Hajime
------------------------
The Ikusa
kyodai had whispered the ancients words before the
first breaking and Kazega Tsuyoi
had ventured out into the cruel world to prevent the ancient prophecy from
destroying those he loved. And yet, some spoken words of fate cannot be avoided.
The Kisetsu android resurrected Kazega’s
dead spirit and stole Kuroko’s hatred, melding them together into the ultimate
evil, the great evil king, DaiMaouBaan. And when
everything else was gone, who was left to fight but the lone child who had
fathered the mighty beast?
“The world will crumble
before the moons in its darkest hour, leaving nothing left but the empty wail
of the void. Yet, from death there is always rebirth. A child will carry on
with nothing from the past, leaving all of his belongings in his footsteps, and
ascend with nothing but the light of God to accompany him to heaven’s
steps...”
--- Sansho
Ikusa, benefactor of the Sakura Clan
...
...
...
“Stupid friends….make ME go
searching for generator replacement parts…it’s not like it was my fault it
broke…”
Yoshime Ozaki picked her
way through the mountains of refuse that the government threw down to the masses
of impoverished citizens of the West Newport Human Republic. Her feet
reluctantly lifted themselves over broken glass and shards of metal, pushing
forward for the sole purpose of self-preservation. Like everyone else, Yoshime
fought a losing battle every day of her life simply to stay alive.
“Hrm,”
thought Yoshime to herself, her eyes scanning the toppled heaps of trash for
anything useful. It seemed to be a daily ritual now, trying to pick up a broken
life from the waste of others. And yet, it was all that somebody like her might
have...
A sudden jolt of static
across the unseen network brought her back to her senses as her neuro-implants took the brunt of an unseen energy backlash.
“Geh,”
cursed Yoshime as she changed her frequencies to avoid the interference.
“Energy levels are unusually high today… something good must have been dropped
off!” She smiled at her clever find, a secret accessed through a gift that her
companions lacked. These days, she appreciated the implants the government had
‘given’ her more and more simply because they helped her move forward. In the
beginning, she had been an orphan, a girl abandoned in the cruel confines of
the real world so that those who birthed her could seek out their own
happiness, sold to scientists in trade for food and money. Yoshime was the
first prototype for a direct human-computer mind link system, something that
would eliminate bulky terminals to access information. They treated her well at
first, and she had learned much about the systems that she now had access to
with a simple thought. But as she grew older they pressed for more experiments
and mass production, slowly crushing her feeble defenses that kept her alive.
And slowly, she began to realize the truth about who
she really was, why she was there, and what her captor's true motives were. And
she became afraid. Eventually, she run away from the
facilities, being hunted ever since to continue the project of which so much
money had been invested into. However, she had met a small ‘street gang’ of
teenagers her age, people just as destitute and helpless as she was, and they
had stuck together ever since. She had friends now, and she lived a much better
life than before…even if they still made her trudge through the junkyards like
this.
“Their loss,” laughed
Yoshime. “Wait til’ they see what I found! I hope
it’s connected to a generator or something. Then maybe Shiroutsuke
can fix up that old land skimmer he’s been whining about and we can get out of
this dump!” Yoshime smiled as she began following the energy trail to its
source. Trudging over piles of metal shards, she eventually came to a small
cave imbedded within the trash.
“They always have to hide
the good things…”
Yoshime had to get down on
hands and knees as she reached into the small cavern. Her small size made it
easy to get in, but her dress got in the way of her progress. Sweeping her dark
shoulder-length bangs aside, she tried to catch a glimpse of her newfound
treasure, but it was simply too dark for any light to reach her blue eyes.
Annoyance swept over her as she finally got a hold on her find, surprised to
find something that had human fingers but a cold metal touch. The setting sun
came back into view as she dragged the heavy object out into the open,
straining her muscles under the pull of the dead weight. Her mouth opened in
shock when she finally stopped to look at what she had found.
“Wh... what...?” she stuttered. A male, humanoid mech sat before her in glistening red armor, its green hair
lying in long bangs almost completely covering its face, and its complex design
clearly stating that it had been a government project. Yoshime stood in shock
for a moment, then began leaping for joy.
“My own mech! This is
so cool!”
Yoshime reached down to
shake the mech by the shoulder, but it simply slumped
forward in a lapse of unconsciousness, unable to respond. Yoshime blinked in
confusion before coming to the slow realization that her new toy could not
stand on its own.
“Damn,” said Yoshime.
“Looks like I’ll have to reactivate it myself!” Pulling some socket connections
from the many bags on her belt and plugging them into the back of the mech’s neck, Yoshime began checking for program errors,
whole pages of information running through her minds eye as she meticulously
read through every single letter and number.
“Okay…at least there’s no
damage, and power cells are fully charged! Just have to reboot!” Mentally resetting the program files and
activating the android’s main core, she came out of cyberspace and stuffed the
wires back into her packs. The mech slowly came to
life as its systems began to work, gears grinding against each other as the
creation shook off the dirt and grime that had covered it during its long
sleep. Slowly, awareness fluttered back into the mech’s
mind and he found himself yet again in that dark little room that he had never
left, only this time there was a new presence to welcome him back to the real
world.
“***Edge
unit: restart. Awaiting
new commands.”
Yoshime let out a shout of
joy as the mech’s dark eyes slowly opened and it
stared at her. A genuine government mecha! Could her
luck finally be changing for the better?
“Hi!” said Yoshime grin.
“My name’s Yoshime, I found you in that pile of trash.” She pointed to the cave
where she had found her prize in excited ecstasy. “I guess I’m you’re going to
be my new companion for a while, so we better get to know each other better!
What’s your name?” The mech simply looked at her in a
daze as it picked itself up from the rubble, it’s
deep, brown lenses still focusing on its new world of vision.
“My unit number is
Edge65438195468732064,” said the mech cautiously, its
voice distantly shaking in the presence of this new force in its private room. Yoshime’s face just twisted in disgust as the numerical
strain fell from the robot’s mouth.
“I’ll just call you ‘Edge,’
okay?” said Yoshime in disdain. “It’d be a real pain to memorize all those
numbers.” Edge merely nodded with a blank expression on his face.
“***Awaiting new commands.”
“What are your commands?”
asked Edge.
Yoshime’s patient demeanor slowly crumbled as the metal idol’s
formalities began to take their toll on her brain.
“Stop acting like that!”
she said. “I don’t have any commands for you and I don’t want you to act like a
slave. Just try to act more human. It’s hard enough trying to talk to all the
other machines I have to work with!”
“***Command’s program:
deleted. ***Hard Drive commands rechanneled
to Corazon Chip.”
Edge suddenly got a worried
look on his face, an emotion distorted by the artifical
human head he wore. Slowly, his expression played out like that of a child
confused, like a babe on the verge of tears because he did not know what to do.
“…what do you want me to do
then?” said Edge nervously.
Startled, Yoshime looked
up. She hadn’t expected that kind of response from a machine; it wasn’t often
that a piece of metal she had shouted at in frustration had replied back in a
rational manner. What was this new find of hers anyways? Yoshime smiled
nervously and apologized.
“It’s okay, and I’m sorry I
got angry,” she said. “I didn’t realize that you could respond like that. Maybe
I should have been a bit more sensitive, ne? I just
want you to be my friend!”
Edge’s look only became
more perplexed as he looked up and down for an answer to his unspoken question.
“Um….what’s a friend?” he
said as he stared at Yoshime with his dark eyes.
Yoshime laughed at Edge’s
naïve nature, her mind still working to explain who or what she had just
stumbled upon.
“You don’t know anything do
you?” she said. “You’re like an expensive paperweight! Didn’t the government at
least put some basic knowledge into your brain?” Edge thought for a brief
second, trying to pry open a sealed door in the dark room of his mind, but
something kept blocking his thoughts...
“***Unaccessable information.”
“…I guess not,” he said in
disdain. “I don’t think I really know anything right now...”
Yoshime stared at him for a
minute, then smiled.
“You sort of act human,”
she said. “Guess you must have one of those corazon
chips that everyone talks about these days, all the new government robots have
them. At least you can learn how to act like a human.” Yoshime turned to look
at the sun, already half gone over the towering piles of junk. “Come on. We
better get back before dark, the police always come
out at night.”
“Okay, master,” said Edge
rising to follow in her footsteps.
Yoshime turned to him and
gently smiled.
“And don’t use those stupid
formalities that the government impressed on your mind,” she said. “Just call
me Yoshime.”
“***New
Commander: Yoshime: Priority 1.”
…
…
…
“Shiroutsuke! Lenna! Alys! Seth!” shouted out
Yoshime as she and Edge made their way through a dingy alleyway between the
corpses of skyscrapers long forgotten.
“I’m home!”
No answer.
Confused, Yoshime peeked her head out from the alley into a small clearing
where she and her friends had set their camp. There lie their corpses in
distorted positions, their fragile human bodies twisted in directions the human
anatomy was not made to bend. Small pools of blood gathered on the ground
beneath the corpses, most of it having been trapped and congealed within the
flesh itself. The look on their faces were all the
same, the fear forever frozen in their lifeless gaze.
Yoshime stood there for a
moment, too stunned by the atrocity to act. Then the tears came, the sadness,
and she suddenly realized the reality of what had just happenedm
the horror of that splattered gore which lie just before her. Edge watched her
run out to hold one of the lifeless bodies in a wail of sorrow, and he simply
followed because he could not understand what to do otherwise.
“Why...” whispered Yoshime
to herself as she held the one named Seth in her arms, stroking his soft,
blood-matted hair. “They were after me, they didn’t have to...to...”
Edge bowed his head. He
could barely understand the tears, the incredible flow of emotion. Yoshime
looked up at him with sad eyes and reluctantly cracked a smile.
“See this?” she whispered.
“They were after me....they didn’t need to hurt my friends...” The tears began
to flow more easily. “My friends...”
Edge tried to comprehend
what had just happened to little avail. Tears. What
did these mixtures of water and salt mean? Why did she cry as such when a life
ended? Or was that merely the way reality functioned in its slow movement of
endless gears? Yoshime’s sorrow, her friend’s death. It was not her fault. Logically
she could not have prevented--- even if she had been present--- the horrible
scene produced that day. And yet, she felt guilt, a twang of injustice because
she knew that she was with these people, that she should have been with them as
their lives came to a close...
And so what did all of it
mean to him? This sadness? This
death? That life must be something to treasure, that existence itself
was a powerful jewel in the vast world that could cause this young girl before
him to cry if it was lost. Thus, he should look upon that gift as she did,
right? That was how he could help her, help the river of pain dry up and drift
away...
Unfairness, things people
did not deserve....
...
“I don’t want to kill
anymore...”
...
Edge shook his head and
clutched it between his hands, the sudden thought fluttering away like the
wind, leaving only a weeping Yoshime with the empty shells of her deceased
friends.
“***Five
unidentified hosts approaching.
Immediate action suggested.”
Edge whirled around to meet
the sudden ambush, but was caught by a hard blow in the gut by one of the
oncoming figures before he could fight, forcing him to double over and fall
towards the ground. A metal gauntlet followed into his lower jaw, sending him
flying into a wall of broken concrete. The red mecha
desperately tried to scramble to his feet but suddenly realized that the attack
had already consumed his energy levels to a dangerous point, leaving him
motionless and helpless. The only thing he could do was watch
the play unfold in vain.
“Edge!!!” screamed out
Yoshime, but the attackers had already grabbed her up, one of them dangling her
above the ground by the neck. Three large cyborg
sentries, hulking masses of metal destruction, paced restlessly about the
broken campgrounds while two human officers carefully laid about their interrogation
in their pristine suits that claimed an equity being served. The one holding
Yoshime, a human, grinned through his dark helment.
“I knew that little rouse
would work,” said the policeman. “Little rats always did stick together, and
their leader always seems to come back in the end to pick up the scraps! Looks
like I’ll be heading to the bar tonight with the bonus I pick up on this one,
eh?” The two men shared a hearty laugh as Yoshime felt her body being
suffocated from the lack of oxygen. Her once supple limbs began to droop limply
as the life of her soul slowly leaked into blackness.
And all Edge could do was
watch...
“***New
Commander: Yoshime: Priority 1.”
...Injustice, tricks,
deceit, conscience...... injustice...
“***New
Commander: Yoshime: Priority 1.”
The policeman grinned even wider
as he watched Yoshime lapse into unconsciousness from lack of air...
...sadness...
“***New
Commander: Yoshime: Priority 1.”
The eyes suddenly flashed
white with anger, hot, and unrivaled. His body curled inward upon itself,
coiling for the pounce that would end his victim’s life. A silent scream filled
the voiceless air as agony let itself loose upon the world...
The policeman’s slow turn
seemed to take forever, but the bloody task was over in seconds. The officer
dropped Yoshime to raise his fist at Edge, but the gravity pulling her to the
ground suddenly loosened its harsh grip and she floated softly down into the
dust. The policeman didn’t have time to react to the unnatural phenomenon as
Edge’s metal hand brutally dug its fingers into his skull and began to twist
the threads of the gravitational field. Metal from his helmet was the first
thing sheered off, followed by skin, eyes, skull, brain cells, until the head
was no longer there; only the bloody stub of a neck and a body lacking a center
to command it.
The other human turned to
run as the robots moved to their commander’s aid, but it was too late. The eyes
glowed hungrily as they raised from their previous
kill. They needed sustenance, something to fill in the void of those shining
globes of hatred. Nothing could be spared for its satisfaction now.
The robots crumpled like aluminum cans as
their innards became devoid of matter, their bodies soon resembling small balls
of tin foil as they turned inward upon themselves. In disdain, the vicious
creature turned from the artificial life that he had just obliterated and began
a march towards the last flesh and blood that opposed his will.
The remaining man cowered
in fear as the beast walked toward him, holding his arms in front of him in a
meager attempt to protect himself.
“Please, man!” he
whimpered. “I got a wife and kids! I gotta support
them, right? You wouldn’t want them to live in this hellhole,” He motioned to
the surrounding area. “...would you?”
Edge looked at the man
without mercy, the man who now cowered before him like a fearful child. Voices
whispered in his head...
Fear, fear of loosing everything you’ve worked for.
Fear of loosing to somebody better than you, and then there’s always the fear
that the rich have...
The rich are careless of who
they trample on, only caring about themselves. The government milks the people
for all they’re worth, and depression covers the land. They are afraid, harboring
the fear that someday they might loose their material possessions, and be
forced to live like a normal human being...
The white eyes glowed with
anger; there would be no mercy tonight.
Unaware of his actions,
Edge horribly grinned as he raised his clawed fingers high into the air...
...
...
...
...
...
Yoshime slowly opened her
eyes, her head still pounding like an hammer on an
anvil. She looked up to see Edge looking down upon her protectively.
“Are you okay?” asked Edge,
as he gently held her by the shoulders. Yoshime nodded,
unaware of what had just happened. What about the soldiers? What had
stopped them from killing them all? She
suddenly became aware of the still-warm blood that had begun seeping into the
dark fabric of her clothes from Edge’s hands. She shivered at the thought of
what Edge had done while she had been unconscious, the
horrors that a government issue mech could create in
the heat of battle.
And almost as if he read
her mind, Edge stared down at his crimson appendages in shame.
“Is everything all right?”
he asked nervously. “I...I didn’t know what to do,” he whispered to himself. “I
saw you sad when her friends ceased to live. I didn’t want you to be sad if you
died.”
Yoshime blinked for a
minute, barely able to tell what the young android was talking about. Could he
understand the link between death and sorrow? Did he realize everything he had
just done? She smiled weakly, a hint of understanding in her eyes as she stood
up.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I
was sad because my friends died. Those were people I shared a lot of happy
memories with...” Yoshime drifted off and stared up at the sky for a moment.
“... but, I’m sure they’ll be looking down on us. And hopefully, they’ve all
reached a place much better than this one...”
Edge did his best to smile
as he joined her. Yoshime took a folded rag from her pocket, and began wiping
the dark crimson stains from Edge’s armor.
“I’m sure you’ll understand
someday,” she said. Edge simply looked at her with a slight smile on his face.
“I’ll try my best.”
That night, a single grave
and a single cross constructed from the surrounding rubble marked the lives of Yoshime’s childhood...
...
...
...
Yoshime told Edge they
needed to move out as soon as possible before the government became aware that
he had slain their soldiers. But Edge only looked at her blankly.
“I...I...,” he said
nervously. He tried to remember how he had saved her...
“***Memory
file #782344: Inaccessible.”
It took a moment for
Yoshime to become aware of the perplexed look on her own face, a look she
quickly replaced with a smile.
“That’s okay,” she said. “As long as we’re still alive, ne?”
Edge smiled back, and looked at her with his dark eyes. He brushed aside his
long green bangs that had suddenly fallen in front of his face, hiding his eyes
in shadows for a brief moment. And in that short second, Yoshime wasn’t able to
delve into those dark pools of blackness to read the poor boy’s thoughts. Worry
temporarily consumed her good judgment as she contemplated her new companion's
brooding. The bangs were soon pulled back once again, and the expression on
Edge’s face had changed to something that she couldn’t read, an innocence that
a child would express to his mother when he first walked by himself into the
real world.
“Yoshime,” said Edge
slowly. “I want to learn how to be a human.”
She looked at him blankly
for a moment, stunned by the comment. And then she could only change her
confusion into a smile and a laugh.
“I’ll help you become
human,” she said. “After all, that’s what friends are for, ne?”
Edge looked at her like a child would, nervous and eager to please his parent.
Then he smiled, realizing that she had approved of his dream, his aspirations.
Yoshime took his hand and
pulled Edge along into the starry night...
...
...
...
“The Edge unit was seen
today by a unit in pursuit of the girl.”
Vomisa was kneeling in Toy’s chambers as he gave the news.
He couldn’t see what his master was thinking, Toy’s face still hidden in the
shadows, but he couldn’t imagine any sense of pleasure on his face after
hearing what he had just said. Behind the emperor, the huge enforcer looked down
at him without mercy, its dead eyes taking in his small form closely. Vomisa hoped that its rage would not be brought down upon
him that day in anger.
“What condition was the
Edge unit in?” Toy finally asked. Vomisa swallowed
hard as he re-read the lines of raw data in his memory banks.
“Perfect condition,” he
answered. “He imploded three beta-class police mecha,
and gored their assisting officers.” Vomisa awaited a
harsh rebuttal, but it never came.
Toy simply sighed.
“Send the Double unit to
eliminate his presence,” he said. “Mistakes must not be made, and having a
berserk soldier in the field will do nothing but become a bother. The renegade
Edge unit is too much of a threat to my plans for it to continue its
existence.”
“Yes, Toy-sama,” said Vomisa, relief
sweeping over him as he turned and disappeared from the chambers. He feared the
rumors of Toy’s wrath, feared that he would become his next victim. And that
was only so because of how much he had learned...
...
...
...
Toy lounged in his chair,
staring out into his clear screens from which he interacted with the world.
Things had changed. The renegade unit was ignorant, unaware of the task at
hand. Edge would need to die; he was too much of a threat alive. Apparently, this
tired hope was just another failure...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
End “Hajime”