.
"Damn!" cursed Yuusuke. "He has gravitational powers!" Edge
smiled at Yuusuke’s realization, his ever watching
knives of madness staring up at his foe.
...
"Kono
bakemono..."
...
Edge’s hand gently brushed
the end of Yuusuke’s knuckle and a wall of gravity
crashed into the mech's armored body. Yuusuke was barely able to keep track of where he was as
his dented form was sent crashing through the rubble of the complex, finally
landing in a pile of debris. He seethed with anger as he burst from the ground,
flying high into the air with wild eyes searching for the one who had dealt
harm to his being.
"I’LL KILL THAT LITTLE
BASTA---" he roared, but the Edge unit was gone. Speechless, he twirled
about in angry frustration to no avail. A quick check of his scanners showed
that the target he sought was not anywhere within a mile of the perimeter. But
what had he just seen? This new prototype was different from the others;
definitely more powerful, but there was something else that he couldn't quite
put his finger on. The glowing eyes of the beast in the darkness hung heavily
in his head, the image haunting his shadow like a ghost. Something different…
the anger, the hatred…
"Toy isn’t going to
like this..." said Vomisa as he picked himself
up from the ground. Yuusuke nodded absently as he let
his mind wander into the glow of the spreading fires. They had failed, hadn't
they? A unforgivable offense.
"I can’t believe you
two were beaten by a rookie."
Vomisa whirled about in the direction of the mocking voice
to face a familiar monstrous robot whose long, blond bangs of hair cut through
the air to perfectly frame his handsome facial features. Around his shoulders
was draped a cape of deep indigo hanging from wide guards that spread out over
his collarbone and back, much like the cape of arrogance he draped around his
entire body, gently waving in the wind. Synthetic muscle rippled in his arms
and chest, the rest of his body covered in a deep maze of armor that served to
channel the energies he wielded in battle. Like Yuusuke,
his eyes were absent of irises, though that fact hardly helped to hide the
hideous conceit that he flaunted at will. He was Yujin,
Toy's primary general.
Seeing that the mysterious
renegade they had just faced had not come back to haunt them, Vomisa allowed himself to relax a bit.
"I didn’t see you
helping out, Yujin," he said with a hint of
sarcasm. "Besides, Toy didn’t even release the target’s weapons system information,
leaving us at a distinct tactical disadvantage. With the amount of power that
thing was packing, I doubt anybody else could have done much better
anyways."
Yujin smirked and let out a snickering noise.
"You should pay more
attention to the records then," he said. "You in
particular, Vomisa. Your syphoning
abilities might have counteracted the unit’s gravity attacks with proper calibration."
Vomisa stayed silent. "And petty excuses won't
help you this time. You know how much importance has been put into the
safekeeping of this project and you'll suffer the consequences as a result of
your mistakes. At any rate, Toy will see you both after you clean this mess
up!"
Vomisa caught the arrogant smile on Yujin’s
face before the energy sparked about his fluttering cape and the massive
general teleported away. His face tightened as he tried to repress his raging emotion,
tried to maintain his professional appearance.
It was then that Vomisa realized his metallic hands were clenched into tight
fists of anger...
...
...
...
"I just want my
freedom."
Edge’s system worked madly
to save what little energy he had left as his tired frame carefully picked its
way through the mountains of trash. His figure lay in the ruins of a junkyard,
concealed in shadows by mountains of refuse. He was dangerously low on power,
but his mind still couldn't register what his body was doing. Slowly, he
uncovered his ears in the darkness and heard nothing. To his surprise and
wonder, the voices were gone.
Standing slowly, he looked
around nervously, unsure of what to do. So confused.
He wasn't being yelled at anymore… but what now? What was he going to do now,
now that there was nobody left to tell him what to do, where to go, when to
fight?
Fight?
No, he hated to fight,
hated to kill, no more of that. No more dreams, no more nightmares. His
consciousness throbbed in pain, swollen from being battered about by the hands
of so many careless souls. And now what? His
child-like eyes searched up into the darkness of the heavens in hopes of an
answer, but they soon fell heavy with sleep. He wanted to find out the answer,
but somebody wouldn't let him, not yet. Rest, perhaps that
was what he needed. Rest, so that he could wake up once again…
And slowly, ever so slowly,
he lay back down in the black void, curling in upon himself like a child in his
mother's womb, waiting, resting, and wishing for the new day to emerge so that
the light of morning could accompany him into the new day.
"***Energy
low. ***Insufficient memory for
recharge. ***Condensing memory data. ***Data saved. ***Begin
energy recharge system."
The glowing eyes dimmed
into pools of darkness as the crimson armor became limp beneath the mountains
of waste. Edge’s figure slowly melted against the refuse as his computer shut
down to begin the recharge program. No more anger, no more hatred. The only
thing left was a calm tranquility that not even the perfect blue of the sky
could match.
Silence overtook the
mountains of metal and rubbish once again as Edge began his long sleep,
dreaming strange dreams all along the way. Soon, morning would come. And then
everything would be right once again.
"***Command
data: reboot initiated: error. ***Compensation:
data erased. *** Reboot initiated. ***Awaiting new commands."
...
...
Vomisa’s report echoed in Toy’s head. The Edge until had
escaped. The corazon chip which drove his mind was
alive with passion. Toy allowed himself a small smile as translucent computer
screens opened their windows before his eyes. The corazon
chip was still activated. The Edge unit had lived.
It had begun...
...
...
"I just want my
freedom......”
...
...
...
...
...
…
End "Prologue"