Lightbringer; Chpt. 6- Not Alone

Adalai- Alright Stinky, Disclaimer!

Stinky, Muse of Comedy- Adalai does not own Kingdom Hearts, it's characters, worlds, ect. Those belong to Square and Disney. However, Adalai ownz this fic, Asher, Ellos, Strife, Yul, Alma, Danya, Hector, Root May, Root Kay, Scion, The End, the plotline, any new concepts or ideas, and fills my food bowl and cleans my litter box, and that's what matters!

Authors notes at bottom.
...

"I want you to test me for Marfan's Syndrome."

Cloud and Leon looked at her, puzzled. But for Aeris it all made sense. Ellos' height, the long arms and legs, the weak bones and joints, all of it. All were classic symptoms of Marfan's.

Marfan's, or as it is sometimes called, supermodel syndrome, is a rare genetic disease that affects the bones, joints, and connective tissue. The body cannot make a substance called fibrin correctly, so connective tissue doesn't form right. It's weaker than normal. Marfan's is usually inherited from a parent, but it can be the result of a spontaneous mutation; the DNA isn't copied right during conception. It isn't as uncommon as you think; 30% of cases are spontaneous mutation.

There are very little physical indicators of Marfan's; long limbs, fingers, and toes, including armspan exceeding height, tall, thin stature, narrow, sharp featured face, prominent stretch marks, Caved in or pushed out breastbone, eye problems, loose and injury-prone joints, brittle bones, double jointed-ness, and curved spine.

On of the main problems that arise from Marfan's is Aortic dissection/aneurysm. This is where the Aorta ruptures, killing the victim instantly. This defect is present in half of all people with Marfan's, and unless treated with open heart surgery, the heart fails around 20 to 30. Other problems are other miscellaneous heart defects, Scoliosis 1, eye problems and blindness.

Many people who have Marfan's live a normal lifespan; only if left untreated could it be deadly. Most people who die of marfan's are, of course, women. Doctors often brush off the vague and apparently unrelated symptoms, not knowing they are really warning signs of Marfan's, especially if related to heart rate.

Ellos had bitter memories trying to get treatment for her Marfan's syndrome. All the various untrained doctors she had seen had told her that her achy joints, curved back, racing heart, and narrow mouth weren't a problem, because she "wasn't unattractive." She was hot Sex on a Stick, and her good looks and ability to get laid, the most important quality of women in the minds of these doctors, were intact; what the hell was she complaining about? She was also lucky in the minds of most women, whose biggest problem was trying to get into some hundred dollar pair of skimpy jeans. Never mind she could have dropped dead from an aneurism, are gone blind, or been confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, unable to fight against the heartless or escape Yul's eminent sunrise.

To these shallow women that Ellos had the misfortune of meeting, whether at Yul or in the present world, her mild Marfan's syndrome was a blessing, not a curse. Ellos' cardiac problems, in there mind, weren't nearly as bad as not being able to fit into a pair of size 4 jeans. And at the same time, she was pitied smugly by these same women; sure, she might look hot, but she was still 'disabled'. It made them feel better, Ellos assumed, to think of her as disabled, as less than they where. Would they scoff the same way at a beautiful woman in a wheelchair, or a blind beautiful woman? Let them have their delusions, and leave her be. Ellos had never considered herself disabled. The disabled were the dead; those who where not fit enough, or adaptable enough to survive. She was alive, and she thrived; in her mind, she was one of the fit, not the disabled. Marfan's was just a part of who she was; she used her unique condition to her advantage when she could, and tried to make up for it's shortcomings when she couldn't. Just a collection of weaknesses and strengths that was part of who she was, and she was one of the fit. The Forgotten.
...

Usually linear, now that Ellos was safe, her thoughts drifted, diverse. This was one of Ellos' abilities; to concentrate and hold many thoughts at the same time, figure out things through her strong imagination and creativity, adjust and thrive quickly in change. Some people with this kind of mind could be indecisive, autistic, unable to concentrate; but not Ellos. She knew when to take advantage of this ability and when to keep her thoughts linear, take control, force things on one path. In Ellos' mind, there were no weaknesses or strengths, only abilities. Abilities where only weaknesses when you didn't use them correctly.

Even if she would not admit it to herself, she was afraid. Afraid they would laugh at her Marfan's syndrome, treat it frivolously and not as the life-threatening disease it really was, or refuse to test her for it, saying they didn't have enough reason to do so, only her word. She was not positive she had it; she had been told by Strife that she might have it, when she complained to him about her achy joints. But Aeris had been very professional; she said she would test her for the disease, described the procedure, even addressed her fears about her not taking it seriously. She even offered to treat her for any other ailments she might have; an offer which Ellos gratefully accepted. It felt weird, being treated so kindly, after having offered nothing in return. Almost in a motherly fashion.

The test for Marfan's syndrome had two parts; physical and genetic. In the first part, Aeris simply checked if she had the normal symptoms of Marfan's, observing Ellos and asking her questions. Then, for the genetic part, Aeris drew some blood from her arm in a syringe. This blood would be put into a machine, which would separate the blood into it's components, If you want to learn how DNA testing works, read on. I have shortened and simplified it as much as possible. If not, skip to the part that says," The DNA was run....extract DNA from the white blood cells using an enzyme solution that breaks down the proteins that bind the DNA to the nucleus. Then, the machine would separate the non-DNA material around it with organic chemicals, then purified, concentrated, and dried with an alcoholic solution. The dried DNA would then be mixed in a buffering agent and then a process called Polymerase Chain Reaction, of PCR, would be applied.

PCR was a process that amplified Short Tandem Repeat Loci, or STR loci. Most DNA in all humans was 99% identical to that of all other life, and an individual's DNA was 99.9% identical to every other humans DNA. Some of this DNA was 'junk' DNA; it served no real purpose, it just 'existed'. STR loci, or genetic markers, are sections of DNA that differ from individual to individual, the DNA that really make you, you. Loci are the name of areas, or divisions on the chromosome. STR loci are sections of DNA that have short, simple patterns that repeat over and over. These short, simple patterns are called GATA repeats.

PCR amplified the DNA creating copies of the sections of DNA at the very end of the STR loci DNA strands, called primers. This process is called denaturing and renaturing. The temperature is raised and lowered to specific temperatures in a machine called a Thermal Cycler. The process is catalyzed by an enzyme called DNA polymerase.

The DNA is then separated into it's four bases by a process called Electrophoresis. The DNA is placed in a gel and electric current run through it, separating the four bases. A camera then records the image of the bases. The picture it captures looks very much like a piece of paper with alternating light and dark bands.

The DNA was run through a huge database of other DNA, which would be used to find species, identify parents and family members, construct a picture and characteristics of the being the DNA belonged to, and to identify genetic diseases.

Aeris looked at the screen of the computer. 4 options flashed.

a.) Scan species b.) Scan characteristics and construct picture

c.) Scan for diseases and syndromes d.) Scan all

Perhaps it was fate, which motivated her hand. Perhaps it was chance, a coincidence. Perhaps it was just idle curiosity. But the world will probably never know the reasons for what Aeris did next. We only know the results. Her mouse hovering over option C, she changed her mind, and pushed "Scan all."
...

Cloud, Leon, Scion, Strife and Yuffie waited outside the hospital rooms, waiting of Aeris to finish examining Ellos and notify them of the results.

Huffing, Aeris came out of the room, holding a huge stack of papers and folders under her arm. Oviously struggling with the load, Cloud came over to his wife and took the mountain of paperwork, setting it down on the coffee table with a loud bang.

Silence filled the room. Finally Yuffie, never one to be quiet for long, spoke. "Well, how is she? Does she have this Marfan's Syndrome thingy or what? How is she?"

Aeris brushed a piece of hair back from her face and sat down, opening the first folder. "She grew up in Kingdom Hearts, Yuf. She has so many things wrong with her I don't know where to begin."

"I don't have the test results back on the Marfan's yet, so let's start with what we have. She has no less than 5 bullets lodged in various parts of her body, not counting fragments and other things I've found in there from the X-Rays." She began passing out the X-rays to the others around her. Leon held his up to the light to see it; It showed Ellos' leg, with a bullet and a nasty looking barbed metal fishhook that looked as if it had come from a whip. Aeris pointed at his X-ray. "I had to dig that bullet out because it was giving her lead poisoning. If you look at this paperwork, you can see all the various types of poisoning healed by cure spells; a variety of heavy metal poisons; arsenic, selenium, bromine and chlorine gas, so much lead poisoning she's practically a walking pencil, radiation poisoning from radioactive elements and other sources, causing small cancers in the body before they were healed by these cure spells. She also has some sort of organic substance in a cavity on the side of her head, probably from an earlier wound; I'm running it through the DNA machine, just in case."

Then Aeris plucked from the paperwork a MRI scan showing Ellos' lungs. "She has an incredible amount of ash in her lungs. She also has traces of what used to be emphysema, bronchitis, asthma, lung cancer, and several serious bouts of pneumonia. It also looks as if she had Tuberculosis at some point. When she sticks out her tongue, I can see that practically every organ of hers has been compromised in some way, by some disease or injury. Every bone of hers has been broken at least once. She has so much volcanic glass in her back, it's more obsidian than flesh.

Also, she shows mental and physical signs of rape. I don't think she can even bear children, even with the Marfan's, anymore. Her pelvis was fractured, and she contracted a particularly nasty strain of STD from whoever raped her; it was cured by a cure spell, but not before doing irreversible damage to her reproductive tract."

"God" Cloud said, wincing at something her saw in one of the X-Rays. "How is she still moving?"

'Knowing Ellos, Cure spells, shadowflesh, and force of will." Aeris said. "Her body is saturated by dark energy and a large part of her organs and muscles have been replaced by Shadowflesh. I think I know how it got there; minute bits of shadowflesh were absorbed through open cuts and wounds when she battled heartless and mindless, and after a lifetime of this, well, it added up. It's probably why she's so strong and resistant to pain. But what I'm worried about is the mental affects off all this. Ellos has a lot of stress-related mental defects from her life and from the rape; blackouts, insomnia, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, amnesia, trauma, unexplained aches and pains, mood swings, and depression."

"And headaches."

Everyone looked at Strife. "She complained about headaches to me. Does she have any of the problems associated with Marfan's?"

Surprised at Strife's statement, Aeris flipped through the paperwork. "No. she has a curved back, but not scoliosis. She has no heart problems, eye problems, or any other defects associated with Marfan's, except for the achy joints. She may have a very, very mild case."

"So what are you going to do about all this?" Leon asked.

"Cast Full Cure, of course."

Full Cure was a sorcery; It required a 2 sorceress to perform it. Sorceries where spells that required a sorceress or sorcerer to perform them because they were too powerful for ordinary magic users to cast and because they required 2 or more different types of magic. Sorcerers where magic users who where more powerful than ordinary magic users; they learned spells more quickly, could cast a wider range of spells for less MP, could create new spells, and, unlike mages, could learn and use multiple types of magic, instead of just one. Sorcerers where uncommon, but not rare. Although anyone could be a sorcerer, the trait tended to run in families. Riona was a sorceress, but that was only one...

"Hold on a sec." Leon said. "Who's the other sorceress?"

Aeris, who had gotten up to go back to Ellos, looked at him, surprised. "Ellos is. You didn't know she was a Sorceress?"
...

"Tell me why I did this again?" Ellos asked.

"To add 40 years onto you life?" Aeris answered. "Any side effects?"

"It itches. Everywhere. Even inside me. It even itches mentally." Ellos said, absentmindedly scratching her arm.

Aeris grinned. Itching was one of the side effects of Full Cure. Full Cure was a mixture of sunstone magic, charter magic, and Curaga. What it did was completely rebuild the body, cell by cell, using DNA as a guide. Thus, it completely healed the person it was used on, both in body and mind. Of course, this took a long time to do; several weeks, in fact. What Ellos needed right now was several days of bed rest and lots of food to provide energy for the spell to work.

"You" Aeris said, "Need to sleep for several hours and eat everything I brought you." indicating the tray of food on the table by Ellos' bed.

Ellos obeyed. It was useless to argue with Aeris when it came to medicine and nursing. She was usually easygoing and accommodating with anything else, but when it came to her duties as a nurse and doctor, she was firm and uncompromising. Probably because she was usually right and knew it.

At the doorway, Aeris paused, looking at Ellos. "I know you have a hard time sleeping, so here's a tip; try doing something relaxing. Listen to some quiet music, draw, put your thoughts on paper." Then she left, closing the door behind her.

Now that Aeris was out of the doorway, she smiled. She drew a battered hand- held organizer; her journal and research notes.

Ellos had always kept her thoughts and feelings to herself, keeping up a stony mask in the presence of others. If you didn't let others read you, you kept the element of surprise on your side and your enemy couldn't gain as much advantage over you. Knowledge is power; one kind of power, at least. She only let her feelings show to her journal. And to Strife, a little bit.

She brought up her research reports. Scrolling down and looking at them, she smirked, seeing where Yuffie had changed the names of the reports, like "the evil report" or "the non-existent report." She wondered, vaguely, if she would remember some of the memories lost in her blackouts and amnesia. She would deal with them when she came to them. They where just memories, right? Memories couldn't hurt you.

Changing the display and choosing "create new journal entry for today", she paused, thinking of what to write. Once she had decided, she looked down at the screen. There was writing there, despite the fact that it was a new journal entry.

"When full cure is cast, sometimes memories return that have been forgotten. But these are more than just memories. These dreams and apparitions; they are of things before I was born. How can I remember them, then?"

How did that get on there?

"They are words you haven't written yet."

Ellos turned around, searching for the source of the voice. Something was wrong. Someone was in the room. She could not be mistaken on such things.

Suddenly, she sensed a vibration, and disturbance in the air and the patterns of light that chimed melodiously in her mind. She turned towards the source.

A normal human might have screamed, or started to babble nonsensically at the sight. Ellos merely sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the sight before her. Studying it, trying to see how it was possible. But it wasn't possible; there was no logical explanation for the specter.

She was not alone.

A woman stood in front of her, looking to be in her middle 20's. It was the same girl from her previous dream; gray skin with a touch of green, black hair, green eyes. She had a large, flower shaped organ above and behind her ear. Though slender, tall and unnaturally attractive, she moved with the same liquid, mercurial grace and inner toughness as Ellos. Ellos felt she should know the woman even though she had never seen her before. Both were somewhat similar in appearance, with an almost identical oval shape to their faces.

"I thought your face would look more familiar. The chin and nose are different; they must have been broken and healed differently, when you were in Kingdom Hearts. Less heart-shaped, more finely and noticeably sculpted, the cheekbones more prominent; from your father. The face isn't the right color; the features lengthened and sharpened, the face too narrow and long; Marfan's syndrome. Your face is too lean, too; it doesn't have enough flesh to fill it out. No, there is almost no resemblance. But that is what Kingdom Hearts does to one, does it not? Makes you forget the past, physically and mentally. You eyes..."

The woman paused, waiting for Ellos to take off her glasses. When she realized Ellos wasn't going to cooperate, she gave a snort of disapproval and continued.

"Think of this as a dream, if you must. Until you know better."

As she spoke, the room seemed to disappear around her. It was replaced by what looked like the inside of a giant tree; pieces of it swilled around each other in graceful, abstract forms, mimicking the simple, streamlined style Ellos had always admired without really knowing why. Onto the woven surface of the inside of the tree and the abstract forms clung thousands of different living things; plants, impossibly large or small, clinging to every available surface, moving and glowing and doing equally impossible things, and creatures that could only be described as the strangest hybrids of plants and animals ever conceived by nature, scuttling, swimming, moving around with every kind of possible locomotion available. The air seemed to be replaced with a sort of liquid, as light and fluid as air, which could change it's properties at a thought from the person it surrounded. Sunlight seemed to stream from everywhere and nowhere, coming, Ellos assumed, from the liquid around her, throwing dappled shadows across the room.

"And once you know, you will never forget."
...

Ellos climbed the ruins, higher and higher until she was gasping for breath, not from physical exertion but from thin atmosphere. This new age Ellos and Strife had traveled to in their makeshift gummi ship was barren and rocky. Covered in deserts of superfine sand and flat stretches of windworn rock, this world had other ways of cleansing itself than it's sunrise. The destruction of the world's surface came from a different source.

Ellos looked at the sky. It was a broiling mess of storm clouds. Usually these covered the entire surface and atmosphere of the planet, creating lethal lightning storms that struck over 10 lightning bolts per square foot and howling sandstorms that could strip the flesh from the bones of a human in 5 seconds flat. The obscuring cloud cover blocked out all types of light, making even Ellos' special eyes have trouble seeing. But from where she was, there was a temporary lull in the near-constant surface storm, allowing her to see and fulfill her task.

A break in the clouds allowed her to see the age's three crescent moons, dark in an already grey sky, devoid of light. Strife had told her in the Present world, you could see all the other ages around you as tiny dots of light in the night sky. But this sky was as empty of stars as it was devoid of light; she was completely and utterly along. Eyes fixed on the sky, she climbed up the ruins, a small heart beating on the surface of the tower's façade, it's original builders long dead.

What was at the top, she had only a vague idea. A NEO was dying on top; She needed the fragments of it's dead heart, if she wanted to make a keyblade. And she would probably only get this one chance; Nobody rarely went into Kingdom Hearts, much less died there. As she got closer to the top, she could feel the NEO; the wing inside her back twitched in response to its presence.

Gasping, she finally reached the top. But what she found there was not what she expected.

A predator heartless had beaten her to the NEO.

She barely had time to haul herself up on top of the tower before it slammed into her, knocking her off the edge. For a scary few seconds Ellos fell down, arms and legs grasping at empty air. Then, her hand brushed against the cold stone of the tower. Prompted from instincts born out of 16 year-long struggle for survival, Ellos' fingers tightened on the projection and she brought her other hand and her legs up, wrapping them around the cold stone for a better grip.

Looking around, she saw she was holding on to a stone spire about 100 meters down from the top of the tower. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that the predator heartless was slowly crawling down from the top of the building, heading right for Ellos.

It had a long, snakelike body, covered with thousands of black needles, tipped with red. The front, however, was made of interlapping plates of armor, from which 3 pairs of arms, tipped with claws, sprouted. It had no neck; just a sort of rounded blob on which the face was. It had 3 yellow eyes, and a huge mouth, the lower jaw jutting out sharply, and filled with multiple rows of sharp shark's teeth.

The thing bunched up, and shot all it's spines out of itself, in 360 different directions. Ellos swung around, gripping to the underside of the spike, using it a shield between her and the vicious spikes. Ellos grabbed her gun and shot at the things head three times, but to no effect. It wound itself around the stone spine, moving slowly and leisurely toward her.

Ellos backed away from the creature, down the spike until she was perched on the very tip. If she could get on it's back, and stab at its neck through the armor, she might be able to kill it. The Spike shuddered up and down, barely able to hold her weight.

The heartless slithered down the spike, wrapping it's tall around the base, mouth open wide to eat her whole.

But the weight became too much for the spike to handle. With a resounding crack, it broke into pieces, throwing both girl and heartless into the oblivion.

Ellos saw the tower spin away as she fell down, along with the pieces of stone from the spike. No longer able to see the heartless, she flung her arms outward, trying to catch another spike, projection, anything. But the wind had picked up and carried her father away and ever farther out, making it impossible for her to grab on to the side of the tower.

As she fell, one though occupied her mind.

Why did I ever try to make a keyblade?
 ...

Author's notes

scoliosis- Abnormal lateral curvature of the spine.
...

Adalai- wootage, it's don-one does happy dance Isn't this so entertaining? Aren't you learning so much?

Stinky- riiggghhhttttt...stuff they will probably never use.

Adalai- on an interesting side note; the Marfan's isn't just thrown in for kicks; latter on, his turns out to be a big and necessary part of the plot. Most people assume that OCs are carbon copies of the author, but with Ellos this is not true; most of the inspiration for her came from my extended, rather than immediate, family. Marfan's runs in my family; appearance-wise, Ellos is partially based on a cousin of mine who has Marfan's and also used to be a model.

Adalai- now, time for the new and improved theme song! If you really like this story, please review! If you really like this story please review! If you really like this story and you don't want a knife to your temple, if you really like this story, please review!

Stinky- do what she says; I thinks she's serious. edges away quietly

Adalai- Please review. They encourage me to write faster. They feed my addiction. By all means, feed my addiction.
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No one can see anything on the other side of me; I walk, I crawl, losing everything on a downfall.
- Trust company, Downfall