[Dream] [Week 4, Day 7] As a Child I Loved You.
You are clutching rocks that pierce and grids against the palm of your hands. They crunch, roll, and slip away, covered in sweat and blood. Your bare feet barely find any foot holds. Going up this mountain is impossible, as a human. You have to be something else. Something that can move easily in this mountain. One wrong move and you’ll topple, fall, and die.
White fur grows all around you. Your skull thickens and horns start to grow at the back of your head. Your fingers and toes loose all of their skin, muscle, and tendons. For a brief moment, you see your own hands, skeletal, briefly, before they start to melt and shift into becoming cloven hooves. Your eyes bulge out and move to the side of your head before your muzzle grows. Your intestines shift. Nerves re-wired. Muscles dissolved and then re-built.
You are the mighty mountain goat. Over three hundred pounds of pure power and agility, you take a few delicate steps, and then leap.
Yes.
You don’t need the gorilla, the cobra, the cheetah, the wolf - you don’t need them. This is enough. This is plenty. Your ears swivel around and you hear it - a growling noise. A padded step, step, step as you turn your head and see a Siberian tiger, also climbing, next to you.
The goat feels terror. It looks a lot like a cougar, but only much, much bigger. But you control the goat - you don’t run away. Instead, you feel relieved. You see that tiger so much, you can easily recognize it if someone decides to drop it in a pit full of tigers.
This is no normal tiger, after all.
Jake.
{ You almost missed the party,} you say as you continue to climb. In the jungle, tiger is king. The mountains are a whole different story. Jake stumbles, but regains his balance.
{ Marco,} he says, his voice gentle but strong and sturdy. { Are you sure about this?}
You turn to Jake, confused. { Sure about what? We went over this before. Kannagara has over six billion people living here, not to mention the other species of the wildlife. All of them relying on us to save, whether they know it or not.}
{ I know, my friend. I know what’s at stake here. But this her we are talking about -}
{ She’s just one life,} you interrupt shortly. You see the clear bright line ahead of you, as though only you can see it. { One person versus six billion people, plus the rest of the billions of species here on this planet. The math is easy to figure out, Jake. I did pass the class with a C average, I'm not totally useless.}
Jake leaps from cliff face to cliff face while you bound across them easily. You continue.
{ We know Joker is allied with the Yeerks. Maybe a Controller himself. Or maybe the Yeerk in his head lets him run the show. Either way, he’s too dangerous to let him live any longer. Either way, he has to die. And so does she. She’s knows too much of us, Jake. She knows we are not Andalites. She knows we’re humans.}
{ Marco.} Jake turns his head, and it’s massive. It stares at you, those yellow, tiger eyes, those predatory eyes that tell you, you are nothing, that you are only prey. { Maybe it’ll better we back off from this. You’re too close.}
{ I can’t believe you, of all people, I’m having this conversation with! } You say, angrily. Why is it that everyone keeps on seeing the little things and not the big picture?! { We both agree early on that the mission goes first. Personal goes dead last. That’s it. The end. I’m seeing this through. If you want to back out, fine, I can’t stop you, so go ahead. But I know what it takes to get things done if we’re going to win this war. I’m done talking.}
{ Marco, it’s more than just that -}
And just that, with the speed only a mountain goat can accomplish in its natural environment, you take off, leaving Jake behind. He can take care of himself. He has the tiger. He is the tiger. You have seen Hork-Bajir standing perfect well the next, then crawling on all fours, holding their intestines the next after meeting a male Siberian tiger controlled by an equally ruthless teenage boy.
You reach toward the top.
And there is the Joker, all scars and smiles and blood and holding a gun.
And her, next to him. All beaten and bloody and possibly near dead, with her dark hair plastered together in sweat, and her dark eyes brimming red.
The one you mean to save.
The one you mean to kill.
Visser One.
Mom.
Joker raises the butt of the revolver and smashes it against her skull. She gasps and moans and starts to hug the ground. You want to cry. Joker is hurting Mom and you want to kill him. But that slug in her brain, that ambitious slug that is the sole reason why Earth has been invaded in the first place . . . you hate the creature in Mom’s head, controlling her body, accessing her memories like it’s just pages in a book. You want that Yeerk to suffer. So you’re glad that the Yeerk is in Joker’s mercy as well.
Joker’s cutting smile splits, sawing his face off in two places. “Whatcha gonna do, Marco-roni?” He taunts, using that old nickname bullies say to Marco. “Whaddaya gonna do, huh, kid? Charge in, Hero-boy? Come on, charge, you dumb sheep. She’ll be dead before you can even move.”
Mom, no, no, Visser One spits blood on the ground. It pools slowly from her mouth, merging with spittle. “Maar-cooo,” she breathes in a shake breath. It sounds hollow, with stones jangles in her lungs. “M-m-my s-s-o-o-n. My bo-o-oy.” She reaches out, pathetically so with a hand with all four fingers broken and a thumb missing. The palm of her hand is covered with sores and burns. The rest of her body is broken; legs in weird places, a bullet hole in her other hand. She bleeds from her forehead, covering half her face in blood while the other side is covered in bruises and cuts.
“Save me, Marco. Save me.”
“SELFISH BITCH!” Joker roars, spit and blood flying from his mouth. He hits her again. “You won’t be saved unless he says so! Stupid, stupid broad, don’t you know your place in comic books?”
Mom’s eyes roll in pain. Visser One opens her mouth, but nothing came out except more blood.
{ Don’t worry, Mom. Everything will be fine,} You lie. { I’ll set you free. One way or another, you’ll be free.}
Visser One gives a small smile. A cold one. Your mother would never smile like that. Never.
{ But you will die, Visser One. Just because you're in my mother's body doesn’t change anything. You will die.}
The look of fury distorts your mother’s face more than any wound can. “You filthy human!” she roars. “You primitive, pathetic humans! We will take you all, we will, boy. We’ll take what we want and destroy everything else! Your bodies, they’re ours! You're our meat, human, OUR MEAT!”
No matter how much Joker hits her, she continues on, ranting. “Several human children along with an Andalite cadet? You are nothing, boy, the resistance is futile. The Andalite forces will not come for your rescue. And I will promise you one thing, Marco,” she hisses, her tongue suddenly flickering in and out, like a snake. The beatings are just only encouraging her now. “Once we capture all of your friends and allies, I’ll personally make you watch their infestation. And then I’ll take you, and have you morph and kill your precious mother. That’s a promise -”
You charge. While Joker is busy kicking and punching and pulling your mother’s hair, you charge. He can’t react - he barely sees a blur of white as he turns and -
- and your head hits something
- and your horns tears flesh
- And you see your mother go flying, flying, flying - her arms wheeling up in the air but it’s useless, no human arms can fight gravity. She goes down, down, down, d o w n in a hundred foot drop. She hits her head. Snap. She bounces and tumbles but you know she’s dead already. Down she goes, like a broken doll, discarded from a little sister you never had but once, a long time ago, secretly wanted. And all those broken promises, promises never made by you, made for you, all lies, lies from another in your mother's head. . .
One life versus six billion.
Not even a question.
Not even.
Joker shrieks with joy. “You did it, kid! A real hero! With sacrifice to boot! You are coming along well, a good sociopath, a nutjub, fucking nuts, you pissant now kill me boy, kill me and be a good-bad hero, kill me and see how FAR YOU CAN GO.” He’s bending over, laughing, tears in his eyes, crawling past his white skin with the fake make-up. His hair is almost green-black from the sweat. He’s patting his stomach like everything is a world is a joke, just like you would see it. He even toss his revolver aside, as it cascades down the drop until in lands perfectly in your mother’s dead, broken, open palm.
Kill me and see how far you can go.
You charge. You don’t care if that’s what he wants. He’s going to die; humanity will be safer with one Yeerk ally dead. One Yeerk ally among the thousands, barely a ripple, but god, it’s better than nothing, better than nothing at all.
But you don’t headbutt him. You don’t shove him over the cliff like last time.
You disembowel him.
You are no longer a mountain goat.
You are a yoma, with its heighten senses of smell and sight, with its amazing speed and agility and deadly claws and the call for guts, guts, guts, much like a Taxxon desire meat. You rush at him and with a swipe, you smell the sweet smell of his stomach flopping out of his belly and oh - this is what freedom taste like. Pure sweetness. You retreat into the yoma’s mind, let it take over, yes, do it Marco, let somebody else take over, it can be Jake or Rachel or the yoma’s mind, let it take over. Do it. You can’t do a thing anymore.
So the yoma feast on the dying, laughing Joker. You and the yoma, feasting together, separately, together.
{ Marco!} Somebody called out. { You are out of control! Morph out!}
What?
Doesn’t somebody can see we are eating here?
“Don’t stop!” Joker gasps.
{ Morph out! That’s an order!} Jake roars.
Jake. Jake. Someone. Friend. Your friend. Leader. Your leader. You.
Marco.
Your name is Marco.
You let out a shuddering breath
- and you s c r e a m and you c r y .
“I am so sorry, Mom!” You sob, tears somehow overflowing yoma’s eyes and everything is blurry, distorting your vision. You barely see an orange and black thing running over to you. “Six billion!” You stare at Jake, wanting his closeness, want to talk to him because he’s alive and Mom isn’t.
So you don’t see Joker pulling out another gun from his jacket pocket, aiming at your head and all you hear is a BANG -
[The Hitomi spurns to life as Marco jerks out of his bed. He gasps with a broken keen underneath, as though trying not to get sick. He lost the battle and with a messy, sloppy noise, he retches and promptly throws up. Marco tries to breathe but only groans. He stumbles out of bed, going somewhere, clearly the bathroom as the noises of him getting sick are only becoming louder.
After a while of no one entering the bedroom, the Hitomi shuts off.]