A/N: So Aiko put this crazy idea in to my head. She tends to do that. I do the same to her so all's fair in the world. :D Fitting an original world with original characters into a challenge designed for the canon worlds – and it works surprisingly well. Unless someone tries it with super-nova because then I think it won't.

So this fic is set in the larger verse going by the name of Pebbles Paint the Path – in which the digital world has its own mechanisms and its own way of choosing Chosen – if you want to call it that. You'll get a glimpse of it in this drabble and more in longer pieces. I'll recommend my series list for what goes where in the world. Or if you're following me, just be on the lookout for anything starting with (PPP) – easy abbreviation.

And the challenges it's for (the first two will be constant appearances):

Diversity Writing Challenge, A86 - write a fic that does not use only one consonants (z)
The Building Blocks Challenge, drabble collection, colour prompt #55 – light pink (5 pts)
Advent Calender 2014 Challenge, Day 17 – write about an OC

Enjoy!

Pebbles Paint the Path

Momo XIII: When She Turned
When She Turned Six

When she turned six, Momo got her first glimpse of the training room.

It was an initiation of rites, or something like that. Every person at the facility who turned six was taken in the narrow hallway with a glass window looking in to the training room. Its entrance was somewhere else. Somewhere in the facility no six year old – or eight year old for that matter – had access to.

They had to wait until their menarche…or a little later than that. It all depended on how long the affinity matchings took. Most girls in the facility reached that stage between eleven and thirteen years of age. That was why there were so few girls above that age in the cafeteria. And nobody above fifteen. There used to be, when she was four. A girl who was almost eighteen, sitting with the nine and ten year olds. Not anymore.

The only times the girls saw those who'd had their menarche and affinity matchings were the glimpses of the training room. That first glimpse being one of the two acknowledgements of their birthdays the facility gave them.

The other was a coloured pebble every year to collect and count. The same colour for the same girl, but different girls got different colours. There were repeats, naturally. There were only ten colours. Not enough to go around. Momo's ones were pale pink and of varying degrees of shininess – just so she knew which one represented which year of her life. Pink was the most common – shared amongst all the Momo and Pinku. Of course, the girls had numbers as well. The combination of the two was unique to each girl. Momo's was thirteen.

She'd received her fifth pink pebble that morning, marking the start of her sixth year: her sixth birthday. She'd lost count. It was easy to lose count in the facility. Except the adults there always seemed to remember the important things. Schedules and things like that. She got the pebble with her breakfast tray, and a white coated woman after she'd eaten.

The white coated woman had brought her to the corridor and shown her the training room.

Momo drank in the sight. Midori – nineteen that was – had had her sixth birthday a few months long ago and had spent days afterwards telling the rest of them. She was the first on their table. Momo was the fifth, but even having four girls relay their impressions of the room did nothing to dampen its reception. Or add to its sense.

In the coming years she would learn about the different scenes they packed in to the training room and start preliminary preparations for them. "So you don't get yourselves killed in affinity matching," the white coats would say. "So we don't die of boredom," the older girls disagreed.

Either way, the training room was a sign for two things. That she was growing up. And there was a world bigger than white and grey and black walls out there.