Fanfiction: Alive

(UM Mebius Gaiden: Armoured Darkness manga by Uchiyama Mamoru)

The other day I started off writing one thing—focused on a younger Hikari and Fightas, to flesh out their backstory—and when I got stuck in a rut, I decided to have Fightas explain it all to Mebius. But for what reason would they meet?

(Again, UM Mebius Gaiden: Armoured Darkness manga by Uchiyama Mamoru)

This one, for starters.

And yes, I do enjoy writing a lot of Hikari-ish pieces. *blush*

Title: Alive
Date: 12/9/2009
Fandom: Mebius Gaiden manga
Genre: General/Drama
Rating/Warnings:PG for the alcohol and some mild Mebi/Hikari. Ultraman and all related characters (c) Tsuburaya Productions 1966, 2008. Fightas, Melos and all related are the creations of Uchiyama Mamoru. The names 'Lucien Candela', Kenjin, Aisal-Hal and the members of the Aisal-Hal should not be taken as canon.

The characters Nembu and Ethyl were created by U of M787. Thanks for letting me use them, U!
Summary: "We're alive right now, aren't we?" Set after the end of Mebius Gaiden: Armoured Darkness (OVA and manga). Mebius tangles with the dark armour again and Hikari is less than pleased.

The last of the Jackal army fled skywards, beaten, broken and hopefully dissuaded from appearing again. Mebius watched their disappearing backs and prayed fervently that it was so; he had no wish to tangle with their kind again, let alone the vampiric fragments of Armoured Darkness that had almost overcome him. The suit was whole and someone would undoubtedly seal its powers—the Braves Directive? The Universal Sci-Tech Bureau?—but right now, he was a little too tired to care. He needed sleep, and a long stint in the lightchambers didn't sound bad at all. He briefly considered, for the first time in his Garrison career, putting in a claim for hazard pay.

"Mebius." Hikari's voice was low and sharp, insistent. "Are you all right?"

All right? He'd been thrown backward by destructive beams, buried under rubble, slashed, kicked, punched and nearly assimilated. He'd slashed, beamed, flipped and lunged for a few brief hours that seemed to have consumed half his remaining life expectancy. Still, he nodded. Hikari had made it through far worse, almost getting pitched into that black hole. "There's no need to worry. I'm not hurt."

"Who said anything about worrying?" Wounded as he was, Hikari's hand flicked out and he smacked the young fighter in the back of the head nearly hard enough to take him off balance, and a lot harder than the man himself thought he did. His eyes burned with cold fury, and though Mebius had never seen him so visibly angry, there was a sick familiarity about that gaze. He had no way of knowing that the same glare had appeared, many times, behind Tsurugi's helmet. "What were you thinking, honestly? If you do something like that again then by the Sage, I—" Hikari bit the last words down and turned savagely away, limping off to the Medical Room like most everybody else, leaving a confused young man with one more sore spot to account for.

"Mebius, wasn't it?" He turned around, still rubbing his head. Standing at his shoulder was an armoured warrior, eyes glittering with mild amusement behind his visor. It had to be Captain Melos' younger brother...what was his name again? "Fightas. Good grief, you really went and pissed Luc—Hikari off there."

"You know him, Fightas-san?" Mebius replied, surprised.

"That man saved my life." The man obviously meant every word, but it did nothing to lessen Mebius' confusion, and it showed. He sighed. "Get seen to with the Cross, and meet me back here. You do drink, don't you?"

--

Fightas shed his helmet as they passed through the door of the Horn and Helmet and waved at the bartender. "The usual for me, and a Jolokia for my friend here!"

"Ayessssir," whistled the bartender through his baleen, and slung two glass globes through the air to a table right in the corner. One of them was wreathed in acrid smoke; that was the one Fightas pushed towards the hapless fighter, making encouraging noises.

"Er...?"

"Oh, psh. It's just pepper and spices—it'll put the fire right back in you. Of course," he said as Mebius unlidded the globe and took a draught of what felt like a ten-alarm inferno, "they don't name it after them ghost peppers for nothing." Once Mebius had stopped gasping like a goldfish and the other guests of the bar had dried their tears of laughter, he raised his own beverage and added, "It's on me, by the way. Thanks for looking out for my brother and, uh, my niece. They're not the easiest people to relate to."

"It was an honour to fight alongside Captain Melos and Captain Aura." Mebius' voice sounded a little crispy round the edges to his ears. "Captain Aura's father was one of the Twenty-Eight?"

"Cal Kalim," Fightas said without missing a beat. "Good guy, but went to pieces around sharp objects...oh yeah, I knew a few of the Aisal-Hal," he said in response to Mebius' expression of surprise, using the reverent name Ulterra had given to the last twenty-eight men who had faced Jackal alongside Garrison captain Zoffy Kenjin. "Went to school, trained with some of them. When I heard they all died, I felt I should have died with them." Fightas paused to sip his drink, winced slightly and went on. "Which brings us to your blue friend. You heard about the time I tried to fight Seven?"

"I can't say I have," Mebius shook his head and replied; he had been very young indeed when Jackal first threatened the Land of Light, and on the cusp of graduating from school when the villain escaped his black hole prison. He remembered fear, and evacuations, and a whole bunch of worrying—but it had been a very volatile time. Looking back on them now, he realised his mind had settled firmly on remembering the most ordinary things possible about that period.

"Oh, all right. I kept challenging him. He kept on refusing, but Melos finally asked him to do it. My sword, his Slugger. The Slugger won. I died."

"But you're..." Mebius rapidly scoured his brain for an appropriate turn of phrase. "...you're here."

"But I'm still here. Down in SciTech they were working on an energy matrix...reconstitutor, or replicator or something. Medicine's not my strong point. Anyway, I woke up strapped down on a table and some scientist called Lucien staring at me. Not how I woulda chose to come back. We had a nice little debate right there. I chewed him out for making me into a guinea pig, and he...ergh..." Fightas clammed up, sensing he might have said too much. Mebius' curiosity, however, was now aroused, and he pressed on.

"What did he do?"

"...Took a glass rod, smacked me over the knuckles and gave me hell." The image of Hikari rapping Fightas' hands with the lab equipment (and a most disapproving expression) sent Mebius into a gale of laughter and fire flew up his throat quite the wrong way. Fightas' expression told him it served him jolly well right. "Hey, it wasn't funny, trust me. That man's a devil with scientific equipment. Thank the gods he didn't break out the burette..."

"I wonder why he got so angry." Mebius stared down into the half-shot of Jolokia that remained. It stared back, promising that the slight burning in his midsection was going to stay for a long vacation. At least he felt very, very awake.

"What, at me or at you? One of his assistants was the brother of one of the Twenty-Eight. He's been through a buncha wars—I bet he's seen his fair share of death. And...ah, you probably know him better than me. He's tangled with the Armoured Darkness before, right?"

"Yes. Oh," Mebius said, as light dawned. "OH," he said louder as even more light dawned, and uttered a final, tiny horrified "oh" as it all settled in. That armour had taken him in, too.

"If he gave a complete stranger hell for chucking his life away, what do you think he was going to do to his friends, eh? Look, what if I told you he tried yanking Father out of that black hole with just that armour of his on?" Horror suffused Mebius' face. The Arb Gear was definitely nowhere near as strong as the steely suits Melos and his brother wore. No wonder he had come back to the battleground looking the way he did! "He did. You didn't know? By the look on your face, you'd like to smack him upside the head right about now, too."

Mebius' voice rose in volume, and pitch. "I—of course I would! He could have been squashed—Why would he...after all that...!"

"And you were just asking why he got so angry?" Fightas drained his tumbler and signalled to the bartender for another. Mebius hid his embarassment in his drink, knocking back the rest of his beverage. "You wanted them to live, even at the cost of your own life. You know you need strength for their sake. But you know what else Hikari told me? You don't have to be the strongest person in battle, just the one who survives. That's the best all the people around you can hope for. You just want them to survive. They hope the same for you."

"...We're alive, right now." The response was soft, almost too resigned.

"Yeah, we're alive and kicking. It hurts like hell, but it's still a life. So what are you going to do, kid?"

"I don't know." Mebius was drawing several blanks, and decided to defer to experience. "What should I do? He...Hikari might might come after me with a burette." Fightas laughed a short, explosive laugh.

"Anger, like jolokia, cools in three days. Decide what you want to do while you're handling your insides, yes? I should have warned you: you really aren't supposed to chug that stuff like that. You're going to feel like death warmed over in the morning." He did.

After many cold showers and much concentrated thought, he decided he had his solution.

--

"You can't very well stay angry with him forever," said the plump, bespectacled Ultran. There was just a hint of chastisement in his voice.

"I am not angry, Nembu," Hikari replied in a completely deadpan tone, eyes never straying from the image projected in midair as he manhandled his keyboard. "I am merely disappointed."

"You can't very well stay disappointed with him forever, either." Nembu had been assisting Hikari the longest, since his early days with the Universal Science and Technology Bureau, plus he was older than his superior; he had no problems being frank with him. A little too frank for his tastes someimes, Hikari thought crossly. "Oh, yes, you'll be pleased to know the Braves Directive has taken charge of Armoured Darkness. We don't know how many there are left out there, but if we can dissect one...would you like to see it?"

"I would not, thank you." The reply was smooth and quick, almost too quick.Those two words set in motion a furious, unpleasant scrabbling in the back of his mind, exacerbated by recent events. Right now, he did not wish to see the horrendous groaning hunk of metal for a long, long time. "Please give my thanks to the Directive for their prompt action."

"Of course."

"Professor Lucien!" Another one of Hikari's lab assistants ran up, something in her hands. "There's a package from you. From Mebius."

"Huh? Ah, I mean thank you, Ethyl." He pulled loose the knotted cord and unfolded the cloth wrapper. Inside was a bento box, with a distinct smell of curry. Oh, it was from Mebius, all right. A note affixed to the top read: I'm waiting outside. Please come and meet me?

Hikari stared at the package for a while, and then up at his two assistants. He wished they didn't look so very expectant. "Ethyl, isn't this your curry recipe?" he asked, very calmly.

"I, er, helped him a little, professor." She tried to look bashful, but did not succeed.

"Well, there you go. What are you going to do?" Nembu asked.

Hikari paused, and then said very quietly, "Have dinner."

--

Mebius was indeed waiting outside—with another bento—and they ate next to a broken building, watching people pass by and enjoying the warmth and light of the setting Spark more than the grain and meat and spices. Finally Hikari put down his cutlery and sighed. "You have a very strange way of apologising."

"I was a little worried you wouldn't think I meant it. And I do—I'm sorry I made you worry."

"There's no need for that." It looked like he wasn't 'disappointed' any more, after all. "I apologise too. I shouldn't have been so harsh. But your life does not belong to you alone, you know. You knew full well what the Armoured Darkness is capable of. You've seen it. And you still put your life on the line."

"Yes, well, Fightas told me you went into the black hole to save Ultra Father."

Hikari let out an impatient snort. "That man always was an idiot. Look, that was different—"

"How?" Hikari fell silent, unable to find any particularly strong logic. "You could have been lost just as easily as I could. And then what would happen?" Mebius added, almost to himself, He looked up at the sky, newly robbed of light and not yet dark enough to show off its stars. "I'm not willing to see the people close to me die just yet. Not for a long time. I'm not ready."

"Nobody is, are they?" Hikari's gaze suddenly seemed tired and sad and old. "You and I have seen death lots of times, Mebius. There's no hurry to chase it down," he said, putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing it gently. "Promise me you won't do something so reckless again. Please."

"You know I can't do that," he replied softly. "And neither can you, although I wish you could." He looked over the near-empty streets and the faint lights in windows nearby. The wind carried the sounds of voices, and he suddenly brightened. "But I can do...this." He sprang to his feet and raised one arm high above his head.

"Mebius, what are you—"

"With the heavens as my witness, I, Mebius, swear to live for as long as I can, as well as I can, and keeping as many things safe as I can!" he recited in a clear, strong voice. Hikari simply stared up at him with the most exquisitely dumbfounded look. "How 'bout that?"

There was a brief, terrible silence—and then Hikari started laughing. Mebius hadn't heard it in a while. "Yes, I think it will do." Rather more sedately, he rose from his seat and raised one arm. "And with the heavens as my witness, I, Hikari, swear to live for as long as I can, and as well as I can..." He paused. "...gaining as much knowledge as I can."

"And keeping people safe!"

"And protecting as many sentient beings as I can," he added, before shivering slightly. "Those close to death must live life all the more more strongly. But it's getting cold out, and I think I should protect my health, first."

"...I know something that'll warm you right up!"

"Please tell me it doesn't involve more curry."

"It is not curry. I swear it," Mebius replied vehemently.

The two spent the night sipping Jolokia (Mebius reminded Hikari to go slowly far too many times for comfort), counting the stars and talking of the most ordinary things, the things that happened between the strategies and battles and monsters. And for those brief hours, for two of the countless fighters facing death in every battle, it felt good to just be alive.

Even if Hikari's core temperature didn't go down for two days. [+/-]"...You don't have to be the strongest person in battle, just the one who survives. That's the best all the people around you can hope for..."