Welcome back to A Writer's Beginning, a warm welcome coming at you from Mayhemb and I.
Now, Mayhemb and I are having a problem actually at the moment.
You see, as any of you who have played the game have known, (spoiler alert) Reggie ends up dying. Yet at the moment, we are at arms about if Maya could and would be able to save him.
Thus, we're going to give you, the fans. The right to vote.
We're going to be putting up a poll on my Author page, and you will get to vote if she will or won't. Depending on the votes, we may even make an alternate chapter if need be.
So, without further ado, enjoy!
(I'm also going to say happy Birthday to my best friend Elizabeth, who was a small inspiration for Maya's character actually. And in partial this chapter.)
...
Maya frowned as she carefully got on her hands and knees in the bus, and put her hands behind her head. With a satisfied nod the D.U.P. agent who had been talking slammed and locked the metal door shut. All around her the windows were closed too...
Thus, once again, she was trapped in here..
She took a deep breath in, before letting a battered sigh out. Oh, what she would give to just...
Just..
...
What did she want to do anyway?
She knew she had to find Eugene, of course. But...What after that?
The news most likely now had her picture as a 'bio-terrorist', so she couldn't return to the Wonderland of a bar that she had gone to..
Plus, she didn't even know if Eugene wanted her...Or..Was even looking for her..
Shockingly she got up, and laid down on the little mini bench of a seat in the container..
And slipped her eyes closed to try and dream of a better reality.
Eugene had all eyes and ears on the D.U.P. as they were going on and on about getting the bus' ready...And then-
"This just in." One of the many news channels he was listening to hummed out. "The D.U.P. have confirmed that they have captured one of the escaped Bio-Terrorists."
He whipped right to the rectangular screen that was beside him, enlarging it as his eyes widened.
A blurry picture of a red-headed girl in the D.U.P. bus was shown, her looking through the iron-bared windows before they would snap shut...
Maya...
There she was-He..He knew where she was...
Now..To just figure out how to get her out...
Maya sat up with a jolt when the back of the bus was ripped open, to reveal a mythical being. A blue and white angel...Eugene's angel..
She ran to it and grinned as it grabbed ahold of her, sending her up into the sky.
Her ears picked up on the sounds of struggles and fights, yet for a moment..She just felt the wind on her, pushing against her face and almost deafening her ears. The Angel's wings thumping beside her head as she closed her eyes.
The sky was dense with a fog that almost chocked her with how quick they were flying.
And then...
It suddenly stopped as the Angel soared up and over the fog, an orange sky above as the wings of light took her away. Took her right to a large screen, and flew right into it.
Her vision filled with blue and white, her body feeling electrified for a few moments.
And then the familiar warmth of the Dominion.
Her eyes looked at the red area, smiling softly at the area. The Angel quickly descended without so much as a pause. The Angel set her every so gently on one of the base platforms as other people filled the multiple platforms.
One moment, there was ten to twenty people all around her..
And in the next.
None.
The Angels and Demons took them, going and disappearing in little portals.
Both an Angel and a Demon were flying towards her, and in that moment she felt panic. No, she didn't want to go. She didn't want to leave..
"EUGENE!" She called out, scared as she curled up, the wings flapping faster and faster as they got near and then..
...
Two arms wrapped around her gently. No fluttering wings, no sounds of a vortex of pixels opening...Just...Silence...
..
She turned softly and blinked up at the familiar glasses wearing face, tears going to her eyes.. "W..White Rabbit.."
"Shh..Shhh...I..I'm here...It's going to be okay.."
In his arms..
Back with him..
Back where she felt safe she..
She..
...
Maya started crying, shaking as sobs raked through her torso, hugging Eugene tightly.
To have her comfort ripped away was tragic, and maybe the shock of it hadn't registered with her until now..Now that she had the security of it all back..
"I've got you Maya.."
"W..Where did you go?"
"I could ask you that..." He murmured as he pulled back, wiping away her tears.
"I..I feel...The water...I...I didn't...I didn't know where to go and I...I got lost.."
"Maya.."
"B-but don't worry...I..I won't leave, I-I won't...N..Not yet.."
"..No.."
"W..what?"
"Maya, you aren't a person who just...Stays in one place.."
"But..But White Rabbit.."
"You have a life out there...A life that's going to mean something."
"Wait-No...Nonono, please don't.."
"Look...Maya...I'm..I'm doing this for your own good.." He stood up, bringing Maya to her feet as he took a few steps away.
"White R-Eugene-DON'T! DON'T SHUT ME OUT!" She cried out as an Angel flew down, grabbing her.
"I'm sorry Maya..."
"NO!" She cried out as the Angel started flying up, a vortex opening. "EUGENE!"
His figure grew farther and farther away, and all that surrounded her was darkness for the longest time..The blue and white pixels slowly dissolved away from the corner of her eyes as tears dripped down and off her cheeks.
And for a moment that's all she could see.
Darkness..
The coldness of isolation seeping in as her heart filled with the thought.
You're alone again Maya.
Her throat got tighter as the familiar white cell at Curdan Cay started to rise above her, chains extruding from the walls and binding her wrists once more.
"NO! L-LET ME GO!" She cried out, trying to pull away from as the metal didn't stop. Her ankles, her legs, her torso...
Everything started to get crushed beneath the weight of the iron chains, her powers failing to extract any color.
"EUGENE-FETCH-REGGIE!" She called out the only names she could remember...The only ones she had on her arms that she even cared to write down.. "SOMEONE! PLEASE! S-STOP THIS!"
And then it happened...
The needles started ripping through the walls the room started to close in. The floor starting to get warmer and warmer as fires started to ignite around her.
"SOMEONE-"
"-SAVE ME!" Maya jolted up with a gasp, ink that had wrapped around her flowed freely. The black liquid dripping as she panted.
...
A dream...
A nightmare..
Whatever it was, she didn't want it to be real.
Even if Eugene wasn't look for her, even if no one would help her...She'd get out.
She was not going back to Curdan Cay.
The Irish girl shockingly got up, blinking when she felt the bus give a small jolt. They were finally moving...Good, good..
Though that wasn't what caught her attention..
What did was a small little piece of paper that she was sure hadn't been there earlier...With the words "Through the Rabbit Hole?"
She went over, picking up the paper and turning it over to show a little map, with a small bunny mark on an area. Once the page was lifted she felt something..
A breeze..
Where the paper had once been, there was the tiniest hole that was barely a pin-prick it seemed.
Yet, it was big enough for her...
Eugene shook a bit, pale when none of his Angel had returned with Maya.
Had he been wrong?
Had that not been Maya in that picture?
No..Not it was, he was sure of it...
So...
Where was she?
Maya blinked as she came across an empty paint factory.
Usually this place would feel wonderful to her, a paradise to her color filled senses..
Yet it felt..Almost empty...
"Hello Maya." A soft voice whispered around her as the fluttering of papers came to her ears.
The Ink Conduit turned around, trying to find a face to match the voice. "Greetings.."
"You may not know me..Yet I know you."
"W..Who are you?"
"Me?...Well..I suppose you can know my name.."
There was a pause as a paper dove flew down to Maya's feet, and carefully she picked it up..And unfolded it to see the name 'Celia'. "...Celia..."
"I have been watching you, Maya." The paper folded back up, and fluttered away just as soon as it had come to her grasp. "You...And Delsin Rowe.."
"Who is this Rowe?" She softly whispered, the last name feeling..Familiar, to her...To say the least.
"You'll meet him soon enough..But first..I..I wanted to thank you."
"Thank me?"
"You are an inspiration to me.."
"I..I am?" She blinked, confusion over-riding her.
"Yes...You have been doing nothing but fighting for your freedom, and have been trying to re-build yourself. You are the Yin to Delsin Rowe's Yang. You are a subtle aggregator...You have been fighting by not fighting, by pressing the boundaries. You're showing them that we can get on their level, and rock their world more than they ever could."
"Wait a second, my dear Bonnie Lass...I..I haven't done-"
"And that's the thing! It's a natural trait of your's..I..I remember first seeing you in Curdan Cay, all those years ago..We were some of the first people in there...Do you remember me?"
She blinked in confusion, trying and straining to think back.. "I..I beg your pardon, my dear...But I..I don't.."
"No..No, you don't have to apologize...I know how it is. To forget how things were..When the days would just meld together..Where you'd wonder when the pain would never end..Yet you..You were always there..And you always had beautiful words to say.."
She blinked up at the voice as the paper constructed what looked like a mirror image of Maya, yet bound and within her cell once more at Curdan Cay. The paper moved it's lips as the girl's whisper spoke.
It spoke of a poem of Maya Angelou..One of her favorite poems...
A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.
Maya blinked small tears away, the voice was so..Passionate...Had that really been how Celia thought of her?
Of..Of how she remembered her?
"Thank you...Thank you so much, Maya...You were the voice that helped me for some of the longest days in that cell. Your poems of hope that you would say, no matter how many times the guards would tell you to shut up..You don't know how much that helped us...Us, the people who were trapped all around you...So..Thank you."
The paper before her collapsed, the cage being destroyed along with her once broken self..And in place, there laid a field of paper amaryllis...
The flower of freedom...
"Thank you, again, Maya...I will see you, if fate should have it."
With that some of the papers seemed to fly away along with a white light, and Maya was left alone in the room filled with the paper flowers.
Never had she thought that her words and actions, which she had thought were just her own..Had inspired someone in a similar way as her...
Yet...
She vowed to never give up now.
Maya wasn't going to back down from this fight, even if no one was on her side..
She was a leader now, she thought as she picked up one of the delicately made flowers...And she was going to lead help them through the hell that was their reality.
BBB: Mayhemb and I would like to say
Mayhemb: To our friend Elizabeth, Happy Birthday
BBB: And to you our readers
Mayhemb: Who see themselves as leader
BBB: We'll see you soon
Mayhemb: Review and rate, beneath our fine moon
BBB and Mayhemb: Bye Bye~!