Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Come on in REi, your timing is impeccable." said Jacques from the other side of the door. As he said this, it slowly swung inward, revealing his room, but all the furnture had been pushed up against the wall. In the middle of the floor, Jaques sat in the middle of an insanely intricate transmutation circle, which had clones and children on each wall and the ceiling. There was a blank spot directly adjacent Jaques on the floor circle, surrounded by many different runes from many different sciences. Alchemy, magic, and wicca being the most common. "Sit there, he gestured to the blank spot. "I can't really give an adequate explanation of this, so I have no choice but to show you. Don't worry, you will merely be an observer. But the things you are about to see are, or were, real." he said, and he waited for her to sit.

"I'm sorry. But it is the only way." he said, putting some energy into the circle. The room began to glow purple from the circles, and a few symbols crawled up Re's kimono. "Don't worry." he said, in a slightly dazed voice "That is for your portection. If you move at all, it could cause a catastrophic failure. And we do not want that." he said, falling into a light unconscious state, it was about to start..

A light mist began to emanate from Jacques' open mouth. Slowly, the room began to fade, and in is place was a white haze. Flashes of events flickered about them; a child on the grass, a city street, and other things of a seemingly random nature. Until the room settled on one image, a birth. Slowly, the image began to envelop the room, until the room itself was now the room in which the birth was taking pplace. Sounds suddenly began to fade in "...sh honey... Push! The baby is almost here!" said a man, kneeling by his wife's side, holding her hand aas she pushed with all her might. "AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" she screamed, and now it seemed as though Rei was actually in the room, for color had fianlly worked its way into the scen, but now Jacques was nowhere to be found. And then, it happened, with one final scream and push. The baby was delivered, healthy, pink, and strong. "A boy! Love, you have given me a son!" said the father, holding out the newly born and crying infant to his mother. "My son.." she panted, as she reached out to grab him and hold him up to feed. "Here now, don't cry, my Jacqeus." "Jacques?" asked the father, suprised she had come with anme for the lad so soon. "Yes, My Jacques. Jacques Sangrir Ganson. You are our son." she said, her love for him almost tangible in the air.

"You will be still and you will be silent, Kira. Lest I excorcise you." said JAcques voice from somewhere, only it didn't sound like JAcques. It sounded like he would really carry out that threat.

But, back to the memory. The scene had faded for a second, and now it showed a wide open feild of grapevines. Down one of the rows was a small boy, wandering aimlessly about the grapes, picking off a few bad ones and throwing them away. "One bad grape can ruin a whole vintage." he said, quoting his father. And speaking of his father, he came driving down the row towards the boy in an old white pickup truck, it's bed full of wooden bins. "Alright son, today is the day you learn the family trade." he said, with much bravado and embellishment. He had planned for this day to be perfect. "First," he started, "We pick only the finest individual grapes for our wines." he said, demonstrating. He picked only the largest, darkest grapes, and threw them into the bins. Mimicking his father's action, the young Jacques began to pick and choose grapes of his own. He threw them into the smallest bin, which would serve for only one bottle, his bottle. It was a tradition in his family for the first good vintage ever made by any Ganson to be kept and opened on their wedding day. But little to the pair's knowledge, a foul contagion had worked its way into the vineyard's water supply.

Suddenly all sound from Kira stopped. With a glance, REi noticed that somehow, Kira no longer had a mouth. Her face was smooth from chin to nose. "Silence." Jaqcues voice commanded.

Now, the scene had shifted again to a large underground chamber, with barrels Armstrong could stand up in stacked three high covering both walls. "Here, son, is where we let or wines age." he said, gesturing to a small safe in the corner. "And here, is where yours will be." he said, taking the gold-leaf laced bottle and placing it inside the safe with as much care as though it were another child. "Now what pappa?" young Jaques asked, his eyes full of wonder. He had never been let down into the wine cellars before. "Now, we wait, and we pick more grapes." he said, tousling his son's hair. "No. Now you two come upstairs and eat these pancakes beofre they get cold." His mother scolded from the steps. She was wearing a white apron, and a pair of white overalls to match. "Alright, honey. Jacques' wine trainng can wait for pancakes. Race ya!" he said, as he took off running, sweeping up his wife with Jacques running along behind, laughing the pure innocent laughter only a child can produce.

But the happiness did not last for very long. Soon the scene flashed to the mother sick in bed, the father sitting in a chair at her bedside, holding her hand, but knowing full well that there was nothing he could do. Then the memory fast-forwarded to a funeral, all the family that lived around the vineyard had gathered there, to give Jacques' mother's body over to the earth. She was to be buried in the vineyard. It shifted again, this time a repeat of a previous scene, but this time the father's smiles seemed false, the sparkle in his eyes dim. Then is shifted to the father sick in bed, with Jacques and the father's parents at his side. Then to another funeral. This repeated over and over, each relative slowly dying of a mysterious disease no doctor could diagnose. Then the first horror came. The scene was Jacques, alone in the vineyard, sitting in front of his family's graves. In the background, some of the extended family were working the feilds, But then something odd happened, the earth over the graves began to shift. Soon, all of Jacques' dead family had risen from the earth, but something was wrong. They did not move like people, they moved mechanically, almost like puppets. But the most notable change was their eyes. There was only blackness in the sockets. No eye, no life, no soul. Then a shot rang out. One of the workers had a shotgun. "Run, Jacques!" he screamed, and the boy took off in terror, as the dead turned on the living. The scene shifted agin, this time presenting a montage of images. Jacques hiding in the wine cellar. Family members gunning down the walkers, as they were called. The family losing. The walkers numbers swelled. Jacques had stopped crying. He had the shotgun. He was the only one left. Then, the scene from his own dreams played out. Jacques, standing alone on the hill, the once beutiful vineyard full of the corpses of the walkers that had once been is family. He stood on the hill, crying, and said, "The Ganson line is dead. I have no family. I am only Jacques." When he had said that, he left the shotgun, barrel planted in the ground, a lone watchman over the rotting filds that had been Jacques' home. And Jacques walked down the road, into town.

"The room once again became hazy. More images flashed in and out of vision, Jacques a young teen, stealing for sustenance, joining gangs, tatoos, brandings, beatings, jail. The is shifted to Jacques as an older teen , posibly 17, lying battered and bloody on expensive looking carpet. "So. I ask my boys to bring me the best theif in the world, and they bring me a bloody and bruised tramp? Kid, you have some explaining to do." The young Jacques looked up at the mafia boss and smirked. "Your thugs couldn't convince me to come freely, so they decided to beat the tar out of me until I couldn't fight back." "Ah, but I sent my five best men after you, why do I see only three before me?"the man in the xpensive white suit asked, curous. "That's simple, I killed the other two." said Jacques, a deep, burning hatred showing in his eyes. "So. You come into my home, bleed onto my carpet, and I have the kindness not to kill you just for that. And you talk back to me, and admit to have killed two of my best men. Kill him." said the man from his chair, his face never leaving the shadows. At that point, several shadows detatched themselves from the ceiling and slaughtered the mafia goons. Two then picked up Jacques' beaten and bloody form. Then the scenes became fuzzy again, glances at running down alleys, jumping over rooftops, then to the face of a dead teenager, the one who'd been carrying Jacques, his last friend, shot dead by the mafia boss himself. The boss stood in the door way, laughing and bleeding. He had a knife wound in his side. When he stopped laughing he levelled the gun at Jacques and said, "And now, brat, you die." but instead of a bullet, the gun only produced clicks. "Humph. You're lucky. I guess I'll just have to burn down the building instead of shooting you." he pulled out a lighter, and threw it on the body of JAcques' dead friend. More flashing images. Running, jumping out of a window, landing in the trash. The building burnt to the cinderblocks. Jacques wandering through the streets, cold, hungry, lonely.