Note: Some details in the prologue have been changed since the initial upload.
Thanks to everyone for reading!
Miscellaneous supporting OCs ahead. Rated M for graphic violence.
Emerald Evanescence
Chapter 1: snap
snap: (v.) to break or give way suddenly and completely; to lose one's self-control, usually without warning.
26 August, 2002
The bustle of hurried footsteps. Girls gathered in their cliques carelessly giggling, their faces caked in lipstick and powder. The guys from the football team hollering to their friends across the hallway. Lockers doors slamming, books dropping onto the floor. They lay open on the grey cement like the bodies of paper birds, before being hastily picked up.
A dark figure wove her way through the hot, sweaty bodies of the crowd and towards her own locker. Her long, black bangs fell over her face as she turned the combination lock. A dull silver ring hung from a leather cord around her neck, nearly hidden under the high white collars of her shirt, which she wore under a deep green T-shirt. Her sneakered feet tapped in impatience until the lock clicked under her fingers.
She had changed much in the past few years, though only a few knew her long enough to even notice that. She had grown an inch or two taller than her two sisters. Her hair, now reaching her shoulders, curled inwards just above her collarbone, falling about her face in a manner that hid her features well from everyone around her. Just as she wanted.
But there were some who had tried befriending her before: desk neighbours from different classes, track seniors wanting her on the school team, even fans who had rooted for her ever since she and her sisters came to be. All of them saw how strangely silent she was, felt the coldness of this silence, and eventually they left her quite alone. Even now, as she fiddled with her locker in the hallway, there was a small circle of space around her. Almost indiscernible in the ever-moving throb of people, but it was there, always. And she knew it.
She yanked opened her locker door at last. A stale, musty smell of paper engulfed her, along with the hint of sweat. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the textbooks and forgotten spare clothes inside the locker. She would have to clear out that mess soon.
Two small photos graced the stripped coat of paint on the back of the metal door, stuck in place with peeling tape. The candid shot on top showed her and a boy — both with unruly dark hair — wrestling with each other in a backyard, and a look of surprise on her face as she saw the flash of the camera.
She smiled tightly. It had seemed like ages ago, just one scene out of many in a fading sea of memories, but she remembered it clear as day. That was the day she received the Pendulum from him. It had been a casual gift, nothing more — but she had grown to treasure it very much. To her it was more than a mere gift of appreciation, of acceptance . . . of friendship.
But she had never told him that. He wouldn't have understood, anyway.
The other picture was of herself and her sisters, taken at the wooden steps of the porch only a few months before. Blossom sat on the right, the pleasant smile on her face framed by her long orange hair that glowed like a halo under the afternoon sunlight. Everything about her was perfect: her slender figure, her outgoing personality, and her kind heart. Everything she wasn't.
Bubbles, sitting with her ankles crossed, smiled out of the picture with one hand raised in a victory sign. She wore her blonde hair in a low ponytail over one shoulder. Her clothes — jeans coupled with a white cardigan over a tank top in pale blue — gave the image of a bright and bubbly girl, in both name and character. Everything she wasn't.
And seated between the two of them, she herself seemed almost like a shadow, of both her sisters and her former self. She wore an ensemble of black and a grim smile; the only specks of colour on her were her stark green eyes that stared back, almost distantly, at the camera. But it was clear from those eyes that she was losing touch with her present, whether it was just among the three of them then, or filled with other people like now. And that was her.
She ran a finger across the glossy photograph.
Nothing had changed.
. . . No, everything had.
As she pulled her books from the depths of the locker, a slim shadow closed in from behind her. A thick flowery scent wafted into her bubble of space, and almost made her gag.
"So, Buttercup, it's the first day of school. Aren't you excited?" asked an equally sweet voice.
She dumped her last book into her backpack and slammed the door shut in reply. But she watched out of the corner of her eye as the other girl opened the locker right next to hers. She was wearing knee-length lace-up boots, a purple pinstriped dress that barely covered half her thighs, a white cropped blazer, and a long golden necklace with a heart-shaped charm at the end of it. Her lavender-dusted eyelids complemented her blue eyes, as the pink gloss on her lips did to the auburn curls tumbling down her shoulders.
Tara adjusted the face mirror hanging on the inside of her locker door as she open her compact with her other hand. "It's such a pity," she said, seemingly to herself, though her eyes were now watching the other girl closely. "Some people just make beauty and charm so effortless, I guess. Not like those who can't get a look from anyone no matter how hard they try . . ." She gave a small laugh in falsetto and went on powdering her face. Buttercup could almost feel the particles of her foundation penetrate her locker door and smother her.
"First impressions do matter, you know. Especially on the first day of anything." There was a click: Tara's compact had snapped shut under delicate fingers. "Imagine coming to school and looking forward to a wonderful year ahead, then turning the corner and seeing some people drag themselves across the floor, looking like such a . . . disaster." She imagined Tara shuddering to herself in disgust as she dropped her compact in her tote bag, but said nothing in return.
A few awkward seconds later Tara suddenly swung her locker door, leaving it just slightly ajar, and widened her eyes at the girl beside her. "I wasn't talking about you just now, Buttercup!" she insisted, her face one of alarm. The heels of her boots clicked sharply against the floor as she made her way over, hips swaying a little more than was necessary, and placed a slender hand on Buttercup's shoulder. Her painted nails shone in the harsh light of the hallway; her bright blue eyes were almost pleading. "Please don't get the wrong idea!"
Buttercup clenched her teeth. In the shadows of her locker her fingers dug into the flesh of her palm, and her knuckles shook, ever so slightly.
Tara immediately realised what she was doing, and whisked her hand off the other girl. She blew at her fingers daintily, as though it was slime that they had just touched, and readjusted the straps of the tote on her shoulder.
"Anyway," she went on, going back to shut her locker. "I'm going out with Butch tonight. Movie date." She tossed Buttercup a sympathetic smile. "It's strange, really. You've known him for so long — but you guys have never gone out even once? You should've given him a chance . . . to see you, I mean. Instead of blending in with the shadows all the time."
Buttercup closed her eyes. Her bones cracked as she clenched her fist even more tightly. Her right hand slowly reached into the depth of her locker—
No.
—and closed upon something cold and hard.
Not here, his voice echoed inside her head.
She withdrew her arm. Now sitting in her hand was a metallic object that glinted under the fluorescent lights. An emerald sat tucked inside its holster, its many facets gleaming, almost with a glow of its own.
"And anyway, I just don't understand why you and Butch turned out so different when you both look so similar. You can at least try to be a little bit more like him, you know . . ."
Tara's babble went on, peppered every now and then with exaggerated hand gestures and expressions. And still it did, even as there came a soft click of fastening clasps, a shifting of metallic wire in a spool, eager to break free from its home.
". . . maybe he'll bring me to winter formal. And who knows — if we really click he might even ask me to prom! I've had my eye on this fabulous silver gown from Stacie's upcoming collection . . . I'm sure it'll totally match the little tiara that might just end up on my head—"
"Shut up," whispered Buttercup.
"—and he'll be right next to me with everyone looking, of course." Tara noticed the other girl not listening, but not the strange addition to her lower arm. "Oh well," she sighed, shrugging, as she swivelled around to walk away. "I guess it's time to go—"
"I said shut the hell UP!"
Buttercup flung her arm out behind her. In one split second a glowing green light zipped out from the contraption on her arm and wove in and out of Tara's body over and over, wire flashing in the fluorescent lights as it pierced channel after merciless channel through the girl, flawless skin and designer clothes and all.
Around them, the many other students fell still. Every single word among them dropped like pins onto the floor as every head turned in Tara's direction. Buttercup stood in the midst of them all, her head still bowed, her arm still stretched towards Tara.
Tara's bag slipped off her shoulder. It hit the floor with a dull thud, books and purses spilling from it and across the floor. Her mouth was agape, sharp and shallow breaths half-caught in her throat, and her eyes wide with shock.
The cable had sliced in through the small of Tara's back, turning sharply around the front before diving into another point on her body. Over and over it did, until it burst all around her in a grotesque parody of a dragonfly with too many wings. The frame of each wing stood quivering upon the girl's body, stained in a rich crimson that glistened thick and sharp against the paleness of her skin. And thrusting out from the centre of her forehead was a small emerald crystal, its very tip dripped with that very same blood down her nose, her lips, her chest, her legs. The blood finally gathered at her feet in a puddle that grew and grew, and drained her life with every passing second.
A small voice drifted over from behind Tara as the crowd gawped at the horrific spectacle before them.
"You won't understand."
The words pierced through Tara's ears like a winter chill, stinging her to the very last bone. They were the last she would ever hear.
The emerald withdrew, slowly at first; then, once through the back of her head it picked up speed, cutting through the rest of her body in reverse, each puncture oddly smaller than the width of the crystal would allow. As each of the triangular wings vanished more blood spurted out, spattering onto the cement floor and onto the dumbfounded faces of the many onlookers around the girl. At last the crystal was free, and it slunk back into its home that was the Pendulum on Buttercup's arm, drenched in that same deep shade of red as the girl once known as Tara was.
And she fell.
Her face hit the floor first, slamming into the ever-growing pool of her very own blood. The rest of her body crumpled in a graceless sprawl she herself would have been ashamed to see. Her blazer was now a blood-soaked red, as was her tangles of hair. Her eyes, still wide with terror, stared out and up at the very person who took her life away thus so.
Someone gave a muffled scream. At that moment pandemonium broke out — girls fainted, boys scrambled, teachers and students alike stumbled back, terrified by the gruesome sight before them. They screamed and backed away from the lone girl who still stood beside the dead Tara, and out of the doors at the end of the hallway.
The emerald, now nested in the Pendulum and splashed with red, glowed more brightly than ever. Buttercup's arm trembled. Her eyes shone, the overhead lights dancing wildly upon green as she stared back into Tara's lifeless face.
"Goodbye," she whispered.
With a strained cry she ran to the other end of the corridor and flew out through a closed window, shattering the glass into silvers that circled the wall like a broken fan before plummeting towards the ground.
– – –
Over at the other end of the school grounds, a young man snapped up his head and looked around. Everything seemed normal. It was still the same library, the same clusters of people reading, the same old librarian at the information desk. But something was amiss, he knew.
His hands paused on the pages of the volume he was holding, as he stood still in one of the aisles between the reference bookshelves. And then, for some reason he did not know, he turned to look at his backpack at his feet.
From underneath the top flap of the backpack he saw something — a small green light winking in the darkness, almost glowing. His heart gave a lurch as the image of a once-familiar machine flashed across his eyes. He thrust an arm towards the glow in his backpack and pulled it out: it was his mobile phone, small and metallic grey, the green indicator light on its shell blinking in time with an envelope icon on the corner of the screen.
"Butch?" A blond-haired girl paused at the end of the aisle and stared at him. She was carrying a small pile of books in her arms. "Are you okay? You look a bit . . ."
Butch raised his eyes and let out a deep breath. "I'm fine, Dion," he said to her, smiling as he stuffed the phone into his jeans pocket.
"Oh." She pulled absently at the white scarf draped across her shoulders. "Well, then I guess we'd better get going. The lecture's starting in ten."
Dion picked up her bag that was beside Butch's, and slipped her books into it one at a time. Then she looked at him again. "Are you sure you're all right?" she asked, her brow furrowing.
Butch saw that his fingers were gripping tight onto the book he was holding. He eased, and swiftly slotted the book back onto its shelf. "I said I'm fine." He gave her another bright smile, and snatched his backpack off the floor. "Come on, let's go."
And as the two of them made for the library exit, the little green light that peeked from the edge of his pocket flashed one last time, and died away.
-tbc-
