the Fall
Preface
Smoke filling her lungs, obscuring her view.
Scorching heat all around her.
"Fujino!"
A distant shout. Raw voices. The disorienting sensation of being spun in circles, flashes of color (orange for the flames of a dragon and green for the-), blood smeared across the floor, the body of a young man split open, hanging upside down from a tree-
Faces, the waxing moon, sky almost invisible through the
fire inside her brain, outside her brain, fire all around her
fog.
And there was piercing pain and she was suddenly sailing across the sky, like in all those fairytales she'd heard when she was younger- when she was younger she always used to listen to her mother's voice, her mother's voice which told her everything would be okay, because she was not yet fifteen, she was not yet eligible for pain, was not yet qualified for things like these, things which she was experiencing now, and she missed her mother and the princes in her stories- bedtime stories like that of-
Kiyohime.
There was fog in her mind, a nervous bleeding in her brain- Her mother had never told her that story ("It's too morbid for a child."), her mother had never-
"Kiyohime." and the red eyed demon.
Had there been a red eyed demon in the story?
"Fujino!"
Her body slammed into the ground, head lolling to the side, eyes burning and- she recognized that voice. Desperate, powerful, resonating within her mind like the last strings of a fading anthem-
"Stop it! Stop it!"
A voice that brought her agony.
"Shizuru!"
A voice that brought her strength and the desire to stand.
"Stay away from her!"
She stirred at the sound of gunshots. A roar. Enraged. Her squad in the background, firing at their assailant-
She moved.
Blood was so very real underneath her finger tips. Everything in her body screamed at her to lie down, to forget.
But that voice
"Stop it! Stop it! Shizuru!"
yelled at her to remember.
remember the name of your beloved monster
"Kiyohime."
A/N:
Trust me when I say that there will be a long and arduous journey before we get to the above scene. This is just to give you a feel for what is to come. Everything will get infinitely more complicated as it goes on. It is obviously ShizNat. Several other pairings will be developed here.
Oh, and watch out for the character development. There's going to be an almost exaggerated amount of it in here. Yes. This will be a very long fic. I hope you will give it a chance and join me for the ride. I'll probably be updating this at a much faster pace than In all the Wrong Directions, because I do action/adventure and angst much better than humor.
Anyway, the story centers around war. Oh, and this chapter is purposely disjointed-ish. So please. Please. As a favor to my sanity. Don't criticize the chapter based on that, since I've done it on purpose. Shizuru's disoriented here, remember?
The rest of the fic won't be like this.
Later.