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It begins and ends with light coming into your world.
Like the sky opening up, letting in an impossible possibility – for the Land of Light, where no natural light exists anymore, it feels sacred to be witness to a fragment of what's the real thing. It of course isn't, actually, but it certainly feels that way to you; you, who were born with curiously searching eyes, see yourself fascinated.
Your eyes stick to the light, then. To its warmth.
In retrospect, you feel inclined to compare it to some scientific phenomenon, because those are still very familiar to you. Something like magnetism, like a chemical reaction… Or maybe it's entirely very own thing. Something that no words may describe; none that currently exist at least.
Safe to say, you were drawn to that light like no other.
The beginning and the end. Stages of life, existence transitioning into something new. Would you call it life-changing? Perhaps. You aren’t sure.
Thinking about it, you really haven’t pondered what your life would be like without light.
–It hurts.
Something in your body twists, deeming the thought revolting. The mere idea has a part, perhaps a tiny, perhaps a bigger part of yourself, shuddering. Your mind doesn’t want to conceive of such a thing, not in any way that is an earnest consideration, a vivid imagination. It feels wrong. Yet that thought itself also sounds wrong.
Aren’t they illusions, light and darkness? How could an unreal thing, nothing but an euphemism of a reality, impact your existence so? Your head hurts. The image of your own figure permeated with so much bright light appears before your mental eye, and it’s– It is–
You curl your fingers into your palm instead. The eventual stinging, the sharp pain, it’ll be a good enough distraction. Surely, it will be.
There’s no use in pondering these things, you say. There’s the way things are, the way everything is. There’s what that all came from. What could’ve been, it doesn’t– it’s meaningless to think about.
–That light might’ve been a focal point of your life once, but you don’t need it. You, who abandoned everything, have no need for such things. No dreams, wishes, goals, nothing. You just live to exist, acting in the meaning of your name. Mad curiosity – or, as people have taken to saying recently, disaster. That’s fine. You're fine, living like that, need nothing more, nothing less.
Because your existence itself is an act of opposition. Going against all that they stand for, proving them wrong, unveiling their deception thread by thread. You couldn’t ever want light when it’s all you stand against.
(And yet, deep inside you, beneath swirling thoughts, howls of beasts, murderous musings, there’s that tiny glimmer of the desire that started it all, still as alive as all those centuries ago.)
Once, your eyes were blue.
Blue, as a color, can be associated with many things. The skies, the seas, opposing forces, so similar yet so far apart. A sea does reflect the sky, but the sky doesn’t reflect it in turn; in that way, it’s a one-sided chase for eternity. One always behind the other, helplessly stuck to its image while the other just exists the way it does.
The sky in the Land of Light is not like that at all. It’s filled to the brim with the bright, artificial light of the Plasma Spark. Still, you’d been told that the blue in your eyes resembled the expanse of a sky. Some planets do have really blue skies, you know. A chuckle. Like the Earth, for example! I’ve heard that there’s lots of blue on the Earth.
You had argued against the case, then. Something as high and mighty as the sky… didn’t feel right for you. You couldn’t explain it well. It sounds too– too nice, too pretty for someone like you. You glanced upwards, and then back at the one you were talking to. There was slight confusion painting his expression.
What about water? he suggested, tilting his head, innocent joy shining in the eyes.
(It’s always shining things, with him.)
Water isn’t always blue. It takes the color of whatever it happens to reflect. Which could also be black, for example. You crossed your arms. Are you just thinking about Earth again?
Eventually, you sort of just resigned to his water comparison. It felt better than the sky, after all. Thinking about it now, you realize why the sky felt so alien for yourself back then. The sky is the domain of the sun, and the sun–
Back then, you’d already known it to be forever unreachable for yourself. Something bright and burning like that could never be yours, not even if you crossed a million light years.
The red blaze of your eyes might be as much of an approximation as you can get. If it even is one.
Not that it was something intentional – no, the chain of events that made this searing color overtake the one you were born with was triggered by a swirl of emotions perhaps as complex as the chaos that birthed the universe. You had no control over it, but you didn’t even want to, at that point. Once the bubble burst, nothing mattered anymore. No long bygone days, none of the colors bleeding into each other, nothing at all. You closed your eyes and let it all fill you up, and then started another life.
Maybe it really was a subconscious act of imitation– No, that’s a ridiculous thought, you throw it away immediately. You’d never do such a thing. Ever since that day, you’ve only had hell within yourself, nothing else. No attachments, no affections.
You’d turned your back on the sun. Said to never look back, and became reborn.
Because it doesn’t matter! None of it matters. Neither light nor darkness, evil nor good. Emptiness stands at the end of everything, it is the ultimate, undeniable truth. Things only gain meaning when faced with difference. So without nothing, when they're all the same in the end, they are fated to become nothing.
(Just like how without a sky to face, your eyes started to bleed until nothing was left. Just like without the sun’s warmth by your side, your heart grew cold and numb.)
Some have likened the eyes of the human form you’ve been taking these days to a void, and you find it quite fitting. A deep, all-devouring black… All colors, all light, everything goes to die there. It really feels right for an existence synonymous with disaster. That’s what you are. What you've become.
The end of everything. No single speck of light to be caught within your field of sight, at least not for long. Like candles, you'll snuff them all out before soon, watching the smoke blend into the dark. In a world where nothing matters, there's no need for light. That’s what you’re here to prove; that everything’s all the same. And to toy with those fools wandering Earth, holding up anything shining as the goodest of things.
The fact that light is a necessity, the better side of the coin, was an arbitrarily made decision, just like the blue-tinted sight you were born with. Anyone who wants to believe otherwise will pay their price.
You have always liked watching.
Although you hadn’t realized just how prone you were to doing it until he pointed it out to you. You were staring at the sky too, when we met.
The way he said it tickled something in your brain – you weren't not sure what. What did you think of it? A weird question, perhaps, but you wanted to know.
He tilted his head, a simple, yet thoughtful expression filling his face. You looked far away, despite being right there. Like your mind was at a totally different place than all of us.
All of us, huh. You let out a tiny huff, which made him look at you with some form of confusion, so you quickly shook your head to indicate that there’s nothing wrong. Nothing he needed to know about, anyways. But it wasn’t enough, for once – he mustered you with one of those looks of his, the slight annoyance of a righteously-minded child. Putting his hands on his hips, he huffed back at you; I don’t think it’s a bad thing! You’re very smart, so you should think.
Then you couldn’t help but chuckle. What’s that even supposed to mean?
Indeed, your mind was often at different places during class. But not necessarily elsewhere, not always – your focus was simply different. You were chasing after a light.
A real, warm light. Dazzling and stunning even in the simplicity of its existence. Like a sun, no bit a sufficient-enough imitation. At first, you were drawn in by some sort of scientific curiosity, the fascination with the unknown. Someone so entirely unlike you, an improbable connection, life paths supposedly laid out as parallel lines.
But once light happened to shine upon you, you wanted more.
You wanted to fill all of your eyes with it, you thought. You wanted to grasp it. Hold it in your hands. Wrap your arms around, be consumed, consume it yourself – either way would’ve been fine. As long as the light stayed by your side, you convinced yourself that that would be enough. (Because there’s no way there could ever be more than this superficial proximity.)
You were fine with just watching for yourself. Directing your gaze to the side until life gave you reason to flit away and pretend you weren't so interested at all. One hand on your cheek, fingers tapping against the desk, picture-perfect image of an understimulated genius, your go-to excuse.
But desire can be such an overwhelming thing. It can rock your entire body, can lead your thoughts astray with ease. And so, your thoughts, while not on whatever was being taught, remained right there in the classroom. Your gaze trained on the back of his head, tracing the patterns of red and silver for the billionth time, the outlines of his figure, wondering just where that radiance of his comes from.
Don’t the humans that he loves to speak of say that such things come from the heart?
So if, say, you got your hands on his body, free to rip out the core, would you find the origin of his sunshine? Would you find it in the inside of his arms, of his fingers? In the hollow of his eyes? Does it run just below the skin, or deeper? If you could find out– If you could lock him in place and get your fingertips in there, then you'd for sure–
Not that you'd ever dare to actually do that, though. Right. At least back then, you were convinced of that. Now… well, the you now would go about it differently, probably.
The illusionary beauty of light and darkness is that one can be corrupted into the other. He, acting with darkness flowing through his body instead of light – that'd be a sight to behold. How would his friends react? His kin, his loved ones? You imagine the conflict on their faces as they inevitably end up having to hurt him – how sweet. And he himself, would he, sunken deep into the darkness, unleash a scream from the depths of his soul, one filled with true despair? You imagine that, too: the exact way his voice would break and fray, the shadow over his eyes and the color of his tears. A sight to salvage until the end of time.
You make a mental note to enact an appropriate plan if you ever get the opportunity.
Until then, you are going to watch. The young Ultraman trying to make a name for himself, to break out of his father’s ever so tall-looming shadow – you reckon that you can make this young one into a being like yourself. You can defile this light, too. That's another beautiful scene to imagine – a hero of light, inevitably falling to the dark because that damn light of his doesn’t actually exist. They’re all the same, these heroes, with their noble ideals of what is right and what is light. Such fools.
But they shall live with their stupor if they really so wish. You are going to keep your eyes on this supposed light, and then you’ll reach out and rip it right apart. Then, that’ll reveal the darkness that’s always been within. Destroying the mirage of light those morons believe in. Deceptions are just euphemized depictions of reality, and when they leave and the real thing becomes clear, their believers are left with holes in their hearts.
(That’s the thing about it all – about the sun, the real one that’s not a fake: it sinks eventually, it leaves to wander off to a different place, gracing it with its warm light. You had it burned into your heart, so you’d know. You were always watching that sun. And you watched it leave you, too.
Not that it was ever within reach in the first place – that’s where you went wrong, after all.)
Humans love to talk more than anything. They love running their mouths, those wretched beasts. About anything and everything, about the most pointless of things, things they claim that matter in an attempt to ignore how nothing truly ever will give their pathetic existence meaning.
Kudo Hiroyuki is no exception at all.
He talks of ideals – of justice, of the wish to save others, to protect, all such noble feelings. It makes you, in turn, feel sick to the stomach. Things as pretty and sweet-sounding as this become mere platitudes; if you examine them, they're all empty shells. No good sustenance.
There is something interesting about lending your ear to someone as fiercely and fierily passionate as Kudo Hiroyuki – you can easily see why his son chose him as his host, it is so disgustingly obvious, would be even to a commoner's eye – but your patience runs thin. Inevitably, Kudo Hiroyuki will speak of one of those things that aggravate you so much, and the carefully spun thread inside your mind rips.
You do know of enough ways to make someone shut up. You have an arsenal for when your presence itself isn't enough (which presents a rare case, but it's best to be prepared). You can do it with fingers, fists, lips, with the flat of your palm, through a grand perusing with your eyes and thunder from your hands. Which one would be best for Kudo Hiroyuki? That is entirely situational.
(You do wonder sometimes, though, how sweet those words of his would really taste if taken straight out of his mouth.)
But there’s more important things to ponder. To get across.
There’s a bond to tear apart. A play to direct, chess pieces to assemble. Your lips form an easy smile, unbothered by all the curious eyes on you as you perform your part. You don’t find the time to care at all, rather engrossed in reciting your words and doing the steps. They may laugh right now, but you’ll be the one laughing at last. Just like you’ll steal all those glorious, heroic lines right out of the son’s mouth.
Hah. When you rip him out of those taut ties that they call a bond for life, what will his friends end up saying? Will they scream, or will they be speechless? You don’t care for their reaction as much, so either way is fine. Just him, who claims to stand with the sun illuminating his back, just him you are eager to finally shut up. Anyone else getting caught up is a welcome bonus.
You can hear the music already, the one soon to fill your future, as you call upon the machine of doom. The final ring to adorn the fingers that’ll eventually bemoan their own foolishness. Ah, it’s so grand in your mind. A beautiful disaster, and you cannot await hearing the sound of your own laughter.
You peer into his son's eyes.
They're of that same golden, amber glow, the same shape. Yet they're not fully his – there's something else mixed in there. Someone different, someone you don't know.
Well, you do know who, sort of – it's the mother of the child, obviously. But you don't know her, neither her face nor her name nor her voice. You left before you ever came to even catch the rumor that the esteemed number six of the Ultra Brothers might've found a companion for life.
Thoughts of who it could be flit across your mindscape like stars attempting to twinkle in the emptiness of space – there was that one time you'd helped him write a love letter, for example. It was embarrassing, but you helped out anyways, because you're so good with words and I’m clumsy. That one didn't work out, though, you're sure. You surely would've known if it had.
You would've known. Your mind sticks itself to that phrase. Why? Because you were the best of friends. You used to share everything. The sky, your afternoons, laughter and tears and your desires, too.
But that has long become an apparition. A ghost of the past rearing its ugly head. You peer down into those half-familiar amber-yellow eyes in front of you, narrowing your own–
And somewhere, in the deepest depths of your heart, a voice cries that it should've been you.
But you ignore it, mentally pressing down on that miniscule part of yours until it dies with a pathetic screech. Things like this, ties, relations, bonds, none of them matter. In a universe that has been destined to return to nothing from the start, all of it falls flat in front of that eventual end. His son and his friends, they're all stupid for attaching such meaning to things that will fade one day.
Earlier, fingers had reached your throat. You were shaken, and you didn't resist, for the fun of it. Eventually, those hands let go, having decided to punch at your chest instead – all futile. Ah, there was such despair underlying these actions, how tasteful. You couldn’t help but giggle at it all.
Yes, it's all been going the way you want. You hold this part of him in your hands, finally. And you'll take your dear, dear time tarnishing this so-called light.
You put your fingers to those cheeks, pressing into them in a way you're sure will hurt. But then you also can't help but to enact a form of bare-boned caress – a far cry from anything with real feeling behind it, but even as twisted as the swirling chaos in your gut has become, it still begs for release when the occasion presents itself.
Your voice, mocking as you lowly speak, finally becomes shaken by laughter. Sharp, bright, piercing, taking center stage in this excellent stage play. It's born from that part at the very bottom of your being; the one that, even as small as it is, reigns over much of what you feel.
The one yearning for retaliation. The one that breathes the poison of hatred, with a tongue of cold fire and teeth like sharpened daggers. Claws reaching out to grasp the vindication they so desperately yearn for.
There’s so much warmth at the tips of your fingers, now. You can't wait to drain all of it – or rather, witness it being drained. A grin spreads wide over your face at the thought.
At last, your dearest dream is coming true.
One of the habits you've adopted throughout the last thousands of years was being attentive towards your demeanor. That is, the way you walk, the way you hold your arms and how you move your fingers. All those little things, tiny details, meticulously fitted together to make a perfect painting.
There's no real reason why, though, aside from you enjoying the act of a particular presentation. It does aid your schemes, most of the time – when others are afraid of your mere presence near their ear, they tend to melt into puddles at the sound of your voice.
Everyone has wishes they want fulfilled, desires unquelled. And when one charming enough comes along, bringing the promise to make their dreams true, no matter how wicked they may be – it's all a simple game for you.
When those people end up screaming, trying to claw at your feet like fools, it makes you chuckle and grin. You got what you asked for, didn't you? It's their fault if they don't think enough. Manipulating hearts is all too easy.
But even before that, some do tell you that you walk with the gait of someone out there to ruin lives. Which is not true, you think to yourself – you couldn't care less about most of these people. (In fact, there's only a singular person you've ever cared about, and ever will. But that is nothing you need to be known.) You don't say anything, then, and just smile. The mask always carefully kept pressed onto your skin.
And so, you walk on, never seeing any reason to change anything about yourself. You'll be the fulfiller of wishes, harbinger of doom, the name of disaster, the synonym of chaos. You walk across finely-plastered streets, through falling debris, past squirming humans and aliens alike, from the E.G.I.S. center of operations to the very outskirts of the city.
And where you walk, you leave nothing but wailing in your wake. Limbs and lives torn apart, screeches and screams, corpses simmering in puddles of blood. Not a care in the world, your mind only set on what you’re thinking to ruin. A mask of nonchalance, perhaps, who’s to say.
You aim with guns, you aim with your fingers, you aim at everything Kudo Hiroyuki has ever cared for. You corner the girl in the office and pick out the world ending from her eyes, you stage an act of jolly deceit around your path towards the missile of doom, you observe the calamities that unfold.
Those stupid humans have a saying for that, don't they? Walking over corpses.
That's all good and well with you. Arms poised beneath your back, a slightly ardent step, your characteristic smile adorning the lips. (The ever so familiar mask.) Your hands are ready to grasp, to snap. (They hold onto the mask tight.) And you step out, ready to see it all become rubble beneath your feet.
When it comes down to the bottom of everything, you know that you cannot lie to yourself.
When you were finally faced with the sun again, the real thing, whole and all – as much as you spoke with mocking tongue and from between bared teeth – it all became clear once again. Like a light finally breaking through the clouds, shining down at the ocean below, piercing all the way through the water’s surface until it reaches the very bottom of those deep, dark waters–
That’s the pretty way of saying it. The sober truth is that seeing him again unlodged something deeply buried within you, beneath all the resentment and anger. A piece of your heart itself was viciously wrenched out, and yet you knew that it was entirely unintentional on his part – which made it feel worse – because he’s way too good and kind to even consider hurting you without precedent. He even offered you to come back to the Land of Light with him, that fool! Like father, like son indeed. You can’t stand them, them and their darn damned light–
That light of his was as warm as you remember it from thousands of years ago.
The realization was deeply uncomfortable, was agonizing and crushing and downright ravaging. A stirring, a pulling, a burning– thing– The light filled your eyes, and you–
Turned away.
(Is that regret? Remorse? An ounce of sorrow? What is it that you feel? Are there words to express it? That feeling of when you looked up at the vast sky, all of its empty blue, and saw the brilliant radiance in its center. Glittering and sparkling, naturally like it belonged there. The brightest of stars, and you couldn’t look away, transfixed as if you never even had a choice in the matter.
That’s right. Perhaps, with how things always were, there was no other way for them to go. He was up there, and you were at the bottom engulfed in the cold depths of water, trying to reach up.)
Again, there’s no point in pondering this. (That’s what you tell yourself.) It's all meaningless. (You insist.) Light and darkness are the same in the fact that they're made up to divide the world and justify arbitrary motivations, they're invisible and don't exist, they can't become each other, there's no point in one longing for the other!
In the freezing emptiness of outer space, you find yourself again with your chest heaving.
You inhale. Exhale.
There's thousands of stars surrounding you, even at the outskirts of the galaxies. Little twinkling, desperate lights waving their arms at you. And you just stare back.
There's no warmth to be found here, in all this cold, unfeeling light. That's why it's their fate to eventually be snuffed out. Like candlelights, like plasma sparks.
You motion your hand around one of those tiny stars, imagining squishing it between your fingers… Right. That's what you do. You quench the light, bring upon the darkness of the night. The cold embrace that welcomes the sun at the end of the day. And eventually, swallows it whole.
(The deeper the darkness, the more beautiful a light will bloom from it.)
Your fingers find their way to your face. (To the mask.) Run over your eyes, nose, lips, down your neck and throat, all the way to your color timer. You hook a finger under the chipped plate covering it –
Well, that chaos inside yourself is soon to be released anyways. Your darkness will cover the Earth, the planets, the galaxies, the universe. Like mist, like deep waters, like the biggest sun's shadow.
Finally you've caught up to that bright, warm light. It's within reach, soon to fill the void of your palms. And then, you shall cherish it, embrace it, make it yours, unleash all your curses, all it deserves upon its fragile, deceiving brilliance–
(And then, you shall no longer be home alone.)