Megaman ZX: Archangel
Disclaimer: I do not own Iris or anything MMX/MMZX related. But Gilme and the Hylians are ALL MINE!
Chapter 1
There was silence and a great cold. She had never felt so very, very cold. Her entire body seemed to be frozen. She was in pain from head to toe. "…it's so cold…..and I can't…get…warm…" Why does my voice sound so strange…? Why can't I move…? As far as she could tell, she was sprawled on a cold stone floor in no where squared. Her vision was foggy and every joint seemed to burn with agony. Her voice was filled with static, and was much higher than normal.
Her blue eyes, which were reduced to rentals, half closed from the pain. What…happened… to me…? Why…am…I hurt like…this…? How…long…have I been…lying here…like this…? A thrill of pain surged through her as she tried to move. "…It hurts…so… much…" She saw her hand out of the corner of her eye. I'm…bleeding…? Once again, it hurt so much to move that she stopped trying.
"…Someone…please help…it…it hurts…" Then a shimmering golden light appeared in front of her. "Who's…there…?" A girl? She was tall, had dark hair and amethyst eyes, and there was a strange glow about her. Almost like she saw see-through…The girl knelt down and placed something in her hand and closed her fingers around it.
"Take care of this." She whispered. "It is a powerful weapon."
"Wait…who are you? Where…where am I?"
"Shh. It's okay, Iris. The pain will go away. You will land soon."
"Land…? Am…I in space…?" The girl's form began to fade.
"Wait…! Don't go…!"
"It's okay, little one. Everything will be alright…" Iris closed her eyes and stopped moving, plunging into the dark, forbidding, frightening depths of unconsciousness. While she lay unmoving, the broken ship fragment she lay inside was caught in orbit of a planet, in a different, practically empty universe in the most remote area of the star system. Gilme.
/On Gilme
Heather carefully bit of the branch between her teeth. A cold breeze from the north sliced through her fluffy white fur, causing her to shiver. Nipping off the leaf, she scampered back to the watcher, forgetting to watch for the bramble vines scattered on the ground. "Ow!" Heather stopped and carefully pulled the thorn out of her paw with her teeth. Giving her wings a quick shake, she brought the leaf to the watcher and put it down.
"Good work, Heather." The watcher said, nosing the leaf. "You found the leaf I sent you to get." Heather ducked her head awkwardly, then she swiped a paw over her ear.
"It wasn't easy. There are so many different trees in the woods." That was true. Heather looked up at the forestline. There were thick, emerald trees mixed with always-greens and no-leaves, as they were called. No-leaves were trees that had lost the ability to shoot new leaves. Always-greens didn't lose their leaves-or pines-during the mild winters, unlike most trees. They weren't entirely common. It had taken her forever to find the rare always-green goldleaf.
"Yes, that's true. You're free to have fun, but don't wander too far from the homecamp, alright?"
"Okay!" Heather got to her paws and scurried back among the trees. She loved free hour. Just for a little, she could get away from the reconstruction. The homecamp had gotten hit by lightning and set on fire. It had been hard to get away. Lucky for them, there was a sudden downpour, so their dens weren't badly damaged, and the herb store was still in tact. But, there were many things that hadn't avoiding being torched, and fixing everything was taking forever. There were two species of Hylians: Light Angel and Dark Angel. Dark angels preferred war to peace. There were ten tribes in the Light Angel confederacy: Darkmoon, Lightmoon, Silvermoon, Rushingriver, Solareclipse, FireofMoonlight, IceofMoonlight, Sunstone, Moonstone, and WindofMoonlight, her tribe.
Hylians were shapshifters. They could take on whatever form they whished, although mostly they preferred to remain in their native form, a mule-sized cat with eagle's wings.
"Hi Heather!" Another Hylian waved her tail, signaling for Heather to come over.
"Hi Amy!" Heather purred in delight. Amy was a bad-tempered girl from another tribe, but who cared? She certainly didn't. Amy was only rough and unsympathetic she didn't want everyone to know she was totally soft-hearted. "How's it going in Silvermoon?"
"It's okay. I'm stuck on scavenging, but that's nothing new." Amy's ears twitched. Looking a bit worried, she added "Is everything alright here? I heard your homecamp get hit by lightning."
"I'm okay. Nothing was badly damaged and no one was hurt, thank Lupus." Heather replied. Amy's eyes brightened.
"That's great!"
"Heyy! Girls!" A cat-angel with black fur and red eyes appeared from the treetops and landed next to them.
"Jade!" Amy gave her friend such a hearty shove she nearly pushed him off balance. "Good to see you." Jade was another one of Heather's friends. He was a Dark Hylian that had moved to FireofMoonlight because he was peace-loving. Not only was he smarter than most tribe elders, he often got Amy out of trouble for clobbering others when she got mad.
"Good to see you." Jade purred. "I see the prey's running well in your territory." He eyed Heather's glossy pelt.
"Yeah. There's this giant den of badgermice!" Heather squeaked. Bagermice were a type of mouse that supplied all the vitamins Hylians needed in a single meal. "They're very tasty."
"Yeah." Amy said, licking the back of her paw. "Eat one and it takes all your self control not to devour the whole pile."
"Yup. I remember what happened when I ate my first badger mouse." Jade replied.
"It's hard to forget!" Heather purred in amusement.
"Have you seen Lucas?" Amy asked, looking over Jade's shoulder. "Usually he's here the lecture me about leaving Silvermoon territory alone by now." Lucas was Amy's brother. He always got on her case about this and that rule and was really annoying sometimes. He was sorta fun most of the time, but he could be irritating whenever he began to rant about the rules.
"Oh yeah, he was headed your way when I was coming to see you two. Well, I gave him a challenge." Jade had an impish expression on his face.
"Really? What'd you make'em do?" Amy suddenly leaned over, excited. Jade's 'challenges' were often very long or very hard. And Lucas was always bragging about how he could handle anything, so whenever Jade gave him one of the challenges, he couldn't refuse.
"I marked out a strip of riverbank and told him to count all the pebbles."
Amy and Heather fell over, purring so hard their nearly cried. "Oh, I wish I was there to see that one!" Amy exclaimed finally. "he's going to be there for twenty summers! Remind me to tell that to whoever courts my mother. Except bigger strips! Much bigger!"
"Oh yes!" Heather purred. "You're a mad genius, Jade!"
Jade suddenly stopped laughing. He looked up. "What's that?"
Heather looked up, puzzled. There was something strange in the sky, falling towards the ground. It was grey and fairly large, surrounded by strange golden light. "A meteor…?"
"…! Get back! It's coming this way!" Amy mewed suddenly. All three cat-angels fell to the ground-just in time to avoid the flying metal object. It crashed into the trees farther away.
"What in the name of the nine rings of hell was that?"
"I don't know." Amy stared as Heather began to quickly pad downwards.
"I have to see what happened!"
"Wait! Heather!" Lucas had come out of no where and yelped at the fire caused by the crash. "Aren't you supposed to run AWAY from Lupus-forsaken space objects, not towards them?"
Heather didn't listen. She just ran onwards. Amy shook her head, and then ran after her. After another second, so did Jade.
Lucas stood alone on the ridge. He felt like something was watching him… "Hey guys! Wait for me!" As he ran after them, a pair of glittering eyes vanished into the darkness.
/
Heather looked up. A huge chunk of metal had fallen from the sky and landed in the forest. She found herself looking for an entrance. Eventually she squeezed through an opening in the side. She found a network of stretches that looked like the great halls of the temple near the mountain.
"…h…e…l…p…" Heather's ears twitched at the sound.
"Someone's in here!" She got to her paws and ran down the walkways. She took no notice of the ruined machines that were lying everywhere. The voice sounded like it was weak with pain, and it had been calling for a long time.
"Please…someone…find…me…" Heather burst into the room and immediately screeched to a stop. In the centre of this room lay a strange alien. In fact, remembering the carvings in the temple, Heather knew exactly what it was.
"…a human? But it can't be…" Well, human or not it - no, not 'it'; the human was probably a girl judging by the appearance - was badly injured. There were cuts and slash marks everywhere on her body. Her arms were badly burned, as if something had exploded while she was near it. Her hair was messy, brown, and extremely long. Heather stared, mortified. The girl shifted her head slightly, towards her. Her eyes were blank, the pupils swallowed by a sea of blue that screamed of NDE. (near death experience)
"Poor thing…" Heather whimpered. She slipped a bit closer and nudged the human's hand slightly with her nose. That's when the strange object she was holding lit up. As Amy, Jade and Lucas skidded into the room, they transformed into a totally foreign form. Suddenly, they looked like humans too-all expect for their ears.
Amy's hair was blue and shoulder length, and her ears stuck out of her head. She had a blue sleeveless shirt and vest, along with fingerless gloves that reached her elbows. She had dark blue jeans and combat boots.
Heather's hair was flame red and somewhat longer than Amy's, but her ears remained the same. She was dressed basically the same way, but she was wearing white tennis shoes and red-and-green clothes.
Lucas's hair was chestnut-colored and rather short. He was wearing a camouflage vest and pants, and he had steel-toed boots.
Jade had long pitch-black hair that reached the middle of his back. He was wearing a black-and-red vest, jeans, and running shoes.
The four Hylians stared at each other for a long time, totally shocked.
"…What happened to me? Why do I look like an Upwalker?" Lucas freaked, breaking the silence.
"First of all, the polite term is human." Jade replied. "And I don't know. But here's something I DO know-if this girl doesn't get help, she's going to die."
"I brought the family amulet from Silvermoon." Amy said immediately. She pulled the giant sapphire out of her pocket and into her hands. Amy muttered something in ancient Hylian and the it began to glow brightly. When the light faded, the girl was sitting upright, most of her injuries closed up. The pupils were back in her eyes. The burns remained, but they probably didn't hurt anymore.
"Thank you for helping me. Who are you?"
"I'm Heather. And these are my friends- Amy, Jade and Lucas."
"Yeah, that's us. So what's your name?" Amy nudged Heather to the side and helped the stranger to her feet. "And what in the name of Lupus happened to you?"
"My name…?" The girl closed her eyes. For a long moment, there was silence. "I-It's Iris. T-that's all I can remember…"
"You can't remember anything?" Lucas asked, eyes wide.
Iris shook her head, a miserable expression on her face. "Nothing. My mind's completely blank…"
"Maybe you hit your head on something when this thing fell out of space." Amy suggested, a sympathetic expression on her face.
"Yeah. Memory loss can sometimes come from hitting your head really hard on something." Jade chimed in.
"Maybe…" Iris didn't look convinced. "By the way, where am I?"
"Gilme!" Heather replied, smiling. "Our home planet."
"… …?"
"Okay, okay. We have a LOT of explaining to do, but can we at least do it on the way to the old temple?"
"The what?" Confusion was plastered all over Iris face.
"Like I said," Amy muttered while leading the group outside, "there is a LOT of explaining to do…"
/Author's note: Well, there's the first chapter! And Iris has lost her memory! Horray! NOT! R&R please!