[6] Chasing Sebastian

[Ashe]

“We’re stalling,” the blond Saiyaness dropped bluntly, making it clear that she was through with the discussion. Without giving them Ashe a chance to pry it out of her, Zena quickened her pace until she had left a gap between herself and the others. Sage watched her leave without a word, lowering her outstretched hand slowly before closing her mouth, retreating into her thoughts once more.

Ashe kicked at the ground after the woman had intentionally left hearing distance. Something told the girl, however, that she hadn’t quite gone far enough up to be able to shut out their words. “Ugh, this is so stupid,” Ashe finally exclaimed, throwing her arms forward in an angry gesture. Sage snapped up in attention, prompting Ashe to continue. “I mean, why does she always have to have sand up her vag? I don’t get it, did you guys grow up on the street or something? What is with the hardened emotionless façade that she’s always trying to portray?”

Sage’s mouth dropped - while Zena visibly tensed up in the distance without actually responding - leaving Ashe to quickly apologize for her harshness. “I’m sorry, its not that I’m trying to bash on your sister or insult your heritage or anything. I just… I don’t get it. I thought you two were Princesses? Shouldn’t you have grown up in a palace or something? What part of being a Princess causes sandy vag syndrome?”

“I don’t… We didn’t… Sandy vag?” Sage sputtered, not quite sure what to respond to first. She didn’t even seem to entirely understand Ashe’s words.

The student continued over top of her words, not entirely discussing so much as she was ranting. “She puffs herself up so proud and tough, when its obvious from the way that she runs away from actually talking about things that she’s just as terrified as the rest of us.” Ashe turned and looked at Sage for a moment and bumped her arm up against the girl who had now wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to withdraw as well. “Hey!” she called, catching her attention again. “Maybe she’s just trying to be strong for you or something,” she voiced, hoping to cheer Sage up. The girl slowly nodded, and Ashe let out a gasp of air.

“Without her, as weak as I am, I’d fade away,” she mouthed in a near whisper, nearly trembling.

She honestly didn’t entirely feel that was the case. There was more to it than that. Zena, and almost every other Saiyan that she’d encountered so far, was consistent in that they wanted everyone around them to know that they were the toughest mothers on the street. It was like a turf war without the turf. Sage was the only one of them that seemed to not try to hold that impenetrable aura around herself and Ashe could only take a guess at what it was.

In every story there was a protagonist - the main character - and then an antagonist. Most people assumed that being an antagonist automatically meant ‘the bad guy’ or at least a rival, but Ashe had learned differently from that. Those two ways were usually the most common methods of portraying one, but in the story of Sage, it seemed that Zena was her antagonist - the character who’s practical reason for existence was to help accentuate the qualities of the protagonist.

If every Saiyan was the elite of the elite and the strongest warrior on their planet, then they would all be nothing more than average. Ashe reasoned that there had to be some Saiyans, like Sage, that were constantly forced into submission and humbled by the prideful ones, who also happened to be the heralds of their stereotype. So then… In their cutthroat world of one-upsmanship, there would have to be people at the opposite side of the road, right?

“Sage, I don’t really think you are weak. I think you just feel that way because of just how much effort your sister,” And every other Saiyan she’d met, Ashe skipped, “puts into puffing herself up to look strong. She puts so much effort into convincing everyone around her that they are weak and inferior to her that you either end up believing it to help further the illusion,” Her mind wandered to the other Saiyans that had immediately set to groveling at the mere mention from the girl that she was a Princess, immediately seeking to exercise their own display of strength so as to be seen favorable by her. “or you end up killing each other just to find out who is right and who is dead,” she ended grimly.

“My sister is powerful,” Sage pleaded. “She… became a Super Saiyan! For me!” Ashe didn’t know entirely how to proceed with the conversation. She didn’t want to destroy whatever comforting hope that Sage had as a reason to live, but she respected her and didn’t want to lie either.

“Sage…” she trailed off, lowering her voice so that Zena would not hear her. “I don’t know why she’s flaunting that as much as she has been. Watch the news sometime. I think something like thirty or fourty percent of your race can do that. We live in a dangerous world, and while I never really wanted to accept that,” she shrugged, looking around as they came up to a bridge. “Here we are. On an island being hunted.”

The girl stopped talking a moment as she glanced over the edge of the mountainside that they had come to. The river raged below them, casting steam and water sprays up at them as wave after wave crashed against the rocks below. Ashe looked up, her eyes falling onto the rotting rope bridge that they had come to. “Dude, there’s no way-” she began, getting silenced as Zena grabbed the ropes on both sides of the bridge for support before stepping out onto the planks.

“Seems fine,” she announced after testing the weight. “They aren’t as rotten as they look. So hurry up.”

Sage was nearly frozen, leaving Ashe no choice but to gently put her arm around her back and nudge her forward. “Just do like your sister is doing. Grab the ropes on each side and walk across. Just hold the ropes tightly,” she guided, walking forward herself until Sage was on the bridge.

Zena was nearly halfway across by now as she looked back over at the pair. “Sage, we don’t have time for this shit,” she growled. She turned her head back and took another cautious step.

“The bridge… The wood is rotten,” the seafoam haired girl voiced to Ashe.

The pink haired girl could only shake her head to reassure her. “No, its really not that bad. But,” she added, prompting her to look over at Ashe, “I would definitely not test that theory if I were you.” Somehow, despite the pressure they were under, she let out a laugh. She motioned down with her head so that Sage saw that she had her legs spread wide enough that she was effectively walking on the ropes that the planks were connected to instead of the wood itself. “Probably will be a lot safer going about it this way.”

Sage readjusted her footing and then took a deep breath. “I’m scared,” she said after a moment.

“So is Zena. Look at her knuckles. They are about as white as they can get around those ropes.”

“But she can fly,” her sister reasoned.

“So could Rose. Wanna end up wet again?” she pointed out, leaving Sage to a decision.

“Not really.”

The girls increased their pace as they spider walked their way across the ropes themselves, making their way to the halfway point of the swaying bridge. Every sway scared them a bit more than before, but they tried to keep each other strong in their fear. Zena made a point of staying ahead of them as if hoping to be the one to trigger any traps, but Ashe took note that the gap between them had decreased tremendously as they shuffled across the chasm.

Just about fifteen steps from the other side, Sage bumped into her sister, who was frozen in place. “Zena?” she whispered.

Ashe’s eyes feel onto what Zena had already noticed. A camera was attached to branch of a large tree that was growing near the water’s edge. Looking down revealed that there was an even larger amount of rocks for them to be crushed upon of anything happened with the bridge.

“How could I have been so stupid!” Zena cursed after a moment.

The quieter pair looked at her in concern, unsure as the why the girl had suddenly decided that being on a rickety bridge over a raging river was the precise moment to return to having a discussion. She kept her hands locked onto the ropes as she slowly turned her head towards them. “Don’t… move…” she cautioned slowly.

Ashe looked around for whatever had left Zena so worried. Bringing her gaze back to the Saiyan’s own, she noticed the woman’s eyes narrowed. “What’s-” she began, receiving a hiss from her in response.

“Turn around slowly, but don’t let go. And for fuck’s sake, don’t shake this bridge,” she warned.

The two did as they were told, not noticing what the problem was. “Ok…” Ashe reacted after a moment. “Do you want us to walk back across?”

“Follow the ropes back to the other side where we started. With your eyes,” she hissed once more when the girl started to actually shuffle back that way. “Know why everything is so fresh and new? Look down!”

The pink haired girl looked straight through the planks to the crashing rocks below them, until she finally noticed the algae covered slabs of wood that were lodged in them. A rope appeared in between wave crashes. “This bridge is here to replace one that’s already been destroyed,” she realized. She turned back to follow the rope again as Sage held on puzzled - and terrified.

“So wouldn’t replacing the bridge be a good thing?” she inquired, her voice shaking with concern.

Ashe slowly and carefully shook her head. “Not if you are trying to film a snuff film. Cameras pointed directly at this thing? There’s no way this thing isn’t rigged or sabotaged. There!” she finally announced, her eyes catching what she wished she hadn’t seen.

There were blades on both sides of the ropes at the side of the bridge that they had arrived on. They hadn’t seen them when they first stepped across because the wood had hidden them when looked at from that direction. The knives were placed in such a way that whenever the ropes swayed back and forth with the bridge, it would move up and down the edges of the knives, sawing away with every swing.

“The ropes are cut from the bridge shaking. There’s some type of blade under each of them, and we’ve been causing them to cut deeper and deeper into the rope. And its nearly at the breaking point,” she observed, adrenaline and fear rushing into her system.

“About time you saw it. I thought I was going to have to point it out for you,” the tougher girl huffed, having just noticed it at Ashe’s mention herself. She had pieced together that there was a trap the moment she realized the remnants of the previous bridge were below them. The moment the flashing red dot of the camera had attracted her attention. “Carefully, without shaking the bridge, get to land,” she directed, taking a step forward.

As if by command, a burst of wind blew up from the rushing water, soaking them with moisture while simultaneously sending a tremor throughout the bridge. Six eyes widened as they all heard it. A sharp twang followed by another immediately snap. “Hold on!” Ashe cried out as the hand ropes gave way suddenly, nearly sending the girls over the edge on its own. They slammed hard into the wood as their supports were released from beneath them.

Snap…
Snap!

The bottom two ropes gave out under the weight and it felt as if they had immediately been thrown onto a rollercoaster that was halfway through a loop. “AhhhHHHHHHHHH!” Their cries were loud and sharp, and not one of them would later remember having been a part of it. Their hands were drained of all blood as they held tightly to the ropes, watching with faces buried into the wood as the gravity changed directions and the cliffside wall rushed out to meet them.

Collision sent waves of shock through each of them, Ashe’s knuckles painfully cutting deep as they struck the smooth water cut face of the earth’s maw. Clenching her teeth, she absorbed the pain with tears.

Sage, who had been in the middle of them, wasn’t as lucky. Upon impact, her own hands had slipped due to the water that had been endlessly thrown upwards at them from the rapids. Too wet to get a decent grip, she found herself suddenly flailing into the open air, cast into a freefall as her eyes widened.

Her older sister came to her rescue, her strong hand catching the girl by the wrist as she swung wildly back into the group. Ashe was in shock, unsure of what to do in the moment and unable to react. Zena pulled her up, barely having a safe hold of her own, and demanded that she grab the ropes once more with her hands.

The three girls could not entirely recall how long it took them to pull themselves up the cliff face to the grassy jungle at its edge, but as they lay there taking deep breaths and calming themselves, the camera’s light continued to flash red. They may not remember, but the camera would not forget.