Author's Note: Here ya go everyone, hot off the presses!...again. Well, sorta. I did some editing although not as much as the last chapter. I added a few snippets here and there but nothing extremely drastic. Well, anywho, I should welcome my special guest shouldn't I?
???: That would be a good idea, wouldn't it?
Me: Oh be quiet Kurama!
Kurama: -turns away, sniffling slightly-
Me: Nooooo, Darkeiko ish sorry! Don't cryyyyy!! -hugs him around the middle- I wab j00!
Kurama: You 'wab' me?
Me: Yes! WAB!
Kurama: What is...'wab?'
Me: Wab is a descendant of the word, love. First it started with love, then it progressed to wove, then shortened to wuv, and then somehow along the way it went to wub, and thus resulted in wab. And there you go, the history of wab!
Kurama: -kneads his nose- That was very...informative.
Me: YAY! Kurama thinks I'm smart! -huggle-
Kurama: -grins slightly before patting my head-
Disclaimer: Any and all things are in the copyrighted hands of Yoshihiro, Togashi. I own nothing else except for the plotline and my original characters (OCs).
Warning: Um, a few cusses...that's all.
~*Chapter Three*~
"Is it just me or are you surrounded by some sort of aura?"
She couldn't explain it. Wherever she looked, at whomever she glanced, everyone had this strange colored outline. Each was different as well, ranging in tinge from blue, black, red, orange, yellow, even silver. Even the size of the border's were diverse.
When she returned to school she had asked her classmates only to receive peculiar stares in response. No one could understand what the young woman was talking about at all. Even when she questioned her teachers, they too gave her a blank stare.
Was she going crazy? Was she insane? How could no one see it and she could? Before the virus she couldn't see anything at all...
Wait, rewind that thought. Virus. Before that damned virus, she had felt perfectly fine and now...she was seeing things others could not. Before that virus she was normal, before that virus, she felt sane. As a result of her sickness, something...abnormal...happened to her.
Her thought processes continued on at a faster pace. If this happened to her as a result of the virus, had anyone else experienced the same? Were other people, same as her, witnessing similar sights? Were other people enduring such a virus that resulted in these hallucinations?
...What about Ameno?
He, too, had caught the virus. He, too, was bed-ridden. Could he, perhaps, be feeling the same as her? Was he seeing things that others could not?
"Well, if you're seeing it too that means I'm not crazy," was his firm response.
Like his sister, he could also view the borders surrounding people. However, at the cost of being viewed as a lunatic, he decided to keep his mouth shut. Reaching a conclusion far more quickly than his sister, Ameno had kept quiet throughout the day until he returned home from work to consult one other person he knew who had received the sickness: his younger sister, Eiko.
But the strange aura wasn't his main concern. As he drove home from work, almost every minute of every day, he would feel prickling on the back of his neck. He felt that someone was watching him, constantly, incessantly. His skin would turn cold and his body would shiver for a few seconds before returning to normal. However, this wasn't all; No, it wasn't all, not by a long shot.
Bugs, enormous bugs. Wherever he could see, tremendous insects passed through the sky. Some landing on unsuspecting bystanders who neither realized their presence nor could see them at all. Some even landed on his windshield, forcing him to use the wipers in clear weather. He felt like he was going insane. So imagine his relief when Eiko had approached him upon his return home.
"You see any insects when coming home?" he asked. Placing his coat on the rack, he shuffled upstairs into his room, Eiko in tow, collapsing into his bed in a heap. His parents had long since changed his and Eiko's bed sheets the moment they were better lest they catch another bout of sickness.
"Yeah but I figured if no one could see the auras, I bet no one could see the bugs too," she responded, situating herself in a revolving chair opposite the bed.
"You asked people?!"
She shrugged. "Well, yeah. What else was I supposed to do? I suddenly wake up and see freaking color around people! COLOR! I thought I was going insane! I needed to ask someone!"
Ameno kneaded the bridge of his nose in annoyance. "Why didn't you just do what I did and keep quiet?"
Eiko huffed, crossing her arms indignantly over her chest. "Excuse me for wanting to know what the hell was going on!"
"All right, all right. Nothing is going to be resolved if we don't stop arguing," he reasoned. "We both know one thing, though."
"What's that?"
"Whatever got us sick probably did this to us too."
"Yeah...think something else happened to us aside from seeing auras and insects?"
Ameno shrugged. "Who knows? If wings started sprouting from my back in the next second I wouldn't be damn surprised. Now pass me the controller, I wanna play Tales. For a while I'd like to get my mind off this."
Sighing, Eiko removed herself from her seat scanning the cluttered room for any signs of the Xbox controller.
"Geez, Ame, how many times have I cleaned this room? It's back to what it was before!"
"If you don't like it, then start cleaning. You use this room almost as much as I do."
"It's still your room!"
"Hey, if you don't want to clean then there's the door." he said, pointing out into the hallway. "If you use the room and MY games, then you have to clean it. No cleaning, no games. Got it?"
Eiko's eyes darkened, jade reverting to forest green, anger clouding her senses. How come she always had to clean his room? How come he couldn't help once in a while?! It was his room too! It wasn't fair! She stomped her foot irately.
"Ameno! It's not fair!" Her voice spoke in a whining tone. Suddenly the wind picked up, swirling gently about the youngest sibling and slamming violently into the eldest. The flurry continued, uplifting Ameno from his bed and pounding him into the floor. The poor boy laid in a crumpled form, his nose crushed against the wooden floor.
"Holy SHIT! What the fuck was that?!" Ameno sat up, staggering as he did so. He brought a hand to his face, noting the red, viscous liquid on his palm. Great, he was bleeding.
Eiko sped out of the room, returning with sheets of toilet paper. Retrieving it from her clutches, Ameno, not so delicately, shoved them up his nose to temporarily halt the flow.
"What happened?" Eiko asked, taking her previous seat watching as her brother clambered once more into bed.
Ameno slowly chanced a look up. His sister's eyes were now the normal jade rather than the forest green they were before. He was positive, damn; he was so sure he'd bet his whole game collection on it.
"You did."
"WHAT?! ME? How could I control the freaking wind?!"
"Who knows, but I'm pretty damn sure that the wind picked up the second you yelled at me." Ameno glared as he finished. Eiko rubbed the back of her head nervously.
He continued. "Try calling on the wind, see if it works."
Eiko nodded. "I'll try."
'Wind...' she thought, gently closing her eyes. Eiko filled her thoughts with air: how cool it felt, how she greedily breathed it in, how powerful it was that it could lift her...
Her eyelids fluttered open, jade eyes bugging out of their sockets. "Oh...my...GOD!"
She was floating...at least two feet in the air. There was no visible support for her feet yet she could feel the pressure keeping her afloat. She had never felt so...free, so...alive. This was stuff only told in anime and manga, and it was happening to her! She was living the dream!
"Your aura is getting thinner. Don't do that for too long, Eiko! Come down!"
The youngest sibling drifted to the ground, smiling weakly at her brother. "Heh, that was awesome! Feel kinda tired, though." Collapsing once more into her seat, Eiko glanced at her brother holding his chin in thought.
"Our aura is probably...equal to the power we can generate. I think the only reason you can control that element is because your aura can manipulate it."
"Yeah but..." Eiko interrupted, "...if I could control any element using my aura how come only wind appeared and not everything at once? ...Maybe it has to do with the virus?"
Realization dawned in. "YEAH! That has to be it! Because when I was sick in bed, I HATED the air! I couldn't handle it! I even got cut up by it!" she exclaimed, rolling up her uniform sleeves. "And now that I'm fine, it's the only element I can control!"
Ameno glanced at his sister, eyes flashing a bit with concern before returning to its indifferent state. Eiko hadn't noticed as she continued her incessant mumbling.
"Yep, that's definitely it! And since YOU had a fever you probably control..."
"Fire?" he asked.
Eiko nodded in response. "If my theory's true, then you should I guess. Maybe you should try like I did? Although..." She glanced around uneasily. "I think we should do this in the bathroom so things don't go up in flames if I'm right."
Together they shuffled out of the bedroom, Ameno chuckling out a, "Nice move, smart one," after she had unknowingly stepped on the Xbox Controller she had been struggling to find only moments before. Eiko merely glared, threatening to hit him if he didn't stop laughing. She didn't need wind to hurt her brother.
"So...now what do I do?" he asked, standing, fully clothed, in the shower stall.
"Just...think about fire! Or something related to fire! Even something that makes you angry, or even-"
"-Like this?" he interrupted, smirking slighlty as he held a flammable, glowing crimson sphere in his palm.
"Woot!" Eiko chirped, before glancing at the ball curiously "Well...how do you get rid of it? My powers are easy enough."
In an instant Ameno closed his palm, the sphere puffing out until he was satisfied before opening it again.
"That works." he responded, climbing steadily out of the stall. Eiko huffed as they both returned to his room, the youngest picking up the controller and glaring at it before handing the object over to her brother.
"Well, now what?" she asked.
"We should train...but first, Tales." He smirked, switching on the Xbox.
Eiko shrugged and watched as Tales of Vesperia began to play. She was too tired to train at the moment anyway.