10

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“She’s coming,” he told her
“That’s good, I was beginning to worry she wouldn’t show up today,” she replied.
They’d been waiting for quite some time now, and his radar had just picked up her approach several miles away.  It wasn’t like her to be so late; usually she was one of the first to arrive of the two to the island.  Yet Zoe had beaten her here and they’d been waiting for a good 20 minutes.  
His eyes could just make out her speck flying high over the horizon.  He smiled; in truth he was beginning to worry as well.  She either was on time or didn’t show up at all and lately she hadn’t bothered to drop by.  But whenever she did, he always smiled; he enjoyed the company of his sister.  His right eye could clearly make out her advancing figure now, though to the normal eye, she was still a barely visible black dot on the blue horizon: her long black hair worn in a twin braid, her beautiful face that always seemed to carry so much sadness, her one angel wing, and her one demon wing.  Zoe saw his smile, and smiled a bit herself.  Smiles are contagious you see.  But suddenly, she watched as his smiling face vanished to be replaced with a mix of two emotions; curiosity and pure terror.  
“What’s wrong, Leviathaan-” a name she had picked up from Angel “-What do you see?”
“No, this can’t be…” was his reply, then turning his face from the speck in the sky to her with some difficulty, “I’ve gotta run; I’ve gotta save her!”  
Then, without even a word of explanation, he ran off, leaving a powerful blast of wind and a huge dust trail of sand in his wake.  Looking now at the figure which he had been concentrating on, she noticed its steady decent and felt a pang of fear fill her entire body.  What the hell was going on?
“Thank God for biomechanical upgrades,” the one named Leviathaan said and put on a fresh burst of speed that sent a relatively small sonic boom spreading in his wake.  Nearby a mosquito was busily getting his pre-dinner snack from a nesting seagull.  Both the mosquito and the crow were- and are you really surprised by this point? -named Dennis, and both, upon being struck by the sonic boom, were killed instantaneously.  
His target’s features, which had been clear to him from his start, were just starting to come into focus for a normal person’s eyes.  He could also make out something else glistening in the light in tracks on her face. What were they?  Tears?  Perhaps, but if he didn’t make it in time, he wouldn’t get a chance to ask her.
Later, when he would replay the memory for any details to the fall he might have overlooked, he would be surprised by the clarity of his own human memory.  It’s not uncommon in stressful situations for one’s vision to be enhanced to the near breaking point.  He could see, with his normal left eye, her willingness to obey the cruel master that is gravity.  He could see the wind fluttering her clothes, and remembered thinking how graceful she looked, even when approaching death.  He could even remember seeing each individual feather sway gently to the soft caresses of the air beneath them.  It almost looked like she was dancing with the very sky; so beautiful in such horror.
But these little details would come later to the strange man named Levaithaan.  For now, all his attention was focused on her simple descent.  For a brief moment, he was certain he wouldn’t be able to get to her before she hit warmed, gritting beach sand.  A few quick equations in his computer half of a mind told him otherwise, but even then, he felt all hope of rescuing her extinguished by the very air he ran past.  This was forgotten in an instant, and the next thing he knew, he was directly below her.  
He caught her as gently as a feather and performed a quick scan of her vitals.  Relieved to know that his catch hadn’t done any damage to her person, he walked her back to where Zoe was waiting anxiously for him with the fallen one named Angel seemingly asleep in his arms.  
“Thank God you caught her!” Zoe said, clearly relieved, “Is she alright?”
“I think so,” he replied, setting the Angel down to rest beneath the shade of a tree Zoe would find vaguely familiar, “there’s nothing wrong with her biologically, so she should be just fine.”
“What’d you think made her fall like that?”
“Her mental wavelengths suggest she’s asleep, so I can only deduce that she fell asleep in mid-flight.  But as to why, I haven’t the slightest idea,” he told her.  He had been careful to wipe the tear tracks away from her face; Zoe was already worried sick, and he didn’t want to add to the pile that she’d been crying on her way here.
“Well, how long do you think she’ll be asleep,” Zoe asked, sitting down on one side of the sleeping girl.
“I don’t know.  We’ll just have to wait and see,” he replied sitting on the sleeping girl’s other side.
And so, they did.

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A week later and the fallen Angel remained asleep.  Though, to say that it was a pleasant sleep would be far from the truth.  On several occasions she had broken out in a cold sweat and would mumble names, or random words.  On one of these occasions, Zoe was watching her while Leviathaan was out collecting kindling and wood to build a fire for the night.  Half way working through her latest poem, she heard her charge begin to stir.
Beads of sweat had already begun to break out all over her face, which was twisted into a grimace, of pain.  Zoe looked around for a rag to wipe the sweat away, when the unconscious Angel spoke.
“…gone, all…gone.  Andrew…Messiah…all gone.  Why?  All of them…gone.”
“Leviathaan!  Leviathaan, come back!  She’s talking in her sleep!”  Zoe screamed, but was unsure if her cries reached the mechanical ears of her target.
The Angel continued to sweat and speak broken sentences for another five minutes, and then, just as suddenly as she had started, fell back into a deep and peaceful sleep.  When Leviathaan returned, Zoe had told him about everything she’d heard, and hoped that Leviathaan’s supercomputer-half of a brain could make any sense of it.  Unfortunately, he could not.  The rest of the week, they paid closer attention to their patient, and when they ventured out for food or wood, remained within earshot of the camp.  


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A week of caring and feeding the unconscious friend and family member they held dear.  A week of random outbursts of unintelligible sentences and cold sweats.  A week of worry for the Mechanical Man and the New Zealander named Zoe.  A week…and then she woke.
Leviathaan was on guard duty, as they had come to call it, while Zoe was out finding some food for lunch.  As usual, he was resting as he always does at the start of my stories.  This time, however, he wasn’t replaying one of his many stored memories, but Google searching his sister’s symptoms.  So far he had produced nothing, and was just beginning to go to another hotlink when he heard his patient stir again.  The past few days had brought about moments when she would start to speak in more complete sentences, and times when she actually opened her eyes and look at the two of them.  It had been debated by the two as to whether she was actually awake or not, and had concluded that it meant nothing.  He questioned whether he should call Zoe back or not, but decided not to; hope could be a good friend and a bitter enemy, and Zoe had had enough of the latter.  
With this knowledge in hand, he ignored her repeatedly mentioning his name in a barely audible whisper.  What struck him as strange, was the growing volume and-was it annoyance?-that he could sense in her voice.  Finally, he opened his eyes to look at her, and found her looking back.  Clearly shocked and feeling the hope which a moment ago he had very logically pushed aside, he barely heard what she was saying at all.
“Well it’s about time!  I’ve been trying to talk to you for the past five minutes!  You may be able to hear an owl breathing at 400 yards, but sometimes you don’t listen Onii-kun!” She said in a barely audible whisper.  
Coming out of his state of shock, he managed to say in a shaky voice, “Well you know how technology is nowadays, amazing as hell, but so damn unreliable,” which was responded to by a weak, but full and hearty laugh.
After allowing her to laugh, it had soothed his soul and mind so much, he asked the question that had plagued both him and Zoe for a week.
“So now that you’re awake,” he began, “why did you fall like that?  Why do you keep mentioning your Messiah?  Why were you crying on your way over here?”
“Well…I’m losing my friends, Onii-kun.  All of them are going away, and my no longer Messiah is talking trash on me, and…I just feel so alone right now.  It doesn’t even matter that my birthday’s in a week.  I was just so sad on my way over here, and I kept thinking about all of it, and I started crying, and then, everything…just started to fade and get black and now…I’m here,” she responded with downcast eyes and, he could tell without his sensors, tears were welling up just behind them.
What he did next was not based on sympathy or any form of console he was trying to offer.  He simply did it as a thoughtless instinct that is inherent in all older brothers.  He moved closer to the Angel, his imouto, his sister, by no more than title, and hugged her.  He did it as tightly as he could, yet she felt it was oddly gentle and at this, she did cry.  He released her, looked her directly in the eyes and said, “you are never alone, imouto.  The Mechanical Man will always be here, and will always be by your side-”
“And don’t forget Zoe, the traveler on the raft.  I can’t believe you didn’t call me over the second she was awake Leviathaan!” she interrupted.
“It kinda slipped my mind, which is surprisingly easy at times,” he responded, as Zoe moved forward to give the Angel a hug as well, “how long were you listening?”
“Long enough to know why she fell.  Oh, Angel, I’m so sorry.  Please don’t worry about it, you’ll always have us,” she said and hugged the fallen Angel again.
“Thank you,” the now conscious Angel said to her friend and brother, “thank you, both of you, so much.  I know you both want to know why this is all happening, but for now, I don’t wanna think about it.  For now…let’s eat, I’m starving.”
And so they dined on roasted bird and some fruit, Angel eating like she hadn’t seen food in a week.  It was only after their stomachs were full did curiosity finally strike.
“Hey, how long have I been out?” the Angel asked.
“A week,” Zoe replied.
“Wait that means…I guess it’s your birthday today, isn’t it?” the Mechanical Man asked.
“Hmmm…yeah, I guess it does,” the fallen one replied.
“Then a very Merry Birthday to you!” Zoe said.
“Indeed, and many more,” Leviathaan added.

And so my story ends for now.  I will not say they lived happily ever after.  Such a presumption is made by fools and children.  But I will tell you that they lived.  Oh yes, they lived and continue to live.  Just as I will continue to write of them.

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He slept on the beach that night.  The gentle night waves acted as the perfect lullaby to send him to sleep, his coolie covering his eyes, and his death dealers laying a few feet up from him on the grass.  Angel had gone home from that day, and had come back to tell him her friends believed her over her once Messiah.  How he loved reliving memories like that.  He was just getting to the part where she woke up several days ago, and he was remembering the shock he had felt when-“Hello old friend,” he said to the night.
“It’s good to see you too, Leviathaan,” replied a feminine voice from no particular direction.  It had a quality of a song about it that he’d always found beautiful.
He had sensed her coming, however it still frightened him at how close she’d gotten and how he couldn’t quite pinpoint her position.  It was almost like she was everywhere.  He didn’t show it on his face, however, and produced a smile as genuine as the waves.
“So what brings you to this island of mystery?  Business or pleasure?” he said in that strangely calm note that Zoe would’ve found disturbingly familiar.
“Well I was in the neighborhood and decided to look you up.  You’re awfully hard to find, you know, but you’ve always been bad at hiding from me,” replied the voice, now from a very distinct point.  He calculated that she was some 10 ft. away from him.  
“Well, I guess some things you can’t just get away from,” he said, getting up to face her.
She looked exactly like she had all those years ago, except for the obvious changes of time and puberty.  Her radiant face wearing a smile was slightly blocked by her shoulder-length curly brown hair.  Her slender figure was hidden beneath a pair of denim jeans and a George Strait T-shirt.  One hand was propped on her hip and the other holding a katana he’d never seen before over her shoulder.  Looking at her, you wouldn’t suspect she could wield the sword she carried, that is, until you looked into her eyes.  Those eyes that he would never forget, no matter how much he wished he would.  They were blue, like Clint Eastwood’s eyes, yet they were always calm and almost…glowing.
The waves seemed to grow bigger and stronger; nothing moved or spoke in the surrounding growth, as if the world around them knew that something was about to happen.  Not even the wind from the sea seemed to disturb their clothes, as if they were in a space completely isolated from nature or time.
“It’s been a long time,” The Mechanical Man said with that same smile on his face to the girl standing opposite him, “I’m glad to see you again, Naomi.”