This does indeed take place alittle over a week after the "Price of Life" Story that Kris is wrighting.
Also i want to thank everyone who has helped me level YOU ROCK SJS!!
Edit: Changed name to something more tuned towards the short stories ^^;;))
The Awakening
Warm……..it was warm …….nothing like she has felt it was a different warm. It burned, it did not feel right it was…..uncomfortable. What was it? This feeling brushing agenst her body, it was soft but …..It wasn’t…gritty, dirty, ………..sand? Where was she…?
Like a babies eyes opening she saw …nothing a sea of sand and wind, a black and red sky. The sky was sorrow, anger, deceit, discontent. This was a world of hell, there was nothing but everything existed. Here was where she was, and where she would stay…
Pluto weakly pushed herself up from sandy floor that made the up this aired desert. Her glasses cracked her clothing tattered and torn, she inspected herself first her last thoughts a great pain, feeling as she was being ripped apart by a force greater than hers or anyone else she has ever known. She made an attempt to stand only to fall, then to get back up again seemed like a feat beyond ability of anyone. Panting she grasped her chest her heart heart pounding hurting a searing pain as an image of dread flashed in her mind. Then after a moment she was fine again. This time she made it to her feet, observing her position she was at a stupor of where, what, and why.
Carried in the wind of this howling desert, she could hear a calling, ghastly voices, many voices. She couldn’t make them out but it really didn’t matter what they said, there was no importance. But it was a direction to travel, she began to step though the fine sand bogged down by her heals piercing the earth. She did the most logical thing and removed them before continuing.
Holding her hand over her face she held her arm in front of her face as if treading head long into the fierce sandstorm, it seemed like a year since she started walking, it started to get worse she could barley walk forward as her feet seared and boiled in the scorching sand. Then as fast as she woke……there was nothing. She opened her eyes and before her was a very small ‘U’ shaped rock formation. There was a cylinder shaped rock formation what seemed to be a grotto at the bottom where an oasis protruded into the sand. Behind that was an ancient rock formation. The figures resembled those that represented pure and unjust evil. Atop the temple like formation was an eagle wings spared head turned and in its talons was a ring of leaves and in the middle of this circle was a swastika……. In siring pain a ghastly voice slipped into her ear carried and stretched in the wind. Grabbing her head she was bombarded with images of a lab and its sinister purposes, those of witch unclear to the young woman. As fast as they came the voices and images left.
With her since regained she could feel eyes peering on her from everywhere. She felt naked and alone insecure. She wanted to die….. A stream of emotions negative emotions passed through her quickly dropping her to her knees and overloading her since. She fell over and hemriged in pain for a moment before passing out in the sand basking in the searing sun.
Why me……Why did she leave me here..?
She awoke again just like before nothing changed, how long she had been out she couldn’t tell. Placing her hand over her eyes looking up at the sun that still beat down on her from the same place as it did before, she stood again. She felt different this time something seemed to be in order. She made her way to the temple stone pillars lined a path toward the grand entrance. Each pillar holding up the old world war two banners of the Third Rich flair there tattered and dilated existences in the wind, beyond them the entrance was void and black surrounded by effigies of evil and hate. Though this didn’t seem abnormal to the young woman it seemed……..like home.
Stepping into the void within an eye blink she was in a round room. A throne room, decorated in evil hate destruction a strip of bloody cloth traveled the extent of where she stood to a grand throne decorated in a twisted amalgamation of heads and wearing. Metal jutting aquardly from bone, flesh stretched and bolted to steel. Blood soaked spikes thrusting from the arm rests and back making a crown of sorts, skulls lined the bottom of the thrown and eyes that where still in the chair stared off into nowhere but still she felt as if they stared at her emitting a empty emotion, a black dark emotion, as if it was her fault they where placed in such a position.
A ghastly green cloud lit the room from the center where a light beamed down upon there throne. Around it was a “Court” of sorts, a twisted amalgamation of bodies, all of them femilure to her, all of them laying there half eaten away, corroded, dead, the smell was unbearable. She observed the bodies with a head turn from one side to another, they where from every portrait of life, lost, sky raiders, freak show, skulls, scientists, gangs. They where all dead in this kings round court and by the looks of the decay some of them have recently been admitted recently, the girl began to step forward.
Each step she could feel the blood soaked material squish and flow between her toes, bits of flesh and bone lined the floor. Behind her, the bodies began to rise one way or another they made there way to there feet, they all belched out a low toned groan that was endless, it was eerie but half way to the throne they all stood and looked at here, they all talked at once as if to tell there life’s story they all spewed it out she could here them one by one but all at once it was almost to much for the frail woman and she feel to her knees, there stores all different but one part was always the same
Why…Why did they leave me here?”
As fast as they started they stopped. There heads turned toward the thrown. In a moment of stupor she turned to see a man….or a being of sorts, he was just as aquard as the chair of doom he sat in. He sat like a charismatic king slouched both hands resting on the craniums of skulls that tipped the ends of the arm rests and all the eyes where fixed on the woman. The man had a sick twisted smile. His teeth mutated and odd tipped in the format of a razor sharp saw blade. His flesh bolted into steel implants tubes and wearing aquerdly jutting from his skin. Her body sank and before she knew what happened she was kneeling at the foot of the thrown looking up at the demon king.
His breathing was that of a man hooked to life support, it was a weasing mixed in with his voice. Witch was ghastly and deep.
Old …..you are old….why are you in my court
I…..
You do not beling…..in my court……
Why are you here?
I….wanted to help….
You hurt us
The court started groaning in pain and started to shriek out as if the suffering was unimaginable. The king still sat there chest pumping up and down.
I……did not know…
A loud shriek of anger, hate, everything that loathed. Piercing into her deepest darkest point of her soul sending her to the bloody floor.
You take….what is not yours
I did not know…..
Now you have us….in you……you are old….tainted……do not deserve us…….
You are not us…….you are not to have us……we do not want to have you…..
You are here before us………why…..though you know why you are not to have us…..
I….I wanted to help a friend…..
Another loud shriek of hate was made at her. Sending her into a disoriented state, she couldn’t move the world spun.
Know that they are not friend they use us…..they have tainted you. You will return what is ours….and you will leave…..
Unsure of what to say there is a moment where only the groans of the dead in his court still herd.
I don’t have anything.
You have us in you…you took us!
YOU WILL RETURN IT!
I have nothing of yours!
She stood up looking at the king defiantly; the groins of the court chanted “return us”
For a moment the king sat but …….within a blink she was sitting in the chair and she could feel a warm wet feeling coming from her head her eyes looked around and the king’s bladed hand was crushing her face. There was pain more pain, pain, and more pain. She herd shrieks of evil and discontent at her and then an unbearable pain that made her shriek out and fight, flailing her arms about but it wasn’t enough to combat the king and she slipped into an unconscious state.
…….What do I have?….
She woke, numb unable to move, she felt nothing. Though something didn’t feel right, she opened her eyes scanned the room. It was dark and over her was an examination light common in hospitals, next to her was the king, his steel hand digging into her open torso, like a person digging though trash……
What are you doing?
Looking for us…..
What is us?
He pulled out what looked like her liver and tossed it into a pan full of bloody organs to his side sloshing bloody water everywhere.
It is us…
Explain.
You came you took us….we want it back
A power?
The power….
What does it do?
Makes power….
For who?
Them…
Another organ was flung from her body. Then she started to understand that the procedure took something from the reactor……that’s where she was in the reactor….the reactor of Terra Volta wanted its power back….something that was used to cure another…
It was used….
…..
There is no more power!
The king stopped his grotesque, and crude examination. And then stood there as if intreaged.
Its no more it was used to help one of them.
……
The woman laughed
Then we will take what you have taken……
The king grabbed something in her that made her shriek and feel death grasping her soul. Ultament suffering came from her mouth as he started to pull it.
You are ours now…you are me….I control you…..
Something inside of her clicked and she could see words fly in front of her and the king outlined and dilated in red. She could hear a deep computerized German voice speak.
Kern Krieger verteidigung on-line.
Absorbieren Protokoll Aktivieren
Something glowed within her open body, a flash of light and the king hemorrhaged and fell. She felt renewed and stood her body healed and she flooded up towards a light in the darkness. She flew fast knowing that the king would soon fallow….. Something was wrong though she was falling and falling everything went dark and it felt as if she dove into water and blacked out…….
Pluto awoke in a familure spot…sitting up holding her pounding head. Once she got a hold of her since she looked around….it was a fogy morning in Independence Port, she sat in a tied pool on the shore of Terra Volta flicking a dead fish caucus and some trash off her ……..perhaps she could get some food was her first thought as her stomach groaned, then looking down at her naked body….maybe some clothing would suffice for now…
The Return Home
“What now?” she told herself, the soft German voice said. Its hands facing up open palmed, droplets of water attached to the pale white skin and pruned fingertips.
The young looking woman’s mind was blank and showed no emotion to what just happened to her as she still sat in the tide pool. All of the images where fresh and clear in her mind as if it all just happened. What did it all mean? The flags of a dead empire, the Desert fortress, the king and his court all had connections to her specifically her. She knew that the mind had ways of interpretation even to this day researchers have not unlocked its full potential, except that it seems to manifest someone’s mind as a representation of there personality and behavior.
She read a book one that outlined several issues about the mind and the ability to blank out traumatic effects of what pasts may have. She knew of several hero’s that had this problem with there mind, herself with one.
Far off the blast of a fog horn ripped though the air and pulled her from her thoughts. She clenched her hands and stood up her naked body blending in with the rich white fog that the port tend to have on early mornings. Forgetting about her powers for a moment she started to walk and make her way off Power Island to the Valor Bridge. The cement was cold and hard. A reminder of when she first took this walk with a kind man……shaking her head she stopped and looked off into the blank distance.
“Where shall I go?” she told herself softly “Perhaps we should go back to the school?”
She now was at a crossroad of where to go at this point. Her attention averted to a news paper stand. The small boxy object bolted into the sidewalk showed the Paragons times’ latest issue, one week and a day from when she last remembered. It was obvious that the Nuns of the school where aware of her absence and she must have been way overdue on homework.
She let out a long sigh and her right arm went up to rub her left forearm, it didn’t feel right a little tingly. Upon reaching it she realized that it wasn’t there. In Pluto’s nature nothing was too weird even for her own body. She looked down and waved her arm though a green ethereal like appendage. “This is new” she said a hit of surprise! Then as fast as it happened the arm seemed to manifest itself back to its sold form. She remembers back when she first started this long walk that she would be sick and suffer from radiation sickness before any of her new powers manifested themselves. Maybe perhaps the core changed that. Speaking of core she knew that was the first part of her “dream” now to understand the rest.
She stood on the bridge for a bit longer lost in thought before deciding on where to go. “The School can wait….” She said a concerned but yet discontented voice. “I’m going home” she nodded to herself content.
Home….Home was an abandoned run down warehouse that has been almost leveled, the sun pierced through the sheet metal roof half of it missing but the only thing that mattered was the long winding stairwell to the fallout shelter 50Ft below the building. It was old and was built during the end of WWII it could easily house 20 people. But was the home of the previous owner and unnamed doctor that ….well it was a story for a different time….Pluto made her way down the deep dark stairwell to the heavy door at the end of a dark damp hall. A plaque clearly marked “FALLOUT SHELTER” with the yellow and black symbol of the apocalypse.
The hallway though the airlock lead to a small room to the left the Barracks to the right the living area. She picked up a lab coat and the damp dirty coat covered her naked flesh and provided little to no warmth. She did it out of habit since she left the shelter for the SJS.
Past the barracks was the lab and to the power house. There she threw the breakers and the rusty old General Electric Diesel generators kicked on and provided a dim light to the rusty hallways.
The wet footsteps made there way back to the barracks and she stopped outside a sliding door, this door separated from the rest of the uniform facility. It was decorated in faded crayon, a child's drawings of grass and a sun, on the grass was a little girl made in green and with a black arrow pointing down to her it said “Pluto” in a 3 year olds writing. Her hand gently grassed the surface of the door over the drawings as if memories were being scanned back into her mind. She smiled a little before the doors automated motors grinded sliding it open and screeched to a stop.
She stepped into a brightly lit child’s room the décor was that of a little girl. Dolls and fluffy animals where placed everywhere the paint on the walls where white and colored on. This was home, her own personal retreat away from everything that stood 50 Feet above. This was her palace, this was her caravel. In this caravel she was invincible, her fans glossy eyed stuffed balls of fluff watched as she would perform and cheer her on and make her feel like a star. The center of her little world where no one could touch her, the one place she could truly feel happy.
With nothing but a smile on her face she walked over and sat on the bed the springs forming to the contours of her butt still looking around at the happiness this place provided for her. She leaned to her side and her hair fell to the bed still wet from the swim. Flopping on the bed she cured up on the pillow was a cute white and pink glittered unicorn and she smiled as it smiled just as much back.
“I am home happy” she said to the unicorn dubbed “Happy”
Takeing it and hugging it to her chest, laying there for as long as she felt content.
The answer is and always will be.......42