#alien stage and blue lock collide??? yes I like when that happens

[dragonrajafanfiction]

Yggdrasil

"Is there anything you want to talk about?"

Toyama sat in his office behind a cup of tea across from his patient Tigre. 

Tigre had been absent for two weeks performing entry exercises for Battlefield Training level 1. He'd performed exceptionally well,  surpassing the students in his troop and complying dutifully with the strict schedule and regiment.  At this point, not only was he physically able, but now he had experience in shooting, keeping watch, and setting up camp. He looked more tan, a bit stronger, more energetic. He kept decorum, but every time he saw him, he couldn't help but feel happy at his success.

Tigre had two more weeks of academic pursuits before returning to Battlefield Training for the next round. Toyama had been seeing him for his weekly counseling and needed to catch up with his mental health after missing a session. 

Tigre took a deep breath, turning the delicate tea cup in his scarred hands. "I've been thinking a lot about where I come from. I didn't really care before. But people ask me questions like: where am I from? Who is my family?  Where did I go to school? But all I remember is the cage. I should have memories growing up. Like going to school. I didn't learn to read and write in the cage. Who taught me? I don't know my real name. My real name is not Tigre. That's what they called me."

Toyama listened carefully. "Do you think these questions are important?"

Tigre was thoughtful for a moment.  "No. That's not it. They're not important.  I just don't want to tell people I lived in a basement all my life. I don't want to say that I don't know my real name. I don't know where my parents are…"

"But this is the truth." Toyama said gently.  "How do you feel when they ask you these questions?"

Tigre thought about this and Toyama pulled a tissue from the box next to him and offered it to him.

"Sad…" Tigre said, wiping his face.

"What do you feel sad about?" Toyama asked.

"Just not knowing. I don't have anything to say… they ask who your parents are, you say I don't know and they… they look at me like they're sorry."

"That makes you feel sad?" Toyama asks. "Or are you sad before then?"

"Um…" Tigre tries to think. "Starting out, I never thought about my past. But now I'm afraid that every time I meet someone, they will ask questions like that. I'll already start getting sad before they ask that."

"So you feel bad in anticipation…"

"Yes. That's it."

Toyama nodded and made a note. "So when you meet someone,  you feel sad because you feel like you can't open up to them about your amnesia.  Then they ask about it. You tell them. They feel sorry, and then you feel sadder. Because they're sad."

"That's the gist of it."

"How do you think that is affecting your social life?" 

"Probably not good. It's not easy to meet new people.  I don't want to talk about myself."

"Understandable." Toyama was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, and, as though to signal a change of subject,  he switched legs.

"Have you tried to remember?"

"Yes." Tigre licked his lips. "I remember hearing a big crash and seeing Chu Zihang walk out.  I called him brother. Before that, I was lying down in the chains. I…"

Toyama kept quiet, making notes.

"I remember… fighting.  Killing something or someone.  Their faces were distorted. But I don't remember when that was. I remember people calling me Tigre, but they are just shadows in my mind."

"You don't remember doing anything else? Only rescue, fighting, lying down… and the shadows?"

Tigre sat still. He tried to focus. He was recalling images from his captivity. But he couldn't understand what order they went in. They called him Tigre… when? He killed that creature… but when? How long was he stuck down there? Which image came first? His memory was like two mirrors facing each other creating an endless array of identical reflection. 

"What about before your confinement? Do you remember anything?" Toyama asked.

Tigre closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to think of a memory of his childhood. He tried to remember life under a bright sun and a blue sky. The feel of the warmth of the day on his skin…. and was struck with a sudden wave of nausea so intense that the tea he just drank bubbled into his mouth like a geyser. He rushed to the trash bin, knocking over his chair, and barely made it in time.

Toyama watched him gagging helplessly and stood up. "Do you need help?"

Tigre was shaking and struggling to catch his breath. Toyama knelt next to him. "It's okay. Just relax." He handed him a tissue to help him wipe his face. "Did anything come to mind?"

"No… nothing."

Toyama pulled Tigre's hair back to keep it from going into the vomit. "It's not a failure. We will find a way to recover your memories. Every attempt is progress. I'd like to propose something… I'd like to get a scan of your brain."

Tigre gave him a fearful look. "Will it hurt?" 

"No. But I think we can both agree that just the act of remembering something forgotten shouldn't have this reaction right? This reaction is more physical than mental."

A few hours later,  Tigre is back in the clinic, in the lab on the fourth floor where they had the MRI machine. Tigre was lying on his back listening quietly to music and staying as still as he could.

Toyama stood in the room behind the imaging machine and the technician operating it sighed in irritation. "None of the images are clear."

"Is he moving around?"

"No that's not it. I'm getting interference in the magnetic resonance. Does he have any metal on him? Or any implants?" The technician asked.

"Implants…" Toyama whispered. Could something have been implanted in Tigre? Something blocking his memories? "Can you see any implants?"

"I can't see anything with these terrible images! I have to stop the test." He clicked a few times on the program to abort the test. "Oh come on… what is happening…"

"What's wrong?" 

"The computer screen just froze!" In the next second, the computer switched off and all the lights went out.

Red emergency lights from a generator came on. "Tigre… stay where you are, I think… ah the communication system isn't working either." The tech said.. "I'll go get him."

From the technician booth, there was a window. So Toyama saw the technician enter the room. He had barely gotten three steps in when the man abruptly collapsed to the floor and began convulsing.

Toyama started to hurry down but stopped. If he entered the room would he start convulsions as well? Tigre was not moving. Was he dead?!

Power suddenly returned to the room and the man stopped his seizures and lay still. Norma's voice suddenly came over the loudspeakers. "A very strong EMP was detected in this building. Agents are in route to investigate. I am assessing the damage. " 

EMP? Electromagnetic pulse? The MRI machine was smoking!

Toyama rushed down to help the technician, kneeling down close.  His eyes were rolled back white and he was breathing bloody foam.

Tigre had slid out of the MRI machine and looked stunned at the scene. "What happened?"

"You're alive! Thank God. Here, call for help."

Toyama tossed him his phone.  He expected Tigre to catch it but it fell and cracked against the tile floor. Tigre just stared at him. "Who are you?"

Toyama felt the blood rush from his face. 

Tigre looked at him in confusion.  "Where am I? What is this place."

Toyama stood up. "No…" His voice trembled. He stepped towards Tigre in a daze. "No!"

Tigre backed away until he could back away no further.  "Stay away!"

Toyama's eyes suddenly blazed yellow. While it was true that students could not use Yanling on campus, due to the nature of his work, Toyama would need special access to his Yanling at all times. A top secret method of defeating the Alchemy matrix that suppressed Yanling was granted him. So even though no one on Campus could use theirs, he could use his.

He stared into the wide and frightened eyes of Tigre and dove into memories that were already fading, burning to ashes like trees in a wildfire! Memories of them together in the hospital. Memories of his first day of school. 

Burning fury burst from Toyama and he opposed the force operating on Tigre’s mind in a single burst, roaring like an angry lion and rushing in the fight. Such a reaction may have struck many as unexpected. Toyama was a gentle soul. He was a professor, a psychologist and a priest, but he was also a member of the Secret Party and a Hybrid. The trail of blood he left was invisible, the battles were fought on the stage of the mind. He’d erased family, friends, lovers, precious moments. So long as they were contaminated by memories of dragonkind, those thoughts were his to slaughter.

For the first time, this peerless psychological warrior was being tasked, not to destroy but to protect. He planted himself in the middle of this mental obliteration and started to rebuild it. Tigre didn’t understand how much Toyama knew him. He’d walked these neural pathways more ways than he could count, like a woodsmen in a forest, he knew the trails of the memories he created. He rebuilt them.

“Who are you?” He demanded this mental fire. “What are you?”

He received no answer, only a corresponding increase of force, like a bull locking horns with him. As their strength collided, Toyama received a vision that he’d never received so far. This was alien, not native to Tigre’s mind. An outsider thought. 

A great tree, shrouded in mist, grew out of the desert. It was so tall that it pierced the cloud cover. Toyama watched in wonder as the white gleaming speck of a 777 passenger plane looked like a sparrow flying through its branches. At the base of the tree was a black dragon, but the dragon was dead. One of the tree’s roots ran through its eye socket. “Yggdrasil?”

Toyama could feel his own hands squeezing Tigre's arms tight while the other man struggled.  Brainwashing was supposed to be a painless process. You were not supposed to be able to perceive the changes. Tigre didn't realize he was forgetting everyone around him a few moments ago. He had just failed to recognizeToyama.  But now that he was both forgetting and having memories restored at once, he was trying to pull away and crying in fear, unable to control his own thoughts as two powerful entities struggled for custody of his mind.

Toyama held on to him. He regretted the trauma he was no doubt inflicting. Even though he was not religious, he worked in the Church on campus as a junior priest and knew how to pray. For the first time he actually did. He was up against something powerful, otherworldly. Even if Tigre would never trust him again, he prayed that he could at least remember him! The force that was erasing his memories was relentless, but it wasn't smart. It didn't try to figure Toyama out. It just erased memories in the same pattern once he restored them. Toyama could learn that pattern.

So long as Toyama safeguarded those memories,  the attacker couldn't advance. The memory of meeting Chu Zihang the first time, waking up the first time in the hospital,  the 3E exam -- these were the main points of interest to this mysterious entity.  Toyama stood as a bulwark against them, and instead attacked this tree. Where is it? 

Tigre's mind suddenly shut off and he slumped against him. Toyama's mind was kicked abruptly back into his body. Toyama felt unbearably hot and thirsty. Sweat dripped onto the linoleum floor. 

Toyama reached up and felt Tigre's pulse through his neck. Though he was pale and limp, Tigre was still alive.

If there was really something implanted in his head, there should be a mark, a scar. Toyama carefully started running his hands over Tigre's scalp, looking for any deformity. His fingers ran over a small series of ridged right on top of his head. 

Toyama tilted Tigre's face toward him to see and pulled his hair back with his thumb and forefinger. A scar, in the shape of an Alchemy rune? It was a perfect circle in a circle.  Like an eye!

At this moment, members from the Executive board rushed in and surrounded him. “I’m alright! The situation is under control, but I have an urgent message for the school board! This is a serious situation!”

Toyama made sure that Tigre was moved to the 5th floor. “I’m sorry. But you have to be returned to quarantine. I don’t know if you can hear me...” Toyama whispered to the unconscious Tigre.

He raced back downstairs towards the library. He climbed to the second floor and burst into the door. The library was like a beehive that had been struck. It was full of workers trying to reconnect with everything that had been knocked offline by the EMP blast. Schneider and Guderian were watching. Who know where Manstein was.

“I need a word.” 

Schneider looked at him in surprise. His shirt was wrinkled, and transparent against his chest and his hair stuck to his forehead.

“Guderian get our systems back to normal.” Schneider strode away and Toyama didn’t wait, immediately leaving the room to a side office.

“Here, it’s not much but at least wipe your face off.” Schneider offered him a tissue box. 

“I’ve finally figured Tigre out. Tigre is not a dragon. He’s a hybrid. But there is something in him that is dragonkin. That is what is erasing his memories. I suspected something physically wrong with him for a long time. So I had an MRI scan done of his head. But when the scan began, a huge EMP blast exploded on campus! When I approached him, he acted like he didn’t know me. So I used my Yanling to peer in his mind and something else was there. Another thought, thoughts that weren’t his. These things were pruning his memories.”

“I dove into the mind of that thing and I saw a memory of a tree. A great tree in the fog. So big that a plane flying by looked like a bit of office paper in the wind. And at the roots of the tree I saw a dragon but it was dead.” He flipped over a piece of paper on a desk in the office and pulled the cap of a pen and held it in his mouth while he drew. I thought, Yggdrasil, but it’s not Yggdrasil. I believe this is a dragonborn thing.”

“Is it controlling him?”

“It’s erasing his memories for a purpose. It was after all memories of dragonkind in his brain. It didn’t seem… conscious. I didn’t adapt strategies, it kept going after the memories… like a zombie, mindlessly trying to eat his brain.” He finished his drawing and leaned on the desk. “I know that dragons can sense the thoughts of humans and can either attack or evade. So this sort of behavior isn’t unheard of. A dragon can manipulate the thoughts of humans. After all.. I can. I defended his mind as best I could. But as for now I’ve returned him to the quarantine area of the clinic to make sure he’s safe.”

Schneider rumbled. “An unfortunate turn of events.”

“I feel bad for him and for Chu Zihang. I know rescuing Tigre meant a lot to him.”

Schneider froze.

Toyama chuckled. “I know that boy too Schneider. He’s a kind person. He was happy to save Tigre and followed his progress because he cared. You kept Tigre alive for his benefit right?”

Schneider sighed softly.

“But we have to … face reality.” Toyama hung his head, leaning on the desk. “If that thing is in his head and it can’t be removed… it will likely kill him at some point. Even if we’re not forced to kill him.”

Schneider walked over and placed one hand on his shoulder.