This story is a sample from The IHA Project. Due to the nature of The IHA Project and the stories published in IHA, change will occur frequently. Basically this story is subject to massive or minimal change without a new chapter being posted
WARNING: OOC Content ahead. Remember, this is the first time in two years I have worked on this story. My writing style changed, a lot. I haven't brought you any emotional fluff yet but please keep following this. The moment will come.
Oh yeah, I changed the name of the pouch Alex brings with him in Chapter One. It is now called a "essence pouch" (I will have to rewrite Chapter One sometime soon).
The flying kick came from behind, catching Alex unprepared. He twisted his body out of the way and watched the blur of his assailant fly past him. The blur landed in a crouch, the momentum of the kick sending it sliding backwards on the firm hillside. By this time, Alex's brain had reclassified the blur as a human body. One that was familiar to Alex. It spoke.
"Better, much better"
Rewind the timeline to a point that could be measured as being three years ago.
Keade Nagase was unsettled. She wasn't freaking out; the guidance officer had explained everything to her clearly. In fact she was surprised at how calm she was. After all, she had been informed that her entire life was fiction. Not that this made it any less real to her, even if she was a character in a book in someone else's world she still lived as a human being in her own. What she was struggling with was this sudden realisation of the masses of tangibility in her life.
"Everything is trying to emulate reality. And because it is not reality it does not necessarily have to conform to the same rules".
Nothing was set or fixed, all was modifiable. Even herself.
She didn't understand why she was feeling so repulsed at her pre-awakened life. It seemed that most of her other classmates were fine with staying in character. Maybe they couldn't get over that part of themselves, as if they couldn't imagine being anything else. Or maybe they thought that would just destroy who they were? As if they would stop being themselves. Maybe they just couldn't see it, they still held on to all their flaws and weaknesses and predicability. But at the same time kept their strengths. And their histories and their families and their pasts.
Maybe that's why she was thinking in this completely out of character way. She had no real past; Akamatsu [1] never gave her one. She couldn't think of much she had to hold on to. She was a novelty girl. Someone to help out in a pinch and support the main protagonists. Maybe get used for a bit of fan service. She didn't want to be the shallow, clichéd, throwaway character she saw herself as.
Now where did that come from? She never thought of herself like that. Why was she dissatisfied, no, disgusted, with the only life she had? What was she comparing it to? What was there in her world that she should be unhappy with who she was. She hadn't been before, why now? What was causing this deep thinking? She wasn't an intellectual. She was a Baka Ranger. An idiot. But why did she think that was no longer ok? She was always smiling, never complaining, never expressing any real opinion. That was how she had always been. Simple, never getting into details. Focused on the immediate, never on the future. What wrong with that? She felt many things, but underneath them all was confusion. Was it alright or "normal" to be having these thoughts? Did everyone go through this?
Sitting in one of the adjustable armchairs, alone in her newly allotted room 74 on the 2nd level of IHA Central barracks 31, Keade tormented herself with these thoughts. Over and over the questions revolved in her mind.
She had done nothing after the induction that morning except sit in her room and stress over changing her way of life and personality. This led to questions about why she was thinking about changing herself and this subsequently led to stressing over thinking of changing her life and personality and wether it was ok to be considering changing her properties. This left her with nothing but confusion and more questions that she couldn't answer. At this point she started stressing over her own stress. Why was she having issue with changing herself? Everyone could do what they wanted with themselves, right? If she changed herself too much her existence would become too undefined and she risked losing her presence on the different plains of existence she resided in. But she was a very well established character. As long as she didn't touch things like gender or modify her body in extreme ways, like giving herself a horse's head, she should be fine. The guidance officer had gone over this with Keade and made sure she understood everything. She wasn't confused about the how, it was the why that was getting to her.
Something inside her resisted the idea. She felt uncomfortable with the concept. It was like all the boundaries that had made her feel safe had been taken away. There was no limit, and that scared her. But why should she be scared? Everybody else seemed to be comfortable with it. It was normal. Maybe it would take a little time but she would get used to it, wouldn't she? It was for the best wasn't? Wasn't it? But it didn't feel right, did it. No, it was frightening. She wished she had never known about it. She wanted it to, to, to go away…. Go away. Go away.
Her breathing quickened and her mussels tightened. A sense of fear had started to creep into her. She told it to leave but it didn't listen to her. It kept growing. The more it spread the more she focused on it. It drew all of her attention, no; it consumed all of her attention, filling her consciousness. It spread through her like a virus flowing through her bloodstream. She felt it gain momentum, moving faster and faster in its hunger to consume. The floodgates had been opened and the water was washing in. The fires were burning and the smoke was building up inside. The flywheels were spinning faster and faster until there was no stoping them. She felt like she was being devoured by some parasite inside of her.
Unbeknown to Keade this was exactly what was happening. The fear thought it was lucky, it had found a consciousness barely defended against influences such as itself. It found its opening in Keade's discomfort with changing herself and had quickly replaced this with irrational fear, the best kind of fear. Soon this girl would be consumed. Soon her life would be controlled by the fear. Her every motion guided by the fear. The fear would eat well off this girl. Oh yes, it would fea-the fear stopped. Something was pushing it back. It wasn't the girl. Another outside force such as itself?
Was the IHA taking action against the fear? If it was the IHA wouldn't they have acted earlier? Why would they have let the fear nearly take hold of this girl? This was the grand operational headquarters and training facility of the IAA's most highly valued forces. An entire universe dedicated to one organisation. Created, maintained, and administrated by the one group.
The IHA had absolute control over all the plains of existence this universe had, including the 5th dimension that the fear resided in. They set the rules, they modelled the landscape: they could do and see anything and everything. They could decide that gravity did not exist. Or turn everyone into frogs. They could detect the faintest existence of an unauthorised object such as itself. So why did they let the fear try to consume this girl?
The fear was damaging, it consumed people. It was not something to be toyed with; it was essentially a loaded weapon by itself. Why, the fear remembered a-the fear stopped, again. The girl was fighting back. The fear had been distracted and had stopped applying pressure on the girl, giving her some breathing space. Idiot! How could it have been so stupid! The girl had come to her senses and was searching for the fear, hunting it down like she was chasing the remnants of a destroyed army. The fear knew it was over; this girl would not be consumed.
The fear could feel that the girl had reached the source of the fear and found its existence reasonless. The fear tried in a parting shot to remind her that wasn't true but the thought didn't reach her, the IHA made sure of that. Then girl was upon the fear, driving it out with vengeance. The fear fled as soon as it had appeared and the girl regained what she saw in her own eyes as full control.
Keade had been sitting there for over two hours now. Another loop of the cycle of questions had passed. But this one had been different. She had been to the depths and resurfaced stronger for it. She would have probably driven herself crazy if she had continued like that any longer. It was time for action. She stood up and set the status display on her door to "Do not disturb". She then did the same with her IAA standard issue smartphone-like device. She had made up her mind. The consequences might be harmful, might be beneficial. In each case they would prevent the torment she had put herself through from ever occurring again. Tonight, Keade Nagase was going to change herself.
Augmentation was an important word she had been taught that day. It referred to the infusion of properties into an object. For an awakened fictional entity [2], such as herself, these properties could be anything they could pluck from a surrounding metaverse or, with the correct training, fabricate themselves. Keade had no chance of coming up with the properties that she wanted in herself. She didn't know how to use Realisation Force. But she thought she might be able to interact with this dimension's metaverse.
One of the first things that Keade learned at her induction was about the nature of what she perceived as reality. They hadn't given her much detail but everything had been explained simply. Essentially, she existed in more than one way. She was a living, breathing, human being that could be measured in the four observable dimensions of length, breadth, width, and time, which were the products of the four spatial plains of existence. She was also a consciousness on the fifth plain and a sprit on the sixth plain. But she was also an idea. The concept of the character Keade Nagase, the Mahora Academy schoolgirl and Ninja, floated around in a normally unobservable layer separate from the plains of existence known as a "metaverse".
This layer was where all the information of everything that existed in a world resided in. It was similar to the way data is kept on a computer. When you get down the extreme base level, every piece of computer data is an electrical impulse. Something being on or off. Ones and zeros. It is the computer's interpretation of the ones and zeros that creates the text documents and the pictures and everything else that is stored on your computer. The same thing is similar for the metaverse. It keeps all the characteristics and properties of all things that exist in a world. Everything from the atmospheric conditions and the laws of physics that are in effect, to the surface of that small rock you found inside your shoe. This provides masses of information by itself but it is not the full extent of the content of a metaverse. As well as existing properties a metaverse attaches possible proprieties that that object could have. The higher the probability of the object possessing that property, the easier it is to detect.
Keade was fairly certain that given the thoughts that had been plaguing her mind had been about changing her properties in general, it was likely that there were several possible properties faintly connected to her existence. All she had to do was find them.
The guidance officer had taught Keade the basics of how to interact with metaverses. It started by shutting off the refusal to not see metaverses that was caused by disbelief. Reliance on a sense causes the need for verification via that sense. "I'll believe it when I see it" and so on. metaverses only reveal themselves to those who are looking for them, and because unawakened people will not be aware of metaverses, most people had trouble truly believing it was there. "You didn't know it was there so you got used to not seeing it"
The next step was to find a way to quantify metaverses. The textbook example was words hovering overhead but the guidance counsellor had given examples of people seeing filing cabinets strapped to everything and bunches of different coloured balloons. The guidance officer had said that the more comfortable and accepting of its residence someone was, the easier it would be to see, eventually becoming nothing more then a shift of ones focus to whatever you saw it as. Keade was still getting used to its existence though, so quantifying metaverses meant separating them from the worlds she was used to. Essentially, she had to construct a mental world for it to live in. It was only her second time trying that day. She had had some brief attempts with the guidance officer, most of which ended as soon as she became aware of her eyes being closed. She shut her eyes and concentrated on the origin of the world outside. Not its history, it didn't really have one anyway, but from where its existence flowed. She continued that metaphor of flowing water, of a rushing river. A river of ideas.
Keade was scaling the side of a waterfall, the foamy mass cascading downward to her left. Dressed in her Keade's ninja outfit [3], she reached for the next finger hold with her right arm. Pulling herself upwards she unhooked her left foot from its sliver of rock and brought it up to another one slightly higher. Pushing upwards with her left leg she brought herself above her right arm and brought her right leg up to be level with her left leg. She paused to catch her breath before repeating the sequence again with left arm and right and left legs. Time passed. Keade's fingers curled around the edge of the cliff face. Pulling herself up with her arms she planted her chin on the summit. Followed by her elbows, upper body and then finally her legs. She took a moment to catch her breath. The river crashed and roared beside her, obsessed in its desire to demonstrate gravity. On the ground beside her were several armbands, each labelled with characteristics. She had found the properties. As soon as she thought this she realised she had blundered. The surroundings of her room begin to reappear and the waterfall and the river faded. Keade moved as fast as she could in order to grab the armbands before they vanished and managed to save three. Slipping them on her arm she opened her eyes and found herself back inside her room. The clock on the wall told her 4 hours had passed. It had been 8ish before she travelled into the metaverse. She decided against discovering her new properties that evening in the mess hall and instead phoned the metaphysical laboratory and booked an examination for tomorrow morning. She then called the rest of 3-A leaving messages that she was still ok if anyone had been worrying about her. She showered and changed into the sleepwear provided in the cupboard, noting that like the armchair it adjusted itself to give her a perfect fit [4]. Lying on the comfortable bed she closed her eyes and slept.
Hello from the Author. This is a notification stating that (due to much confusion) no further works set in the IHAverse shall be worked on until the pilot story, MI6ED, is published. Until then I shall bring Training For Two up to three chapters and then suspend work on all of my current stories. In case you couldn't figure it out all of them dumped you into a world that only I know about. I published them as a publicity stunt but ran into personal problems along the way. Now that these problems are starting to be sorted out I can get back to writing for the IHAverse. To tell you the truth I need to take some time off as honestly, I really had very little idea of what I was writing. I've only just now (23/11/10) got a clear idea of how everything fits together.
(I need to do something about these notes. They're way to long and contain loads of shit that nobody cares about.)
Well, this started out as me fleshing out some aspects of the story and I ended up trying to explain a couple of the more important concepts. I'm not sure why everything went slightly dark but I enjoyed writing like that as I drew on my own experiences, and I was listing to The Prodigy at the time. The 1997 album "Fat Of The Land". I'm listing to The Prodigy right now by the way, their 2004 "Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned" album. Please R&R and visit my profile and my other stories for information on IHA and The IHA Project. IF YOU SO DARE! *laughs evilly* I seriously advise you read my other stories though if you want to understand the IHAverse (which anyone can be a part of and publish media in once the website is working. Or you could PM me about it and I will happily explain).
For the record I haven't watched Inception and I started writing up the IHAverse in 2008.
Oh yeah, important question. This story seems to heading in a rather flashback heavy way as I explain the backstory behind my interpretation of Kaede. Contemplating splitting this into two stories. One dealing with Alex Rider training with Kaede, the other with Kaede's reaction to being awakened to her fictional nature. Your thoughts appreciated.
Probably should explain at this point that I will make reference to many things that I won't really explain. This is on purpose. Chronologically this was supposed to be the 8th or 9th story for IHA but I was persuaded to publish the unfinished scraps that I had lying around to arouse interest. Most of these explanations can (will soon be) found in articles or other stories that have been published on The IHA Project's website, linked on my profile. For example, the first flashback in this story is set the day that the universe Negima is set in is officially opened to interdimesional activity. Standard IAA and SIAA procedure dictates for major characters to be contacted first. This is to do with the concept of Realisation Force (yeah it's a crap name), something very important that I haven't explained yet. When a universe is opened the occupants of it are informed of their own existence as fictional characters.
In case you haven't figured it out I write this rather like a blog. Such is flexibility of The IHA Project (the website for which still isn't fully developed. It is up, just not with the features it needs to have. Anyway...). Some people will not publish anything until it is 50,000 words long and proofread for grammar and spelling. Others will publish the beginnings or the barebones of a complete story and then fill in the rest. Either way works. The thing with The IHA Project is that you don't have to do it alone. The community can add bits or make edits or rewrites and publish these versions as linked documents. If you think something could be done better then you click the "edit" button, make your changes, save it, and a new document will be published as a child of the original. The authorship holder/s of the original will be notified and may choose to add some or all of the changes to the original, request the link between the two be severed, or do nothing at all. Please note that all the functions I talk about are not actually in place yet because the website dev is very lazy. And, well... I sorta haven't quite explained them to him.
OK. I'll admit that this has been very hard to write (such is why my stories are less then half finished). I have decided to work only on Training For Two as it is the most popular story I have published. In the meantime I will be working on what is supposed to be the pilot story for The IHA Project, MI6ED.
[1] Referring to Ken Akamatsu, mangaka behind Negima.
[2] In the IHAverse, this refures to characters that are aware of their existence as fictional characters.
[3] Does anyone have a better description of Keade's outfit she wears when she appears as a Ninja?
[4] Just to clarify; the sleepwear, not the cupboard.