Hello Reader!
Man, it's been a while, hasn't it?
Whelp, I'm back for my second fan-fiction, this time in the realm of Fire Emblem. Don't worry though, there is another pokémon fic in the works (not that anyone cares).
This story is a modern-day retelling of the Awakening plot line, except all the characters are college students. Yeah… It's a bit of a stretch. Anywho, there are just three things I wish to explain before we begin. First, each chapter is going to have a quote attached to it that I feel sums up the mood of the chapter. If I can find the original speaker, they will be quoted, if not, then I probably just made it up and it will be marked "X". For example, today's quote is "The beginning is always today" -Mary Shelley. The second thing, which will not be included in all chapters, is songs. I really wanted to write a songfic, but I don't know how… so some chapters will have songs listed above them that fit the mood. However, I couldn't find any songs for this one, so just… make up your own or something. Lastly, I don't always have access to a computer, so some of these chapters will be written on my phone. This one is all computer, though.
WARNING TO ALL READERS: THIS VERSION OF THE STORY IS CURRENTLY BEING UPDATED, AND IS VERY SLOW PACED. A NEW VERSION IS BEING WRITTEN, BUT THAT MEANS THAT ONLY THE CURRENT CHAPTERS THAT ARE UP FOR THIS STORY WILL BE POSTED ON THIS PLOT LINE. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
Sorry for the long AN. Let's begin!
DISCLAIMER: All aspects of Fire Emblem Awakening are property of their respective owners. None of which are me.
Three figures running down a dark hallway. Echoing footsteps.
Flashing lights against a blue sky. Shouting.
Two combatants in dark robes. Swords clashing.
Smoke rising upwards. Immeasurable pain.
A rising figure. A bolt of lightning.
Moving rubble. A face.
A crumpled body.
Blackout.
"Thanks to you, we carried the day."
For an eternity, his entire world was darkness and pain. Nothing else existed, nothing else mattered. As far as he knew, nothing else had ever happened to him. He felt empty. He, he thought, why do I call myself he? He sat there in darkness, pain making it hard to think. What is my name? Another pause. Robin. I just remembered that. How odd. I suppose that's one mystery solved.
Robin opened his eyes. It surprised him that they worked. The color was a refreshing sensation to his weary brain, though it was just the pastel gray of a wall. That's a beautiful wall, Robin thought, then chuckled at his own delusion. He tried moving his neck next, rotating slowly side to side. It hurt, but no more than what he was already experiencing. He was in a long, what was the word, rectangular room, with four walls painted identical to the beautiful one he had opened his eyes to. The floor was a light cream title. He drank that in for a moment before moving on.
Looking down, what he only assumed was his body lay in bandages on a baby blue bed with a steel frame. A tube was stuck in his arm, attached to a needle. Some sort of liquid poured in to his veins from a bag hung above his head. He was wearing no shirt, but could feel something wrapped around him from the waist down. A moment later, he realized that it was most likely pants.
To the left of his bed sat an identical setup to what he was resting on, with a similarly bandaged figure, facing away from him, laying shirtless on the bed. Blushing, Robin noted that the other human was female. Now why does that make me blush? He tried to remember. Whatever had happened to him, he seemed to have experienced some memory loss.
A door he had somehow failed to notice on his primary scan of the room opened and a woman in a blue shirt and blue pants rushed in, placed her hand on the girl in the other bed, then swapped out the bag hanging over her head for a new one.
"Ex-ec-e" Robin started, then broke out coughing. The woman now came to his bedside. Voice dry from lack of use, Robin started again. "E-excuse me" his voice caught. She handed him a small cup of water, which he downed gratefully. "M'am, could you please tell me where I am?" Speaking was easier now.
The woman smiled warmly. With a thick accent Robin couldn't recognize, she answered, "The Lutheran Hospital, outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Do you wish for me to call a doctor?" Robin nodded, and the Nurse ran off.
Fifteen minutes of staring at his own heart rate monitor later, a man in a white coat walked in to Robin's room. He had black hair that was gray at the stems and a short beard that looked well-trimmed and messy at the same time, sort of like one would expect an aging father to look.
"Glad to see you up. You are very lucky, you know." He spoke softly while smiling.
"I-I'm sorry sir, I don't know. Everything before that wall"-he jerked his head at the wall- "Is a big blank for me. What happened?"
The doctor sighed. "You were on a plane destined for somewhere in the North-East of the US. Nobody knows for sure what happened. One minute you're in the sky, the next, a tin can full of dead bodies smoking on the ground. You and her"- he pointed to the girl on the other bed -"Were the only survivors. I fear that, if you lost your memory, she may have too." Robin shuddered. The girl rolled over. "I have your coat in my office somewhere if you would like to see it. You were wearing it when you arrived."
"Could you bring it to me, sir? I fear I may be unable to walk."
"I wouldn't allow you to even if you could. You need to be glued to that bed for the next week." The door slammed as the doctor left.
The noise woke the girl to Robin's left. He watched as she went through the same steps he had, soaking up all the colors of the world she had missed for the last few days. She was pretty, with a full figure and white hair running down her back akin to the strands Robin noticed were hanging in his eyes. She turned on her other side to face him, and he blushed bright red and looked away.
"You can look now." She called in a smooth voice. Robin turned back to face her, relieved to realize that she was as red as he.
"You're alive." He mused.
"So it seems. Any idea what's going on?"
"According to the staff, we were in some sort of plane crash, and won the lotto and turned out to be the only survivors."
"Lucky us. Are you in as much pain as I am right now?"
"Do you feel like you are simultaneously burning to death while bench pressing the weight of the earth?"
She laughed harmoniously. "That was an excellent way to put it, Mr.-"
"Robin. My name's Robin."
"Now where do I know that from? Oh, it seems so familiar! I'm gonna kill myself thinking it over." The girl stared at the wall for a moment, pondering. "By the way, my name is… name is… is…" She gasped. "How am I supposed to know your name if I can't even remember my own?" The girl's brow furrowed.
"You too, huh?"
"Sorry?"
"I've forgotten everything as well. We must have experienced too much trauma." Silence.
"Skye. My name's Skye. I just remembered that. How odd. Well, I guess that's one mystery solved." Robin burst out laughing.
"Those are the exact words I used telling myself my name! You think we're related?"
"Wouldn't put it past fate to make us siblings. It's cliché, like something you would read in a fan fiction." The conversation stalled. There was a moment of excitement as Robin quickly looked away when Skye's tired hands dropped the blanket covering herself, but other than that, the two sat in silence. A silence broken by the doctor as he reentered the scene.
"Here, young man, is your coat. Ah, young lady, it is good to see you alive! I have your sweater for you here. I figured that I could keep it in here until you awoke, but as you are up, you may take it." He cleared his throat, calming himself. "My apologies. You must think me incompetent for not treating you now, but truth be told, you were out for long enough for our staff to preform all necessary operations on you. All you are doing now is R+R, and soon you will be fully healed. You might still need a couple casts, however." The doctor left as quickly as he had arrived.
"What's his rush?" Skye ask Robin, putting on her sweater and zipping it up the front.
"Maybe there is a pandemic of rotten toe worms in the area." Robin said offhandedly, but immediately regretted it, as he heard sounds of retching from the side of his bed. He, too, felt queasy just thinking of the idea.
"Why would you even think that?" Skye scoffed as she righted herself agin, wiped her mouth, and began to dig through the numerous pockets of her retuned sweater. Why she owned, or how she found, a sweater with all these pockets was a mystery.
"My last name is Shiro. What's your's?" she ask Robin, examining half a torn plane ticket. On it read her name, "Skye Shiro", and destination, but the only word of it she could make out was "Hopkins". It was obvious the ticket had seen better days.
Robin was examining a wallet, which had fared much better than Skye's ticket. It held a sky-blue drivers license, a $5 off coupon for a coffee shop, a folded up traveler's check, and fifty dollars worth of pennies.
"I'm a Shiro too. Robin A. Shiro. Does this mean we're related?"
"I would guess it either puts us as siblings or as a married couple, judging by our age. Do you have proof either way?" Skye blushed as she spoke.
"This says I'm unmarried." Came the reply. Skye sighed with relief. It wasn't that Robin was unattractive, but she really did not want to be married to someone she didn't know.
After a full half hour of rummaging, Robin and Skye had finally emptied all of their pockets.
"So let me get this straight- we're twins." Robin nodded. "And we're both amnesic." Another nod. "And we were flying here to go to a college?" An affirmation. "But nobody knows where this college is." Robin let out a yawn and lay down.
"Exactly. Nobody in the hospital has ever heard of this 'Ylisse'." They had ask everyone who had come by, only getting the doctor to "look it up" after pestering him non-stop. Now, all that could be done is wait.
"I've been thinking- why is it that, even though we both lost most if not all of our memories, we still know how to talk? Why didn't we just turn back in to giant babies? And how come I know exactly what a baby is, but cannot picture it in my head?" Skye wondered aloud.
"You expect me to know this… how?" Robin answered his twin. "Now shut it. I'm trying to sleep."
The room fell quiet again. The sun was going down, Skye could see through the open door. The room to which she was confined had no windows, but it had probably been a nice day.
I wonder what my life was like before. Skye wondered. My ID said I had three siblings. I wonder who they are. She rolled on to her side. I wonder what's going to happen to me now? Shivers went up her spine at the thought of living without any prior experience, no ideas what she was to do. I need to do something- to stop my broken mind from wandering. She told herself. She attempted to dismount the bed, maybe find a shirt to go on as opposed to her sweater. She was beginning to boil. Her mind tried to send a message to her leg, to get it to move, but was met only with a renewed wave of agony throughout her body. Am I paralyzed too?! Skye panicked, kicking at her blankets. Wait- I just kicked my blankets. Problem solved. With great effort, she was able to lift one leg out of her bed, and then gravity took effect, pulling on her other leg, then her hips and torso, then her head, until she was a crumpled heap of human collapsed on the floor.
COLD COLD COLD COLD! Skye stood quickly, wondering why the floor froze her legs, but immediately fell again, this time landing in a crawling position. I can do this. she thought, weakly moving her limbs as to avoid causing herself too much pain.
What seemed like an eternity later, Skye reached the cabinets on the other side of the room, and collapsed against them, breathing heavily and wishing for a pain reliever. She sat there until the floor froze her again, and she looked down, shocked to realize that she wasn't wearing anything but her sweater. Stitches ran up and down her legs, and one appeared to have been in a splint. Why on earth was I naked in the hospital bed?! She blushed. That seemed to be a theme with her.
In one of the cabinets she found a robe and gratefully donned it, shedding her sweater in the process. Slamming the cabinet door shut and walking clumsily back to her bed, she realized she had woke Robin.
"Nice robe." He smirked.
"Thanks. You want me to get you one? You could use it to cover up… that." She waved lazily at his bare chest. The response had been almost reflexive, the way something becomes only after it's been done for one's whole life. Maybe this was the way their relationship worked.
"I would gladly take that." He said, smiling. "I thought I was wearing pants, but upon closer inspection, my legs are stuffed in casts and bandages." He tried to rise, grimaced, then fell out of bed the same way Skye had.
His sister laughed. It felt good, she thought, to be happy after being unconscious for so long. She tossed him the extra robe she had grabbed.
"Ew. Now cover up, please." She said, looking away disdainfully.
Once Robin was clothed, he sat on his bed, his sister mirroring him across the room. Before he could say anything though, there was a soft knock on the door.
"May I came in?" The doctor whom they had pestered in to doing their research for them had found something..
"Sure." The twins answered in unison.
"I have found the answer to your query, although the internet provided little use. Ylisse is a college, nobody knows where, reserved only for special students of some kind. The only other thing I found was a phone number, which I called. I reached the president of the academy and told them that we have you here. They looked you up, and they agreed to come get you some time in the next week." He finished. "I'm sorry, but that's all I know. Now get back in your beds. You are still patients here." Robin and Skye sighed.
The natural light long since having faded from the hallway outside the door, both Shiros were asleep. The room they shared was once again peaceful, and the repetitive sounding of a heart rate monitor lulled the scene even more. The only thing that was out of place was a dark silhouette in the door of the room.
"You and I can become one, and I can reclaim my power…" It rasped. The sound echoed through the room like nails on a chalk board. Seconds later, the figure was gone.
The next five days passed without incident. Despite what the first doctor they had seen had said, Robin and Skye were taken out of their room and to the PT ward, where they spent all of their time stimulating their minds in hopes of restoring their memories. The endeavor proved fruitless, however, and the two quickly switched over to a fitness-centric regimen.
"Well, Robin, I can say you are as back to normal as we can get you." The therapist spoke, as she, Robin and Skye watched the van that was from their school pull up fromthe second floor window. "Skye, I'm still worried about your right leg. Don't push it too hard, and do the exercises I assigned to you. I'm letting you go only if you come back for a check-up in a month."
"Yes, m'am."
They were having a parting exam with their trainer, as what could only have been the President of Ylisse had just arrived in a white mini van with a blue teardrop-like symbol on the side.
The doors of the van opened. Out of the drivers seat stepped a tall woman, wearing green, with a long face and long bleach blonde hair that fell in curls down her shoulders. The twins watched her enter, then headed downstairs to meet.
"I believe their names are Robin and Skye," the pale woman was saying to the man at the reception desk as Skye, Robin, and the trainer approached.
"We're coming." Called Skye from across the room, stopping the woman mid-sentance. She turned to them and smiled warmly.
"Hello! It is truly a pleasure to meet you." She bowed her head. Instinctively, the twins bowed back. The woman giggled softly. "I my name is Emmeryn. I run the school which was your destination before the tragedy that befell you. I dearly hope you are alright."
"They're fine." Griped the PT, obviously thrown off by Emmeryn's soft voice and cordial tone. "All we need is for her," she pointed at Skye, "to come back in about a week for a check-in. Her leg is still healing."
"As you wish." Emmeryn bowed again.
The man at the desk stood and handed the twins a release form. "As near as we can tell, you are both at the age to which you are no longer dependents. So, just sign here and you can go." Pens scribbled.
"Then we'll be off." Emmeryn started. "Thank you for taking such good care of our newest students." The sliding glass doors opened and closed.
"Kinda seems like the beginning of a kidnapping." The clerk pointed out to the trainer.
"Meh. I got paid, so I could care less." She walked off, back down a dark hallway.
Emmeryn was not a talkative driver, Robin noticed. She just sat there, staring quietly at the road and obeying every rule to the letter. It was crazy, and also somewhat down lifting, as his sister spent the whole car ride staring out the window at all the beautiful greens of late summer. The silence was awkward only for Robin, who began to feel queasy whenever the car did anything but go straight.
"Are we there yet?" he ask, unaware of how immature it made him sound. Emmeryn laughed lightly, but did not smile and kept her eyes on the road.
"You see that small town up ahead?" Robin nodded. "Our destination is a three hour drive from the third town after that one." Robin groaned, moaned, and cried at the same time.
"The sun's already beginning to set. How are we going to get there in one night?" Emmeryn chuckled and whispered under her breath.
"Gullible."
Although the sun had set long ago, the city of Ylissitol, which held the school of Ylisse, was not as far as Emmeryn had said, much to Robin's delight. After they had reached the town Emmeryn had pointed out, they had veered on to a side road, one-lane, that was coated in cracks and weeds. They stayed on that road for half an hour before it opened up in to a well-kept four-lane highway, which lead directly in to a cramped, but cozy, city. Most of the buildings were Japanese-Style architecture, and were all two to four stories high. Despite the clustered establishments, Robin spotted multiple parks, raised above housing units, splashed about the city.
"Welcome to Ylissitol. Here, we hold all citizens of this fine nation that are descended from the blood of heroes long past." Emmeryn paused in her monologue, pointing dead ahead. "And that- That is the school Ylisse. There, we teach the old ways as well as the new to the descendants of the ancient Ylisseans, who had unique DNA that allowed for them to accomplish inhuman feats. You two have that DNA, which is why you have been brought here."
At the what Robin guessed was the center of the city, they reached a brick fence topped with decorative white spokes. The van's headlights shone on a steel gate, but nothing could be seen beyond the bars. Emmeryn parked and got out, then took a key out of her robe and opened the gate.
"We only lock it at night." She explained as she stepped back in to the car. "Many people, most of them failed students, have made a gang that attacks the school when they can. They don't do it in broad daylight, though. Tis' a sad reality of our existence." Both Robin and Skye shuddered.
Inside the gate, from what was visible in the van's dim headlights, was the polar opposite of the clustered city. There were vast, green open spaces, sprawling classroom compounds, along with a disorganized cluster of residences labeled for student use only. The van parked in front of one such house.
"This is my house." Emmeryn jerked her head over her shoulder, obviously in a hurry to get inside after a long day of driving. "The rest of these are school-provided student housing. We have no fraternities or sororities, but out two dorms from when the school was first built act sort of like them." She tossed Robin and Skye each a key. "Unfortunately, we are a little crowded this year, so you two will each be sharing one of the two large, third floor dorms with two roommates each." Emmeryn pointed off in to the dark. "Walk that way for about twenty yards and you will hit the road that leads to the Alpha dormitory. It's in the very Northwestern corner of campus. Since school hasn't started yet, many students might still be up, but it's easier if you just let yourselves in. Robin, you're in room 301, and Skye, you're 303. That's all you should need to know for know, and I have tasked your roommates with explaining the rest of the school to you in the morning. Goodnight, and may we meet again soon." With that, Emmeryn bowed one last time and went inside.
"Which way did she say?" Robin ask his sister, startled by the woman's sudden departure.
"Somewhere in this general direction." Skye said over her shoulder, heavy footprints wandering away. Robin jogged to catch up.
It was too late in the season for crickets, leaving the echoing footsteps singularly lonely. The moon shone above the trees, casting moving shadows that made the road a mirage. Every building they passed was dark, as if the life had gone with the sun.
DONG. A single sound of a large bell rattled the silent night. Robin's head shook. Was it that late already? The sound died off in the night.
"Hey." Skye finally spoke, breaking the peaceful silence that had enveloped the campus for so long.
"Yeah?"
"Do you ever get the feeling that something big is about to happen? That we're walking in to something we can never escape?"
"That's funny. It's like you read my mind."
So.
That… happened.
Yes, Skye is female Robin if you couldn't guess.
I really just needed one chapter to introduce the characters and the main themes of the story, so for all of you about to go read something by somebody with talent, please, just give me one more chapter. If you liked the story though, please like it and follow it, and I would appreciate anyone taking time out of their day to leave a review.
What majors should Robin and Skye be? I really have no idea.
Now, a little mystery to put at the end of my chapter story. This story's first letter of the phrase of power is…
E
Now while you wonder what the heck that means, I bid you adieu.
"The world would have you believe you are nothing. Society would have you believe you are everything. The truth? Whatever you want it to be."