This chapter has been betaed by Strata-Assassin [03/12/13]. Thank you very much for your help!
Disclaimer: I don't own Escaflowne characters, only "the child".
Well, this is my first fanfic wiii~ Be gentile please *x* If the grammar or the spelling are bad or monstrous abominations is because I'm good at reading english but terrible writing it and Strata-Assassin isn't the one to blame!
This is the notation I will use.
Italics for thinking.
XXXFlasbackXXX At the beginning and the end of a flashback
The child and the boy refers to themselves using the pronoun Boku - I, but for boys. The child speaks with cajun accent.
Well, without further ado, we begin. Enjoy it.
Il Giudizio
It hurts…
Unspeakable pain pierces the child's head.
It itches…
The child touches his forehead and notes bandages around his head. Terror invades him he and attempts to remove his bandages.
"Don't do that! You'll hurt yourself!"
The child opens his eyes and sees a boy about the same age as him. At that moment, gray specularite meets with blood-red ruby. He is a very beautiful boy with silver hair, porcelain skin and carmine eyes framed by long lashes. The child's upper half was in the lap of the boy and he touches the face of the child.
"Angel?" The child raises his tiny hand to touch the ivory face of the boy. He takes the child's hand and smiles warmly. It was like the moonlight over a silver lake.
"How do you feel?" His voice is deep and smooth.
Where am ah? The child tries to speak again but his throat is dry and sticky.
"Drink." The boy puts him a glass of water to his lips and the child drinks quickly. "Hey! Don't drink so fast or you will drown." The child finishes his liquid and tries to speak again.
"Where am ah?" His voice was deeper than the boy's and kind of raspy.
He uses such a strange accent. The boy thought, his gaze seems sad but tries to smile "We're in a laboratory of the Zaibach Empire," he said grimly.
The boy asks the child: "What's your name? Do you remember it?"
"My name…Ah don't know… and yours?" The child touches his head and notes it was shaved.
"I don't remember either, but they call me Number Twenty-one," he says and points to his shoulde where a strange glyph rests. Then to the child's shoulder and says, "You must be Number Twenty-seven."
The room is dark and wet. Leaks are dripping in all the corners, but a faint ray of silvery light from the moon shines through the small window, partially illuminating the face of the boy and making his hair shine like the moon herself. This place smells of water, moss and like a dirty bathroom however that fact didn't bothers the boy a lot and, for some reason, this room was kind of familiar to the child.
"Well Twenty-seven, how old are you?" The child closes his eyes and starts to count.
"Ah don't know," Twenty-seven says. "And you?"
"Seven, well that's what they told me. Where are you from?"
This guy changes the subject vary fast! thought the child.
"Ah don't know, but ah remember a light." An image appears in the mind of the boy. "And many men," the child continues, "above me with white hands, cruel eyes and pointy shining sticks." The scene is vivid in the boy's mind, even the cold touch of their smooth hands and the pain when a neddle pierced his neck to inject him a cold liquid.
"What are you doing?" The boy looks terrified and starts to move his irises as if he were paralyzed by the fluid injected by the men in the child's neck.
"Ahrg!" the boy cries and starts to frantically to pull his hair. Getting up, he throws the child off his lap. "Ahrg! The pain! I can't stop feeling the pain! Stop it, you bloody bastard!" From the boy's forehead blood starts flowing and his skin is cut for no apparent reason, but in reality he was watching how those men were cutting him with scalpels.
"Sorry," Twenty-seven cries and shuts his eyes. "Ah don't know how to stop it." Tears stream down his cheeks and he tries to wipe it. The child's head felt heavy and and he hears a buzz.
"Hey, you!" A guard approaches the cell.
Twenty-one's eyes glow amber and then a shockwave emerges from the boy's forehead, throwing the man against the wall. The guard's head is shattered by the blow and his body falls to the ground as if it were a rag doll. Another guard approaches to see his partner and pukes.
"What have you done to him?!" Twenty-seven faces the man tears in his eyes, and they glow aquamarine. The man starts to feel the same despair as Twenty-one and shouts, "Help! Help me!"
"Jajuka! Help me!" shouts the boy as he cries and carves his nails into his own flesh.
Quickly, four cloaked men arrive and open the metallic door of the room "You dirty lab rat!"He begins to rotate the knob of a bizarre box. "Stop this madness!" An electric shock goes through Twenty-seven's head and he screams.
"Ahrg!" He opens his eyes wide, raises his hands to his head, falls unconscious and starts to convulse. Quickly, a golden dogman approaches Twenty-one, but with precaution.
"Calm down my boy, Jajuja's right here with you." One of the cloaked men moves towards the boy. His aquamarine hair is long and spiky; his eyes like a pair of cruel garnet orbs.
"Stop Twenty-one!" The man's eyes glow amber and a shockwave flows from his forehead. The boy seems to be suspended in the air by an invisible hand around his neck. Twenty-one struggles and then a needle floats toward him to punctures his collar. The boy falls to the ground like a sack of potatoes with his eyes and mouth open.
The dogman walks toward the boy and caresses him "Be quiet. It's over." The golden beast pulls the needle from his neck. Twenty-one hugs the dogman and cries in silence.
Meanwhile, another cloaked man approaches the child, puts a cloth on his mouth and injects him a green liquid. "This is all."
The green haired man faces the fallen guard. "If something like this happens again you will be with these lab rats in the cell!" he says with a stern voice.
"Don't worry, this won't happen again," the guard says with a face full of guilty.
"You better, you've been warned." With that the cloaked men leaves the cell.
The guard turns furious to the infants. "You!" Points Twenty-one. "White rat! Better take care of that bald rat or the sorcerers are going to punish you double! And you, beast, leave that thing and come with me" He left the cell.
"Don't leave me alone." the boy cries and tries to stop the dogman by pulling his cloth.
"I'm sorry; I'll be back shortly." He gives Twenty-one a piece of his clothing to cover the wound inflicted by his new cellmate's ability and he gets out of the room.
The boy takes the cloth and starts to bandage his forehead as he sits down on the ground.
"Like hell I'd take care of that boy!" the silver haired boy said. The child was still convulsing. "Shit!" The boy approaches the child. "Hey." He tries to put him with the back in the ground. "Well, I think that's enough."
XXXFlashbackXXX
Twenty-seven awakes in a dark room on a dusty brown carpet. There are some dirty couches and the walls are stained with water. At his left there is a chimney with burned logs and to his right there are small windows near the ceiling with heavy curtains blocking the light. There is no sound from outside. The door opens and an old woman enters the room with a tray with something that doesn't smells very well. "Eat it," says the old woman abruptly. She throws the tray on the floor and leaves the room. The child hears the sound of a key locking the door. Suddenly, he notices his stomach growls and starts to eat from the tray regardless of odor.
XXXFlashbackXXX
"Wake up you little freaks!" the guard shouts. "Here are your meals." He takes their bowls and spit on them "Enjoy it…" He leaves laughing.
Twenty-seven gets up from the ground, approaches the bowls and starts to eat the sticky porridge.
"You're disgusting. How can you eat that after seeing he spit on it?" says Twenty-one. The child stops eating.
"Ah am vary hungry, so ah eat, what's wrong with dat?" he says as he licks his fingers "In any case, if you don't want to eat dis, can you give me your portion?" he points the other bowl.
"You can have it!" the boy says and throws the bowl to Twenty-seven. "I'm going to wait for Jajuka. He brings me food without nasty fluids on it."
"That Jajuka guy sounds like you trust him, is he your friend?" the child asks as he starts to eat Twenty-one's porridge.
"Well, you can say something like that, but he's my servant. He taught me how to talk, read and write, also the rules of this place," the boy says proudly. "And why we are here," he stated that in a gloomy mood.
"Why are we here…?" the child whispers. "About before…Ah'm vary sorry…Dat wasn't on purpose… Ah don't even know how it happened. In any case, you say that Jajuka guy told you about why are we here, can you tell me? Please."
"Hmm," the boy murmurs. "Alright, but don't think I'm doing this for you," Twenty-one states in an angry mood. "It's only because we're going to be stuck here together for a long time." He pauses a moment. "But, I'm going to tell you under my conditions." He holds his thumb up. "First, never use that tricks of yours against me." Up goes the index finger. "Second, you're going to obey all my orders without complaint." Middle finger up. "And third, never leave me alone." The boy finishes and waits for an answer.
"Fine, ah can fulfill your conditions." Then Twenty-one moves his extended hand towards Twenty-seven.
"Then, that's a promise." He extends his pinky. "Do the same." Twenty-seven does as the boy tells him to do. Twenty-one links his pinky with Twenty-seven's. "And with this, it's settled."
"Listen carefully because this is the first and last time I will explain this" the child nods. "Fine, as I told you before we're on a laboratory of the Zaibach Empire. Here they make many experiments on human beings, beast people and animals. They chose you probably for that trick of yours and started messing with your head as part of those tests. I've being here for almost two years since they found me in the woods near the Floresta Mountains." He pauses as if he were remembering something.
"They killed my parents and siblings, and now their fur is hanging on the walls of one of those vile pigs." He clenches his teeth and presses his hand into a fist. He seems to want to cry, but he holds. "They put me in this cell and ordered Jajuka to teach me how to talk because until that day I only knew growl like my parents taught me to do, they were wolves. He taught me to write and told me that I wasn't like everyone else; that I belonged to the nearly extinct race of the draconian people, and because of that I'm here."
"Parents, siblings…?" the child seems not to understand those terms. "What are dose?"
"Are you stupid?" Twenty-seven looks into Twenty-one's grayish eyes and sees that he's serious about that question. "That can't be true! I can't believe it! You don't know it!" he says angrily. "Do I have to explain everything to you? Are you a pup?" He covers his face with the palm, massages his eyes and breathes deeply. "God! This will be a long night…"
I removed the japanese phrases - only leaving some that are important to the plot like the pronouns and things like that - because this would be very confusing and is annoying to scroll up there many times. In the original document I use ctrl+b but here this is ctrl+f and even that is still bothersome when you are reading concentrated. Prologue and Chapter I are now only one. Special thanks to Cyn V [ u/375322/Cyn_V] for the advise!
The use of ryuujin and madoushi was changed for draconian and sorcerer respectively. [10/20/2013]
I hope the "cajun accent" was not difficult to read for you, I am currently learning about it. Like I told you before, Strata-Assassin [ u/762324/]is the beta-reader whom helped me to correct many of the abominations in this chapter. Can you believe that, with a single chapter, actually corrected me most of my chapters and those who are on the way? She is incredibly awesome and you should check her profile!
