11-08-2009, 06:10 AM
"Sigh."
Ashe's fingertips drummed the computer desk as her forehead rested in one of her palms. Her eyes drifted sleepily over the monitor trying to focus on the task at hand, but the week had been so frustrating that she just wanted to lay down and get some sleep. She just couldn't quite decide on...
1:00.
Her head snapped up and she mumbled something under her breath as she looked at the clock by her bed. She finally turned off the monitor while yawning and lay down in the bed, sliding under the covers to escape the chill. She never understood how Gensei insisted on keeping the air on even during the winter. Honestly, the heating in the place sucked due to the shop windows just bringing in cold air, but to have the air on in addition to that?
He always just laughed in his own way when she brought it up, faulting her for refusing to just put more clothes on when it was cold. His viewpoint was that her insistence in wearing a sheer nightgown leaving her practically naked was her decision and didn't really affect him. Her viewpoint, on the other hand, was that they slept upstairs where heat would rise, and he expected her to then wear a full wool jacket while sleeping. If it wasn't for the additional expense, she swore that he'd probably keep all the windows open on top of it.
The old man was just hot natured, she supposed.
She bolted forward a moment as a frost induced sneeze overtook her. Reaching over to her tissues, the adolescent wiped away her frustrations before pulling the covers back down onto herself to start up a good heat bubble. The thought crossed her mind that Sage would fit in perfectly with the snow that Gensei seemed to be hoping would happen in the apartment.
She hadn't heard from anyone since the events of Friend or Foe, which bothered her a slight bit. She couldn't quite remember what had happened after they each had viewed their futures. It was as if she had watched some movie about an alternate future based on her life and then immediately gone to sleep. She remembered the doors opening for the group to move through... and it was foggy after that.
The next moment that she remembered distinctly, she was completely naked on a helicopter with a blanket around her. She'd turned bright red after lazily throwing the blanket off herself to discover that she'd had nothing on beneath her. In their defense, Kaden had tried to stop her but she'd insisted that she was burning up at the time. She had shut her eyes once more on the helicopter, hoping to shut the world out to hide herself from them, but in her absolute exhaustion she had passed out once more, not waking until her grandfather was standing over her in a hospital.
He'd had a difficult time after waking from the darts that had been used to capture her for the event, but he'd managed to hold himself together until the authorities had taken them all back to their home planets. She'd missed her flight to Kajin Rala to visit her family, but Capsule Corporation had agreed to give her a free pass to use a ship of her choice at any time in the future, allowing her to save it for the next time she had a break from school.
Unfortunately she hadn't had the chance to exchange contact info with any of the great people she had met during the event. She was lost in a galactic sea full of trillions of people with no way to get any of their attention, no idea of even where to start. She had returned to her life without the ability to look back, and after reconciling with her family and friends on the events, everything seemed to pass as normal. Gensei had insisted that she return to practicing her martial arts with him at least twice a week, to help prepare her for the next time something happened. She insisted that there would not be a next time; he insisted that as long as the Star's Tear was present within her, there would always be a next time.
Outside of this minor training, she spent most of her time heavily studying, spending time with friends, and running the shop beneath their apartment. She'd even picked up an extra job babysitting for one of her teachers' kids when they had family issues to take care of. Everything had kept her busy, including the two young kids that had somehow broken her cellphone screen on her last visit. Thankfully she had brought in enough money to possibly get a new phone to replace her current one with. Having a cracked touchscreen phone was absolute balls to her social life.
Staying up looking up phones on her computer was going to suck in the morning.
---
Yeah, this sucks balls... she thought groggily as her clock went off. Morning had come early, as usual, but her schedule had kept her occupied lately. She almost missed the simpler time during Friend or Foe, when the only thing she had to worry about with her time was surviving.
Her off humor joke kept her amused long enough to go through her morning routine on sheer muscle memory, stumbling out the door and down the rafters of the stairwell. She was probably going to be late for school, she realized, but she was too tired to care. She didn't even know what day it was, when she got down to it.
Thinking about it, she figured it was probably time to check the mail. She'd been forgetting the last few mornings and Gensei had asked her about it last night. Why he didn't just go get it himself, she'd never know. He always laughed and used the excuse that he was old, but she didn't think he was that old.
"Phone bill... Credit card offer... another credit card off- Freakin' Kami, like five credit card offers in here," she grumbled, about to throw the entire thing into the trash before remembering the bills she'd run across. While thumbing them separate, she ran across another envelope that was addressed to her in formal ink. The girl with longer pink tipped hair staired at the envelope for a moment before setting it with the keepers.
She pulled out her cracked phone for a moment and groaned before runing to her car, the envelope forgotten in the stack of letters.
---
She was thankful that picking up the extra work had let her afford a decent car for herself so that she could stop walking to class on the cold days or begging her grandfather to take her, but the amount of time she had to put into it sucked when she showed up at school late.
Speaking of...
"Where the heck is everyone?" she questioned out loud as she pulled into the parking lot. Had there been some form of emergency? Who the hell would call in a bomb scare on the school at 6:30 in the morning? Did the time change again? Her phone flipped out into her hand quickly as she glanced at the time on it. "No... its right on time... for a Saturday, oh bull!" she groaned, realizing that she could have slept in since it was actually the weekend.
Taking a deep breath to calm down and watching her frozen breath fog up her window for a moment before reaching behind her seat to dig the stack of bills out from where she'd thrown them in the backseat. She pulled the envelope addressed to her out from the stack and ripped it open. "Probably just another credit card offer," she sighed as she glanced at the first words on the paper. "They do get creative lately."
To our grand prize winner Ashe!
You have been selected to visit the planet Dante for our grand event. It should only take a moment of your time and the prizes are numerous. We have a wide assortment of concert tickets for all your favorite bands, the largest choices of the newest high tech cell phones, music players, and other gadgetry. Just visit the nearest Capsule Corporation and hand them the enclosed chip for a quick trip to the headquarters on Dante and you could be well on our way to greatness! Offer expires on Saturday, so hurry in!
Damon Dukes
She stared at the paper unsure of what she'd just read for a moment before picking the envelope back up and shaking it. A smaller piece of paper wrapped around something fell out into her lap and she picked it up. "What's this?" she asked out loud as she unfolded the paper. P.S.: There will be punch and pie. She dropped the paper and looked at the computer circuit a moment before remembering the words about Saturday.
Setting everything down in her passenger seat next to her bookbag, she put her vehicle back into drive and pulled out, heading towards the Capsule Corporation building. There was no way she would get back to sleep at this point in the day, and she didn't want to miss out on punch and pie. Especially if the punch was spiked. With her weak, she could use it.
---
"Last call for anyone heading to Dante! Your chips will deactivate within the hour!"
The loudspeakers called out as she entered the building. She'd grabbed her bag on the way out of her car just in case she needed to store some kind of paperwork or listen to her music player while waiting, but it didn't look like she'd have that luxery. She was running in full sprint mode towards the teleportation tube room before rounding the corner as they called once more over the speakers.
"Hey! I've got a chip," she yelled to the woman about to power down the tube. "Don't you dare turn that thing off!" She slid to a stop before throwing her bag down to the ground before her, heaving heavily in her attempt to catch her breath.
The attendant gave her a stern look for a moment before silently extending her hand. Ashe glanced up and quickly handed her the microchip before returning to running her hand over her cramp. "Everything cool?" she asked after a moment as the woman placed the chip into the machine and pointed a finger at the tube itself.
The woman shrugged before waving Ashe towards it. "Go for it. I'm just a bit surprised to see someone heading to Dante that gets a cramp so easily. Hope you make it out of there alive," she intoned ominously.
Ashe just laughed a moment, not realizing how seriously the woman was being. "Thanks, I've done this before. I do love my contests," she added. "And this pie totally better be a cheesecake!"
The woman scoffed for a moment before holding her hand over the teleport button. "Cheesecake is not a pie."
The machine whirred to life and Ashe dematerialized before she could argue with the woman, her essence finding itself reassembled in another tube on the receiving end. As soon as she appeared, she argued with the silence and darkness to which she'd appeared. "What does she know? Cheesecake is totally made of awesome, the main ingrediant of pie. What does she think? I totally wouldn't go if they had said there would be cake. That's the biggest trap in the world. Everyone knows that if someone tells you there will be cake, the cake is a lie! Pie on the otherhand, especially cheesecake, is like the awesome that binds us together."
"Cool story," a deep voice called out from a now open doorway as she jumped high into the air.
Screaming, the pink haired girl landed and whirled around, shielding her eyes from the extremely bright light that had appeared from behind the tube. "Who's there?" she demanded.
"No one of your concern," the voice answered. She saw a dark shadow turn and walk through the light before stopping. "We've been waiting for you to finally arrive, Ashe. I believe most of your friends are already here."
"What?" she asked, her mouth dropping, no longer sure of herself. The man in the distance left the entranceway as Ashe spun back around to find that the machine had powered itself back down. "Are you kidding me? A one way trip? Ugh, I knew that the words free were a bad sign. But..."
She couldn't believe it.
The pie was a lie?
Ashe's fingertips drummed the computer desk as her forehead rested in one of her palms. Her eyes drifted sleepily over the monitor trying to focus on the task at hand, but the week had been so frustrating that she just wanted to lay down and get some sleep. She just couldn't quite decide on...
1:00.
Her head snapped up and she mumbled something under her breath as she looked at the clock by her bed. She finally turned off the monitor while yawning and lay down in the bed, sliding under the covers to escape the chill. She never understood how Gensei insisted on keeping the air on even during the winter. Honestly, the heating in the place sucked due to the shop windows just bringing in cold air, but to have the air on in addition to that?
He always just laughed in his own way when she brought it up, faulting her for refusing to just put more clothes on when it was cold. His viewpoint was that her insistence in wearing a sheer nightgown leaving her practically naked was her decision and didn't really affect him. Her viewpoint, on the other hand, was that they slept upstairs where heat would rise, and he expected her to then wear a full wool jacket while sleeping. If it wasn't for the additional expense, she swore that he'd probably keep all the windows open on top of it.
The old man was just hot natured, she supposed.
She bolted forward a moment as a frost induced sneeze overtook her. Reaching over to her tissues, the adolescent wiped away her frustrations before pulling the covers back down onto herself to start up a good heat bubble. The thought crossed her mind that Sage would fit in perfectly with the snow that Gensei seemed to be hoping would happen in the apartment.
She hadn't heard from anyone since the events of Friend or Foe, which bothered her a slight bit. She couldn't quite remember what had happened after they each had viewed their futures. It was as if she had watched some movie about an alternate future based on her life and then immediately gone to sleep. She remembered the doors opening for the group to move through... and it was foggy after that.
The next moment that she remembered distinctly, she was completely naked on a helicopter with a blanket around her. She'd turned bright red after lazily throwing the blanket off herself to discover that she'd had nothing on beneath her. In their defense, Kaden had tried to stop her but she'd insisted that she was burning up at the time. She had shut her eyes once more on the helicopter, hoping to shut the world out to hide herself from them, but in her absolute exhaustion she had passed out once more, not waking until her grandfather was standing over her in a hospital.
He'd had a difficult time after waking from the darts that had been used to capture her for the event, but he'd managed to hold himself together until the authorities had taken them all back to their home planets. She'd missed her flight to Kajin Rala to visit her family, but Capsule Corporation had agreed to give her a free pass to use a ship of her choice at any time in the future, allowing her to save it for the next time she had a break from school.
Unfortunately she hadn't had the chance to exchange contact info with any of the great people she had met during the event. She was lost in a galactic sea full of trillions of people with no way to get any of their attention, no idea of even where to start. She had returned to her life without the ability to look back, and after reconciling with her family and friends on the events, everything seemed to pass as normal. Gensei had insisted that she return to practicing her martial arts with him at least twice a week, to help prepare her for the next time something happened. She insisted that there would not be a next time; he insisted that as long as the Star's Tear was present within her, there would always be a next time.
Outside of this minor training, she spent most of her time heavily studying, spending time with friends, and running the shop beneath their apartment. She'd even picked up an extra job babysitting for one of her teachers' kids when they had family issues to take care of. Everything had kept her busy, including the two young kids that had somehow broken her cellphone screen on her last visit. Thankfully she had brought in enough money to possibly get a new phone to replace her current one with. Having a cracked touchscreen phone was absolute balls to her social life.
Staying up looking up phones on her computer was going to suck in the morning.
---
Yeah, this sucks balls... she thought groggily as her clock went off. Morning had come early, as usual, but her schedule had kept her occupied lately. She almost missed the simpler time during Friend or Foe, when the only thing she had to worry about with her time was surviving.
Her off humor joke kept her amused long enough to go through her morning routine on sheer muscle memory, stumbling out the door and down the rafters of the stairwell. She was probably going to be late for school, she realized, but she was too tired to care. She didn't even know what day it was, when she got down to it.
Thinking about it, she figured it was probably time to check the mail. She'd been forgetting the last few mornings and Gensei had asked her about it last night. Why he didn't just go get it himself, she'd never know. He always laughed and used the excuse that he was old, but she didn't think he was that old.
"Phone bill... Credit card offer... another credit card off- Freakin' Kami, like five credit card offers in here," she grumbled, about to throw the entire thing into the trash before remembering the bills she'd run across. While thumbing them separate, she ran across another envelope that was addressed to her in formal ink. The girl with longer pink tipped hair staired at the envelope for a moment before setting it with the keepers.
She pulled out her cracked phone for a moment and groaned before runing to her car, the envelope forgotten in the stack of letters.
---
She was thankful that picking up the extra work had let her afford a decent car for herself so that she could stop walking to class on the cold days or begging her grandfather to take her, but the amount of time she had to put into it sucked when she showed up at school late.
Speaking of...
"Where the heck is everyone?" she questioned out loud as she pulled into the parking lot. Had there been some form of emergency? Who the hell would call in a bomb scare on the school at 6:30 in the morning? Did the time change again? Her phone flipped out into her hand quickly as she glanced at the time on it. "No... its right on time... for a Saturday, oh bull!" she groaned, realizing that she could have slept in since it was actually the weekend.
Taking a deep breath to calm down and watching her frozen breath fog up her window for a moment before reaching behind her seat to dig the stack of bills out from where she'd thrown them in the backseat. She pulled the envelope addressed to her out from the stack and ripped it open. "Probably just another credit card offer," she sighed as she glanced at the first words on the paper. "They do get creative lately."
To our grand prize winner Ashe!
You have been selected to visit the planet Dante for our grand event. It should only take a moment of your time and the prizes are numerous. We have a wide assortment of concert tickets for all your favorite bands, the largest choices of the newest high tech cell phones, music players, and other gadgetry. Just visit the nearest Capsule Corporation and hand them the enclosed chip for a quick trip to the headquarters on Dante and you could be well on our way to greatness! Offer expires on Saturday, so hurry in!
Damon Dukes
She stared at the paper unsure of what she'd just read for a moment before picking the envelope back up and shaking it. A smaller piece of paper wrapped around something fell out into her lap and she picked it up. "What's this?" she asked out loud as she unfolded the paper. P.S.: There will be punch and pie. She dropped the paper and looked at the computer circuit a moment before remembering the words about Saturday.
Setting everything down in her passenger seat next to her bookbag, she put her vehicle back into drive and pulled out, heading towards the Capsule Corporation building. There was no way she would get back to sleep at this point in the day, and she didn't want to miss out on punch and pie. Especially if the punch was spiked. With her weak, she could use it.
---
"Last call for anyone heading to Dante! Your chips will deactivate within the hour!"
The loudspeakers called out as she entered the building. She'd grabbed her bag on the way out of her car just in case she needed to store some kind of paperwork or listen to her music player while waiting, but it didn't look like she'd have that luxery. She was running in full sprint mode towards the teleportation tube room before rounding the corner as they called once more over the speakers.
"Hey! I've got a chip," she yelled to the woman about to power down the tube. "Don't you dare turn that thing off!" She slid to a stop before throwing her bag down to the ground before her, heaving heavily in her attempt to catch her breath.
The attendant gave her a stern look for a moment before silently extending her hand. Ashe glanced up and quickly handed her the microchip before returning to running her hand over her cramp. "Everything cool?" she asked after a moment as the woman placed the chip into the machine and pointed a finger at the tube itself.
The woman shrugged before waving Ashe towards it. "Go for it. I'm just a bit surprised to see someone heading to Dante that gets a cramp so easily. Hope you make it out of there alive," she intoned ominously.
Ashe just laughed a moment, not realizing how seriously the woman was being. "Thanks, I've done this before. I do love my contests," she added. "And this pie totally better be a cheesecake!"
The woman scoffed for a moment before holding her hand over the teleport button. "Cheesecake is not a pie."
The machine whirred to life and Ashe dematerialized before she could argue with the woman, her essence finding itself reassembled in another tube on the receiving end. As soon as she appeared, she argued with the silence and darkness to which she'd appeared. "What does she know? Cheesecake is totally made of awesome, the main ingrediant of pie. What does she think? I totally wouldn't go if they had said there would be cake. That's the biggest trap in the world. Everyone knows that if someone tells you there will be cake, the cake is a lie! Pie on the otherhand, especially cheesecake, is like the awesome that binds us together."
"Cool story," a deep voice called out from a now open doorway as she jumped high into the air.
Screaming, the pink haired girl landed and whirled around, shielding her eyes from the extremely bright light that had appeared from behind the tube. "Who's there?" she demanded.
"No one of your concern," the voice answered. She saw a dark shadow turn and walk through the light before stopping. "We've been waiting for you to finally arrive, Ashe. I believe most of your friends are already here."
"What?" she asked, her mouth dropping, no longer sure of herself. The man in the distance left the entranceway as Ashe spun back around to find that the machine had powered itself back down. "Are you kidding me? A one way trip? Ugh, I knew that the words free were a bad sign. But..."
She couldn't believe it.
The pie was a lie?
![[Image: Ashe.jpg]](http://i1017.photobucket.com/albums/af298/symbiosychotic/Ashe.jpg)