03-20-2009, 07:45 AM
Ashe’s world erupted into a blue and silver hue as she fell endlessly through the abyssal void, never feeling the impact of the cold steel floor that had been beneath her. Her eyes were fluttering back open as she fought to awaken herself, but she knew inside that it was futile. She had called Sage’s name, her memory recalling that Sage had sprung into action to grab her, and… A bright flash of light upon contact.
Feathers had replaced her body mass as she glided down, her feet finally touching down upon a crystalline stairway of a bright blue to contrast against the silver of the surrounding atmosphere. Her shoes turned in place as she gasped, looking all around her before kneeling to touch the azure stairwell. It felt solid enough that she couldn’t deny its existence as illusion, but she knew that she was either in a dream - or dead.
Oxygen filled her lungs as the girl strode cautiously down the crystal steps, seeing no end in sight but having no choice. Every step down the stair way seemed to be a walkthrough of her life, with the sky around her taking form as if a television, creating bubbles of imagery that floated by her to either cease their existence violently or to merge with one nearby to somehow interweave moment’s of her life. Her eyes widened as she reach out gingerly, a small orb landing upon her fingertips.
Taking a moment to sit down to rest, she found the sapphire platform had adjusted itself to mold around her, leaving her nested comfortably within an orb of energy as if sitting within a bean bag chair. She barely even noticed the changing of the world around her. The events within the crystal ball at her reach had her entire attention, however, and she leaned further in to lose herself to its visual grandeur…
Inside of the scene playing out before her was a small child, a young girl with a freckled face and a tomboyish grin plastered on her cheeks. Ashe gasped at the realization that this was her at the age of two. She couldn’t remember this ever happening, though, but another five year old girl was guided out of the room quickly by a man who was unmistakably Ashe’s father.
She looked around, suddenly realizing that she was now within the mind’s eye of the young girl, unable to control what she said or did, as if she were simply along for the ride. I don’t understand… What is this? Grandpa? Her thoughts rang out within her mind as the man called Gensei strode into view, guiding a woman in her mid twenties in to see the girl. Ashe felt herself smile and reach for the woman - her mom - as she received a quick hug in response. Her hands clasped at a name tag that read Lilandra Branford before she felt her mom pry her off.
Why is she worried?
Gensei squeezed her mom’s shoulders reassuringly and received a smile from her. A moment later, he looked up at a doctor that had entered the room and said something that Ashe couldn’t hear. Gah! Where’s the volume on this thing? Immediately she was sitting back on the crystal sofa, holding her favorite set of headphones. “That’s… interesting,” she mumbled suspiciously as she placed them within her ears, glancing back into the sky that was holding the scene - now paused - as if she were in a theatre. “Well, as long as I’m here for the ride, I wouldn’t mind some-” Popcorn covered her lap as her hands clumsily bumped the bag against her. She quickly straightened it up and popped some into her mouth in satisfaction before focusing on the images that had once more begun playing.
A man had strode forth and Gensei paused to shake hands with him. “Ah, Dr. Tranfield, it’s a pleasure to work with you again,” he laughed jovially, releasing the man’s firm grip to run his hand through his shorter but still lengthy white beard.
“Please, the pleasure is all mine. Lily has told me all about how much you’ve done for them. Especially the girls, I don’t know how they’d have gotten along with anyone else here. Isn’t Terra starting school soon?” the man asked in small talk.
Ashe’s mom stepped forward, a woman with strawberry blond hair pulled firmly back with a tie and eyes that radiated kindness through her glasses. Her crimson lips spread into a proud smile and she nodded, holding the younger Ashe’s hand as she spoke up. “We are hoping to send her to school as soon as possible before they close out the new entries. I think that we are going to keep Terra here on Kajin Rala though so that we can monitor her firsthand. That will allow us some advanced insight in case anything goes wrong with Ashe so we can-”
“Lily, don’t worry, we’ve got this under control. This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve done this for your kind,” the man reassured her, looking down at Ashe. The young girl who shared her mother’s hair color was peeking out shyly from behind her leg at the smiling man. “Ashe, you have a great lineage behind you, and we have a lot that we can learn from you. I doubt that you will even remember any of this, but just to let you know, we’ve taken your absolute safety into concern and the procedure will not hurt a bit.” He produced a small piece of candy from his coat pocket and handed it to her, coaxing her to step forward a slight bit. “Someone also told me that you love taffy. Is that true?” he asked, a faint twinkle in his brown eyes as Ashe leaped forward, snatching at the candy. He tussled her hair a bit and then stood up, beaming at the other two adults. “Well, at least she didn’t bite me like Terra did, haha.”
Ashe’s mom chuckled a bit and looked down at her daughter. “I couldn’t believe she did that to you, Jon, but Ashe is definitely more like her mommy, aren’t you?” Her arms embraced the triumphant girl as she chewed on her favorite candy. “Ashelia, don’t be afraid. This won’t hurt, and we’ll won’t let anything happen to you. We’ll wrap this up quickly and then you and grandpa will go to Earth so that you can live a normal life among normal humans.” She pulled back for a moment and then looked up at Gensei. “She’s so beautiful, isn’t she?”
The man simply chuckled once more, obviously confident in his talents. “Lily…” he began.
She took a breath and stepped back. “I know. Its just harder every time,” she said sadly. “I guess the rest of us turned out alright though, other than-”
“Are you ready, Ashe?” the man spoke to her, lifting her up and setting her into a comfortable doctor’s chair. “Dr. Tranfield here will watch to make sure that you are healthy and your body is working right.” Glancing over at the man, he received a nod as the diagnostic pulled up her vitals. He looked back at her and stepped away for a moment.
A warm and soothing field of energy surrounded the man as he began to unwrap a small sealed package from the table nearby, his aura building up the energy for what was to come. It was then that the image suddenly burst into static, as if the television before her had lost its reception. Ashe leapt to her feet as everything began vanishing around her.
“Wait!” she cried out, running a few steps forward into open air yet not falling. “Bring it back, I need to see what happened. What… I don’t understand! Mom? Gensei?” she cried out, having only seen just enough to confuse her as an event that she couldn’t even remember had just happened before her eyes. “What did you do-”
…to me? I’m… a normal human girl!
---
The lights burned her eyes as they were forced open, her breathing in painful gasps as the oxygen seemed to burn on injured lungs while the light attacked her eyes. Images were still happening in fleeting moments before her, only now she realized it was present events. Her eyes were flickering and wandering all around, unable to bear to her conscious that she was being ripped away from wherever she had been.
“Please, Ashe, we need your help!”
The girl’s muscles spasmed at their sudden awakening, as if they had been punched through with sheer adrenaline and had been completely unprepared for the experience. She felt herself being dragged to her feet and tried to hold herself up as her pink hair fell completely over her eyes, her head hanging low to the ground before someone straightened her up. “Come on,” a soft voice called out in a near whisper to her.
Ashe’s eyes finally began to adjust on the blurred imagery contesting for ownership before her and her breathing became normalized enough that she coughed before attempted fluent verbal thought. “Sa-sage?” That was the name she was trying to remember. It wasn’t her sister, nor her mom, nor even Gensei or her father. They were far away from here in a memory that was still halfway lost.
Had her family betrayed her? Gensei had watched over her and loved her for her entire life, and she’d visited her family every summer on that second Earth. She and her sister were close and her parents had never even come close to a divorce. She was a normal Earth girl, wasn’t she? Had that all changed? Was everything a lie, or was there more that she didn’t understand?
“Am I a freak?” she whispered imperceptibly below her breath, escaping Sage’s attention as the girl checked her all over. She tried to calm her mind using some of the breathing techniques that her grandfather had shown her, but she couldn’t help but question her past. Focus… She locked eyes onto Sage’s, matching her breaths with her own and feeling the energy ebb and flow back into her. These were her new… friends. The word felt strange within her mind, but she believed it was true.
She hadn’t known them long, understandably, but she was in a situation where she was going to have to rely on these people to keep her safe. She couldn’t exactly defend herself against these creatures, and they seemed to realize that, that she was an ordinary girl. She couldn’t use magic powers or wield ancient bladed weaponry of the past. She couldn’t fly through the air and explode energy from her palms, nor could she even fight in close combat with anymore more than the absolute basic levels of training that she had received after… After what had happened her first year in High School.
Sage and Rose were seemingly polar opposites, but they were like her. While Rose could do the unimaginable, she shared Ashe’s style of dress, even her hair color. She was wild and energetic, much like her friend Becca back home, and she seemed like she wouldn’t let anyone push her around. Rose comforted Ashe by her always confident presence, keeping her calm under pressure in the same way that Becca had always done even if she could be a bit annoying and selfish at times.
Similarly, Sage seemed a lot like her friend Claire. Although the two did not share the same timid and shy personalities, they were both compassionate about others and tended to think about helping out others and letting them enjoy things that they otherwise might not have been able to. Claire had, on many occasions, helped Ashe clean a scrape or ice a bruise after a bad fall from a tree or rough party. She was constantly seeking to involve everyone in things to keep the group close during times that they seemed to be getting pulled apart, and had helped Ashe out late into the night on some of the toughest school assignments she’d been given - all while Becca skipped out and went to a movie.
Ashe had always seemed to share a bit of herself with both of them, and she could find herself doing the same with Rose and Sage. The two may not have spoken very much with each other, but she was beginning to feel a level of trust building up with both of them that would allow her to let them in, friendships that could possibly even allow them to keep contact if they managed to survive this event.
Someone called out to them in the room, and Sage helped Ashe to lean against one of the tables in the room before turning to blast her energy gun at a group of the creatures that had scattered through. Rose was rising into the air next to Ashe as Sage ran to the edge of the room to help clear away the onslaught that had swarmed in from a hole that had been opened in the wall. Kazuya’s blade was flashing, cutting as many down as she could in the front.
It was that moment that a massive goblinish creature shattered through the rear barricade in the room as if breaking through tinfoil. A quick glance from Ashe brought a chill of terror to her heart. Sage’s words echoed within her mind as the creature bounded across the room and grabbed Ashe by the throat, lifting her into the air as its tongue flopped around outside of its gaping maw like a towel hanging loose over a set of knives. “Only two of these were salvageable, with the third requiring immediate extermination. This third creature will be exterminated within the week and has been stored within the facility’s tubes until the disposal plant is once more operational.” This had been the creature that was on the screen while they had read that part. Her feet slammed forward against the creature, but its chest was like a dragon’s, coated in a thick leathery set of yellow scales. She tried to call out for help, but her voice was being choked down in her throat. In what came to her as a mixed blessing, the creature switched her to its other large claw, releasing her throat for a brief moment as it raised her into its enormous mouth.
“Rose!” she cried out, expelling the air before it even had a chance to fill her burning lungs. Sage and Kazuya were too far away. “Help me!” she pleaded, her eyes burning with painful tears as she struggled to survive the creature’s bone crushing grip. As she tried to look anywhere but down its throat.
The two girls locked eyes from across the room, holding their breath as the explosions boomed, and Rose was the first to look away, glancing first at the floor before setting her sights on a glass window above them. Ashe’s eyes widened for a moment… as Rose’s aura exploded around her, not to help her fight the creature holding her, but to instead send her sprawling through the shattering glass and away from the group.
The world grew quiet around her, and she was lost to her thoughts as the oxygen was being drained away. Rose… You are coming back… Right? You were getting something to help… I know you were… she cried out, her only comfort being that she would be crushed by the creature before it decided to swallow her whole, and no one would even know. Mom? Grandpa? Dad?
Rose?
Feathers had replaced her body mass as she glided down, her feet finally touching down upon a crystalline stairway of a bright blue to contrast against the silver of the surrounding atmosphere. Her shoes turned in place as she gasped, looking all around her before kneeling to touch the azure stairwell. It felt solid enough that she couldn’t deny its existence as illusion, but she knew that she was either in a dream - or dead.
Oxygen filled her lungs as the girl strode cautiously down the crystal steps, seeing no end in sight but having no choice. Every step down the stair way seemed to be a walkthrough of her life, with the sky around her taking form as if a television, creating bubbles of imagery that floated by her to either cease their existence violently or to merge with one nearby to somehow interweave moment’s of her life. Her eyes widened as she reach out gingerly, a small orb landing upon her fingertips.
Taking a moment to sit down to rest, she found the sapphire platform had adjusted itself to mold around her, leaving her nested comfortably within an orb of energy as if sitting within a bean bag chair. She barely even noticed the changing of the world around her. The events within the crystal ball at her reach had her entire attention, however, and she leaned further in to lose herself to its visual grandeur…
Inside of the scene playing out before her was a small child, a young girl with a freckled face and a tomboyish grin plastered on her cheeks. Ashe gasped at the realization that this was her at the age of two. She couldn’t remember this ever happening, though, but another five year old girl was guided out of the room quickly by a man who was unmistakably Ashe’s father.
She looked around, suddenly realizing that she was now within the mind’s eye of the young girl, unable to control what she said or did, as if she were simply along for the ride. I don’t understand… What is this? Grandpa? Her thoughts rang out within her mind as the man called Gensei strode into view, guiding a woman in her mid twenties in to see the girl. Ashe felt herself smile and reach for the woman - her mom - as she received a quick hug in response. Her hands clasped at a name tag that read Lilandra Branford before she felt her mom pry her off.
Why is she worried?
Gensei squeezed her mom’s shoulders reassuringly and received a smile from her. A moment later, he looked up at a doctor that had entered the room and said something that Ashe couldn’t hear. Gah! Where’s the volume on this thing? Immediately she was sitting back on the crystal sofa, holding her favorite set of headphones. “That’s… interesting,” she mumbled suspiciously as she placed them within her ears, glancing back into the sky that was holding the scene - now paused - as if she were in a theatre. “Well, as long as I’m here for the ride, I wouldn’t mind some-” Popcorn covered her lap as her hands clumsily bumped the bag against her. She quickly straightened it up and popped some into her mouth in satisfaction before focusing on the images that had once more begun playing.
A man had strode forth and Gensei paused to shake hands with him. “Ah, Dr. Tranfield, it’s a pleasure to work with you again,” he laughed jovially, releasing the man’s firm grip to run his hand through his shorter but still lengthy white beard.
“Please, the pleasure is all mine. Lily has told me all about how much you’ve done for them. Especially the girls, I don’t know how they’d have gotten along with anyone else here. Isn’t Terra starting school soon?” the man asked in small talk.
Ashe’s mom stepped forward, a woman with strawberry blond hair pulled firmly back with a tie and eyes that radiated kindness through her glasses. Her crimson lips spread into a proud smile and she nodded, holding the younger Ashe’s hand as she spoke up. “We are hoping to send her to school as soon as possible before they close out the new entries. I think that we are going to keep Terra here on Kajin Rala though so that we can monitor her firsthand. That will allow us some advanced insight in case anything goes wrong with Ashe so we can-”
“Lily, don’t worry, we’ve got this under control. This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve done this for your kind,” the man reassured her, looking down at Ashe. The young girl who shared her mother’s hair color was peeking out shyly from behind her leg at the smiling man. “Ashe, you have a great lineage behind you, and we have a lot that we can learn from you. I doubt that you will even remember any of this, but just to let you know, we’ve taken your absolute safety into concern and the procedure will not hurt a bit.” He produced a small piece of candy from his coat pocket and handed it to her, coaxing her to step forward a slight bit. “Someone also told me that you love taffy. Is that true?” he asked, a faint twinkle in his brown eyes as Ashe leaped forward, snatching at the candy. He tussled her hair a bit and then stood up, beaming at the other two adults. “Well, at least she didn’t bite me like Terra did, haha.”
Ashe’s mom chuckled a bit and looked down at her daughter. “I couldn’t believe she did that to you, Jon, but Ashe is definitely more like her mommy, aren’t you?” Her arms embraced the triumphant girl as she chewed on her favorite candy. “Ashelia, don’t be afraid. This won’t hurt, and we’ll won’t let anything happen to you. We’ll wrap this up quickly and then you and grandpa will go to Earth so that you can live a normal life among normal humans.” She pulled back for a moment and then looked up at Gensei. “She’s so beautiful, isn’t she?”
The man simply chuckled once more, obviously confident in his talents. “Lily…” he began.
She took a breath and stepped back. “I know. Its just harder every time,” she said sadly. “I guess the rest of us turned out alright though, other than-”
“Are you ready, Ashe?” the man spoke to her, lifting her up and setting her into a comfortable doctor’s chair. “Dr. Tranfield here will watch to make sure that you are healthy and your body is working right.” Glancing over at the man, he received a nod as the diagnostic pulled up her vitals. He looked back at her and stepped away for a moment.
A warm and soothing field of energy surrounded the man as he began to unwrap a small sealed package from the table nearby, his aura building up the energy for what was to come. It was then that the image suddenly burst into static, as if the television before her had lost its reception. Ashe leapt to her feet as everything began vanishing around her.
“Wait!” she cried out, running a few steps forward into open air yet not falling. “Bring it back, I need to see what happened. What… I don’t understand! Mom? Gensei?” she cried out, having only seen just enough to confuse her as an event that she couldn’t even remember had just happened before her eyes. “What did you do-”
…to me? I’m… a normal human girl!
---
The lights burned her eyes as they were forced open, her breathing in painful gasps as the oxygen seemed to burn on injured lungs while the light attacked her eyes. Images were still happening in fleeting moments before her, only now she realized it was present events. Her eyes were flickering and wandering all around, unable to bear to her conscious that she was being ripped away from wherever she had been.
“Please, Ashe, we need your help!”
The girl’s muscles spasmed at their sudden awakening, as if they had been punched through with sheer adrenaline and had been completely unprepared for the experience. She felt herself being dragged to her feet and tried to hold herself up as her pink hair fell completely over her eyes, her head hanging low to the ground before someone straightened her up. “Come on,” a soft voice called out in a near whisper to her.
Ashe’s eyes finally began to adjust on the blurred imagery contesting for ownership before her and her breathing became normalized enough that she coughed before attempted fluent verbal thought. “Sa-sage?” That was the name she was trying to remember. It wasn’t her sister, nor her mom, nor even Gensei or her father. They were far away from here in a memory that was still halfway lost.
Had her family betrayed her? Gensei had watched over her and loved her for her entire life, and she’d visited her family every summer on that second Earth. She and her sister were close and her parents had never even come close to a divorce. She was a normal Earth girl, wasn’t she? Had that all changed? Was everything a lie, or was there more that she didn’t understand?
“Am I a freak?” she whispered imperceptibly below her breath, escaping Sage’s attention as the girl checked her all over. She tried to calm her mind using some of the breathing techniques that her grandfather had shown her, but she couldn’t help but question her past. Focus… She locked eyes onto Sage’s, matching her breaths with her own and feeling the energy ebb and flow back into her. These were her new… friends. The word felt strange within her mind, but she believed it was true.
She hadn’t known them long, understandably, but she was in a situation where she was going to have to rely on these people to keep her safe. She couldn’t exactly defend herself against these creatures, and they seemed to realize that, that she was an ordinary girl. She couldn’t use magic powers or wield ancient bladed weaponry of the past. She couldn’t fly through the air and explode energy from her palms, nor could she even fight in close combat with anymore more than the absolute basic levels of training that she had received after… After what had happened her first year in High School.
Sage and Rose were seemingly polar opposites, but they were like her. While Rose could do the unimaginable, she shared Ashe’s style of dress, even her hair color. She was wild and energetic, much like her friend Becca back home, and she seemed like she wouldn’t let anyone push her around. Rose comforted Ashe by her always confident presence, keeping her calm under pressure in the same way that Becca had always done even if she could be a bit annoying and selfish at times.
Similarly, Sage seemed a lot like her friend Claire. Although the two did not share the same timid and shy personalities, they were both compassionate about others and tended to think about helping out others and letting them enjoy things that they otherwise might not have been able to. Claire had, on many occasions, helped Ashe clean a scrape or ice a bruise after a bad fall from a tree or rough party. She was constantly seeking to involve everyone in things to keep the group close during times that they seemed to be getting pulled apart, and had helped Ashe out late into the night on some of the toughest school assignments she’d been given - all while Becca skipped out and went to a movie.
Ashe had always seemed to share a bit of herself with both of them, and she could find herself doing the same with Rose and Sage. The two may not have spoken very much with each other, but she was beginning to feel a level of trust building up with both of them that would allow her to let them in, friendships that could possibly even allow them to keep contact if they managed to survive this event.
Someone called out to them in the room, and Sage helped Ashe to lean against one of the tables in the room before turning to blast her energy gun at a group of the creatures that had scattered through. Rose was rising into the air next to Ashe as Sage ran to the edge of the room to help clear away the onslaught that had swarmed in from a hole that had been opened in the wall. Kazuya’s blade was flashing, cutting as many down as she could in the front.
It was that moment that a massive goblinish creature shattered through the rear barricade in the room as if breaking through tinfoil. A quick glance from Ashe brought a chill of terror to her heart. Sage’s words echoed within her mind as the creature bounded across the room and grabbed Ashe by the throat, lifting her into the air as its tongue flopped around outside of its gaping maw like a towel hanging loose over a set of knives. “Only two of these were salvageable, with the third requiring immediate extermination. This third creature will be exterminated within the week and has been stored within the facility’s tubes until the disposal plant is once more operational.” This had been the creature that was on the screen while they had read that part. Her feet slammed forward against the creature, but its chest was like a dragon’s, coated in a thick leathery set of yellow scales. She tried to call out for help, but her voice was being choked down in her throat. In what came to her as a mixed blessing, the creature switched her to its other large claw, releasing her throat for a brief moment as it raised her into its enormous mouth.
“Rose!” she cried out, expelling the air before it even had a chance to fill her burning lungs. Sage and Kazuya were too far away. “Help me!” she pleaded, her eyes burning with painful tears as she struggled to survive the creature’s bone crushing grip. As she tried to look anywhere but down its throat.
The two girls locked eyes from across the room, holding their breath as the explosions boomed, and Rose was the first to look away, glancing first at the floor before setting her sights on a glass window above them. Ashe’s eyes widened for a moment… as Rose’s aura exploded around her, not to help her fight the creature holding her, but to instead send her sprawling through the shattering glass and away from the group.
The world grew quiet around her, and she was lost to her thoughts as the oxygen was being drained away. Rose… You are coming back… Right? You were getting something to help… I know you were… she cried out, her only comfort being that she would be crushed by the creature before it decided to swallow her whole, and no one would even know. Mom? Grandpa? Dad?
Rose?
![[Image: Ashe.jpg]](http://i1017.photobucket.com/albums/af298/symbiosychotic/Ashe.jpg)