04-06-2009, 11:13 PM
“Something’s not... right,” Sage mumbled, watching her sister fight one on one with the blond haired man behind the mask. Ashe wasted no time asking her what she meant, picking the machine gun back up and looking over it. As best as she could tell, it was low on bullets, so she'd have to make the next one count.
Moving into position, she dropped down to her knee and braced herself, waiting on the right opening. Almost on cue, Sebastian thrust a palm of ki directly into the chest of the blond girl, throwing her away from him in an explosive frenzy. Ashe took advantage of the moment by opening fire from nearly point blank range, inciting Sage to open fire with her own weapon.
Amazingly, the man was as gentle as he was gay, when it came to movements. He pulled a complete Matrix style maneuver, falling back a bit as the first volley of energy bullets passed by, twisting into a more appropriate position to lunge from. A split second passed between the pink haired girl and her opponent as his eyes narrowed in the holes of his mask, sending a chill passing over her as his hand flicked a slight bit in preparation.
She felt it before he'd even cleared the path to them, somehow.
He was in her face, his smell almost intoxicating her from his proximity before the iron triad made their way jaggedly across her chest, cutting through dress and flesh as one, before making its exit on her right side. It was a sharp, icy touch that she felt to just outside of her heart, cascading the man in her crimson life force as her gun fell to her side, her mouth opening to speak.
"Die," the man spat, shoving her back away from him as her chest continued to spurt blood.
She struck the ground without complaint, falling to her side to catch Sage in her field of vision as Sebastian turned to his next prey. Sage cried out Ashe's name, but the girl was no longer one with this world, having been sent on her way as her body lay in its own blood.
---
"Not good," Ashe softly whispered as she pushed herself weakly to her feet, the words seeming to come to her from influence more than her own creation.
She felt exhausted, like every breath was a chore, every heartbeat a commitment. Turning a heavy head slowly around her, she realized that Sage and the others were nowhere around her. "Sage?" she called out in a near silence, unsure as to where they were.
Before her, the field erupted into an array of ghostly, faded imagery. A translucent figure of Sage ran to embrace what appeared to be Ashe herself while Zena reengaged the sadistic and now serious killer. Her feet shuffled as she approached Sage to tell her that she was ok, but she felt so heavy and weak. But...
Sage was crying, and the girl beneath her was certainly her somehow. The crimson that was soaking the ground around them and staining their clothing, the blood that was covering Sage's hands, was her sustenance. There was so much of it, more than the student had ever imagined.
She wanted to throw up, but that just felt impossible. The nearly transparent figures before her each fought, one for Ashe's life, the other for Sage's. "You've got to be kidding me," the girl gasped, taking in this new shock. "I'm... dead?"
There was a time in Ashe's life that she'd wanted to die. On her sixteenth birthday, she'd gone out with some friends to celebrate her birthday. Long story short, her night concluded with her crying at her home afterwards. She'd slept with the new boy at the party.
She later learned that what had happened was considered rape, but neither of the pair actually felt that way about the situation. She was sixteen, so a lot of her friends were starting to take their relationships to the next level, some even long before then. She'd lost a couple of boyfriends already for being scared to push past her boundaries. It wasn't that she had any moral objection to the idea, she was just scared. She wasn't sure if she wanted it or not.
A lot of alcohol and a majorly cute guy can go a long way at changing your feelings.
That was the night that she'd given herself away and received nothing in return. She regretted it almost immediately. There was no lie, the physical feelings that she'd experienced had been amazing, like nothing she'd ever felt before. That didn't replace the lingering guilt and remorse that had somehow taken hold of her, though. It was something that she didn't understand. Was it that she felt that she was too young? Was it that she realized that she had nothing more than a passing interest in the boy? She felt as if now they would always somehow be connected, regardless of distance, through sharing that one act of passage.
That night, as she her mascara ran down her cheek in front of her mirror, she swallowed what was left of a bottle of pills.
Fortunately, she woke with nothing more than a major headache and the feeling that she couldn't hold down anything in her stomach for weeks. Those weeks consisted of her creating other pains for herself to replace the internal agony that she was going through. Maybe it wouldn't have bothered her so much if she hadn't woken that night to find the boy had left already, never seeing him again nor hearing a word. She felt used and discarded.
After trying the traditional methods of handling her depression, she eventually woke herself from it with a fiery determination to express her anger at the situation in other ways. She asked her grandfather to begin training her in self defense techniques, hoping that she could find release through that. She had enjoyed gymnastics as a child, so this wasn't a far leap from that.
Midway through the basics and realizing that her clumsiness was doing nothing more than frustrating her, she gave up. She hadn't been physically forced to do a damn thing. She'd done it by choice. She had made a bad decision and couldn't even blame the alcohol for it. The alcohol had long left her system, but the pain and anger remained. When physical pain from blades and fighting practice dummies didn't solve her problem, she desperately looked inward.
Her friends told her that everyone regrets their first time, yet they were always so bubbly and hyper when reenacting their stories of the topic. She put it to the test, however, coaxing Justin into bed at one of the following parties for a casual romp between friends. She didn't feel better afterwards, even though he'd treated her well. Maybe she'd done it wrong? It had to be someone that she wasn't already close to; she needed to build a relationship from nothing.
Her next boyfriend was a guy she met through some other friends. He was a cool guy as well, teaching her a few new tricks on the guitar that she hadn't known during the few months that they dated. It was the longest relationship that she'd had, but when she followed through on her goal to sleep with him after deciding that he was great for it, she felt different. She was uninterested, despite knowing that she should feel otherwordly while with the guy that she had thought she loved.
One guy after another, searching for a way to understand why she regretted that one guy so much. By now, she realized that she had been so focused on blaming the problem on the first guy that she'd recreated the pain with the others. She had once been told that humans were pattern seeking life forms. This had been her pattern, paining herself through what others found as pleasure.
There had been a time in her life that she had wanted to die.
Right now, she wanted nothing more than to live.
It was funny how that worked out.
"Sage, just let me go and run. Run far from here. Just run and don't look back," the girl pleaded at the apparitions before her.
Help her.
Ashe would have normally turned quickly or jumped in shock, but the soothing crystalline voice that echoed within her likely couldn't do anything to exacerbate the situation that she was in. She turned slowly, prying her eyes from her fallen form to face the floating form before her. At first, she was confused, but briefly the image of the five jagged tear drops floating in star formation came to her mind, allowing her to identify the being before her.
"The Star's Tear."
Help her.
The whispered insistence was calm, patient, and yet encouraging at the same time. Ashe glanced back and shook her head. "I can't. There's nothing that I can do," she explained, defeated. "I'm not sure if you noticed, but I'm a bit... dead," she settled on, tasting the word bitterly in her mouth.
We are only half dead. What remains is half alive.
While it had a point, she let out a breath of artificial air. "You aren't about to start this glass being half empty or half full nonsense, are you? And what's with this 'we' stuff?"
We are one.
She remembered hearing this when Gensei had nearly completed the ritual of binding to bring the Star's Tear into her to bind with her abnormal genetic code. She hadn't yet heard from them what the reason was, but she couldn't deny what had happened. "I'm not so sure about that. You are clearly stand- uh, floating right there. And I'm most certainly right here." She argued because she wasn't sure how else to handle the situation.
Help her, Ashe. We will help her.
She looked back at the form of Sage crying against her blood soaked chest as Ashe stared into her own lifeless eyes. "How?" she asked helplessly.
Use our power to enhance her power.
"I don't... have power," she began, knowing that she wasn't entirely correct. There was no other reason that she would have been granted such a powerful relic if she couldn't do something out of the ordinary. Everyone on this island had had some form of power and assuming that her selection had been entirely a mistake was, at this point, simply naive. "I don't know how," she corrected. "I can't even fight."
We will learn together. For now, our ki has begun to seep through our muscles and bones to strengthen us. We will adapt and grow stronger in time.
"But that doesn't teach me what to do, how to control this power, I can't even hold my own in a wrestling match because I don't know what to do!" she cried out, stumbling entirely over her words in helplessness.
We will learn together, the spirit repeated, coaxing her. For now, we endure and adapt. For now, we enhance her power.
Ashe felt the strong urge to turn back to Sage and felt a strong glowing surround her and the being of light at her back. In echo, the image of Ashe and Sage both erupted into a dazzling glamour of power, slowly fading from Ashe and lingering on the blue haired girl. "Wha-" she began, feeling the breath leave her body for a moment. "Whoa."
The light seemed to expel from every cut and bruise on the pink haired girls body, erupting like beams of light from a shattered mirror. She could feel the new oxygen and blood divide and spread throughout her body as her chest sealed itself shut, binding together by the call of natural life itself. The painful bruises under her eyes faded as well, taking the cuts within her mouth with them.
Focusing on specific locations that only she knew of, she watched as a dozen scars along her arm and wrist faded from existence, taking with them many similar injuries from her life. The small fracture in her ankle from when she fell from the gymnast beam as a child... Even... As much as she knew that her physical purity had somehow been restored, what had been done could never be undone from her memories. The acts had happened, and while they were repaired, she felt as if they were simply covered up. However, she'd been given a second chance at life. She was revirginated, rejuvinated, and regenerated.
Go now. Help her.
---
Her eyes opened to the sight of the cerulean haired girl holding her head close to Ashe's chest, her tears having dried against her cheeks as she was lost to the melancholy feels of failure. The student felt bad, watching her, for what she must be feeling.
Ashe hadn't realized that Sage was looking at her now, until the thought suddenly invaded her mind and called her name. The girl was surprised to see her alive and awake, completely renewed.
“Uh, yeah?” she mumbled, wary of if she should explain what she had seen happen. Leaving it for a later time she simply asked, “Sage, what’s-?”
"I don't know," the girl replied, confused. "“I don’t... I...” she mumbled, unsure of herself as she pulled at Ashe's clothing to look her body over for damage, her mind unable to grasp at what had happened.
Ashe was simply going to jokingly ask her "What's for dinner?" but something told her that the girl didn't need any other confusions thrown her way at the time. The girl pulled Ashe's jacket back off and threw it to the side, returning to pull her clothes in every direction without shame.
“H-How?!” she demanded, rolling Ashe over to run thrust her fingers into the destroyed cloth covering her back, feeling over the baby soft skin that had replaced the wounds. “You... There’s no way you could-” she fumbled, watching the final injuries fade before her eyes. “You should be... dead.”
Deciding to give the girl time to understand the situation, Ashe pushed herself up slightly, running her own hands through her blood soaked hair with a groan before popping various stiff joints. "Well, I feel... really good," she settled on, not wanting to go into details. “But... what did...” she began, trying to figure out what Sage had felt during the transfer. She couldn't really figure out how to word it, though, without freaking the poor girl out more.
“I... I don’t know,” she repeated on the edge of a breakdown. “I don’t know, I don’t-”
Topic for another time, Ashe supposed. “It’s okay,” the young girl interrupted. “What matters is you... healed me. Somehow. I guess we can work out the details when we-” The girl continued babbling in spite of Ashe's words until Ashe snapped loudly to try to shock her out of her... shock. “Sage,” she interrupted again. “I don’t know what to tell you, okay? Maybe you have a gift. Right now, we have to worry about Sebastian. Remember your sister, right?” The other girl always seemed to use her sister as a mental crutch, and right now, that's what they needed to focus on. "If we don't focus, he'll kill us."
She nodded slowly, only halfway taking the girls words in as she continued to mumble to herself almost incoherently. “Sage, please. I need you to focus,” she groaned, needing them to move on before they had a repeat experience with Zena.
The girl took a few deep breaths, running her mind through mental breathing techniques before meeting her eyes. “Okay... What... what should we do?”
Moving into position, she dropped down to her knee and braced herself, waiting on the right opening. Almost on cue, Sebastian thrust a palm of ki directly into the chest of the blond girl, throwing her away from him in an explosive frenzy. Ashe took advantage of the moment by opening fire from nearly point blank range, inciting Sage to open fire with her own weapon.
Amazingly, the man was as gentle as he was gay, when it came to movements. He pulled a complete Matrix style maneuver, falling back a bit as the first volley of energy bullets passed by, twisting into a more appropriate position to lunge from. A split second passed between the pink haired girl and her opponent as his eyes narrowed in the holes of his mask, sending a chill passing over her as his hand flicked a slight bit in preparation.
She felt it before he'd even cleared the path to them, somehow.
He was in her face, his smell almost intoxicating her from his proximity before the iron triad made their way jaggedly across her chest, cutting through dress and flesh as one, before making its exit on her right side. It was a sharp, icy touch that she felt to just outside of her heart, cascading the man in her crimson life force as her gun fell to her side, her mouth opening to speak.
"Die," the man spat, shoving her back away from him as her chest continued to spurt blood.
She struck the ground without complaint, falling to her side to catch Sage in her field of vision as Sebastian turned to his next prey. Sage cried out Ashe's name, but the girl was no longer one with this world, having been sent on her way as her body lay in its own blood.
---
"Not good," Ashe softly whispered as she pushed herself weakly to her feet, the words seeming to come to her from influence more than her own creation.
She felt exhausted, like every breath was a chore, every heartbeat a commitment. Turning a heavy head slowly around her, she realized that Sage and the others were nowhere around her. "Sage?" she called out in a near silence, unsure as to where they were.
Before her, the field erupted into an array of ghostly, faded imagery. A translucent figure of Sage ran to embrace what appeared to be Ashe herself while Zena reengaged the sadistic and now serious killer. Her feet shuffled as she approached Sage to tell her that she was ok, but she felt so heavy and weak. But...
Sage was crying, and the girl beneath her was certainly her somehow. The crimson that was soaking the ground around them and staining their clothing, the blood that was covering Sage's hands, was her sustenance. There was so much of it, more than the student had ever imagined.
She wanted to throw up, but that just felt impossible. The nearly transparent figures before her each fought, one for Ashe's life, the other for Sage's. "You've got to be kidding me," the girl gasped, taking in this new shock. "I'm... dead?"
There was a time in Ashe's life that she'd wanted to die. On her sixteenth birthday, she'd gone out with some friends to celebrate her birthday. Long story short, her night concluded with her crying at her home afterwards. She'd slept with the new boy at the party.
She later learned that what had happened was considered rape, but neither of the pair actually felt that way about the situation. She was sixteen, so a lot of her friends were starting to take their relationships to the next level, some even long before then. She'd lost a couple of boyfriends already for being scared to push past her boundaries. It wasn't that she had any moral objection to the idea, she was just scared. She wasn't sure if she wanted it or not.
A lot of alcohol and a majorly cute guy can go a long way at changing your feelings.
That was the night that she'd given herself away and received nothing in return. She regretted it almost immediately. There was no lie, the physical feelings that she'd experienced had been amazing, like nothing she'd ever felt before. That didn't replace the lingering guilt and remorse that had somehow taken hold of her, though. It was something that she didn't understand. Was it that she felt that she was too young? Was it that she realized that she had nothing more than a passing interest in the boy? She felt as if now they would always somehow be connected, regardless of distance, through sharing that one act of passage.
That night, as she her mascara ran down her cheek in front of her mirror, she swallowed what was left of a bottle of pills.
Fortunately, she woke with nothing more than a major headache and the feeling that she couldn't hold down anything in her stomach for weeks. Those weeks consisted of her creating other pains for herself to replace the internal agony that she was going through. Maybe it wouldn't have bothered her so much if she hadn't woken that night to find the boy had left already, never seeing him again nor hearing a word. She felt used and discarded.
After trying the traditional methods of handling her depression, she eventually woke herself from it with a fiery determination to express her anger at the situation in other ways. She asked her grandfather to begin training her in self defense techniques, hoping that she could find release through that. She had enjoyed gymnastics as a child, so this wasn't a far leap from that.
Midway through the basics and realizing that her clumsiness was doing nothing more than frustrating her, she gave up. She hadn't been physically forced to do a damn thing. She'd done it by choice. She had made a bad decision and couldn't even blame the alcohol for it. The alcohol had long left her system, but the pain and anger remained. When physical pain from blades and fighting practice dummies didn't solve her problem, she desperately looked inward.
Her friends told her that everyone regrets their first time, yet they were always so bubbly and hyper when reenacting their stories of the topic. She put it to the test, however, coaxing Justin into bed at one of the following parties for a casual romp between friends. She didn't feel better afterwards, even though he'd treated her well. Maybe she'd done it wrong? It had to be someone that she wasn't already close to; she needed to build a relationship from nothing.
Her next boyfriend was a guy she met through some other friends. He was a cool guy as well, teaching her a few new tricks on the guitar that she hadn't known during the few months that they dated. It was the longest relationship that she'd had, but when she followed through on her goal to sleep with him after deciding that he was great for it, she felt different. She was uninterested, despite knowing that she should feel otherwordly while with the guy that she had thought she loved.
One guy after another, searching for a way to understand why she regretted that one guy so much. By now, she realized that she had been so focused on blaming the problem on the first guy that she'd recreated the pain with the others. She had once been told that humans were pattern seeking life forms. This had been her pattern, paining herself through what others found as pleasure.
There had been a time in her life that she had wanted to die.
Right now, she wanted nothing more than to live.
It was funny how that worked out.
"Sage, just let me go and run. Run far from here. Just run and don't look back," the girl pleaded at the apparitions before her.
Help her.
Ashe would have normally turned quickly or jumped in shock, but the soothing crystalline voice that echoed within her likely couldn't do anything to exacerbate the situation that she was in. She turned slowly, prying her eyes from her fallen form to face the floating form before her. At first, she was confused, but briefly the image of the five jagged tear drops floating in star formation came to her mind, allowing her to identify the being before her.
"The Star's Tear."
Help her.
The whispered insistence was calm, patient, and yet encouraging at the same time. Ashe glanced back and shook her head. "I can't. There's nothing that I can do," she explained, defeated. "I'm not sure if you noticed, but I'm a bit... dead," she settled on, tasting the word bitterly in her mouth.
We are only half dead. What remains is half alive.
While it had a point, she let out a breath of artificial air. "You aren't about to start this glass being half empty or half full nonsense, are you? And what's with this 'we' stuff?"
We are one.
She remembered hearing this when Gensei had nearly completed the ritual of binding to bring the Star's Tear into her to bind with her abnormal genetic code. She hadn't yet heard from them what the reason was, but she couldn't deny what had happened. "I'm not so sure about that. You are clearly stand- uh, floating right there. And I'm most certainly right here." She argued because she wasn't sure how else to handle the situation.
Help her, Ashe. We will help her.
She looked back at the form of Sage crying against her blood soaked chest as Ashe stared into her own lifeless eyes. "How?" she asked helplessly.
Use our power to enhance her power.
"I don't... have power," she began, knowing that she wasn't entirely correct. There was no other reason that she would have been granted such a powerful relic if she couldn't do something out of the ordinary. Everyone on this island had had some form of power and assuming that her selection had been entirely a mistake was, at this point, simply naive. "I don't know how," she corrected. "I can't even fight."
We will learn together. For now, our ki has begun to seep through our muscles and bones to strengthen us. We will adapt and grow stronger in time.
"But that doesn't teach me what to do, how to control this power, I can't even hold my own in a wrestling match because I don't know what to do!" she cried out, stumbling entirely over her words in helplessness.
We will learn together, the spirit repeated, coaxing her. For now, we endure and adapt. For now, we enhance her power.
Ashe felt the strong urge to turn back to Sage and felt a strong glowing surround her and the being of light at her back. In echo, the image of Ashe and Sage both erupted into a dazzling glamour of power, slowly fading from Ashe and lingering on the blue haired girl. "Wha-" she began, feeling the breath leave her body for a moment. "Whoa."
The light seemed to expel from every cut and bruise on the pink haired girls body, erupting like beams of light from a shattered mirror. She could feel the new oxygen and blood divide and spread throughout her body as her chest sealed itself shut, binding together by the call of natural life itself. The painful bruises under her eyes faded as well, taking the cuts within her mouth with them.
Focusing on specific locations that only she knew of, she watched as a dozen scars along her arm and wrist faded from existence, taking with them many similar injuries from her life. The small fracture in her ankle from when she fell from the gymnast beam as a child... Even... As much as she knew that her physical purity had somehow been restored, what had been done could never be undone from her memories. The acts had happened, and while they were repaired, she felt as if they were simply covered up. However, she'd been given a second chance at life. She was revirginated, rejuvinated, and regenerated.
Go now. Help her.
---
Her eyes opened to the sight of the cerulean haired girl holding her head close to Ashe's chest, her tears having dried against her cheeks as she was lost to the melancholy feels of failure. The student felt bad, watching her, for what she must be feeling.
Ashe hadn't realized that Sage was looking at her now, until the thought suddenly invaded her mind and called her name. The girl was surprised to see her alive and awake, completely renewed.
“Uh, yeah?” she mumbled, wary of if she should explain what she had seen happen. Leaving it for a later time she simply asked, “Sage, what’s-?”
"I don't know," the girl replied, confused. "“I don’t... I...” she mumbled, unsure of herself as she pulled at Ashe's clothing to look her body over for damage, her mind unable to grasp at what had happened.
Ashe was simply going to jokingly ask her "What's for dinner?" but something told her that the girl didn't need any other confusions thrown her way at the time. The girl pulled Ashe's jacket back off and threw it to the side, returning to pull her clothes in every direction without shame.
“H-How?!” she demanded, rolling Ashe over to run thrust her fingers into the destroyed cloth covering her back, feeling over the baby soft skin that had replaced the wounds. “You... There’s no way you could-” she fumbled, watching the final injuries fade before her eyes. “You should be... dead.”
Deciding to give the girl time to understand the situation, Ashe pushed herself up slightly, running her own hands through her blood soaked hair with a groan before popping various stiff joints. "Well, I feel... really good," she settled on, not wanting to go into details. “But... what did...” she began, trying to figure out what Sage had felt during the transfer. She couldn't really figure out how to word it, though, without freaking the poor girl out more.
“I... I don’t know,” she repeated on the edge of a breakdown. “I don’t know, I don’t-”
Topic for another time, Ashe supposed. “It’s okay,” the young girl interrupted. “What matters is you... healed me. Somehow. I guess we can work out the details when we-” The girl continued babbling in spite of Ashe's words until Ashe snapped loudly to try to shock her out of her... shock. “Sage,” she interrupted again. “I don’t know what to tell you, okay? Maybe you have a gift. Right now, we have to worry about Sebastian. Remember your sister, right?” The other girl always seemed to use her sister as a mental crutch, and right now, that's what they needed to focus on. "If we don't focus, he'll kill us."
She nodded slowly, only halfway taking the girls words in as she continued to mumble to herself almost incoherently. “Sage, please. I need you to focus,” she groaned, needing them to move on before they had a repeat experience with Zena.
The girl took a few deep breaths, running her mind through mental breathing techniques before meeting her eyes. “Okay... What... what should we do?”
![[Image: Ashe.jpg]](http://i1017.photobucket.com/albums/af298/symbiosychotic/Ashe.jpg)