Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 14:10:53 -0600 Reply-To: Highlander TV show stories Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Alejandro Melchor Lombardo Subject: FIREBORN_I This story is intended as part of an ongoing series of open ended stories featuring the main character; any suggestions, commentaries and else are welcomed. Also, any corrections on syntax, orthography and such are wholeheartedly accepted, for english is a second language to me. Some troubles were reported and I found out the local server was going nuts when I posted this, so; here it goes again (plus some corrections; thanks Steve) Alejandro Melchor al168214%academ01.mty.itesm.mx ------- CHRONICLES OF THE FIREBORN --------- I. GATHERINGS There it was again, he noted; a man who would otherwise be lost among the sea of faces if not for his tightly focused attention. Doctor Jorge De Aragon snorted in disgust, he was being watched again; would they never let him be?, he asked to himself. The rain was pouring gently on the streets of Mexico City, the place where De Aragon had established a new existence as a teacher in the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, campus Mexico. How many names had he adopted since the Curse? He could not remember, the only thing he was certain right now was that the bothersome Watchers had located him again. He boarded the pesera that stoped at his call, its bright green contrasting loudly against the dull grey of the city. Let the Watcher follow him now, he thought as he made himself as comfortable as the small space inside the Volkswagen Combi allowed. He found an unocuppied space between a young student type and a fat woman and sat, brushing water from his trenchcoat. He smiled lightly, thinking back to the time when he had first discovered the Watchers. He was a mercenary in Spain, he recalled, under the command of Ferdinand, the Catholic King in a crusade to get rid of the saracens in spanish land. Battle was hard, De Aragon had always admired the saracens' prowess in battle as much as his disdain for the human race allowed him. He had felt a nagging at his head; a low buzzing that refused to leave no matter how much he lost himself in combat, swinging his sword left and right, severing the lifes of the kind he hated. At night, he saw this fellow over the campfire, totally and utterly unnoticeable; nothing stood out of him save that basic ignorability, but the buzzing became stronger when Jorge thought of him. The next day of combat, he managed to fight beside the man and, making sure no one in the Spaniard army saw him, struck with the sword's pommel to the back of his head. The man limped, and he pulled him aside, away from the battle. "Now, my friend," Jorge asked when the man woke up, "just _what_ are you?" "What dou you mean, hombre?; I am a soldier in the King's employ". "You lie, friend,", De Aragon locked his eyes on the man's, and with a deep voice he asked again, "what are you?" "I...am...a...Wat...cher...", the man babbled, Jorge smiled inwardly, of all the powers he had lost, his stare was not one of them. "What is a Watcher?, what do you watch?" "Imm...immortals..." He had been found! Despite all of his precautions, someone had guessed at his true nature! "Why?!" Jorge shouted, almost losing control of his mesmerizing gaze, "why do you watch me?!" "We...keep records...of all...immortals..." The thought struck him at last. "Are there others like me?" "Many...many more...but you are a...strange one...We don't know when...you first died..." What was this man rambling about?! He had _never_ died in the centuries after the Curse. He had taken good care of that. "Continue". "You have not fought...with other immortals...taken others' heads..." His curiosity was really picked; through the Watcher he learned of the immortals and their Game, of the Gathering and the Prize. He killed the man, making sure that his body was found hacked by the saracens' scimitars. "Con permiso, senor,", said the student as he signaled the driver to stop. De Aragon came back to the present with the buzzing sensation; he had really not expected to shake off pursuit when boarding the collective transport; what bothered him now was that the feeling was stronger _and_ split. They have assigned two or more to watch me, he thought; he could not blame them, he had killed several Watchers over the course of history so that it was only natural for them to feel safe in numbers. He climbed down at the same time as the student, he fixed on his surroundings and discovered that he was lost; the city had overgrown, and now it was like a black stain, an oversized version of what it used to be. It didn't matter anyway, it was Friday and he had nothing to do, and he was enjoying the rain, so he walked, with no direction in mind. The first time he had beheld Mexico City it was still called Tenochtitlan, and the magic flowing in the land startled him to the point of ecstasy. He had arrived with the horde of Hernan Cortes and had actually wept when the aztecs were put through the sword. Such opportunities wasted, he remembered, his tears being not only for the indians but also for himself, for at first he had harbored the hope that a shaman of this strange land might now how to remove his Curse. After the fall of the Aztec Empire, he wandered the american continent in search for the cure, but in all his travels he never met someone with enough power to counter the enchantment laid upon him by the most powerful of magicians. There it was again; the nagging presence of the Watchers, don't they tire of losing their men to me?, their very stealth allowed him to easily dispose of them without attracting the media's attention, and he was greatly tired of their running around after him. Certainly they had bugged his home, again. The electronic age made life very difficult for those who don't die. "Those who don't die", he muttered, thinking if he had ever encountered one of those immortals the Watchers paranoically pursued; maybe that swordsman in France that was rumored to have survived a duel while fighting drunk, or that grumbling woodsman with the axe in perfect condition, an axe not forged to cut trees... Wherever, and whomever they were, as he didn't recognize them, they didn't recognize him and he was happy at that; he didn't want to get dragged into their Game, he was not of their kind, he was their better, but would not gain their Prize even if he killed them all and became the "only one". And carrying a sword all over the city was extremely uncomfortable. He stopped dead in his tracks, the buzzing had grown stronger and more widespread, surrounding him. That's no surveillance tactic, he thought, I have seen wolves doing just that. He could not believe it, he laughed at the thought, they were hunting him down! They thought themselves undetected but it was their deep concentration on him, their quarry, that exposed them to his mind! A few blocks away he spotted a subway station; he decided to humor them and headed there imperturbable, at last a fight! He had grown bored as the human society became more civilized, his thirst for violence having to be put aside, but now; now there was a challenge! He saw the first one climbing down the stairs to the station proper, looking as normal as a grain of sand on the beach, but not to his mind's eye. The station was almost deserted, good, he thought, no witnesses. The train arrived shortly; he boarded it and, as the doors were closing, he got out; perfect: one of his shadowers had taken the bait and gotten in; the train went on his way and the only people left on the station were him and the Watchers. One of them pulled a gun. "Chingada!" Jorge sweared in spanish as he dived behind a corner to evade the shot. He had underestimated his hunters, he knew they thought him an immortal whose only way to die was his head being severed, why shoot him? Easily he found the answer; to slow him down. But he was not immortal; he was merely undying. He had discovered that his abilities prior to the Curse had begun to return over the turn of the centuries, but they were still insignificant and mostly useless in direct combat, a human would be lost; but he was not born human and no human would kill him! He sensed the Watcher with the gun fastly approaching, and being joined by his friends; three of them. He peeked by the side of his relative shelter and, as the Watcher passed by a huge billboard, De Aragon suggested reality to drop it on him. Reality complied. He heard a grunt and a crash, and he ran to where the man laid beneath the huge plastic board and jumped on top. He heard as he knocked the wind off his pursuer and, inhumanly fast, he lifted the board and took the gun from the Watcher, shot twice and hid himself before the others had the chance tho shoot their weapons. Across the railway, stairs beckoned to him. He made a dash for it and jumped, he managed not to touch the electric rail and made it to the other side; it was of little use; the hunt would continue on the street above. The rain had stopped, and the asphalt was wet and slippery. Jorge ran to a place where he could ambush the hunters. He felt them exiting the station and kicked a can to attract their attention. "There!, he went that way!", Jorge heard them and stopped as he turned a corner. He stood, waiting. He had not noticed the gun he had taken had a silencer. He thanked the gods for it. As soon as one of the hunters appeared, he killed him with three shots to the head, turned the corner and downed another one before emptying the handgun's magazine. Jorge threw the gun away noisily, making sure that it was heard. By exerting his will, he produced the sound of running feet and waited for the last of them to show up. He did. Jorge grabbed him by the collar and smashed his body to the wall, actually making some cracks on the plaster. Hastily, he locked eyes with his pursuer. "Now, now; aren't we nasty nowadays?, killing poor immortals..." Fear came from the man's eyes, and Jorge relished every bit. He checked the man's wrist. Sure, there was the Watcher symbol. "First you spy, now you kill; what are the Watchers up to now?" "Kill...all...immortals...Protect..the Prize..." Jorge's gaze had been strong in the 1400's, now it was irresistible, and he used it to twist the Watcher's mind and numb it with illusory pain. From there he learned that the Hunters were renegade Watchers, he smiled and pulled at the mind of his victim once more, producing a restrained gasp. "You are lucky, man; I have decided not to kill you, what do you say to that?" "Huh..." "WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THAT?!!!!!" "Thank...you". "Good; now listen, and listen well: your mind now belongs to me", De Aragon said as he twisted again with his eyes. "Aargh!" "From now on, you will do everything on your capacity to divert your fellows' attention off me, you hear?" "Yes". "Tell them that your mission was acomplished; I killed your companions, but you killed me". "But..." "And understand, manling, that I am NOT one of your immortals; I AM NOT EVEN HUMAN!, I am of the fireborn!, cursed to wear this shape until my natural life ends!, which for my kind will not be for a very long time". He let the Hunter drop to the ground, then lifted him and dusted him in a friendly maner. "You surely have my phone number, right?" "Ehr, yes; I do". "You will call me when you decide to go after an immortal with enough time for me to reach him before you do; it was time for me to meet with one of them". "I..I.." "Remember; fail me, and you die". De Aragon left unhurriedly, unlike the Hunter. He mused over his spontaneous decision, did he really want to meet an immortal? Well, at least the experience would prove interesting. He began whistling a tune his mother had sung when he was still a hatchling, the song reminded him of the days before the Curse, when he had flexed powerful wings and sailed the winds. A time when he could lay claim to the name of dragon. THE END (for now...) --------------------------------------------- So that's it. As I wrote I realised that writing in english actually hinders me; I will practice some other ways, like writing in spanish and then translating but, in case that doesn't works, could anyone out there translate my texts from spanish? I would be eternally grateful :). Alejandro Melchor yyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy =========================================================================