Fighting the Machine God

[Valodya Bassarov]

Flashback

His eyes light up as he lifts his head to face her.
"You work for Red Infinity and don't know who I am? I must say I am insulted. I am the one who started all this. I am Valodya Bassarov." The man replies.

[Kaieka]

(Bassarov's flashback)

"Your small actions and governments mean nothing to me. One man is the same as the next, you wake up, you live, you die, and I watch it all from a distance. I have always been, and will always be... and I work for no man. Now then, I tire of chatting, time for a little fun."

I run my nails across his chest again, this time harder, slicing through the front of his dirtied white shirt. Then, without warning, I plunge my nails inward between his ribs. His body jolts with pain. It is ecstatic. Delighted, I pull my hands clean and lick his blood off of my fingers. He tastes old, much too old for such a young face. There is something more to this one than meets the eye.

[Grove]

Grove woke slowly, finding Roane laying beside him on the soft bed of mosses inside the treehouse. He sat up slowly, removing her arm from over his chest carefully as not to wake her. Once he stood he saw her curl up slightly at his absence. She looked stunning, and very peaceful. A replica of Grove formed from the wood, but took on the color of the wood so it looked more like a carving. Having done that he left by melding into the tree itself, and traveling through the earth several miles to the site where the battle had occured just the day before. The desolate wasteland that was created from the forest when his opponenet had exploded was painful for him to even look at.
Grove closed his eyes and breathed in deep, feeling mother's power within him. He kept hearing Help me. Over and over again from the very earth he stood upon.
With a look of nobility he raised his hands to the sky, a blue glow starting to surround his palms. From the barren wasteland plants started to creep out from beneath the cracks. The trees way off in the distance gave off seeds which instantly started to grow, becomming full trees which gave off seeds of their own in less than a second. Plants wound around Grove's legs, making their way up to his hands and more. They used Grove's body like a platform as a tree-like plant grew up around him, making him part of the tree itself. The trees from the distance reached him, growing extremely fast, almost turning the area back into the thriving forest it was in leveral minutes.
Grove's body became solid as the glimmer left his eyes. Another form of Grove materalized from the soil just becide the tree that had grown up around his previous body. He would leave it there, as a reminder, and a protector for this forest. He went back into the ground, but was seeking out a different place now. He was seeking Bassarov.

[Lucky]

The waiter comes to take their drink orders. It takes only moments before he returns with their beverages.

"I know i am forcing you to do this. Its just i haven't had company or someone to talk to in ages. I thought you seemed nice enough. Hell you apologized for my own idiocy. I tripped you by accident ya know. But you were really nice about the whole thing. And since we've talked you seem intelligent. Be nice to talk with someone for a change instead of just fighting and pur....i mean fighting all of the time. My job is tiresome."

She looks down at the menu embarrassed. She seemed a bit out of place here with him. She looked like a freak and he didn't. Maybe thats why he was acting weird.

"Devin...are you uncomfortable because I look like a freak? I mean i am unusual and all. If thats it i don't blame you for wantin to go. I do look weird huh? You don't have to stay i will not force you to..."

She looks at him questioningly.

[Valodya Bassarov]

Flashback



He winces in pain.

"Why are you doing this...if you don't care?"

Bassarov isn't sure if this is how things went. Things are blury after a year. She is there, and her pain is as real and near as it was then. Imagination warpes memory.

[Cheshire]

I was at my parlor in my chambers at the Ministry of Elements. I looked through my crystal ball seeing events of the past. I gazed in my crystal ball how Kaekia was turned into a mermaid, Violet into an ornament box, a zombie party, and attacks on random people. I then stumbled on an event, I saw kaekia and Bassarov. "Hello..." I said surprisingly. I looked into the ball as I watched with glee.

[Iltanesh]

As the ceremony completes, the entire house goes dark for the merest of instances. Suddenly, a burst of light and color errupts from the shrine and enshrouds the home. A veritable rainbow of spirits dance around the house, protecting it from harm.

[Devin]

Devin just looked at her, still smiling slightly.

"... You look normal to me."

He still wished he could just walk out of here and write some more. He always got so uncomfortable around others he did not know. Let alone girls he did not know.

[Kaieka]

(Bassarov's flashback)

Kaieka laughs and approaches Bassarov once more, gliding her bloody fingers gently down his cheek.

"I do what pleases me."

There is a void in the soul of Kaieka, seeking only to live a normal mortal life, but she is past the point of ever returning to the mortal life. She has traded all of that for what she has become. Traded all that she could have felt of love and life for a chance to outlive pain, something that could never be. She couldn't outlive pain, so she would deliver it to others.

She looked into the eyes of the man before her as he hung so close to the edge of death. A bond that she could so easily break, like a twig or a flower. She could end his mortal exsistence so easilly. He was nothing more than a human. And yet, as she looked into his eyes, she saw a deepness there. Again, there was an age and a depth that she couldn't understand, and in seeing it, something inside of her cried out. It seemed as though those eyes, that soul could give her something that she desired. With all that was inside of her, her being cried out, "Love me! Love me!" That is all she wanted. Perhaps this one... perhaps this man with the deep, old eyes...

Kaieka felt weak, which was a feeling that she hated more than anything else. Her nails bit into his flesh again, she turned them to give agonizing pain, she whispered in his ear of slow and torturous death. No! He was just like any other man, they all leave, they all die, none of them fulfill... and this one too would die... very, very soon.

[Lucky]

She narrows her eyes as the waiter returned for their orders. She got a turkey sandwich and didn't know why she doesn't even like human food. She just wanted to spend time with the human. But he seemed as if he wasn't having a good time.

"ok...fine. Why don't i believe you?"

She leans back and crosses her arms.

"Tell me about yourself please. I am curious about you. Please?"

She takes a sip of her red cola.

[Valodya Bassarov]

"But I am different, I wouldn't leave you, I would do anything for you to return. I would give up Mischa or Zero in an instant. I wronged you. I wronged you..." He says to her. Not following the script of how things actually happened.

"Look, I am flawed. Horribly flawed, but I love you and always will, and like a poison I can not extract you will always be a part of me....."

He closes his eyes and leans against the cold wall of his cell. He touches the warm blood that is coming from the wounds in his side.

"Why did you have to die? Why did you die Kaieka? I would kill myself to be with you again you know, but I have too much left undone."

[Void]

He is awake. I can feel it. He may be moving soon.

I move silently across the rooftops.

"The machine Zwei has begun to get out of hand. Perhaps I should intervene..."

[Devin]

Wants to know about me? Right... No one would ever care enough about me to want to know about me. That is the way it always has been, and always will be. I have already accepted that fate.

Devin just decided to respond in a vauge manner.

"I am a human, and a pathetic one at that."

He takes a sip of his water.

[Kaieka]

Kaieka leans in close, her hands on either side of his head on the wall, her face directly in front of his.

"But you didn't give them up for me. All I wanted was love... your love... but I couldn't have it. That is what killed me... not having your love. There was no life without it."

A guard comes to the door and asks if Kaieka has killed the prisoner yet. Kaieka latches onto his neck and drinks her fill of his blood, throwing his dripping corpse to the ground and a set of keys at Bassarov.

"This is how it goes. This is my exit."

She walks out the door and dissipates into mist, leaving Bassarov hanging on the wall.

[Valodya Bassarov]

He is unshackled before she even throws him the keys. One of those strange things about the haze of painful memory.

He falls to his knees and examines the keys. What use are they? He would rather be locked away forever. It would be so much easier. He made his choices and has to live with their outcomes

He will never truly be free because of it. He throws the keys out the window in a rage. The clank when they fall against the cobble stone below his window.

"Ya budu Bcegda lyubit tebya"

He opens his eyes and sees that he is no longer with Kaieka.

He is staring at the machine instead.