Disclaimer: This terrific story plot that I am working off of is not mine. My own crazy inventions however, are. So, original plot: not mine. Crazy inventions: mine. We on the same level? Good.
Rating: This one, like my last story, is a PG---PG-13. The only R rated movies I've ever been able to see are Matrix Reloaded, and Good Morning Vietnam. So, the only thing that makes my story this rating is some mild cuss words and perhaps one or two small fight scenes.
Summary: It has been approximately one month since the events of Elf 17, and though many things are different than they were before, the tension has been somewhat lowered. That all changes however, with the arrival of a mysterious person who is said to be searching for the newly christened Astrea. For this person's search starts a catalyst, and not all that occurs because of it will be good…
!!!Note From Author!!!: Hey, I just want to say how proud I am that I can finally claim to be a part of this website. Because I have already finished one story, I am no longer a newbie. Whoo hoo! Oh, and a word of warning, if you have not read Elf 17 first, you will be mightily confused. I advise that you read it. Also, alas, I am not a huge Ms. Parker/Jarod romance fan. I know there are a lot of you out there, so I will add in some of that. But don't expect too much. Besides that, let's get reading!
Feedback: (Shadow Elf has jumped through the portal, not knowing what new realm she will land in. She can only hope that it's a good one…)
"AAHHH!" [Shadow Elf is spit out of the other end of the portal and lands unceremoniously on the ground]
[Muttering and dusting herself off] "God, now where the heck am I?" [She sees a sign and reads it, though it is hard to do so because the words seem to travel back off of the paper]
"Welcome to Corouscant, please park your speeder as this is a no-flying zone. Enjoy your day and…" [She pauses and raises her eyebrows at what she reads next] "'May the force be with you'?"
Quote:
"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
- Tom Clancy
************************************ShadowElfBard**********************************
Story Time!
8:33 AM, Monday
Blue Cove, Delaware
The Centre (surprise, surprise)
Pursuit Team's Main Office
Broots' Computer Terminal
Broots casually sipped his java from a no-spill metallic holder as he started up his computer. He liked to come in early to work, not because he liked his job, but because it gave him time to get started without having to worry about when Lyle was going to show up.
That's right, after the Triumvirate was told about the escape; one of the first changes they made was putting Mr. Lyle on the pursuit team.
So far, it had been hell. Lyle, Broots learned, besides being a total psychopath and all around evil guy, was extremely resentful and could stay angry for a long, long time. It has been approximately one month and five days since the escape Jarod and Astrea made, and though there have been many changes, (and presumably more to come according to the director), Lyle's anger for Jarod and Astrea have not been one of them.
Broots supposed the only one who hated Lyle being on the team more than him, was Ms. Parker.
She gave so many glares and bit out so many retorts at her twin that Broots had been left alone from most of her usual quips. Lyle was taking the brunt of the attack, and Broots really couldn't complain. Personally, he thought that Lyle deserved it.
One thing that was worrying Broots more than Lyle's placement on the team, and that was distressing Sydney as well, was that in the one month and five days since the escape, there had only been one clue Jarod had given, and it had been so complicated and well done that when they had reached his last lair, he'd been gone for nearly three weeks. Never had they found a trail that cold before. Never. Not only that, but the place hadn't had a single taunting hint, or a playful jab at the pursuit team that was left behind. None of them had been contacted by Jarod as of yet, and thus far there had been no new leads since his last lair. It was beginning to worry the team, Ms. Parker as well. Because without leads, the pursuit team was failing, and at the Centre, failure didn't come without punishment.
The search for Astrea wasn't going well either; though Broots thought that since he hadn't told anyone what name she was going under he might be responsible for that. The one thing that had surprised most of the pursuit team, was that the Triumvirate was deadly serious about both pretenders being brought back. They wanted her back just as much as they wanted Jarod. It was sort of hard to comprehend for the team. After all, he, Ms. Parker, and Sydney had all gone through the past two to three years taught that Jarod was the most important asset to the Centre. It was kind of hard to get used to the fact that there could be someone as important as Jarod.
Broots closed his eyes as he sipped down his drink, trying to calm his mind and nerves with the magic of a freshly brewed cup of coffee.
"You've got mail." Came a mail voice from his computer.
Broots scrunched his face, his momentary peace gone. He knew he should have signed up with Juno instead of AOL. Ah well.
He moved his mouse and opened up his e-mail, ready to read the mail that he supposedly had. The letter started downloading and when it was finished Broots promptly opened it.
Ten seconds later, he wished he hadn't.
8:48 AM, Monday
Pensacola, Florida
Street Corner
Bus Stop
Jarod told the driver his thanks and shifted the weight of his duffel bag from his right shoulder to his left as he stepped off the bus and began walking down the sidewalk.
It was a beautiful morning, as it usually seemed to be in the orange grove state. The sun was already up and warming the world, and Jarod was glad that he'd worn his black tinted sunglasses. People walked about at a slow and easy pace. There were some joggers and some who came out for a daily walk of exercise that went at a slightly faster pace than the rest of the scattered pedestrians, but all in all people were relaxed.
Jarod stopped walking for a moment and pulled off his sunglasses, revealing his beautiful brown eyes. He looked skyward, raising an arm to block off the glare of the sun, and smiled at the dazzling blue sky. There were clouds, large white almost pearl colored cotton puffs that drifted lazily by, and he could hear the orioles and other birds as they sung from trees and telephone wires. He gave a small grin, becoming more laid-back in that instant than he had been for the past four weeks since his liberation.
He then sighed and stuck the shades back on, and began strolling down the sidewalk.
Personally, he really hadn't wanted to some to the east coast. After he and Astrea had split up back in Tennessee, he had wanted to stay as far away from Delaware as humanly possible. He'd even considered leaving the country and going to England, or Scotland, or even Greenland. He really hadn't counted on traveling to the same coast that the Centre was on. But he'd also realized that there was a new change within him that he needed to get rid of.
He was afraid.
He'd been afraid before, it's not like he was some courageous fictional character who always laughed at danger. No, he'd never laughed at it, but before he'd been captured he's been at least able to chuckle. Now, he was paranoid. He'd set up something for the pursuit team to follow while he was traveling with Astrea, but even then he'd made it as complicated as he could so that they'd have a heck of time figuring it out. That had been a few weeks back. Now he was becoming so paranoid that he wondered if he should leave clues at all.
Jarod's eyes showed the pain he felt behind his impenetrable black lenses as he neared a motel.
He was beginning to feel lost, and he worried that if he let this fear overwhelm him, the side effects would leave him a broken man. But no matter how hard he tried he couldn't shake the paranoia, or the concern that the Centre was on his trail. It was a horrible feeling, fear. It made you feel so naked and unprotected, so weak and vulnerable; that you looked over your shoulder every five minutes and that you were afraid to enter your own home at night. The feeling was more gut wrenching than anything he'd felt before. Even his love for Ms. Parker didn't hurt this much.
He entered the motel and rung the small bell on the counter. A middle-aged black woman came out, wearing a nice suit and a wide smile.
"Can I help you sir?"
"Yes, I'd like to know the daily rate for renting a room here please."
She kept the smile on her face as she talked. "Well sir, per night it's about forty dollars without extra add-on's such as room service and call-in movies."
"Is breakfast included in the price?"
"Yes sir. The breakfast room is open from 6:30AMto 10:30AM and they serve coffee, juice, donuts, and bagels."
He nodded. "All right then, I'd like to book a room for three nights please."
She reached down under the counter and handed him a card key with a door number on it. "Very well sir, you pay for the room the day you plan to leave. Any extras will be added on to your final total and we accept credit cards, cash, and checks."
"Thank-you," he said and then grabbed the key.
"My pleasure. Enjoy your stay!"
She watched as he waved in acknowledgement and then walked down the hall towards his room. The grin faded from her face and she rubbed her sore cheek muscles.
"I swear one of these day I'm going to pull something from smiling so much." She shook her head and then went into the back room, still rubbing the side of her face.
8:50 AM, Monday
Jessup, Maryland
Unspecified Area
Astrea's Temporary Bedroom
Astrea Edona Broots groaned and rolled over once more in a half-sleep. Realizing that her brain somehow felt it was time for her to get up, she reluctantly moved out from under the newly-bought blankets and stretched while down on her knees, extending her arms and arching her back. She then stood up, and walked past a dusty, fractured mirror over to an old, almost antique dresser where she'd placed the clothing she'd been accumulating. It was a chilly winter morning, and she was not surprised to see a light snowfall outside of the filthy and cracked window.
Through half-opened eyes she rummaged through the drawer and then grabbed a set of clothing. She took off the t-shirt she'd slept in, changed her lingerie, and slipped into a pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt with a Celtic design on the front. Then, remembering the weather, she put on her gray sweatshirt over the top.
She yawned, rolling back her tongue in her mouth as she did so, so that the act resembled a dog's yawn, and then began making her way over to the bathroom.
Astrea had found this place, deciding to settle down in one spot after she'd finished her four-state training session with Jarod. It had been fun, she had to admit, going from state to state, solving crimes and helping people. They'd gone to Arizona, Washington, North Dakota and Tennessee, and each state had given Astrea training that she'd need should she choose to follow Jarod's lead and travel the globe, staying forever a wraithlike protector who smites the wicked and gives justice to the innocent.
She'd found this house however, when she realized that that wasn't the life for her.
She loved the idea of helping people, she really did, but her heart wasn't in the way Jarod worked. Never staying in one place too long, always traveling, solving crimes and scaring the criminals into confession. She liked traveling, it was fun and exciting, but she'd discovered difficulties. For one, her age was a nuisance. Because she was only fifteen, she didn't have the freedom Jarod did. She couldn't take on any job she wanted, because in most places, she was underage to get a full-time job. She also didn't really think she could handle the way Jarod worked. He'd solve a crime, find out who had done it, and the scare the person so badly that they would give a full confession. She wasn't able to do that. She just couldn't deal with it. The first time she'd tried she'd broken down and Jarod had been forced to take over. Her last reason, the one that had really been the decision maker, was that she stuck out like a sore thumb wherever she went. Her ears, her teeth, even her finely toned body made her appear less than normal. She'd ruin the pretend and be caught if she ever slipped up and transformed in front of someone, and she wouldn't take that chance. She couldn't take that chance.
So, she'd traveled to Maryland after the split-up. She'd gone around, deciding whether or not to rent out a room or stay in a hotel or make her own home, when she'd stumbled across this place. It was a huge house, and extremely old. It seemed to have been abandoned, because there'd been only a few pieces of furniture and each piece looked like it hadn't been touched for nearly ten to twelve years. She looked the house up on the internet, and found that the last owners had lived there nearly thirteen years ago, but had never returned or sold the house or anything. The place had just been…forgotten.
Which suited her purposes just fine.
Astrea, using the large amount of money Jarod had given her to start her off with, had been in the last week or so making the home her own. She'd dusted off most of the furniture, cleaned out as many rooms as she could, (there were five bedrooms alone), and had added in little personal touches. She'd bought a laptop, and a portable modem, so she received the money she needed to pay for things and such playing the stock market. She found she was rather good at it, and withdrew the cash she made from a carefully set up bank account.
And she was also in a secluded area. There was a wide expanse of woods behind the house, and there were no other homes around in any direction for about eleven miles, so, there was no one to comment on her strange appearance or less-than-ordinary mannerisms. So, for the moment at least, she was fine and safe. She had a home, (though she had no idea how long it would be until someone found out about her living there), and for the first time in a long, long, long time, she was truly happy and content.
She came out of the bathroom, and gazed through the window at the barren forest, and the white covering that decorated it. She took in a deep, breath and exhaled the icy air slowly, a smile on her lips.
It was a wonderful feeling.
9:27 AM Monday
Blue Cove, Delaware
Parker Residence
Ms. Parker's Bedroom
Ms. Parker mumbled incoherently as her radio alarm clock lulled her from the tranquil state of sleep.
She grudgingly rolled out of bed, folding her arms from the change in temperature that came from moving out from under puffy warm blankets to an open wood floored room.
The radio announcer was talking; saying that it was nearly two below outside and that there was a chance of snowfall in the next day or so. His annoying perkiness made her scowl at the radio through the slits her eyes had become. She grabbed her silken robe from the door hook she had hanging on her bathroom door and pulled it on. She thought about turning off the radio as she opened the door to the bathroom to brush her teeth and hair, but found that for the moment she really didn't care.
She thought about what she'd have to be doing today as she went into the bathroom, leaving the door open. It was Monday, the beginning of a brand new week. A fresh start, the chance to make everything different and better than the week before.
Yippee.
She clutched her head as she felt a headache come on, and she reached into the medicine cabinet for the bottle of aspirin. She grabbed two tablets and popped them in her mouth, grabbing a paper cup from the corner of her sink and filling it with water so she'd be able to gulp down the pills.
She was having aches more frequently these days, she noticed with a slight curling of her lip. Headaches, backaches, stomachaches, heart- she cut off in her line of thought. Whoa, wrong turn; get back on the main road. You don't want to travel down that street. She closed her eyes and tried to redirect her mind but found the task very difficult. She shrugged. Ah, what the hell. Thinking about 'wonder boy' wouldn't hurt all that much would it?
She grabbed for a comb and as she brushed her hair she let her mind wander where it wanted to.
So far at the Centre, things had been getting worse, if it was possible to get any worse that is. Her father was being even more secretive; tracking Jarod had become about as impossible as Raines growing hair, and to top it all of her dear brother Lyle was more psychotic than usual. God she hated him. If he weren't her brother she'd tie lead weights to his feet and drop in the Hudson. Hell, just as long as daddy didn't find out she'd still do it. Bloodlines be damned. Just thinking about that conniving bastard made her eyes burn with anger.
"It's too damn early to be this pissed off." She said with a slight smile on her lips, remembering when Elf 17 had spoken the phrase.
Her brother was one problem; but Jarod was a whole other one.
She was beginning to worry about him. She hated to admit it, because she felt herself weak because of it, but she was concerned for him. What had happened at the Centre must have really shaken him up, because she'd been able to sleep all through the night for the past month. Not a single midnight phone call. He hadn't even given her a new cryptic message or painful clue.
She reached for her toothbrush, and squeezed some toothpaste onto it.
She should be happy, she supposed, after all no more mind-games was a good thing right? Hell yeah. It was the one thing that had probably kept her back from him. The clues, the playing, and the messages he gave her in such a hidden language. Just when she thought things couldn't be any worse, that there were no secrets left to uncover, he popped up all bright and cheery, so self-righteous, staring down at her from a higher moral platform, to throw another little bit of info about her family, and the Centre, and her father.
She closed her eye and continued brushing her teeth, and then her ear caught the sweet song that had just begun on the radio. It had a pretty good rhythm. Singer was good too. Her name was, Janet, Julie, no, Jewel. Yeah, that was it, Jewel. Her songs were okay, they were more realistic than most of the other trash out there anyways. She moved her head slightly to the music of the song as she listened to the lyrics.
…Well in case you failed to notice,
In case you failed to see,
This is my heart, bleeding before you,
This is me down on my knees.
These foolish games are tearing me apart
Your thoughtless words are breaking my heart
You're breaking my heart…
Ms. Parker's eyes snapped open and she threw down the toothbrush, rushed out, and quickly shut off the radio.
She stood there for a moment, staring in an almost fear, and finally squinted her eyes at it with suspicion, and slowly backed away and headed into the bathroom, never once removing her eyes off the silent machine.
Once back in the bathroom she leaned up against the tiled wall and ran a hand through her hair.
God she was becoming paranoid…
9:38 AM Monday
St. Louis, Missouri
Indeterminable Location
On A Bus
Lia sighed as she stared out the window of the bus at the snow-covered terrain as it passed by. She liked December well enough, it was a beautiful month, but this month…she really didn't want to be reminded of the holiday season.
She looked down at the pad of paper in her hand, her poem-pad as she called it, and began to flip through the pages, bored and deciding to read over some of her own writing. She reached the one she had appropriately named Fear.
It is a lioness on the hunt
That falls upon you like waves upon the sand
It makes controlling your mind like taming wild mustangs
We loathe and despise it
Yet we created it
With our books and our movies
With our memories of the past and our thoughts of the future
It takes things we know nothing about
And uses them to its advantage
It cannot be killed
Because it has no true form
It is cunning and malicious
And as a shadow it follows you
Like morning follows night
She smiled at her work. That was one of her more somber poems. She had better ones; she had sonnets, and couplets, quatrains and free verse. She even had a haiku or two. She loved to write. It was her passion, and one of the only ways she could express her thoughts.
She'd been needing to do a lot of that lately.
She put her poem pad down on the empty seat where her backpack was and returned to looking out the window. She still couldn't believe that she was an orphan now, and breaking the law to boot. Her mother and father shouldn't have gone out that night, but of course, they had. She clenched her fists as she thought about it. Her parents had been coming home from a movie out in town and had gotten in an accident with a drunk driver. They'd died en route to the hospital.
Lia's mother had been an only child, her father was dead and her mother was in a nursing home. Lia's father also had had no relatives she could go to. His mother had raised him and his brother, and his mom had passed away last June. Lia's uncle would have had custody of her she supposed, had he not been in jail serving time for attempted auto theft. So, Lia would have been sent to the orphanage. She probably would have stayed there too, had she not found out about something her mother had kept from her.
She'd been in the lawyer's office; as he'd told her about her parent's will and belongings that were put into safekeeping should something happen to them. There'd been a good amount of money entrusted to her, along with the deeds to the home they owned, but one thing had been left in a safety deposit box that had outshined all of the other things that had been left behind.
It had been a letter.
On the letter, that had been clearly meant for her in case something should happen, was information that had caused Lia to pack up a backpack with clothing and her favorite items, withdraw all the money from the bank account her parents had set up, (including some of the money left to her), and escape the orphanage where she'd been put. The information had been very simple and straightforward.
She had a sister.
The letter had told her how her parents had been forced to give up their firstborn, (who apparently wasn't Lia), for adoption when they had lived in Los Angeles. Her parents hadn't wanted to be close to that place and the horrible memories it held and had moved to Kentucky. That's where Lia had been born.
Once Lia found out about it, she'd made up her mind. If she had a sister, she sure as hell wasn't going to let herself be handed off to some other family and totally ignore that fact. Nope. She was going to find her.
So she'd set out, with no idea where her sister was, or what her name was, and was now traveling to Los Angeles California going to hopefully meet with the orphanage that had taken care of her sister. She had a picture of her sister, when she was about one, and could only hope that would be enough to identify her. It was going to be tough though, and she had to face it, she wasn't exactly the bravest person in the world. But this was important, and she'd find her sister. What she'd do afterward, she had no idea, but she'd worry about that when she got to it.
She allowed herself a small smile and the bus drove on.
************************************************************************************
First chapter finished! Yeah, I know, not a whole lot of action at all, but I'm trying to go into this one a bit slowly, and get your acquainted with the situation. Also, I don't know if anyone caught it, but there is something different about Lia. Okay, actually there are two things different, but only one was hinted at. Can you tell me what it is? ;)