by AkumaMR
07.06.03
Chapter 2: Just a Little BG Info...
DISCLAIMER: I own naught but the totally random combination of Roman letters following.
"Yes, sir, Dage!" Ying jokingly saluted. "Right away, sir!"
Ying grabbed her things and Dage drove her to the martial arts center, only a couple miles from their apartment in uptown Shanghai. She hated riding in cars and distracted herself by watching through the window at passers-by, envying their normal, uneventful lives. She envied how they had not had three years and a mother stolen from them when they were fourteen.
Her mother had been driving her to the dentist's, and neither expected it when a drunk driver zoomed out of the next intersection and turned to hit them head on. The front of the car had crushed on impact, thrusting the steering wheel into Ying's mother, flattening her upper body against the seat and killing her instantly. At least, this is what Ying was told. Because although Ying had survived, she had done so just barely, and had been locked in a coma for three years, her body slowly withering away in a hospital. Just last year she had miraculously recovered, but with no memory of anything prior to her coma.
Her muscles were weak from disuse so the doctor advised her to take up some sort of sport or physical training. Dage had signed her up for a couple of tennis workshops because that was what Ying had enjoyed all through grade school, but she surprised both him and her father by choosing martial arts instead. She didn't really understand why she chose it over tennis, it just seemed right; furthermore, when she began, she found she had a natural skill and learned much faster than the other students in her class, and had worked her way up to the intermediate level in three months. She had just begun advanced classes a couple weeks ago, and the current lessons were on swordplay, something Ying had been looking forward to since her first class.
And so she contemplated the abnormalities of her life, all the way to practice, where more important matters took over her thoughts, such as concentrating on swinging the sword just right, hard enough to cut through bone, but not enough to overswing and hurt herself. That day was a rather fun one, because the class was taking a break from serious studies to learn a couple parlor tricks. A basket of fresh produce sat on one side of Ying, and a pile of neatly chopped veggies lay on her other side. She tossed up a few potatoes, and swung, once, twice, trice. Six neatly sliced potato halves lay at her feet. She smiled, satisfied at her mastery of potato chopping, and grabbed a stalk of celery. By lunch, Ying had mastered the art of chopping airborne produce, anything from cherries to pumpkins. Dage was greatly impressed when Ying demonstrated her new skills for him, dicing the vegetables for dinner. Later, he watched her as she hungrily slurped his vegeteble stew; she really seemd to enjoy her new hobby. It had taken the loving brother a while to get used to the new Ying, and the new soul that possesed her.
Dage knew this thanks to the fact that he could see and converse with what normal people called ghosts. Ghosts were actually the souls of the deceased, ones that had not yet moved on to their next reincarnation for some reason or another. Contrary to popular medical belief, comas were actually caused by the soul leaving the body prematurely, before the person's fated time of death. Dage had realized his special powers when he saw his mother weeping over Ying's prone body soon after the accident. Before leaving for reincarnation, she had told him to take good care of Ying, no matter what happened. For the next three years, Dage did extensive research on the subject, and found that there were those before him with similar powers. This was how he learned that the only way for his sister to wake up was for her soul to come back and repossess her. Day after day he would visit the temple and pray for it to return, to bring Ying back.[7]
Ironically, Dage's hard work was repaid and Ying was repossessed, but by the wrong soul. He could tell. Not only did she have an almost completely different personality from the old Ying, but her general impression, her psychic feel was different. Alas, Dage could not complain, for he had prayed for reposession and he had gotten his wish. He came to love the new Ying as much as the old, and vowed to protect her as his mother had wished.
He never had too much trouble with Ying, because she wasn't the kind of girl to go out and socialize. She never went to parties where she might come in contact with illegal drugs or aggressive perverts, and as soon as she had learned that her mother's death had been caused by a drunk driver, she had sworn off all alchohol. Instead, she had taken up martial arts and MVRs. It was a good thing Dage didn't know about Ying's prowess in the MVR field, because if he had, he would have had something to worry about.
Multi-player virtual realities had been developed and released during Ying's coma, but she had taken an instant liking to them as soon as they had come out. She quickly found out that people almost always underestimated girls playing the games, and so she played under male characters instead. Soon she became known as "The King of MVRs" across the network. She also became an expert hacker, and a hobby of hers was logging into people's private games without their noticing, messing around, and then logging out again. Normally, Ying would never return to a hacked game, but there was something about Wufei's that caused her to log in again day after day.
Something special.
Yumemiru
Chapter One
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