Author's Notes

Okay, now this calls for some celebration for me –throws a party- Wahoo! I did it! I did it! However I didn't do it alone, I had help from the hate mail senders and also a very special thanks goes out to my friend Alicia whose house I was at this weekend and she helped me with a few ideas that appear in this chapter and others to come. -sigh- Okay, some of you will probably remember that last time I said that you would find out where she was going in this chapter, well, there's been a change in that. I'm sorry, I write these things in chapters so what I say might be in the next chapter has a high chance of being in a different chapter all together. So in this chapter you will not be finding out where she is going, sorry. It's because, well I know how this story goes and when I'm thinking through it in my head, I know what all the things I'm talking about but then I remember that you guys don't so I have to fill in the blanks and explain things that I wouldn't in my head so that's why if I say something's going to be in the next chapter, don't believe me till you read the next chapter. Okay, that's done, here's the disclaimer: I do not own any of things in here that might seem familiar to any of you who have seen or read miscellaneous anime or manga series including names, techniques, moves, or words, etc. Okey dokey, done, here it is.

**Characters 'thoughts', flashbacks, and dreams

Chapter 2: Lost Memories

"I can't believe we made it in time before sunset." Serenity said as she stumbled out of the undergrowth and into the open evening air.

She had a bloody dagger in her left hand and was wiping blood from her lip and nose. She was covered in cuts and bruises that were still pretty fresh. Still staggering, holding her arm, her right eye badly bruised and swollen shut. She wiped more blood out of her good eye, which was dripping down into it from a nasty gash on her brow.

"Feh! Those darned Skrits! I swear they get smarter and smarter every time I fight a group of them." She spit out some blood onto the ground beside her.

"Well at least they're good for two things which makes fighting them not a total waste of my time. I get good training from fighting them and their blood has unrivaled healing capabilities. It hurts like a roundhouse kick to the face but if you can get their blood in the first place, then you can take the pain. Who would of thought that those little buggers had something this precious? If people could get a little spine and fight some of them, then there would be a lot less deaths in my opinion, but that's not my problem." She said breathily through gritted teeth with a weak shrug and winced at once. Taking the blood covered dagger and pressing it into a wound on her forearm, she immediately took a sharp breath in.

"Well guys," she said to Lithe and Sirus who had landed near her on the ground, and were watching her intently. "Looks like your gonna have to do me one more favor." she said with difficulty, trailing off and then fell forward, unconscious, on the ground.

........

'Where am I?' Serenity thought and looked around. There was nothing here, but at the same time, there were so many things here. Both seen, but unseen and lost, but found. At least, she thought so; the whole place was absolutely white and empty, the silence was heavy and it unnerved her so when she heard voices talking quietly but urgently, she jumped and immediately dropped into a fighting stance and began to scan her surroundings for the source.

After looking around for about a minute, she slowly stood erect, but in a position that she could easily change back into her fighting stance at the slightest sound, she hadn't survived this long in the wild without learning how to fight and defend herself with ruthless precision and to never let her guard down for a second because even the smallest sound could mean death if overlooked.

"Uh! There they are again, those blasted voices! Where in the world are they coming from?!" she muttered with gritted teeth as she spun around to face the spot where they seemed to be coming from. As soon as she did this, she again dropped out of fighting stance, but this time, she dropped her guard and just stared at the door that had, as far as she could see, appeared out of nowhere.

"What the world?! Where did that thing come from?! I looked this place over five times! There's no way I missed that! Hm, I must of passed out and hit my head or something because this place is messed up. Oh well, whatever, if this is a dream or something to that effect, then the worst that can happen is I wake up." She said with a shrug, which she noticed didn't hurt her, and began to open the door. She was half way through it when she commented absently, "Either that or I go into a come and die that way." There was a moment and then a bright yellow light engulfed her and she was gone.

"Whoa, what is-hey, wait, I know this place, it's, it's, I-I can't remember. But I know this place, I can feel it!" she said shaking her head in frustration with a hand on her forehead, eyes closed. She stopped as soon as she heard the voices again, but they were whispers this time and they were coming from outside the door to her right. She began to look around frantically for a place to hide, it was then that she saw the cot in the corner with a small girl lying on it, deep in sleep and realized that she wasn't alone in the room.

'Who's that? Wait, no, it can't be! But, it is, it's me, w-what am I doing here? I've never been here before in my life! And yet, it seems so very, very familiar. It's like a memory that is buried just deep enough that I can't quite touch it.' She thought, frowning. Then the door opened, she spun around and ended up looking a strange, tall woman with bleach white hair, pale skin, and chilling ice-blue eyes in the face, followed by her parents.

"What is this? Who is she? Why are my parents with her? This is insanity! This has to be some sort of twisted dream because there's no way that this could be real, that nightmare is the last memory that I have of my parents. I don't remember anything about them but that one memory, and the next one is just me in the endless forest that makes up most of Diqui Valley when I'm 12 or 13. Everything else is either too fuzzy to try and make sense out of or blank. But this is so real, and I'm still so young lying on that cot." She was becoming more and more confused and frustrated.

"Layle? Erin? Are you two alright?" The pale woman asked, concern seen clearly in her eyes.

"Yes Saya, we're fine. Thank you for your last-minute intervention. With Serenity there with us, we couldn't do anything more then what we were." Her father said with a sad shrug.

"Yes, thank you so very much! I know our position at the moment, but I love her more then I could have ever believed possible. I almost broke the oath when those creatures began advancing on her." Her mother said, embracing the woman called Saya, sobbing.

'Wait a second; this must be right after that weird light came! But, that's impossible; I-I saw my parents get killed by those thins and fall to the ground dead! Then if this is after that, they can't be here talking to that woman or anything like that! This is definitely madness, I've lost my mind, and I'm leaving! Now where's that blasted door?' Serenity thought in frustration and started for the door, very annoyed. She had no intention of listening to, or watching this madness any longer. But when she tried to go to the door, she couldn't move, she tried with all her might to walk to the door but her legs and feet wouldn't move. "What the heck?! Why can't I move?! I want to leave, I don't want to hear or see anymore!" She yelled out loud, putting her hands over her ears and closing her eyes, but it didn't work, she could still hear and see them. "Be quiet! Just be quiet!" But they still continued to talk, and nothing she did seemed to affect them at all.

"I know, Layle, I know." Saya said, nodding and patting her mother gently on the back. "So how is she? Is she badly injured?" She asked turning toward the cot in the corner where Serenity was lying, asleep.

"She's just fine, Elizabeth of the Earth clan and Cheyenne of the Water clan have already come and attended to her injuries though they were very few and could barely be called injuries in the first place." Her mother said going and sitting on the edge of the cot and stroking Chibi-Serenity's hair lovingly.

"She's tough, I'll tell you that much. She'll definitely be a fighter when she gets older." Erin, Serenity's father, said to Saya, his arms crossed and a crooked but proud smile on his face.

"I agree, to survive some of the blows she must have gotten from those things, she would have to be." Saya replied to him.

"By the way, what were those things anyway? I've never seen anything like them before." He asked, walking to stand and stare out the window closest to him.

"From what Madison and Samantha of the Earth clan can tell, they seem to be a new breed of Roth, since we have been able to dispatch the older versions more and more easily." Saya said, going to sit at the desk by the door and pulling a book off the shelf to the right of the desk.

"Blast that demon who calls himself a divine being!" her father said forcefully through gritted teeth, slamming his fist on the wall by the window, his eyes blazing with pure malice. A slight breeze seemed to come out of nowhere, growing in force, almost blew out the candles in the simple iron chandelier hanging above their heads.

"Easy Erin, just calm down, deep breaths. You don't want to lose it and risk waking up or hurting little Seri." Layle said soothingly, getting up carefully from the cot and going over to put a calming, yet restraining, hand on her husband's shoulder.

"Layle's right Erin, you took an oath that Serenity would never find out about either of you. Don't break it now." Saya said in a soft voice, her ice-blue eyes willing him to calm down. Erin took a deep breath; the wind slowly subsides as he turns away from the window, his hands still curled tightly into fists.

"-sigh- I'm sorry, it's just that when I think of Him I get so angry and forget about everything else." He said, his face falling as he said this.

"Yes, I'm quite aware of your little rampages." Saya said letting out a short laugh. "Honestly, I think that you would have been better off born of the Fire clan, not the Wind, your personality suits it better, but I guess that's from your mother then since you were granted Wind from your father and Sora. But I agree, Lord Sesshomaru does throw many annoying things at us" she said, growing serious" as well as the thought of him causing the blood of any Wizard to boil with what he did to the ones who granted us these precious gifts." She set the book aside, seeming to no longer have any interest in what it said and creating a ball of ice in her hand that she began to fiddle with absently. " But that doesn't matter right now. What matters is what is to become of Serenity?" Saya said, looking over at the sleeping child.

"What do you mean 'what is to become of Serenity'?" Layle asked, suddenly very worried still standing over by Erin with her hand still on his shoulder.

"Erin, Layle, just try to stay calm, I know how you feel about Serenity but she will have to be sent away and trained." She said standing up, her hands were up like she was trying to hold back their responses; the ball of ice had vanished from where she had laid it on the desk.

"What?! But Saya, please, she's too young to be alone, she needs her parents to take care of her still!" Erin said, taking a step forward and to the left so that he was between Saya and the cot, panic and determination on his face.

"It can't be avoided Erin, for two reasons. One, you said yourself that she's a fighter, and two, she just saw her mother and father murdered in front of her. If she wakes up and sees you two standing here alive and well, what's she going to think? What do you think that'll do to her, hm?" Saya said in a ridiculing tone, frowning and pointing at the both of them, her eyes as cold as the Ice element she controlled. "I'm sorry both of you, so very, very sorry. You are two of my closest most trusted friends and to have to tell you this is equally painful for me but it's necessary, for your and Serenity's sake." She said, her face full of pain and sadness and her eyes softening from their previous hard, coldness to emotions that were mirrors of what her face showed.

"My poor, poor Seri!" Layle cried, falling to her knees by the cot, heaving with her sobbing into the covers on it. Erin stood behind her, his hands soothingly rubbing her shoulders; tears falling silently down his face. Saya walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Please Saya, I know that you can't ignore the rules if I asked you to just because we're childhood friends but please, please, if you can, make it painless for her, please?" his voice was quiet and he never took his eyes off of Chibi-Serenity's sleeping form.

"I am able to promise that. Her memories will have to be temporarily altered so that she can be trained since there seems to be a concerning amount of interest in her by the Raveners, which are generally very stupid but very obedient creatures and they attacked her and her parents soon after she was born with no order what so ever. You two may be in charge of her training if you wish" she said as quietly as he had "and then when that is done, they will be returned to normal and suppressed. I will see to that personally."

"I will train her and I'll be there with her when her memories are suppressed." Layle said through sobs into the covers. She looked up at Erin with a red face and swollen eyes, her face a mask of deepest sorrow.

"I will as well." Erin said in turn, his voice cracking from his own tears. They both turned to look at Saya. Her face became serious and when she spoke her voice was full of authority.

"Very well. Then as Saya of the Ice clan, only daughter of our leader Jonin and without my mother being in this world, it is my duty to oversee and authorize the activities of each of the clans, Earth, Fire, Ice, Wind, and Water, and their members. With this, I charge you, Erin and Layle of the Wind clan, with the duty of overseeing the training of the child Serenity Sarah Crest, until the time when it is deemed that she is able to survive on her own in the Valley and her memories suppressed. Do you accept this charge?" she said in the customary tone of giving an order.

"We do take this charge and swear it on the name of Arrancar." They said in unison, reciting the oath to reinforce their commitment, their faces solemn in doing this.

"Then it is done, her training will begin tomorrow and her memories have already been altered." Saya replied in an equally solemn tone and she turned to leave. She paused in the door way just before she left and said, with her back to them "Cherish her while you can, I have a feeling that she is more precious than we could ever understand." Then she closed the door and left.

"No! I don't want to be here! I don't want to hear or see anymore of this nonsense!" Serenity yelled, finally managing to break free of the trance-like state she had been in. "This isn't true, they're gone! They're not here anymore! I saw them die; they can't be here! I've watched them die over, and over, and over in that nightmare millions of times!! It's a lie!! They're dead!! DEAD!!!" She began screaming at the top of her lungs, putting her hands back over her ears and closing her eyes. She was shaking her head back and forth violently. "Let me out! Let me out!" she cried, tears streaming down her face now, this was too much for her and she was finally crying for all those other times that she had held them back as well. "I want out." She said, hoarsely, from all her yelling. Then there was nothing, everything had gone completely black this time. She took a step forward and fell off an invisible edge and was spinning, spinning and falling. Farther, faster, out of control, she flailed, her hands darting this way and that, tying to find something, anything, to grab onto to stop her fall but there was nothing. The she hit bottom and everything stopped.

Okey dokey, that's number two, yay! Amazingly enough, I can't think of anything to write here so that's all and please R&R thanx! :D