saladlove | Rise in Revolution (Chapter Thirty-Five)

This chapter is all about Cataclysm. So have fun with that. ^^

Chapter list: https://tanadin.dreamwidth.org/650.html
World map: http://tanadin.deviantart.com/art/Kaldriel-RiR-map-594639189

Chapter Thirty-Five

Ripples

Kyir’s workshop, Sector SOV. March 25, 2272. Time instance 842N.

Cataclysm yawned from where he sat in his seat as Kyir sent Neves on his way, the cyborg now properly repaired and functioning. He thought he saw Kyir smiling slightly to himself as he put his tools away and shut the toolbox once Neves was gone, but he wasn’t quite sure. It was hard to be sure with Kyir’s facial expressions unless they were directed at you.

“Feeling better?” Cataclysm asked after several minutes.

“Hm?”

“About the Neves thing.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Kyir was silent for a moment before continuing. “Thanks for pointing out that he’s...not that different from us. That we’re all just...handicapped, I guess.”

Cataclysm nodded slightly and got to his feet. “You packing up for the night?”

“Yeah, I need to get some sleep. I’ve barely slept at all in the past couple of days.”

“Not that I blame you.”

Kyir didn’t respond to that, and Cataclysm sighed quietly. Kyir voluntarily getting sleep at a decent hour- it was only around 10pm- and being so quiet meant that he was still thinking about Corvus. He stepped forward and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“Nothing’s changed, Kyir.”

“It has,” Kyir growled. “It has changed. I was given hope that he could be saved and then he was taken from me again. Again, Cataclysm! How would it feel to learn that...that Feathers is alive, and then learn that you have to kill him? Or Zi?”

Cataclysm growled, baring his teeth and subconsciously sharpening his feathers as flames hissed out from between his teeth. “Zi is different. He is alive and I’d like nothing more than to rip his throat out.”

“My point about Feathers stands.”

“Srvliux is...he’s...dammit, Kyir! You know how I feel about Srvliux!” Cataclysm crossed his arms moodily. “But fine. I get your point. It’s different, and it hurts all over again.”

Kyir nodded slowly, his arms shifting to hug himself. “It hurts like it hurt when I lost both of you,” he whispered. “That was the worst day of my life.”

Cataclysm hugged his friend tightly. “You have me,” he mumbled reassuringly. “I’m not going anywhere. We’re friends until the end, and if we go down, we go down together.”

Kyir nodded and hugged the demon tightly in return. “I know.” He let out a shaky breath. “Thank you.” He stepped back.

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m going to go to sleep.” Kyir shuddered, the previous matter clearly not dismissed. “Good night, Cataclysm.”

“Good night, Kyir.” Cataclysm watched his friend leave and resisted the urge to follow and comfort him further. Kyir needed some time alone to compose himself and hopefully he’d be back to his aggressive and snappish self tomorrow.

Cataclysm unsharpened his feathers and folded his wings more tightly against his back as he turned and left the building, sighing as the wind tugged at him. It had been a night very similar to this one both times he had flown to the Lu’ann household to save a life; the first time, it had been Adria’s, and the second time, it had been his own. He spread his wings slightly to watch his feathers in the moonlight. He had made those trips on two different sets of wings, black and white, soft and rough, whole and corrupted. He folded them against his back once more and forced himself to walk down the street, hoping to clear his mind with movement if nothing else.

I miss Corvus. The thought surprised him. I miss the twins’ antics. I miss how he and Kyir balanced each other out. I miss Kyir not having this shadow over his mood, dragging him down. He kicked at some trash on the street. I miss Jase. I miss Adria. I miss Dare. All Kyir and I have left is each other. And Xela, I guess. But she wasn’t one of us. Hell, I miss Luna. How weird is that?

His thoughts drifted back in time, further, to before he even knew Kyir. I miss Srvliux. He was a pain in the ass, but he was family. Zi...fuck Zi. And fuck Sally while I’m at it. Terok’s fine though. I miss Terok. Assuming he hasn’t been corrupted by his father. Zi’s a piece of shit. When I get my claws on him-

Cataclysm’s thoughts were interrupted by the clash of steel on steel. He diverted his course to behind a building, where someone had a light set up to illuminate what appeared to be a training session. Emma held a sword and was taking swings at an unfamiliar cyborg whose number read 7007-γ, who was easily blocking everything Emma threw at her. Surrounding them were several other semi-familiar faces- Jimmy and Gali (who were holding hands), Scott, Clash, and a couple of unfamiliar cyborgs.

7007-γ was about 5’9 with darker skin and mid-length black hair. Her eyes flashed blue in the light and all of her limbs seemed to be replaced, as did her right eye. She easily blocked another attack from Emma before barking, “Again! Less ferocity and more power! There’s a difference and you’re not seeing it! You’re pouring all of your energy into predictable and unbalanced attacks! You’re leaving your defenses down and you’re vulnerable!”

She blocked another stroke and moved, bringing the blade on her other arm up to rest against Emma’s neck. “Keep your defenses up,” she repeated in a hiss.

Emma growled at her. “It’s hard when you have prediction software and I don’t! I can’t see all of the possibilities or whatever!”

“You have to learn how to!” the cyborg snapped. “The Mainframe’s cyborgs aren’t going to disable their prediction software for you!”

“It doesn’t matter how good you are,” Cataclysm interrupted. “They will defeat you if you don’t have some kind of upper hand. Magic, inhuman strength, cybernetic enhancement. I don’t see the point to this.”

“Presumably, it’s so that we can defend ourselves until someone rescues us,” Gali told him. “But Caroline’s turned it into a military drill.”

“How do you even know what that is?” Cataclysm demanded. “There hasn’t been anything like that since before you were born.”

“I’m young, not ignorant!” Gali protested.

The cyborg- Caroline- stepped forward to glare down at Cataclysm, who straightened his spine and drew himself up to his full height of about 5’4. Dammit. “And who are you to tell me that what we’re doing is pointless? They have to learn how to do something. I don’t think any of us believe, even for a second, that a regular human, no matter how good, could take out anything more than a two thousand unit without a gun, and even with one they’re not much better. But if they’re even a little bit able to defend themselves, then people like us can have time to do our job.”

“Our job,” Cataclysm repeated. “Killing as many Mainframe-controlled cyborgs as possible?”

“Exactly.” Caroline crossed her arms. “You get it. You seem capable enough, for a midget.”

Cataclysm growled and spread his wings, sharpening his feathers. “Five-foot-four is a perfectly respectable height! I’ll have you know that, where I come from, I’m considered rather tall!”

Caroline looked him over critically. “Short. And angry. You probably fight with the same fury and predictability as Emma. That has its place, and against the Mainframe isn’t it.”

“I didn’t ask you!”

“I don’t recall caring,” Caroline decided. “Emma!” She turned back to her. “Again!”

Emma growled and threw herself at the cyborg immediately, swinging her sword on a deadly arc towards Caroline’s neck.

“Typical.” The cyborg parried the blow and shoved Emma back, causing her to lose her balance and fall onto the ground.

Emma growled and started to get up, but paused when Cataclysm extended a hand to help her up. As she looked up at him, face frozen between a snarl and surprised, but grateful, look, he stiffened, eye widening as she shifted and the light glinted off of her sword just so, triggering a memory as clear as the day it had happened.

He flashed back to over forty years before, back when he was still Zyvren, back when he was young and naive and things seemed okay. Back when his only concern was what he would see in the Mirror of Ripples.

The Mirror…

He knelt in front of the Mirror, not daring to peer into its silvery surface until instructed to. Its frame glimmered with blues and whites and glimpses of green, the colors shifting when he moved and winking in and out of existence when he blinked.

Behind him, Raka’met reached forward with his gnarled wooden staff and tapped the top of the Mirror, his silver wings spreading slightly as he did so. “Look into its depths, young angel. Look, and see a glimpse of your destiny.”

Zyvren slowly raised his head and his eyes looked at the Mirror, its surface warping and humming with energy as the image on its surface changed from blank to colorful and entrancing, a moment and an image that would forever haunt Zyvren’s memory.

Before him was a dark scene of a girl- a human girl- with brown hair and eyes sitting on the ground, face torn between a snarl at someone or something he couldn’t see and a grateful and surprised look up at him. She shifted slightly and light reflected off of a sword in her right hand as she extended her left, likely to take a hand he couldn’t see that was being offered to help her up.

The Mirror’s surface rippled and returned to its blank, silver state. Zyvren rose shakily to his feet and left the temple, turning what he had seen over and over in his mind.

Cataclysm snapped out of the flashback as Emma took his hand and he automatically helped her up, looking at her with new interest. She had seemed familiar and interesting before, sure, but now that he knew…

He resisted the urge to drag her away and explain what he had seen to try to puzzle out why the Mirror of Ripples had shown her to him. She would likely not understand and he wasn’t willing to divulge his past to her just yet.

He barely mumbled an acceptable response when she thanked him and got back to training with Caroline. He left them to their sparring and automatically started walking back towards where Kyir had set up his workshop, breaking into a sprint as he went.

He needed to work this out with someone, and Kyir was all he had left.

He burst through the door into the workshop and almost kicked down the door to Kyir’s room, screaming something along the lines of “KYIR! HOLY FUCK!”

This earned him a lot of shouting and angry swearing from Kyir, some sparks of electricity that stung his skin and sent tingles through his body, and a lamp being thrown at him, before Kyir composed himself enough to put on his shades and demand what the hell was wrong with him.

“It’s her! I saw her, she was in the Mirror and it’s her and it was the image, with the sitting and looking and her face and the sword with the light and fucking Caroline I’m going to punch her in her stupid cyborg face for being mean to her and KYIR, I SAW HER IN THE MIRROR!”

Kyir stared at him uncomprehendingly once his torrent of words ceased. “Cataclysm,” he said slowly, “you just woke me up, so maybe I’m not thinking too well, but I’m pretty sure you just spat out a bunch of gibberish that didn’t mean a single fucking thing with no specific nouns. Try again, scatterbrain.”

Cataclysm took a deep breath and focused on what he wanted to say before speaking. “Do you remember how I told you about the Mirror of Ripples?”

“The angel artifact that shows you your fate or whatever? Yeah, why?”

“What I saw then, I have seen now.” He hesitated. “When I looked into the Mirror, I saw a girl. When I met Emma, I knew she seemed familiar, but now… Kyir, I saw the exact moment that the Mirror showed me.”

“Okay.” Kyir rubbed his eyes, pushing his shades up momentarily. “What does this mean?”

“It means my fate is intertwined with hers, asshole! So if she dies I’m probably fucked! And I don’t know why the Mirror showed her to me or why I’m meeting her now, in the middle of this hellscape!”

“I don’t have a fucking clue, Cata. I’m not one to ask about destiny. But would you like me to help keep an eye on her?”

“I’d appreciate that, yeah.”

“Alright. I can do that.” Kyir yawned. “It’s great that you caught up with destiny or...whatever it is that means. I’m not totally functional right now. I’m going back to sleep. Tell me again in the morning and I’ll be properly excited. And maybe have some ideas of how to help you figure shit out.” Without another word, he turned and fell back onto his bed, not even bothering to take his shades off.

Cataclysm laughed quietly before leaving the room, sitting down against the wall and pulling his wings tightly around him once he was out.

What happens now? What do I do? Raka’met said that I’d know when the time came. But I just...don’t.

He shivered slightly as a thought occurred to him, but shook it off.

He’d talk to Kyir, and probably Emma, in the morning.

For now, he just needed to get some sleep. He got to his feet and trudged towards the room that he had been sleeping in lately, hoping that nightmares wouldn’t haunt him tonight as they all too often did.