FanFic - DP/UF - Crossroads [7]
MegaZone
----------------------------------------------------------------SEVEN
"It is better to have loved and lost than to have hated and
won."
--Anonymous
"Ahh...wow. Now this is a place."
So saying, the reinstated Commander Benjamin D. Hutchins
flopped onto his back on top of the grassy knoll. It was the sort of
place he had always wished Millinocket had, and had always written
into the golf course in his stories which involved that town, the
place where he grew up and was so far distant from now. It was on
that nonexistent grassy knoll that one could sit and see, spread out
below him, the entire town of Millinocket, its lights glittering in
the early evening, his breath crystallizing before him as he sat
pensive. In his stories, the grass knoll above Millinocket which
wasn't really there was one of his favorite places. He and Ray had
many long and involved conversations on that knoll, before and after
Friday, August 24th, 1990.
But there was no Ray, and no grassy knoll over the town of
Millinocket, and nothing particularly special had happened to the real
Ben Hutchins on August 24th, 1990. In fact, his high school years had
been, with a couple of notable exceptions, singularly unimpressive,
and without a doubt carnally uneventful. Not that it particularly
bothered him; there were always other things to pour his energies
into, to sublimate the stress in useful ways...fiction, for example.
Fictionalizing was a way of keeping himself semi- sane. He had
continued it into college, until that day...Wednesday, October 2nd,
1991. The day his world had turned inside out and upside down and
taken a very hard bank to the left. (And rotated 90 degrees from the
plane of reality.)
It didn't hit FUBAR 'til the 12th, but still...
He stretched out, looking up at the night sky. There had been
a time when he was afraid of the dark, but that was a while ago now,
and besides, there was no need for him to fear; there was nothing out
here which could harm him. A cool breeze blew across the knoll,
ruffling his shirt. He stuck his hands behind his head and closed his
eyes, smiling peacefully. No more stress, no more running for his
life; just peace and calm and quiet.
He heard a soft rustling that meant someone had taken up a
sitting position beside him; there was no need for him to open his
eyes, he knew full well who it was. Nonetheless, he did open his
eyes; after all, he knew who it was, and he knew that looking at her
was fun. He had done far too little of that over the past hundred
years, and what little he had usually over the sight of some kind of
weapon; no fun at all.
In his stories, written centuries ago, the woman who sat on
the grassy knoll and talked with him for hours at a time went by the
name of Rachel Summers; she was a striking redhead, around 5'7", with
a mite of a temper problem.
The woman who was sitting on the grassy knoll with him here
went by the name of Kei; she too was a striking redhead, around 5'7",
with a mite of a temper problem. The similarities were annoying at
times. However, they were all circumstantial; Ray and Kei were
totally and entirely different. Night and day. Not and real. This
wasn't just a stress reliever after an evening of Battletech, pizza,
and too damn much caffeine; Kei was real, here, and very much alive.
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Oi. Isn't recursion wonderful? I need some
sleep. See you in the morning, kids.)
With a sigh of contentment, he leaned back fully and dropped
off to sleep.
Ben knew already that he was dreaming. It was the only
explanation for what was going on, and besides, he knew this dream
well, it was a frequent one. As before, he tried to force himself
awake; as always before, he failed. This little drama would play
itself out to its conclusion, as always, no matter what he did.
He was walking down the corridors of the Seventh Street
School. This was a dead giveaway; the Seventh Street School, along
with the rest of Musashi City, was dead, long dead and buried in the
scorched ash somewhere in this very desert, beneath the wreckage of
Largo's Dreadnaught. Also, the corridor was incredibly long, vaulted
and Kafkaesque...and cold, too damn cold. He shivered despite the
warmth of his CVR-7. He turned a corner and saw the door to Corridor
17; desperately willing himself to stop, he tabbed the control and
opened the door, his ElectroMax ready.
He came barreling through the door, gun smoking, CVR scorched,
brushing past himself, and dashed off down the corridor. Gryphon
turned, puzzled beyond repair, as he went past himself. Then he
turned back and stepped through the door to see Kei, standing with a
look of utter shock and disbelief on her face. At his end of the
corridor, just about at his feet, was an entire fifth-division class.
Dead.
"Should've run when you had the chance, you son of a bitch!"
Kei screamed, her voice raw.
"What?!" Gryphon replied, by now extraordinarily confused.
"BASTAAAAAAAAAAAARD!" shrieked Kei. She raised her own
weapon, tears streaming down her face, and fired. Three times in
rapid succession, neatly blasting a "therefore" symbol into his chest.
CVR-7 shattered and flesh burned; he was thrown backward into the door
frame, feeling the cold hard metal slam his CVR back piece into his
back as the smell of charred ceramic and flesh bit into his nostrils.
Pain roared across his brain; he probably screamed, although he never
felt it, because blackness had already descended on him.
He had never raised his own gun.
Ben screamed and tore himself awake. Always it came to this
point. Always. He couldn't escape the ending, it always forced
itself out to the finale. That hadn't been the end of the tale; he
had awakened an hour and a half later. Kei was gone. He was lucky;
his CVR-7 had stopped most of the energy before failing. As it was,
he was cruelly wounded, and as he was dragged to the evac shuttle, he
started bleeding severely. He survived, though, and woke again a day
later in sickbay.
And then everything went to hell.
Now, there was just the cool and dark of the hill, the warm
glow of the city below, and Kei's concerned voice asking what was
wrong. The very same woman who had shot him and left him for dead.
The universe is a funny place.
"No, I'm fine," he insisted, pulling himself up into a sitting
position and crossing his feet. "Just a dream, is all."
He leaned back again and, now fully awake, dropped into
thought. He realized something, suddenly, out of the blue, and spoke
it aloud:
"I miss Eve."
"Mm?" asked Kei, who had been lost in thoughts of her own.
"Eve. I miss Eve." Ben looked up into the night sky, found
Sol. It comforted him to think that Earth was still there.
"Now that you mention it...I've been wondering all these years
what's been missing from life on board ship...now I remember. Eve was
everywhere, anytime she was needed."
"Yep."
"I remember how proud you were when she came online... going
around grinning all over the ship for days, you were so happy...I've
only seen you happier twice in my life. Once when you saw me again in
the HoloDECstation, and once last night."
"I wonder...if I had the facilities, could I rewrite her?" He
shook his head. "Probably not...she wouldn't be the same..."
"You did a pretty decent job on me," said Kei with a grin and
a nudge.
"I was insane at the time," Ben replied. "Make of that what
you will..."
A soft footstep sounded behind them; they turned. Yuri. "Hi,
Yuri," said Ben as Kei's partner settled gracefully to the grass
beside her. "Didn't expect to see you here tonight..."
"Didn't expect to see you at all tonight," Kei corrected him,
elbowing Yuri in the ribs and grinning broadly. "What's the matter,
eh? Forget what to do? Huh?"
"Cut it out, Kei!" Yuri replied, shoving Kei slightly. "Oop,"
said Ben, "I think there's a problem here. Standard offers apply." It
was a standard statement of his, made to friends who seemed to be
having problems.
"Ditto," Kei added. "So what's the problem? You should be
bouncing off the walls! The Team Supreme is back, Yuri, what could
possibly get you down about that?"
"It's been almost a hundred years," Yuri said in a hollow
voice. "He's changed...he's a different person entirely. I want the
old Zoner back."
"What do you mean, `changed'? He seemed pretty much the same
when he came aboard," Kei replied. "Didn't he seem that way to you,
Ben?"
"Yeah, pretty much. He's bound to be a little different, I
suppose--a hundred years in isolation will change a person as much as
a hundred years on the run will. I'm different now than I was then.
We all are."
"He thought I betrayed him...have you talked to him yet?"
"No...I sent him the communique that brought him here in the
first place, but I haven't really talked to him."
"You should...he's completely different. No. I take that
back. Not completely. He's like he was when he was angsting.
Distant. Cold, almost. I could always reach him before...what's
happened to us? What's happened to all of us?" She leaned on Kei's
shoulder, sobbing.
"Don't panic, partner," Kei said. "I'm the one that's
supposed to get all emotional."
"And I'm the one who always has to pick up the bits when Zoner
fucks something up," grumbled Gryphon, getting to his feet and
striding purposefully back toward the Lovely Angel.
"Don't wait up," he called back over his shoulder. "This may
take a while." He squared his shoulders, his fists clenching
reflexively as he built up his resolve for another confrontation with
the most fragile ego he had ever encountered. After four hundred
years, Zoner was just as tiring.