10,000 views!
Thank you to everyone who has ever skimmed, glanced at, read, reviewed, or was appalled by my story. Because all ten THOUSAND of you make me feel happy inside just because you took the precious moments of your tiny life to read my writing. Thank you assorted living organisms of the planent.
Thanks to reviewers:
`XxKingArthurlllxX
`IcelandicPuffinCat
`zhane17
`awesome dt
~Tiruneko ;3
X~33~X
"My name… my name is Gumi Megapoid. I belong nowhere and in many cases, in fact most cases, have been dubbed a grade- A psychopath. People call me the crazy girl, the crowbar girl. They dare each other to beat me up at sleep overs, to try and mess with me. But craziness, true insanity is derived from something deeper, more ferocious than they could imagine. True insanity is the fear of what's around you. The crippling fear that whatever you do, however you do it, you know you will hurt people, even get them killed. And you try and you try to change that, change that part of you, but you know you never can. So your mind changes itself to avoid the pain, the fear. No one can live in constant fear. And sometimes, those changes, bring out the bizarre in us.
"All my life, wherever I happen to go, I get people killed. Once, when I was little, I even got our local paper boy killed. My ball rolled into the street. A car came and well, let's say I never got that ball back. I'm used to the constant chaos the constant fallout, and maybe that's why I'm still moving right now."
Gumi rushes over, sliding out from under the bench and racing towards Len's hacking form. A large jagged piece of metal connected to a burning piece of glass sticks at an angle out of his upper back. His face is twisted in agony, his eyes dash back and forth, scanning and alert. Gumi recoils slightly, noticing how his eyes look. They're bright red, a firey and pulsing red. A crimson red as you've never seen. Think of the most intense shade of red you've ever looked at, whether it be an apple or a Christmas light dangling from a rooftop on a cold night. Now, take that color, and light it on fire.
Gumi's hands, covered by fabric fingerless gloves, scan and gently move across Len's head. He coughs and gags, spewing and sputtering everywhere. Immediately the green haired girl whips off her jacket and ties it above the piece of metal, joining it around Len's waist and pressing him face down into the grass. Using her teeth Gumi rips off a piece of fabric from her gloves and folds it to make a large padded square. She pushes it with a great amount of pressure onto Len's wound.
His body lurches forward violently, he screams in agony. A group of people begin to crowd around the explosion and burning car, besides that none of the other people are insight. None of the girls from earlier, the only really distinguishable things are two large fire trucks. Smoke clings to the air.
Her eyes burn like they're melting, and Gumi reaches for her goggles, pulling them down over her jade green eyes and squinting the pain away. Tears form at the corners of her eyes to help mend the damage caused.
"Think, Gumi. Why won't you think right now? Oh if it would just-"
"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up." Gumi shouts at the screaming Len. Her words are barely heard above the roar of the fire and the sirens anyways.
She takes her other glove and crams it into Len's mouth, quieting his screams to a muffled yelp. Gumi reaches under the bench for her crowbar and her hands fly back upon touching it. The thing is scalding hot, about as hot as an oven cooking something very large. A thought crosses her mind and Gumi hurriedly lifts Len's arm. His palms and fingertips are badly burned, almost broiled. Her crowbar must have been directly in the fire, and this boy must have pulled it out for her.
"You lousy idiot, you bas-" Another pop of an explosion erupts from in front of her. Even through her goggles her eyes burn. Gumi quickly moves to move Len, but he collapses down back to the warm ground and wails in agony. "I'm sorry… this will really, really hurt but otherwise I can't move you." Her hands fly to the scalding piece of metal and she rips with all her strength, and as fast as she can. The shard hits the ground silently, completely hushed by the volume of everything else.
Gumi picks up her crowbar and rests it under Len's right arm. She wraps her arms around his left and coils Len's fingers around the crest of the tool and taps his palm once telling him to grip it. She stops suddenly.
"No burns."
"Who the HELL are you! Start talking right, god damn, NOW!" A fierce female voice shouts. Gumi's eyes travel upward gradually as she hobbles with her victim forward. A blonde haired girl, singed with burns all over, clutching a gun, stands with it aimed at Gumi's head. "Drop, him, now."
"If I do the added shock to his system will put him in even more agony, cause even more damage, and possibly kill him." Gumi keeps walking steadily. Len groans under her arm.
"Are you crazy? This thing is loaded. I said put, him, DOWN." To any other person Rin's face alone would have rendered anyone paralyzed with fear, minus the gun and burns sizzling on her upper arms and legs, and the threats exploding from her mouth.
"Yes, yes I am."
"Rin! Rin!" A sheepish yet terrified female voice screams from somewhere in the distance. "We need to go! Now! Hurry!" Two silhouettes are visible off in the distance beside a park public restroom. One of the figures is significantly smaller, and from the looks on it entirely dependent on the taller one it almost seems to meld into. They disappear into the building.
Rin scoffs furiously and rushes forward, removing the crowbar out from under Len's arm and tossing it aside.
"Bring it!" Gumi snaps back angrily. Rin stops to get it with a low pitched growl.
"You help me get him back and you're gone, hear me?" Rin warns shooting Gumi a glare of ice.
"Oh if only it was that easy. Besides, I kinda like you guys already." Gumi says with a cocky smirk towards Rin.
"Seriously get the hell outta' here before I make you."
Gumi turns to look at Rin and jumps a little in surprise. The blistering and burning skin on her cheeks and neck has all disappeared. Her eyes are the same shade of red, but slowly fading to a duller color.
"Miku open the door!" Rin bangs on the locked door to the park bathrooms. A tall girl with long teal pig tails pulls the door open, and the three rush inside, slamming the door behind them. Rin carries off Len to the far corner of the room beside the toilet where he begins to vomit, Miku sits in the opposite corner, covering something trembling and emitting small animal like noises with her arms and legs. Her red eyes are filled with tears. Her skin is shining and pale but her clothes tell a different story. Massive holes and singed areas line a grey sweat shirt with the number eleven sprawled across the front and the pair of baggy jeans is nearly a pair of shorts. She is missing one of her shoes but has no injuries at all.
"I thought you said you were fixing the damn car!" Rin screams at Gumi, who still stands pressed against the cold wooden door.
"That wasn't me. The explosion came from the back of your van."
"Why the hell did it explode in the first place!" Rin demands, her voice getting louder with each shout.
"That explosion was too big, too loud, too flashy to be any sort of manufacturing defect. And even with a planted bag of fireworks it still wouldn't have been big enough, plus the noise woulda' been different, and I'da known, I've blown up quite a few cars with fireworks… but that's not the point. Your car had a bomb in it. Someone planted a bomb in your car."
"You've gotta' be kidding…" Rin seethes, shaking her head slowly. Her right hand is under Len's back, propping him up, she holds his head at an angle with her left.
"Oh no…" Miku gasps, clenching her eyes shut.
"… It doesn't necessarily mean they found us, Miku. It means they know our car." Rin tries to reassure, to herself more than anyone.
"What do you mean, they found you?" Gumi tries to enter the conversation. Rin ignores her like she never said anything at all. "You may wanna' take that one to the hospital." She says pointing at Len.
"He'll be fine." Rin snaps back forcefully.
The group remains in silence for a while. Eventually Gumi slides down the door and sits with her legs crossed on the floor with the hood of her jacket up, hiding her face. The only noise in the small and dimly lit bathroom is the occasional whimper of the thing in Miku's arms. Suddenly the girl jolts forward.
"…um… Rin?"
"What?"
"My uh… my… shoe." Miku whispers a little embarrassed.
"Go get it."
"…alone?" She asks, staring up at Rin with her now dulled red eyes.
"Yes alone! What am I, everyone's personal bodyguard?" Rin yells angrily, throwing her arms up in the air. By this time Miku has gotten pretty used to Rin's personality, one of her main traits being how she handles stress. When upset or worried, instead of reacting like most people would, Rin shows this with anger. Anger towards any living thing that is in her vicinity at the time, including poor shy Miku.
Gumi watches Miku's thin arms slowly uncoil the thing in her lap. Her hands grip it in an awkward way, and she gently eases it out of her lap. She straightens her knees and stands. The thing is up with her, burying its face into her legs and clinging like a stray animal. The scraggly looking teal haired girl moves uncomfortably with the thing wrapped around her, but she slowly makes her way to the door. Now that the thing is standing and moving, Gumi recognizes it as the monkey bar girl, the little one the boy was holding. Her hair is filled with soot, and noticeably burned off in parts. She is missing large portions of her clothes, what remains of a skirt almost entirely burnt away. If it wasn't for her shirt being a little large and baggy, she would be nearly naked. Two face framing pieces of hair on her head are braided neatly and tied in with light pink rubber bands. Someone took some time to take care of her.
Miku eases out of the child's grasp, and slips out behind the door, closing it silently with as little as a thud. For the brief moment the door was open muttered and indistinct noises of people chattering flow into the room, noises of cars beeping in traffic and water rushing from fire hoses too.
The little charred girl falls to the ground, her knees tucked up to her chin and her face buried in her arms. She is only a few feet from Gumi and she watches her quiver like a leaf. Somehow watching the traumatized girl shake on the floor and mumble incoherent things to herself bothers Gumi. And nothing really seems to bother Gumi.
Slowly the green haired girl removes her hooded leather jacket, and silently drapes it across IA's quivering shoulders. Immediately IA stops whispering and moving. She holds as still as a rock, probably not even breathing. Then she resumes.
A few minutes later the door creaks open and Miku enters holding something under her arm. Rin exchanges a glance with Miku, and she shakes her head in response. Miku turns to Gumi and extends her arm. She is holding Gumi's silver laptop.
"Yours?"
"Yeah, thanks tealie."
"M-Miku." She says shifting uncomfortably as IA resumes her panic-clinging position.
"Gumi. Nice to meet ya'. Well, not really nice considering-"
"God will you please shut up!" Rin nearly screams from across the room. Miku jumps noticeably and Gumi falls silent, something that doesn't happen very often for her.
Gumi opens her computer. The screen is filled with black popup windows containing a system she was working on breaking into. Her fingers fly rapidly amongst the keys, working to their own rhythm, nearly untraceable.
Maybe the best thing about Gumi is her intelligence. She is not emotional, or aware of her surroundings, or the best athlete, but she is a genius. And single handedly, maybe the best hacker in the world. Her life lives in technology, whether it be from computers to cars, she knows it, everything about it. It is her life. Besides the whole pick pocketing thing.
Miku meets Gumi's gaze from across the room. Miku's face looks a little bit terrified.
Gumi turns to Rin.
"He'll die ya' know." She says simply, shattering their hanging silence.
"What?" Rin snaps back with venom.
"He'll die. We're sitting here, watching your brother die."
"How did you-"
"It's kinda' obvious, sweet heart. You look like him with his hair down." Rin grunts angrily. More silence follows. "He's going to go into shock, and bleed out in this dark bathroom in your arms. And frankly, I wouldn't want to die anywhere that smells like this." Rin doesn't respond. "You're watching him die in pain."
Rin stays silent for a while before talking with a tone Miku has never heard before. "So are you."
"Yeah. Yeah I guess I am, huh?"
Another chunk of time passes as early afternoon turns into late afternoon. The sun burns more intense and the constant thrum of people, reporters, and sirens drone down to a gradual murmur of a couple walking on the beach saying to each other, "I heard a car blew up over here earlier." Gumi suddenly erupts from the corner of the room.
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Ha-ha! What now?" She cheers to herself, laughing.
"What's your issue?" Rin asks.
"I broke it."
"Broke what?"
"I broke their fire wall. I hacked into their systems. I traced the signal back from the email they sent me, and baam! I reached their code, all it took was the simple matter of breaking it, and I did. Ha!" She explains while cracking her knuckles.
"Who's system?" Miku asks.
"The computer system of my case worker."
"Case worker?" Miku asks again.
"You know, foster care stuff. Seriously you guys ask a lot of questions, honestly, it's like you all have deep seeded trust issues. Are you all seriously jacked up or something?"
"Takes one to know one." Rin says with a smile.
"I like you, you're great. A bit negative, but great." Gumi laughs cheerfully.
"And you talk too much. Like, way too much."
"Heard worse." Gumi responds. They both laugh.
Suddenly Gumi's voice takes a dark turn. Her voice deepens and her face grows dark. "I'm sorry."
"For what?" Rin asks, still a chuckle in her voice.
"For everything that happened today. Most people in city that have heard of me think I'm cursed. 'Cause whoever hangs out with me, whoever I talk to really, bad stuff happens to them. So I'm sorry that your car exploded, 'cause I'm eighty nine percent positive that I probably had something to do with your car exploding."
"No, it wasn't you. I know that for sure." Rin responds plainly.
"If it makes any difference to you, you helped us." Miku points out.
"I wouldn't call what I did helping. I used your brother as a human shield, got his hands burned, scarred the little girl, annoyed the crap out of you with my rambling, and made you carry my computer back here. Unless you have a different meaning of the word, what I did is not helping."
"Well for whatever it's worth, thank you." Miku says.
Suddenly a noise escapes from the corner of the room. Len slowly sits up, his muscles screaming and aching as each molecule of his body begins to work and move again, newly re animated, most of the blood in his body replaced with newly formed cells. His breath comes in jagged waves, then slowly materializes into an actual pattern, and his lungs hiss back to life. He opens his eyes to see a surprised green haired girl in the corner of the room wearing black leggings and an orange tank top with orange biking goggles on her head and a computer in her lap. Beside her is a yellow crowbar. Her eyes widen with confusion. Her lips move but Len's ears work slower, and only when they have stopped moving does her words become clear, as if before muffled through an ocean.
"How the hell is he alive?"
"My name is Gumi Megapoid, and today I have met a group of people who cannot die. The people I was meant to meet."
Character Pole:
IA- 2
Kaito- 1
Lapis- 2
Len- 4
Miku- 4
Rin- 7
Oliver- 1
Luka- 1
Gumi- [Welcoming the newest character! ^^]
~Tiruneko ;3