Title: Runaway
Author: Dream Tenshi
Chapter: 1
Chapter name: Flashback
WELCOME TO SANC KINGDOM, the sign read.
Hotaru Tomoe walked on the road in a late-after-noon gloom. The dark clouds hung very low and heavy, threatening to drench on her for the seventh time today.
"Sanc Kingdom," she whispered. Never heard of it. She wipes her white pale hands on her jeans, but it didn't help. She was soaked.
Her jeans heavy with rains. Her sneakers were soft and squishy. Hotaru's black hair was wet.
Hotaru peered past the WELCOME sign. A bridge! Under the bridge was a swiftly flowing river. The water swept crumpled leaves and dead small branches along its ways.
Hotaru shifted her heavy black backpack on her shoulders. She pulled her black baseball cap lower over her purple wisdom eyes.
'Maybe I can be safe here', she thought. 'Maybe I can start over here in Sanc Kingdom.'
A lump rose in Hotaru's throat. She didn't want to start over. She wants to go home. Home, where she had friends and family who cared about her deeply.
But she couldn't. She could never go home. Not after what she did.
'Don't start crying again', Hotaru, she ordered herself. 'You're soaking wet as it is. Tears are weakness like what they taught you at the laboratory.' She turned and stared in the opposite direction. Should she stay here- or keep on moving?
Hotaru wished she could forget what happened. Forget everything and everyone from the past. Start fresh. With new friends that would care about her.
But the memories would never disappear. It would haunt her in her dreams. The laboratory. The wires. The doctors.
Dr. Kaorinite especially. She shivered when she whispered her name.
Her red hair that look like blood dripping and her green cold eyes that look like she wants her dead. Hotaru remembered the first time she ever met her. The people led her into the lab. The bright fluorescent lights hurt her violet eyes. They sat her down in a Straight backed wooden chair, the most uncomfortable chair she'd ever sat in.
They crowded around her, working, working and working around her. The orange lady attached sticky electrodes to her temples.
Green, red, yellow, blue and black wires ran from the electrodes into the large machine terminal. The assistants barked orders back and forth. The people who were barked with orders walked like zombies.
"Trail run on module four," the orange-hair woman said in a white coat.
"Go module four," the green hair lady relied. She flipped one of a switch, and one of the machines began a loud, rhythmic beeping.
"Pulse is seventy-nine, blood pressure one-twenty."
"Is that good?" Hotaru asked innocently.
They ignored her. They always ignore her questions.
The green hair lady moved a table in front of Hotaru. Another assistant pushed in her chair.
"Tell Dr. Kaorinite that the subject is ready," the green haired woman ordered.
"My name is Hotaru," she reminded them. "Why can't you ever use my name?"
The green hair lady regarded her coldly, saying nothing. She picked up a clipboard and began making notes.
"It's spelled H-O-T-A-R-U," Hotaru grumbled.
The green hair woman stopped writing and stared at her.
"Did I go too fast?" Hotaru asked sarcastically.
The woman set the pencil and clipboard down and left the room.
Seconds later, the red headed lady strode into the exam room; in her white lab coat swishing with each step she took. She stood about 5'10". Her eyes look so deep, so angry.
Angry eyes, Hotaru thought. No laughter in there. So serious. Only a big, cold, dark nothing like the planet Saturn.
"Hotaru," she said, folding her arms across her chest. "How are you today?"
"Fine, if you don't count me sitting in this very uncomfortable chair and every person ignoring questions," Hotaru said sarcastically.
"Fine. I am Dr. Kaorinite. I'm running this phase of the experiment. Unlike Dr. Tellu, I will not tolerate any sarcasm. You have to understand, Hotaru. You are here to learn, but to teach as well. We need to learn from you. So you must clear your mind and concentrate. If you refuse to obey that one simple rule, you will be finished here at Jubban College. Is that clear?"
A jolt of anger shot through Hotaru. 'Who does this lady think she is? They need me a lot more than I need them.'
Hotaru gazed into Dr Kaorinite eyes. She did not turn away. She took the challenge and stared back.
"You need to learn how to control your talents. If you don't, you will put others, and yourself, in danger."
Hotaru shivered. "I understand," she finally replied.
"Fine. Let us begin," Dr. Kaorinite pulled a pencil from her coat pocket and placed it on the table in front of Hotaru. "Move the pencil across the table, please."
"What?"
"Move the pencil across the table, please," Dr. Kaorinite repeated.
"I-I don't know if I can," Hotaru stammered. She heard the machine's beeps increase with her heart rate. Her palms began to sweat.
"That is unacceptable," Dr. Kaorinite replied. "Move the pencil across the table, please."
"I can't just do it, you know!"
Dr Kaorinite slammed her palm down on the table.
"What did I just explain to you? This is not a game. This isn't even a test. This is your life, young lady!"
"Don't yell at me!" she yelled back. "I can't help it! I'm no one of your stupid machines! You can't just turn me on and off whenever you want! Get out of my face!"
Dr. Kaorinite drew in a deep breath. She leaned forward on the table, placing a hand on either edge. Leaned so close to Hotaru, she could feel her breath hitting her face.
"Young lady, whether you know it or not, you are blessed with one of the most remarkable talents on the face of this earth. I advise you to cooperate and concentrate. If you don't, there are more important people who are waiting to see how your abilities work. And believe me, their tests will be much more painful than this. Is that clear?"
Hotaru wanted to rip the itchy electrodes off her temples and run out of the lab. 'No', she told herself. 'I have to be strong. I have to try.'
Because she knew that the doctor wasn't lying. Her father had told her the same thing- a long line of doctors waited to put her strange talents to the test. Kaorinite would not be the worst.
She stared at the pencil.
"Concentrate," she ordered.
She focused on it. The pink eraser. The yellow paint. The sharp, black point.
In the background, the beeping increases faster. Hotaru's heart hammered in her chest, Full of fear. Full of anger.
'Do it', she told herself. 'Just do it.'
"You're not concentrating!" Dr Kaorinite whispered harshly.
But she was. Hotaru hurled all her energy toward the pencil. And she felt something.
Something growing inside her.
Slowly inflating.
Like a balloon.
"Concentrate," Dr. Kaorinite repeated. Her voice dug deep into her brain.
Her power grew.
She pushed harder.
The machines beeped faster and faster. Hotaru felt the blood rushing through her veins like angry waves.
"Heart rate one-ten," came a voice from nowhere. "B.P. one eighty."
Hotaru's fingernails bit into her hands. The moisture on her palms could have been sweat or even blood.
"Concentrate!" came the voice.
'The doctor's voice. The enemy's voice.'
'Kill the enemy.'
The power exploded in Hotaru's mind. All at once the pencil became a part of her will. And she knew exactly what she wanted to do with it.
The pencil wiggled. Then it slowly turned around on the table, its point turning toward Dr Kaorinite.
In her mind, Hotaru took a strong grip on the pencil, squeezing it with all her might. The pencil stopped wiggling and rose several inches from the table. It hovered there, as if waiting for an order.
'Now', she thought. 'Do it!'
She made it happen. She forced all her anger, fear, and frustration into the shaft of the pencil.
She knew it was wrong. But she couldn't help herself.
Hotaru aimed it at the only target she could see-and let loose with all her might.
Hotaru cried out with the effort. 'It felt like throwing a giant spear. I did it!' she thought. 'Yes!'
Then she watch as in slow motion the pencil rocketed across the room- toward Dr. Kaorinite's heart.
Hotaru gagged and closed her eyes. She couldn't watch. Couldn't watch the pencil stab into Dr. Kaorinite. She couldn't do it. It was like a rewind. When she hurt her fellow classmates. When she almost hurt her only best friend Rini.
"Hotaru!" Dr. Kaorinite howled.
She shook her head back and forth, her eyes shut tight.
"Hotaru!" she called again. Hands grabbed her shoulder, holding her in the chair.
"No!" she screeched. "I didn't mean it! It just happened!"
"Hotaru," she called one more time, "it's ok!"
Hotaru opened her eyes and saw Dr. Kaorinite fine and the pencil was in the wall behind her.
*End of Flashback*
She shivered at the thought and notice that she's walking straight to the Sanc Kingdom.
'Should I?' A simple question she could not decide. 'I am hungry. I'll just talked to a fast food restaurant and leave.'
Hotaru started to walk toward the unfamiliar town until a car horn made her jumped. She walk more near the grass out of the road, but it honk again.
"What more do you want?? Go!" Hotaru yelled at the driver.
The car drove near her and the window slide down.
"What's a pretty girl like you doing out here in the rain?" The driver asked.
"None of your business." Hotaru stated.
"Hope in!"
"Leave me alone."
"I'm not going to leave you out here alone so, come in."
Hotaru knew the guy will not leave her alone and she opened the car and got in.
The guy drove off.
"What's your name?"
"Hotaru."
"Hotaru? No last name?"
"None of your business."
"Come on, tell me."
"Tomoe."
"Hotaru Tomeo? Where have I heard that from? By the name is Andy."
Hotaru didn't like the feeling she's having. It's like a six sense like when something bad going to happen. Hotaru gasped when she felt a hand on her thigh. Hotaru turned and saw Andy was looking at her with lust and a smirk on his face. Hotaru smacked the hand away.
Andy frowned and put it there again.
"Stop," Hotaru whispered.
"And why should I? I guess I forgot to mention this before. Whoever I give a ride to must give me something back and I know what I want."
"Please don't."
Andy didn't hear her and put his hand on her thigh again and went up. Hotaru started to grow scared as well as mad. Hotaru started to grow dark purple and her eyes as well.
"I warn you." Hotaru whispered deadly.
"What?" Andy said surprisingly as he felt his heart started to twist and his head started to pound. The top of the car ripped own by an unknown force and Hotaru started to flow until she was out of the car and into the air and flew to the side of the car. Hotaru slowly raised one of her arm and then the other and the car started to glow purple and it started to flow. Andy was screaming. Hotaru started to curl her hand together and the car started to crush together.
'Stop!' Something inside Hotaru said. Slowly she stopped glowing purple and the car came down crashing and the purple glow died down. Hotaru fell on the floor from the lack of energy. Andy fainted. She then blacked out as well. Hotaru didn't see another car coming by.
Well, how was it? For the first time, it's not Usagi-centered. So R/R.
WELCOME TO SANC KINGDOM, the sign read.
Hotaru Tomoe walked on the road in a late-after-noon gloom. The dark clouds hung very low and heavy, threatening to drench on her for the seventh time today.
"Sanc Kingdom," she whispered. Never heard of it. She wipes her white pale hands on her jeans, but it didn't help. She was soaked.
Her jeans heavy with rains. Her sneakers were soft and squishy. Hotaru's black hair was wet.
Hotaru peered past the WELCOME sign. A bridge! Under the bridge was a swiftly flowing river. The water swept crumpled leaves and dead small branches along its ways.
Hotaru shifted her heavy black backpack on her shoulders. She pulled her black baseball cap lower over her purple wisdom eyes.
'Maybe I can be safe here', she thought. 'Maybe I can start over here in Sanc Kingdom.'
A lump rose in Hotaru's throat. She didn't want to start over. She wants to go home. Home, where she had friends and family who cared about her deeply.
But she couldn't. She could never go home. Not after what she did.
'Don't start crying again', Hotaru, she ordered herself. 'You're soaking wet as it is. Tears are weakness like what they taught you at the laboratory.' She turned and stared in the opposite direction. Should she stay here- or keep on moving?
Hotaru wished she could forget what happened. Forget everything and everyone from the past. Start fresh. With new friends that would care about her.
But the memories would never disappear. It would haunt her in her dreams. The laboratory. The wires. The doctors.
Dr. Kaorinite especially. She shivered when she whispered her name.
Her red hair that look like blood dripping and her green cold eyes that look like she wants her dead. Hotaru remembered the first time she ever met her. The people led her into the lab. The bright fluorescent lights hurt her violet eyes. They sat her down in a Straight backed wooden chair, the most uncomfortable chair she'd ever sat in.
They crowded around her, working, working and working around her. The orange lady attached sticky electrodes to her temples.
Green, red, yellow, blue and black wires ran from the electrodes into the large machine terminal. The assistants barked orders back and forth. The people who were barked with orders walked like zombies.
"Trail run on module four," the orange-hair woman said in a white coat.
"Go module four," the green hair lady relied. She flipped one of a switch, and one of the machines began a loud, rhythmic beeping.
"Pulse is seventy-nine, blood pressure one-twenty."
"Is that good?" Hotaru asked innocently.
They ignored her. They always ignore her questions.
The green hair lady moved a table in front of Hotaru. Another assistant pushed in her chair.
"Tell Dr. Kaorinite that the subject is ready," the green haired woman ordered.
"My name is Hotaru," she reminded them. "Why can't you ever use my name?"
The green hair lady regarded her coldly, saying nothing. She picked up a clipboard and began making notes.
"It's spelled H-O-T-A-R-U," Hotaru grumbled.
The green hair woman stopped writing and stared at her.
"Did I go too fast?" Hotaru asked sarcastically.
The woman set the pencil and clipboard down and left the room.
Seconds later, the red headed lady strode into the exam room; in her white lab coat swishing with each step she took. She stood about 5'10". Her eyes look so deep, so angry.
Angry eyes, Hotaru thought. No laughter in there. So serious. Only a big, cold, dark nothing like the planet Saturn.
"Hotaru," she said, folding her arms across her chest. "How are you today?"
"Fine, if you don't count me sitting in this very uncomfortable chair and every person ignoring questions," Hotaru said sarcastically.
"Fine. I am Dr. Kaorinite. I'm running this phase of the experiment. Unlike Dr. Tellu, I will not tolerate any sarcasm. You have to understand, Hotaru. You are here to learn, but to teach as well. We need to learn from you. So you must clear your mind and concentrate. If you refuse to obey that one simple rule, you will be finished here at Jubban College. Is that clear?"
A jolt of anger shot through Hotaru. 'Who does this lady think she is? They need me a lot more than I need them.'
Hotaru gazed into Dr Kaorinite eyes. She did not turn away. She took the challenge and stared back.
"You need to learn how to control your talents. If you don't, you will put others, and yourself, in danger."
Hotaru shivered. "I understand," she finally replied.
"Fine. Let us begin," Dr. Kaorinite pulled a pencil from her coat pocket and placed it on the table in front of Hotaru. "Move the pencil across the table, please."
"What?"
"Move the pencil across the table, please," Dr. Kaorinite repeated.
"I-I don't know if I can," Hotaru stammered. She heard the machine's beeps increase with her heart rate. Her palms began to sweat.
"That is unacceptable," Dr. Kaorinite replied. "Move the pencil across the table, please."
"I can't just do it, you know!"
Dr Kaorinite slammed her palm down on the table.
"What did I just explain to you? This is not a game. This isn't even a test. This is your life, young lady!"
"Don't yell at me!" she yelled back. "I can't help it! I'm no one of your stupid machines! You can't just turn me on and off whenever you want! Get out of my face!"
Dr. Kaorinite drew in a deep breath. She leaned forward on the table, placing a hand on either edge. Leaned so close to Hotaru, she could feel her breath hitting her face.
"Young lady, whether you know it or not, you are blessed with one of the most remarkable talents on the face of this earth. I advise you to cooperate and concentrate. If you don't, there are more important people who are waiting to see how your abilities work. And believe me, their tests will be much more painful than this. Is that clear?"
Hotaru wanted to rip the itchy electrodes off her temples and run out of the lab. 'No', she told herself. 'I have to be strong. I have to try.'
Because she knew that the doctor wasn't lying. Her father had told her the same thing- a long line of doctors waited to put her strange talents to the test. Kaorinite would not be the worst.
She stared at the pencil.
"Concentrate," she ordered.
She focused on it. The pink eraser. The yellow paint. The sharp, black point.
In the background, the beeping increases faster. Hotaru's heart hammered in her chest, Full of fear. Full of anger.
'Do it', she told herself. 'Just do it.'
"You're not concentrating!" Dr Kaorinite whispered harshly.
But she was. Hotaru hurled all her energy toward the pencil. And she felt something.
Something growing inside her.
Slowly inflating.
Like a balloon.
"Concentrate," Dr. Kaorinite repeated. Her voice dug deep into her brain.
Her power grew.
She pushed harder.
The machines beeped faster and faster. Hotaru felt the blood rushing through her veins like angry waves.
"Heart rate one-ten," came a voice from nowhere. "B.P. one eighty."
Hotaru's fingernails bit into her hands. The moisture on her palms could have been sweat or even blood.
"Concentrate!" came the voice.
'The doctor's voice. The enemy's voice.'
'Kill the enemy.'
The power exploded in Hotaru's mind. All at once the pencil became a part of her will. And she knew exactly what she wanted to do with it.
The pencil wiggled. Then it slowly turned around on the table, its point turning toward Dr Kaorinite.
In her mind, Hotaru took a strong grip on the pencil, squeezing it with all her might. The pencil stopped wiggling and rose several inches from the table. It hovered there, as if waiting for an order.
'Now', she thought. 'Do it!'
She made it happen. She forced all her anger, fear, and frustration into the shaft of the pencil.
She knew it was wrong. But she couldn't help herself.
Hotaru aimed it at the only target she could see-and let loose with all her might.
Hotaru cried out with the effort. 'It felt like throwing a giant spear. I did it!' she thought. 'Yes!'
Then she watch as in slow motion the pencil rocketed across the room- toward Dr. Kaorinite's heart.
Hotaru gagged and closed her eyes. She couldn't watch. Couldn't watch the pencil stab into Dr. Kaorinite. She couldn't do it. It was like a rewind. When she hurt her fellow classmates. When she almost hurt her only best friend Rini.
"Hotaru!" Dr. Kaorinite howled.
She shook her head back and forth, her eyes shut tight.
"Hotaru!" she called again. Hands grabbed her shoulder, holding her in the chair.
"No!" she screeched. "I didn't mean it! It just happened!"
"Hotaru," she called one more time, "it's ok!"
Hotaru opened her eyes and saw Dr. Kaorinite fine and the pencil was in the wall behind her.
*End of Flashback*
She shivered at the thought and notice that she's walking straight to the Sanc Kingdom.
'Should I?' A simple question she could not decide. 'I am hungry. I'll just talked to a fast food restaurant and leave.'
Hotaru started to walk toward the unfamiliar town until a car horn made her jumped. She walk more near the grass out of the road, but it honk again.
"What more do you want?? Go!" Hotaru yelled at the driver.
The car drove near her and the window slide down.
"What's a pretty girl like you doing out here in the rain?" The driver asked.
"None of your business." Hotaru stated.
"Hope in!"
"Leave me alone."
"I'm not going to leave you out here alone so, come in."
Hotaru knew the guy will not leave her alone and she opened the car and got in.
The guy drove off.
"What's your name?"
"Hotaru."
"Hotaru? No last name?"
"None of your business."
"Come on, tell me."
"Tomoe."
"Hotaru Tomeo? Where have I heard that from? By the name is Andy."
Hotaru didn't like the feeling she's having. It's like a six sense like when something bad going to happen. Hotaru gasped when she felt a hand on her thigh. Hotaru turned and saw Andy was looking at her with lust and a smirk on his face. Hotaru smacked the hand away.
Andy frowned and put it there again.
"Stop," Hotaru whispered.
"And why should I? I guess I forgot to mention this before. Whoever I give a ride to must give me something back and I know what I want."
"Please don't."
Andy didn't hear her and put his hand on her thigh again and went up. Hotaru started to grow scared as well as mad. Hotaru started to grow dark purple and her eyes as well.
"I warn you." Hotaru whispered deadly.
"What?" Andy said surprisingly as he felt his heart started to twist and his head started to pound. The top of the car ripped own by an unknown force and Hotaru started to flow until she was out of the car and into the air and flew to the side of the car. Hotaru slowly raised one of her arm and then the other and the car started to glow purple and it started to flow. Andy was screaming. Hotaru started to curl her hand together and the car started to crush together.
'Stop!' Something inside Hotaru said. Slowly she stopped glowing purple and the car came down crashing and the purple glow died down. Hotaru fell on the floor from the lack of energy. Andy fainted. She then blacked out as well. Hotaru didn't see another car coming by.
Well, how was it? For the first time, it's not Usagi-centered. So R/R.