Village Hidden in the Bay (Worm/Naruto) [draft snippet] Chapter 5 Part 2

Edited 7th Jan 2015

(OLD draft snippet Chapter 5 Part 2)

Notes: After much thought, I decided to go with my original plan to give Lisa a similar ability akin to the mind dive feature of Ar Tonelico games and a mild fusion of the Persona(s) from the game series. This draft is edited to path the way for the dives into the Cosmospheres.

I also did not like how I originally portray Lisa’s second trigger… so here’s an edited and hopefully better copy.

The first Cosmosphere mind dive will be in draft 3, still in progress >.<” sorry, being a busy few weeks.

<< Village Hidden in the Bay Chapter 5 [Draft] Part 1

OoooO

Reality 8757-A41, Brockton Bay, 3^rd July 2010

There had been the pain, the overwhelming fear and desperation of the unknown, of not knowing why this was happening to her, and how it was happening to her. She had not realised until then, how much she had depended upon her parahuman analytic ability to understand the world and people around her. Red tinted her vision as she was crippled by the spasms rocking her body… and then like a switch had been flipped, everything had shut off.

An infinite darkness stretched before her, the sparkling of numerous stars doting the horizon. She felt as though she had seen these stars before. There had been a brief memory, of something she had seen in a pain wrecked moment, as she screamed out into the void for help.

The stars were of various sizes and colours, and they pulsed with… voices. Many were no bigger than grains of sand, radiating sounds of static. A number were a little larger. The voices she heard from those closest to her were familiar yet foreign at the same time. Then there were the large stars that shone with radiant light. The voices coming from them were strong and loud, occasionally she could catch words she could understand, human words that she could comprehend individually, but they came to her in a jumbled mess, leaving her with no context of what she was hearing.

It was as though she was floating in an infinite darkness of stars and Noises. She could hear every words coming out of the many stars she could see. Words that dissolved into nonsensical Noises as she began to hear more and more, as they began louder and louder…

Lisa barely managed to stop herself from retching at the audio pollution she was suffering from. She drew in a deep shuddering breath, for a moment it was as though the darkness around her tightened in anticipation.

“Stop!” She screamed, her voice somehow cutting through the loud incomprehensible din. Her plead cutting through the expanse of the darkness as though amplified by an unknown entity.

There was a short moment of blessed silence before some of the stars started pulsing with Noises again. It did not take long for the rest of the stars to emit their own Noises, now louder than before. A number were moving quickly, several vanishing into the darkness that lie beyond her sight.

Lisa sobbed, jamming her fingers into her ears, yet the Noises were too loud to be muffled. She just want it to STOP. To stop HEARING all the chaotic mishmash of voices. Something surged from her body, a pool of energy that she had no idea she possessed. The energy wrapped around her body, her head, her ears, as if granting her protection. And blessed silence return.

With a gasp, Lisa looked around her, startled at the total silence that now enveloped the darkness. Without the noises distracting her, Lisa was finally able to take stock of where she found herself in. She remembered following that transformation cape who might have plant related abilities. She remembered following that cape to her home, only to end up discovering a hidden entrance of some sort. That entrance had some unknown defence mechanism which literally rendered her analytic power useless and turned it against her.

The pain and desperation from having her power crippled, the subsequent losing of her conscious, and then discovering herself… here. It did not paint a pretty picture. Had she tripped some sort of defence mechanism that the transformation cape had set up? Was she trapped in some sort of dimensional space made by powerful tinker devices?

Looking around for more clues, it was then she caught sight of the blazing emerald star floating behind her, with a shimmering white star next to it. The emerald star, made all earthly and beautiful by the twines of brown weaving within itself, was descending in a downward pattern. Whereas the shimmering white star, with a greyish crystal of some sort embedded in its interior, was tagging along.

There was a sense of familiarity about the shimmering white star, a nagging feeling that was enough for Lisa to attempt to follow it. It did not take her long to discover that she could fly, or at least managed an approximation of flight, by willingly herself to travel in whichever direction she wanted.

Descending down after the shimmering white star, she sank into a mass of glowing dust particles. For a heart stopping moment, as the particles brushed up against her, she heard the…

CHITTERING OF BUGS

…burrowing themselves deeper underground. Their alien… foreign tongues incomprehensible to her. She felt the…

ROUGHNESS OF DIRT

… coursing against the skin of the many earthworms tunnelling in all directions.

Lisa gasped, willingly herself to move out of the cloud of tiny sparkling lights, soaring after the emerald star and its accompanying white star as though they were a life line. She reached their side, stumbling into a large zone of darkness where there was no cloud of dust like particles.

Her disorientation caused her to brush up against the emerald star, and that was when she heard and felt…

WORRY. FEAR. CONFUSION. ANGER.

“… what happened?” A young female voice asked, her voice resounding in Lisa’s head. “The seals were supposed to keep people away! The paralysis seal on the trapdoor is only supposed to be the last layer of defence if they manage to get pass the Deterrence seal! And that voice screaming in my head for help… and then later with just one word resounding in my head to ‘stop’… god… was that her?”

“We found her on the trapdoor. And she somehow managed to see through the Genjutsu produced by the Deterrence seal, only to be paralyzed. She is most probably the one letting out those mental cries. I doubt she’s just an ordinary civilian.” A male voice said in deep tones.

“… this is bad… I wonder who else heard the her cries…” The girl said. “I wonder what her powers really do…”

WORRY. ANXIETY.

“If you are worried about her mental powers or of her gaining control of your body, I do know several mental defence seal arrays that can prevent… or at least hinder similar mental techniques.” The male voice said, trying to sound assuring. “Konoha were allies with the Yamanaka clan who specialized in mental defence and mental attack techniques, and they helped the village develop several defence techniques and seal arrays against mental attacks.”

SURPRISE.

“What! You can do that?” The girl said in shock. “… that will be a big help… but you don’t understand. Remember the research I have done on parahuman powers? Telepathy is supposed to be a power that would never appear in parahumans. The only alleged being known to possess telepathy is the Endbringer Simurgh. If this girl is the one that cried for help in our heads… are we the only ones that heard her crying out? Because if others heard it as well… there will be chaos in the streets.”

Jerking away from the emerald star in shock, Lisa’s eyes widened, as her analytic power came to the forefront, piecing together the pieces.

DARK. SEEMINGLY INFINITE SPACE.

SPARKLING STARS. VARIOUS SIZES, COLOURS, EMITTING NOISES.

BLOACKAGE OF NOISES THROUGH SHOCK/ WILLPOWER?

CLOSE CONTACT TO ACCESS NOISES.

HUMAN SPEECH/ CONVERSATION DETECTED.

EMERALD STAR REPRESENTATION OF TRANSFORMATION CAPE.

OTHER LIGHTS/ STARS… SOMETHING SIMILAR?

ESSENCES OF HUMANS. INSECTS. ANIMALS?

WHITE STAR MOST PROBABLY REPRESENTATION OF HERSELF.

Her power whispered to her, making more leaps of judgment in mere seconds, somehow working faster and smoother then she had ever wield it before.

SUFFERED FIGHT OR FLIGHT SITUATION. CAUSED BY UNKNOWN SOURCE.

TRANSFERRED TO THIS PLACE.

CAPTURED?

COULD BE.

NOONE ELSE HERE BUT HER… AND THE LIGHTS.

OTHER POSSIBILITIES?

MEMORIES OF PAIN. DEEP MENTAL TRAUMA.

THERE WAS ANOTHER MEMORY… INACCESSIBLE @#!!

NEW POWER?

HIGH CHANCE. SECOND TRIGGER.

Lisa shuddered, feeling the rush of her power analysing all that she had experienced and seen. The possible conclusion her power had drawn was so impossible… yet having taken into account her current situation, and the conversation she had overheard from the emerald star. It is highly probable that she triggered… with some kind of telepathic ability.

Most parahumans get their powers by suffering through massive trauma, a Trigger Event that somehow empowered them based on the situations they found in. Few however were known to Trigger a second time. A second trigger granted a cape a new set of powers, or further empower their original parahuman abilities. It was considered a pipe dream in the cape world, and not something that could be replicated at will.

Lisa had read about second triggers when she first found out about her Thinker ability, while reading up on information about parahuman. Known capes who had second triggers numbered less than twenty amongst the thousands over capes in the world. Second triggers were so rare, that they were considered an impossibility by most.

From the conversations emitting from the emerald star, and Lisa’s own dim memory of the events that brought her here, she would guess that she had some kind of broadcast telepathy, based on the conversation she had just listened in to. This dark space was probably some sort of conceptual dimension/ space that her power accessed when she tried to use her new abilities. And the stars around her were most probably representation of people in real time.

If she was to touch the other stars physically, Lisa had a strong hunch that she could sense the emotions and heard the thoughts of the people, insects, or maybe even animals that they represented. It was at that moment Lisa realised how much trouble she was in. Like the unknown cape had thought and said to her companion, telepathy was supposed to be an impossibility. The Endbringer Simurgh was the only being known to possess telepathy, commonly utilized through her infamous telepathic screams.

Though the man’s words to the transformation cape did hinted that there were other… capes out there with telepathic abilities, what with the mental defences he had alleged knowledge of. It was something to worry about for another time, once she was able to get out of the situation she was in, and had secluded herself in a safe place to research what was a Konoha, or Yamanaka clan, which sounded sort of Japanese.

When possible telepathic abilities were discussed in parahuman forums, it always stirred up a lot of fear, paranoid and anxiety because everytime the Simurgh showed up, people who had heard her screams for too long tend to go down the wrong paths in life, maybe sooner, maybe later. Those people literally became walking time bombs. More than a few had their mental state altered by the Simurgh, becoming someone that would cause great destruction to the world in future.

The stigma attached to telepathic abilities, due to the devastation caused by Simurgh using similar abilities, meant that telepathy or powers related to it, caused an undue amount of fear in the populace. Masters that could control humans via their emotions, or just wrestle control of ones’ bodies, drew dangerously close to that line. And it was well known the Protectorate had plans drawn up to put down or deal with parahumans with those sort of Master abilities.

Lisa could only imagine what plans they might have drawn up for someone with real telepathic abilities. Lock down Brockton Bay and wall it up like they did to the other cities attacked by Simurgh through the decades? Sentence everyone in the city to imprisonment within confined areas like world war refugees? The possibilities were terrifying.

And if her telepathic cry for help was heard by everyone in the vicinity… Lisa felt dread pooling in her stomach. It would not end well for her. She had a rough idea of how she sent out that cry for help, but now was not the time to attempt to replicate what she had done in desperation and confusion.

“Shit!” Lisa cursed, chilled with fear at what might await her once she woke up in her body. Visions of being locked away by the Protectorate to rot in some dark hole… or even imprisoned in the Birdcage crossed her mind. With the paranoia behind telepathic powers, Lisa was doubtful the government or any agencies out there would let her stay free, even if she did not hurt anyone. “Why didn’t I listen to my common sense and leave that cape alone… what am I supposed to do now? And how am I going to get out of this place?”

She glanced at the white star representing her essence which had been floating motionlessly close by. Maybe if she touched it, she could… tunnel into her body or something and leave this place? It was worth a try at the very least, especially since there were no visible exits in this dark space.

If others really heard her telepathic calls, the first time which was probably the cry for help, and then the second time when she panic and shouted at the Noises to stop, the Protectorate would surely have been notified by now. And with the close proximity the white star representation of herself was to the emerald star, her physical body was most probably very close to the unknown cape and her companion.

She need to wake up quickly, extradite herself from wherever place the unknown cape and her companion have brought her to, and leave the area. There would be time to experiment and figure out more about her new powers once she was in a safe location that was preferably out of Brockton Bay.

Rushing to the white star that was her essence, Lisa set her jaw grimly as she gripped the white shimmering orb with both hands. There was a brief sensation of lingering pain… most probably from the paralysis she suffered before she blacked out, and then her hands sunk into the light. The darkness around the star swirled to life, as tendrils of darkness began to press into the compression her hands had made.

Lisa was startled, nearly rearing back, as the tendrils of darkness grew to a torrent. She was unable to pull herself out of the white star, as a strong pulling force began emitted from the white glowing star which had expanded in size. Resistance proved futile as the star expanded in size, seemingly determined to suck in all the darkness around her, including herself.

Giving a muffled cry, Lisa plunged right into the portal, through the sea of white tainted by streaks of passing darkness. She was plummeting down a tunnel, screaming her lungs out, only this time, she could not hear herself cry.

Then images formed on the streaks of darkness flying past her. Images that were of times long past.

Lisa’s eyes widened as she literally saw her life flashing before her, images that even she had forgotten until now, as she fell down the endless tunnel, into a lifetime of her own memories…

OoooO

It was but a simple Information shard, split from the Thinker during the Gestation cycle. It had a predetermined path, planned by the Warrior and the Thinker. A path that would direct it to the most suitable host for this ordinary Information shard.

The entity in the shard, bonded with its host during her deepest emotional turmoil, sinking its roots into her, gathering her turbulent emotions and potential for growth in order to evolve and mutate into a better shard, it had changed.

From its host’s desire to understand people and the world, it mutated into the best form to gather information and analyse them. Becoming more powerful and efficient as it tweaked its host’s emotions and increase her desire for knowledge so that it could be utilized and pushed to its limits. It had become more than just a shard to contain Information, but also a shard to Analyse the data it gathered.

It worked towards the purpose the Thinker and Warrior had assigned for it. To encourage its host to seek out conflict, to constantly grow and become more powerful, until the time when it could return to the Thinker and be whole again.

But an abnormality had occurred. Its host had come into contact with a powerful unknown energy form that somehow synergized with the host’s mental energies. It could feel the foreign energy reaching towards it, it SCREAMED at its host to fight it to no avail.

The host’s mental state crumbled and the foreign mental energy pierced into the shard, linking it directly to the mental neurons of its host, corrupting and changing the shard as the foreign energy leeched into the shard’s own energy conduits, drawing and then converting the shard’s energies into its own power source.

The shard’s own energy conduits, which was spread out across three alternate worlds was no longer under its control. The entity tried to fight back, trying to understand the unknown energy and figure a way to combat it.

A STRONG URGE TO LEAVE THAT AREA ALONE CONSUMED IT. THERE IS NOTHING THERE. NOTHING TO SEE. WALK AWAY.

The foreign energy whispered, empowered by the power of the shard’s own energy conduits. The entity gave a wail as what amounts to its conscious crumbled. Battered and influenced by the foreign energy which it did not know how to defend against or assimilate into itself, the entity’s conscious tried to stretch and leave its own crystalline structure. The effort weakened and then extinguished its conscious as the foreign energy continued its attack.

Without a sentient conscious to influence, and with the human host already under its thrall, the foreign mental energy continued feeding on the shard’s energy conduits, growing stronger and stronger until it filled up the crystalline shard. Its energy bond with the leftover’s of the entity’s original conscious, and from those knowledge it gained… sentience.

It changed and evolved, no longer a shard entity of the Thinker. No it was something more. It was the darkness formed from the spirit, the shell created from nothingness, a power made to… deter other sentient from those under its protection?

It pondered its existence, trying to figure out its potential and purpose. It was still a child though, taking its first step, observing the world through its host’s eyes.

Then its host had fainted, leaving its mental link opened and unwatched. The control the human host had of the shard now laid untended to. Like a child taking its first step into the world, it stretched out through the mental link, pouring out around its host in its energy form, invisible to the other physical beings… but one. A female human being that has the same energy signature as it…

She was… its creator? Mother?

It did not have time to ponder as a strange sensation came from within itself. Its host’s mental state had appeared within the layer of energy that made up its body. The host still had no control over her physical functions, allowing it free rein to explore the physical realm. There were several brief tingles as its host tried something within itself, but mostly it was ignorable.

Then its host did something strange. If it had a mouth, it would wail in shock as it found itself being pulled back into its host body, as its energy signature began to reform under the host’s control.

And as its world changed, it learnt something new.

OoooO

>> [Draft in progress] Part 3 – Taylor (point of view) – Mind Dive Stage 1 [Sarah Livsey] The Little Girl in the Glided Cage