Things have beginning points.
Well, not really, but we like to think they do. We like to be able to point at a spot, and say, it began here. Assigning some arbitrary point to the cascade of events, although it is in some measure true. There are starting points…..
Something started when a combat Navi was reprogrammed to understand every aspect of human behaviour, but the jury is still out on what.
Something else started when a virus infected Navi was discarded in the trash, to be found by a child who couldn't afford one….. something most people would call wonderful. Or perhaps not. You can never tell with some people.
But the real beginning could have been placed a long time ago, in a rich family with twins…
hr
ISeventeen years ago…..
"Enzie!"
"Kenzie! Catch!"
"Got it! …..Play hide-and-seek, Enzie?"
"Sure! You hide!"
"Okay!"
"4-5-6….. 7-8-9….. 10! Ready or not, here I come!"
"….."
"Hey, where are you?"
"Kenzie?"
"Kenzie! I'm not going to search forever!"
"…..Kenzie?"
"….."
"Mamma! Pappa!"/I
hr
Five
years ago…..
"KEN!"
The young man winced at the ear-shattering yell. The woman who had raised him
wanted him again.
I will not call her my mother. She's not. She's made that clear. Bastard
brat, no mother, no father… Grumbling to himself, he threw down the pencil
he's been writing with. There'd probably be no more schoolwork done today. There usually wasn't, when she called.
"You bellowed?" He said, bored, as he leaned against the entrance to the living
room. It was a pigsty, as usual. The woman, (bitch, he thought, but very
privately….. he liked having teeth) glared at him. Her name was Jacqueline.
Somehow, that name had always put him in mind of pretty, delicate girls, with
long blond hair. It was a flowery name.
There was nothing flowery about what he was looking at. Hard muscles over a long, lean frame, and a face that would have done credit to a mule. A particularly bad tempered mule. Still, the physical characteristics didn't matter, really….. what mattered was that she was damn unpleasant to live with. Even abusive. Dark brown, angry eyes gazed at him as if looking for something to punish.
However, he was living up to her lax standards of dress and deportment. His blue jeans weren't that clean, but they weren't ripped either, and his shirt was tight on his slender, but muscular chest. A blue bandanna, holding it out of pure blue eyes, confined his shoulder length black hair. Facially, he seemed to be Japanese, although his skin was very pale….. perhaps a half-breed, to put it crudely. And that was the only way Jacqueline ever put anything.
But he'd been fast enough for her, so she wasn't TOO angry. "Harvy needs some parts. Get down to the dump and find them." She growled, handing him a list. He bit off a groan. "And don't come back until you do!" Ken bit his lip, but turned around stiffly, leaving.
His schoolwork meant nothing to her, but it was everything to him. His one escape from this rotten side of town, the grinding poverty he'd endured and seen all his life. And he was good at it. His marks were all A's, and he had a knack for programming, plus, he was creative. Fortunately, he'd avoided getting into trouble so far, although that was more luck than design. His leather jacket had been stolen, and his net crimes didn't even bear thinking about.
Shaking his head, Ken snarled to himself. He didn't want to go to the dump, but he had to. There was no choice at all.
hr
Sorting through garbage was never fun. Although at least this garbage didn't
stink too badly, compared to the rest of it. It was all technical things,
parts, metal garbage, nothing organic.
"Crap crap crap….." Ken growled angrily, throwing aside parts. He'd found only a little bit of what he needed. Some of the others' he had found, but they were too badly corroded to be of use. Jacqueline and Harvy would kick his ass if he brought home useless crap.
"…..?" He lifted something out of the morass, noticing the familiar shape, the handle that fit easily into his hand. "A Pet? What the hell?" Pets weren't that common, not yet, certainly not enough that they were the usual sort of thing found in a dump. "Holy… AWESOME!" Ken's eyes lit up as he examined it. The Pet wasn't working, but seemed to be in perfect condition. Maybe a software glitch, a virus, but either way….. "I bet I can fix this!" He had to restrain the urge to run right home to work on it… work still had priority. Carefully stowing away the Pet in his jacket, he started rooting through the junk again.
He'd get to it later…
hr
Three years ago…
"I
am getting SICK of your whining about my boyfriends! Sick of it!" The young
girl pushed her hair back out of her eyes. Her skin was the deepest black of
Africa, and her eyes were a warm brown, meant to smile and smolder. Right now,
they were smoldering with anger. "Get it out of your system already!"
"But what do you SEE in that louse?" Her Navi complained. The Navi was just as
beautiful as her operator, in a completely different way… skin of palest white,
armored in silver, with a few brilliant red hair spikes poking out from under
her helmet. She was buxom where her operator was small and lithe. "He's a jerk!
A dweeb! I don't understand this physical attraction thing!"
"….." Her operator stared at her, stunned, for a moment. "No, you don't. That's
the whole problem, isn't it? You don't understand!" She suddenly smiled. "But
that's fixable."
"Eh?" Her Navi blinked, tilting her head to one side with a frown. "What do you
mean, Irene?"
"I mean it's about time I gave you a small attitude adjustment!" She announced,
plugging her Pet into the computer to start reprogramming. Her Navi looked
worried.
"Is this going to hurt?"
"Oh, probably, but you'll be better for it." She said gleefully as she started
to type.
"Oh, crap….."
