Hello readers, I'm having a love affair with a leather jacket I just bought, and my new slippers. The jacket looks exactly like the jacket Alice was wearing during the first resident evil movie, so I could use it for Cosplay of I wanted to.
A few days before I finished this chapter I went over to my friend 0erbayunFang's place after my sister randomly came into my room and said "Get up, we're going to kill Cid." It took me a moment but I then realised she meant that Fang wanted us to come over and her help her kill Cid. Now Fang had been stuck versing Cid for quite the time, and by the time we came over she would have had about nearly twenty goes versing him. So at one point through the time we were there she got fed up with it and handed the controller to me and asked me to have a go, and, no jokes here, but the first time I versed him over her twenty, I killed him. To make it even funnier, at one point while I was versing him she asked me and my sis whether this was just like watching her play the game, my sister answered yes but I've said "yeah similar" – queue drastically deepened voice - "but I'm better than you" which as mean as that may sound it is true. I have the experience over her, and she always over-strategizes, which can be bad depending on the situation.
Now on to things that actually have things to do with the story, the start of this chapter is taking place around the same time of the end of the last chapter and also Aaia Yuto comes back in this chappie. I've been waiting for quite a while to bring her back and now I'm finally doing it, but I'm going to have warn you that the only ones of this stories chapters I really have planned out is the next one, so updating after that may be a bit stalled because I have to plot out the story some more.
Saviour
Looking down from where she had her bow trained on the routes that twisted around and among the trees, Serah turned her gaze towards where a small number of women were picking vegetation from a small vegetable patch. The vegetable patch was bordered by high walls of stone and was only accessible if you travelled through a rock tunnel that led directly through the thick earthen walls. With the tunnel hidden from view by moss and vegetation that naturally covered its entrance, only those who knew it was there could find it with ease.
From her position in the branches of a tree that lay against the outside of the wall, Serah turned her eye away from the women to scan over what lay outside its perimeters. She was one of a small group charged with protecting women who came out of the safe house to harvest fruits and vegetables for cooking, and other plants used for natural medicines.
Glancing to the side, Serah spotted one of the other sentries perking up suddenly, going on to look out for something in the foliage below. Watching him with interest, she too directed her eyes down to the empty forest floor. Focusing, Serah tried to discern the existence of any sounds that may have attracted his attention. It took a time, but eventually she did hear something; a soft pitter-pattering of footsteps, but luckily for them they were light and distinctly animal.
Continuing to watch for a time, Serah soon turned her head away seeing as nothing had appeared to prove her theory wrong. The sounds vanished completely shortly after, and nothing else arose during the women's harvest of the vegetable patch. So as the women signalled up to them that they were finished, Serah and the other sentries climbed closer to the rock wall from their place within the jade leaves of the trees and waited for the women to walk through the earthen tunnel and out into the forest. When they emerged at the start of the tunnel, the sentries descended the rest of the trees' lengths until their feet hit solid ground. Readying their weapons once more just in case they were needed, the small group set off among the trees and back in the direction of the safe house.
Walking along the forest floor, Serah kept her bow partially drawn back, something that made sure she was ready to attack, but what would have been better paired up with a mind that was actually on her current whereabouts. Truth be told, her mind wasn't really where it was meant to be, not in the least. It was continuously wondering back to the last time she had been sent out with this group of women to collect from the vegetable patches. She had made the mistake of bringing Claire with her, and Claire being the Valhallan magnet she is, attracted them right to them.
Of course, while no matter what an attack from Valhallans was bad news, but they had a pinch of luck on their side with that they were halfway back from the vegetable patch and it had been easy enough to divert their attention so that most of the women and the sentries could make their way back to the safe house under the Valhallans noses. But that had been how she, Claire and Darla had been pushed to hiding in that long abandoned shack until the Valhallan had forsaken the search and departed the area.
Looking up to spy Darla walking among the small group of women encircled by the sentries, Serah couldn't help but let a small smile find its way to her lips. As terrifying as it had been at the time, something about it had become a bit of joke among her friends, not the near death experience part but just how it only added more to the saying that Claire was a Valhallan magnet, and a klutz, and that no matter how high her IQ was, she possessed no common sense whatsoever.
Sad to say but the girl had none of the natural grace of her namesake, well unless she was fighting. When she was fighting any of her less than elegant qualities seemed to all but evaporate. Serah couldn't help but think that was a jinx; her name cast upon her.
The sound of heavy footsteps broke Serah out of her thought suddenly but snapping her head up to scan the area around her; a strong feeling of foreboding settled itself in her stomach as she quickly realised that no one in their group was dumb enough to make that much noise and that none of them weighted enough for their steps to be that heavy in the first place. Also that the noises were coming from a place a fair few meters away from them, somewhere within the maze of trees surrounding them. And unlike the little pitter-pattering of footsteps they'd heard before, they were definitely, unquestionably human.
Tapping another sentry on the shoulder, he nodded in understanding, having heard the footsteps himself and signalled to rest of the group to hide as best they could within a small alcove of trees.
Peeking out from around the trees, Serah and other sentries looked over the forest for whatever created the noises. Their search was soon awarded with what it sought for, even if it was a horrible sight to behold.
The Valhallan men that they sighted were only lazing about in the midday sun, not really caring about what else lay near them, but their mountainous builds emanated the strength that they possessed. Watching them for a time, the sentries began to formulate a plan to avoid the men.
They were not even any close in distance to how close they had been to the safe house last time they had been caught out in the open like this. So the situation became considerably more dangerous than it had been last time.
Watching the group around him intently, one of the men, the same one Serah had tapped on the shoulder before, spoke up "We'll need to circle around them, take the long way back and just pray to Etro that we don't run into any more of them."
Still keeping her gaze trained on the men, Serah was about to nod to his suggestion when she saw something move in the tree branches above the men in the distance. Whatever it was it had a lithe form, and looked unmistakably feminine. In the time she was watching it, Serah saw the form yell something down to the men, and whatever they must have said caused a considerable reaction in them. They got up off the ground and instantly begun to search the area.
Had the person informed them that they were here? Biting her lip she turned back to face the small group, and spoke to the man who had made the suggestion of going the long way back to the safe house.
"Ethan, I don't think we can go by your plan that anymore, there was something in the trees just then, someone I think. But after they left the Valhallans got up and began to search for something. I think whoever was in the tree told them that we were here."
Widening his eyes at the news, Ethan tiptoed closer to Serah so that he could see what she was talking about. And sure enough, when he looked around the side of the trees he saw the Valhallans scouring the area in search.
"Damn it," he muttered, "well that derailed our plan, we can't get away without their knowledge if they're scattered about like they are, especially if they're focused on finding us."
Sneaking one more glance over at the Valhallans, Serah nodded, saying, "Right, we need another plan and currently that entails a distraction."
"Got anything in mind?" Aniette, a girl of twenty or so, who was the only other female in the group of sentries apart from Serah, spoke up.
"Yep," Serah said as she took hold of the nearest tree branch in her vicinity and hoisted herself up onto it. "I'm going to mess with them a bit."
It was a personal favourite of her Valhallan avoidance tactics. If she aimed her shot just right, it could give the appearance that it was being shot from a different direction than she was actually shooting it from. It always looked so funny when you saw all the humongous men running off in a completely different direction than you were really stationed.
But as she began to aim her arrow, something caught her eye, a person. A woman to be exact, and more than likely the one who had spoken to the Valhallans. She was standing in the branches of a tree a long way away from her, but was still slightly visible. Serah couldn't make out anything much detail-wise about her face, but was wearing a black dress with slits going up either side of the skirt, exposing her legs, the kind of legs that even from this distance had the appearance that they went on for miles. She also had what would have been knee length blonde hair if it had not been floating away from her body, propelled by the wind, and black sunglasses that adorned her face.
But as quick as Serah had spotted her she was gone, disappearing somewhere into the labyrinth of the forest. Rising her bow back up to seek out a target, Serah could help but find a sinister feeling settling itself in the back of her mind; whoever that girl was, she was bad news. She just prayed that she wouldn't speak a word of her location to the Valhallan men like she had before.
Finding the perfect target, Serah let her arrow fly, its slim form sailing through the air to find its mark in the trunk of a tree. It got the effect she wanted, with the Valhallans distracted by their search, none of them saw it until they heard it hit the tree with a loud thunk.
They all turned to see the arrow sticking out of the trees, with three white feathers attached to the end of the shaft. There was a pause for a moment, where the men did nothing but stand there and stare at it, but it ended quickly. And seeing its placement on the western side of the trunk, they all seemed to develop the thought that that was the direction the arrow had come from, so they set off west. Perfect. It was just the reaction she was hoping for.
Slipping out of the tree and landing on the ground beside the others, who were eager to get going, Serah couldn't help but let one though encroach her mind as she began to walk alongside the small group. When she shot her arrow, why did the Valhallans stare at it so strangely, like it had been a tremendously dangerous thing?
They had been travelling towards the safe house for a while when they heard a distinctive sound of a twig snapping underfoot from behind. And unlike the last time, finding what had made the noise was all too easy.
There was a man behind them. A substantially tall man, with trimmed black hair that splayed out a little around his collar and had a couple of long strands of varying lengths that hung over his right eye making up a fringe of sorts. He had a long black mark up his left arm that looked to be made up of ancient symbols and mystifying dark blue-grey eyes. While he didn't have the heavyset build that so many other men of his kind had, he was unmistakably Valhallan.
His picturesque blue eyes looked blurred and off-centre, like he wasn't completely there at the moment, but his sure movement gave nothing of the sort. His voice on the other hand did show that something was indeed, very wrong with him.
"Lyza niks itaza husko," his voice drawled on; it sounded forced in some way, and somewhat unnatural.
Letting his words hang in the air for a mere moment the man began to laugh, and the sound of it alone chilled Serah to the bone. It wasn't a nice sound, not grating or harsh, but it screamed to Serah that something bad was about to happen.
And she was right, a little too much for her own liking.
When the man stopped laughing, a smile that chilled Serah equally as much as his laugh had found its way onto his face, and in the next moment the sentries behind her were dead. Just like that, they were breathing one moment and gone forever the next, killed by some unseen force. This seemed to be extremely funny to the man, and he started laughing once more, doubling over as he tried to contain his chuckles.
And then the scene changed again; the man took Serah in a choke-hold, but didn't move to strangle her. Widening her eyes as she found herself trapped within his grasp, Serah made a desperate attempt to break his hold on her, but quickly became aware that it was too strong for her to break away from with her own strength. The man watched as Serah tried hopelessly to escape his grip and his laugh penetrated the air again; he called out madly to the remaining women who stood before them.
"Ruswa budros raiz wlatua, nas tru tranee dukan itaza stuvan abetz laiensas!"
Again he laughed the same one over and over again, as the petrified women fled the area and Serah's world went dark.
...:...
As her consciousness slowly came back to her, Serah's ears picked up the sound of people taking. But her dazed mind soon managed to realise that it was useless to try and listen in on the conversation, as it was being spoken completely in the Valhallans' native language. So she couldn't understand a lick of it. But with nothing else to do as her mind took its sweet time coming back into focus, she was left with no other choice than to listen to it, language barrier and all.
It seemed mostly like gibberish to her, but there was one word that kept popping up constantly and that piqued her curiosity. Entessa, they kept on saying. Entessa, entessa, entessa, it seemed like it was topic of their conversation or something. But what it meant, she had no idea.
Blinking her eyes open as her focus came back in full, Serah looked over the small makeshift camp she lay in, trying to get a feel for her surroundings. She was in a grove bordered by massive trees that grew into the sky and lay off to the side of a small camp-fire that was encircled by a large group of Valhallan men and every one of her limbs tied up so tight with thick coarse rope that she was left with no hope of escape. Looking over the camp once more, Serah quickly noticed that the creep that had captured her was not among them; neither was the woman she had seen briefly staring back at her when she had been aiming her arrow in the tree.
Finding how she lay on the ground increasingly irritating, Serah made the mistake of trying to get herself into a more comfortable position.
The movement caught the attention of one of the men around the fire and laughing at her slim form tied up and entirely immobile, he called out to the others around him "Ee svikcovik anasiac bitcovla"
Whatever he said must have been something humorous, or at least it seemed so to his friends, as the men around the fire began to crack up laughing when the man turned around to flash them a smile.
Swinging his head back around he smiled fiendishly at Serah, leaned in uncomfortably close and said with his tone dripping in menace, "Yue iv guomvik rie introana anasiac, dincru untundra impvla raiz emenees yue."
Fighting back the urge to flinch as the man stared down at her, Serah tried as hard as she could to keep the overwhelming fear she felt flood her body at bay as her dire circumstances began to sink in, showing on her features. Some unexplainable instinct told that showing such an emotion to these men in front of her wouldn't end well for her. But some amounts of it still seeped through to show on her face, where it gleamed in her cerulean eyes. But that couldn't be helped, not when she was this scared.
By the end of the night, it became unknown to even her how she had kept all her fear locked up in her body, with only trace mounts showing themselves to the outside world. All she knew was that it had been a long, long time indeed, since she was this overcome with such a helpless devastating sense of heartfelt fear.
That morning was the start of a nightmare.
She had been roused harshly from a fitful sleep, and once the ties that bound her legs were undone forced to march alongside the fearsome men through the massive forest. The men walked in a formation that kept Serah encircled by all of them giving her no chance, not even a slight hope of being able to escape past their burly forms.
For hours they trekked across the forest floor, walking in almost complete silence, excluding the rare comments the Valhallans made to one another as the minutes pasted. They all but ignored Serah; there was a grunt or hand movement to direct her every once in a while but nothing more, so she was left with nothing other than the option of listening to her currently turbulent thoughts. Her mind tried to make sense of why she had been captured instead of killed, like the others were. She knew that while uncommon it wasn't unheard of for the Valhallans to kidnap people, but that didn't necessarily explain why it had been her they'd taken, it didn't even begin to. What was different about her that made them decided to take her above everyone else? She could ponder the subject for hours, but Serah had a feeling that the answer wasn't going to make itself known any time soon.
On and on they walked, taking a couple of minutes off their walk sometime after midday, to take a short breather and to eat something, from which Serah only received the equivalent of crumbs to ease what was getting to be a ravenous hunger, having last ate around twenty-four hours ago. The journey was then started up again, eating up another few hours of the day until they came upon the edge of the forest. At the forest's edge a grand plain stretched onwards, all the way until it touched the horizon, its end not even visible for the eyes to see. Stepping into the long strands of grass that decorated the land all around them a beautiful emerald green, a handful of the Valhallan men craned their neck skyward to view the position of the sun, aiming to figure out the direction they needed to head in. When they lowered their heads one of them motioned to the north-east and called out in his own language some words whose meaning was lost on Serah, but she presumed that he was only telling them which way they needed to go.
They trekked on into the hours when darkness had descended overhead, and the sounds of various night animals could be heard from all around them. After a time the Valhallans settled in for the night and went to sleep one after the other, leaving only one awake to keep an eye on their captive, just like they had the previous night.
But quite the contrary to going to sleep herself, Serah remained awake; with her legs rebound she lay on her back staring up at the pitch-black sky painted with stars. Her thoughts refused to let her fall asleep just yet; they rested on the surface of her mind, reminding her of the past. The plain she lay in right now was one she remembered very well; she had crossed it when she and her friends had left the site of Cocoon's fall to go to New Bodhum, a village they had built with their own hands. They had sought to live by the sea, like they had while living on Cocoon, so they had found suitable land and built the village upon it. It had been beautiful to say the least and she herself had absolutely loved it there, but after five years of living there the coming of the Valhallans to Pulse had forced them to relocate. They seemed to favour the area New Bodhum was located, so it swiftly became too dangerous to stay there and it became one of the most foolhardy things in the world to even let the thought into your head. So they came to Mynscentar forest; it was much less open than New Bodhum so it created a great natural hiding place and was drastically less prone to being occupied by Valhallans.
But she'd always miss New Bodhum, not saying that the forest wasn't beautiful, but she'd always miss the sight of the sparkling blue sea with waves ebbing up to meet the grand expanse of golden sand. Plus there was a sentimental side to her love of the place, other than the fact that its namesake was of the place she had grown up in, it was the last place she had lived where her sister was with her.
Serah bit her lip when she thought of that, and did her best to ignore the tear that fell from her eye involuntarily. That was another thing she had spent over a decade missing, her sister.
Wiping the tear away from her face, Serah rolled onto her side, thinking that if her mind was going to take that path with her train of thoughts she'd rather not listen to it. So she closed her eyes against the world and eventually, sleep did find her, but it wasn't a restful one.
The next day was very alike the previous one: it enclosed a journey across the plain, broken up with only two breaks in all, and by the end of the night there was still more of the plain to traverse.
This was something that reminded Serah just how little of the plain she had actually travelled when she'd first crossed it when going to New Bodhum as opposed to when she did for Mynscentar, it was a mere fraction.
The next day and the next day after that went along in a similar fashion as well. It was only on the fifth day of her being held captive by the Valhallans did something differ from the otherwise mundane journey. They at last reached the end of the monstrously-sized plain and Serah almost at once began to recognise the land around them. And after only a couple of minutes of travelling through semi rocky terrain, she smelt something a little different in the air.
It was the smell of the ocean.
...:...
Blearily opening his eyes to the sight of a sun shining brightly above him, Hope promptly closed them again to block out the unexpected light.
Since he and Savina had been knocked out by that woman who had yet to make her appearance again, they had both regained consciousness sometime before the hours of twilight, but with all their limbs bound tight. The following morning they had been gruffly made to travel along with the large group of fierce men from the forest and out into a plain that had seemed like it would go on forever, although Hope knew that was not the truth having traversed the plain before. They had remained on the plain for a couple of days, the Valhallans treating both him and Savina harshly without proper reason all the while. But what Hope presumed to be last night; he had grown fed up with the treatment and tried to escape. He would have succeeded too, had a lone Valhallan not woken up in the middle of the night and caught him in the act, and proceeded to knock him unconscious.
Eyes fluttering open again, Hope strived to keep them open long enough in the light so he could figure out the approximate time. Seeing how high the sun had risen, he guessed that he must have been out for quite a few hours; it would have been just past midnight when he had been knocked and now the sun was nearly in the middle of the sky. He grimaced when he realised that; being unconscious that long could never be good for you.
Raising himself off the ground slightly so that he was no longer in the way of the sun's rays, Hope noticed that amazingly for the first time in five days, he was no longer tied up. But something about the situation only served to make him suspicious. And casting a quick glance around the grassy, semi-rocky area, Hope failed to set eyes on anyone until a voice called to him from his left.
" Is Prince Charming's awake, I see."
Following the sound of the voice, Hope found a person sitting in the branches of a tree that had its root dug into the ground to his left. He recognised her instantly as the blonde woman from before who had knocked him out. She was sitting there casually laying her back against the trunk of the tree with one leg crossed over the other. Seeing her clearly now as opposed to the fleeting look of her he'd seen five days ago, hope was able to take in her appearance properly.
She was amazingly tall for a woman, daring to come close to Snow's height, height she only added to with a pair of thigh high, black glossy high heeled boots, one of which had a string wrapped around it that had heavenly white feather attached to random places along it. Her body was toned to perfection, her limbs long and held gracefully without much thought. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of black sunglasses that were shaped like upside trapeziums, but her lips like he'd noticed before were full in shape and had the colour of a heavenly rose. Her golden blonde hair that was ridiculously long and blew all around her in the wind was thick and tremendously wavy, bordering on curly. She wore a black dress that had no straps, apart from a chain that wrapped itself around her neck and connected to the left and right side of her bust. It had twin slits up the sides of the skirt and three green stripes that resembled claw marks which started on the skirt's bottom right corner. And on her arm, exactly like the Valhallan man that had found him and Savina back at the base, she bore a brand made of black, ancient-looking symbols.
From her position in the tree she smirked at Hope, an expression that seemed exceedingly natural on her face and enquired, "Well is Prince Charming going to even ask what he's doing in the middle of nowhere with no one in sight but mwa and completely unbound?"
Using the time after her question to let his confused mind attempt to create a coherent thought, Hope eventually asked her, "Who are you?"
Chuckling a little at his question, the woman got up from her spot on the branch and stood up, talking more to herself than to Hope, "Wasn't really the query I was after but I reckon it will do."
Sliding her right hand off where she had it placed on the trunk of the tree, the woman jumped off from the branch without a thought to how much the landing would hurt from the height she was at.
But she landed perfectly on her feet without a sign of pain, and observing the jump from where he sat on the ground, Hope thought that he may have seen before she hit the ground a barrier of sorts that broke her fall.
Walking closer to Hope the woman came to a stop right in front of him. Placing hand on her hip, she stared down at him, looking over him intently.
"Now, Prince Charming, to answer the inquiry you've yet to vocalise, you have been left here for the time being, the brutes that call themselves "men", have found that friend of yours to be of more amusement than you." Pausing for a second she tacked on in more a mumble, "Or important, either fucking one I don't really give a shit."
Pausing once more she began to pace around the ground absent-mindedly, and like the smirk it seemed like it was something she did a lot. When she was pacing Hope had the distant thought of trying to make a run for it when her back was turned and her eyes were off him, but some instinct told that even if he utilised all his military training that he wouldn't be able to escape this women. She had the air of a person who could be immensely dangerous when she wanted to be.
Halting her pace, she drew closer to Hope from where her pacing had taken her away from him. Facing his front she leaned in closer, picking her sun glasses up with her slender fingers and pulling them away from her face, revealing her deep blue eyes. Looking in to their mesmerising depths from where they were situated right in front of his face, Hope was taken aback by a striking sense of familiarity the eyes unearthed in him.
"Now to answer the question you did vocalise," the woman spoke, "who I am is not important to you, not what I am called or anything in relation to myself. I am just a person who holds enough power over those brutes that they will listen to just about my every word, but personally I imagine it's because I strike fright in them rather than because of how high, let's say my hypothetical rank among them is. So as far as your concerned with me, I'm just a Lily pad"
It was when Hope was looking into those deep blue eyes did the warning told to him in the past by the Valhallan man back at the base come back to him. "If you value your life avoid the blonde haired girl, with her you'll meet your death." He could only pray that luck would favour him today, seeing as this girl matched that description perfectly, dangerous aura and all.
A smirk found its way onto the woman's face again, and completely unaffected by her last less-than-sane nickname she'd bestowed upon herself, she articulated to Hope, ignoring the look he sent her way, "But I can imagine even easier that your mind is no longer putting the want for that information first, and that you now want to know of your friend's situation, but alas that is not information I hold. With me not being within the area she is I could not tell you what is actually happening to her. I could not but hypothesise, but what I could hypothesise is not a nice occurrence, for her at least. So maybe that is something you'd rather not hear."
Straightening up to stand at her full height, which made her tower over Hope from where he sat on the ground, she walked around him and suddenly stamped down excruciatingly hard on his hands from where they were placed on the ground behind him, pinning them to the earth with one of her high heels. Putting her sun-glasses back on her face, she drawled on with laughter evident in her voice, "You know what? I'm downright ashamed that a high ranking military person like yourself didn't even attempt to make a run for it. I gave you ample chances did I not? Or did you have enough sense in your body to tell you that I would indefinitely catch you if you tried. Because I'd much rather that explanation over cowardice, I can't stand cowards you know, they always beg for mercy that I'd never even give a thought to bestowing upon them. So then Prince Charming, which one is it? I'm dying to know." she added sarcastically.
Wincing as a fresh wave of pain radiated from where she was digging his hands into the dirt with the pressure of her high heels, Hope tried to give an answer, but found it challenging as something about the women's aura was sealing his lips shut. After some time he managed to get out a simple, "Sense"
Easing the pressure off of his hands slightly, the women made an 'hm' sound that was followed with the words "I'm impressed you can still talk, even if was such a pitiful effort like that. Most people can't make the slightest sound, let alone move. But let us see what happens when we up the ante."
Lifting her feet away from Hope's hand, she sidestepped and placed her left hand on his shoulder for a moment before sliding it off and walking back to the front of him and into his line of sight. Instantly Hope felt something change, his body became stock still and no matter hard he urged it, it wouldn't budge. His sight started to blur until the women in front of him resembled that of a child's painting, and he felt his consciousness begin to drift away. But he was still able to make out the woman's words.
She was obviously speaking to herself.
"Oh and Prince Charming here was doing so great, been a long time since I got someone like him to mess with. Guess he's just a few steps ahead of the other buggers, but I suppose he's still not good enough to withstand all I had to throw at him. At least he did better than that friend of his."
That was the last Hope heard before the world disappeared before his eyes.
...:...
Sitting in the branches of a tree and hidden behind bushel's jade painted leaves, Aaia Yuto watched on as a bunch of lanky men dragged Serah along with them through the semi-rocky terrain below her. Tapping her fingers on the branch above her absent-mindedly, she waited until they had passed her. Blowing out a sigh, she decided that she should probably cut her lazy act and actually help her instead of sitting back and observing her before those oafs really do something to legitimately hurt her.
Standing, she felt about for a better grip on the branch above her, and endeavoured to follow the trail of tree tops until she got to the front of the men. Hopefully, and she was pretty sure she could, she could get to the front of them without alerting them to her presence.
Lucky they were just a lot of brainless oafs.
...:...
In the last few hours something had snapped in Serah, be it that she was angry that these men had infested the place that meant the most to her on Pulse or that she was just simply fed up with being led around like she was, but at every order they gave her now, she disobeyed them and she had struggled in her constraints until the rope had rubbed her skin raw and then some. All she knew was that she wasn't going to stand for being these men's captive any longer, even if the rational part of her mind kept on telling her that her struggling would amount to nothing with her mediocre strength against the Valhallans' monstrous ones. But that didn't stop her from trying.
After a few more minutes of struggling, Serah heard the noises of something rustling in the trees from overhead. The noise confused her slightly, by the volume of it, it definitely wasn't something small, but that was strange as most monster were too scared to come near the Valhallans. It had been how they had gone through five days of travelling across Pulse with nary a hustle. So what was in the trees then?
Her answer came in the form of the path in front of them bursting into flames.
From the trees tops dropped down a cloaked form, one obviously possessed by a female, garbed entirely in black with a bandanna with golden marking that matched the ones on her cloak covering most of her face. A laugh sounded from her as the girl straightened herself up from her drop down position and stood up in front of the burning fire.
"Amesu dei wena kaku nata mabu, mabu?" a beautiful sounding, exotic accented voice said in a questioning tone.
Serah noticed looks of confusion settling themselves on the faces of the men around her at the girl's words when she cast her eyes about them, and it was only after a moment of thought that she figured out why. She'd spent the past five days surrounded by these men, hearing them speak their language among themselves, and when she compared their words to the ones spoken by the girl in front of her she realised, that the girl was in fact speaking an entirely different language.
The girl laughed again, placed her hands on her hips, and blew out a sigh, speaking up again to the confused men in the same language she had spoken in before.
"Bakei fucking foso sarube wa amesu dei wena nata anuka tekuro wakishika."
Serah's face acquired a perplexed expression at the utterance of those words. Was it just her, or was there something a little off with that sentence? She didn't legitimately hear that swear did she?
She didn't have time to contemplate the thought as the girl moved from her spot at an alarming rate and disappeared from her sights for a flash only to reappear behind one of the huge Valhallan men a few paces behind her, where she progressed to give him a swift and hard knock to the back of his head making him fall to the ground senseless. From there she moved about the clearing and dealing out the other men similar fates, all the while evading them with a level of speed that Serah hadn't blinked an eye at before. Watching the girl with an intense sense of interest, Serah felt her bounds tighten some, and twisted her head to see a Valhallan man had gripped them in his free hand, the other occupied with a sword. But whatever the man had hoped to do by making sure to keep her close it soon proved useless when Serah felt heat radiating off the ropes tied around her arms. Tilting her head as much as she could she became aware that portions of them had been set alight and the man quickly let go to stop himself from getting burned.
Stepping away from Serah, the man failed to notice the distinct sound of light foot steps to the right of him and within moments he was on the ground unconscious, the mysterious girl standing over him, the blunt of a peculiar looking short sword bared before her. The flames that existed on Serah bounds went out and it soon became apparent that they were the only ones in the clearing that were still conscious.
Putting her sword back into a sheath that rested on her left thigh and was attached to her by a belt on her waist, the girl dusted herself off and flicked her long black hair out of her eyes. She then began rubbing her left fist like it was hurting while mumbling herself in her accented voice, "Damn it, how fucking hard do those oafs' skulls have to be to hurt my hands this much?"
Flicking her eyes over the girl fleetingly, Serah looked over the clearing, finding it so bizarre to see the huge men that had been such a daunting sight for so long limp and useless on the ground. Taken down by a girl who looked no older than sixteen no less.
Redirecting her gaze towards the girl in question, Serah, took in her features. She was beautiful to say the least, absolutely beautiful, with straight jet hair trailing down her back and ending at her waist. The hair looked to have the consistency of silk, and had a section of it tied up high and cut considerably shorter than the rest, its evenly cut ends only coming to her neck. Her dress was of a simple design, all black, short and strapless with brownish fur trimming the bust and a segment missing from over the sternum, exposing skin that otherwise would be covered. The segment was rectangular in shape except for the tip which was curved upwards in a triangular like fashion to follow the contour of her breasts. There were silver armour plates on her thighs and shin of either leg, which had decorative details etched into them. A similar plate was fastened to her left shoulder and she wore black gloves that came up to just below her shoulder, which had metal pieces sewn into them, which on her hands were similar in shape to bones and along the arms were three long pieces on the topside and bottom side on both gloves. On her feet she wore no shoes apart from fabric that was latched onto the top of them. The colour of her eyes was not visible from the way she held her head, but if Serah was seeing them right her lips were such a pretty colour of rosy pink. And on her ears dangled a pair of jagged crystal earrings from which three heavenly white feathers hung off.
Unexpectedly, Serah saw the girl's head shoot up, where she kept it watching straight ahead for a second before glancing to both ends of the clearing where the path ended and where it picked up again. Without turning her head back to look at her the girl spoke up to Serah, "We better get out of here, some of those men are still using this path."
Nodding, Serah asked her, "Where to then?" There weren't many places to go around here.
"Where else?" she girl answered with a hint of playfulness in her voice, as she stepped over to the group of trees that lined the clearing and gestured for Serah to come closer by holding out her hand for her to take.
Unsureness settled itself around her for a moment but Serah quickly banished it with a shake of her head and walked forward to take the girl's hand in her own. As quickly as she had placed it there she wished she hadn't, the girl in front of her had a mischievous smile on her face that couldn't mean her any good.
Standing stationary for a second or so, the girl suddenly lurched backwards, taking Serah with her. Within moments Serah found herself being pulled through the trees with the black haired girl only to come out the other side in a drastically different environment, a beach.
A beach with golden-white sand and waves consistently lapping up to the shore, and where a setting sun painted the sea red, orange and yellow. Feeling the girl let go of her hand Serah let the sun take her attention away from the beach. She hadn't realised it had gotten so late in the day, she was a little too distracted by her want to escape, but of course, lucky for her, someone had granted her that freedom. But who were they?
Turning her head back downwards so she could see the girl she was about to question Serah was met with a sight that she surely hadn't expected.
The girl was lying in the shallows of the water on her back, all of her armour plates abandoned upon the sand. Her eyes were closed and she had a serene expression on her face, just feeling the waves wash by her. Watching her curiously, Serah noted her dark, long eye lashes that rested on her cheeks since her eyes were closed; they created an exotic look that matched her accented voice.
Glancing down at the armour plates on the shore and then back to the girl; Serah asked her curiously, "What are you doing?"
"I'm not quite sure," the girl answered. "I just like the feel of the water, where I come from it's not the smartest thing to go near, so I am taking advantage of it now."
"Where do you come from?" Serah asked, the girl's previous statement had piqued her curiosity. Where could she have come from that water was dangerous?
"Nowhere special," the girl replied.
"What's your name, then?" Serah probed, seeing how her query had been shot down.
"It's of no importance." the girl told Serah, finally opening her back up to stare up at the sky above, "and I won't tell to you if you bribe me with yours, I already know it anyway."
"What?" Serah exclaimed. Sure, it made perfect sense that a random girl she had never met before knew her name. "How do you know my name?"
"A little birdy told me." the girl quipped with a smile on her face. Sitting up in the water and crossing her legs, she voiced to the woman behind her, dropping their last subject, "But, um, can I ask you something?"
"Hm?" Serah sounded, figuring that the girl wasn't about to answer anything she asked any time soon.
"What colour's the water?"
"What?" Serah said incredulously. "Blue, but why do you have to ask me that?"
Ignoring her question, the girl jumped up and suddenly yelled out in a voice drastically deepened from her normal one, "Holy shit, it's blue!"
Twisting back around, she looked Serah in the eyes and told her, "And back to saner things now, but to answer your question let's just say that colour is something long lost on me."
Serah was about to query the meaning of that sentence, when it hit her as she looked in to the girls grey eyes.
The girl who had single-handedly defeated over twenty Valhallan men who were anything but weak and saved her, led her seamlessly through a group of tightly-packed-together trees and onto this beach without hitting a single one, was blind.
And done, I have to say but Aaia and Lily pad would have to be my favourite OCs in this story, and as you'll notice, if you already haven't, they're bat fuck insane, just like me.
I really like the way Lily pad talks, and if anyone's wondering but I'm not too sure why she was calling Hope Prince Charming, it may be because the Valhallans called Serah Sleeping Beauty, in their language of course, but otherwise I'm a blank. My mind was just telling me that she wasn't calling him by his name but something really weird, so it became that.
Also, just so you know, but the heels on lily pad's boots are five inches, which is probably more easier to imagine how big that is if your a girl and have a high heel obseesion like me, or are just good with sizes and such. For anyone who can't really imagine it five iches is about 10 centimetres, and seeing as lily pad is 192 cm tall, with an extra ten cm she becomes as tall as snow.
I don't think this is going to be updated for a while because for one I direly need to plot it out more and I think I might get all the analects in ffxiii, cuz it will help with some of the plotlines involving Etro and the like and I've been interested in getting them all ever since I first got one. Also I'm doing a picture of Aaia right now and it looks very much like her, I'm up to colouring it now but when I'm done I'm going to put it on my deviantART account seeker-of-the-skys, so your free to look at it if you want.
Remember to leave me a review; it'd be dearly appreciated, as would con-crit
Sayonara for now.
~Claire Kreiss