Bravery = Stupidity

I never thought that I'd look at a plasma bolted gun and find its barrel appealing. But that day that I told Edmond how I felt, a sense of complete and utter idiomatic patheticness fell over me. What was I thinking??? I'll admit that I was rather blunt about it, I just came out and said it.

"I'm pretty obvious about the way I feel about people. I bet you already know, but I like you. And we dont have to worry about it right now, we can totally forget this conversation if you want, but I was wondering if you liked me back." He didnt really say anything, in fact, he nearly immediately changed the subject. But he didn't change the subject like he was mad at me or like he was even saying no. We just immediately got off track, and I went with him.

"So I guess... We're forgetting this conversation?" I asked tentatively.

"For now." He said reassuringly. Like, we were going to talk about this later, just not at the moment. And I was alright with that. It wasn't a flat out NO, and that was pretty good... Considering.

Out here we have a system of communication called "Talkie Comm Links", which is somewhat like bluetooth but every person in the world has it installed by the time they are 12. Its a small chip in the side of your neck that hooks into your vision and allows you to have facial recognition with anyone you see. No one asks for names anymore, what's the point? That was something interesting I found about Edmond. He didnt have one; he didnt want one. For me the comm allowed contact between him and I. He owned a large, old-age computer that allowed him to talk to me through a text based thought program.

I would stay up all night talking to him on the comm, watching the text appear behind my eyes and responding with similar thoughts. We talked about everything, and nothing. It was the funnest time I'd ever had. Going to school eventually became a fun concept to me, I would see him in the morning, at lunch break, and after school. He wanted to talk to me. He told me all about his story that he was writing, and asking me to sketch his characters out for him, which I did. He was quite pleased with them.

I decided to bring up the subject again. The subject that we had said to forget. I asked him if he felt the same way...

He said yes. I gave him a big hug and then walked away, the biggest smile in the world was plastered on my face. I guess sometimes bravery pays off, even though I had been stupid enough to start a relationship over the summer. Everyone seems to tell me that summer relationships end when summer ends. I hope and pray that isn't the case with Edmond and I, because our relationship is something special.

Battles Well Fought

Everything is held together by some sort of lynch pin, and most of the time the pin is the most obscure thing in your life. My lynch pin was Edmond. I had no idea what a big affect he had on me until one night I had a dream about him. It was like my subconcious was telling me to look in the right direction, I finally did. And I realized... Edmond is brilliant.
Edmond loves the old things.
He appreciated them with the same vigor and devotion as I had. We spent hours together, talking about everything on the face of Renascentia. Including the fact that he had broken up with his most recent interest, and I hate to say it, but that was somewhat pleasing to me. I was not pleased that he was unhappy because of it, but... It was possible he no longer had feelings for her. It took me a while to figure out what I was going to do about how I felt about him. It was the first time in my life that I'd ever been under an intense influence such as this, and under no circumstances was I going to destroy the friendship with him that was so precious to me. Romantically or not, Edmond was a big chunk of my life. So I left it alone. I left it alone for a LONG while.

Every Ancient is sent into the field for a test battle against the Nameless. There are not many survivors on these trips, but 160 years old didn't seem all that bad of a time to die. Besides, Edmond was on my team. The whole group of Ancients was going into battle every day, but now I was playing a more active part. I knew what these things looked like, I knew that I may one day become one of them, but I was going to fight them. I was going to fight the idea of them until my very last breath, and Edmond was going to help me. The drop point was 100 yards from the edge of the grey zone, the wall where the monsters are hiding. I unholdstered my gunblade and let it shift into the sword mode. I held the blade in a perfect position and stared at the wall of swarming monsters, suddenly alerted to my presence. Edmond was at my side. I knew I wasn't supposed to, I knew the battle ethic and was aware that charging dead into the center of that legion was most likely going to get me killed... But as I looked into the eyes of those creatures, I saw something that I could possibly become. I hated them. And I hated myself for being like them. So I charged. I launched myself through the front line of defense and released a battle cry that was worth remembering. I ran in, but none of them touched me. All of the monsters moved out of my way, and I glared at them, demanding a reason for them to attack. But they didn't move. They looked at me with smiles on their wicked faces. I stood there, surrounded by the darkness and the demons and nothing was happening. It was all still.

"Don't fight us, Annabel." I heard a sweet voice call out to me. I whipped around, sword at the ready and my feet in a ready position. It was the same demon that I had seen behind the metal shop. "I've been waiting for you."

"Why?"
"You could have everything you want." She stepped forward and I was reminded of how beautiful she really was. Most of the other Nameless were not dressed in such elegant clothing or had such a perfect smile, but there she stood in all her dark glory, and she was offering me something that she knew I wanted. "Why do you deny yourself happiness, Annabel? You could be wonderful. You could have all the pleasures in the world. There are many men that would have you, dear. Don't you know?"
I was silent.
"Oh, come, come now." She laughed. "I know what it is you want. I know what it is you hide. Throw aside your ridiculous faith, come with me. I can show you everything." She promised me exactly what I wanted. She was tempting me with the chance to be like her, "free", from rules and restrictions.

But from the darkness I heard a voice. It was Edmond's. He was lost in the thickness of the dark too. He ran into the opening that I had somehow created in the midst of all these demons, and he stood by me. I couldn't see his demon -- the one who was telling him to let go of his dreams and his world -- but I could see him there. He was looking at me, and I was looking at him. Edmond and I walked out of the darkness together that day, his hand in mine, and neither of us looked back.

We went back to school, surviving something that most people didn't even fully understand. We now knew what the purpose of the Nameless was... They were a form of anti religion, almost. Converting whole towns and cities, this battle was not a physical one like most of us thought. You cannot kill the darkness with a gun. They are there to tempt you with what you feel like you want most. Edmond and I's relationship began to be closer than I had ever imagined getting to someone. I never, ever let my guard slide back up with him.

I woke up one morning, stared at the holographic clock and groaned. I had woken up an hour earlier than necessary. I inhaled the oxygen that was fed into my room through a small golden vent and allowed a small, vague smile to cross my lips. Then my eyes snapped open when I realized the reason for my early arousal.

The pain was gone.

I flung the sheets from my legs and stared at my inner thigh. The ashen color had disappeared entirely. I dared my fingers to touch the skin where the source of my anguish had once come. It was perfectly smooth. Edmond had renewed my faith. How could one person have helped with my heartache so much? I looked at the image in the mirror and was quite pleased to see that my mind was not playing tricks on me. The blotch was gone.

I donned a cute red top, a black over-jacket, and I reached in my closet for a bundle of jean pants. I stopped myself, and reached for the shorts instead. Today I was going to tell him how I felt about him.

I stared in the mirror and saluted myself "Good luck, soldier." And I was off.

The Masks We Wear

It's amazing how one day you can be walking along, pretending to enjoy your life, and then someone makes you realize how much you've been missing. Somehow it's also terrifying, because you're afraid that once the mask comes off your face there will be nothing underneath. I was afraid that I'd been pretending so long that the real me had faded into nothingness.

Educating yourself as a young 160 year old girl, is a very highly thought of thing. I had to master the different techniques of fighting the Nameless and creating a life for myself. I had five classes and then a lunch period and a small religious class available only to Ancients.

I believe it was a Monday when I walked into one of my classes and sat down next to a pretty Ancient girl named Alice. She was tall, beautiful, blonde, and for some reason, determined to make my day better. I was very confused when she started to talk to me...Not that I thought she wouldn't because I had any bad impressions about her, but I was confused because this girl had never spoken to me before when we had had classes together. So she just up and started a conversation with me, and I slowly became aware that this girl was actually really nice. Soon, we were friends. But despite my happiness at having found a friend that was neither stupid nor human, the mark on my leg was spreading. I wore my faded jeans to cover the growing disease. It finally occurred to me that my old friends in conventional school were NOT going to come back to rescue me. I had to make friends here. So I left my wretched little band of half-brained kids, and asked Alice if she would let me stay with her at lunchtime. And she happily agreed.

Alice hung out with a giant group of Ancients. All laughing around the circular table in the lunchroom, their auras were aglow with happiness. I smiled, and an instant relief flooded over me. These people were going to become my friends. I sat down at an open seat, and just then I knew that my previous observation was correct. There was one person I was particularly glad to meet, Hal. Hal was a tall, stout boy with a large jaw and a hilarious sense of light humor. Hal liked the older things. Not the same amount, or to the same degree, but he appreciated them somewhat. And that's what made us click. We were friends, and the rest of our friends considered this a sign of a possible relationship. Hal was nice. Hal was funny. But Hal and I....NO. I just didn't look at him like that. It was brilliant, being with these people in a happy place, but then school would end... And I was left to plunge back into the battlefield. Alone.

One day, I came into lunch and found a new person sitting at the table. This person's name was Edmond. The thing about our lunch table is that if you don't grab a seat quickly, you are not going to grab a seat at all. If you leave, your seat will be taken. So I got up to get lunch, and Edmond, Hal and I were forced to leave the table and sit at another. Edmond was just barely taller than me with dark brown hair and adorably squinted brown eyes. He had broad shoulders, a broad smile, and a dark -- somewhat perverted -- sense of humor. I liked him immediately. I didn't like him in the sense that I would have been interested in him as a romance, but he was so much fun that I could not let him go.

Hal developed a random spasm of meanness where he would just say something terribly rude and then go back to being nice. It began occurring more and more often until I got so tired of it, I discontinued my habitual communication with him entirely. I eventually left the big group entirely, sitting at a table with Edmond and LaMar (a short silky-haired younger friend). At this time, I also became friends with a tall blond boy named Jonah. I went boy-crazy over Jonah. He was so tall, and so athletic and fun and flirty, I assumed he liked me too. I was planning on telling him at the New Years Dance, which I attended with a happy heart. Most dances given for youth are quite large, hundreds of kids swarm into the massive room to forget about the monsters outside that we would have to fight again tomorrow. Edmond and LaMar were there, and I spent most of my time with them. We laughed, played a small game of holographic hockey, and danced. On the sides of the dance floor, Edmond and I sat down together to catch our breath.

"I've never told anyone this, but I've been crazy about Jessica for about a year." He told me. I half-smiled and glanced over at the short blond in the swarm of dancing people.

"You should ask her out." I told him. He looked at me for a minute, smirked, and then stood up. The dance was about to end. I felt a twinge of jealousy as I watched him dance with her, at the time I wasn't certain why because I was blinded by my feelings for Jonah... I could not see past my silly little mask. At the end of the dance, I told Jonah how I felt about him. I was promptly refused, but because of the context, and the way that he said it, I was lead to believe that he had feelings for me too. For the next two hours, I was the happiest girl on earth. Edmond and LaMar came over to my house and we hung out for a bit; enjoying the New Years moment. But then they went home, and my moment was over.

Then I found out that I was wrong. Jonah didn't have feelings for me. A: I felt like the biggest fool on the face of the planet. B: I thought he was a jerk for not making it more clear to me, so I lost all of my feelings for him. And that was that. And I was done faking everything, I was done lying to make people feel better, I was done wearing even half of the mask that I was wearing before.

I threw that mask out... It was never seen again.

Becoming Something Else

I love old things. Things from your time. I managed to send these messages through a complex system based on constant black holes and scrambled information shot at just the right angle. It was a science developed in an attempt to rewrite fate, but it isn't possible to do that. You cannot erase the original reason that you wrote the message because it creates too much of a paradox. But I can send various messages through as long as they cannot affect my own future. It won't.

But like I said, I love old things. I love the old movies like Star Trek, the Princess Bride, Star Wars, and the A-Team. I love the TV shows like Stargate SG-1, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Castle, Bones, and Firefly. I'm rejected in my time. The humans show so little interest in the things of the past, facing the future with the 3800th version of the Ipod, and little tablets that fold into a compact, clear box about the width of your thumb. There's a great deal of soul in the entertainment from so long ago; the books, the movies, the television and the elegance of design put into technology and fashion. All that is left now is the half-finished story lines and the plainly colored bodysuits that self clean every day. So boring. I like a diverse wardrobe, so I do the practical, cheap thing... I make my own clothes.

I recently was upgraded from conventional school to the Golden Arch School of Interactive Sciences and Arts (GASISA). Although that was what the school was originally designed for, the Golden Arch School had become a military base. You go in seven shifts -- not unlike my old school, but this was more efficient -- and each shift you are moved to a different site, and ideally we are supposed to be disciplined for success. It was a training school, promoting your own skills to advance against the Nameless in different ways. A better community is better defended. It was supposed to prepare you for the "real world".

Supposed to.

There I felt rather obscure, despite the fact that a third of the school's population were Ancients. I could not find anyone who cared about the old things in the way that I did, there was no one to relate to. I made friends with a small group of obnoxiously loud humans, and even went through a small relationship with one. But I never loved him, though he claimed to love me. So I huddled in the corner with people who vaguely cared about my existence. Which was more than I could say for most of the school.

The very essence of being an Ancient is to have faith in our religion, but it's is difficult when your religious instructors begin to contradict each other. My disciplinarian for the year made quite a few statements that completely disregarded the allegations of my teacher the year before. I spent hours pouring over the books in my possession, and I found how they could get confused because it confused me too.

Considering how much I missed my friends, how much I missed having a father in my life, how confused and dismayed I was at the idea that I may not be able to turn to a loving God...I turned my back on my faith. I stopped believing. I became angry, one of the forces that binds the darkness together. Weeks went by and a dark cloud hung over my head, a cloud of dismay and fear.

The humans I called "friends" were terrible warriors. Their determination to do anything with their lives was nonexistent. No ambition. No progression. It had been a long day, I wanted to go home, but one of the humans insisted that I visit one of their houses. I reluctantly agreed, not really wanting to spend more time with them than I had to. I went inside, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a bowl of sliced, raw beef. I thought nothing of it at first, but then I knew what they did. They used the meat to fed the Nameless like pigeons at a park. I wanted to tell them to get it away. To stop letting such demons into their home. But I was a guest... And if I didn't have them, then who did I have? So I swallowed my belief and shoved it somewhere deep inside where I didn't have to look it in the eye. I stuffed my guilt with lies so I could live with myself.

Weeks passed, and the weeks slowed into months. With every passing moment I was easing my way into some sort of pot, and I couldn't help but feel that the water was going to boil. I knew I didnt care enough to jump out. I helped my "friends" feed the demons. When night fell, I even danced with them like we were intimate allies. I was becoming the person I vowed I would never be.

One morning I awoke to a harsh burning sensation in my thigh. I gasped at the pain, rolling out of the thin sheets and onto the floor. My leg could not hold me up, and in my surprise I slipped -- hurtling towards the floor. Beads of sweat were climbing out of my pours as I withstood the pain, making the agonizing trio to fully see myself in the mirror. I blinked away drowsiness, rubbing my eyes to focus the picture and managed a clear look at the inside of my thigh. It was dark, growing into a deep ash color. I choked on my thoughts before they could come to my lips. I was turning into a monster. That's how it happened. That is how the Nameless were created. I stared at the blemish with wandering thoughts... They turned into the dark ones because their minds were so submerged in faithlessness, fear, and anger. They once were Ancients. Struggling to take deep breaths, I leaned on my leg. The pain was bearable now, as most pains are bearable once you accept their existence. It was a part of me, now. I pulled my hair back and stared into my own eyes.

I was a monster.

I walked to school that day, with my gunblade on my hip and my coat wrapped tightly around me. The chill in the air and the wound on my leg began to play a toll on me that I was not prepared for, and the usually simple walk to school became a rather painful trek. I paused near an alleyway, positive that I had heard something shuffle around in the group of clustered trash. I removed my gunblade from its holster. The weapon made a satisfying click as it's small hinges worked it into the blade position. I was right, there WAS something moving in the dark. The Nameless are rarely seen outside their legions, and if you witness the legions you rarely live to tell the tale. A small group is normal, especially when invited. But one by itself? Practically unheard of. The magic. Their aura. I could smell her already, and the odd thing was... She smelled lovely. The figure stood, and I was aware of her perfectly curvy figure and her deep red eyes and her long, silky white hair. She was quite beautiful, and I paused. She eyed me, her pointed ears twitching and her lips shivering in anger. She was hate, she was temptation, she was loathing, but she also knew that she'd be dead if she attacked me.
There was a moment of silence between us. She was obviously lost, or abandoned. Either way, she didn't want to be here. Oh, she wanted to kill me, I was sure of it, I could see it in her eyes. That restlessness... I recognized it from the mirror this morning. I lowered my blade. She looked suspicious for a moment, but took her leave nonetheless. I watched her scamper away because I knew... That could be me.

The Beginning of the Metaphor

In the deepness of night, you can find creatures without names. They are nameless beings that hide in the shadow of the pulsing heart of nightmares. With skin the color of ash and eyes like bloody moons, they huddle to the darkness, appearing eerily human but missing all the light of day that they once treasured. No one dares to seek out those who are already lost to the night. Few ask how the monsters became the way they are. Few know the answer to such a question.

My name is Annabel Lee. And I am one of the few.

I am 160 years old, and a fervent member of a race known as Ancients. The Ancients are recognized for their strength and most importantly their faith, to be an Ancient is to have faith. The appearance of humans in comparison to the ancients is remarkably similar, except for a slight, barely noticeable glow that hovers around us.

The year is 3065. The earth and its inhabitants were forced to leave their homes and expand into the edges of space. A new home was finally found, we called the planet Renascentia, which is latin for "rebirth". Here we settled, and the people began to notice that the planet had a rather... odd affect on them. There were a few who began to live longer, evading death because of a subtle luminosity on their skin, some who stayed the same, and some who disappeared into the darkness entirely. So it was, the "enlightened ones" reestablished a religion that had been forgotten since the earth was lost. They called themselves Ancients, and they lived for hundreds and hundreds of years in the light of the sun and the light of their faith. Humans remained the same, neither light nor dark, too lost in their own beliefs to care about the war being waged between the Ancients and the Nameless that could rip apart all of Renascentia.

I am a soldier. Fighting against the darkness that tears its way through the human population. Once a city is taken, it is shrouded in a hovering ash that covers its residents from the sun, and no one presumes themselves worthy enough to walk into the clouds of fear and anger. All Ancients know that the darkness is more than just the absence of light; it is anger, fear, hatred, and everything that can be found when one is lost in the deep. I fight the Nameless. I am not the strongest soldier, nor am I the most talented, but I am faithful.

This is my story.