Title: Macro
Author: Cheezey
Theme: Doomite Fic
Characters/Pairings: Yurak
Album and Song: Depeche Mode – Playing the Angel; “Macro”
Rating/Genre: K / Genfic
Summary: Right before taking on Voltron as a robeast, Yurak views the universe around him through new eyes.
Author's Notes: Right before taking on Voltron as a robeast, Yurak views the universe around him through new eyes.
Intense. Amazing. They’re the only words that come to mind, but they don’t do the feeling justice.
The light on Arus as the coffin opens is nearly blinding, but never has it looked so brilliant or beautiful, exotic and inviting even as it lures me to certain death, like a moth to a flame. To think that the skies of these light worlds were once painful to my eyes, weaker than those of most from my dark and cloudy world, and now I can stare at the light for so long and with such rapt fascination. Decades of travel in the fleet and a mechanical replacement to the worse of my two eyes made the ambient light of these brighter worlds tolerable, but never so delightful as I find this golden-red Arusian sunset. I’ve always liked red; it’s so bold and bright, fearless and powerful.
The sounds. In my youth I cursed the oversized ears I was born with; how my aunts and cousins would pinch and tug on them calling it affection, how witless fools I was schooled with would make them the focal point of pathetic attempts to insult me—as if I, someone who’d rise to the lofty station of commanding the greatest robot army in all of the Denubian, would take something so ridiculous to heart. But today… today they bring to my senses a depth and clarity that I never knew even existed. Reaching up to touch them I can tell that the old witch exaggerated their size, a final dig at me on a personal level, no doubt. But the receivers she put in them alongside the lasers—the irony, I muse darkly, that something that once caused me so much annoyance is now a way to strike back at what annoys me—pick up textures and rhythms that make even the most mundane noises sound like a melody. Who knew that the mechanical combined with the organic could create such perfect harmony?
My sharp vision catches sight of a desert snake slithering between some rocks nearby. I watch the play of the fading glints of sunlight upon its coppery black scales and smile. Snakes on my home world are much bigger and probably deadlier, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about things on Arus it’s not to underestimate them. But still, even as I walk over to it and squash its tail under my metallic boot, shining a brighter red in the crimson sunset while the creature squirms in panic beneath it, I have no fear. I don’t fear anything anymore. After all, what have I got left to lose?
My other foot crunches down upon its head, ending its misery quickly and creating a melodious crunch that ripples through the air around me. I then wonder if my own end will be so merciful and swift. I expect it won’t be—not because Voltron doesn’t finish his adversaries quickly, but because I’ll fight as long as there’s breath, or lazon, if that’s what fuels it now, in this robeast body.
I turn to the east, the direction of the
My pace quickens along with my pulse. Smell is what I notice next; amidst the distinctive scent of electrical energy and lazon, I detect strange and hitherto unnoticed aromas upon the light Arusian breeze. One is sharp and mildly unpleasant, and after a moment I realize it’s the scent of an animal. It stirs a distant memory of a pet my sister once had, some weak little off-world prey animal she liked for its soft fur and kept in the family home, which wouldn’t I would have cared about if she’d bothered to have it cleaned up after. My lips curl slightly as I wonder to this day how someone with slaves to take care of such things could still not bother to order them to clean its caging often enough to keep it from stinking. I found the smell distasteful then, but today—my fingers flex in anticipation—today it makes me feel alive, stirs my primal urges to rend, to tear, to destroy. I suppose that’s a part of the process, to live as the “beast” part of the robeast of I’ve become, as a predator.
The second scent is fainter, light and floral. Nearby I see a cluster of thorny desert plants, one of which has a bright yellow and white flower with the tips of its petals tinged with the subtlest touch of blue atop it. Its colors are so vivid that I slow my pace to look more closely at it. It’s still quite far away, but I can see and smell it as if it was right under my nose. Its beauty lures me and I’m struck with the urge to pluck it so I can savor all the pleasures it has to offer my senses despite the fact that it’s guarded by poisonous thorns. A sardonic smile crosses my half-robotic face as it resurrects another memory. Sometimes that which is most beautiful and tempting is best left untouched.
Desert Lily, I then recall the plant’s name, and my smile widens slightly as I reach in to take the flower. I remember how we learned about this particular bloom. Years ago after King Zarkon’s initial battle with Arus’ King Alfor in the Valley of Zohar a force was sent into this part of Arus to try to quash the planet’s ongoing rebellion. Some soldiers came across this plant and couldn’t resist its allure. Whether the fools were slacking on duty or thought they might impress some woman into their bed by taking the flower I don’t know, but only a few cuts from the thick briars protecting it had them in the medical bay hours later and dead by the following morning.
My hands close around the flower as I pull it from the stalk. The thorns scrape fruitlessly against my now metallic arm, and my smile changes to a grin. It’s intoxicating. Not just the desert lily—though that is quite the sensual delight—but the feeling of invincibility. I wonder if this is what drives Haggar to prolong her ancient existence in that frail, ugly, and useless old body of hers, that sense of near-immortality. I chortle. Immortality is what I’ll need to defeat Voltron. We’ll see if what she gave me is as good as hers.
I inhale slowly and deliberately, savoring the essence of the desert lily in one final act of leisure. I run my fingertip along its silken petals. How soft they are, smooth and warm like the skin of a fine, pure, and beautiful woman. How it is that metal limbs with artificial nerves fused to my own flesh could sense all of that so finely, so perfectly? I trace the flower’s outline in one complete and fluid motion, noting with my keen robeast sight how precisely those mechanical fingers move. The finest cybernetic armor I could buy—and I always had the best—couldn’t even come close to competing with that.
I dip my finger into the center of the desert flower and marvel at how the pollen collects in tiny balls on my fingertip. I bring it to my lips and my eyes light up with delight as the powdery essence explodes in a burst of pure sensation upon my tongue. The taste! I’d describe it as sweet, but that doesn’t even begin to cover the pure rapture that floods my senses in that instant. I laugh, and as the taste fades I toss the flower up into the air and watch it flutter down to the dusty soil with an even better taste imagined—that of the blood of each and every one of those Voltron pilots.
My resolve is renewed a thousand-fold and I charge forward with determination, drive, and rage unlike any I’ve ever felt before.
“Voltron.” I seethe with sheer hatred, my fingers flexing and heart—so I do still have one of those. Is it next to my lazon core? I wonder idly—pounding a furious rhythm inside me.
As I move faster and faster, I catch a new scent on the air, one reminiscent of the stench that wafts up from the Pit of Skulls back on Doom. No doubt it’s some animal carcass festering in the desert sun upwind from me, but I recognize and embrace it as something else. Death.
Will it be mine or Voltron’s?
I spot the familiar sight of those damnable mechanical lions on the horizon and roar with rage.
We’ll soon see.
* * *
“Macro”
Lyrics by Martin L. Gore
Overflowing senses
Heightened awareness
I hear my blood flow
I feel its caress
Whispering cosmos
Talking right to me
Unlimited endless
God breathing through me
See the microcosm
In macro vision
Our bodies moving
With pure precision
One universal celebration
One evolution
One creation
Thundering rhythm
Pounding within me
Driving me onwards
Forcing me to see
Clear and enlightening
Right there before me
Brilliantly shining
Intricate beauty
See the microcosm
In macro vision
Our bodies moving
With pure precision
One universal celebration
One evolution
One creation
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