by The Eurostar and Grimm
Edulcore Cicciotto:
"Is that a sword, or are you just happy to see me?"
I look toward the corner of the dark room. There's a small, young girl, roughly one meter and a half tall, smiling at me. She would be a perfectly normal Latino teenager with long, smooth auburn hair, pink gloss lipstick, sky-blue eyeshadow, piercing at the navel, and a tribal tattoo over her left arm, if not for the blood-stained Las Ketchup shirt, ripped at the stomach, and for her red-glowing eyes.
A vampire? She doesn't seem so.
The girl smiles, provocative and sexy.
"You are the one Guida-Sofia dreamt of, the Timeless Champion, the bearer of the Devil's Claw. Your sword has power, man. Big power, y'know? And I'm hungry. I want that power."
The girl is walking slowly toward me. She keeps smiling seductively. Her left hand plays with her hair. "What do you want for that blade, handsome?"
Ladnikia vibrates in my hand. She longs for the blood of the girl. I feel the thirst of the blade; it's hard to hold in check the sword. I know, somehow, that if the girl will come close, the sword will kill her by herself, dancing, alive, in my hand.
The girl stops. She's scared of the sword. "I'm not scared, Ed."
She's reading my mind. I never said my name. "Oh, you're very smart, Ed. Now, give me the sword."
What can I do?
"Just give me the sword, Eurostar."
Time -- I need to buy some time; maybe M'xy will arrive.
"We are sealed from the outside world, Euro. There's just the two of us. Nobody will come to disturb us. Now. Give. Me. The. Sword."
Ladnikia vibrates even harder. My sword doesn't like these words. I feel her aiming at the throat of the girl.
And the girl pauses. Her fiery face seems to mellow. She fears Ladnikia, yet she wants her, badly.
"Yeah, I want the sword. Just hand her to me."
You dream, girl.
Her face turns red. I feel myself being pushed up in the air, first slowly, then faster, up to the ceiling. The girl seems powerful. This is not the power of a vampire.
I am more than a vampire, Ed. I was PSI-Unit.
PSI-Unit, the kids that protected the island, like the one I met before, the ghost.
"Who?" yells the girl.
What was her name? It was funny, Italian but not truly, like the feminine version of one that is only masculine. What was? Gerardo? Gregorio? Guido!
"Guida-Sofia! You saw her?"
She was dead, a ghost, come to reveal to me the location of this sword. She seemed happy in the end.
"LIAR!" the teenager screams loudly. I am thrown to the opposite wall. I feel the rage of the sword, aching to kill the girl. I try to control the blade; it requires a lot of effort.
"She was not happy! No one must be happy! Only I am happy!"
I feel the rush of sheer emotions that flows from the girl's mind. It's like a wild river, which is about to overwhelm me. I plant the sword steadily in the floor; it's my only resistance, my bulwark toward her mounting psychic attack.
She levitates, the red glow now engulfing her whole body, her hairs spreading out like a halo. And the images arrive. I know they arrive from inside my brain. The girl read my mind like a book; the parts that are closed, locked from myself, are easier for her to see.
And she made them open to me, and they scare me.
I see my past, the time of my childhood. I see my father and my mother.
My mother was talking to demons, Bhaghhh-rupth, or whatever his name is, and others, calling them from the Netherworld, performing magic. She was hiding from her people, the name of which I have heard before: the Cloaks.
My father, his features changing into reptilian ones, an alien, piloting a UFO just like my own, working closely with a man with a face I have seen before: the Giorgio, and then destroying it, time after time. He, too, was hiding from his own people, the Hoods.
A prophecy, about a child born from the two secret societies. And experiments on me. That's the past.
There's more: the future, all the memories that I had from my time as a herald for Tempus of the Time Trust, which I thought were erased to protect my sanity in this new life of mine.
Wrong.
They were not cancelled, they were only concealed. And now I know why. Then, I had open access to my own future. I saw what I would become in time: a tyrant.
I see the Revolution, the true one, the one where I win.
It's not possible; I learned my lesson.
Yet, I see myself leading an army of metas, killing norms, trashing them with Ladnikia. I hear the song of the sword. I see her placating her thirst with blood of so many innocents.
I see myself, and my grown son, ruling the world with an iron fist; norms are slaves, under the boots of the metahumans. I feel tears over my face.
But I also feel a sense of accomplishment. I feel the relief of millions of metas that today are living in the shadows. I tremble.
The attack is fierce. I know that only the blade is keeping me alive, a parasite that protects her host to survive herself.
"See your destiny, Euro?" shouts the girl.
I see it. I am scared by it, yet a part of me feels triumphant. I must fight myself; that part of me which is not what would be good for humanity, for neither metas nor norms.
But I also feel the life that every meta bears every day. I feel the violence, the discrimination, the plain, sheer hate.
"You can end it, Euro. You can free every one of them. I can help you."
I have tried before. It's not the right way. I need to set an example, show that metas are like norms. Have the norms learn that metas must be friends, not enemies. That's the way.
"You know you are lying to yourself, Euro. You want the Revolution. You started this, you started the game, you set the rules and the goal. But the others stole it. The others changed the rules; the others ruined your game. I can give it back to you. Just be with me. Give me Ladnikia!"
Stupid girl! Don't you see? I couldn't give you the blade even if I would. Ladnikia doesn't permit it. I am hers as much as she is mine.
The girl seems perplexed. She's back on the ground. "Be my ally!"
What do you mean, kid?
"Be my mate!"
Don't be silly. You're barely even legal.
"Watch me!" The girl thrashed away her ripped shirt. She has young, firm breasts; she takes them in her hands and offers them to me. Rounded, pink nipples point to me. "Take me!"
Oh my, how much time has passed since the last time I have seen a body so beautiful, so young? Lorelei, Vidalia, they were beautiful, but not so young. I feel so old, now. She's there, inviting.
"Lady, when I was a kid, I always ate unripened fruits. With age, you understand the ripened one are way more better," I say. These are the first words I actually spoke since the moment I met her.
"You lie, Euro. You want me. You want me badly. You want my body and my power."
She's true. I want her. I want to feel her body pressed to my own. I want her to my side, I want her to cause the head of Walker to explode. Those lips. The pointed red tongue that darts from there.
She is coming near me. I feel the smell of her hair. I look at her softly bouncing breasts. Her face is near mine, beautiful, young, with no wrinkles anywhere. How many years have passed since I looked at a face so smooth from the same vicinity?
"You want me. I want you," she whispers. "We'll be so powerful, together..."
She's near me. She's slowly opening her lips. I can kiss her, and in a moment our tongues will meet. Her mouth is open, her eyes closed. My lips touch hers...
...and her eyes open wide, her screams invading my mouth.
Ladnikia has hit. All by herself, she has guided my hand by her own will, while I was concentrating on the features of the girl, so that she could not read any thoughts about what I was hoping for.
The blade is deep down her belly. She screams, her head pulled back, out of view.
There is no longer any blood in her body, yet Ladnikia is absorbing a lot.
A lot of what? Emotions, thoughts, sentiments... I would say a soul, an evil soul.
And much to my surprise, when the blade has ended her devilish meal, the undead girl is still crying.
I expected her to fall, maybe even dissolve, like in the horror movies.
Instead, she's alive for how much a being with no blood at all, with two deep wounds in the stomach, could be considered alive.
She's weeping, very softly, sobbing.
She raises her head toward my puzzled face. "Thanks. You saved me."
Saved you? From what?
"I don't know. But it was not really myself. I was not."
The girl stands up, touches her wound, looks at herself in the fragment of a mirror.
"I am dead. Why don't I vanish away, like Sofia?"
"She was a ghost, girl..." I begin to say.
"Daniela. My name is Daniela." She touches herself. "I am no ghost. I am flesh."
"Yes. I think my blade absorbed your evil soul. I was expecting that would have killed your body, but you are still up. Guess that an undead body can't die."
"If that's true... what am I now?"
"I really don't know. But... if you still remember what you were, I think you are still Daniela of the PSI-Unit. And from what I heard during the parade, you were pretty tough professionals. The island still need protection; there are a hurricane and vampires and people to save. You can begin helping me... and maybe showing me a trick or two at this line of work."
The girl raises her eyebrows and then smiles, the smile of a normal teenager, the mischievousness she sported before, totally gone.
I smile, too. "I have a friend here somewhere. Let's look for him."
I am Edulcore Ciccioto, also called the Raptor. I have been many things in my life: athlete, addict, chef, metahero... but always throughout the changes I have been one thing constantly, a gentleman.
The blood-sword Ladnikia hangs in one of my hands, in the other, my shirt. I extend the shirt toward the topless girl standing in front of me. She is still somewhat frightened from the ordeal of being turned into a vampire. She reaches out for the shirt with one arm and takes it, while covering herself with her other arm. She turns her back to me and pulls the shirt on. We begin walking into another room.
Over in the corner, Shirley's Uncle Otto moans softly, obviously still in great pain. The wind and rains outside howl mightily.
Suddenly, I hear a voice from the hallway.
"Hey," Mick cries out, "you'll never believe what I found in here!"
He walks into the room with a happy look on his face and holds up his hands. "More roots!"