Post by Umeru Ichimei on May 20, 2008 20:17:13 GMT -5
1
Another day brought more news broadcasts depicting the countless dead or dying people that littered the battlefields. I lay on my bed and looked up through the skylight that held its place over my head. Instead of seeing a beautiful blue sky dotted with clouds and rays of sun shining down, my vision encountered the pale white glow of the protector dome. A sigh escaped my lips and I allowed my mind to wander away from the depressing news of the war. I tried to wrap my mind around a complex theory I had learned from Ane that explained how rianso enhanced human abilities. Rianso was a strange, blood red, crystalline substance that was discovered hundreds of years ago on the second moon, Caterio. When powered through an R.P.A. (rianso power amplifier), the rianso awakens dormant abilities within the “host.” I had always thought that it was weird that the R.P.A. users were called hosts, as if the rianso had a parasitic side effect on the user. I tried to shake those thoughts from my mind, after all, I was going to become a host soon enough and I could become one of the dead they talked about on the news. I hated all of this, no matter what I thought about, it all returned to the war and the death it causes. I was ejected from my thoughts by the ringing of the doorbell. “Just a minute, I’ll be right out!” I yelled to the person at the door, to which Ane’s voice responded.
“Hurry up Kira, were going to be late again! There is no way you can get out of trouble if you’re late again, so hurry up!” she yelled, the urgency trickling out through her words and her frantic knocking worried me. Ane had never been so urgent before, and even if she was late, she usually found a way to weasel herself out of punishment in the end. Her strange behavior sent a small tremor down my spine, with good reason; Ane is always right when she thinks something will go wrong. I threw on my usual outfit of dark blue jeans and a grey shirt with a small red insignia on the right sleeve in the shape of an intricate runic cross. I ruffled my short, unruly red hair and ran to the door.
“What’s wrong?” I asked hurriedly as I slammed the door open to reveal Ane waiting for me. She was seated on the bench in the yard, her long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail revealing heir piercing, ice blue, eyes. She was dressed in a pair of faded blue jeans with frayed edges along the base and a pure white with the same insignia as mine, except that hers was a light, sky blue color.
“I’m not sure.” She said in a hushed voice, “Something just doesn’t feel right today.” She looked down at her feet and started shuffling her toes as she finished her thought.
“What could possibly go wrong today?” Inquired of her as she stared off in the distance; a glassy look in her eyes.
“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing!” She said while she stood up and faced me. “Just promise me that you won’t forget me when you leave for the war. I don’t want you to become an empty person.” She said as a small tear traced a path down her face and fell to the ground with a quiet drip.
The time tower broke the eerie silence that followed with the usual three, ear shattering clangs that rang through the pale city streets and echoed off of the protector dome’s wall and returned to the tower. Ane looked up in shocked surprise and ran off towards the school building calling back, “I’m going to beat you there, Slowpoke!” Her eyes betrayed her false smile and reminded me of the single tear and her fearfulness when their conversation began.
“You’ll never beat me!” I yelled back at her playfully as I ran to catch up to her, knowing that my memories of her and all of the time we spent together would never fade away. But her fear couldn’t be farther from a simple paranoia as all would soon see.