The Girl From The Middle Of Somewhere

Part 2: The Beginning

12 years earlier

"Bullseye!" Echoed the scream of a delighted child amidst the buildings. "Did you see that?"

"Of course I saw it, Kinny. It was a great shot, but you're gonna have to do better than that if you wanna beat me," said an older man, maybe in his 40s. He was tall, quite fit and had black hair, brown eyes and tired features. His outfit was as unremarkable as the man himself, with brown, short sleeved shirt and dull grey pants. He didn't wear shoes, since they were walking across soft summer grass.

"Oh yeah? Well, I'm gonna make sure you'll eat those words in a bit! Just give me 30 minutes, and I'll beat your score!" Squealed the little girl. She was barely 10 years old, with few teeth missing from her wide smile. Short brown hair accentuated her wide eyes. Her dress was a bit loose on the shoulders, but the girl didn't even notice it over her excitement. Her defining feature was her tanned skin, which stood out clearly from the rest of the villagers, who were naturally quite pale, even during the summer.

Though it was no wonder she was so different from her neighbors. Little Kinny had been the mystery girl of Easthaven a little over 9 years now. It was the tale villagers liked to remind each other of whenever Kinny walked past.

It had been a normal morning in Easthaven, a little village at the eastern border of the kingdom. The villagers were waking up, and started their morning routines. Blacksmiths heated up their forges, bakers prepared their furnaces and seamstresses checked their threads. No one paid any attention to the town's old fountain, until soft cries started coming out of it it. A few passerbys took notice and went to see what the commotion was all about. To their surprise, in the old fountain there was a baby girl, wrapped in some dusty rags. She had to be barely 3 months old. Her skin was dark brown, like some of the southeners who occasionally passed through the village. But none had been there for a few months, so the girl couldn't be theirs. In 10 minutes, the whole village had come to see the child, who had surprisingly calmed down, even though a few dozen townspeople were staring at her. That was until one of the women picked her up from the fountain. That's when she started screaming like there's no tomorrow. No matter what they did, the villagers could not get her to calm down, and the only way was to put her down to the fountain again. Pretty much all the villagers tried, from mothers, to grandfathers, to teens. Finally, someone emerged who could pick up the girl without causing a fuss out of her. That someone was Mars Duskstalker.

Mars was almost as big of a mystery as the girl was. He had lived in Easthaven all his life, except for when he went to the war. Howerver, when he returned, he had changed. Not like pretty much all the other veterans, who still had nightmares of great sieges and their comrades blowing to pieces. No, the biggest change in Mars was that he hadn't changed at all. When he came back home, he just greeted everyone, went back to his ranch and has been living there ever since, as if nothing happened. It was as though the war had had no effect on him, other than making him a bit tougher-looking. Everyone knew who he was, and he knew everyone and was good friends with them, but it was like a part of him was clouded, and no one could see through him. There were of course rumors.

Some said that he had been a part of His Majesty's special corps. Some said was the sole survivor of his unit. Some said that he had gotten a daughter with a mysterious woman he met in the war, who had then dissappeared with their child. And most just assumed he had downed one bottle too many.

Anyway, he was not the type anyone had assumed would be good with children, but as he was pressed to try to pick up the girl, she just cooed softly in his arms and started napping, which made Mars very uncomfortable.

Math wasn't his area of expertise, but he could count together: Mysterious child in the middle of the village + The only man who can handle her without breaking their eardrums + No girl's parents nowhere to be seen and no point of origin = "Well, since we can't do anything, let's just give the girl to Mars."

And so the little girl was placed under the care of the former soldier, which worked out surprisingly well. Some mothers taught Mars the basics of raising children so he could get started, and when the girl's parents didn't appear, he legally adopted her as his daughter. The name of the girl came to be Kinny Nessa Darkstalker.

From that point life went on as usual for the whole village. The only difference being the new, dark-skinned girl who had become a part of the usual view around the town. Since little Kinny wasn't a fan of babysitters, her adoptive father had to bring her pretty much everywhere. That bothered neither of them, since Kinny radiated with joy whenever she got to be with Mars, and Mars too was pretty pleased with the new toddler in his life. Whenever he went to the fields, he put Kinny under the shade of the great oak. Some villagers were terrified of his recklessness, but Mars knew that his daughter would never crawl away. She just adored him too much to go chasing butterflies. When she learned to walk, Kinny became an ustoppable force which blitzed around the village and its beautiful countryside. Growing up in Easthaven was as perfect as it could get, and not once did Kinny have to shed a tear for something. Since she was the only child her age in the village, everyone treated her as if she was the center of the town. And in her young mind, Kinny kinda thought she was.

Her first word was, unsurpisingly, Mars. Well, actually it was more like "Maas", but it was still her first try. Turned out Kinny was quite smart, since she learned to speak understandably by the time she was 2,5 years old. And she only improved her vocabulary in the following months. When she turned 3, she could already have quite long and sensible conversations with her father, even though they were usually about birds which had flown over her earlier. When Kinny turned 5, she got the best birthday present a girl can dream of: Her very own doll! Atleast that's what the villagers thought, until Kinny proudly presented them her brand new slingshot. She was the daughter of a former soldier after all, and it seemed like her father wanted her daughter to atleast be able to hit something. And so every time Kinny wanted to (And that was quite often) she dragged Mars to her very own shooting range to train her. At first the only targets were tin cans on the fence, but when she turned 7, Mars upgraded the range with wooden targets, which could be moved around with a lever, and got their power from a small crystal to which Kinny used her weekly allowance to power up every Sunday. And as her skills and confidence grew, she got a permission from Mars to shoot the crows which were always picking their crops. These were by far the hardest targets Kinny had tried to hit, but she managed it with an almost unnatural precision. At that point Mars agreed to compete against her in "Kinny's Weekly Slingchamp Competition."

Which brings us back to the beginning, where Kinny and Mars are starting their little contest number 107 on Kinny's 10th birthday.

"Oh come on Kinny, do you happen to remember that I have been crowned the champion of Kinny's Weekly Slingchamp Competition for 106 times already? You can't beat that with just half an hour of extra practise." Said Mars, smiling softly at the little girl.

"Oh, just wait and see, old man!" Kinny snapped back. "I'm gonna beat you so hard, you'll be too embarrassed to show your face at the town square in the evening!" Kinny stuck her tongue out at the end of the sentence, which Mars swiftly grabbed.

"Crady man! Leet me goo!" She begged. Mars chuckled. "Don't expose you weak spots to the enemy, you never know when they might strike back," he said, letting go.

"Oooooh, you're going to regret that, Mars!", Kinny shouted as menacingly as she could, which wasn't very much with her 10-year-old voice. Mars chuckled again. "I'll be waiting."

At this point it should be noted, that Kinny had never called Mars her dad. He was very dear and just like a father to her, but she had always called him just Mars, which he had quickly accepted. Their relation was like the one between a father and daughter, but those who didn't know of the situation might think that Mars was Kinny's uncle. This was one of the many oddities in Darkstalker household.

Without even bothering with the firing range, Kinny went straight to the fields, looking for some live targets.

"I gotta do my best today," she thought to herself. "I can't let Mars beat me 107 times in a row, or else he won't let me forget it for a month. Especially on my birthday."

The day they were celebrating Kinny's birhtday wasn't of course actually her birthday. 2 months after she had appeared, a young warlock had went through the village, and managed to tell Mars that Kinny was about 5 months old after a few tests. So they just decided that the day they found Kinny was her birthday. Mars himself wasn't one for such celebrations, bu the knew that once Kinny learned what they were, she would be very upset if she didn't get her birthday present. Kids can cause a lot of work.

After 25 minutes were up, Kinny had managed to down 9 crows. Confident in her skills, she returned to Mars, who was waiting outside their makeshift firing range. "Ah, you're back. Ready to face your shame?", he asked. "You just be prepared to tell everyone you lost to a 10-year-old!", Kinny replied. "Alrighty then, I take that as a yes."

10 minutes later.

Kinny's Weekly Slingchamp Competition Number 107 was well underway. Mars had finished his turn, with almost perfect 49 points. He had missed the last moving target, which had been supercharged just for this occasion, so it moved twice as fast. Kinny had finished stationaries and was on her last moving targets, having 47 points total with 2 targets plus the supercharged left.

"I can actually do this!", she thought to herself as she racked another bullseye. And after that, another.

"Well, you might have gotten lucky 49 times, but the last one is a real bummer. I could hardly see it, so good luck with that. Just aim where it's gonna be 1 second from the start, and hope for the best," Mars called to her from the controller area.

The seconds before the final shot crept longer than they should have. Kinny could feel cold sweat dripping down her neck. "This is is. The final moment. If I hit this, you'll be the champion for the first time in your life,"she thought to herself. But she couldn't handle the stress. 106 times she had been forced to listen Mars's speech of how one day, with enough practise, she would be better than him. "But I don't need to practise anymore. I want that day to be today!", she panicked just before Mars shouted "Go!"

Kinny was utterly devastated. She has forgotten to aim correctly in her panic, and now the target would fly past her without a hope of her hitting it.

At that moment, Kinny realized that right now, she wanted nothing more than to hit that target, to finally beat Mars, even though her window of opportunity had already closed.

"No."

Kinny whispered.

"It can't."

And so she forced the window open again.

Afterwards, she didn't really remember what happened. Just as she was about to give up on hitting the target, her desire to do so seemed to bend to her will, and she could almost hear a clock slowing down. As Kinny looked up, she was astonished. Afterwards, she could only describe it as if time itself had slowed down, with the target moving under a half it's original speed. But at the moment, it felt like a world of possibilities had unraveled in front of her, and without a thought she hit the final bullseye. Kinny allowed a wide smile to creep to her face. "Finally," she thought, before passing out.

Mars couldn't find the words. First it looked like Kinny was surely gonna miss. He didn't feel too bad about, she could just try again next week. But then, as if the very laws of reality had wanted her to succeed, she raised her slingshot with inhuman grace and accuracy and hit the target just as it was about to pass by without showing even the slightest of effort. In fact, her face could have been a mask of serenity, not the face of a stressed-out girl it had been only a second later. Then she collapsed.

In panic, Mars ran to her side. A quick check confirmed that she still had a pulse. "Thank gods, she just passed out," he whispered to himself. "Still," he thought, "What was that?" Mars had never seen anyone shoot like that, like hitting the target would be as simple as breathing. "Kinny Nessa Darkstalker, what are you?", he asked himself. "No, who are you?", he corrected himself. Mars knew that he would have to ask Kinny later about that, but at the moment he had to revive his daughter. And he had a promise to keep.

"Well champ, you finally won. Now it's just the big question: Strawberry or chocolate?

Even in her unconcious state, Mars thought he saw a slight hint of a smile.