A/N: Another drabble collection/character peak from the PPP series, this time focusing on Midori XIX (who was mentioned several times in the Momo XIII drabbles).
Written for:
Diversity Writing Challenge, d5 – drabble collection with drabbles 50-500 words
Ultimate Sleuth Challenge, Ch 2 – Kowloon lvl 2/EDEN Community Area - Write a ficlet novel/collection (Up to 1000 words per chapter)
The Building Blocks Challenge, colour prompts #99 – pale green (this chapter only)
Pebbles Paint the Path
Midori XIX: When She Turned
When She Turned Six
When Midori turned six, she felt a little more grown up than the others.
The other birthdays weren't so important. They received their stones: the only way to differentiate one year from the next, but she was the only one on their table to have five stones, and that meant she was the first of them to glimpse the training room.
And that glimpse of the training room was the first milestone they reached – assuming they even made it that long.
Her table was mostly strangers now. Just last year, they'd been different though only a familiar eye and the number of stones would know the differences between them. Momo was the same, though. Still four stones at the moment, but she'd get her fifth before Midori gained her sixth and that made them part of the same batch, presumably. And the other four between them, but they were different. And more distant because of it.
The numbers muddled somewhere. None of them knew nor cared where the cut-off was, for them being in one cohort instead of another. And it didn't matter. There were many Midori, just like there were many Momo, Pinku. Aka and all the rest. Not too many Murasaki though. They were a rarer breed.
It had to do with the affinities, or so said the rumours. Murasakis had a certain special sort of affinity. Midoris, in contrast, were painfully boring. But boring was good, in the facility. Boring meant things were progressing as per normal. Meant that there was little threat of not meeting a cut and Midoris didn't have a great life expectancy either. That was why she was the nineteenth and Momo was only the thirteenth. Six lives in between. Momo had been on that table before even Midori had come along. She knew Midori XVIII, even if she never spoke of her.
So complicated sometimes, but at other times it didn't matter. Like now. She might be a higher number (but only higher than Momo; the others were higher still, including Pinku whose they didn't even know), but she was older. And she would be the one with the first glimpse of the training room, with a fruit the others would have to wait to taste.
She had this above Momo at least. This above the others at their table that weren't the Murasaki and Aka and Pinku she'd known from before, and so there was only Momo left to measure herself against – though Midoris were only supposed to measure themselves against other Midoris and that was that.
But how could she, when she'd never talk to another Midori unless there were two of them being simultaneously disposed of. And she wouldn't be disposed. The odds were low, but not stacked against her. Aside from Momos, Midoris had the best odds, and the highest success rates to boot. Higher than the Momos, even. They were needed more.
Midori was the nineteenth, but she wasn't going to let number twenty take her place.