Chapter 1, The Upside-down Waterfall

It was in the afternoon after school and I was walking home with my best Eglantina who I usually call Tina or “The Damn Cat”. She, in turn, calls me Ema or “Ms Normal”. We bare each other’s cutting remarks well, maybe that is why we get along so well.

Introduction

I’m sure everyone remembers the day, the day the world went crazy. I know I remember that day like it was yesterday, even though it has been ten years since then though to be fair I haven’t forgotten much since that day.

Kirk - Dwindling

The call was abruptly shut off and it felt like Yaju was gone, maybe forever. Was it the Nothings that had done it, I suspected as much but there didn’t seem to be able hard proof or a good lead back to them.

I put my own phone in my pocket. Regardless of who attacked Yaju the very fact that she had been attacked meant that things were going into motion. Yaju was a powerful asset to Districts so if somebody was trying to dispose of her that meant they saw her as a risk, probably to a plan about to be unfolded.

Yaju - Violence

I wanted to know how it came to this. I was standing on one of the houses in Districts and I was surrounded by normal humans. I had just been laying down on the roof of one of the high schools in Districts thinking when I had heard them approach. I was surprised that I hadn’t felt them but when I noticed that they were normal humans that made sense.

“I still have trouble believing that they exist.” Said Rika. “I saw what they did to the insects but I still find it a strange thought. I mean I haven’t even heard of a rumor of these Nothings before.”

I scrunched up my forehead thinking. “I wouldn’t say that exactly. I still go to a normal school most of the time. There are lots of rumors that circle those sorts of places. One type always seems to get attention though, the ones about regular people being able to compete with Hunters.”

“It is nothing special and it wasn’t certainly a nap. It is simple, after my watch I decided to do some training. The training rooms on my section of the wall tend to be more crowded then the ones here and it was close by so I decided to use these ones.” I said. It was the excuse I had come up with ahead of time. It was basically true, since the gate I usually guarded was one of the major gates it tended to have a large compliment of Hunters than this gate. The only problem was that I had no idea if this argument held water today.

“Are those your other servants?” Asked Morn.

“I would not call them servants. They are Hunters like me that are also my friends. I might also needed to get a higher ranking Hunter in on this too. Without someone like that I’m not certain if I can pass off a fake identity.”

“I’m sure that whatever plan you make will be good.”

I sat there and watched the cocoon as the night went on. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I couldn’t just leave it here, who knows what might happen if I did that. I was conflicted about my opinions about what to do with it. I had been left with it so I didn’t want to just break it and kill the beast inside. That felt wrong. Still I didn’t want to be in charge of her either. But then what should I do with her, just tell her to leave when she emerged from the cocoon. That might just be the same as killing her myself.

Rika - Normal

The jungle has been quiet, like the calm before the storm. I didn’t know any other way to describe it. Maybe things just seemed too quiet after the attack on Istan and I was just getting bored of not doing anything.

It had been a couple months since the attack on Istan and I had plenty of time to become bored. I had gone on several patrols with Kirk and Yaju during this time but those had been uneventful. I still had trouble speaking seriously with Yaju after that tiff at the hospital but we could do casual conversations just fine.

Kirk - Experiments

“So these are the initial results then?” I asked looking down at the clipboard.

Professor Stolas nodded, “The sample size is still small but that is the results from the experiment.”

“Lower performance then I had initially expected. Very little improvement and not very much epiphanies.” I frowned reading through the notes on the different experiments. “I suppose I’m not really surprised. These were just preliminary experience to see if the methods were sound. However I guess I’ll have to go back to the drawing board.”