Panda Hero
Chapter 8: Mystery Memory
"Mommy, Daddy? Where are you?" a young girl cried out hysterically. Her small frame started to shudder as she violently coughed into her elbow, as she was tought to do.
The child ran to the best of her ability, stopping every now and then to catch her breath, only to choke on her own wheezes. She fidgeted with the collar of her fleece pajama top. It was so hot!
"Hello?" the blonde girl shouted out again, her voice cracking at the end. She took a deep breath of the ashy air by her mouth, nose suddenly stuffy as if with a cold.
Vainly wiping soot off her face, only for it to mingle with her sweat, she trekked on in the familiar maze called home.
Something suddenly combusted in front of her, it's tiny but harmful embers stinging her pale, coal streaked face. She quickly turned away on a reflex and swatted at her face, tears finally letting loose.
Despite the flames, explosions, and the ominous creaking sounds, the young blonde girl fell to the floor in a helplessly innocent sobbing heap. She was curled into a ball, letting free everything that was building up earlier behind her eyes. The only reason she stopped herself from panicking and crying was because big girls weren't supposed to cry.
Suddenly, she stopped. What was that new sound amongst all the crackling and whooshing of spreading flames?
A low, painful moan. Whoever was making the sound was calling her name inbetween bouts of hacking.
Getting up on her hands and knees, she crawled to the source. She found it was easier to breath closer to the ground, but she still tried to cover her mouth and nose with her pajama top.
"Honey? Sweetie, are you there?" the familiar woman called. The girl stopped at the doorway, eyes wide in horror.
The room was almost completely aflame. The devilish red light reflected onto the broken woman's face, flickering around her terrified glassy eyes mockingly.
She sobbed out loudly, "Oh, thank God!" she shouted in relief, voice heavy with smog. The woman tried fidgeting underneath all the fallen rubble ontop of her to get closer to the girl.
"You need to leave. NOW." she demanded, coughing. "Don't let them get to you!" she ordered the child through gritted teeth. She cried out in pain as something fell onto her exposed leg. "Them"?
"No! I won't leave!" the girl began to cry again. The woman's face visibly shattered at how distraught the little girl was.
"Honey, you have to. Please, just go." she began to plead. "I love you."
"But Mommy-!" the girl protested. She couldn't just leave her there! The girl started to stand up and attempt at prying the remnants of ceiling off her mother, until the woman shouted, "GO."
She stumbled up and began to run away, not being able to look on anymore. From behind her, a loud crack! and the room was consumed.
After what seemed like eons of racing through the large building, dodging the hazardous flames, she finally found a door.
Throwing it open, she ran down the stairs, and tripped in the process.
Falling onto the dewyness of the lawn, she fisted the grass in her small hands and began to shake and tremble again.
"Hi!" someone called from above her. She looked up. Who. . .?
A boy who was a few years older than her towered over her, taller than he should be for his age. The only sign of any youth was his round-ish face and big green eyes.
He didn't look familiar at all. The large house behind them was completely on fire now and was swaying in the light winter breeze, ready to crumble at any moment.
He whistled as he gazed at the sunburst against the dark night sky.
"That sucks." he said quietly, yet completely calmly as black scraggly hands were reaching out of the inferno's windows, ready to grab both of them and drag them inside.
He looked back down at the girl, who was completely confused. "Why don't you come with me? Everything will be okay." he said neutrally with a friendly smile. The boy held out his hand.
Silently, she took it and hauled herself up. With one last teary-eyed look at the disinigrating house, she walked off with the boy as sirens wailed behind them.
Rapidly sitting up, Rin clutched at her chest in a cold sweat. She heaved air in and out with difficulty, feeling the phantom heavyness in her lungs like the little girl in her dreams from the smoke.
W-who was that little girl? Rin's heart ached for the poor child, even if she was a figment of her imagination. And her poor parents, considering her father was caught in the house also.
For a dream, it seemed so real. Even how she woke with the feeling of smog in her lungs and the flicks of fire warming her face. She swiped her palm down the length of her face, hand shaking.
And that slightly older boy was so. . .odd. Not in a weird type of odd, but, the way he acted in a situation like that.
Rin buried her head in her trembling hands, sweat soaked bangs sticking to her wrists. She must be so twisted to even dream about something so scary and frightening like that.
But, the more she tried digging into the memory of that dream, the more she got confused. Finally, she hit a mental dead-end. It was one of those strange dreams where, while you're having it, everything makes perfect sense and you know exactly whats going on. But the minute you wake up, all those little valuable details vanish and you're left with giant chunks that don't make sense when put together, like a shattered window frame. Shattered from the combustion of that house.
Finally she shook her head. She shouldn't dwell on it anymore, it was just. . . too disturbing to think about how that woman was practically crushed and than incinerated to death, while still alive.
. . .But, If she went back to sleep, what if that horrific nightmare replayed? This time more graphic than the last? Like hearing the crunch of the body and the gurgling, bubbling-like sound of it finally exploding under the heated rubble? The way that the little girl cried. . .it was just too much.
And somehow, it had an emotional connection with her.
Rin looked over to Rei, who was fast asleep and quite frankly deserved the rest. It wouldn't do him any good by waking him, stealing his precious rest for God knows what he does in the morning, since he was always gone.
"Hey." someone whispered in the darkness. Rin jumped, looking more like she was having a spazm. The sound of a cot crunching due to the movement of a body came from the corner of the alley.
"L-Len?" Rin stuttered, once again grasping at the fabric above her chest. What was Len doing here, creeping up on them in the dark?
. . .Oh yeah. Len lives with them. Duh.
"Why are you up?" she asked, trying to calm her irregular breathing, now intensified three fold from earlier.
Len got up from his alienated spot in the corner and sat on her cot, right next to her. Rin scooted away a little, uncomftorable with the current situation.
"Why are you up?" he asked. "You were mumbling something in your sleep and then you screamed and shot up." was that worry slipping into his expression? Len was not one to be worrying over others. It's just not him.
It could be the darkness playing tricks with her eyes, Rin convinced herself.
But, talking and then screaming? She hadn't realised she had woken him with that, yet she wasn't surprised that she had, thanks to that horrific nightmare.
"Just a bad dream." Rin muttered back bluntly. She really didnt want to talk about it.
Len watched her for a moment and then slowly nodded. Surprisingly, the dense, blonde teen understood not to be nosey about it.
After a minute, Len asked "Are you afraid to go back to sleep?"
Well, yeah. Of course she was! Afraid wasn't the word to describe how she felt, though. More like terrified.
Rin started to shake her head 'no.' She couldn't have Len thinking how weak she was, but eventually stopped and nodded 'yes'.
As if second thoughts were contagious, Len reached out a comforting hand to wrap around Rin's, but thought better of it and withdrew. "Then i'll stay up with you, alright?"
She looked at him. Why? That was just stupid of him. By the looks of it, he seemed extremely tired.
"Why? I mean, are you sure?" she asked, slightly concerned. She hadn't noticed Len's attempt of holding her hand earlier.
"Yep." he smirked, seeming to have reverted to his old self.
What Rin didn't know, was that behind his false grin, he was also terrified of drifting back into the world of sleep. For he also had a nightmare.
That evening, the Panda Hero came by to get Rin. Len gave the older woman an attitude and in return, she smacked him on the shoulder with her bat.
Rin and the Panda Hero left, walking shoulder to shoulder with Len sprawled on the ground behind them clutching his shoulder in exaggerated pain.
"Oh, shut up, Shota. You'll live." the woman chuckled over her shoulder.
Clattering up to their new hangout upon a roof overlooking a portion of the slums, the two did what they usual did. Talk.
The Panda Hero stopped mid-sentence to blow a bubble with the gum she was usually found chomping on.
Rin tilted her head, intrigued. She noticed that the woman's tongue wasn't green, like most other Panda users. Maybe she didn't eat the drug to get the effect, but took it another way?
Something still didn't make sense though. The blonde girl gazed at the woman's long tan legs dangling off the roof. Her eyes hovered over the rest of the woman's overly exposed flesh. Every inch was lightly tanned. And not a single squiggly icy vain in sight.
A giggle. "You alright over there Rin? You're like, drooling over me or something." the panda-eyed woman smirked lazily.
Rin furrowed her brows in deep thoughts. "Panda Hero. . ." she started. The teal-haired woman 'hmm'-ed in acknowledgment.
"How do you take Panda?" the teen asked curiously, looking down at her new bracelet so she won't seem too nosey.
Looking away, the cocky look was wiped off the woman's face. Instead, her jaw was set in total seriousness.
"You know what i've been thinking about? I got this little idea in mind." she replied to nothing in particular. It seemed like she was forcing her tone to sound breezy and care free. It came out not sounding right at all.
Rin shrugged to herself and leaned back on her hands as she scrutinized the smoggy horizon. She was ready to listen to whatever the older woman had to say, while keeping how suspicious she acted at the back of her mind.
"There's a certain place on the outskirts of the town," the woman started. Town? She was probably talking about the slums. "with a baseball field and everything!" she petted her bat lovingly.
Baseball? "Whats that?" Rin asked. The word was unfamiliar. Turning to her, the woman asked, "What, baseball?"
With the sheepish nod from Rin, the Panda Hero's jaw dropped. "You've never heard of the sport?" she asked again.
Sport. . .Boxing was a sport. Was this 'baseball' just boxing with the added 'baseball's' that she was talking about? If so, Rin might take a crack at it.
"Oh my God. . ." he teal haired woman whispered to herself, the single black rimmed eye going wide.
Rin panicked. Was she not cool now because she didn't know a baseball? "Wh-what, is that bad?" Rin blurted out.
Jumping up, the Panda Hero brought up her bat in the air, making the perfect batters position.
"Baseball is a game where you take a bat," she waved her stainless steel one around, "and swing it at a ball thats thrown at you." she explained. She swung the bat at an imaginary ball, quite comically. She raised her hand to her forehead and watched the imaginary ball fly into the sky and 'ooooh!'-ed.
Rin giggled to herself at her friend's rare show of childish-ness.
"Then," she began again. She raced around in a circle, "You run as fast as you can to these bases and then make it back to home plate." she concluded her explanation.
Flopping down in mock exhaustion, she sighed. "Phew, that was tiring!" and spread out her arms, only to drop them lifelessly.
"So we're going to play baseball, then?" Rin asked as she stumbled over the unfamiliar word. She was eager to try it, even if it didn't involve her fists.
Nodding, the woman answered her. "Yep. Everyone's going. Tonight."
Tonight? That was pretty short notice; she didn't even know about it! "When did you plan this?" Rin asked.
"Just now." the Panda Hero answered simply.
NOW? But how was she going to- "The whole clan is practically under my control. I'll work it out." the teal haired woman said with semi-finality.
Before another word could be said, the Panda Hero was up and climbing down the fire escape skillfuly. "Come on Rin!" she called up impatiently to the blonde teen.
I know I haven't updated in some time, so, think of this as an early Christmas gift! xD I purposely left some un-tied ends here; like what Len's dream was what was RIN'S dream about, and the little girl, and even how the baseball game goes. Not to mention how suspicious the Panda Hero acted. Hmm. But thats why you'll have to REVIEW TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! ;D
~Sabby-Sama