First Written April 05, 2007.

Holy crap. This fic is four years old now. Not even proper novel length and desperately juvenile, it's nevertheless taken me four years to write what I have thus far. It's been an experiment for me, as this fic marks a lot of firsts: first story I've written to crest 50k words (and possibly reach 100k someday if it's only halfway through the plot as I fear), first to feature a female primary protagonist, first relationships beyond friendship between characters, and so on.

I was fourteen when I began posting this, but much younger when I first plotted out an early outline of sorts on three sheets of mangled yellow college-ruled notebook paper. In the time that stretches between now and then, I like to imagine that the stylistic flow and structure of my storytelling has evolved. But reading over my older work from my youngest days of writing, it's a little disconcerting to see those are the only thing that have changed. The general plot remains the same – people do something and save the world. There is a great deal of doing, and almost no meaning behind it. I can write words and words and words and they may be beautiful, but they will never speak to anyone. And that is all right with me. I am not Orson Scott Card or John Knowles or Terry Pratchett or any of my other idols of authorship.

I am Fusionmix, and this is a semi-original fiction which, in later chapters, involves elements of Daisuke Amaya's freeware masterwork Cave Story. This is not the next Great American Novel. It's a silly story about a girl who is unlikeable and foolish at times for reasons I will dismiss by saying she is human, rather than admitting to myself that I simply did not know how to write believable and likeable female characters when I began. It's an occasionally pretentious story with excerpts from crappy songs at the beginnings of chapters because I can't bear to remove them out of nostalgia. It's a goofy fanfic I hope reads well and conforms when applicable to the laws of English.

Welcome to the world of ASCfR. Please keep your hands, feet, and related limbs inside the vehicle at all times. Relax, and enjoy your ride.

All lyric excerpts are property of bands I used to listen to or still listen to and am in denial about liking.

A Second Chance for Redemption

Chapter 1

†††

I woke up in a dream today, to the cold of the static,
Put my cold feet on the floor.
Forgot all about yesterday, remembering,
I'm pretending to be who I'm not anymore…

Merely after seeing a single match, she loathed the Games, mind and gut rebelling against every single aspect of that cruel pretense of a sport. Even a year hence, guttural snarls, issued from between hooked fangs and twisted mandibles and physically impossible structures of biological jokery had never quite released their hold and gone onward into the safe haven of distant memory. In her mind, the snarl-sounds mingled equally with the hoarse, terrorized grunts and screams of the same creatures—maybe those who were maybe not as strong, not as resolute as others; those who spilled fresh blood across brownish-crimson stained metal tiles, and whose entrails were trampled by the oncoming hordes of their less-frightened comrades. And then, not too often, but it did happen, would come amidst the mayhem the broken cry of a Gladiator, when he would be swatted to the ground and waves of monsters washed over him.

Worst of all was the crowd, massive, leering, and roaring its approval as a favorite Gladiator tore through the ranks of his foes, or jeering raucously as he was pulled down and savaged. Then the alarms would howl, and the little thrusters on the beaten warrior's suit would kick in, and lift his half-alive armored frame out of the reach of the beasts, over the edge of the pit to a waiting stretcher. If the booth Controllers ensured that his jets activated and he was pulled from the arena in the time, he would survive, and return to bathe new cybernetic bone and muscle in spurts of thick, red blood.

Yes, she did hate the Games, strong words be damned. Let the world know that Tera hated watching a lone human butcher dim-witted creatures shipped in from whatever twisted laboratories could stand to create such pathetic excuses for life. Tera Ankiel had avoided the underground arena of her hometown in Texas for a year since she had gone, for the first and last time, with a group of loud-laughing companions to see a match live. Her brother followed the leagues of Gladiators—their rivalries and friendships and elaborately silly callsigns that set them apart from their other faceless armored fellows—so she naturally caught several bouts on television. The Controllers were fast and accurate. Blood was spilled, but nobody died.

So it was her own debatable luck that in this battle, the gladiator was killed.

She remembered every gruesome detail with bitter-bold clearness, sharp, cold, and more than anything, precise. She'd forgotten how to breathe sometime around when she first saw the emergency jets on his suit ignite, watched his limp form jerk from the maw of one of the larger beasts, one arm twisted in an unnatural way, helmet bashed in completely on the left side, armor shredded away at the distended hip. Her friends did not mock her reaction, rather, they comforted her, for it had been their first time as well to see one of the gladiators be so badly mangled, but they assured her that he would probably live. In fact, in a moment of exceedingly bad sympathetic judgment they took her to see him, forcing their way through the ring of murmuring fans and members of the crowd as the medics loaded him onto a stretcher and, after fumbling with upper-body armor plates, plugged various needles, pumping pain-relief drugs, into his neck.

She could remember the dull clank of metal armor as those triangular two-inch-thick pieces of bronze-gold protection hit the concrete, tossed there among the peanut and sunflower shells. Torn completely through even in some of the bulkiest spots, the armor lay for the passing sun to beam glare off into her Tera's eyes.

None of the ghostly white-clothed men reached for the thick snakes den of life support cables; no gloved hands extended towards the oxygen mask. The near-silence of the medical team meant disaster, and as one of them shrugged, and turn to leave, the group of observers ceased their whispering.

A few of the older men took off their hats, and shut their eyes, but the vast majority of the once rambunctious onlookers to the fight lost their gruesome interest and flitted away, blurry and out of focus.

The Gladiator seemed too young, probably only eighteen or so, with a thick shock of black hair, now crusted and matted with sweat and blood. His one intact eye flitted about aimlessly, darting to and fro in its socket like a thing possessed, before lighting on her. A smile flickered across his swollen, bruised face, jerkily pulling up his mouth at the corners, bloodstained lips trembling with the effort. "…H-hey-y-y…" was all he forced out, in one painful, gurgling croak.

The eye remained fixed on her, the grin ceased to quiver and remained fixed for a few seconds until it melted back, in sections, relaxing bit by bit by bit. A dark trickle welled over his lower molars, over his sagging lip...

The eye, bloodshot brown, had just begun to list when Tera turned, blindly palmed a person out of her way, and ran.

"So are you coming or not?" Alisa's voice seemed harsh and distorted as it issued from Tera's tinny phone speakers.

"'Lisa, I can't." A lame excuse; she knew that Alisa would see it as such, and win out in the end. "I'm…busy, that's all."

Alisa's voice was now harsh, distorted, and a little reproachful. "Girl, don't even try to tell me that you're busy. Or did you find somebody yet? If you did, we can get an extra ticket."

Apparently, the only kind of 'busy' that Alisa recognized as being valid was a date, but that insult stung. Fine. It had been a year, she was a big girl of seventeen now, and she could cope with watching mindless brutality and slaughter for a few hours and sitting in an uncomfortable plastic seat that jabbed in all the wrong places and stuck to her legs when she tried to stand up. "You win, Alisa," she said reluctantly, letting her sigh out audibly, more for Alisa's satisfaction than her own comfort.

"Is he hot? What's his name?" Alisa's voice carried evil, evil glee. "Or her name, if..."

Tera thumped her head onto the table to conceal an embarrassed flush. "Ok, fine, what time is it?"

"Ten. We'll pick you up. Buh-bye!" Click, and the steady beep…beep…beep. Tera could almost picture Alisa's sickeningly happy little wave.

"If you would like to make a call," said the phone, "please hang up and try again!"

Tera flipped her phone into sleep mode and slid it into her pocket like one in a trance, or deep thought. Hanging up. That had the potential to be profound. Why not, say, hang up past apprehension, take a step out, and try again? That was all she could do now, put on a brave face and go to the Games, or make up some hopelessly inadequate excuse of helping her brother, and have Alisa and Anzl and the rest laugh their little hearts out about what a cowardly, closed-minded twit she was.

Joy.

On the way up the street towards where she had left her bike, she was met by Nemo, the Ankiel family's Personal Household Assistance Droid, or PHAD. "Hello, Miss Tera. Can I be of assistance?"

Tera felt like ignoring him, but since he was a robot, he would probably follow her and continue to ask the same question like a blue-plated mental retard. Which, Tera had to remind herself, due to the limits of robotics technology, he was. "No, Nemo, you can't."

"Is Miss Tera in adequate emotional condition?"

"Yes, Nemo, I'm fine. I'm going home." A sudden thought piqued her curiosity; she turned away from her bike to face him. "What are you doing downtown?"

Nemo's inner workings whirred briefly, before he answered, "I am running an errand for your mother. May I ask what was your assignment?"

Tera couldn't help a smile at his behavior. Whoever had been in charge of coding the PHADs had not been much in the way of an innovator. The little bots talked and spoke like something out of an Asimov novel. "I was at the library, studying for my biology test that comes when school starts. Remember? I told you before I left."

"I am sorry to have forgotten, Miss Tera. I should have searched my memory banks more thoroughly before bothering you with a question to which I already possessed the answer." Although his metal face could only display emotion to a very limited degree, his voice could make up for this, and Tera felt a rush of sympathy for her little iron brother.

"It's alright. I was mumbling this morning, I can't blame you for mishearing. Don't beat yourself up over it."

Nemo could cock his head to the side, and he did now. "Beat myself up? I do not understand."

"Stop thinking about it," Tera defined.

The robot nodded, and looked off down the road. "Will you have a rendezvous with your associates tonight, Miss Tera? According to your mother, you are 'free to go wherever if you would like', she has no task for you to perform tonight."

Tera shut her eyes and mounted her bike, flicking a strand of straw-colored hair out of her face, saying as she did so, "I'm going with Alisa to the Games at ten. I'll tell her myself though."

Nemo pulled the closest thing to a frown that his blue metal face was capable of. "You have been reluctant to go before. Following the last time, you were in unstable emotional condition. What has caused you to change your mind?" He could express concern; whoever had designed the PHADs had known what they were doing, and had succeeded in creating a line of sturdy robotic assisters who were the closest thing to life that man could create. Yet for all of his realism, Nemo had none of the verisimilitude of human emotion. He was a robot, and while he was definitely the most lifelike model, he was still nothing more than a machine, unable to pursue anything more than his original programming.

"Miss Tera?"

Tera jolted herself out of her brief, brooding reverie, pulling the flight goggles down from her helmet and over her eyes. "Don't mind me, Nemo," She smiled. "I said I'm fine, right?" With that, she flicked the ignition and adjusted herself to the steady vibrations as the bike's magnetic system activated, picked up the repulsing force under the street, and picked itself up off the ground, leaving the single forward wheel planted firmly to facilitate steering. The world around seemed to blur, as the road ahead snapped into deadly sharp focus, and her bike growled forward, swerved around a car, and vanished up the road.

Nemo waited for traffic to abate before trotting with as much dignity as his three-foot-tall frame could muster across the street.

A low sigh. Very low, as if artificially deepened and extended. "Have you found him yet?"

Silence. Silence which seemed to hiss with an almost tangible sense of forboding. "No."

"And why not?" A hint of anger had forced itself into that voice, tightening it into a pinched sort of growl. "Why are you interrupting me if you haven't found him?"

"You seem to forget just how large the Surface is. He could be anywhere." Slyness now, a concealed subcurrent of contempt.

Another sigh, which drew itself out, becoming a curse. "'He could be anywhere'. How old and stupid do you think I am?" Something burned, torched in a sudden fit of wrath. "Well, then, 'Curses, foiled again'!" The voice's bearer shifted and leaned forward patronizingly. "Is that would you would like to hear? Perhaps some maniacal laughter? I am perfectly aware of how much space he has to flee in. We found him before; we will find him again. Waiting is becoming tiresome."

"I am sorry." Rigid, formal apology. It meant nothing.

"Oh, shut up. I'm not buying your loyal minion act today. If you feel like being a disrespectful incompetent, at least do me the service of not pretending I'm too old and stupid to punish you." Mirth had now crept in, mingling with a sort of sadistic pleasure.

The rigidness solidified further in an attempt to stem the tide of fury building up behind an emotionless façade. "My apologies are genuine."

"Foist it on your paying customers; it won't work on me. Now, where is he?"

"I said I do not know. He has not been found."

"And that's our problem, isn't it?" the voice screeched, rising several octaves. "Why are you even here?"

"l...forgive me, it is not important."

Heavily breathing now, the angry voice seemed to consider something before adding, loudly, "Well then. Go find that useless golem so we can work on remedying our problem. I have listening to do." The following low sigh was never completed, as it was drowned out by a deep hum, and its maker disappeared.

He was spattered with grease from head to toe.

While Tera's fifteen-year-old brother could be described as fairly good-looking, he was usually too engrossed in whatever new technical venture he had embarked on to notice anybody watching him, and if he did, he would cheerily call them over to bury them in his world of mechanical parts and robotics. Now, on the front lawn of the Ankiel family's medium-sized suburb residence, he was sweating profusely, grumbling almost as much, and straining to pull a connection into place. Momentarily, he released his pliers and dropped his hand to his knee, resting his chin on it and peering peevishly at the stubborn bit of metal he had been struggling with. As if enlightened, he blew on his reddened hand, shook it, wrapped a greasy rag around it, and wrenched at the pliers as hard as he could. There was an audible 'click' as something shifted.

There. He could successfully boast that he had completely disassembled his father's car motor and rebuilt it in less than seven hours, taking time to learn every aspect (well, almost every) of its shiny silver interior as he went. Summer vacation was a wonderful thing, he thought to himself, wiping strings of sweaty deep-brown hair from his forehead and leaving trails of oily black. Noticing for the first time the approaching electric whine of his sister's bike, he stood up and let her spray the greasy grass, and himself, with a dull sheet of muddy water from the puddle beside the sidewalk. "Nice one!" She said, dragging off her helmet and appraising the lawn with a sarcastically happy smile. "I'm sure Mom's just going to be thrilled at what you did to the lawn!"

He shrugged, as if for the first time noticing the mess he had made. "I fixed Dad's engine," he said offhandedly, but the pride was evident in his voice.

"Yeah, and probably took your time doing it. All he had to do was replace the old charger link thing. This might have been overkill."

He waved dismissively at her. "So? It's fixed, right?"

Tera threw her arms and helmet into the air, gazing skyward as if to say 'Lord take me now'. "If you say so! I'm just remembering what happened the last time you said that."

Snapping out an arm quickly, the young mechanic caught her flying headgear and offered it back to her. "You're just jealous, I can't help it if I'm a mechanical prodigy."

"Mechanical prodigy, my face," Tera grumbled.

He grinned as cheekily as possible, like some sort of demonic chipmunk if such a thing existed. "Hey, Mom's not even here so don't go shooting at me. I'll clean it up, don't worry!"

"Why does that make me worry, Kax? Answer me that." She mounted the porch and glared back at him.

Callix Ankiel, more commonly known by his awkward nickname Kax, ignored her. He made a great show of whistling as he ambled off, filthy hands in baggy jeans pockets, to go find a hose.

Tera rolled her eyes again, and, digging her keys out of her own pocket, unlocked the door and obstreperously slammed it shut behind her.

Tera's father was gone at the moment; he had hitched a ride with a co-worker to his job, what with his car being out of it for the day. Eric Ankiel—roboticist, inventor, and complete technical geek—had passed down his obsessive genes to Kax and left all of the down-to-earth ones that made him tolerable to be with behind. At least, that was Tera's theory; she had begun developing it from the age of four, when she realized that having a younger brother was more of a hindrance than any form of blessing.

Swiping a granola bar from the package on the counter, she bent over to inspect the contents of the refrigerator through its transparent glass front. Another piece of intrigue from years past. Her father often jokingly spoke of inventing some sort of force field to cover it, but since the glass kept the cold in and the heat out anyway, Tera personally found the idea more than redundant. The more interesting variation would be the one that her mother had brought up sometime in March of two years ago, when she was irritated to find that Kax had pinched the last of the diet Coke. Mrs. Ankiel had decided on the spot that, if ever a force field came into play to replace the glass over the fridge, it would need a way to be programmed to activate and electrocute certain people when they reached for particular items. The rest of the family had gotten quite the laugh out of this, although the mother had been quick with her halfway-indignant and good-natured rebuttal, saying that they could store money without fear of it being stolen.

Tera found some leftover tacos, and after chucking them into the flash-oven for half a minute, flopped down on the couch in front of the TV with the food on a plastic plate in her lap. The plate was decorated with deformed, anatomically impossible cartoon animals marching around the edge; it was one of the few remaining artifacts from when she and her brother had been toddlers in high chairs screaming for organic applesauce and Cheerios. This one had a blue elephant in the middle.

The news, as usual, was boring, filled with fake smiles packed with fake teeth in fake faces which flapped methodically in the movements of monotonous speech, bubbling out some story about how the peace was still being kept between the United Republic of America and North Korea, a teacher was arrested for forcing her class to break the first amendment with prayers or something, a post-gender pride march downtown, and whether or not there would be another fatal outbreak of AIDS somewhere. Tera flipped channels in between bites, avoiding sitcoms, soap operas, and, quite understandably, the news. Eventually, she gave up, and settled to eat her tacos in silence.

This was almost a daily ritual by now; she still found herself incredulous that most of the half-decent shows had been cancelled. After Kax put down the controller and exiled his collection of 39 ancient video game consoles to the shelf in favor of gaming on his portable, the Ankiel television became a useless silver slab of screen which sulkily dominated part of the wall.

The elephant was no longer obscured by food, so Tera got up and dropped her plate with a brittle clatter into the sink, glancing at the clock built into the fridge as she did so. Meh. Only five.

Eventually, she retired with a book to her room, to whittle away the last few hours of quiet that she would be able to relish for a while.

"Oh, hi. Any luck telling him?"

"Of course not, you idiot."

"What went wrong?"

"What do you think went wrong?" Snap.

Hadn't expected a question. "He got mad at you again?"

"That was rhetorical. Have there been any changes?"

Dust kicked, forming a dingy grayish cloud. "Uh…"

"Will you stop that!"

"…sorry. I mean, no. No changes. I think it was just, uh, a tremor. Or turbulence." The dust settled.

"Good. Be patient, and stay ready. He is listening tonight." Kick. "And stop that!" A low hum, rising in pitch, quavering as it filled the air.

And then all was silent once more.

By now, the water heater had been running non-stop for about ninety minutes. With an annoyed grunt, Tera flipped onto her back and stared at the ceiling, while she let her breath out in a long hiss to calm herself down. Kax had been told to limit his shower times, but usually, once he went in, the whole of the URA Armed Forces would have difficulty in dragging him out. Oh well. Tera was not the entire army, but she was his sister, and that should at least command some small amount of respect and/or authority. She rolled to her feet with some effort, stretched the kink out of her neck, and ambled towards her target.

"Knock-knock," Shouted Tera against the door to the bathroom, and was rewarded with the sound of the water thudding off. The pipes whined as the pressure cut abruptly, moaning out a sound she mentally likened to that of a helium-dosed bovine mammal. "You should be clean now, unless you fell asleep in there."

No reply. The pipes squealed again, as the water resumed its noise. Kax had heard, but Kax did not need to listen.

Tera had heard stories that her father had told, about how in college he and a group of his friends would locate the dorm water heaters at ungodly hours, and turn them all off, just in time for the other students to take their showers. Laughingly, she had joked that, had that little incident been brought up during his job interview, he wouldn't be a scientist.

The only problem was that now, you couldn't turn off a water heater. It was built into the plumbing system, and looked more like a grate than a giant tank filled with heated water. So freezing Kax alive wasn't a solution. Giving up, Tera resolved to figure out a way to make him pay the water bill somehow. He had been forced to do it before, after he had turned on all of the faucets as an April Fools prank years ago.

She started involuntarily as her phone beeped softly, announcing a call. Somebody had turned off the custom ringtone function which assigned a particular song for each of the callers. "Kax," she said matter-of-factly, "If you screw with my phone again, I will insure that your death is long and painful." It was said with the disruptive sound of water running to mask it, so she knew that he wouldn't hear it. Her annoyed little explosion was less of a threat and more of a personal reminder to password-lock the entire stupid piece of electronics. The ring repeated itself; she irritably flipped the device open without waiting for the liquid crystal screen to pool fully, and pressed it against her ear where her wayward ashen-yellow hair wouldn't get in the way. "Hello?" She began, hesitantly, like a young child answering the telephone for the first time.

"Hello, girlfriend! Got a date for tonight yet?" Alisa, half-kidding if her tone was to be construed correctly. Nobody else burst out like that.

"Hi." Tera let the date bit slide. It slid very, very far.

"Just 'hi'? Are you down or something?"

Tera experimentally chewed on a fingernail, realized what she was doing, and dropped her hand to her side again with a dull thump as it brushed the wall she was leaning against. "No. I've been trying to get Kax out of the shower before he causes a drought."

Alisa was quiet for a moment, a time long enough without her chatter to be considered a miracle. "Try using a bullwhip, you know? A Taser? I've heard that those work well. Anyway, I called to say that the match this evening's been moved up to nine. Some scheduling debacle, who knows. Anyway, make sure you remember. We'll be there to pick you up! Bye-ee!"

Click.

Still holding the cell phone, Tera whipped around, suddenly aware that Kax was standing there. "Finally," She smirked, arms akimbo.

"What?" Kax stared at her innocently.

"You're out of the shower."

"Yeah, and?"

Tera suppressed a laugh. "Alisa recommended that I take a bullwhip to you."

"Well hello to her, too. Anyway, are you going somewhere?" He was wearing the same black T-shirt with the bike logo on it that he had been during his engine repairing spree. What the point was of taking a shower and then putting on filthy clothes again, was beyond his sister's comprehension. But then again, most of the things that Kax did would classify themselves outside of the thought patterns of practically any human being. Many times, Tera had considered letting him in on this private idea just to spite him, but most likely, he would take it as a compliment.

His question still needed answering, so she glanced at her watch with a brisk, businesslike motion and stated shortly, "Games at nine." Quite frankly, she did not want to talk about the Games. She had given into Alisa's prodding, after all that had happened the last time she had stepped into the blinding glare of the arena lights and heard the shouts of enthusiastic crowd-members twist into ugly calls for blood. Tera flicked her gaze down towards the hand which still held her phone, clutching it so tightly that the knuckles had bleached themselves white. "I'm going to go get ready."

Twisting herself sideways, she attempted to sidle past her brother and escape to her room. But the world always had to have those terribly persistent people, among them Kax, could not take a hint, no matter how obvious it might be. Kax held out an arm; an expression which Tera could not identify as more than curiosity flickered across his features. "Huh. Last time, you practically died of shock. And what was with all that screaming I heard about?"

Oh. So apparently, now it was time to be a jerk. Tera affixed a crude imitation of a smile to her disgusted face "I saw a man die, Kax," she said, fake cheer bouncing from her tone. "D-I-E. Die. He was only a little older than me, and he was dead. He spoke his last words. Right there, and then he died. And now you expect me to just forget about it?" The façade of happiness bled out almost frighteningly quickly.

Despite his cocky exterior, Kax could be solemn when he wanted to be, and right now, his grin wavered and, while it remained in place, it was a rough, silly shadow. "I never said that. All I said was that…"

Tera's blue eyes flashed, as her dangerously short fuse sparked. "Yes," she spat, wishing more than anything that he wasn't her brother, so she could slug him, hard. "You basically go and make light of the whole situation, and then," She paused for emphasis, pulling her lips back in a feral sneer, "You hope that your idiotic, convoluted logic will take care of it." She roughly elbowed past him with a low curse, forced through clenched teeth, and practically fell through the doorway to her room, letting the door's narrow piston prevent it from slamming.

She sat down hard on the floor, looking up at the ceiling It had been a year, yet she still could not forget that blood-glazed face, one eye screwed shut and trickling pinkish fluid. The hoarse, cracking whisper of his last words still was there, in the back of her head. She hadn't even known the guy. She managed a bitter laugh, quietly, so that Kax wouldn't hear her.

Her reaction hadn't even been so strong when her grandfather succumbed to cancer. And she had known him for fifteen years of her life. But rationalization didn't stop the fact that thinking of Dead Gladiator Guy made her chest clench up like she couldn't breathe.

Struck with a sudden, madly nervous inspiration, she carefully crept to her door and locked it, then double-checked the house intercom. Off, good. Window shut. With hesitant steps, the girl drifted toward the center of her room and knelt. Hunched over like a turtle retreated within its private bunker, she shut her eyes tightly and began whispering a fervent prayer, aware that the tears were trickling down her cheeks and dampening the carpet as she inwardly cried out for the soul of the dead man to be saved. It was a short prayer, and barely thirty seconds later she was awkwardly climbing to her feet and going after the windows and intercom and locked door in an effort to return things to normal. It was a short prayer, but it had to be.

Standing awkwardly half-way down the hall, Kax looked towards his own watch.

Two hours left.

When Tera's mother finally returned, it was near eight. "You look nice," she said, inspecting her daughter who had opened the door. "Are you going somewhere?"

You look nice. Always the first thing anybody ever said, excluding boys, who Tera was a socially retarded idiot with, and who largely ignored her anyway. Sometimes, she had a deep, nagging feeling that secretly she was a giant walking billboard of average niceness, somewhere in the low middle of the hot-to-not spectrum. Afflicted by a brief notion of vanity, Tera check herself in the hall mirror as she trailed alongside her mother toward the kitchen. If anything was more than nice, it was her hair, which grew in a bright natural blonde. Overall it achieved an effect which could be compared to some blind florist sticking a sunflower at the top of a flower arrangement chiefly comprised of baby's breath and nondescript ferns. Tera once tried to have it permanently darkened to counter this effect, but it still grew in blond, and Kax's suggestion of getting it colorshocked only earned a bored glare. That sort of thing was murder on the scalp. Dandruff was not on her bucket list.

Ah, yes. Mom had asked where she was going. Righty. "Games."

And now came the disapproving glance that all mothers have been experts at since the dawn of time. "Are you sure?"

The answer. "Yes." An answer…? Or a blatant baldfaced lie forged of denial and other deep, meaningfully, soul-wrenching things? Actually, she reflected, it was probably both.

"Well, sweetie, you are old enough to go. If you really want to, I won't stop you."

"Thanks, Mom." There was the barest undertone of sarcasm, which Tera doubted her mother would pick up on.

She didn't.

Instead, Laura Ankiel smiled graciously and opened the fridge to fix dinner.

Old Word Count: 4549

New Word Count: 5196

Re-reading this was embarrassing. It's still not quite up to par with the later chapters, and reeks of small-child-trying-too-hard in places, but I'll just pass that off as being part of Tera's character growth or something. The sections I re-wrote are fairly obvious. The entire beginning is much less painful and I managed to touch up a lot of dialogue. The most conspicuous alteration is the total revision of the EVIL ITALICS PEOPLE OMG, because I'd hope a fellow would have at least a little personality evolution over the course of time, and because I'd rather not write characters who sound as though they're reading out of Evil Diatribes for Dummies. Expect the other rants to be redone as well.

In case you're wondering what you just read – it's a semi-AU continuation of Cave Story following the Bad Ending and the events of Soldier from the Surface (which was my first fic). It does not become firmly integrated with Cave Story until chapter 10, and even then only in the last couple of paragraphs. There are many elements from the game and its surrounding mythos, but they will likely not become clear until later.

Thank you so much for reading ASCfR, and I hope you enjoy the following chapters as well.