Binoculars, a folding chair in the snow, and a roof. My observation post, as good as can be expected under the circumstances, I suppose.
It’s not that I’ve never seen this tower before. I saw it back when it was just a stump of concrete in a dirty field. I saw it at the height of its glory when it was a world-famous marvel of engineering. I saw it burning one sunny August. I saw the city from the observation platform and from a table in the restaurant just above it. Every time I visited, the golden eye saw it differently, and today, what it sees is an ominous, creepy syringe, with a small dance party of demons on top of the needle. No, I’m not about to count them. Knowing the eye, the number might turn out to be imaginary. These usually cause a headache.
Today, I came to see it fall, and as I watched the battle on the lawn before the tower get started, I heard a familiar voice behind my back.
“You don’t have to be so graphic when calling me. I would probably be here anyway, it’s your story, after all,” Rika whispered. It’s strange how I didn’t feel her breathing on my neck. Probably because she forgets to breathe so often…
I made a mental note to go back and actually figure out some way to attract her attention to correct for the paradox, and looked away from my binoculars to respond, “I just had something important to tell you, and it needs to be today.”
She smiled back. “That’s silly. You could have a thousand New Years in a row if you wanted. What makes this one special?”
I handed her the binoculars. “Look. I said before, that this is the time and place I picked, remember? But this, this is why I picked it. You see… It’s an immature nation. It’s like a child. Never really got the chance to grow up, stuck like that for hundreds of years. Vindictive, prideful, egotistic, paranoid… But precisely because it’s so much like a child, it craves a miracle, a miracle that brings meaning to the senseless world. A miracle like you. Today is the day miracles happen. I’m sorry it’s not your birthday, but for these people your birthday doesn’t mean anything. Today does. Tonight, here and now.”
“So what do you expect me to do?” she thrust the binoculars back at me with a menacing grin. I know that grin. I wonder, did anyone tell you how scary that grin looks in the dark, when your hair is glowing like that?
But that’s not the way it’s supposed to go.
“I don’t expect you to do anything. They do,” I said, pointing a finger out towards where the Elusive Avengers were tearing up the scenery on the lawn before the tower, fighting police and the Patriot. Patriot would not be much of a threat, since his suit barely had the battery life for five minutes of operation, but police guns were another story. “I told them, that today, if they do their best, if they have hope, they win the battle that avenges all their suffering and change the world forever. I’m just an extreme historian, I don’t have the right to ask. They live here.”
“You’re a writer. And I’m your Deus ex Machina,” she replied. Her voice was blank, and the expression was blank too, but the golden eye was simply blinded. Thank ye gods and little fishes for small mercies, because I shudder to think what it would have shown me if it wasn’t.
Let’s just hope she’s familiar with the concept.
“No. You’re my eucatastrophe.”
She suddenly laughed. A long, slow laugh that starts as a giggle and ends as a villainous laughter, synchronous with the shaking of my knees. When she was finally done, which felt much longer than it had any right to, she asked, “So what is ‘their’ wish?”
You could almost hear the quotes.
“To stop the lies and make way for the truth,” I said. I can’t tell her to knock the tower down, she has to guess. I would hate it if this costs me this fragile friendship, but I have a hunch that it won’t. I’m actually more interesting to her this way.
She smiled again. “Wish granted. But when this storyline is over, you go with me on an adventure.”
So that was all it took? I smiled right back. “Deal.”
“Reconfigure for 最終兵器!”
“STAND BY. READY.”
That suitcase still unnerves me. The way it jumps into her outstretched hand out of nowhere, the way it glitters blue as it transforms into something else.
“Set up!”
And on feathery wings of steel, she rose into the air, as snowflakes drifted down.
It didn’t take her longer than five seconds. I don’t know how many watts she pumped into that laser beam, but probably not that much, because it didn’t actually slice the tower apart completely. Ripping up most of the steel trusses with a diagonal cut was enough.
The air filled with the low rumble of concrete sliding against concrete and cracking apart, while the chime of my pocket watch marked the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one.
There was also no end of screaming, but that’s what makes it a catastrophe.
The eu- part is about how it’s actually for the best.