She didn’t even care anymore. About the bridge, the rocks, the blades, the fall. None of it. So, then, why was she so frightened? What drove her to keep feeling fear? Was it just natural response to the immense danger all around her? Was it concern for the others, who Sage really didn’t want to see any harm come to? Or was it just that she was so used to being afraid that she didn’t know how else to feel? Sage found herself deeply concerned about that prospect. Had she become so attached to her fears that she let them define her?
“Kai... Kai did this,” she muttered, out of earshot of both her companions. An unfamiliar feeling stirred within her, but it was faint and obscure. A smudge on the wall in a corner of some cluttered room, unimportant and not worth a second glance but just on the edge of noticing and not noticing, causing the viewer to focus only on it out of sheer annoyance.
Zena was up ahead, of course, making sure everything was okay for the other two girls. Really, Sage felt bad for Ashe. The cerulean haired girl was used to being treated as though she were useless or inept, but she didn’t want for her new friend to have to feel that way, too. Not that she would say as much. She was tired from talking as much as she had, today. Some days she’d gone without saying a word at all. She recalled how lonely and depressing that felt, and yet now she looked back on days like that with a bitter fondness.
Falling into step a few beats behind Ashe, she kept pace until she and Zena were confident she was following along, and then she drifted back and away from them, disappearing behind the cover of a pair of trees.
Flopping heavily against the trunk of the larger tree, she fished her bottle of pills from her front pocket. Her buzz was fading, and this was hardly the time for her edge to come back. She popped one of the pills and swallowed hard, clearing her throat at the irritation it caused her. Sage closed the bottle and put the Valium back in her pocket.
Leaning back, she closed her eyes and let out a long breath. Somewhere in the depths of her imagination, a digital watch alarm was going off, its high pitched beep beep beep telling her to stop wasting time and get back to the group. She sighed; sleeping at the foot of this tree seemed so... inviting.
She opened her eyes, but the incessant beeping could still be heard. Her head swiveled about to try to find the source, and her gaze fell onto a blinking light flashing through the foliage just a few feet from her. She narrowed her eyes at it. She was sure now that the beeping was coming from it, beeping in time with each pulse of the cherry red light.
Just in her periphery, she saw another light, and turned to see it. Then another appeared off to the right. Another to the left. Another up front. Another, and another. Soon, there were lights everywhere she looked, on the ground and in the trees. She took in a shaky breath and tensed up, looking around for Zena and Ashe, and only then realizing that she wasn’t really sure what direction they were heading in anymore. Oh no, she silently cursed, biting her lip. Her back pressed up against the tree and she waited, anticipation and dread of whatever was to come wafting all around her, and all the while more red dots appeared in the thick underbrush.
One of them came into view, revealing itself as a roughly human-shaped robot, with no facial features at all, unless you counted the glowing red light on what passed for its head. It crawled on all fours and had menacing ‘claws’ where the fingers and toes should have been. The machine was shiny and reflective, like chrome. Sage took no solace in the terrified reflection that stared back at her from the glossy metal.
It pounced. She shrieked, and cowered, hands over her head. The shiny machine, claws outstretched, sailed over her head and crashed into the tree behind her, crumpling on impact. It collapsed beside the desperate girl, angry sparks spitting from splits in its shell.
Run!
She bolted, dashing through the thick jungle, running for her life for what felt like the millionth time. She could hear heavy, mechanical thudding behind her as those many lights began to converge upon her. She could see them at the edge of her vision, and she felt the thrumming of metal ‘feet’ on soil behind her.
“Zena!” she screamed, and then skidded to a stop as one of the mechanized creatures came sailing across her path. Sage kept running, unknowingly dodging three more who pounced on her position when she’d stopped.
The azure haired girl kept running, fighting back the niggling fear that kept taunting her from the corners of her mind. You don’t know where you’re going, it said. You could be running opposite the direction of your sister. You could be running straight into a trap!
What choice did she have? So she ran. The vicious crack and high pitched shriek of falling timber suddenly invaded her senses, but she wasn’t about to turn around to see why trees were suddenly being knocked over.
Ahead, she spotted a derelict camp of some sort. It looked obviously worn and uncared for, but there was a tiny concrete building that stuck out from the soil in the clearing. She could hide from the machines in there. Sage just prayed the metal door wasn’t locked.
One of the machines suddenly came hurdling over her shoulder, its claw just brushing her shoulder, the metal so sharp her sweater was shredded at the point of contact. The machine tumbled, skidding into the brush, and Sage burst into the clearing. Just a few feet remained from she and the door when from the roof of the little concrete structure leapt another of the swarming robots.
The machine’s forelimbs crashed into Sage’s chest, and the machination violently slammed her to the dirt, pinning her on the ground. It raised up a limb, and a set of those deadly metal claws were suddenly produced in the previously fingerless hand. The arm reared back, and the girl’s eyes went wide. “Zena?! Ashe?! HELP!!”
The claw swiped downward, her guillotine. She had asked for death, and even had been willing to act as her own executioner, but this... this was wrong. Sage didn’t want to die like this. Alone in a jungle, killed by some featureless robot. Before, with her gun at her head, she had the power. She held authority. She alone. To die like that... she really was going to pull the trigger. To die like this, to die powerless like this, it would prove everything everyone had ever said about her. Sage wasn’t good enough. Sage was ruined. Sage was a special case.
But the claw stopped. An inch or so from her face, she wasn’t sure, but it was close enough that she couldn’t turn her head to look around for fear of brushing against the dreadfully sharp, metal claws. What’s... why didn’t it...?
CLANG!!
Zena swept in, smashing her heels into the machine atop her sister, before starting in on the myriad other mechanized monstrosities that surrounded her. Ki blasts and feet and fists lashed out in all directions, a blur to the prone hybrid, who watched, bedazzled by her sister’s heroics. But...
Soon, all that remained of the machines was oil and scrap. Many of them were on fire now, along with parts of the rainforest. Ashe emerged from cover, then, into the clearing with the royal sisters. Zena growled, a fire in her eyes as she hauled Sage to her feet. “Why the hell did you wander off like that?! What the hell is wrong with you, Sage?!”
Sage couldn’t say. Not just because she wouldn’t defy her sister, but because she really didn’t know. Not anymore. She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it. Some internal conflict raged inside her, and she opened her mouth again, but she paused. “The robot,” finally. “It... it had lots of time to... to kill me before you... came and...” she trailed off.
“What’s your point?” Zena irately demanded, though she had a pretty good idea of where this conversation was heading. She wasn’t a fan of the kinds of questions that were coming.
“Why?”
“Why what?” if only Zena knew how much her impatient irritation hurt Sage.
“Why didn’t it...?”
“I don’t know.”
“But-”
“I don’t know.”
That was it, then. The crystal haired girl knew she could only push a subject so far and then was expected to fall silent, and she did. Turning to the abandoned camp, she finally had the time to drink in its details.
It looked very military in origin. There were only four buildings, three made of wood and the little concrete shed... thing. They were arranged in a semicircle on the east edge of a much larger, flat circle of cleared dirt. It looked like a fence surrounded most of the area at one point - columns interspersed here and there lent support to the idea - but they were no longer present.
“This where we’re supposed to go?” Ashe inquired, looking about herself, watching for any sign of a grand confrontation like the one in Olde Town. “The guy we’re looking for, he’s-”
“No, it’s a strategically poor location. The advantage here is inside the camp, and that’s where we are,” Zena replied, her normal indifference mitigated by careful concentration as she scanned the area thoroughly. Sage was, in a way, surprised by this. She still didn’t know for sure how Zena had returned to her old form, but the Zena she knew was no soldier. Had she retained Zasha’s memories? How was she doing so well in the field if she hadn’t? “Still... this camp isn’t here for nothing. I doubt it hasn’t been in some way tampered with. The question now: is it a trap, or is something we need here?”
And then the ground fell out beneath them. Inexplicably, they found themselves crumpled in a heap in a deep, perfectly constructed corridor, staring up at the sky above them. They watched in horror as a series or bars shot from the tops of the walls, crisscrossing the open sky above them until there was a bar every six inches apart the length of the massive corridor. Zena immediately slammed a ki-charged fist into one, but failed to even fleck any paint off it. “Dammit!” she cursed, slamming a fist into the wall with an equally underwhelming effect. They had fallen into a trap.
Because of me, Sage didn’t add aloud. Their new situation was bleak. There was a wall immediately behind them, which meant there was only one way to go down the corridor, and it stretched on so far they couldn’t see the end of it, even with the illumination of the blazing sun above them. The bars cast dreary shadows upon them, but all was silent, at least. Nothing bad seemed to be happening. Immediately.
“We’re sitting ducks. We have to get moving, now,” Ashe declared. Zena nodded, almost to the teenager’s surprise. “But... it could be another trap.”
“No, it will be a trap. What would the sense be in locking us up in an elaborate secret tunnel... thing like this otherwise?” the blond retorted. A fair observation, the girls with wilder hair colors decided.
“Then we-” Sage began, but fell short, unsure exactly how to articulate the sense of dread that washed over her.
“-Don’t have any other choice,” Ashe finished.
“Kai... Kai did this,” she muttered, out of earshot of both her companions. An unfamiliar feeling stirred within her, but it was faint and obscure. A smudge on the wall in a corner of some cluttered room, unimportant and not worth a second glance but just on the edge of noticing and not noticing, causing the viewer to focus only on it out of sheer annoyance.
Zena was up ahead, of course, making sure everything was okay for the other two girls. Really, Sage felt bad for Ashe. The cerulean haired girl was used to being treated as though she were useless or inept, but she didn’t want for her new friend to have to feel that way, too. Not that she would say as much. She was tired from talking as much as she had, today. Some days she’d gone without saying a word at all. She recalled how lonely and depressing that felt, and yet now she looked back on days like that with a bitter fondness.
Falling into step a few beats behind Ashe, she kept pace until she and Zena were confident she was following along, and then she drifted back and away from them, disappearing behind the cover of a pair of trees.
Flopping heavily against the trunk of the larger tree, she fished her bottle of pills from her front pocket. Her buzz was fading, and this was hardly the time for her edge to come back. She popped one of the pills and swallowed hard, clearing her throat at the irritation it caused her. Sage closed the bottle and put the Valium back in her pocket.
Leaning back, she closed her eyes and let out a long breath. Somewhere in the depths of her imagination, a digital watch alarm was going off, its high pitched beep beep beep telling her to stop wasting time and get back to the group. She sighed; sleeping at the foot of this tree seemed so... inviting.
She opened her eyes, but the incessant beeping could still be heard. Her head swiveled about to try to find the source, and her gaze fell onto a blinking light flashing through the foliage just a few feet from her. She narrowed her eyes at it. She was sure now that the beeping was coming from it, beeping in time with each pulse of the cherry red light.
Just in her periphery, she saw another light, and turned to see it. Then another appeared off to the right. Another to the left. Another up front. Another, and another. Soon, there were lights everywhere she looked, on the ground and in the trees. She took in a shaky breath and tensed up, looking around for Zena and Ashe, and only then realizing that she wasn’t really sure what direction they were heading in anymore. Oh no, she silently cursed, biting her lip. Her back pressed up against the tree and she waited, anticipation and dread of whatever was to come wafting all around her, and all the while more red dots appeared in the thick underbrush.
One of them came into view, revealing itself as a roughly human-shaped robot, with no facial features at all, unless you counted the glowing red light on what passed for its head. It crawled on all fours and had menacing ‘claws’ where the fingers and toes should have been. The machine was shiny and reflective, like chrome. Sage took no solace in the terrified reflection that stared back at her from the glossy metal.
It pounced. She shrieked, and cowered, hands over her head. The shiny machine, claws outstretched, sailed over her head and crashed into the tree behind her, crumpling on impact. It collapsed beside the desperate girl, angry sparks spitting from splits in its shell.
Run!
She bolted, dashing through the thick jungle, running for her life for what felt like the millionth time. She could hear heavy, mechanical thudding behind her as those many lights began to converge upon her. She could see them at the edge of her vision, and she felt the thrumming of metal ‘feet’ on soil behind her.
“Zena!” she screamed, and then skidded to a stop as one of the mechanized creatures came sailing across her path. Sage kept running, unknowingly dodging three more who pounced on her position when she’d stopped.
The azure haired girl kept running, fighting back the niggling fear that kept taunting her from the corners of her mind. You don’t know where you’re going, it said. You could be running opposite the direction of your sister. You could be running straight into a trap!
What choice did she have? So she ran. The vicious crack and high pitched shriek of falling timber suddenly invaded her senses, but she wasn’t about to turn around to see why trees were suddenly being knocked over.
Ahead, she spotted a derelict camp of some sort. It looked obviously worn and uncared for, but there was a tiny concrete building that stuck out from the soil in the clearing. She could hide from the machines in there. Sage just prayed the metal door wasn’t locked.
One of the machines suddenly came hurdling over her shoulder, its claw just brushing her shoulder, the metal so sharp her sweater was shredded at the point of contact. The machine tumbled, skidding into the brush, and Sage burst into the clearing. Just a few feet remained from she and the door when from the roof of the little concrete structure leapt another of the swarming robots.
The machine’s forelimbs crashed into Sage’s chest, and the machination violently slammed her to the dirt, pinning her on the ground. It raised up a limb, and a set of those deadly metal claws were suddenly produced in the previously fingerless hand. The arm reared back, and the girl’s eyes went wide. “Zena?! Ashe?! HELP!!”
The claw swiped downward, her guillotine. She had asked for death, and even had been willing to act as her own executioner, but this... this was wrong. Sage didn’t want to die like this. Alone in a jungle, killed by some featureless robot. Before, with her gun at her head, she had the power. She held authority. She alone. To die like that... she really was going to pull the trigger. To die like this, to die powerless like this, it would prove everything everyone had ever said about her. Sage wasn’t good enough. Sage was ruined. Sage was a special case.
But the claw stopped. An inch or so from her face, she wasn’t sure, but it was close enough that she couldn’t turn her head to look around for fear of brushing against the dreadfully sharp, metal claws. What’s... why didn’t it...?
CLANG!!
Zena swept in, smashing her heels into the machine atop her sister, before starting in on the myriad other mechanized monstrosities that surrounded her. Ki blasts and feet and fists lashed out in all directions, a blur to the prone hybrid, who watched, bedazzled by her sister’s heroics. But...
Soon, all that remained of the machines was oil and scrap. Many of them were on fire now, along with parts of the rainforest. Ashe emerged from cover, then, into the clearing with the royal sisters. Zena growled, a fire in her eyes as she hauled Sage to her feet. “Why the hell did you wander off like that?! What the hell is wrong with you, Sage?!”
Sage couldn’t say. Not just because she wouldn’t defy her sister, but because she really didn’t know. Not anymore. She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it. Some internal conflict raged inside her, and she opened her mouth again, but she paused. “The robot,” finally. “It... it had lots of time to... to kill me before you... came and...” she trailed off.
“What’s your point?” Zena irately demanded, though she had a pretty good idea of where this conversation was heading. She wasn’t a fan of the kinds of questions that were coming.
“Why?”
“Why what?” if only Zena knew how much her impatient irritation hurt Sage.
“Why didn’t it...?”
“I don’t know.”
“But-”
“I don’t know.”
That was it, then. The crystal haired girl knew she could only push a subject so far and then was expected to fall silent, and she did. Turning to the abandoned camp, she finally had the time to drink in its details.
It looked very military in origin. There were only four buildings, three made of wood and the little concrete shed... thing. They were arranged in a semicircle on the east edge of a much larger, flat circle of cleared dirt. It looked like a fence surrounded most of the area at one point - columns interspersed here and there lent support to the idea - but they were no longer present.
“This where we’re supposed to go?” Ashe inquired, looking about herself, watching for any sign of a grand confrontation like the one in Olde Town. “The guy we’re looking for, he’s-”
“No, it’s a strategically poor location. The advantage here is inside the camp, and that’s where we are,” Zena replied, her normal indifference mitigated by careful concentration as she scanned the area thoroughly. Sage was, in a way, surprised by this. She still didn’t know for sure how Zena had returned to her old form, but the Zena she knew was no soldier. Had she retained Zasha’s memories? How was she doing so well in the field if she hadn’t? “Still... this camp isn’t here for nothing. I doubt it hasn’t been in some way tampered with. The question now: is it a trap, or is something we need here?”
And then the ground fell out beneath them. Inexplicably, they found themselves crumpled in a heap in a deep, perfectly constructed corridor, staring up at the sky above them. They watched in horror as a series or bars shot from the tops of the walls, crisscrossing the open sky above them until there was a bar every six inches apart the length of the massive corridor. Zena immediately slammed a ki-charged fist into one, but failed to even fleck any paint off it. “Dammit!” she cursed, slamming a fist into the wall with an equally underwhelming effect. They had fallen into a trap.
Because of me, Sage didn’t add aloud. Their new situation was bleak. There was a wall immediately behind them, which meant there was only one way to go down the corridor, and it stretched on so far they couldn’t see the end of it, even with the illumination of the blazing sun above them. The bars cast dreary shadows upon them, but all was silent, at least. Nothing bad seemed to be happening. Immediately.
“We’re sitting ducks. We have to get moving, now,” Ashe declared. Zena nodded, almost to the teenager’s surprise. “But... it could be another trap.”
“No, it will be a trap. What would the sense be in locking us up in an elaborate secret tunnel... thing like this otherwise?” the blond retorted. A fair observation, the girls with wilder hair colors decided.
“Then we-” Sage began, but fell short, unsure exactly how to articulate the sense of dread that washed over her.
“-Don’t have any other choice,” Ashe finished.
![[Image: Sage.jpg]](http://rebecca.florizone.com/sig/miscsig/Sage.jpg)