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Summary: She has always envied the clouds. (Or: In which dreams are fulfilled in the most peculiar ways and a young girl gets reincarnated as the future Cloud Arcobaleno.) [SI, Self-Insert/OC-Insert as femSkull]
Have fun.
Nobody Sees Me Wishing
Chapter 11
Out Of Order
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.
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Of Failures and Trickery
benevolent (adj.) showing or motivated by sympathy and understanding
XXXIII.
Throughout the years, Anja noticed her Flames changing.
In many ways, they reminded the girl of muscles. The more one used them, the stronger they got. Considering that by now Anja used her Cloud Flames almost all of the time, it wasn't hard to guess how much they had developed since their awakening.
There was a reason why she would one day be known as the strongest Cloud in the world. The girl was slowly realizing that such a name might not have been as much of a fancy moniker as she had first guessed.
(...a monster resided deep within her chest and she could feel it growing with each passing day...)
Injuries that had once needed hours to heal, disappeared within seconds or minutes nowadays. The pain she had once felt due to the healing process had by now become inconsequential.
Her pain tolerance had never been so high before.
And it weren't just her Flame's healing properties that had increased in strength. Due to the repeated kidnapping attempts, Anja had also learned to control the more dangerous aspects of her powers properly. If they were in closed quarters, the Cloud did not need to touch her enemies anymore to harm them. She had enough raw power to saturate a whole room in her soulfire. By the time her victims noticed that something was going on, they had already breathed in the purple Flames and their bodies were being propagated from inside.
Although the deaths did not get any less gruesome, Anja did stop caring as the time passed. At some point, the faces of her victims all started to blur together and the acrobat lost count of how many people she had killed in self-defense.
As much as it scared her, Anja got desensitized in some ways. This made things both easier and harder. Death was a part of life and the girl had accepted that a long time ago. She did not control it and if someone was stupid enough to come after her, then Anja could not be blamed for bringing it upon that fool.
(...Eliza would have been appalled...)
The whole thing was also made easier by the fact that a small part of her craved the violence. Clouds were generally known for their temperament and brutal behavior and the girl was no different than the rest of her 'brethern'.
Anja might have not enjoyed fighting or killing, but there was a small and savage part of her that needed it.
Still, she tried to find an outlet in other activities.
And that was where her acrobatics came in.
The adrenaline her body produced during some of her more reckless acts was intoxicating and seemed to calm the beast within her.
These days, she knew exactly why her male counterpart had chosen his field of work.
Anja understood him and that scared her more than she cared to admit.
XXXIV.
A while back, when the circus was stationed in Greece, Iwona and a few of the acrobats went out to get some new costumes for the performers. Among the garments was a tight whole-body suit that reminded Anja of a prisoner uniform she had once seen in a cartoon with Krystyna. The girl did not remember which cartoon exactly, but it did make her feel a little nostalgic, though not in a negative way.
It was a whim that prompted her to try the black and white stripped bodysuit on. When it ended up fitting her like a second skin, Anja decided that it was fated to be.
Unfortunately, Iwona did not share her opinion. The older woman complained that her outfit was too plain for her shows and tried to prompt Anja to search for something new.
As the girl had never been one to follow orders, she did the exact opposite. From that day on, that bodysuit became her official costume.
Though, Anja did decide to yield a little for Iwona's sake. During her next shopping trip, the girl found a bright red shirt that she then put over the bodysuit. Surprisingly enough, the red color did not clash with her purple hair in a bad way.
Still, the colors of her costume, the stark make-up Anja started to apply and the overall persona she adopted on stage made her appear way more dramatic than she actually was. It was quite amusing how often people assumed that she was just a bumbling idiot, only to be surprised when they decided to approach her after the show.
Most of them expected her to be the exuberant person she presented on stage. Associating that person with whom she truly was wasn't easy.
(...Anja ignored how similar she had become to Skull de Mort...)
The truth was, though, that the audience would not have loved her shows even half as much if Anja did not behave the way she did. They came to see a daring and fun acrobat, not a girl that enjoyed cloud-watching and eating pierogi more than anything else.
Anja did not mind pretending to be someone else only so that she could stay on stage. After all, that was something she had already been doing for years.
Besides, she needed the kick she got out of her performances. Without it, she became very fidgety and incapable of staying still for too long.
''Go on, Anja. It's your turn,'' uttered Arnold as he stepped out of the main tent, sweat covering his brow and a grin firmly in place.
Cutting her musings short, Anja nodded her head. ''Thanks for the info.''
Stepping into the menege and greeting the audience with overeager waves of her arms had by now become second nature to her. The same could be said about climbing the ladder towards the slackline and then taking off her father's beloved helmet. She never failed to wear it to one of her shows.
What Anja wasn't familiar with was having her Flames prodded by someone. It wasn't the first time the girl came upon a Sky, neither was it the first time that one of them tried to pull her in.
This had just never happened during one of her shows before.
At first, the acrobat tried just ignoring the unwanted intruder. Regrettably, this did not work out as well as she had hoped, thus Anja started searching in the crowd for this stupid Sky inbetween her acrobatics.
It turned out to be a man who very obviously noticed her attention on him. His Flames brushed more insistently against hers and Anja shuddered in disgust. While there were certainly many Elements that would have jumped at the chance of bonding with him, Anja wasn't one of them. This Sky's Flames weren't even halfway strong enough to be compatible with hers and felt more like a violation than anything else when they brushed against her skin.
Gritting her teeth in anger, Anja forced herself to continue balancing across the rope. Her attention was waning from her actual task as anger began coursing through her veins.
(...How dare this weakling touch her?...)
Letting herself fall backwards against the slackline, Anja was propelled onto her feet. Sparks of purple fire appeared all over her person. They signified her anger and slowly developing rage.
(...Cloud Flames churned within her...
...
...she could barely keep them from lashing out instinctively...)
Foolishly, the unknown Sky decided that the best time to try his luck once again would be during a back-flip. His Flames latched onto her and Anja recoiled. Her body twisted to the side, foot missing the slackline by a centimeter.
Nina Lubanja Filipović fell.
She fell six meters until her body collided with the ground.
Her neck broke.
Silence reigned throughout the whole tent before one after another cries of panic erupted.
The feeling of her bones mending themselves was not an unfamiliar one, neither was the hand on her back. Eyes moving towards Yves, Anja forced her arms to move.
She needed to stand up and quell the panic before the situation got completely out of hand.
Her movement immediately quieted the crowd down.
The audience was too far to see it, but Yves had a first row seat to the spectacle that was Anja snapping her head back into place. He paled considerably.
Only years of experience ensured that her guardian continued the show after a few moments of shock. Yves helped her stand up, a manic grin slowly spreading across his face. He raised her arm into the air and shouted into the silence of the room, ''Ladies and gentleman, please, a round of applause for-'' He paused for a second, a contemplative expression appearing on his face before he chose to continue, ''Please, a round of applause for the Immortal Skull de Mort!''
The roar of the crowd was easily tuned out by loud beating of Anja's heart.
(...Yves never looked at her the same way again...)
XXXV.
Verde's intelligence was beyond average.
That did not stop him from making mistakes. In his defense, though, the teen had thought that he had calculated all the variables of his plan properly and that he would manage to carry it out without a hitch.
Moreover, it wasn't as if this plan hadn't worked out a dozens of times before and earned him more money than anyone else in the circus had.
The idea to cheat while gambling came to him in a moment of reckless genius. It formed due to his ever-present desire to study at a real university and the lacking funds to do so.
If Verde wanted to make something of himself, then he needed to earn money to pay for a higher education. Unlike many other students, the boy did not have the privilege of a wealthy and well-connected family, thus he was faced with many hurdles. After all, there weren't many places a seventeen years old circus member could actually earn a lot of money in a short amount of time.
Thus, gambling.
With the right tactic and a few tricks Verde managed to make quite a lot of money. That is, until he played against the wrong people.
Even though Verde couldn't have known that his opponent was the heir of a French Mob, he should have at least been smart enough to recognize some of the signs after a while.
He should have recognized the danger he was in before the enraged heir pulled out his gun and pointed it at the teens head.
''Did you actually think we would let you get away with this, you little fucker?'' Questioned the man, his auburn eyes set ablaze due to his anger.
Verde's mouth was completely dry as he answered with a wavering voice, ''I...of...of course not. You can keep the money.'' He swallowed visibly. ''Just, please, let me go.''
The mobster laughed. ''I can keep the money?'' Loud and clear, the sound of the safety being pulled echoed through the whole room. ''Even if it did not already belong to me, this would still not be something for you to decide.''
At some point, though Verde did not know when exactly, the teen realized that he would not survive that evening. This became even more obvious when the dark haired man pressed his gun harshly against the Spaniard's forehead.
Verde did not want to die.
Fear and defiance managed to register in the boy's mind just a second before the mobster pulled the trigger.