This is the product of me watching the end of Texhnolyze at some obscene hour of the night and then deciding to pump out a story full of that dark-angsty-sappy crap that I seem to love to write. This was written in two sittings, both at around two or three in the morning and is pure unadulturated self indulgence. Enjoy and don't come bitching to me if it's crap. Also if you could tell me why it's crap and how to make it better that would be greatly appreciated, I wouldn't mind a few suggestions for possible titles either. And remember this has not been preread or even edited in any way so expect some errors. Total word count: 2,913.
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I was awake.
More to the point, I was alive. I�d thought I was dead, I knew I was dead, so why am I still here? Everyone�s dead, Ran�s dead, I no longer have any purpose left to being alive, at first my purpose was simply to live, and to hate, and to kill. Then after I met her it was to protect her, but I�ve failed she�s dead, so what purpose do I have to remain here any longer. Am I still bound to the prophecy that you made Ran? I�ve already destroyed everything just like you said I would, do I now have to live by myself forever just like you said as well? No, I refuse to believe that everything I�ve done has just been part of some predestined plan! I refuse to resign myself to that fate! Ran I know you didn�t want me to suffer that fate and I know you didn�t make that prophecy of your will, I know you hated being the oracle, so for you I�ll make sure that, at least one part of it, doesn�t come true. I know that there�s still one person I can go to, even if I know she doesn�t really care for me, I�ll go to her, for your sake, so that your final prophecy will not be fulfilled.
There is no longer anyone alive in Lux besides me; this is truly the end of the human race. Lux was the last bastion of true humans, no matter how twisted their humanity was. The people on the surface can barely even count as people, no they are just ghosts of the past who refuse to let go, but I know that she�ll still be there when I get there, right where I left her, after all where would she go, there�s nowhere to go, so it would be pointless, and Doc�s not one to do anything without purpose.
I walked back through the empty streets, there was no one left, just the dead Shapes who stood silent vigil to this city of death. They stood crooked throughout the streets, their feet had taken root in the ground as if they were some sort of strange mechanical trees that grew straight through the pavement, a silent reminder of man�s final failed bid for evolution. I chuckled slightly at the thought of how pleased Doc would be that her �children� had truly been the most advanced texhnolyzed limbs ever. The fact that they were even functioning right now was testament to that, though I suppose that is, in part, my doing as well, although how I�ll most likely never know. I suppose that Ran had been dead, or as good as dead anyway, already by the time I came back from the surface, because though I�m not exactly sure how or why you could probably match up when the obelisk had failed to the exact moment she was put into that...�state�. What they did to her, it makes me tremble with rage just thinking about, I feel so powerless now. I have so much anger but nothing I can do with it, it�ll do me no good now. There�s nothing I can do for her, I was too late, too late to save her, too late to stop the Shapes, too late to save Onishi, too late to do anything! Ran, I think I love you, did you know that? You�re the first person I�ve loved since my mother died. How could you leave me like this Ran? Please don�t leave me, don�t leave me alone, don�t leave me all by myself in this dead city, in this dead world.
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I�ve been walking for so long. I�ve left the city and I�m slowly ascending the air shaft to the surface once again. The train was destroyed so I�m going the long way. As I get closer I feel as if I�m rising from the bowels of the earth, from the pit of Hell itself, to Heaven, but I know that Heaven is not what awaits me at the top of this stairway, no the place I�m going is as alike to Hades as the Hell that I�m leaving behind. I�m not quite sure what I intend to do when I find Doc again, but I know that I will do anything to stop Ran�s final prophecy from coming to fulfillment. I may have destroyed everything but I refuse to be alone. I will not lie down and let destiny sweep me about as it will. I make my own destiny!
Heh, I chuckle to myself as I realize that�s just about the only thing driving me now, the need to feel as if, in whatever small way, I�m doing something, anything, for Ran, the one who did and gave so much for me never once asking for anything in return. She did not like her position as the Oracle and thus hated all that it entailed, I feel that if I can stop this one thing then I can, just maybe, pay back just a little to her for everything she did. Pretty warped logic but it�s the only thing I have to hold onto now, the only thing keeping me going, the only thing keeping me sane. I wonder sometimes if I�m already insane or not, would I even notice? Somehow I don�t think I�ve been completely sane for a long time now.
I think about Doc, I know she never really cared for me. Even if she did let me have her while we were in her lab I know that I was nothing more than an experiment to her, but still I find myself drawn back to her. Doc is all I have left, the only person left in this world that I know. Now all that�s left for us to do is huddle together for protection and human contact and just wait for the end to come. I can�t wait for that day, the day I�ll be reunited with Ran, I don�t know if she went to Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, or if those don�t even exist and she�s just been cast into oblivion, but I do know that no matter where she is I will follow her, just like she followed me.
I�ve gone as far as I can go on the staircase, the rest of it�s destroyed, so I�ll have to shimmy my way back up the cable that I was lowered down on. I wondered why it was still hanging there and realized that he must have known that I would probably need it to get out again afterwards, damn bastard knew, he knew that I�d be back after there was nothing left for me down there.
I reach the top of the shaft and climb onto the crane that was holding the cable over the shaft and then carefully crawl across it back to solid ground, wouldn�t want to fall now, it�s a long way down. As tempting as the thought is at the moment I know that that isn�t what Ran would have wanted and I know, somehow in the back of mind, that wherever Ran is I would never be able to reach her if I killed myself, so I slowly work my way across the crane and then back onto solid ground, it feels good to feel the earth beneath my feet again after just hanging for so long. I chuckle slightly as I realize that a hanged man might think the same thing. The surface looks the same as when I left, the perfect blue sky and vibrant green grass with the single path leading off into the distance with street lamps exactly interspaced dotting the edges along the sides of it. It�s times like this when I wish I still had my motorcycle as I know from experience it�s a very long walk to the �main� city, if you could call it that. More of a ghost town really, especially when even its own residents admit to being ghosts. I still shudder when I think of the strange little girl holding the crystal ball from which that man�s voice was projected.
As I�m walking I wonder what I expect to find once I reach Doc, is there even a point to attempting to restart the human race after all this? I get the feeling that, if she really wanted to, Doc could probably find a way to do it, even if we were the only two humans left alive. It�s too bad that even Doc, for all her genius and intelligence, still can�t find a way to bring people back from the dead, I suppose it�s just one of those immutable facts of life. From the moment we are born it is written in stone that we will die, a prophecy you could say. Everything seems to come back to prophecies, to Ran. I know that I can�t help Ran now, and I know that I can�t help anyone else either even myself, hurting people is the only thing that I�ve ever been good at. So I suppose that this is just my one last rebellion against the authority figures of my life, although this time instead of promoters or mob bosses they are the very Fates themselves. I can almost bring myself to laugh at the irony of it all, my entire life I�ve just been rebelling at one higher power or another, vainly trying to escape from the life that I had been born into, and when I finally find someone that I feel I can love, they are taken away from me and the only thing they leave behind is the final nail in the coffin that I�ve been trying to escape from my entire life.
I can see the city dawning over the horizon now, I can�t really tell how long I�ve been walking or even what time it is as I don�t seem to feel pain or fatigue anymore and here on the surface the sun never sets and thus it is never dark, making it hard to tell what time it is or even whether it�s one day or the next. The town is even more deserted then when I left it, even the ghosts seem to have finally moved on and decided to give up the painful mockery of life that they were in as there was no longer any real humans to imitate so what was the point? It seems that everyone has found release except for me, I wonder if Doc�s even going to be there or if she too has moved on from this hollow world by her own hand, but I doubt that Doc could ever bring herself to commit suicide, everything she�s done in her lifetime has been to escape death and thus I cant see her willingly throwing herself into its cold yet cathartic embrace. And I know Doc knows this as well, which is why I�m sure she�ll be right where I left her.
In the main building where we were interrogated by the little girl with the crystal ball and where we later left Doc I come to the main lobby area and I know that I need only ascend the stairs to reach Doc and the end of this little fool�s crusade that I�ve led myself on but there�s just one thing that I want to check first. I guess I was right was all I could think as I entered the room where we were interrogated to see the crystal ball that the child had held laying on the floor as if someone had dropped it, I suppose that the girl moved on with all the rest of the ghosts. Feeling a surge of anger and deciding to indulge my rage one last time I picked the ball up with my texhnolyzed arm and slowly crushed it between the metal fingers until it cracked and shattered, falling to the ground in millions of crystal splinters. All I could think was that that act seemed to sum up my life perfectly, holding something perfect and beautiful within my hands and then destroying it for self satisfaction.
With that one last act of destruction finished I decided to put an end to my self-imposed quest to the surface to find the only other human still alive in this world. I could tell Doc was still there when I came to the room that she was in when we had left because her sobs could be heard throughout the building and I wondered why I hadn�t noticed them before. I pushed open the door to her room and there she was, just like I knew she�d be, she was laying in the bed sobbing. I could almost bring myself to smile as I thought of the normally cold and untouchable Doc now finally forced to admit to her own mortality and what the old Doc would think if she could see herself now, crying her eyes out with her hair in complete disarray and her normally perfect alabaster skin red and blotchy from the crying that it seemed she had been doing for quite some time now as she apparently no longer had any tears left to cry because she was just dry sobbing now without any more liquid for her tear glands to excrete. When she heard the door open her head shot up and upon seeing me her eyes widened and we just stared at each other in silence for moments that stretched into infinity.
�They�re dead, every last one of them. I killed them, just like Ran said I would.� I decided to take the initiative to break the silence as it seemed she wasn�t going to be speaking of her own will for awhile yet. This seemed to galvanize her back into action and after taking a moment to collect herself she responded.
�All the �people� here just disappeared a few days ago so I had feeling that something must have happened back in Lux. At least, I�m pretty sure it was a few days ago, it�s hard to tell when there�s never any night to separate the days.� Her tone was shaky at best but she did an admirable job of recapturing some of the tone that defined her old voice. It was sad that even after all this she was still trying to hold up that front. �Why have you come back Ichise, what�s the point now?� I felt bad for her, she was looking at me with such hope in her eyes, begging me to tell her that there was still a reason to continue living, begging me not to leave her all alone again in this empty place. I didn�t have anywhere else to go so I doubted that I would ever have to leave her ever again, it renewed my will to continue living as I knew that I�d at least be able to make one person happy.
�We�re the last people left alive Doc, that is the point, there�s no one left, just you and me now. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life alone here?� I knew she didn�t and as I would never tell her about the prophecy nor why I really sought her out this was the best answer I could give. I went to the bed and sat down on it next to her as I said this.
�No, no, please, I don�t care if we�re all that�s left, just don�t leave me alone, I don�t want to be alone anymore.� As soon as I had sat down she threw herself onto me and abandoned the last of her composure as she broke back down into sobs and continued to murmur muted pleas for me not to leave her alone into my shirt. I wrapped my arms around her and rocked her back and forth whispering assurances into her ear that she would never have to alone again. This was all that I could do now, she was the last thing I had left and I would be damned if I was going to let her be destroyed just like I�d destroyed everything else in my life. It was because of me that everything had ended up this way and so now it was my duty to take care of the last remaining member of the species that I had been prophesized to be the last of. I knew that she was only a weak substitute for Ran but she was all I had left and even if I could never love her I could still make sure that she could be somewhat happy in this world that I had damned her to remain in. I suppose that was how I justified what I was doing.
�Don�t worry Doc, I won�t ever leave you, you don�t have to be alone ever again. I�ll protect you Doc, I swear it.� �Because I couldn�t protect her� I silently added in my mind, I wouldn�t fail her like I had failed Ran. Laying her back down on the bed I slowly began to kiss her as her hands roamed my body, eager at the chance to forget, if for only awhile. I won�t ever let your prophecy come to completion Ran, this is all for you. I live only for you Ran.
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I was awake.
More to the point, I was alive. I�d thought I was dead, I knew I was dead, so why am I still here? Everyone�s dead, Ran�s dead, I no longer have any purpose left to being alive, at first my purpose was simply to live, and to hate, and to kill. Then after I met her it was to protect her, but I�ve failed she�s dead, so what purpose do I have to remain here any longer. Am I still bound to the prophecy that you made Ran? I�ve already destroyed everything just like you said I would, do I now have to live by myself forever just like you said as well? No, I refuse to believe that everything I�ve done has just been part of some predestined plan! I refuse to resign myself to that fate! Ran I know you didn�t want me to suffer that fate and I know you didn�t make that prophecy of your will, I know you hated being the oracle, so for you I�ll make sure that, at least one part of it, doesn�t come true. I know that there�s still one person I can go to, even if I know she doesn�t really care for me, I�ll go to her, for your sake, so that your final prophecy will not be fulfilled.
There is no longer anyone alive in Lux besides me; this is truly the end of the human race. Lux was the last bastion of true humans, no matter how twisted their humanity was. The people on the surface can barely even count as people, no they are just ghosts of the past who refuse to let go, but I know that she�ll still be there when I get there, right where I left her, after all where would she go, there�s nowhere to go, so it would be pointless, and Doc�s not one to do anything without purpose.
I walked back through the empty streets, there was no one left, just the dead Shapes who stood silent vigil to this city of death. They stood crooked throughout the streets, their feet had taken root in the ground as if they were some sort of strange mechanical trees that grew straight through the pavement, a silent reminder of man�s final failed bid for evolution. I chuckled slightly at the thought of how pleased Doc would be that her �children� had truly been the most advanced texhnolyzed limbs ever. The fact that they were even functioning right now was testament to that, though I suppose that is, in part, my doing as well, although how I�ll most likely never know. I suppose that Ran had been dead, or as good as dead anyway, already by the time I came back from the surface, because though I�m not exactly sure how or why you could probably match up when the obelisk had failed to the exact moment she was put into that...�state�. What they did to her, it makes me tremble with rage just thinking about, I feel so powerless now. I have so much anger but nothing I can do with it, it�ll do me no good now. There�s nothing I can do for her, I was too late, too late to save her, too late to stop the Shapes, too late to save Onishi, too late to do anything! Ran, I think I love you, did you know that? You�re the first person I�ve loved since my mother died. How could you leave me like this Ran? Please don�t leave me, don�t leave me alone, don�t leave me all by myself in this dead city, in this dead world.
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I�ve been walking for so long. I�ve left the city and I�m slowly ascending the air shaft to the surface once again. The train was destroyed so I�m going the long way. As I get closer I feel as if I�m rising from the bowels of the earth, from the pit of Hell itself, to Heaven, but I know that Heaven is not what awaits me at the top of this stairway, no the place I�m going is as alike to Hades as the Hell that I�m leaving behind. I�m not quite sure what I intend to do when I find Doc again, but I know that I will do anything to stop Ran�s final prophecy from coming to fulfillment. I may have destroyed everything but I refuse to be alone. I will not lie down and let destiny sweep me about as it will. I make my own destiny!
Heh, I chuckle to myself as I realize that�s just about the only thing driving me now, the need to feel as if, in whatever small way, I�m doing something, anything, for Ran, the one who did and gave so much for me never once asking for anything in return. She did not like her position as the Oracle and thus hated all that it entailed, I feel that if I can stop this one thing then I can, just maybe, pay back just a little to her for everything she did. Pretty warped logic but it�s the only thing I have to hold onto now, the only thing keeping me going, the only thing keeping me sane. I wonder sometimes if I�m already insane or not, would I even notice? Somehow I don�t think I�ve been completely sane for a long time now.
I think about Doc, I know she never really cared for me. Even if she did let me have her while we were in her lab I know that I was nothing more than an experiment to her, but still I find myself drawn back to her. Doc is all I have left, the only person left in this world that I know. Now all that�s left for us to do is huddle together for protection and human contact and just wait for the end to come. I can�t wait for that day, the day I�ll be reunited with Ran, I don�t know if she went to Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, or if those don�t even exist and she�s just been cast into oblivion, but I do know that no matter where she is I will follow her, just like she followed me.
I�ve gone as far as I can go on the staircase, the rest of it�s destroyed, so I�ll have to shimmy my way back up the cable that I was lowered down on. I wondered why it was still hanging there and realized that he must have known that I would probably need it to get out again afterwards, damn bastard knew, he knew that I�d be back after there was nothing left for me down there.
I reach the top of the shaft and climb onto the crane that was holding the cable over the shaft and then carefully crawl across it back to solid ground, wouldn�t want to fall now, it�s a long way down. As tempting as the thought is at the moment I know that that isn�t what Ran would have wanted and I know, somehow in the back of mind, that wherever Ran is I would never be able to reach her if I killed myself, so I slowly work my way across the crane and then back onto solid ground, it feels good to feel the earth beneath my feet again after just hanging for so long. I chuckle slightly as I realize that a hanged man might think the same thing. The surface looks the same as when I left, the perfect blue sky and vibrant green grass with the single path leading off into the distance with street lamps exactly interspaced dotting the edges along the sides of it. It�s times like this when I wish I still had my motorcycle as I know from experience it�s a very long walk to the �main� city, if you could call it that. More of a ghost town really, especially when even its own residents admit to being ghosts. I still shudder when I think of the strange little girl holding the crystal ball from which that man�s voice was projected.
As I�m walking I wonder what I expect to find once I reach Doc, is there even a point to attempting to restart the human race after all this? I get the feeling that, if she really wanted to, Doc could probably find a way to do it, even if we were the only two humans left alive. It�s too bad that even Doc, for all her genius and intelligence, still can�t find a way to bring people back from the dead, I suppose it�s just one of those immutable facts of life. From the moment we are born it is written in stone that we will die, a prophecy you could say. Everything seems to come back to prophecies, to Ran. I know that I can�t help Ran now, and I know that I can�t help anyone else either even myself, hurting people is the only thing that I�ve ever been good at. So I suppose that this is just my one last rebellion against the authority figures of my life, although this time instead of promoters or mob bosses they are the very Fates themselves. I can almost bring myself to laugh at the irony of it all, my entire life I�ve just been rebelling at one higher power or another, vainly trying to escape from the life that I had been born into, and when I finally find someone that I feel I can love, they are taken away from me and the only thing they leave behind is the final nail in the coffin that I�ve been trying to escape from my entire life.
I can see the city dawning over the horizon now, I can�t really tell how long I�ve been walking or even what time it is as I don�t seem to feel pain or fatigue anymore and here on the surface the sun never sets and thus it is never dark, making it hard to tell what time it is or even whether it�s one day or the next. The town is even more deserted then when I left it, even the ghosts seem to have finally moved on and decided to give up the painful mockery of life that they were in as there was no longer any real humans to imitate so what was the point? It seems that everyone has found release except for me, I wonder if Doc�s even going to be there or if she too has moved on from this hollow world by her own hand, but I doubt that Doc could ever bring herself to commit suicide, everything she�s done in her lifetime has been to escape death and thus I cant see her willingly throwing herself into its cold yet cathartic embrace. And I know Doc knows this as well, which is why I�m sure she�ll be right where I left her.
In the main building where we were interrogated by the little girl with the crystal ball and where we later left Doc I come to the main lobby area and I know that I need only ascend the stairs to reach Doc and the end of this little fool�s crusade that I�ve led myself on but there�s just one thing that I want to check first. I guess I was right was all I could think as I entered the room where we were interrogated to see the crystal ball that the child had held laying on the floor as if someone had dropped it, I suppose that the girl moved on with all the rest of the ghosts. Feeling a surge of anger and deciding to indulge my rage one last time I picked the ball up with my texhnolyzed arm and slowly crushed it between the metal fingers until it cracked and shattered, falling to the ground in millions of crystal splinters. All I could think was that that act seemed to sum up my life perfectly, holding something perfect and beautiful within my hands and then destroying it for self satisfaction.
With that one last act of destruction finished I decided to put an end to my self-imposed quest to the surface to find the only other human still alive in this world. I could tell Doc was still there when I came to the room that she was in when we had left because her sobs could be heard throughout the building and I wondered why I hadn�t noticed them before. I pushed open the door to her room and there she was, just like I knew she�d be, she was laying in the bed sobbing. I could almost bring myself to smile as I thought of the normally cold and untouchable Doc now finally forced to admit to her own mortality and what the old Doc would think if she could see herself now, crying her eyes out with her hair in complete disarray and her normally perfect alabaster skin red and blotchy from the crying that it seemed she had been doing for quite some time now as she apparently no longer had any tears left to cry because she was just dry sobbing now without any more liquid for her tear glands to excrete. When she heard the door open her head shot up and upon seeing me her eyes widened and we just stared at each other in silence for moments that stretched into infinity.
�They�re dead, every last one of them. I killed them, just like Ran said I would.� I decided to take the initiative to break the silence as it seemed she wasn�t going to be speaking of her own will for awhile yet. This seemed to galvanize her back into action and after taking a moment to collect herself she responded.
�All the �people� here just disappeared a few days ago so I had feeling that something must have happened back in Lux. At least, I�m pretty sure it was a few days ago, it�s hard to tell when there�s never any night to separate the days.� Her tone was shaky at best but she did an admirable job of recapturing some of the tone that defined her old voice. It was sad that even after all this she was still trying to hold up that front. �Why have you come back Ichise, what�s the point now?� I felt bad for her, she was looking at me with such hope in her eyes, begging me to tell her that there was still a reason to continue living, begging me not to leave her all alone again in this empty place. I didn�t have anywhere else to go so I doubted that I would ever have to leave her ever again, it renewed my will to continue living as I knew that I�d at least be able to make one person happy.
�We�re the last people left alive Doc, that is the point, there�s no one left, just you and me now. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life alone here?� I knew she didn�t and as I would never tell her about the prophecy nor why I really sought her out this was the best answer I could give. I went to the bed and sat down on it next to her as I said this.
�No, no, please, I don�t care if we�re all that�s left, just don�t leave me alone, I don�t want to be alone anymore.� As soon as I had sat down she threw herself onto me and abandoned the last of her composure as she broke back down into sobs and continued to murmur muted pleas for me not to leave her alone into my shirt. I wrapped my arms around her and rocked her back and forth whispering assurances into her ear that she would never have to alone again. This was all that I could do now, she was the last thing I had left and I would be damned if I was going to let her be destroyed just like I�d destroyed everything else in my life. It was because of me that everything had ended up this way and so now it was my duty to take care of the last remaining member of the species that I had been prophesized to be the last of. I knew that she was only a weak substitute for Ran but she was all I had left and even if I could never love her I could still make sure that she could be somewhat happy in this world that I had damned her to remain in. I suppose that was how I justified what I was doing.
�Don�t worry Doc, I won�t ever leave you, you don�t have to be alone ever again. I�ll protect you Doc, I swear it.� �Because I couldn�t protect her� I silently added in my mind, I wouldn�t fail her like I had failed Ran. Laying her back down on the bed I slowly began to kiss her as her hands roamed my body, eager at the chance to forget, if for only awhile. I won�t ever let your prophecy come to completion Ran, this is all for you. I live only for you Ran.