a/n: Special props to my computer, for deciding not to randomly restart every 5 seconds during the writing of this chapter! And to reviewers, thank you *so* much, rock on!!
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Aren stepped out from his room's doorway. The noise was considerably louder in the outer hallways. It pounded viciously into his head, but he payed little attention. Quick and cold air whipped at him from the far wall of the train, which consisted of a four-foot high part of steel, and a tinted glass window for the rest. This extended from one end of the car to the other, and most of the windows were slid open. The cold pierced at Aren like a knife of ice; he knew the cold as much as the darkness, and hated it equally.
And the wind pressed long hair against his forehead. It sat unevenly at a spot near the center. He sneered, and pulled his skullcap down. The light whipping of hair he akinned to the trickle of blood. but then, he was paranoid of the blood. He needed to get over it, he thought. Just live with it. Because he did not dare brush the hair away.
"I'll figure it out!" he called, "go ahead, shut the door. I can't believe we can't get this thing to lock."
Irvine and Selphie returned distantly. "Okay!"
The metal door swished quickly shut, and Aren leapt back to avoid catching his arm in its way. "Whoa, watch it!" he laughed, and examined the block of metal that stood before him. In its center was a keypad, with a long calculator-like display above it, a rather primitive liquid matrix model. He groaned angrily. "Oh great, one of these."
He slowly brought his hand to the keypad. No waves, he thought. Can't screw this up, no waves. The flesh about his shaded eyes tightened, and his lips thinned, as he concentrated hard. Gently he pressed at the keys, and entered the code to lock the door.
The metal-palmed hand drew back, and Aren sighed. "Okay!" he called. "Try it now!"
With a metal swoosh, the door swung into its sheath in the wall, and almost took his arm for a ride once more. But he pulled it quickly away. Selphie stood in the doorway, smiling cheerily, and she waved with bright eyes. "Hello!"
"Hi there!" smiled Aren. "I'm breaking into your room! Does your door lock?"
With sweeping arms, Selphie presented the sheathed door. "Why no, it doesn't!"
From down the car, the two of them heard a distant, and very peeved call from a gruff-sounding gentleman. It was a call that seemed to addressed them both.
"Will you shut up down there?!"
Selphie giggled quietly. "Um...I'll close the door now!"
"Good idea," nodded Aren, and the block of metal swooshed shut. Aren reached his cold fingers behind glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He tried hard to focus on the little screen above the keypad. But in the rectangle, he saw a spectrum of brilliant colors. No numbers, only colors.
Hyne, come on. He stared longer. But as he gazed, the colors began to leak from the rectangle. They flashed, and enveloped his vision, and instantly it was all he saw.
"Gaah!" he doubled back, hands over his face. As he slid across the floor, he felt a hard collision to his back. And above the deafening sound of the train's mechanical droll, he heard a female shout, and a sharp thud to the hard floor.
Aren quickly snapped his eyes back open. The colors had disappeared; his sight was true once more. But beside him now lay a young lady, sprawled on the floor. She was tall and thin, and blonde-haired, and wore a dark red dress without sleeves. Shiny black boots and gloves adorned her, and from a loose belt hung a whip made of chains.
"Oh, excuse me!" Aren apologized, and hopped to his feet. He reached a hand down to the fallen woman.
She gathered herself, and took the hand, nodding without looking. "Thank you, it's quite all right...I suppose it's dark in here, and..."
A quick glance up led to a sharp gasp, and the woman jumped away. "Halt where you are!" she sneered, "I am a representative from Garden, and you are under arrest! Do not try to evade me; I am sanctioned to use deadly force!"
Aren cocked his head. "Eh, say what?" he shrugged, and turned to his door. "If...you're joking, I'm sorry, but I don't get it."
The crack of a metal blade landed inches before his boot, followed by a metallic snap. The woman flicked her wrist, and brought the whip back into a coil. "I said halt!" she pointed with a black glove. "Are you Aren Bowes?"
"What Garden wants to know?" Aren's eyebrow raised. He slowly reached to his black hooded coat.
The whip struck him hard in the chest. Two metal clasps fell from his jacket. He stumbled away with the blow, and the sharpened point ran toward his neck in a deadly swipe. But Aren grasped the chain, yanked it safely away, and gave a powerful tug on his end of the whip. The woman flung forward off her feet toward him.
He held his forearm out, across his chest, and she collided bluntly but painlessly. "Give me that!" growled Aren, annoyed, and he grasped her wrist.
A rush of wind, and a moment's worth of vertigo, and he felt himself flipped against the cold ground. The attacker was upon him instantly, and the whip of chains was wrapped around his neck. The woman's eyes were tight behind her set of thin glasses. "Do not resist arrest!"
Aren was immensely confused, and a little sore. He glanced to his chest; his shirt was sliced up and down, but he bled only slightly. He sighed, and shook his head. "Listen, I really didn't mean to knock you over, okay? But you don't have to go and flip me over it, all right? We're even."
As he brought his arms to the chains, he recieved a hard kick to the side. It stung, more than flat-out hurt, but it peeved him all the more. "That's it," he grumbled.
With a fluid twist of his leg, he swept the woman's feet away, and she fell. Aren felt the chains loosen; he slid them quickly off. He rolled away from the spot and stood, grabbing the clasps from the ground. A barrage of whip strikes came his way. Weaving and dodging, he avoided most, but a few struck with painful snaps.
"I'm warning you, stop it!" he yelled at her.
"And I'm warning you," she replied, "to stand down!"
Aren spun away from a cracking whip. "I'm not gonna stand down if you're trying to beat me down!" He lunged forward, and landed a punch to her shoulder. Though he held himself back, he felt her buckle away under the blow. The woman slammed her back to the glass, and stumbled shakily forward, but instantly returned all the faster with more strikes of the whip.
The blade at the whip's end was becoming harder and harder to keep track of. What am I gonna do, punch her in the face? he thought, feeling the sharp steel scrape his arm as he ducked back. She doesn't sound drunk, she's talking way too eloquently, and she's deadly with that whip...but I can't just...
Aren felt ice cold steel strike his forehead. It dashed through his skullcap, and cut his flesh, and he felt himself fall backward. Darkness returned. He remembered the metal, the ice protruding from his head, the hell of pain that was his separated flesh. And he felt the blood, the trickle that ran down from the wound, and split directions at his nose, and dripped over his mouth. He smelled the sharp scent, the saline and sweat that had mixed with the blood on the day the darkness came.
Sight returned, clouded in red. The woman's whip was coiled in her arm, and the blade at the end was dripping with Aren's blood. She was no longer stanced to strike him, and her eyes were not the thin slits they once were. Now they were wide and dilated, and she stood straight up, and the black glove on her hand was against her gasping lips.
The blood flowed, and he shook at the feeling. The darkness came with the blood.
His palms vibrated and glowed; and he felt an energy building. Building and drawing from around him, from everything, the air and the walls, and even the woman who attacked him. It drew as she watched, and stepped back in shock. And Aren's bloody view was tight with rage, as he raised his glowing arms, white electricity and a droll hum coarsing around him.
A blur of flowing cloth stepped in his way, and he heard Irvine's voice call him. "Aren, hold it! Don't wave her, buddy! She didn't know!"
The hum grew louder, the blood thicker. "Get out of the way!" Aren breathed.
"Aren, she's my friend! It was a mistake, man. Can you let that wave go, just for a second? We'll get this whole thing figured out."
He inhaled to respond; blood dripped into his open mouth. Aren spat it away in a frenzy. "Move!"
The nothing returned, a nothing of blood red. It stung at his hidden eyes, and he blinked it away, but nothing returned with each attempt. The energy was immense; he could barely keep it about his shaking arms. And he tightened his fists, and it began a focus toward his steel palms.
A quiet voice kept the energy at bay.
"Aren? I dunno what's going on, but...could you...relax? I've got another Potion, and we'll get you all healed up, okay?"
He felt the rage subside. "Selphie? Where are you?" he coughed.
"I'm right here, in front of you."
He gasped blood. "Move!"
She replied, in determination that chilled him. "...No. Not 'till you calm down."
I can't! he thought in panic. I can't lose a wave this big!
But he must try, he knew he must at least try. He could not explain the danger of the waves to Selphie, he had no time. He felt the wavecores at his palms, surging to release themselves, and any second they could leave his grasp. So he focused hard, and felt his ears ring, and his head pound with pressure. He slowly lowered his arms, palms still shaking with immeasurable energy.
With a dissipating hiss, he felt the energy break apart, and flow from his arms. A high scream rang through the air, the sound of concentrated sound being returned to the atmosphere in a grinding clap, and he knew he had done it. The cores were gone. He felt their pressure and weight fade. And he sighed hard, and crumpled to the uninviting ground.
The blood was still running. Still tormenting him. He could not muster the rage, the determination to combat it. And he could not cry. His tears had been gone for an eternity. So he lay face down, drained and beaten, in a pool of his tormentor, and let the blood cover his face.
But he heard Selphie's quiet voice, and a gentle grasp across his back, that lifted him away from the blood. And without rage or tears, he felt some reassurance.
~
