| |
I was trying to fall asleep, though I ended up rolling over a few dozen times. Maaya and Kairi were sharing a room, and I was sharing a room with Rei and Niketa. Rei had called dibs on the couch since she could never fall asleep on a hotel bed, and even though I was sleeping on a bed and not a leaning against a stuffed backpack deep underground in a cavern and I fell asleep just fine then, I couldn’t sleep. I finally sat up and pulled on my boots. I slid a keycard into my pocket and decided to go for a walk around the courtyard in the back of the hotel. I opened the door silently, glad both Rei and Niketa were heavy sleepers and proceeded into the hall.
It was darker in the hall than I expected, and it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. No moonlight filtered in like it did in the hotel room, so it was tricky. I walked forward a few steps, still blind, and bumped into somebody. I automatically jerked my arm back, ready to elbow the person in the jaw even though he said,
“Hey! Wait, it’s me, Cloud!”
I stopped, and blinked a few moments and let my eyes adjust before asking,
“What are you doing up?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
He let go of my shoulders and asked,
“I’m guessing that’s why you’re up too?”
“Yeah.” I replied. “If we keep talking out here, the others will wake up.”
“Mmm.” He said, as we walked over to the elevator. When we reached the ground floor and entered the courtyard, it was clearly lit by the moon. It was close to the full moon if not the full moon.
“Thinking about Exodus?” He asked.
“Partly, mainly Twi-LIGHT.”
“You were close to your sister, huh?”
“Yeah…even though she was a lot older than me, I was always the one doing the protecting. I never had much interest in being a proper young lady like my parents wanted me to be, I was always a tomboy. I think the first time I had to fight somebody with a katana was when I was thirteen. I started kendo and a few other hand-to-hand types of martial arts when I was eight or so. I was taught how to aim a bow when I was seven, though that skill never came in handy.”
I looked up at him saying,
“You’ve hardly said a thing about yourself. I don’t see where you get off asking me anything about what I’m thinking about. If you want me to answer any more of your questions, you’d better answer mine.”
“Alright, ask away.”
I stopped and stupidly asked,
“Really?”
He smiled a little saying,
“You seem surprised.”
I was about to say something wise ass-ish, but thought better of it.
“Okay. Firstly, did you have Evi poisoning when you were young?”
He looked startled as he asked,
“What made you think that?”
“Evi leaves a scar on the body, and since Evi poisoning is the radiation of divine power, those who live through it can enter sacred grounds. Your replica was able to follow me into Neivila, and since he’s your exact copy I figured you had it when you were young. Since Evi poisoning weakens the body to the point the heart can’t even pump blood, and if the person in question does manage to survive, he or she would be in rehabilitation for years after word. So, since the outbreak was about fifteen years ago, you must have been pretty young to have been able to function normally for the last few years, never mind be healthy enough to be able to handle having Skyevi cells injected into your body. I suppose a person who survived Evi poisoning would adapt to Skyevi cells pretty easy too.”
“I was eight when I got it. I had to work in the military to pay off the debt though, nobody thought I’d be able to though.”
“Alright, and exactly how old are you now?”
“Twenty-two.” He replied.
“How long were you Trenxi’s lab rat?”
“Under a year.”
“How did you end up Trenxi’s lab rat?”
“Since I was in the military, I was singed over to Twi-LIGHT. When Trenxi got learned I’d had Evi poisoning when I was young, he exposed me to more of it so I fell into a coma and he try out how a person who had Evi poisoning adapted to Skyevi cells, as you predicted.”
“So that silver band on you pointer finger identifies you as a Evi poisoning survivor, right?”
“Right.”
I was a little satisfied, if he had Evi poisoning than that’s why his replica could enter Neivila…not because I trust the real Cloud.
I asked him a few more simple questions, what kind of post he had in the military and what division he worked for, so I could find his name in the database and check his story, and some other minor questions. I also asked him how long he worked for Twi-LIGHT, even though he said he was only there a few days before he was forced into the Special Agents program.
We stopped when we reached the center of the courtyard and it was a circular platform a few steps off the ground with a fountain and benches surrounding it. I sat down saying,
“Maaya is going to have a fun reality check when she realizes that after this setting out at dawn is necessary.”
He sat next to me saying,
“She’ll get used to it.”
“Niketa hasn’t gotten used to it.”
“True, though I’d guess Maaya is tougher than Niketa. She’s been running Exodus for over a year now, if I remember correctly.”
“Mmm. Hopefully Kairi won’t object to staying at Exodus HQ.”
“She’ll most likely make you promise to be back in a week or so though.”
I sighed saying,
“Probably.”
“Has Maaya told you where we’re going after Neivila?”
“No, but I think we should go to the Ruins of Michi. They’re overseas, but I think that’s Trenxi’s next target. There hasn’t been any word of him going after any other relics here in Ragnarok.”
“So why Michi?”
“Just a feeling, I’ll need to do a lot a research and get a list of all the known Skyevi relics. All the weapons she used are qualified as relics, so we’ll also be looking for her bow. I know she left a pendant at Michi, but I’ll have to do more research about how we’ll get to Michi. I also want to check the records on another possible relic I heard about, the ‘Blood Crystal’.
“Blood Crystal? I never heard of that one.”
“Neither did I, I want to know if it’s on Maaya’s recover list. I’m not positive, but I believe it has massive destructive power. There’s no proof, but I think the relic we’ve been calling ‘Skyevi’s Pendant’ is probably the Blood Crystal. The whole reason everybody wants all these relics is because they propose not only ultimate divine control, they also could revolutionize further exploration of other worlds and the chance to find even more divine relics. I suppose they think the divine beings themselves are dead, but exactly what kind of power are we calling ‘divine’? For all we know it’s common technology in other world that are trying to explore this one. It’s impossible not to ask questions like that, don’t you think?” I asked looking him squarely in the eye.
“Especially in this line of work, with mentally unstable creeps like Trenxi around. Than again, I suppose anybody who is so unhappy with they world they’re chasing after fairy tails is mentally unstable.”
“Not really everybody questions the things around them.”
“Yeah, but it’s a pretty big deal when you have the resources to really do something about it. Didn’t you ever realize that the people who start organizations like Exodus and Twi-LIGHT are people who reject the world? Kazuki was always in a good mood from what I remember of him, but I didn’t know him very well.”
“Not all people who want to change the world are like Trenxi.”
“Anybody who would manipulate the living dead are just as bad as Trenxi.” I said flatly.
“The living dead, eh? I though Trenxi only manipulated the living.”
“What’s Skyevi? She was alive, and even though she’s dead she still radiates and holds power like a divine battery. The divine radiation gives people Evi poisoning, and the power she holds is just un accessible. Both Exodus and Twi-LIGHT want Skyevi’s power, her true power not just the radiation they’ve been collecting for all these years to power this country, even though they have no idea what’ll happen if they do get at her power.”
“Whoa, wait a second. Since when were they using the radiated energy to power the country?” He asked, genuinely surprised.
I smiled dryly saying,
“See those lights? They’re powered off her radiated power. That’s why people who work with Skyevi get Evi poisoning. It’s like nuclear power, the body can’t handle it and in the end, it kills the person. You know how Evi poisoning works, it weakens the immune system and starts attacking all the organs of the body, non-vital and replace able first. It’s like a combination of every disease there is, and yet it goes away. Doesn’t make much sense, but it’s been proven time after time for the last few hundred years. They collect the power in shielded spheres, that can power an entire city like this one for a year.”
“It’s that powerful?”
“Yeah, why do you think global warming has slowed down so much in the past few hundred years? Ever since the Ragnarok government started selling years of collected radiation, all natural resources have been kept in balance. Skyevi is a great thing, she’s the world’s great sin. Sins always seem to lead to something great at first, but when the sins profit end, the sinner find themselves in a worse situation than they were in before. Skyevi is going to stop radiating power some day, and the chances are it’s going to have to do with Twi-LIGHT and Exodus. The collected power is suddenly going to go dead, and the people won’t understand because nobody will tell them. Although it would seem the decrease of global warming and other things like that have been decreasing, there are other things going on that show this world is no better off now than it was before. Skyevi had something to do with this world, and that’s why people who play with her power always are the ones to reject the world. If they’re so naive they don’t realize until they’re too late, than they merely lose their ability to be at peace and take their own lives.”
“You’ve thought about it a lot, haven’t you?”
“When you dream for five years, you can’t help but think.” I said sourly.
“You remember the things you thought about when you were in a coma?” He asked sounding surprised.
“I’m remembering some of the dreams I had, I think. I always have re-dreamed my dreams. I’ve been having some really weird ones recently, so I guess I’m re-dreaming some of the stuff from then.”
Cloud stood up saying after a brief silence,
“We’d better head back. It’s getting late, and this’ll probably be the last time we sleep in a proper bed for awhile.”
“I’m guessing nine and a half days.” I said standing up and walking forward. Cloud followed saying,
“That few? I’m betting two full weeks, fourteen days.”
“Betting, eh? Shall we swing into Nioglow and grab that bad of chips?” I asked with an evil smile, glad to change to topic. “You said ‘betting’ this time.”
“I’ve got a better idea, how about a bag of those peanuts you love?”
“Perhaps a bag that sits for five years under the floorboards of a church.”
“You didn’t have a bag of those under there too, did you?”
I cackled saying,
“No but I found one welded to a CD-R! How about the loser of the bet has to eat that bugger? It’s probably covered in germs much worse than anything found in a public bathroom.”
“I have a better idea, if you can’t make a bet involving your circus peanuts without being filled with mold, how about the winner has to clean the other’s sword for a week?”
“Let’s make it a month, polisher. I’ll have to buy some special polish.” I said turning around with an evil smile. I held out my hand saying,
“Shall we make it a deal.”
He shook my hand saying,
“Deal.”
He didn’t let go right away though, and when I went to pull my hand away, he pulled me against him saying,
“Let’s just make sure we can stay together for a month without running off trying to be a hero and nearly getting shot up, abducted, killed out of sheer stubbornness, alright?”
My brain had never moved slowly, I was far faster to react to a gun to my head and solve the problem them than this.
He let go of me after a second that seemed like a eternity, even though his hands were still on my shoulders and we were far too close for comfort. Our faces were hardly an inch apart as he asked,
“Alright?”
My brain kicked back into gear at that moment, and I jumped away all saying trying to my face from turning red,
“I’m not making any promises.”
I turned around and dashed off, not listening for his reply. He didn’t follow, thank goodness, and I didn’t stop until I was in the stairwell three floors up. I leaned against the wall, still frazzled and asked aloud,
“What in the seven hells was that?”
Not that there are seven hells, as far as I know… The unfazed wise-ass part of my mind cut in. I calmed down a little and continued walking up the stairs muttering,
“I’d rather have a gun to my head though, at least I’m familiar with that and know how to handle myself…”
I entered our room silently, and laid down in the bed, still feeling unnerved…I think I liked being unnerved about Skyevi, Twi-LIGHT, and Exodus better than being unnerved about Cloud though… And if I was going to be unnerved about him, I should be worrying that he’s going to turn on me and try to kill me!
I nodded off shortly after hearing him come up and enter his room, even though it wasn’t a deep sleep since I had all dreams involving all the things that go wrong at Neivila tomorrow…
|
Help Us Stop Plagiarism -
Nearly all works at PnP are original. However a few people choose to plagiarize.
To check, choose a phrase from the work, then either drag and drop to the search box or copy and paste.
click on search and works at Google will be shown which match. Just to be sure, please do this before
you recommend or rate the work highly...
|
 |
|
|
|
Select a Random Book
|
|
Welcome !
