Welcome to chapter 1 of World of Xyis! (Yes, I suck at titles, but I'll change it later. Suggestions are accepted!) Please note that this whole story is original, and of my creation, and so are the characters. I own everything in this story, please do not steal unless it's for fan art or something, and always put proper credit up. Also, if you could PM a link to the fan art or fan fiction… (Yes, I know I'm dreaming. But hey, it's a free country!)
Summary (more detailed): Ayame Hisa is a normal 15-year-old girl from Genesis, until she is kidnapped by the Official Government Forces, or OGForces, and said to be a Xyis, or a cursed mage feared by all on Genesis. After her mother's death she is transported to the forest Shizukana, where she meets fellow Xyis Michiko Chiyo and her half-brother Yuki Tobikuma. The siblings tell her of a Xyis' life: they must kill the creatures called 'Chi' as a group or they will be murdered by the OGForces.
And now, without further ado, I present to you to original story of the World of Xyis.
I couldn't see anything. It was too dark. Someone—or something—had thrown me into this place. Suddenly, the room jolted and I could feel it rising off the ground. So I was on an aircraft. Going somewhere…where? Where were they taking me? Those OGForce soldiers had already captured me from the safety of my own home. What did I ever do? And then there is my mother. What happened to her? I don't want to think about it. All I heard while I was being dragged away blindfolded were two gunshots and a scream that sounded like my mother's. Tears escaped my eyes as I wondered what torture they'll come up for me next. I heard footsteps. No use hiding. Then I saw them. Two OGForce soldiers walking up to me. Then, a bright light and everything went black.
I open my eyes to be greeted by another bright light, which turned out to be the sun. I blink and see clearly again. I sit up. Dizziness slaps me in the face as I realize that sitting up was indeed a bad idea. Oh, well. I look around to discover that I am in front of a cave in what seems to be the middle of a forest. I get caught up trying to get all the little sticks out of my black hair, so I don't notice the person behind me until they speak.
"They've sent someone," said the voice, a girl's voice. She sounded cold and emotionless, maybe even a bit bored.
"Huh. Wonder why," replied another, this time a boy. I turn around slowly to meet two gazes, one gray, and the other brown.
"W-who are you?" I stutter. The girl with gray eyes snorts. Her dirty blonde hair flickers in the light wind as she kneels down to my level and examines me. I look back at her.
She's wearing a half-white, half-light pink tank top…thing. Instead of a regular bottom, the tank top bottom was split into two and connected with a zipper. The sides of the shirt look open, and the back was connected to the front only with a tab of light pink fabric. She's also wearing short black shorts with a light pink ribbon woven around the waist. A sword hilt sticks out of a brown sheath at her left side. She is wearing pink sneakers to match her shirt, black thigh socks, and long fingerless black gloves. Her eyes are covered with fragile-looking glasses.
"Another scared one, apparently. The last one who came here shivering died." The last one? What happened to them?
"Michiko, stop it. You're just scaring her more." The brown-eyes boy kneels beside here and looks at me. "What's your name?"
"A-Ayame," I manage. "Ayame Hisa." He looks less scary, wearing simple clothes: dark brown pants tucked into tall black boots, dull orange t-shirt, and a cargo vest. He has short brown hair, styled into spikes. Black aviator goggles cover his tan-ish forehead. I brush off my own clothing: my black tank top under my short gray t-shirt jacket, above-the-knee gray skirt, black knee socks, and multicolored sneakers. I arrange the colorful beaded bracelet on my right wrist. Then I look back up at the strangers.
"I'm Yuki Tobikuma, and this is my half-sister Michiko Chiyo. She's not very good with people, if you know what I mean. It's nice to meet you." He sticks out his hand and I shake it politely. Michiko snorts and stands up.
"Tell her to come to my room when you've explained everything," she says and walks into the cave.
"It's…nice to meet you too. Where am I and what are you doing here?" I ask Yuki.
"Where are you? You are in the forest Shizukana. What am I doing here? Working, mostly. You're here to do the same," he answers.
"Working?" I ask, not quite getting it.
"For the OGForces," he says. "You, me, Michiko, and Torao—you haven't met him yet—we were chosen, see. We've all got powers. You probably haven't found yours yet. Took me a couple months. With these powers, we're taken away from our family—and our family is most likely killed—and we're taken here to exterminate all the evil creatures in the forest. Nobody knows why, but Torao thinks that all these creatures are being controlled by some greater force that the Government wants to destroy." He takes a breath as I soak in this new information. "You know about Xyis?"
"Xyis? The cursed people who are born with cursed powers and that are feared by all on the planet of Genesis—wait, you're saying that's what I am?" Yuki nods sadly as my head spins. Me? A Xyis? But…how?
"Yes, the Government of Genesis invents these tales of cursed mages to make it okay for them to kidnap children with magical powers to do this job for them," Yuki explains. "So basically, everyone on Genesis thinks we're Xyis and that it's a good thing that we were…well, they think we were taken away and killed, and our families 'purified' of our 'dark magic'. We're sent here to rid Genesis of creatures we call the Chi as an ensemble. There are many types of Chi—you'll meet them all in battle and one of us will introduce them to you. Many Xyis die in battle. We three are the only survivors so far."
"Wait…we still call each other Xyis?" I ask.
"Yeah, just because it's easier than inventing a whole new name. Are you with me so far though? I'm not very good at explaining things."
"No…I get what you're saying. So you, me, Michiko, and this Torao are Xyis. The rest of Genesis thinks we're evil and cursed, but we're not. We have magical powers. Our job is to defeat a group of creatures called Chi, and we think that there is a bigger force controlling the Chi that the Government wants to destroy. It's a very hard and deadly job at times. And I suppose our base is here, in the forest Shizukana."
"Wow, you're good. Oh, one other thing. One of us three is going to be your 'mentor', or something like your mentor. It's going to be Michiko, since you're a girl. She'll teach you to fight with and without magic, she'll give you your weapon, and she'll teach you about the Chi." Great. I groan inwardly. Michiko seemed so unfriendly when I talked to her. "She wanted you to go to her room after I talk to you. I'll bring you there."
He gets up and starts walking. I follow him into the cave. We seem to be in a sort of hallway, lit with torches. I try to memorize as much of the place as I could. We pass two openings, one which Yuki informed me was the dining hall, and the other was the kitchen; until we reach a flight of stairs. They lead us down to another hallway. The first door, Yuki told me, leads to his room; the second one, to Michiko's room; the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, lead to vacant rooms; and the one at the end of the hall was Torao's. We entered the second door to Michiko's room.
The room was lit by torches, like the hall, and was painted a dark red. A simple double bed adorned with maroon sheets took up the corner of the room, and a small table sat beside it. There was a desk beside the door made of dark wood. A bookshelf made of the same wood was filled with thick, leather-covered books beside the desk. The whole room was dark.
In fact, the entire cave was dark, unlike the rest of Genesis—a technologically genius planet with the modern style of large wall windows and wide open spaces on the ground since most of the buildings were built on top of a slim yet resistant structures. Cities were built up in the air—some even floated. In the small town of Jenor where I lived, the sidewalks were a couple of kilometers above the ground. Most people on Genesis did not have a fear of heights, thank God. Whoever did just went to live on the ground, which was also perfectly normal.
Anyway, Michiko didn't seem to be in her room. Yuki, however, just calls out her name. "Michiko! We're here!" The blonde women emerged from two sliding doors on the wall in front of her bed, totally surprising me.
"Sorry, I was training." She didn't seem particularly sorry, but from the experiences I've had with her (which isn't many), she never showed any emotion.
"Anyway," Yuki says, "Ayame is here to being her training. Go easy on her, okay? She just lost her family." Right. My mother. So she was dead…no, no crying now. I can't cry in front of them. That would just be wrong. But my mother…I sigh.
"Oh, um, actually…just my mum. My father died when I was five, ten years ago," I tell them.
"So you are fifteen, correct?" Michiko confirms, and I nod. "Wonderful. It was such a hell last year when they sent that six-year-old. Honestly, why did they get her so young?" Yuki shrugs. I don't know how they act so blazé towards death. A six-year-old came here? And died in battle? That's awful.
"How old are you, anyway?" I ask them.
"Me?" Yuki says. "I'm one hundred and fifteen years old."
"And I am one hundred and twenty-three years old," Michiko adds. My face kind of went from the 'oh, okay, this is normal' to 'OH. MY. FLIPPING. GOD.'
"Aha…whoops…I forgot…um, as soon as you discover your powers, you're immortal," Yuki tells me sheepishly.
"YOU'RE NOT SERIOUS!" I yell, and Michiko winces and glares at me. "Sorry. Kind of a lot to take in."
"And the other stuff wasn't?" Yuki asks innocently.
"Well, it kind of just all hit me. You know, light bulb, then explosion?" I mimic a light going ding over my head then make an explosion sound and mime the light exploding while simultaneously getting an 'I can't believe it' look on my face and getting very odd looks from both Yuki and Michiko.
Needless to say, I smiled sheepishly and went back to being quiet me.
"Okay…" Yuki trails off. "Well, anyway, I'll leave her to you, Michiko." She nods and Yuki leaves.
"Follow me." I nod and follow her into the doors where she'd come out before. They led into a hallway that was kind of titled upwards. At the end of the hall, we got to two more doors, which Michiko opened to reveal a full-out army training area. Targets, sandy areas, structure, tall trees, trenches, cave openings, climbing ropes, open fields, and running tracks. My green eyes widen.
"Welcome to the training area," she says in her bored voice. "The targets place is where we practice shooting arrows from a bow, bullets from a gun, javelin throwing, and sometimes aiming our magic. You don't always have to aim magic, just a couple of types of magic. The sanded area is for combat training and physical training, such as weights and martial arts. For combat training we use wooden swords, and sometimes, but rarely, real swords.
"The ropes, the structures, and most of the trees here can be used for climbing exercises. The fields are for practicing taking cover, running across battlefields, and bigger combat training exercises. The running tracks are, of course, for running, and the trenches are for practice. Some of the forest around this place is used for training as well. This area is outlined by a protective shield."
"Oh" is all I can say.
"And as for Chi combat practice, we use a computer system to create solid holograms for practice," Michiko finishes. "We'll start with physical exercises." She leads me to the sandy area, where we proceed to do about half and hour's worth of weight exercise. My arms feel like they're about to fall off when Michiko brings me to the climbing ropes. Another half hour later (I remembered I had a watch fifteen minutes after we started doing weight exercises), my arms were so tired, I think they did fall off—but my mentor just led me to the structures adorned with ladders, which I had to climb up and down for fifteen minutes straight.
I was tired. My arms, my legs, my whole body hurt. We'd stretched before the exercises, so I wasn't going to pull a muscle, thank God. And she insisted I drink water every twenty minutes, so dehydration wasn't going to happen either. Just when I thought I was at my breaking point, Michiko said the magic words.
"I almost forgot, you're not used to intense training." She frowns. Even though she's done just as much as I did, even more (her weights were double the weight of mine, her ropes were longer, and she'd also climbed trees as well as the ropes and the ladders), she didn't sound tired at all. "In a while, you'll be able to go for hours on end. Myself, I can do three days straight of training then I get a bit out of breath."
"You don't sleep?" I gasp out between breaths.
"Trained Xyis who've evolved their powers to the max need a couple of hours of sleep every seven days. I, however, have not evolved my powers fully so I can only go with three days. Yuki can go for two, and Torao, six." I gasp. Six days with no sleep? I'd probably die.
"Who is this Torao, anyway?" I ask. I've been meaning to ask this. Michiko thinks about it for a bit.
"Torao...Torao is different," she manages. "He was the first one they took, you know. He is more six hundred years old. And that's what he told me about a year after I arrived here. So he's about seven hundred now. Probably more." More than seven hundred years old? They've been taking people for over seven hundred years? "Torao is the most powerful of the three of us, and obviously you. He has eliminated thousands of Chi, and has had plenty of time to think over the possibility of this 'higher force'. He has seen Xyis come and go over his lifetime. When I passed my hundred year mark, he said to me, 'I've never seen any Xyis but me live to see this day. Congratulations.' Then I became official the female mentor, with him still being the official male mentor.
"Now that Yuki is the official male mentor, Torao is usually in his room or training in his personal training area. It's like he's not even here, except for giving orders. Most of the time, the order is to stay put while he deals with the rival Chi. At one point, he was getting rid of all the Chi we were warned about—Yuki and I had to have a serious talk to him about it."
"Why didn't you just let him do it? This might sound wrong, but I'm just wondering why you didn't take the easy way out?" I ask. All this new information is blowing me straight off my feet. I need to ask a question before I get too lost.
"Did you ever wonder why we do it? Why we don't just sit around instead of helping the Government? Because if we don't do anything, they'll kill us." I gasp. They would kill us just because we're not out there killing some creatures they don't feel like dealing with? "We also do it because the Chi are a menace to the population. Nobody's ever heard of the Chi on Genesis except for us and the government, and you know why? Because we Xyis destroy them before they have a chance to reach the populated areas of Genesis. Those OGForces that brought you here? Special order, they are. That squad's the only one who knows about the Chi."
"Can I just…say everything I've heard today in a nutshell, just to clear things in my mind?" Michiko nods slightly. She still hasn't shown any emotions whatsoever but anger when she mentioned the OGForce killing us if we don't do our job. I take a deep breath.
"Okay," I begin. "I am a Xyis. I was brought here by special OGForces and my mother was killed when I was kidnapped. I apparently have magical powers. I must train in order to eliminate the Chi, a danger to Genesis. Xyis become immortal when they discover their powers. Most die before their training is complete. If I don't kill the Chi, I will be murdered by the OGForces. That it?"
"Yes," she says approvingly, "you're one of the smart ones."
Okay! So chapter 1 is done. This was the basic intro chapter, and I hope you all understand what's going on, because I'm a bit like Yuki sometimes, who can't really explain ideas properly. If you don't just tell me and I'll alter the story a bit so that you do :) I really hope you decide to stick to reading this story for a bit, because this IS an OS (Original Story) after all. I'm also thinking of trying to draw my OCs and posting them on DeviantArt (my DA is SpellsGal if any of you want to check it out).
So please, review! Tell me if the idea sucks or if it's cool!