Welcome to Gaia! ::

Chapter one
Two Days Later

Ryan walked down the road with his neighbor friend Kitrina Knoleidge, Kit for short, ‘discussing’ what Ryan had seen the other night. Ryan had a notepad at the ready to make himself heard, since he couldn’t talk for himself. When he was only four years of age, his vocals had been torn up by a cat in a mad frenzy when he accidentally ate some catnip.

‘So what do you think about that’ Ryan wrote and then handed the pad over to Kit.

“I don’t know, it sounds kind of far fetched.” Kit replied to his note, “I mean everybody has a government issued id bracelet…”

‘But what if she wasn’t from earth?’

Kit didn’t respond. She wasn’t sure how to deal with this kind of situation. The hardest choice she made was what to do when Ryan had been attacked by cats.
The two continued down the road, jumping down a hill to a trail that they made themselves that doubled back towards their houses. They lived next to each other, while their next nearest neighbors where down the road to a small village. Even further than that was one of the larger cities.

These larger cities made up the first and some of the second classes. The main cities moved up in major advancements, while the towns and villages outside the walls had been left behind in 21st century style living.

The current year is 3425, and the fifth world war had come to a close 3 years ago, finally causing the world to come together under one ‘equal’ rule. An issued ID bracelet was given to everybody at birth, and it gave access to certain areas while tracking you and such. The third and fourth world war had pushed the world back in technology advancements, and the human race made a huge come back after the fifth, when it rebuilt the cities from scratch. All technology on weaponry was forsaken, leaving only medieval style weapons in their place for defense.

Ryan and Kit were walking down the faint trail reflecting on the idea of someone outside of the government’s control, when Star popped out from the brush and turned to confront them.

“Where are we, and who are you two people?” Star asked sounding a little lost as if she had forgotten something dear to her.

Ryan gapped for a second, remembering it was the same girl as the other night,
and then pointed at Star’s wrist and it’s vacancy of a bracelet.

Kit saw what Ryan was pointing at, then answered the question, “We’re on Earth, this is Ryan, and I’m Kitrina but you can call me Kit.”

Ryan waved a little when she said his name. He changed his position to a neutral stance, not sure if it would help the situation any since he’d tensed up when she jumped them.

“Oh…why couldn’t your friend here answer me those two days ago?” Star asked with a hint of annoyance in her voice. She had started to remember things after impact and her memories went that happy. Ryan’s lack of response had triggered a memory that was unpleasant. Her impatience was starting to show as she fidgeted around and looked around for something.

“He can’t talk…he lost his vocals cords a long time ago…” Kit replied solemnly, with a hit of annoyance in her voice too. Normally people didn’t get to her but she disliked it when people would carelessly jump to conclusions, especially when the person couldn’t defend themselves.

“Well I have better things to do than talk to two locals, like finding that…” Star said as she jumped off back into the woods.

Ryan and Kit looked at each other slightly confused at what had occurred recently. After a few seconds, though, they began walking again.

‘You know, we can’t tell people about this. They wouldn’t believe us for one, and if they did we could get in serious trouble for knowing it.’ He passed the note on to Kit.

“I guess you’re right, and I wonder what she was looking for…” Kit responded with curiosity in her voice.

‘Well I think we should go home. We can think more about this in my basement.’

* * *

Ryan jumped onto one of the few sofas in the room and Kit sat down on a recliner. The basement was rather empty except for a small TV, some furniture, and various pieces of junk. Ryan flicked on the TV, and started to flip through the channels. There were 9,999 of them free, and nothing to watch on any of them.
‘So what are we going to do now?’ Ryan asked with his text.

“I don’t know, we’ll think of something…” Kit replied, a little zoned out from the TV. “If I stayed the night at your house we could think about it more.”

‘Sounds like a plan to me’ he ripped the paper and handed it to her while heading upstairs to pop the question to them. He came back down with a response in a couple of minutes.

‘Yes.’

“Alright! So, anyways, we need to figure out this girl’s motives. I mean like, is she dangerous, can we make her an ally or is she a foe…” Kit said some eagerness.
They both looked at the clock together. It was 8:30. They thought the clock was wrong, when they remembered it was summer still, and the sun was out longer. Ryan stared at the ceiling watching the shapes move slightly as he tried to focus harder on it. Kit sat staring vacantly into space, as if trying to make the strange girl to appear in front of them again.

The room was entirely silent. Well almost, except for the TV that was on, the clock was ticking, there was the background noise of water running upstairs, etc. Hours passed by unnoticed by the two unmoving figures in the room. For them, time had stopped completely. Suddenly a loud clash from upstairs and a stream of curses broke them out of their dormant trances.

“Well, have you thought of anything yet?”

Ryan shook his head in response.

“Me neither…Wanna go out and see if we can find her again? It’s only…” Kit said as she looked up at the clock again, “…11:24.” Kit was a little surprised, as well as Ryan. It had been almost three hours of total inactivity.

Ryan shrugged his response as he got up. They both headed over to the basement door that led outside, and journeyed back to the woods behind their houses.

Ryan and Kit poked around the dark forest. They had traversed through the familiar trees many times before, but it always seemed to look different to them at night.

“Where do you think she went, Ryan? She said she was looking for something, so if she hasn’t found it yet then she should still be in the general area.” Kit said thinking aloud.

Ryan shrugged in response as they trudged on. He took out his pad, wrote down an idea, then had Kit read it.

“I don’t know if we should split up Ryan.” Kit replied to the note, “What if you find her? How would you signal me?”

Ryan picked up two sticks and banged them together. Clack! The sound echoed through the woods. He started to walk off satisfied with his plan. Kit jumped over to him, and pulled him aside.

“We still don’t know what her intent is. What if she or something else attacks one of us and the other can’t reach the person in trouble in time?” Kit was trying to give out excuses so she wouldn’t have to roam alone. It wasn’t that she was scared of the dark, or being alone. She was scared of being in the dark, alone, with wild animals and a rouge person roaming free in the woods.

Ryan sighed silently. It was pointless trying to argue, the topic was no longer controversial. The two continued to search the woods together, not realizing how close they were to the person they were searching for.

Star was darting all over the woods faster than any normal human could. She had darted behind them once, paying them no mind. Star was looking for an item that she had lost on entry. It was a small pearl with a red glow to it. This precious jewel was the source of her powers. She had used it once to try to take over the place she came from.

After a half hour of searching the weary friends headed back towards home. They were almost to the edge of the forest when Kit noticed a strange glow coming from a bush on the side of the trail they were following. Pulling Ryan along with her, they investigated the source of the eerie light. Kit reached the bush first, so she started digging through it.
“Ooh! A pearl! I think someone might have dropped it, because there is not really much other explanation of how it got here…what an uncanny red glow though. It has to be valuable. Oh, well. Finders keep, losers weep!” Kit said excitedly.

Now with the woods behind them, they stopped at Kit’s house to get her things for the night. After arriving in the basement of Ryan’s house, they got their gear ready so they could stay up all night in comfort.