Angelii Essay #2

[sixthdeadliest]

Following Six's Ascension a few months after his arrival, he made steps forward to reach out to more people. He formed a close alliance if not friendship with the Cybertronian Drift along with keeping an eye on all the kids of Nautilus. After one trip home, he lived under the impression that he'd died in his home world, so he decided to make the most of living in Nautilus. For the longest time, he was content and even happy though it'd be hard for anyone to tell with his stoic demeanor.

Then he found out that he hadn't died. Instead, he learned that he'd go on to lose his memory of the previous six years (arguably the best six years) of his life.

He spent months agonizing over the decision of whether or not he should return home to keep an eye on how things would go. However, the option had the possibility of him forgetting everything not just at home but in Nautilus as well. As time continued to pass, he decided that in order to be able to better understand his housemates and not lose his connection to them, he had to take the risk. However, he didn't simply jump into this without a plan. Knowing the kind of person he'd been six years prior to the Nanite Event and One's going EVO, he put a fail safe in place to help ensure that that version of him would be able to start becoming a better man.

He went to the Deva Antovil for assistance in building a star puzzle. Five of the six pieces were placed in the trust of Six's Shadow who would only award them when certain lessons were learned: Compassion, Loyalty, Patience, Trust, and Love. The intent was for certain people to be his teachers though Six allowed the Shadow to be able to make its own judgment calls on when he earned each one. Even if he didn't fully understand each lesson, the point was to at least be able to learn them.

Leaving a final message to himself to make that possible amnesiac version of him aware of the puzzle's existence, he returned home.

He returned February 1st without his memories of the previous six years or of Nautilus.

The Six that returned was a mercenary assassin with his moral compass firmly in the red zone. He regarded Nautilus initially as enemy territory, prepared to fight and kill anyone that attempted to approach him. It took Rex Salazar and Dr. Rebecca Holiday to calm him enough to at least return home with them. It was in his old room that he discovered the sixth piece of the puzzle bearing the message "Final Message" on it which prompted him to look on the Network for the last message he'd posted before he left.

Over the next few years, Six slowly earned each puzzle piece. Compassion he learned while working with Danny Fenton in training him how to properly fight, even standing up for the boy against a nightmare version of Vlad Plasmius when he was transported into the kid's dream during a storm. Loyalty he re-learned from Rex who never stopped standing by his side no matter how difficult Six made it. Rex also taught him Trust when Six had been transformed back into the street child he'd once been and had given him a reason to trust someone else by taking him in and taking care of him. Patience came from Lucas Kovach whom he'd been training in lockpicking and who'd been patient with him even when Six had raged at him. The final piece, Love, he earned by sacrificing himself to save Rex from an EVO Hei's lucky strike.

Despite all his hard work in achieving each puzzle piece, he would backslide from time to time. Particularly when he kept losing people. The worst of it was when Holiday unexpectedly went back to Sleep with no warning, only the wedding ring from the "ten years later" storm left behind. He took on dragon form and tried to hide away from Nautilus, burying himself in the wyrm's instincts. Rex managed to coax him out of it and bring him back to himself.

Rex was also present when he assembled and activated the star puzzle, triggering one last test in which he had to go back and face his past. It was a struggle to be able to accept those parts of himself that he'd buried, the very parts that helped forge him into the person he was. It was made even worse by the fact that Rex got a front row seat to it all. In the end, however, Six succeeded, even going on to use his Shadow from time-to-time as someone to talk with when he wasn't sure what to do.

In the ultimate display of trust, Six forged a two-way bond with Rex, allowing the kid a way to track him at all times along with letting the boy sense his emotions. Initially, he kept a sort of low wall up to maintain some distance, but eventually he dropped his walls completely, giving Rex free access to the emotions he normally kept hidden behind a stoic facade. It was a major breakthrough for the former mercenary who'd been taught by experience his whole life that giving people too much of himself would only lead to them hurting him.

So he started opening up again, largely to kids such as Daisuke Motomiya whom he'd met by chance during a walk. The kid wasn't afraid of him and had even invited him to play as a member of his soccer team. At the same time, he stood by Rex's side when he went through his own troubles...even though it would've been much easier to simply send his Shadow to deal with each emotional issue. While still remaining in the background of Nautilus life, Six kept a protective eye over it all.

Then the Labyrinth broke loose.

Gazing into the empty eye sockets of the Labyrinth, Six had the horrible epiphany that he'd never really be free of the person he'd once been. He would always be that mercenary assassin at his core. It gnawed at him. His Shadow could only offer that he just had to keep trying at it since there would always be that chance that he'd slip into old habits. It didn't give him peace per se, but it did give him some form of focus.

At the same time Ursaems had gathered a group of followers who ultimately went on to capture the Labyrinth in a pendant. Six stalked the group, watching the fight play out while not involving himself in it. When the action triggered a flood of Chaos into Nautilus, badly damaging the Aeon, Six stepped forward to volunteer to find more information on Ursaems to be able to find a way to stop whatever plans the Deva had since an all-out assault would be suicide. He went with Rex to retrieve vital intel which helped determine Ursaems' mindset for a more effective counterattack which he also participated in.

Things were quiet for a while after that until Rex lost his emotions during the senses storm. With a logical and rational Rex telling him that he was no longer needed, Six floundered and fell back onto the familiar idea of a contract to try and make it through what he saw as the inevitable severing of their bond. He built a thick wall between the pair of them, not wanting to let the emotionless Rex to have more ammunition to hurt him. However, even without constant knowledge of Six's emotional state, the emotionless version of Rex still managed to inflict damage. The worst of it was the kid's knowledge of things his old self had done that Six would never approve of, thoroughly rattling his decision to try and emulate who he'd thought was the better man. Yet when the opportunity arose to throw away the "sobriety chip" Nautilus had given him to celebrate his efforts of trying to move past being a heartless mercenary presented himself, he couldn't bring himself to do it, still wanting to be better than he had been. However, he felt lost on where to go next.

Fortunately, the accidental post on the Network allowed Rex--now back to normal--to see the full damage of what had happened. While Six maintained that wall between them, there were cracks that allowed some of his emotions to filter through. Despite not being a particularly comforting person, he even allowed the kid to cry on his shoulder, forgiving the kid for what he'd said during the storm once Rex explained that while he didn't need him on a logical level since Rex could protect himself, he still needed Six on an emotional one.

In short, over the past three years, Six has gone from being a somewhat respected member of Nautilus society to an amnesiac mercenary living on its fringes. Despite how much he struggles at it, he's been working on becoming at least some version of the Six that originally came to Nautilus and taking great strides in the process.