Homeworld Visit: 5th December 2020
"Go!"
Go where?
"Keep going!"
Yes, but where?
Under assault from the tsunami of noise, he had scarcely placed his toes against the soil before he was on his knees. Eyes wide, ears ringing, head in absolute agony as whispers, roars and a stream of emotions tore through him. Something was wrong and he didn't know what, yet even as he knelt upon the ground, body quaking, someone seemed to be urging him on. He didn't know them, he couldn't even see them, yet in his head he heard a voice that should have been familiar to him. It was almost as if he was hear and yet he wasn't, and he forced himself forward. Stumbling towards whatever lay beyond the jungle's edge because whatever lay there, whatever caused such alarm, was waiting for him there.
Seconds turned in to minutes, minutes into what seemed like hours; and then finally he burst forth through the edge of the jungle to see the ruptured and rotting plain below. They were under attack and as he cast his eyes to the sky he saw no enemies, merely 'weapons' that fell from the sky and towards those who lay below. Bodies fell to the floor, blackened and smoking, and not for the first time he felt the panic crush and tear into his chest.
He was scared.
Yet in the distance he saw that man again and even from here he heard the orders ripple through his mind. An unwavering strength and courage, a calm that gripped at his frozen form, and finally began to thaw it. He was a youngling yes, but he had been trained for this, he knew everything that they did. He was Hive and all he had to do was join the chorus... In doing so he would understanding, in finding the song he would know peace and with it he would be calm.
As a single entity he might well be nothing.
As one voice, they were everything.
A gulp, a deep and haggered breath, and then he sought the soft and lingering song that rippled softly. At the heart of the chaos their lay a gentle lullaby, and with it, the methodical and strategic whispers of those of greater experience and wisdom than he.
"Hold the line." It sang. "Let none fall..."
At the back of the line he stood, poised in armour that would see no use from here, and in those moments he understood - in those moments he knew. He thrust his arm towards those he could scarcely see, those who stood far in the distance to hold a line that he couldn't from here, and to them he sent a gift. The armour once coiled around him fell away and those treasured insects soared across the battlefield to shield that which needed it more.
He would hold the line.
In any way he could.
--
It was with a yell of alarm that he woke, sitting upwards abruptly with ragged breaths. Several moments were spent waiting for his 'vision' to clear so that he might find himself in the midst of an open and devastated plain, and yet he still remained in darkness even then. His hands lifted to rest against his forehead and he sniffed. Pain, at this point in time, was an under statement - his head pulsed and practically radiated, yet as reality began to settle in he came to recognise where he lay.
He was safe, squirrelled away somewhere in the warrens and not on the plain he had thought he was on.
"A vision...?" he murmured softly.
They had never been that intense before, the flashbacks hadn't ever felt quite so real, and yet that was all it had been. He was somewhere in the Hive, somewhere new, but he was most definitely out of harm's way. Rather, as his eyes adjusted to what lay around him, all he could gather was that he was in a rather large cavernous area with several enormous 'gates' that he had seen once before. He couldn't begin to understand what this was for yet, but perhaps where he was and where he had been were connected.
Still, he had no recollection of walking in here to begin with.
He groaned softly, rising to his feet in a staggered fashion. A hand still pressed gently to his forehead, it took him a minute or so to realise that the now familiar shimmer was missing. That bizarre 'armour' he had inherited a month ago had gone and he had been left looking very much like he always had. Had he misinterpreted, had he done something wrong, or was he simply not meant to have such a thing permanently and this had been a lesson?
He was embarassed to admit that he was a touch disappointed by it.
Perhaps a lesson that not everything lasted forever, though it as safe to say he may have already known that one, the very concept was something all humans were acutely aware of.
Eventually his hand lowered to his side and it was with a small sigh that he turned to look towards one of the gates once more when something caught his eye. The familiar shimmer that had once been on him appeared to be 'stuck' to something else. His eyebrow lifted far higher than one would deem normal and before he could think it through he was already moving towards the 'lump' in the distance that had his 'glow'. Much to his surprise the glow was stuck to a vase, one that didn't have anything of note, and yet it had been wrapped in the warm embrace of a carapace that had once been on him.
He reached out to touch it, thought better, and then pressed his hand to his chest in thought... An action that seemed to be recognised as 'return' as in a flurry of glittering 'snow' the light swept across the small distance between man and object to settle upon him once more.
A pause at this point was understandable.
The curiousity returned.
The man cast his arm out once more to point towards the vast; and once more the shimmering carapace coiled away from his form and wove around the vase to blanket it once more. Was he throwing his 'armour'? This was an incredulous thought and he gave a playful beckon, rewarded with the return of the carapace. Headache aside, he had to wonder if perhaps there was more to this and while he didn't fully appreciate that experience, perhaps a little more practice was in order.
If he could throw this, then could he throw something else at the same time?
Suffice to say that in the coming hours the vase and he were about to become fast friends as scientist and test 'subject' explored the limits of what a certain senshi's magic could and couldn't do...
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