I will shy away from the specifics [closed, complete]
who: Axel Eric and Sho
what: CAKE! TAG! ANGST! EPIC!
when: The day the kid curses ended (231), backlogged
notes: Ryuu is still on hiatus, btw. We just needed to get this out of our system and set some things up for next week.
Eric toddled down the street between Grell's house and Junkhouse Ramen, a piece of cake in each hand. He was absently eating one (already full from having eaten four slices earlier), and carrying the other one for Sho. Uzuki was a dumb girl and had already eaten some, and Eric didn't think that Joshua or Mitsuki would like cake. Sho, however...
Sho was in the back corner of the room in one of the more private booths, one of the ones with curtains, the big piles of artfully arranged junk enclosing him like a protective shell. He had a huge peice of paper spread across the table, and on it he was scribbling equations
He was currently working on an algorithm for a fractal generator, and cursing this place's lack of calculators or computers of any kind. If he had one he could generate some truly beautiful 3d fractals; as it was, he had an abacus, some sort of mechanical calculation device (a "portable difference engine" the man had called it"
Still. The equations were useful for figuring out how to place his line drawings, and he thought he could even build a 3D version if the tried. Which led him of course to another thought as he tapped his pencil against the side of his head. The junk here was really pretty cool, wasn't it? He'd always loved the industrial-punk look, it was why he actually prefered Tokyo to boring old Okinawa (not that he'd EVER tell his mother)
If he combined the principles of fractals (well, obviously not COMPLETELY; he couldn't work on atomic scale. yet. ) with the aesthetics of steel and metal, maybe he could make something unique and beautiful...
This all gave him a horrible sense of deja-vu, however; so he plunged himself back into his calculations
Eric opened the door to Junkhouse with his foot, and started hollering. "Sho!! Sho I have some cake!" Of course, it came out muddled because there was the last of his cake in his own mouth. Eric went to the back, and pulled aside the curtain with a grubby hand. "Hi!"
At least Eric announced his presence this time, thus, Sho could prepare for him. Still... he wasn't very happy about being interrupted. "Maths," he said, simply, continuing to write.
"Cake," Eric retorted, shoving the dessert towards Sho.
"Fh, d, d, don't get it on my maths!" Sho shouted, pushing Eric's hand back as he stood up.
Eric pouted. "I wasn't gonna get it on your math..." he said. "I just wanted to give it to you."
Sho sighed, but then managed a slight smile. "Th. Thanks. Um. Plate. First," he said, suddenly skipping out of the booth towards the kitchen
It didn't occur to him that he shouldn't know where the plates were kept, but he wasn't thinking about that.
Meanwhile, Eric held onto the cake carefully, unsure of what to do with himself. He wiped his cakey hand on his shorts, leaving a trail of black crumbs.
Sho bounced back, plate and fork in hand, and then shoved said plate in Eric's general direction
And Eric dumped the cake onto the plate, and trotted off to find the sink so he could wash his hands, before returning to the table and sitting down across from Sho. He picked up a small iron tube and started inspecting it.
Sho, in the meantime, ate his cake in silence. It was a little too sweet for him - he liked his chocolates dark, something which his mother, who loved sweet things, always found strange - but it was cake, so who was he to complain. He finished it off with the glass of water he had at the table - all in silence, before going to scrub his plate and wash his hands
Eric continued his exploration of the pipe, before setting it down to fiddle with a gear. When sho returned, he was peering at the two curiously, trying to see if the gear would fit onto the pipe.
Coming back, Sho looked at what Eric was doing. "... wh. where d-did you get that?"
Wide-eyed, and looking almost like he was caught in the act, he pointed at the unassemelbed pile of stuff that was sitting on the floor next to the booth. "It was just kinda laying on top."
Sho frowned. "I think it's um, decoration. Shouldn't it be welded on?" Without even asking, he took the peices away from Eric, and then immediately began trying to assemble them himself
"Actually," Eric piped up, "that gear is for a a grandfather clock, and that pipe is probably an old boileroom exhaust. I was just trying to make a cool toy."
Sho paused, giving Eric a calculated look. He genuinely didn't like it when people seemed smarter than him - his intelligence sometimes seemed the one thing which made him better than anyone. "Oh," he said, simply, and then went back to his calculations. Unfortunately he realized that he was also finished, which meant that he had to pretend to be occupied
Eric took the things back, and finally succeeded in jamming the gear onto the pipe. With a triumphant laugh, he jumped up, and started performing a weird mix of karate and power-rangers style kung fu katas around the shop, with accompanying sound effects. Upon seeing that Sho was ignoring him, he pointed the thing at Sho like some sort of wand and yelled "ZAPPOW!"
Sho nearly jumped out of his skin, flailing a bit. "Wh, gh. Why do you do that?" he asked, rolling up his papers at last.
He looked a little sad for a bit. "I'm just trying to play with you."
Sho tilted his head. "Why?"
"'Cuz it's fun"
Sho considered this. "How?"
Well, Eric had to think about that one. "Sometimes it's just fun to run around and play with a friend."
Sho didn't have a response, really, other than to start walking. "I'm. Uh. putting away my maths."
"Okay!" Eric said brightly, before sitting down and making another gear-pipe-spring doo-dad for Sho.
Sho came back downstairs then, sitting on the steps and watching Eric from the shadows, quiet again.
Eric didn't notice him at first, but once the bobbling cog-on-a-spring rod was finished, he glanced around for sho, and spied him on the stairs. "Here!" he said, giving the thing to the other boy, before brandishing his own "weapon."
"Lets go find some bad guys to fight!"
Sho looked at it, curiously. It was interesting as an object, sure, but... "... you know if you changed a few things you could make this launch gears.'
"and other uh. stuff. like bottlecaps"
He hadn't thought of that. Eric turned towards Sho, green eyes wide with amazement. "Really?!"
Sho sat down, fishing a small pair of pliers out of his back pocket, and set to work. "Yes. M. be easier if I had a hot glue gun. or a sautering gun. but mom hates it when I use that."
A few moments later, he fished a small washer out of one of the various piles of loose junk and shot it straight at Eric
With reflexes he didn't know he had, Eric managed to dodge the washer, and it hit the far wall with a loud clatter. "... COOL!"
Sho smiled, a rare and strange thing, at least for this one.
He proceeded to fiddle with the second one... and then loaded both of them, a maverick grin spreading across his face.
"Dodge this~" he said as he fired off a volley of washers, running across the room
Eric wasn't sure how or where he'd gained the skills to move the way he was, but he wasn't going to disregard it. "You shall never defeat me, Doctor Nefarious!" he crowed, batting one away with the gearpipe
Sho was equally fast, moving with almost inhuman grace; he didn't know where he'd gotten so speedy either, but it seemed somehow right.
"Dr. Nefarious? Zetta LAME!" he shouted, slipping behind a booth, his lisp disappearing as his grin spread. "Call me iVector!" With that, he popped out and fired off another washer
The pipesword didn't feel right. It was too awkward, too... wrong. Eric tossed it aside, and retrieved two broken baby carriage wheels from the pile of junk, before cackling and diving behind a chair. "Curse you, iVector! You are no match for the, um..."
He paused to think. " THE INCREDIBLE CAPTAIN AWESOME!"
"Captain Awesome?" he said. "Well, if you're a Captain, then I am DOCTOR HORRIBLE!"
"I have a PHD in HORRIBLENESS!"
With that, he jumped out from his hiding place and charged, firing another washer
Something in the back of Eric's mind nagged at him, that there was a REAL Doctor Horrible. something about a freeze ray. He dodged, and then ran outside. "I shall lead you away from the brave citizens of the ramen shop, fiend!"
Sho cackled. "You may change my coordinates, Captain Awesome, but I, iVector, am a constant! And my constant is my persuit of you! I AM YOUR ARCHNEMISIS! THE EIGENVECTOR TO YOUR EIGENVALUE!" He shot off a few more washers, then, with a burst of speed, tried to tackle the other boy
Eric didn't understand half of that, but it was okay. iVector was obviously a villian and ridiculous over the top villain phrases were good. And then he felt Sho running up fast from behind, so he increased his own speed. "Never shall you catch me, iVector! For CAPTAIN AWESOME is SO AWESOME that no evil can beat him!"
Sho needed to go faster. He had to catch Eric; he was caught up in the moment completely. If only he could...
and then he was suddenly in front of Eric
There was little to no transition, just a flickering of something almost like TV static and a hissing noise, and then he was there.
When Sho appeared right in front of him, all Eric could do was squawk in surprise, and stumbled backwards, scraping his knee in the process. "How'd you do that?!" he asked.
To tell the truth, Sho had absolutely no idea.
Of coures, he responded, "With the power of maths."
"Math doesn't do that!"
"Then I did it with science!"
Science was a slightly better explanation, but something was NOT lining up here. Factor in several other things... "Are you magic, Sho?" Eric asked seriously, standing up.
"There's no such thing as magic," he said. "Everything has a logical explination..."
He shrugged. "We just don't always know it."
Eric looked like he was deep in thought for a bit. "Do it again."
Sho screwed up his face, trying to replicate the action. coordinate transfer, transposition, spontaneous translocation, come on, you know the numbers, just...
He sighed. "I can't replicate it"
Eric thought some more, before stepping towards Sho, bopping him lightly on the arm, and then running. "Tag!" he crowed, dashing in the opposite direction.
Sho's mouth made an "o" shape as he realized what had just happened. Not giving thoughts to consequences, he immediately gave chase, yelling as he went.
"Slowpoke!" Eric teased, grinning wickedly as he ran.
"That's SHOPOKE to you! ALSO ALAKAZAM IS BETTER!" he shouted as he ran faster
Being from the year 1995, Eric had no idea what Sho was talking about, but that was okay. Eric poured the speed on, managing to go quite fast for a ten year old.
And Sho managed to match him, just barely... but not overtake him, his long legs carrying him foreward. Suddenly, however, he stopped, his eyes going wide.
"... m. m. y my cooridinates," he said, "These coordinates are an unknown."
Eric whipped around. "What's wrong?"
"Our coordinates in relation to our origin point are unknown," said Sho, again. "We're lost."
Eric looked around. "Um...." Okay, he didn't recognize this part of town. Eerie warehouses loomed over them... and something about this district was not sitting right with Eric. He was scared, now, something about this place gave him a hinky feeling... and he listened for the rythymic thump of his heart in his ears, like it always did when he was scared... and heard nothing. Instinctively he grabbed Sho's hand and began pulling the other boy the way they'd come. "We'll just go back the way we came," he said, trying to sound braver than he felt.
Sho, too, was inexplicably frightened for some reason... and somehow, being with Eric didn't seem safe anymore. He had this weird sense of deja-vu; and his own heart was pounding. He gulped, then nodded, trying not to show his fear
Eric quickened his pace, wanting to get away from that place. Something about the scary man, fire and hearts made this place all the more terrifying. The dead silence within his body only amplified that fear, and Ax-- Eric, his name was Eric, could feel Ax-- the Scary Man almost breathing down his neck.
Sho, too, could feel something, fragments of... what? He was confused. On the one hand there was sudden, inexplicable hate of A... Eric which he couldn't parse. It was illogical - Eric may have been noisy, but hate? honestly? Noisy but fun, enlightening, and seemed to not care about Sho's stuttering or love of American things or mathematics.
So why this seething desire to hurt the other boy? And... other things. Fragments. A blond boy, a little older than him - or was it younger? - who evoked the same seething hate - Joshua?
And then... a memory. Standing in a train station, blasting Nightwish in his ears (who?) becuase he couldn't stand the sorry excuses for music that most of Japan listened to, thinking about thermodynamics, about how he didn't fucking want to go to Tokyo U even if he HAD aced the entrance exams (both verbal AND math, thank you. well, verbal was due to cram school) becuase he didn't want to be a sarariman
and the equation for signal to noise. Yes, that was what it was, Signal to Noise, the ratio, and then someone on that damned crowded 9:00 am rush had pushed him and the train was coming and...
He held his head, groaning. "Amplitude of Signal / Amplitude of Noise squared equals signal to noise ratio," he mumbled to himself, "too much Noise."
Meanwhile Eric was experiencing a very different kind of resonance. As they ran, they drew closer and closer to one building in particular - nondescript, boring, dilapidated - and yet something about it SCREAMED dissonance, threatened to tear him apart. The back of his neck was hot, burning, and the dull thud of his footsteps punctuating the distinct lack of a heartbeat. Zexion was wrong- Zexion had lied, but didn't Zexion ALWAYS lie - an illusionist, someone who deliberately tricked people. Where? How did he know that?
His whole body had risen in temperature, and compulsively, he jerked his hand away from Sho's - something was wrong. Something in him was building up, powered by his fear, his panic, and something else. Eric cried out in pain as the overheating became too much, unaware that the rock that lived in his pocket along with his lizards was driving that other power. He had closed his eyes in terror when it took hold, and it wasn't until he opened them that he realized he was completely on fire.
The scary man - Axel - had come for him. And as he stood there,burning without actually burning, his own memory flickered, seeing himself as though it was a movie - standing outside the shattered remains of a book store in Washington DC, his glasses shattered, cheeks bleeding, looking up at someone in a black coat as the shadows lived and ate him alive.
Eric hunched down on the ground, unable to make the fire stop, unable to make the memory stop, unable to make the tears stop.
Sho, on the other hand, was simply staring at the sky as memories continued to flood back - he is falling through the air as he realizes that no, his wings aren't areodynamic and he should have known, but hey, they were wings, and he's lucky that Kariya happens to be on patrol that day and that he's already dead so gravity doesn't apply to him the same way
He's standing on top of a building, wind in his hair as he grins down at the players, all of them little ants, worthless garbage, and here is his revenge on Tokyo, on Shibuya, and in some ways on the world that rejected him - zetta sons of digits, those right quadrilaterals, where once he'd been the one kicked around now he would do the kicking
fashionistas with their up-dos and those damn goth kids, all of them at his mercy as he watched Noise take them down and here he laughs because this is vengeance; and now there's only one last integer to delete, one last square to solve for, and his equation will be the most fun of all...
There's the sound of gunshots as his first calculation somehow fails; but that's ok, he has plans within plans; there's Konishi with that so-short dress and her logical talk and god it's hot; there's Kariya with his laid back style and uncaring
And there's his plot, his plans, his wheels within wheels; there's his deal with the devil (for was not the devil an Angel transposed?), there's his desire to continue transforming, transcending, his desire, no, need for power, to prove that yes, he WAS the best, the highest form, to approach infinity
There was his final transition, his level i flare; there was that damned Composer interfering
There was a boat on a sea; there was a relocation of coordinates. so much more,
And then red hair and a common thread; that same need to meddle, that same desire when seeing power to make it undone, that same drive; and of course mistrust, becuase he knows his own type (Starscream. They are both Starscream. And he laughs at that notion.)
... and then there is a promise of still more power, just as being Taboo, of transcendance, of raising onself to another power and he should have known better because there he lost so very much
And then being reborn because Kariya, of all people, loved him and believed in him; and then knowing that he didn't have to reach infinity by his previous methods; that going at it in a normal curve rather than an exponential or power sequence was fine enough
"Turn up the signal; wipe out the noise."
Eric was realizing now, as he sat there hunched over and burning, that the Scary Man wasn't anyone his imagination made up. It was him - he was Axel, not Eric. It wasn't a mistake - he became Axel when he lost his heart. No heart, no emotions.
He remembered now, and as he rememered, the flames dissipated, leaving behind a boy that was physically fourteen, but mentally 22, kneeling on the ground. Everything he'd done, everything - no, nothing - he'd become... and how utterly terrified he was of himself. Was he really that much of a bastard?
Roughly, he wiped his eyes with the back of his arm, and snuffled, before standing slowly. Axel stood there quietly for a few moments, before flinging his arms wide and screaming at the sky, "you've got to be fucking kidding me!" He violently inhaled, unable to contain the outburst. "I reject it. I reject ALL that bullshit about hearts and feelings," he muttered to himself
"'Nobodies do not feel' - what a fucking lie!" he continued to yell, ranting, understanding how strange it sounded to hear his own fourteen-year-old voice saying things he expected to hear in his own voice. "It's bullshit, all of it!"
"But the constant is that something is still missing," shot back Sho. Weirdly, he wasn't angry. He knew, intellectually, that this man had done something horrible to him, but some of the cool intellectualism he had as a child remained. He had only gained that malice and hate in middle and high school.
"You're not a complete binomial. You can't be factored; can't be solved. An incomplete equation, with a nonreal answer."
"No shit, Sherlock. All the same, I do know this. I HATE this fucking city!" He punctuated his newfound hatred by ramming his foot through a rotting door.
Again, his voice was oddly quiet, for him. "I hate you," he said again. "Maybe it was my fault and maybe some lessons have to be learned the hard way but I still hate you. And... no one knows that."
And now his voice seethed. "No one is supposed to know that about me," he hissed
And probably, for the first time in his life as a nobody, Axel looked visibly stricken. "... I deserve it." he said, after a while. "Your hate, I mean. Kariya's too... hell, everyone in this goddamn city should hate me - I haven't done anything that would make them feel otherwise." He looked back down at the ground.
Axel didn't bother with responding to Sho's accusation of knowing what he was like as a kid - it'd only piss him off.
Sho was ignoring Axel's assertation of deserving it. He honestly didn't care; what he cared about was that someone out there knew of the shy, quiet child he'd been. "Not even Kariya knows that. Not Konishi. That factoring hectopascal Joshua probably knows but whatever, you know..." he whirled in place. "... and so does anyone who's seen me, that ieteration of me is dead!"
And at that, Axel snapped his gaze towards Sho, that intense, sneaky look back in them. "Oh, and you think that Eric Levine is still running around, catching lizards and eating cake like he doesn't have a goddamn care in the world? You're not the only one in that boat, which should be pretty damn obvious by the fact that we're still younger than we should be."
It probably didn't help Axel's argument that "still" was punctuated by a rather poorly timed puberty squeak.
"Not the same factoring thing," snapped Sho, who was now back to being eighteen years old. His voice, however, had a strange waver in it - almost like he was on the verge of tears. "Not the same thing at all." And with those words, he stepped backwards, vanishing in a spray of something not unlike TV static.
Axel stood there, alone in the middle of the alleyway, slowly returning to his proper age. "... I know."
what: CAKE! TAG! ANGST! EPIC!
when: The day the kid curses ended (231), backlogged
notes: Ryuu is still on hiatus, btw. We just needed to get this out of our system and set some things up for next week.
Eric toddled down the street between Grell's house and Junkhouse Ramen, a piece of cake in each hand. He was absently eating one (already full from having eaten four slices earlier), and carrying the other one for Sho. Uzuki was a dumb girl and had already eaten some, and Eric didn't think that Joshua or Mitsuki would like cake. Sho, however...
Sho was in the back corner of the room in one of the more private booths, one of the ones with curtains, the big piles of artfully arranged junk enclosing him like a protective shell. He had a huge peice of paper spread across the table, and on it he was scribbling equations
He was currently working on an algorithm for a fractal generator, and cursing this place's lack of calculators or computers of any kind. If he had one he could generate some truly beautiful 3d fractals; as it was, he had an abacus, some sort of mechanical calculation device (a "portable difference engine" the man had called it"
Still. The equations were useful for figuring out how to place his line drawings, and he thought he could even build a 3D version if the tried. Which led him of course to another thought as he tapped his pencil against the side of his head. The junk here was really pretty cool, wasn't it? He'd always loved the industrial-punk look, it was why he actually prefered Tokyo to boring old Okinawa (not that he'd EVER tell his mother)
If he combined the principles of fractals (well, obviously not COMPLETELY; he couldn't work on atomic scale. yet. ) with the aesthetics of steel and metal, maybe he could make something unique and beautiful...
This all gave him a horrible sense of deja-vu, however; so he plunged himself back into his calculations
Eric opened the door to Junkhouse with his foot, and started hollering. "Sho!! Sho I have some cake!" Of course, it came out muddled because there was the last of his cake in his own mouth. Eric went to the back, and pulled aside the curtain with a grubby hand. "Hi!"
At least Eric announced his presence this time, thus, Sho could prepare for him. Still... he wasn't very happy about being interrupted. "Maths," he said, simply, continuing to write.
"Cake," Eric retorted, shoving the dessert towards Sho.
"Fh, d, d, don't get it on my maths!" Sho shouted, pushing Eric's hand back as he stood up.
Eric pouted. "I wasn't gonna get it on your math..." he said. "I just wanted to give it to you."
Sho sighed, but then managed a slight smile. "Th. Thanks. Um. Plate. First," he said, suddenly skipping out of the booth towards the kitchen
It didn't occur to him that he shouldn't know where the plates were kept, but he wasn't thinking about that.
Meanwhile, Eric held onto the cake carefully, unsure of what to do with himself. He wiped his cakey hand on his shorts, leaving a trail of black crumbs.
Sho bounced back, plate and fork in hand, and then shoved said plate in Eric's general direction
And Eric dumped the cake onto the plate, and trotted off to find the sink so he could wash his hands, before returning to the table and sitting down across from Sho. He picked up a small iron tube and started inspecting it.
Sho, in the meantime, ate his cake in silence. It was a little too sweet for him - he liked his chocolates dark, something which his mother, who loved sweet things, always found strange - but it was cake, so who was he to complain. He finished it off with the glass of water he had at the table - all in silence, before going to scrub his plate and wash his hands
Eric continued his exploration of the pipe, before setting it down to fiddle with a gear. When sho returned, he was peering at the two curiously, trying to see if the gear would fit onto the pipe.
Coming back, Sho looked at what Eric was doing. "... wh. where d-did you get that?"
Wide-eyed, and looking almost like he was caught in the act, he pointed at the unassemelbed pile of stuff that was sitting on the floor next to the booth. "It was just kinda laying on top."
Sho frowned. "I think it's um, decoration. Shouldn't it be welded on?" Without even asking, he took the peices away from Eric, and then immediately began trying to assemble them himself
"Actually," Eric piped up, "that gear is for a a grandfather clock, and that pipe is probably an old boileroom exhaust. I was just trying to make a cool toy."
Sho paused, giving Eric a calculated look. He genuinely didn't like it when people seemed smarter than him - his intelligence sometimes seemed the one thing which made him better than anyone. "Oh," he said, simply, and then went back to his calculations. Unfortunately he realized that he was also finished, which meant that he had to pretend to be occupied
Eric took the things back, and finally succeeded in jamming the gear onto the pipe. With a triumphant laugh, he jumped up, and started performing a weird mix of karate and power-rangers style kung fu katas around the shop, with accompanying sound effects. Upon seeing that Sho was ignoring him, he pointed the thing at Sho like some sort of wand and yelled "ZAPPOW!"
Sho nearly jumped out of his skin, flailing a bit. "Wh, gh. Why do you do that?" he asked, rolling up his papers at last.
He looked a little sad for a bit. "I'm just trying to play with you."
Sho tilted his head. "Why?"
"'Cuz it's fun"
Sho considered this. "How?"
Well, Eric had to think about that one. "Sometimes it's just fun to run around and play with a friend."
Sho didn't have a response, really, other than to start walking. "I'm. Uh. putting away my maths."
"Okay!" Eric said brightly, before sitting down and making another gear-pipe-spring doo-dad for Sho.
Sho came back downstairs then, sitting on the steps and watching Eric from the shadows, quiet again.
Eric didn't notice him at first, but once the bobbling cog-on-a-spring rod was finished, he glanced around for sho, and spied him on the stairs. "Here!" he said, giving the thing to the other boy, before brandishing his own "weapon."
"Lets go find some bad guys to fight!"
Sho looked at it, curiously. It was interesting as an object, sure, but... "... you know if you changed a few things you could make this launch gears.'
"and other uh. stuff. like bottlecaps"
He hadn't thought of that. Eric turned towards Sho, green eyes wide with amazement. "Really?!"
Sho sat down, fishing a small pair of pliers out of his back pocket, and set to work. "Yes. M. be easier if I had a hot glue gun. or a sautering gun. but mom hates it when I use that."
A few moments later, he fished a small washer out of one of the various piles of loose junk and shot it straight at Eric
With reflexes he didn't know he had, Eric managed to dodge the washer, and it hit the far wall with a loud clatter. "... COOL!"
Sho smiled, a rare and strange thing, at least for this one.
He proceeded to fiddle with the second one... and then loaded both of them, a maverick grin spreading across his face.
"Dodge this~" he said as he fired off a volley of washers, running across the room
Eric wasn't sure how or where he'd gained the skills to move the way he was, but he wasn't going to disregard it. "You shall never defeat me, Doctor Nefarious!" he crowed, batting one away with the gearpipe
Sho was equally fast, moving with almost inhuman grace; he didn't know where he'd gotten so speedy either, but it seemed somehow right.
"Dr. Nefarious? Zetta LAME!" he shouted, slipping behind a booth, his lisp disappearing as his grin spread. "Call me iVector!" With that, he popped out and fired off another washer
The pipesword didn't feel right. It was too awkward, too... wrong. Eric tossed it aside, and retrieved two broken baby carriage wheels from the pile of junk, before cackling and diving behind a chair. "Curse you, iVector! You are no match for the, um..."
He paused to think. " THE INCREDIBLE CAPTAIN AWESOME!"
"Captain Awesome?" he said. "Well, if you're a Captain, then I am DOCTOR HORRIBLE!"
"I have a PHD in HORRIBLENESS!"
With that, he jumped out from his hiding place and charged, firing another washer
Something in the back of Eric's mind nagged at him, that there was a REAL Doctor Horrible. something about a freeze ray. He dodged, and then ran outside. "I shall lead you away from the brave citizens of the ramen shop, fiend!"
Sho cackled. "You may change my coordinates, Captain Awesome, but I, iVector, am a constant! And my constant is my persuit of you! I AM YOUR ARCHNEMISIS! THE EIGENVECTOR TO YOUR EIGENVALUE!" He shot off a few more washers, then, with a burst of speed, tried to tackle the other boy
Eric didn't understand half of that, but it was okay. iVector was obviously a villian and ridiculous over the top villain phrases were good. And then he felt Sho running up fast from behind, so he increased his own speed. "Never shall you catch me, iVector! For CAPTAIN AWESOME is SO AWESOME that no evil can beat him!"
Sho needed to go faster. He had to catch Eric; he was caught up in the moment completely. If only he could...
and then he was suddenly in front of Eric
There was little to no transition, just a flickering of something almost like TV static and a hissing noise, and then he was there.
When Sho appeared right in front of him, all Eric could do was squawk in surprise, and stumbled backwards, scraping his knee in the process. "How'd you do that?!" he asked.
To tell the truth, Sho had absolutely no idea.
Of coures, he responded, "With the power of maths."
"Math doesn't do that!"
"Then I did it with science!"
Science was a slightly better explanation, but something was NOT lining up here. Factor in several other things... "Are you magic, Sho?" Eric asked seriously, standing up.
"There's no such thing as magic," he said. "Everything has a logical explination..."
He shrugged. "We just don't always know it."
Eric looked like he was deep in thought for a bit. "Do it again."
Sho screwed up his face, trying to replicate the action. coordinate transfer, transposition, spontaneous translocation, come on, you know the numbers, just...
He sighed. "I can't replicate it"
Eric thought some more, before stepping towards Sho, bopping him lightly on the arm, and then running. "Tag!" he crowed, dashing in the opposite direction.
Sho's mouth made an "o" shape as he realized what had just happened. Not giving thoughts to consequences, he immediately gave chase, yelling as he went.
"Slowpoke!" Eric teased, grinning wickedly as he ran.
"That's SHOPOKE to you! ALSO ALAKAZAM IS BETTER!" he shouted as he ran faster
Being from the year 1995, Eric had no idea what Sho was talking about, but that was okay. Eric poured the speed on, managing to go quite fast for a ten year old.
And Sho managed to match him, just barely... but not overtake him, his long legs carrying him foreward. Suddenly, however, he stopped, his eyes going wide.
"... m. m. y my cooridinates," he said, "These coordinates are an unknown."
Eric whipped around. "What's wrong?"
"Our coordinates in relation to our origin point are unknown," said Sho, again. "We're lost."
Eric looked around. "Um...." Okay, he didn't recognize this part of town. Eerie warehouses loomed over them... and something about this district was not sitting right with Eric. He was scared, now, something about this place gave him a hinky feeling... and he listened for the rythymic thump of his heart in his ears, like it always did when he was scared... and heard nothing. Instinctively he grabbed Sho's hand and began pulling the other boy the way they'd come. "We'll just go back the way we came," he said, trying to sound braver than he felt.
Sho, too, was inexplicably frightened for some reason... and somehow, being with Eric didn't seem safe anymore. He had this weird sense of deja-vu; and his own heart was pounding. He gulped, then nodded, trying not to show his fear
Eric quickened his pace, wanting to get away from that place. Something about the scary man, fire and hearts made this place all the more terrifying. The dead silence within his body only amplified that fear, and Ax-- Eric, his name was Eric, could feel Ax-- the Scary Man almost breathing down his neck.
Sho, too, could feel something, fragments of... what? He was confused. On the one hand there was sudden, inexplicable hate of A... Eric which he couldn't parse. It was illogical - Eric may have been noisy, but hate? honestly? Noisy but fun, enlightening, and seemed to not care about Sho's stuttering or love of American things or mathematics.
So why this seething desire to hurt the other boy? And... other things. Fragments. A blond boy, a little older than him - or was it younger? - who evoked the same seething hate - Joshua?
And then... a memory. Standing in a train station, blasting Nightwish in his ears (who?) becuase he couldn't stand the sorry excuses for music that most of Japan listened to, thinking about thermodynamics, about how he didn't fucking want to go to Tokyo U even if he HAD aced the entrance exams (both verbal AND math, thank you. well, verbal was due to cram school) becuase he didn't want to be a sarariman
and the equation for signal to noise. Yes, that was what it was, Signal to Noise, the ratio, and then someone on that damned crowded 9:00 am rush had pushed him and the train was coming and...
He held his head, groaning. "Amplitude of Signal / Amplitude of Noise squared equals signal to noise ratio," he mumbled to himself, "too much Noise."
Meanwhile Eric was experiencing a very different kind of resonance. As they ran, they drew closer and closer to one building in particular - nondescript, boring, dilapidated - and yet something about it SCREAMED dissonance, threatened to tear him apart. The back of his neck was hot, burning, and the dull thud of his footsteps punctuating the distinct lack of a heartbeat. Zexion was wrong- Zexion had lied, but didn't Zexion ALWAYS lie - an illusionist, someone who deliberately tricked people. Where? How did he know that?
His whole body had risen in temperature, and compulsively, he jerked his hand away from Sho's - something was wrong. Something in him was building up, powered by his fear, his panic, and something else. Eric cried out in pain as the overheating became too much, unaware that the rock that lived in his pocket along with his lizards was driving that other power. He had closed his eyes in terror when it took hold, and it wasn't until he opened them that he realized he was completely on fire.
The scary man - Axel - had come for him. And as he stood there,burning without actually burning, his own memory flickered, seeing himself as though it was a movie - standing outside the shattered remains of a book store in Washington DC, his glasses shattered, cheeks bleeding, looking up at someone in a black coat as the shadows lived and ate him alive.
Eric hunched down on the ground, unable to make the fire stop, unable to make the memory stop, unable to make the tears stop.
Sho, on the other hand, was simply staring at the sky as memories continued to flood back - he is falling through the air as he realizes that no, his wings aren't areodynamic and he should have known, but hey, they were wings, and he's lucky that Kariya happens to be on patrol that day and that he's already dead so gravity doesn't apply to him the same way
He's standing on top of a building, wind in his hair as he grins down at the players, all of them little ants, worthless garbage, and here is his revenge on Tokyo, on Shibuya, and in some ways on the world that rejected him - zetta sons of digits, those right quadrilaterals, where once he'd been the one kicked around now he would do the kicking
fashionistas with their up-dos and those damn goth kids, all of them at his mercy as he watched Noise take them down and here he laughs because this is vengeance; and now there's only one last integer to delete, one last square to solve for, and his equation will be the most fun of all...
There's the sound of gunshots as his first calculation somehow fails; but that's ok, he has plans within plans; there's Konishi with that so-short dress and her logical talk and god it's hot; there's Kariya with his laid back style and uncaring
And there's his plot, his plans, his wheels within wheels; there's his deal with the devil (for was not the devil an Angel transposed?), there's his desire to continue transforming, transcending, his desire, no, need for power, to prove that yes, he WAS the best, the highest form, to approach infinity
There was his final transition, his level i flare; there was that damned Composer interfering
There was a boat on a sea; there was a relocation of coordinates. so much more,
And then red hair and a common thread; that same need to meddle, that same desire when seeing power to make it undone, that same drive; and of course mistrust, becuase he knows his own type (Starscream. They are both Starscream. And he laughs at that notion.)
... and then there is a promise of still more power, just as being Taboo, of transcendance, of raising onself to another power and he should have known better because there he lost so very much
And then being reborn because Kariya, of all people, loved him and believed in him; and then knowing that he didn't have to reach infinity by his previous methods; that going at it in a normal curve rather than an exponential or power sequence was fine enough
"Turn up the signal; wipe out the noise."
Eric was realizing now, as he sat there hunched over and burning, that the Scary Man wasn't anyone his imagination made up. It was him - he was Axel, not Eric. It wasn't a mistake - he became Axel when he lost his heart. No heart, no emotions.
He remembered now, and as he rememered, the flames dissipated, leaving behind a boy that was physically fourteen, but mentally 22, kneeling on the ground. Everything he'd done, everything - no, nothing - he'd become... and how utterly terrified he was of himself. Was he really that much of a bastard?
Roughly, he wiped his eyes with the back of his arm, and snuffled, before standing slowly. Axel stood there quietly for a few moments, before flinging his arms wide and screaming at the sky, "you've got to be fucking kidding me!" He violently inhaled, unable to contain the outburst. "I reject it. I reject ALL that bullshit about hearts and feelings," he muttered to himself
"'Nobodies do not feel' - what a fucking lie!" he continued to yell, ranting, understanding how strange it sounded to hear his own fourteen-year-old voice saying things he expected to hear in his own voice. "It's bullshit, all of it!"
"But the constant is that something is still missing," shot back Sho. Weirdly, he wasn't angry. He knew, intellectually, that this man had done something horrible to him, but some of the cool intellectualism he had as a child remained. He had only gained that malice and hate in middle and high school.
"You're not a complete binomial. You can't be factored; can't be solved. An incomplete equation, with a nonreal answer."
"No shit, Sherlock. All the same, I do know this. I HATE this fucking city!" He punctuated his newfound hatred by ramming his foot through a rotting door.
Again, his voice was oddly quiet, for him. "I hate you," he said again. "Maybe it was my fault and maybe some lessons have to be learned the hard way but I still hate you. And... no one knows that."
And now his voice seethed. "No one is supposed to know that about me," he hissed
And probably, for the first time in his life as a nobody, Axel looked visibly stricken. "... I deserve it." he said, after a while. "Your hate, I mean. Kariya's too... hell, everyone in this goddamn city should hate me - I haven't done anything that would make them feel otherwise." He looked back down at the ground.
Axel didn't bother with responding to Sho's accusation of knowing what he was like as a kid - it'd only piss him off.
Sho was ignoring Axel's assertation of deserving it. He honestly didn't care; what he cared about was that someone out there knew of the shy, quiet child he'd been. "Not even Kariya knows that. Not Konishi. That factoring hectopascal Joshua probably knows but whatever, you know..." he whirled in place. "... and so does anyone who's seen me, that ieteration of me is dead!"
And at that, Axel snapped his gaze towards Sho, that intense, sneaky look back in them. "Oh, and you think that Eric Levine is still running around, catching lizards and eating cake like he doesn't have a goddamn care in the world? You're not the only one in that boat, which should be pretty damn obvious by the fact that we're still younger than we should be."
It probably didn't help Axel's argument that "still" was punctuated by a rather poorly timed puberty squeak.
"Not the same factoring thing," snapped Sho, who was now back to being eighteen years old. His voice, however, had a strange waver in it - almost like he was on the verge of tears. "Not the same thing at all." And with those words, he stepped backwards, vanishing in a spray of something not unlike TV static.
Axel stood there, alone in the middle of the alleyway, slowly returning to his proper age. "... I know."