Taj chose Mewtwo? I suppose you could put it like that.
There was a time, long ago, when Taj did not even think about playing as Mewtwo. Perhaps you could call him foolish, but I would contend that this is the state all mortals assume when confronted with something greater than themselves. They blind themselves to truth in order to maintain balance within their fragile minds.
Indeed, opening your mind up to the abyss, the infinite, the primal darkness within us all... it is no small task.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Bear in mind that my account of Taj's story is pieced together from the broken sobs of witnesses, what little I have gleaned from Taj's sparse but dark recollections, and my own memory of that day. I was not there, mind you, but in a location a safe distance away--Texas, as it turns out.
That day began like any other, but as is typical of a day capable of shattering the Earth itself, there were... portents. The birds stopped singing. Plants grew still in the dying breeze and wilted with the passing of the Shadow. I felt the echoes, heard the soft song that slid across the ears like a sword being drawn from its sheath... but this is not my story.
Taj, of course, was blind to the coming, for reasons mentioned above. He was in that blissful state that many of us enjoyed, at the time: playing Super Smash Brothers: Melee.
In pursuit of speed, Taj played Fox and Marth, but also chose them for their grace and style. Even then, before knowledge of tiers was common, he displayed an affinity for the game that bordered on the psychic. Premonitions of future knowledge rippled back and laced themselves through his brain and influenced what was seemingly the most mundane of choices.
Those same premonitions, whispered truths from nether voices, made themselves heard that day, and Taj--open to them, despite the precautions his brain took to insure its own sanity--felt a slight tug. A minor push, a gentle voice that said, "here."
Taj's cursor glided down from Fox, as if its owner were in a trance. It moved right, past Pikachu, past Jigglypuff, and fell upon the center square of the bottom row.
Mewtwo.
All events can be traced to a cause, and if you were to find the catalyst for what happened next it would, without any shred of doubt, be the click of an innocuous green button, sliding through its chamber, to trigger an electrical signal that changed the world.
The noise that came from the television then was not silence but was not sound. It was a nether-wave that tore through the music and the conversation of Taj's gaming compatriots, an anti-silence that absorbed the ambiance and drew power from it. And with that consuming wave came one dark tendril, then two, then three, spiraling wisps that grew in thickness and length and headed towards one irrevocable destination.
The arms drew in the light and consumed it, spitting out a trailing coruscation as they entwined Taj, who still sat without moving or speaking, staring wide-eyed into the terrible maw of darkness. Ominous laughter shook the remaining foundation of the crumbling house and a voice, in a language unspeakable and unknowable, slithered through Taj's brain with a seductive susurrus. They lifted him into the air while around him life itself melted away.
The voice continued to wind through the inner chambers of Taj's mind, promising, threatening, spitting, cursing. And then, at the end... asking.
It stopped, to wait for an answer.
Time itself held its breath.
Taj's eyes softened, and he breathed a single word:
"Yes."
The laughter grew, then died as a swirling ball of utter blackness, the purest antithesis of brilliance, formed with Taj at its center.
It swept apart the remaining matter that still stood whole before it, and pushed on through the neighborhood, the town, the city, until it had grown to a sphere thirty miles wide. Abruptly, it shrunk down to the size of a swirling gem which burrowed itself deep into Taj's heart, and suspended above the crater formed by its dark power, Taj slowly lowered to the ground.
It is there, in the center of that carnage, that he was found later by authorities, who stared dumbfounded at the scene of destruction before them.
The world has never been the same since. Following that day, when Taj's body became a willing vessel for the consuming legion of shadow, he has walked the streets and highways of America, laying waste to all who stood before him.
And, we are certain, it was in fact the voice of the blackness himself, the primordial shadow that existed in the pure darkness before any light ever shone, and his voice undoubtedly lives on in Taj's mind.
What did that voice say? You'll have to ask Taj. He won't tell you, of course. To say those words would fulfill the tales whispered in the legacies of dark tomes, would precipitate the very crumbling of the Earth itself. The most I have ever heard him say, in a hoarse and shallow whisper that teetered dangerously over the precipice of madness, was this:
"You can't run from darkness."
There was a time, long ago, when Taj did not even think about playing as Mewtwo. Perhaps you could call him foolish, but I would contend that this is the state all mortals assume when confronted with something greater than themselves. They blind themselves to truth in order to maintain balance within their fragile minds.
Indeed, opening your mind up to the abyss, the infinite, the primal darkness within us all... it is no small task.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Bear in mind that my account of Taj's story is pieced together from the broken sobs of witnesses, what little I have gleaned from Taj's sparse but dark recollections, and my own memory of that day. I was not there, mind you, but in a location a safe distance away--Texas, as it turns out.
That day began like any other, but as is typical of a day capable of shattering the Earth itself, there were... portents. The birds stopped singing. Plants grew still in the dying breeze and wilted with the passing of the Shadow. I felt the echoes, heard the soft song that slid across the ears like a sword being drawn from its sheath... but this is not my story.
Taj, of course, was blind to the coming, for reasons mentioned above. He was in that blissful state that many of us enjoyed, at the time: playing Super Smash Brothers: Melee.
In pursuit of speed, Taj played Fox and Marth, but also chose them for their grace and style. Even then, before knowledge of tiers was common, he displayed an affinity for the game that bordered on the psychic. Premonitions of future knowledge rippled back and laced themselves through his brain and influenced what was seemingly the most mundane of choices.
Those same premonitions, whispered truths from nether voices, made themselves heard that day, and Taj--open to them, despite the precautions his brain took to insure its own sanity--felt a slight tug. A minor push, a gentle voice that said, "here."
Taj's cursor glided down from Fox, as if its owner were in a trance. It moved right, past Pikachu, past Jigglypuff, and fell upon the center square of the bottom row.
Mewtwo.
All events can be traced to a cause, and if you were to find the catalyst for what happened next it would, without any shred of doubt, be the click of an innocuous green button, sliding through its chamber, to trigger an electrical signal that changed the world.
The noise that came from the television then was not silence but was not sound. It was a nether-wave that tore through the music and the conversation of Taj's gaming compatriots, an anti-silence that absorbed the ambiance and drew power from it. And with that consuming wave came one dark tendril, then two, then three, spiraling wisps that grew in thickness and length and headed towards one irrevocable destination.
The arms drew in the light and consumed it, spitting out a trailing coruscation as they entwined Taj, who still sat without moving or speaking, staring wide-eyed into the terrible maw of darkness. Ominous laughter shook the remaining foundation of the crumbling house and a voice, in a language unspeakable and unknowable, slithered through Taj's brain with a seductive susurrus. They lifted him into the air while around him life itself melted away.
The voice continued to wind through the inner chambers of Taj's mind, promising, threatening, spitting, cursing. And then, at the end... asking.
It stopped, to wait for an answer.
Time itself held its breath.
Taj's eyes softened, and he breathed a single word:
"Yes."
The laughter grew, then died as a swirling ball of utter blackness, the purest antithesis of brilliance, formed with Taj at its center.
It swept apart the remaining matter that still stood whole before it, and pushed on through the neighborhood, the town, the city, until it had grown to a sphere thirty miles wide. Abruptly, it shrunk down to the size of a swirling gem which burrowed itself deep into Taj's heart, and suspended above the crater formed by its dark power, Taj slowly lowered to the ground.
It is there, in the center of that carnage, that he was found later by authorities, who stared dumbfounded at the scene of destruction before them.
The world has never been the same since. Following that day, when Taj's body became a willing vessel for the consuming legion of shadow, he has walked the streets and highways of America, laying waste to all who stood before him.
And, we are certain, it was in fact the voice of the blackness himself, the primordial shadow that existed in the pure darkness before any light ever shone, and his voice undoubtedly lives on in Taj's mind.
What did that voice say? You'll have to ask Taj. He won't tell you, of course. To say those words would fulfill the tales whispered in the legacies of dark tomes, would precipitate the very crumbling of the Earth itself. The most I have ever heard him say, in a hoarse and shallow whisper that teetered dangerously over the precipice of madness, was this:
"You can't run from darkness."
