Hello, everyone! How is everyone doing in the current circumstance thus far? Because I'm getting emotionally tired from all the social demands being for me and I just want everything to stop and to not speak to anyone for days just be me, my writing and tv shows but I can't...I live in a house with 5 people and the house has 10 rooms, 2 bathrooms, 1 kitchen, 1 sunroom (dad's man cave), my aunt's bedroom, my parents' bedroom, my sister's bedroom, the living room (aka my room) and the storage room. I can't go anywhere and not see people!
I also think I'm nearing a writer's block but I'll try to write as much as I can until I run out of ideas.
This story is also published both on Wattpad (Vicky1599) and Archive of Our Own (Vicky19) and although in Archive of Our Own it's a chapter ahead so you must be warned for spoilers!
In this chapter, I would suggest listening to:
EPIC ROCK Fearless - Kat Leon
Enjoy!
Be Somebody
Chapter 08: New Game Old Self Step Up.
Nansia walked out of the bathroom and got dressed then she sat on her desk and started solving her homework Penelope was gone for some reason.
The following days Nansia had changed completely she was almost all the time late in class but she always handed her assignments in time.
She was always trying to be there for her friends and at the same time, she was thinking about breaking up with Penelope she wasn't in the right state of mind to preserve a relationship.
"Penelope? Can I talk to you?" She asked hesitantly one day and Penelope looked at her confused.
"I know that you did your best to welcome me in this school and in your dorm but I don't think having a relationship at this moment is wise. I mean look how messed up I am. And you saw you how hard I'm trying to keep up and I don't think I can keep up with all of it...I'm sorry." Nansia said to Penelope with calm and sincere tone then held Penelope's hand and apologized.
"I...expected that to happen to be honest. I understand your stress and I agree, we should break up but I hope we can be friends." Penelope said with a sad tone and Nansia's eyes welled up as she hugged Penelope.
"Of course! I wanted us to remain, friends, I didn't proposition that at first because I didn't know how you'd react." Nansia said as she was hugging her now ex-girlfriend.
Both girls let go of each other and Nansia decided to sleep with Hope that night to give space to both of them to deal and process with the breakup.
Hope was crashed and excited at the same time to spent the night with Nansia, they seemed to only have time to be together when Nansia was either hurt or trying to learn about her powers and heritage or/and catch up with school.
That night both girls fell onto Hope's bed with pizza and 500gr ice cream in hand.
"So, what do we do?" Hope asked Nansia with a smile.
"Binge-watch a TV show?" Nansia asked and Hope smiled as she nodded as she reached for her laptop.
Hours later the two girls were asleep on the bed when Nansia woke up from another nightmare of her being back in 2149,
She woke up as tears streamed down her face but Hope hadn't woke up she tiptoed outside and saw Jed sitting in the stairs of the school by himself.
She sat next to him and said nothing as she laid her head to her knees and closed her eyes and let the breeze lick her face.
"What woke you up?" Jed asked just after two minutes of silence not allowing Nansia to be lost in her thoughts as she wanted in the first place.
"Nightmares, you?" She said as she looked at him. Her tone revealing how done she was with all the nightmares while she stretched her legs and grimaced at the sound of her bones cracking and the pain that flared up.
Jed heard the sound but didn't comment on it.
"Me too but thanks to you and your attempt to kill yourself, thanks for that." Jed said seriously and Nansia's eyes widen.
"I'm sorry you didn't have to be there you know...keeping me company and all." She said seriously too and with a hint of guilt in her voice.
"Any sane person would stay by the side of someone who just attempted suicide, Nansia, that is how the world reacts!" Jed whispered yelled at her enraged by how unaffected she acted in all of this.
"Well, in your world maybe but in mine, no one gave a shit...if you died they would type a heartfelt Facebook post and be done with it. No one really hears you even if you say exactly how you feel, people are too self-absorbed where I come from." Nansia said with a cold tone as she looked at the gates and the street lights outside of the campus' grounds.
Jed looked at her shocked.
"How many shades of fucked up was your dimension?" Jed asked shocked as he sat up and looked at her.
"How many terrorist attacks have happened since 9/11?" Nansia asked him coldly as she looked at him dead in the eyes.
"Um...in the US or worldwide?" Jed asked as he got gravely serious.
"Worldwide."
"None."
Nansia let out a heartless chuckle before looking at him with tears welling up in her eyes.
"Lucky bastards. Where I come from as of 2017 there have been 26.445 terrorist attacks worldwide. But those calculations were from two years ago because I come from 2019 where there have been 15 more terrorist attacks making them 41.445 terrorist attacks since 2001. So, my world is 41.445 shades of fucked up…" Nansia told him as tears welled up in her eyes and few slipped as they watered her vision and she saw a shade of Jed rubbing his face with his hands while saying;
"Holy shit!" He sounded shocked and in her mind, she remembered how long she's been standing before her computer screen at 3 am looking at the statistics while her younger sister was sleeping in her lab with her teddy bear in arms.
Her mind flashed back to the times she used to watch the news;
Flashback:
She remembers when she just 12 years when she was eating lunch with her family while watching TV in the kitchen of their apartment when the news showed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 showed up on their news report which resulted into another mushroom cloud to be let out and the overheating of the planet to escalate even further into overheating beyond salvation.
She was terrified and thinking what if the nuclear wave will affect her country and people's appearances. But she still had faith in humanity yet she watched as after the nuclear event the plants' colors seemed to become less vibrant and plants made longer to grow and developed.
Then four years later they had been watching the news about the aftermath of a wildfire that burned for three days and burnt five towns killing 115 people in the process and even more land that was covered by trees and farmers' lands killing their year-long hard work on their crops. The images of ghost towns one after the other, of burned bodies and dropped dolls and other toys, burned (ironically) in her own mind in her country.
That day it was the day that she lost the last fiber of hope she had for humanity...for her generation creating a better world. When she was in 2149 seeing everyone and learning what had happened made her feel the irony and pride, her generation had tried in a way to save humanity but ended up fucking it up for good.
She remembered how all those news broadcasts about the terrorist attacks used to shock her and her family and the world but by 2002 it was a normal occurrence, the humanity would be momentarily sad and then move on. By 2019 people had become apathetic and at the same time vicious trying to protect themselves and their loved ones. You couldn't trust anyone and you always had to be mentally and physically ready to accept that your loved could die in a terrorist attack any day any time. That you could very well end up being the victim of one or maybe two or even more in your lifetime.
She remembers how in both hers and her sister's schools they had drills, what you do if a shooter comes in, if a bomb explodes, if someone attempted arson. They were taught how to fight hand in hand combat, how to shoot, how to arms and disarm someone with a weapon, how to disarm bombs and guns, PE class seemed to be a Military Academy and Nursing school all at once. You were taught how to patch up wounds, perform a surgery with basic things, to give CPR and so on.
By the time children graduated high school they could easily work as nurses, EMT or join the army or bomb squad. It was surreal in comparison to what she was told by her grandma who was a teacher all her life before retiring in 1990s after teaching from 1960s, forty years of teaching.
Her grandma died two days after her second round of 18th birthday on her mum's birthday who happened to be her grandma's younger daughter…
When she was in 2149 and she was turned 18, Raven Reyes, Monty Green, Jasper Jordan and Harper McIntyre brought her a makeshift cake made out of rice, their portion of rice, with a candle on top and sang to her happy birthday while she was busy on duty, cleaning the guns and counting and cataloging the armory.
She was shocked and surprised all at once, she had tears in her eyes and she hugged them tight. That day she decided to tell them who she truly was…
Everyone in the closet stared at her gaping in shock and she took a newspaper from her pants, before she went into a psychic meltdown after learning of her best friend's death in the terrorist attack in Belgium, she had grabbed her school's newspaper and there was an article on her best friend Marie's cooking competition and her best friend's Karen's article on her take of the new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie called Avengers. There was also an article about her cousins', Helena and Andreas, success in a International STEM competition with an AI, the prototype of what they knew to be now ALLIE.
She told them she had it in her pocket when she appeared in here, she told them that one minute she was fighting an anxiety attack alone in her school's bathroom and the moment she closed her eyes and re-opened them she was laying in a jail cell in space and in her jail clothes there was the same paper and looked brand new, even smelled like freshly printed paper!
Raven and Jasper were the first to shake off the shock and start asking questions as to why she time traveled. Monty and Harper were the seconds who then asked the real questions, was she here to fix things? That made Raven and Jasper to wonder about the time continuum and about what happened to her family after her disappearance. That led them to the control room of the Ark where Raven searched on the archives about a Vasiliki Athanasia Andoniadou.
They saw that they had put her as a missing person for 10 years and then declared her dead in 20 years after her disappearance. That led her cousins Helena and Andreas and their team in MIT to develop a basic version of ALLIE that was able to find missing people based on their social media tracking and DNA sightings. At the same time Helena was researching a plan B planet and she found one and named him Alpha and it was located Goldilocks zone in a solar system 60.000 light years away. And how Helena after MIT signed a contract with NASA and started training to become an astronaut to lead a space mission along with Oswin Oswald, Rupert Oswald, Katerina Callius, Susie Fontana Brooke. In that mission Helena died in landing when they crashed and she left behind her brother and niece, Becca Franco (had chosen her mother's maiden name). The rest of the crew were forced to return to Earth by NASA.
Couple years later they sent again Russell Lightbourne, Simone Lightbourne, Priya Desai, Daniel Lee, Faye Lee, Victor Lee, Miranda Mason, Jasmine Mason, Caleb Mason and their kids; Ryker Desai and Josephine Lightbourne.
Andreas' daughter, Becca, was the one that made the AI into what she and her friends knew as ALLIE, 33 years later after Becca's father was institutionalized on accounts of insanity and records were revealed that he always struggled with schizophrenia. Helena, on the other hand before her death, went on to work with NASA and designed the first mining ships, Elligius I, II, III and IV and then the Ark. Her sister, Nicolette, inspired by her sister's disappearance join the Military and climbed the chain of command and became the 1st Greek descent woman and a Commander to have a seat in NATO, she went on to fight global terrorism and leading four different NATO troops and then later urging the United Nations to sign a contract with NASA and her cousin's daughter in order to launch the Ark.
Raven also found an article that Nicolette had married and had a son who got tangled with terrorism which forced Nicolette to lead the public manhunt on her son and later to trial him and imprison him. Nicolette had public issued a statement that she was disgusted by the actions of her son and that after his involvement with 4 terrorist attacks and two terrorist groups she disowned him and said that he was no son to her and that global peace was and always be her first priority.
Nicolette was assassinated at the age of 50 after being retired for five months, the sniper was caught and it identify as her son who had escaped prison two months prior. Then her son was locked on a prison ship but that was coded date Raven couldn't hack neither could Jasper.
They also learned that her mum and her step- dad had divorced three years after her disappearance and her sister and step-dad spoke to the police and in court and told the world of the abuse both herself and her sister went through under their mother, at 17 years old Nicolette was living a safe and peaceful life with her dad while their mother was imprisoned for 15 years on accounts of domestic abuse and neglect with no chance for parole because she was considered a danger to her only surviving daughter and ex-husband.
Nansia had been crying while reading the newspapers and apologizing for all the harm her family had done to the world.
Jasper and Raven were the first to hug her as her knees buckled and she started to sob. Harper and Monty were staring shock at the photo of Nansia as a little girl and as teen next to her step-dad who was dressed in his Army uniform and he was accepting a metal. They couldn't fathom any of the information in the big screens.
All five of them were too engrossed in what was going in their minds that didn't listen to the door unlocking and Murphy, Bellamy and Clarke with Abby and Kane walked in on them. They saw Nansia stumble backwards repeating no no no after everything and whispering that her little sister was assassinated by her own son, her nephew. And then Raven and Jasper hugged her as she fell to her knees.
Shocked Abby and Kane looked at the pictures and at Nansia's broken state.
"What the fuck is going on?" Bellamy had asked in shock and confusion.
Harper had easily lied saying how Nansia wanted to search through her ancestors' achieves and she became emotional while Monty quickly put away the information. Raven and Jasper excused themselves as they held a distraught Nansia and walked away to her assigned room.
The next day Nansia saw how she was always shadowed by Murphy or Bellamy or Octavia…it pissed her off.
She had been talking to Raven and Jasper about telling Monty and Harper to meet her in the forest to show them something.
She had managed to get away from Bellamy, Clarke and Octavia when the sun was setting down. That day she showed them her element manipulation and her telekinesis. They were shock and amazed then Monty and Harper agreed to help her find out what that is and why she has powers. They secretly had her blood tested in the labs but in two days Eric stormed in the lab and saw Nansia with a bunch of tubes and Raven and Monty fighting over who will handle the computer and analyze the data while Nansia looked pale and ready to pass out and Harper with Jasper were trying to keep her from looking at the needles stuck in her arms.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU IDIOTS DOING?" Eric exclaimed in shock and terror making everyone jump.
And just like that Eric learned the truth too. And punched Nansia then apologized….and became slowly her ally.
End of Flashback:
Suddenly Jed's hands on her shoulder made her look up and wipe her tears with her hands and took four deep breaths and then exhaled trying to keep herself from crying again since without her knowledge as she was lost in her thoughts and down memory lane that she had started to silently cry as Jed watched her. It seemed longer but in honesty, it was a mere minute.
"Okay, you win! Now can we talk about something less depressive?" Jed asked and Nansia nodded as she try to make herself feel a little better and push the sad thoughts away from her mind and focus on the present.
"Alright! Favorite movies?" She asked as she clapped her hands to her thighs as she sat Indian style and turn to face him as her back rested on the handles of the stairs.
Jed copied her stance and started talking.
It was when the sun started to rise and birds to sing loudly which made the teens look at the sky chuckle and quickly scramble to their feet and rush inside but before Jed stopped her and said;
"Do you want after practice to meet at Mystic Grill?" He asked her and he seemed nervous.
"Wait? You are asking me on a date?" Nansia asked confused and Jed panicked.
"No! I know you just broke up with Penelope, she told me, and I wanted to make sure you're okay...I was trying to ask you if you wanted to hang out maybe get dinner...as friends." Jed explained his way of thinking quickly and made Nansia nod.
"I can't, I would like that but I can't I'm working after school there and my shifts ends at 12 am." Nansia explained with a small smile.
"Oh! Do you want me to come and get you so you won't have to walk alone back?" Jed asked her and she smiled as she nodded.
"Okay, i'll be there at 11:30 pm. Bye!" He said smiling as he rushed to the opposite direction that she was going heading towards the boy's section.
Nansia walked back to Hope's dorm and saw her sleeping, she looked at her watch and say it was 5 am. She had two hours to sleep, she quickly took off her pants since she sat on the floor with them on and she didn't know how dirty the ground was and went under the covers.
Sleep took her quickly and woke up at Hope shaking her.
"Amazing news! The first two classes have been canceled! Miss Angelica's waters' just broke and she is giving birth!" Hope exclaimed and Nansia smiled as she thanked Hope for letting her know and turn around to sleep some more.
Two hours later Hope woke her up again for the rest of the classes, Nansia wasn't that happy about it but hey, what can you do?
Once classes were over Nansia rushed into Hope's dorm changed quickly in her uniform and grabbed her sneakers as she rushed out.
She ran to the bus stop and managed to catch the bus on time. She ate on the bus as she watched the houses go by.
In 30 minutes the bus stopped outside Mystic Grill and she climbed down and went inside just in time.
She walked into the kitchens, punched in her card, and started washing the dishes that were already there.
Back in the Salvatore School, Hope and the rest were trying to figure out all about Malivore and the keys while Nansia was so unaware of that quest approaching.
Time passed very quickly for some and very slowly for others such as Nansia who spent six hours on her feet with a 10-minute break in between as she washed dishes, glasses and cutlery.
Nansia walked towards the booths where she saw Jed sitting there waiting for her but this time he was deep in thoughts. Jed was in the office along with the rest of the core group and he was let known how serious Malivore was and Dr. Saltzman had asked them not to reveal to Nansia because she was too absorbed in her own search to find who she is and what's her purpose that she got easily distracted. Yes, she would be aware of the monster attacks but she wouldn't always be in the know about Malivore. She needed to figure out her lineage.
So, Jed, was forced to lie instead of telling what truly bothered him.
"Hey!" Nansia said tiredly as she sat down once she put the burgers on the table and the two started eating.
"Hey, how was work?" Jed asked as he tried to focus on Nansia but failed and Nansia sensed that.
"What is wrong? Did something happen at school?" Nansia asked worried and Jed was forced to put a facade.
"I'm fine nothing happen just homework. So, tell me, how was work? Come on, little wolf, distract me from math and all that jazz...hey it rhymed!" Jed said in a joking manner trying to sell that it was just homework.
Nansia studied his face for a few minutes before starting to ramble on and on about how she got along with everyone in the kitchen but what Jed didn't know was that Nansia had been lied to many times and she had lied herself, she could tell that Jed was lying even if his heart didn't speed up.
But she knew better than anyone that people were allowed, they had the right, to have secrets and keep things to themselves.
So, she let it be. Besides, she and Jed were newly acquainted and she didn't expect him to open up to her so soon or ever.
Once they were done eating what Nansia had brought to them and then she quickly washed the dishes and said goodbye to Margarita Lynwood-Fell who was left to close up shop.
They started walking back to the school grounds in silence since Nansia noticed how Jed seemed to be deep in thoughts.
When they arrived at the gate they opened it and Nansia turned to Jed and said;
"I know for a fact that you're not worried about school stuff and that is okay if you don't want to tell me just talk with someone because I know from experience trying to find a solution to a problem by yourself might be impossible because you might not have thought of the solution that could have been the simplest option and a second mind does indeed help. So, talk to a friend you trust and good luck. Good night, Jed! Thanks for today." Nansia said with a kind and wise tone as they walked up to the school entrance before they went their separate ways.
Jed was caught off guard and just offered her a nod and a tight-lipped smile because he walked away towards his dorm and Nansia watched him leave.
Nansia walked to Hope's dorm and fell as quickly as her head hit the pillow asleep. She was starting to get so sick of the fact that she wouldn't stop herself from going into flashbacks, lost in her mind, while she was around others and just being reminded of how shitty her life was back there.
She had a second chance, something not many had!
She must make the most of it.
She will make the most of it.
So? What do you think? Will Nansia make most of it? What do you think will happen next?
I can't wait for your reviews!