A/N

I would start pressing play on the music right when the man captures her and all the epic stuff should be playing when the "others" show up.  Basically, if you could edit music to certain parts, then pieces of Rittai Kidou would be playing in lots of places in this chapter. ALSO, thanks for 100 reads!

I slowly walked back home after the encounter with the weird boy who called himself Aiden. Aiden seemed like he was nice, but the military was obviously a subject he had strong opinions on. I had some strong opinions about that too so I guess that’s why we clashed a bit. I wanted to know more about him. I don’t meet a lot of new people on a daily basis, so I started to wonder when I was gonna see him again. I had so many question for him. He was going to have a big surprise the next time I see him. If I do see him, I thought sadly to myself.

Walking was always a dangerous thing to do for me. Walking is when I could put my body on auto-pilot and focus more on my thoughts. These thoughts mostly ended up with me depressed or questioning my existence on planet Earth. I loved thinking, it’s just that some thoughts I would prefer to not have thought.

My thoughts on this particular walk home, were aimed at the choice I had made back in the forest moments ago. Was I actually committed to joining the military? I really didn’t know and I didn’t want to think about it at the moment. If I thought about something that life changing I thought I would burst into tears because of stress. I was such a wuss. I cried at almost everything that made me upset or uncomfortable. Bad test grade: cry. Get called a name: cry. Extreme embarrassment: cry. I sighed to myself as I thought these thoughts. I wondered if I was ever going to get over that. I usually felt better after crying though… maybe I shouldn’t have to get over it? No; if I wanted to join the military then I would have to suck it up because there wouldn’t be any time for crying on the battlefield.

My expression hardened as I walked through my home’s front door. My Mother was the only one up, even though I had probably been out for at least over an hour. She was drinking coffee. Something that was actually kind of hard to come by at the moment because of a coffee bean shortage. Coffee would be becoming pretty valuable here soon. I sighed as I took off my teal cloak and slipped off my slip-ons. I felt like talking, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk about it to my Mom. I didn’t want to worry her that not just one of her children could be joining the military, but both. I didn’t even know if one of us would be going or not yet. Maybe I’m just taking this all too seriously. You’re only 13 after all and they won’t even let you join the military yet. Take a moment, and relax.

My weird mood must’ve been showing on my face because my Mother said, “What’s got you so worried?” She took another sip of her coffee.

Crap, I thought. Is it really that obvious? I should work on my pokerface. “Nothing Mom; I’m not worried. Some things that’ve been going on lately has been getting me worked up over nothing lately,” and I gave a relaxed smile. I was trying to listen to bird songs in my head to calm myself down, and I wasn’t sure yet if it was working.

“What kind of things?”

“Oh, just, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

Ugh. “Mom, I’m sorry if I was making you worried or gave you the thought that something was wrong, because nothing’s wrong really. I’ve just been thinking about my future and the thought that I may be having to choose soon kind of started to stress me out. It’s nothing serious.” That’s the kind of answer she was looking for. I had somehow forgotten that if I was too ambiguous with my answer, that she’d inquire more than she had to.

She closed her eyes and drank her coffee. “You shouldn’t be thinking about your future just yet. There’s no rush.”

I smiled despite what was really going on. If only you knew, I thought. “Okay,” is all I said as I walked back up into my room to read for a few minutes before Felix woke up and I’d be forced to stop. That is, unless I wanted him to blab about what I was reading. The thought suddenly occurred to me that I could continue reading in peace in the forest. I grabbed my books and walked back to the forest, with only birds singing in my head. I was glad, no thoughts to deal with.

I can remember exactly when I first came to like the forest as much as I do now. I used to always go there, but it never really had any meaning besides just being a forest that was there. This forest was the place that I had met Eliza for the first time, so it was very special for me. I reminded myself of that day.

………

I walked into the forest alone. I was only 7 and I had gone away from my Mom who was back at the open market. I liked the market, but not that much. It was really loud and it got kind of annoying with all those people trying to sell you things. I had found the forest behind a food stall. I heard the birds and I was intrigued by the noises they made. For some reason, back then I thought that if they were all birds then they should make the same sounds. I apparently, didn’t know that there was different species of birds yet.

The forest wasn’t dark at all like you would think your stereotypical forest would be. Sunlight shone down through the trees’ branches and leaves. It looked interesting and inviting. Not in the least bit dangerous. Giant evergreens and oaks rose high above me, scraping the perfect image that was the sky. Botany wasn’t one of my favorite subjects, though I would get interested in it later, so I didn’t know which exact kind of trees there were in the forest. Only that they looked beautiful. I remember wanting the ability to draw just then, so that I could forever have an image of what that forest looked like. Alas, Felix was the one that was born with the amazing art talent and not me.

I stumbled around the forest, trying to spot some birds. I was getting frustrated because all the birds were flying away from me. I didn’t know that I was making too much noise. I thought I heard footsteps coming and they weren’t far off so I stopped and listened, trying to pinpoint which direction they were coming from. I was only 7, and I didn’t know much about bad people. I mean, I knew that there were bad people who did bad things, but I hadn’t personally had any experience with them. It was kind of the same thing with bullies, which I literally thought they didn’t actually exist until I saw and heard it happen.

The two men were on me in the matter of seconds. I struggled for a full minute before one of them threatened to kill me if I continued. I went limp and sat there, wide-eyed and confused. A giant, dirty had was covering my mouth and I remember being thankful that I didn’t have a stuffy nose. My brain was racing at a million miles per second trying to think about what I was going to do. My arms were pinned to my sides and my mouth still covered. No screaming or fighting. What did they plan to do with me? I was so scared that my thoughts were nothing more than panicked ones with no actual direction.

The tears started to cloud my vision as I saw out of the corner of my eyes a black bag being taken out. Do they plan to put me in that?! I thought. I couldn’t do this anymore! I didn’t know who these people were and what they were doing and I felt helpless in their arms and that there was nothing I could do.

I snapped my eyes open wide as I repeated the words in my head: I am powerless! I am powerless! I am powerless! I am powerless! I am powerless! I am powerless and there’s nothing I can do!

“You make so much as a squeal little missy and I will personally kill all of your family,” the man that had his hand over my mouth whispered to me. “Nod your head if you understand.”

I tried, I really tried to nod my head, but I couldn’t. I was frozen and paralyzed with fear. My blood ran cold and I spaced out because my mind had decided that it was too much for me to handle.

“I said, NOD YOUR HEAD!” He yelled at me.

I was broken out of my trance as I realized the dire situation I was really in. I nodded my head before, what I thought, was a smack to the back of the head to make me unconscious. I knew that that was what was coming. They were going to knock me unconscious and take me somewhere. I would have no control, and I would be powerless.

He raised his hand and I braced myself by shutting my eyes tight and tensing up my muscles as his giant fist came down at me. I never felt that particular blow to the head. I heard a loud BANG of a gun being fired and I saw dust fly up around me. I let go of breath that I didn’t know I was holding.

“HEY!” I heard a young girl yell. She couldn’t have been more than 8, and she was sitting on the branch of a nearby tree, high above us. I looked up at her with terror still extremely evident in my eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?!” She had a musket aimed right at the man that was holding me. She’s going to get herself killed! I thought.

I turned my head ever so slightly to try and see my would-be captors. I didn’t get very far before he hit me hard in the back of my head. He didn’t hit the right spot and I stayed conscious, only pretending to not be. I thought I saw blood trickling down the side of his head coming from his ear. No way! Did she have aim that good? I felt a little more hope. Maybe they would just set me down and run away. They didn’t know how predictable this person was, and she could possibly shoot them any time.

Her eyes shown with confidence I looked up at her slightly. She winked, but not right at me. She knew that if she did, she would give away that I was still conscious. That could get me hurt a lot more, and she knew it.

“I’m not kidding around with you! I will shoot you!” She wasn’t kidding. I may have been only 7 at the time, but I learned at a very young age to read people’s faces.

“But you are kidding around. You small 8 year old you wouldn’t shoot-” he was cut off by the sound of the gun firing twice and both people falling down and yelling in pain. I fell to the ground with a quick thud. I was eager to get out of the man’s hands and away from him. He grabbed my leg at the last minute with a death grip and pulled out a dagger from his belt. As I turned around to face him, I saw that both of them had been shot in their right leg and bleeding profusely. The girl that was in the trees took an animal horn off of her belt and blew into it, creating a full sounding bass note. You could see and hear birds fluttering away in fear from the new sound and the horrible seen that was taking place.

She jumped off of the branch and gave herself a running start as she headed towards me, before the man could slice his dagger into one of my calves.

“Where are they?!” I hear her yell in frustration on her way over. By this point I was freaking out. “Hold on!” I heard a faint zipping sound and the shouting of people. I see her face light up with as the new noises become clearer.

“WE’RE COOOOMMMMIIINNNGGG!” An older man shouts. He’s somewhere in his 20s. He’s wearing a military uniform with a unicorn as his symbol: the MP uniform.

My face looked tons happier and faithful with the arrival of the Police, but is soon twisted in agony as the man stabs me in the back of my leg. I scream bloody murder and shut my eyes, but I can feel their concerned stares. When I open my eyes again, the girl from the trees has finally reached us and has her musket pointed at the man’s head.

She leans down closely to his ear so he can hear her, “Move one more muscle and I won’t hesitate to shoot,” and she starts to lean away when he suddenly reaches out with his arm that isn’t shoving a dagger deep into my leg, he grabs a fistful of her semi-long hair. I can see that her face turns from its previously confident expression to fear-filled. She points the musket lower at his body, obviously trying not to kill him instantly so that he has at least a small chance to live. Instead of shooting him in the head, she shoots him the arm that’s holding her hair.

The man screams out in agony and lets go of both of us. I lay on the forest floor, panting, crying, and powerless, with a dagger dug deep into my left calf. I knew enough about situations like this that I knew that if they took out the dagger here, I might bleed out. The dagger was the only thing stopping the blood flow. I hoped that it wasn’t rusty.

This had all happened by the time the MP arrived. The man who’d stabbed me had had an accomplice. I remembered that he was the one who’d taken out the black bag and was about to shove me into it. His accomplice was running away, and several MP soldiers leapt after him on their 3DM gear, while three others stayed with me. I felt dizzy and I was going into shock.

“Stay with me!” A man yelled. I remember being picked up and thrown onto his back the nicest way a person could be thrown, and the sensation of weightlessness. I’m flying…, was my last thought before I blacked out.