Dream | 06 [canon update]
[The following dream is filtered from ALL the Embryon...wait what? 0_o ...yes, tis true. All the Embryon. Sorry, guys. D: It also contains heavy spoilers for...pretty much all of DDS 2. :| ]
Gale wakes up in an empty street. It is dark, dreary...underground. He stands up slowly, looking around. He is alone...the Embryon are not here. He wanders in the dark, emerging where several streetlights are brightly lit, in a street that may be familiar as any number of streets in a modern city in the real, modern Earth. Except for the soldiers dressed in white that swarm him, trying to apprehend him. He calmly begins to address them--but then something changes, and he's like he was when the Embryon attacked Vamp--bloodthirsty, unthinking...leaping at them in a frenzy of teeth and Vayu's one powerful leg.
A jumble of images...there's a man with a brown coat and glasses, and a boy...telling him so much about the Junkyard, and the Embryon...they are A.I.s, they are not real. Nothing but computer programs. That makes Argilla upset and Serph uncertain. But Gale knows differently. He has seen differently. He feels anger. The people of the Junkyard were not mere constructs.
Another rush of information, an olive leaf silhouetted against a blazing yellow sky, a glimpse of Heat as he throws Gale into a glass window, and there she is, Angel, helping them. She's granting them passage to Sera. Their fingers touch, their hands meet...and the look on her face is one of sadness and longing before it is back to rigid indifference. Sadness and longing, he understands. He felt them too, the same time she did.
More and more, piling up... blood on Serph's jacket, Heat standing in front of him, Agni's powerful right arm in place of his own, the claws sticking out of Serph's back... God's anger at this injustice, and the beginning of the deconstruction of the entire Earth... Argilla and the man with glasses, Roland, no longer among them... and a great beast. A beast with so many mouths and teeth, and an enormous swollen abdomen. Vritra. Serph is reborn from that beast by slicing its way out, his injuries healed...and the beast disappears. It's only Heat. Heat, who is bleeding out so violently, if only Argilla were here, she could heal him. And he leaves, waits for Serph...after a while they follow after, and Serph comes out trying to keep his face so strong as he carries Heat's body out of the darkened, twisted corridors of the laboratory...
So much despair. Pain like he never thought he'd ever feel, like someone has put a serrated knife into his own abdomen and twisted it. He fought against the beast that was Heat, and he feels the betrayal and guilt and sadness...so much more sadness than when Lupa died...
And then Gale hears the story. The story of two princes, once told in the Junkyard. Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Sera, who had very special powers of the mind....powers that allowed her to communicate with God Himself. There were two doctors tasked with taking care of her: two princes. One put on a facade of pleasantness and used the girl's fondness for him for his own twisted ends...and used the love that a lovely young nurse named Argilla as a failsafe. The other doctor, seeing through this man's facade, grew and more and more angry with his coworker's maltreatment of Sera--even acting out in front of Sera, who saw him as nothing but a bully and an evil prince. So one day when the truly good prince had had enough, and pulled a gun on the truly evil prince, he was gunned down by the seemngly kind nurse. While Sera watched through an accidentally opened video channel, enciting God's anger for the first time. A black sun and the beginnings of the Atma virus unleashed.
The truly good prince? Heat O'Brien, whose A.I. self already existed in a virtual paradise that Sera had built. A paradise of sand and sun and clear blue oceans, along with Serph Sheffield's kind and gentle persona given life, and Argilla and Cielo as well.
But that is not Gale's destiny. He is connected, but he is not a part of Sera's life. At one point, he might have been, if things had been a bit different. The man who is a part of him died years before Sera was born. That is why, when his Leader and Sera are convinced they must proceed to the site of a device that can send their data to the sun, to calm God's anger before sunrise, he is more than willing to give his life. This is their combined destiny, not his. He has played his part, and played it well, and he can live with that.
How he would have liked to have more time to spend with his Leader and his comrades...
There is one last thing he must do, however. One last embrace...
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*Gale awakens carefully, looking at all the Embryon sleeping beside him. At Heat, and Argilla, and Cielo...and Serph and Sera, too. He doesn't seem disturbed by this dream at all. Quite the opposite. But the hurt in his face is apparent as he gets up, taking his Dreamberry with him. He walks a good distance out of their room, sitting outside the base itself before he looks to the Dreamberry.*
To all of you who are watching this...I ask that you do not share this dream of mine with the others. Under any circumstances.
Gale wakes up in an empty street. It is dark, dreary...underground. He stands up slowly, looking around. He is alone...the Embryon are not here. He wanders in the dark, emerging where several streetlights are brightly lit, in a street that may be familiar as any number of streets in a modern city in the real, modern Earth. Except for the soldiers dressed in white that swarm him, trying to apprehend him. He calmly begins to address them--but then something changes, and he's like he was when the Embryon attacked Vamp--bloodthirsty, unthinking...leaping at them in a frenzy of teeth and Vayu's one powerful leg.
A jumble of images...there's a man with a brown coat and glasses, and a boy...telling him so much about the Junkyard, and the Embryon...they are A.I.s, they are not real. Nothing but computer programs. That makes Argilla upset and Serph uncertain. But Gale knows differently. He has seen differently. He feels anger. The people of the Junkyard were not mere constructs.
Another rush of information, an olive leaf silhouetted against a blazing yellow sky, a glimpse of Heat as he throws Gale into a glass window, and there she is, Angel, helping them. She's granting them passage to Sera. Their fingers touch, their hands meet...and the look on her face is one of sadness and longing before it is back to rigid indifference. Sadness and longing, he understands. He felt them too, the same time she did.
More and more, piling up... blood on Serph's jacket, Heat standing in front of him, Agni's powerful right arm in place of his own, the claws sticking out of Serph's back... God's anger at this injustice, and the beginning of the deconstruction of the entire Earth... Argilla and the man with glasses, Roland, no longer among them... and a great beast. A beast with so many mouths and teeth, and an enormous swollen abdomen. Vritra. Serph is reborn from that beast by slicing its way out, his injuries healed...and the beast disappears. It's only Heat. Heat, who is bleeding out so violently, if only Argilla were here, she could heal him. And he leaves, waits for Serph...after a while they follow after, and Serph comes out trying to keep his face so strong as he carries Heat's body out of the darkened, twisted corridors of the laboratory...
So much despair. Pain like he never thought he'd ever feel, like someone has put a serrated knife into his own abdomen and twisted it. He fought against the beast that was Heat, and he feels the betrayal and guilt and sadness...so much more sadness than when Lupa died...
And then Gale hears the story. The story of two princes, once told in the Junkyard. Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Sera, who had very special powers of the mind....powers that allowed her to communicate with God Himself. There were two doctors tasked with taking care of her: two princes. One put on a facade of pleasantness and used the girl's fondness for him for his own twisted ends...and used the love that a lovely young nurse named Argilla as a failsafe. The other doctor, seeing through this man's facade, grew and more and more angry with his coworker's maltreatment of Sera--even acting out in front of Sera, who saw him as nothing but a bully and an evil prince. So one day when the truly good prince had had enough, and pulled a gun on the truly evil prince, he was gunned down by the seemngly kind nurse. While Sera watched through an accidentally opened video channel, enciting God's anger for the first time. A black sun and the beginnings of the Atma virus unleashed.
The truly good prince? Heat O'Brien, whose A.I. self already existed in a virtual paradise that Sera had built. A paradise of sand and sun and clear blue oceans, along with Serph Sheffield's kind and gentle persona given life, and Argilla and Cielo as well.
But that is not Gale's destiny. He is connected, but he is not a part of Sera's life. At one point, he might have been, if things had been a bit different. The man who is a part of him died years before Sera was born. That is why, when his Leader and Sera are convinced they must proceed to the site of a device that can send their data to the sun, to calm God's anger before sunrise, he is more than willing to give his life. This is their combined destiny, not his. He has played his part, and played it well, and he can live with that.
How he would have liked to have more time to spend with his Leader and his comrades...
There is one last thing he must do, however. One last embrace...
Click to view-----------------
*Gale awakens carefully, looking at all the Embryon sleeping beside him. At Heat, and Argilla, and Cielo...and Serph and Sera, too. He doesn't seem disturbed by this dream at all. Quite the opposite. But the hurt in his face is apparent as he gets up, taking his Dreamberry with him. He walks a good distance out of their room, sitting outside the base itself before he looks to the Dreamberry.*
To all of you who are watching this...I ask that you do not share this dream of mine with the others. Under any circumstances.