Chapter - 4

SHE'S SO UNUSUAL (2)

 

THE LABORATORY

 

The Doctor was reinstating the lost girl back to the empirical chamber. But for some reason, the girl did not resist being brought back to the same place that had kept her close from when she had known herself.

 

While the Doctor had the same distant look on his face, the girl looked at him in wonder. She could feel within herself that his orders could not be defied, more precisely her brain refused to act against him.

 

And in that strangeness, a new question popped up in her mind.

 

“Are you my parent?”

 

“No.” The doctor replied in an extremely reticent demeanor.

 

“But aren’t they the one who cares about you the most?” The girl’s hands were being strapped to the pod sheet, but she was more inclined to have her question answered fairly.

 

“I see that you have learned to talk on your own while you can also mimic my voice speaking to me.” The doctor glanced at the girl’s face which he usually does not do with his experiment subjects unless required to collect data for analysis.

 

“Yes, I have experienced so much in this little time and met so many people. I am looking forward to meeting them again.” During this point, the girl abruptly interrupts with a delirious voice.

 

The Doctor could feel a new shine in those perfectly round yellow eyes that had remained shut in the darkness of this facility for the longest of time he had been here. But now they were shining brighter than anything in this time-forgotten place.

 

The doctor tightens the holds on the girl’s hands and the pod sheet becomes vertical in position next proceeding to move it inside the chamber.

 

“The sky is so blue and the water is deep. Green colors are everywhere. But this place is so dark. How long am I going to stay here?” With a dawdling child’s face, she tried to meet the frigid look on the Doctor’s face.

 

“I don’t know.” The Doctor continuously checks the state of magical circuits and the status of his experiment subject. Unfortunately, the readings were all over the place and he had never seen such defined curves appear before in any of his subjects.

 

“The world is so vast I want to go outside of this place again, maybe forever, and meet my friends. ⸺Yes that’s right I feel it, what I want to do... I want to come to life and LIVE.” The girl hugs the dress she had been given by the first person she had made contact with and brings the hem of the dress close to herself.

 

“No… that can never happen.” The Doctor bangs his hands on the pod shell but the strong magitite glass did not budge even a little.

 

He could no longer handle this childish display of retaliation his test subject showed. In frustration, he hurries up with the process to stabilize her randomized and unrestful soul realm into an absolute zero state. He no longer wanted his subject to create junk memory and pollute her soul realm before it achieves its real purpose.

 

“Ahhh….” The girl screams in agonizing pain. Her expression turns bleak as unbearable pain surges through her magical circuits within her body pumped with crude magical energy. She tries to push away the glass shield just like she had done previously. But her attempts end up in failure when she realizes they had been improved to match her unknown willful strength.

 

“Why are you resisting? You never showed any of these signs before.” The Doctor shrieks unable to understand this disobedience that the girl was never taught.

 

“I can’t go back to how I was… I still need to know one thing. Can you tell me my ⸺name?” The girl’s body suffers an indescribable pain as usual but her mind still wandered to the few moments she could remember doing something very different for once.

 

⸺And for once she was not alone.

 

Something that hadn’t been decided for her. Something she had never been prepared for. Something she would have never known… and yet the moment came when she just couldn’t wait and look forward to being like that again.

 

The girl continues to glare with affection and longing and that’s when the Doctor knew he had lost his test subject forever.

 

“Hahaaa…” The doctor’s laughter winds up crazy, unlike his limited disposition. He continues to speak, “You are just a doll with no life and no name. That’s a wish you cannot have no matter what. There is no need for your wishes to come true because when you wake up you will be a part of something even greater and what exactly you were meant to be… Nothing else will matter anymore.”

“I can’t. I don’t want to… forget.” the girl keeps on resisting to leave the glass chamber she had now been trapped inside. Several cords with sharp needles insert on her back with golden serum being injected directly into her central nervous system. She screams but the voice does not penetrate through the small cylindrical space.

 

“You will be no different than the previous incompetents who failed to survive through this process or have not been able to keep their mind and sanity. You should be content being able to see the light for once and die for the sake of this world to become the first next step of its evolution. That is the only meaning you will ever need in life.”

 

The pod slowly fills up with a green liquid and the girl pushes the glass shield harder but it has no effect.

 

“I need to find them. They will worry for me.” The girl mutters in a disappearing voice. She was losing strength and her magic energy was being drained continuously, conducted through the alchemic fluid making it impossible for her to use it directly for herself.

 

“Help me…” the girl repeats those words again when she remembered a silhouette that had appeared last time and held her hand in the town.

 

But hoping it to happen now again did not work the same way. The light slowly started fading from her eyes as the pod was now filled to the brim with the fluid and she could breathe or speak no longer. Floating in an empty dark sky, she slowly lost consciousness.

 

“You need no such thing as friends or parents. You are the ultimate creation and as such you should have no bearings on these humanly-low desires. From now, I have decided that when you wake up next, you will feel nothing. That nothing in this world would inspire those emotions within you again.”

 

In his moment of unbridled ambition, the Doctor looks at the adjacent pod that was never there before until recently. In truth, the Doctor had finally made the ultimate breakthrough with the help of the girl’s awakening and found the missing element that would finally complete his research.

 

Suddenly the alarm of the system inside the laboratory goes buzzing.

 

{Intruder Presence Detected. Initiating Self Preservation Process. All Synthetic Chimeras Deployment In Process. Status : Complete. Danger level : ERRR!/*!*#}

 

Just feeling the final announcement to be a glitch, the doctor decides to leave the rest of the work to the disposable chimeras which had no use for him anymore.

 

“That was faster than expected, I couldn’t believe it to be just another girl. But she does possess a considerable amount of high-end magical energy. Could she really be the one who defeated my chimera monster? I will soon find out and by then I will finally  be able to help humanity take the next step and let this be its final test.”

 

The Doctor finally returns back to tending to his other new project in which he had invested his life’s worth of research and all resources. By analyzing the girl’s mysterious power he had factored the same process into fusing all the other test subjects and also their soul realm boundary to be punctured using the golden serum.

 

The process caused excruciating agony when their soul realm and cores would collide dramatically with each other causing wear and tears in their soul.

 

Apparently, none of the test subjects were able to maintain their human form except for the girl. At the end of the process and the final result, their soul is blanched turning white, and then reformed using a Catalytic Somnium Generator.

 

Since the girl’s body had been built and cultivated under careful observation with the care she was perhaps able to maintain her human form and also because children have the most sensitive magic circuit prone to the stimulus of all kinds and infinite possibilities to grow as molded. The Doctor had no choice but to put away his garb of human kindness and use them as magic resources.

 

The golden serum filled the full tank and slowly the test subjects were liquefied in it together. It was only their unique skill they had gained by passing through this process by forced means and also what kept them alive in that twisted irredeemable state.

 

The catalytic generators inside the pod starts moving and once the golden liquid converged at one point, it began to condense into a single, large droplet.

 

Magical readings stabilized and reached an absolute zero state just as the Doctor wanted.

 

[Initializing Cooling. Put To Cryogenic Sleep. Temporary. Catalytic Generator Powered. Beginning Evolution. Code Name : Eabhloid. Authority : !##*#??]

 

It almost seemed that time had frozen around this very new being that was going to take root in this new world either as the perfect evolved being just as the Doctor wanted it to be or just an another error.

 

***

 

REGIS ASCALON

 

The place was vast, spacious, and overwhelming. I curiously turned my eye around trying to figure out what this place might be.

 

It had only been a few seconds before I found myself up in this pit-hole-like place. There was no light source and everything was dark. The last thing I could remember was me and that lost girl being engulfed by a strange light.

 

“I wonder where that girl could be. For now, I cannot find her here and we will have to look for her again… Alicia!” As if suddenly remembering her name my shoulders stiffened and my senses became more aware and alarmed.

 

Looking around carefully and skeptically, not finding her close left me with an unpleasant feeling of missing something important.

 

The next instant I snapped and before I knew it I drew my bow. Only with a little thinking and I could deduce that I was in the enemy’s territory and somehow brought here by spatial magic cast by the monster in that light that consumed us.

 

For a few seconds, I analyzed my surroundings again and no one was there. I loosen up the bow and start walking towards the only gate in the room from where little light came in.

 

Dhump!!!

 

Zrrrr….

 

Several red lights flashed in constricted lines around the entrance and I knew I was trapped here as I saw them take the form of bars.

 

“What exactly is going on here? Magical bars as if they can really keep me barred.” I chided.

 

Without wasting another second I take off my magic-insulated hand gloves and hold the bars without thinking of the consequences or trap magic that could have harmed me on trying to make a break.

 

Without applying any control I let my magic wreak havoc and red strands of light distort.

 

The effect of anything interacting with my magic caused destructive interference in the magic waves it came in contact with. It was only Alicia who could manipulate it till now.

 

BOOM!

 

Blasting off, leaving an unnatural amount of mass of smoke. Even the tiny movement of  raising my arm caused to condense the thick fog to mold itself around my body.

 

When I tried to move away clearing the smoke, I was now outside of the place and in an alleyway.

 

A red beam of fiery light fired at me and I somehow managed to sidestep. Only leaving a blunt smell of burning in my strands of hair that had caught on a little spark.

 

When I looked up I was dazed by the sight⸺

 

The walls had an unbelievable appearance, something out of this world. White sturdy stones with grey lines forming some kind of circuit and from the top protruded several rod-like canons in which red light shot continuous beams.

 

I rolled over and a dozen of laser light rays incinerates the ground to leave a burnt hole where I previously stood.

 

“That’s going to be a bit bothersome,” I said with a strained face unhappy by their way of welcoming an elven princess.

 

Before another barrage of laser lights could continue to pierce me I used my bow and readied three magical arrows simultaneously launching them at the laser canons and nullifying the light.

 

The arrows zap inside the canon’s mouth and with a bang and a lot of burning fumes, they are rendered disabled.

 

Continuing with the simple strategy of taking out each canon one by one and dodging multiple laser beams I move forward with one aim to get back to Alicia. The whole situation felt wrong somehow and I had no idea who the real enemy was and what they were after.

 

“I even doubt she would be able to find me with how disoriented she can be in these kinds of moments without me. I will have to do something on my own for now.” I muttered to myself taking aim at the final laser canon as it missed its shot.

 

Swisssssh….

 

“…Seya!”

 

With a cry, I released the magical arrow. The tip, glowing red, sliced through the canon, spraying beams of crimson light it explodes.

 

My magical arrows were becoming stronger every time I pulled my bow and I could also feel my magic growing as I kept on using it. By getting on this journey, I am finally able to do things my way and also find what I am really capable of.

 

The path narrowed and in front, a metallic door stood which could have been opened in two ways.

 

Most probably it was locked and the size was abnormally huge. I was unfamiliar with the metal, but breaking it would be impossible in one go even for me.

 

While I chipped my brain for a solution the gate vibrates producing a cacophony of screams and on the other side stood a girl whom I had known only for a few hours.

 

⸺But I was happy to find her.

 

“Hey, are you okay? I am glad I found you.”

 

Without asking myself the question of how the door actually opens itself I started walking toward her with a relieved face.

 

I too was worried about her because she was lost and had no way to get back to her home.

 

“Seems like we both are lost now.” I tried to lighten the mood with a simple joke and giggled. “Let’s go back home.”

 

I was about to put my hand on the girl’s shoulder.

 

The only problem was I decided to ignore all the gestures which I shouldn’t have taken lightly and totally overlooked.

 

The new truth that had surfaced was. that the real danger now I faced was not this enemy’s base but her.

 

“I wouldn’t recommend doing that if I were you.” A voice chimed in our reunion and there was no possible way I wouldn’t have recognized that voice.

 

“⸺Alic …” Just when I was about to turn around I couldn’t understand her warning.

 

I was just too happy to see her again even if it was for a little while we were separated she was the first one to find me again.

 

[WIND CUTTER]

 

A strong condensed wave of air dimensionally cuts through as I felt the absolute strong wave force pass by close to me but never meant to harm me.

 

“But… why!?”  

 

The question was not aimed at Alicia.

 

It was that lost girl, and the moment she was about to… attack me, Alicia’s magic stopped her.

 

But I still couldn’t understand the missing connection and those beautiful golden eyes. Her affection soon turned into lethal intention in battle.

 

I was sure I felt Alicia’s magic successfully cutting her body in half and especially her arms twisted. She was struck by the wall as the force carried her along with it.

 

“…How? What’s really going on here?” I was distressed by the inconceivable thing happening in front of my eyes.

 

The girl stood back after a few seconds perfectly fine with no wounds. She was unharmed.

 

That was no ordinary healing magic anyone can cast to join two parts of the body back. She should have been dead and not even Alicia can fix something irreversible like that.

 

Though her arm had been twisted out of shape, the girl gave a little sigh of disappointment, evidently unbothered by the pain, and with the attack she was struck. She lifted her chin, looking toward us like some kind of noise in her surroundings. As if she didn’t recognize us.

 

“There’s no such thing as home.” The girl said it under her breath and rushed back at me when another wave of wind slashed her in half and I visibly saw it happen again including the tremendous amount of blood spilled.

 

The girl had lost her mind and herself too, that’s the conclusion Alicia reached.

 

And even after the passing of these three incomprehensible seconds, I worriedly looked at the girl.

 

In the next second, the girl in pieces reappeared as one single entity ⸺alive, if that’s what I could truly call it. If it was not something akin to coming back from the dead.

 

“It’s tough when you get attached to someone. But she is not the same person anymore.”

 

Looking back at Alicia for answers, I heard the frightening yet bewitchingly sweet voice speak those cold-hearted words.

 

***

 

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