DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Alternate Reality PHX: Phoenix Reform Academy Alchimia animae: Cadence

A silhouette of a young lady stands in front of smoke and rubble, outlined against what can be seen of the night sky behind. Sirens sound in the distance, growing closer. A unit of soldiers in body armor, looking grim and nervous move forward slowly, having just arrived on the scene. One of the trio of hero’s on the scene, an older man Wearing no uniform or indeed even a costume, held up a hand and the soldiers stood back, at ready.

Walking up beside him were a lady in a grey cloak and another woman in a long black dress, with starling blue eyes who looked like she had rushed in from some dinner party, but was now smudged with dirt and smoke. All three had grim looks of determination.

In the background, another group moves in to secure Alchemy, and to try to find Nyx - and to see who was still alive.

The young woman stalked forward, arms extended, hands outstretched, fingers spread wide. The same posture when she stood upon the hill and threw the nearly invisible black lightning that looked eerily purplish in the thin light of the crescent moon overhead. Her posture was menacing, and she seemed ready to unleash that terrible dark energy that twisted matter and dissolved reality. She walked down the hill and kept heading for the prison and those who were defending it and all the surviving people. The heavy black cloak fell away in a tumble as the wind chased it to the ground.

The soldiers closed in warily and she stepped forward when one came close enough. She was trying to provoke them, intimidate them, make them fear her. She could tell they already feared her. Good. Fear was a powerful tool for self-preservation. Threaten the fearful and they became very unpredictable, except she could predict what would happen if she pushed them far enough. But the soldier stepped back, keeping his composure.

Then the older man, a hero... battered and beaten, stood firmly but defensively before her. He raised a hand and the the young woman looked in his direction, turning to face him, still walking forward a few more steps, as though she were challenging him, daring him, to attack her.

In the slightly better light shed from beneath the circling helicopters and from the large search spots on a prison wall tower, the young wild woman, hair pulled back tightly behind her head, with her face painted china white save for her ruby red lips and the black grease paint slashes running from the corners of her eyes and down her cheeks like stains from black tears. It was a macabre image, as if she were a marionette without strings, a demonic doll.

The woman in the cloak was next, and then another woman in a pretty dress. Obviously trading some fancy party for the chance at meeting her own demise. That was what the young woman was hoping to do right now. she wanted a trade like that. The young woman growled because she wasn't getting the reaction she wanted.

How did it all come to this... Why wasn't she who she once was, in a time that was not long and yet felt like forever ago...

****

"Cadence Marie Weathers... get back inside right now young lady. That there is a tornado spinnin' down. And you standin' out there like a fool child is not sensible at all. You heard me girl! Don't make me come out there... Get inside! Now!"

The middle aged woman snapped open the screen door and made eye contact with her adopted daughter. The child was only about ten, but she was mighty willful and could get herself into the damnedest things. Too smart, and that willfulness didn't mix well. But today seemed different, the girl turned away from the distant twister crossing the farm fields several miles away, and she nodded. "Yes Mum," she said. It was a simpler time when less people died.

****

"KILL ME!" screamed the young woman suddenly. She stood there twisting from hero to hero challenging them, with her hands at the ready to unleash that same fury that they already experienced.

"DO IT... KILL ME! NOW!"

The three ‘hero’s’ standing in front of her exchanged a ‘look’, and nodded. The one in grey looked up, tilted her head, and Cadence felt ... something ... flit across her mind.

The lady said in a soft but cutting voice:

“No. We choose not to. You wear that makeup - I do not believe it is wearing you.”

The woman in the dress also looks over.

“I see no evil here. I see a scared young lady. I will not be party to murder in the name of justice. There has been enough destruction charged to the account of those two, I will not add my own charge to the toll.”

The third spoke, the older man.

“I have learned to not argue with these two. In the end, it saves me time and trouble. I will not gift you with an easy way out. The easy way out is almost always the worst one”

"I am EVIL!," the scared young lady hissed, her voice rising at the end. She stared accusingly and hatefully at the three of them, eyes darting once or twice to the soldiers behind them. Then her glare came back when the Grey Lady spoke of the garish makeup. Her hands were trembling now, still clinging defiantly to the threat that she could kill them all, right where the stood. But those words stung. She didn't choose the makeup. That was her freakin' insane Aunt who painted her up. Both her Aunt and her Mother created her and made her the weapon she became. Their love was all she was allowed, all she deserved.

"I killed them... Me.... I did that," she continued as she stabbed a finger at the ruins of the building from where Alchemy had orchestrated her attack on the Black Hole Prison. But the voice of the older man broughtt her attention back around.

"Easy for who? Me? I don't want easy. I don't want your Gifts. I don't want your mercy! I want the justice I deserve! I killed them."

Already her voice was breaking and she clenched her hands into fists to keep them from shaking. "It was my choice... There was no choice, so I made a choice... Them or all of you... so many of you.... Her or you..."

Grey

“Yes. You made a choice. Choice creates reality. Choice creates you, and recreates you with every decision. Death is the easy way out of that process. Living with your choices, that one is hard.”

Old man.

“Do you have a name? I’m Martin.”

Woman in black dress.

“I’ve got a handkerchief here if you want to wipe that ghastly stuff off your face. It doesn’t suit you.”

They had to know this was dangerous! Why were they so calm?

The 'young lady' looked from one to the next as they spoke in succession. She offered no response to any of the three.

"And that's why you were losing tonight," she whispered with resignation in her voice.

"Good people die in terrible ways because bad people don't care what they do or who they hurt... and still you offer mercy to those who neither want it nor deserve it. But the bad people will take it and use it against you... again and again... I made a choice when I had no choice available... I used every bit of strength I could find to kill her, and I knew that everyone around her would die because of that choice. And if I didn't kill her, it wasn't for the lack of trying."

She held out her hands, wrists together, as an offering, a surrender.

"You believed you could save those people on that rooftop with her, and so you did nothing at all... They were dead from the moment she took control of that building. She leaves no survivors. She would kill them one by one, in screaming agony, to make you come to her, and then blow the whole building up in some fusion reaction of matter and energy... They were dead already... And so I made a choice and I have earned the name my mother gave me, because I think she knew all along that I would do exactly what I did.... I am Forsaken."

Martin:

“Oh, you are both right and wrong. You made a choice which I was in no position to make.”

He says quietly.

“I am presuming you are the daughter which we suspected.”

He looks over at Grey, who nods.

“I will bind you, but I suspect if you want to resist, that would be of little use. Still, if you will come along ...“

He looks over to Mariel.

“Call Eric. I think we may have use of his latest creation.”

The young lady had nowhere else to go. She bowed her head. Her mother named her well, she was indeed abandoned, deserted, destroyed, betrayed, and made a betrayer. Right or wrong, choices had consequences...