Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Time's Folly; A Bittersweet Symphony ❯ Nascent of the Sealed Psyche ( Chapter 14 )

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Chap 14*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

[These shitty creatures can actually put up a half-decent fight!]

 

[Half? By Saiya-jin standards? Hardly! You're being much too kind, Suika!]

 

Suika smirked at Radditz's answer as she returned her attention to what was in front of her. This particular planet's sky shone in a dark orange; the color of the ground below her feet was nearly the same color, removed only by a hue or two. The inhabitants consisted of mostly long and lanky beings, whose skeletal builds contained what seemed to be natural hunchbacks. At the end of their arm-like appendages, they all had three thick “fingers” with suckers on the ends. Over their variously brown and tan-hued skins, they wore robe-like clothing, which were colored in brownish-orange shades, topped by hoods covering their faces.

 

Five of them lay on the ground before her, dead.

 

[Radditz, why do you suppose they wear the hoods over their heads? I haven't seen one without it on.]

 

[Beats me. Maybe they're shy?]

 

“Hn,” she grunted, cocking her head to the side slightly. She shifted her vision from the unmoving bodies in front of her towards the distance ahead. Her sharp vision told her that the creatures were changing their formations; in order to launch some kind of full-frontal assault her way, no doubt.

 

“How futile! Don't they know that such an obvious head-on attack won't work on me?” Suika sighed, crossing her arms across her chest to await the steadily advancing horde of hooded aliens.

 

[Well, Radditz, looks like I spoke too soon. Seems they are not half-decent fighters after all. I guess I got the `smarter' ones.]

 

[~ laughing ~]

 

[Shut up! So, you got one…get off it!] She tuned out Radditz as he continued to laugh amusingly in her head.

 

“Alright, time to speed this shit up!” Suika faded out from her current position and faded in about twenty feet front of the hoard, which made them all come to a sudden stop.

 

“Oh, come now! Don't stop your advance!” she taunted. “I just decided to decrease your travel time. Quite frankly, your stupidity has more than bored me. You are Pathetic!”

 

Giving a feral smirk, Suika outstretched her arms, pressing one palm at an angle against the back of the other opened-angled palm. “Get out of my face!”

 

The aliens looked at each other, talking rapidly in their sloppy-sounding language. Numerous creatures on the outside of the main group broke off to regroup around Suika, surrounding her, as a dozen more flew into the sky. Her smirk only widened as a long, horizontal beam, the width of her spread hand, shot out of her hands. At the same time, a number of slender, sharp-pointed ki beams encircled the parent beam. The ensuing blast tore right down the middle of the enemy's forces, easily annihilating half of what had previously stood before her, leaving a huge, smoking gap in between.

 

Switching her attention to the circle of airborne aliens that had formed above her, she flew straight upwards into the thick of them. The first one she encountered, she immediately kicked in the stomach, then knocked out the two more, which had been directly adjacent to the first by stretching out her arms and ki blasting both - leaving nothing in their wake. None of them had sufficient time to react, for the next few deadly seconds became only a blur to them.

 

Since the one she had kicked in the stomach was still floating in the air, she grabbed it with both hands around its neck. Swinging its body about, she connected with two more, knocking them both into the ground to create quite a deep crater. Finished with her “bat”, she hurled it down to join its companions, right before she repeated her previous blast and incinerated the three in the crater. Then she turned back to face the remaining seven.

 

She stretched her arms out again, making a triangle with her index fingers and thumbs, while leaving the other fingers parallel to the ground, pointing straight at the seven.

 

“Piercing Flash!!”

 

Short, thick, sharp-ended ki beams formed in front of the tips of her fingers, as the space in the triangle lit up with ki. Simultaneous beams flew at them, hitting all seven in the chest. Those were followed two seconds later by the triangular blast that split into seven triangular, jagged-edged ki beams that dug themselves painfully deep within the aliens' bodies before exploding from the inside.

 

With a sinister smile, she turned her attention back to the ones still left on the ground. “Your turn.”

 

She clapped her hands together then pulled them slowly away from each other, forming a horizontal ki beam that stretched from palm-to-palm, about the length of her arms' span and as wide as the area between her body and the beam. Using her middle and index fingers, she centered the beam over the horde of aliens below her. They started to shoot muddy, orange-colored goo at her, which only ended up slamming ineffectually against the ki barrier she formed.

 

“It's over!”

 

With that, Suika flicked her fingers, and her ki block broke up into long and narrow separate blasts that pointed at the ground. Then she swept her fingers downwards. Like heavy rain, the sharp ki blasts careened downwards, splitting the aliens in two from the head down, creating quite a sight of sticky, melting, goo-ish alien remains scattered all over.

 

“Hm, they do make quite a mess for such skinny creatures.”

 

She finished up by pointing both hands downward and methodically shooting at all the spots where any of the rubbery-looking goo of distorted or unidentifiable body parts remained, promptly burning them into nothingness. Satisfied with her handiwork, she flew off into the sky.

 

<><>flash forward<><>

 

Trunks laid Azure down onto the cot which Autumn had last used. Earlier, as he was bringing her inside and up into the medical wing, he noticed that her ki was rising. Though he knew that she was quite unconscious, every so often, he could see her flinch slightly, as if she was reacting to something.

 

Trunks studied her while she laid there, wondering at the peacefulness of her face when, the movements in her hands, her arm and leg muscles, and her fingers began twitching sporadically. After a few minutes, he figured if she was having a dream, it was quite an active one.

 

“Or with any luck, maybe it's memories that are trying to resurface.”

 

Situating himself on the nearby cot, he slipped into his own mind, while staying attentive to any sudden changes that may happen.

 

<><>flashback<><>

 

Hovering in the air, Radditz slowly lowered his arm back down to his side and peered down into the newly created crater below him. Not a trace remained of the three aliens that he had been toying with.

 

“They didn't offer much of a challenge, but it was fun anyway.”

 

“And those were supposed to be the more challenging ones?”

 

Radditz whipped around at the soft roughness of the voice and was promptly met with a blow to his head that knocked him down into the same crater he had made earlier.

 

Growling, Radditz stood up sharply once he had hit the ground, looking around violently for his surprise attacker.

 

“Peek-a-boo!” He heard the whisper behind him.

 

He whipped around ready to block another, but this time expected, attack, but none came. Suika hovered in front of him, smirking. “You got lucky. You got the ones that could actually pretend to fight with a small amount of skill. Those were supposed to be mine.”

 

Radditz smirked. “My apologies,” he said sarcastically.

 

She smirked. “I have decided that you will repay me.”

 

With that, she turned sideways, lifted her leg and kicked him square in the chest. Caught off-guard, Radditz flew backwards quite a few feet. He grunted and flew back at her, but faded out right in front of her. Suika was not fooled and as he reappeared she brought her knee up to meet his chest, which propelled him into the air. Then she flipped backwards, kicking Radditz over her head as she did so. Radditz landed roughly on his back as Suika finished her flip landing gracefully upright again.

 

“Is that all, Radditz?” she asked tauntingly as she turned around. Radditz got up again, a thin stream of blood coming from the corners of his mouth. He grunted in response as she smirked. The two then advanced upon each other.

 

The mostly stalemate situation didn't last long. Suika found an opening, grabbed Radditz by his arm with both hands and threw him into the ground, where he landed on one knee.

 

That wasn't a very strong throw, even for her, he thought, looking at her curiously. But this time Suika's smirk held a different type of message. It took Radditz a few moments or so to decipher just what she was trying to convey in that animalistic smirk.

 

In the next second, Radditz found himself pushed onto his back again and she was standing with both feet on his chest plate. Radditz looked up at her with surprise.

 

“And what is the honor this time?” he asked with a flicker in his eye.

 

She knelt down, still on top of his chest plate, so that her face was only inches from his. She breathed him in steadily, noting the thin trails of blood then said, “You owe me for my boredom with these idiot creatures today. I wanted to play around a bit before purging this planet completely.” She stepped off of him to the side.

 

“Undress!” was her one command, as she quickly rid herself of her own armor and spandex. Radditz obeyed, sitting up and slipping off his armor and his spandex suit.

 

As soon as he was done, she moved back over to him and again pushed him down onto the ground. She arranged herself on top his broad upper torso, her legs straddling either side, her boots pressing his arms down, holding them out to his sides. Leaning back, she supported herself from behind by anchoring her hands on his lower torso. Then she snaked her tail from behind her body to between her open legs. Slowly and tantalizingly, she began to graze her tail against her outer lips, moaning softly and grinding her hips against the tip.

 

Radditz started breathing raggedly as he watched the tip of her tail being slowly inserted into her center. She pulled it back out again, held it up, slowly waving it seductively in front of him, making sure he could see that the tip was being moistened within her.

 

As the alluring scent traveled into his sensitive nostrils, she re-inserted her tail slowly within her, moaning softly and deeply in a way no male species of any kind could resist. With a tormenting slow and steady pace, she kept thrusting and withdrawing the tip, pausing occasionally to teasingly wave its wet, matted fur at him before reinserting it.

 

Because her legs were the strongest parts of her body, they pressed on his arms in such a way that his attempts to free them from her legs' resistance were ineffectual and only resulted in short, annoying spurts of pain.

 

Instead, his tail snaked its way up and down her legs and waist. The combination of seeing the muscles in her thighs contracting as she kept Radditz's arms out of commission and the rocking of her body against her tail heightened his arousal more. He emitted a long guttural moan.

 

Judging from his pungent scent, the stiffening of his muscles, and the glaze in his dark eyes, she could tell Raddtiz was plenty aroused. Licking her lips, she stopped her masturbation to sit upright. Swinging her legs off from his arms, she leaned forward, placed her hands on his shoulders and looked straight into his eyes. Radditz flinched slightly as he felt a touch of her wetness hit his torso.

 

Although they were still a bit sore, his arms were free. He moved his right hand up to deeply massage her left breast, while the other hand grabbed tightly onto her waist.

 

He felt her tail wrap around his thick member. A moaning purr came from him as her tail tightened around it as it wound up and down his shaft in tantalizing fashion, the teasing coaxing of the friction a little faster than her masturbation just moments before, imitating if it was inside of her. She chuckled, feeling his aroused state as his own tail tightened around her leg.

 

“Suika…stop fucking playing with me!” he panted.

 

Smirking, she bent her head down towards the arm that was outstretched to her breast, and opened her mouth. Cocking her head to the side, she lightly raked one of her unnaturally sharp canines into his skin, making a small, but thin, five-inch cut up his forearm. Radditz's arm slightly jerked involuntarily to the feel of the cut. Lightly and sensually, she sucked on the blood seeping from the cut.

 

Radditz began to growl at his own discomfort, both hands now on her waist, tightening the hold he had on it and trying to stay coherent enough to not challenge her control of the situation, or to loose all sense. She smirked down at him. “Impatient?”

 

“Unfair! You got me back!” he half-whined, half-growled in response.

 

Using his greater weight, he suddenly flipped her over, switching their positions. She promptly scratched at his chest, leaving several thin lines of blood from her fingernails before exerting some strength of her own and flipping Radditz onto his back once again. As he was being flipped over, Radditz caught her wrist with a fleeting bite of his own.

 

She bent down and, with her sharp canine, made another cut, lighter this time, up the rest of his arm to his shoulder, then back down to the middle of his chest, marking a slight blood trail all along the way. Radditz uttered something that sounded like a moan and a purr at the action.

 

She threw her head back, licking her lips; his name rolled off her tongue entrapped in another, but more predatory, moaning purr as her hands slide down her own body teasingly, pausing to briefly grab at her breasts, and ended with a dip of her hands between her legs and a couple of teasing thrusts, before opening her eyes with a rapacious grin. A rough purr signaling the heightened lust came from Radditz at the action, falling further into the lustful entrapment of her ever strong, addictive scent.

 

“I've decided to be nice and fuck you now.”

 

Taking her time to stand, making sure his eyes never left her body, she moved in-between his legs. He propped onto one of his forearms as she lowered herself into a sitting position; then slid his thick flesh slowly into her.

 

Radditz let out a rough purr, moving his other, lightly bleeding arm down to the ground to fully brace them. Then she started to rock against him, deeply and slowly, taking her time. Skillfully, she moved her body; enveloping, caressing, fucking him deeply and firmly into the ground.

 

Deep guttural moans came from both Saiya-jin as Radditz started thrusting back. Both of them increased their speed steadily, the two of them grinding, pounding; skin slapping against each other creating light dust bursts from the ground around them, causing specks of the dirt to cling onto their sticky, sweaty bodies. Through ragged breaths and heavily lidded eyes Sukia, emitting that silky, yet bestial purr goaded Radditz on in their native tongue; accompanied by a perfect view of her bouncing breasts and Saiya-jin rawness, Radditz looked on with hungry desire, inching closer and closer….

 

Through his increasingly ragged breaths, Radditz conveyed his warning of approaching orgasm. Leaning back on fully extended arms, his fingers made little craters of their own as he dug them into the ground. Suika's signal was a feral grunt accompanied by the digging her fingers into Radditz's thick thighs that she had been holding onto behind her while moaning out wildly. She sped up her thrusting, pounding harder willing his thickness to reach deeper within her.

 

Her fingers pierced his skin and drew light blood. The light scent of the blood she had drawn from him, mixed in with his strong Saiya-jin scent and the dual thrusting, all came together as rough sounding purr poured from her lips. Her inner, contracting walls felt him widen then tense, before releasing his fluid warmth with a wild fanfare of satisfied moans.

 

Panting, Radditz immediately fell backwards onto his back, and Suika fell back as his legs slid from their position a little bit, defaulting to leaning on her arm and letting her head loll backwards, enjoying the feel of him within her. After a couple minutes, Radditz was the first to speak:

 

“I'm dirty now.”

 

Suika gave him a humorous smirk as his former thickness slid limply out of her.

 

She shifted a bit to allow him to stand up. He reached around, collecting his spandex suit and armor as did she. As she stood up, holding her things in one hand, she took the other, wrapped it around his dick and slid it once over his shaft. The motion made Radditz shift his stance slightly. Then she brought her fingers up to her mouth to taste the aftereffects.

 

Radditz moved his hand to do the same, but she disdainfully slapped his hand away. “I don't understand why Frieza sent me to go with you on this mission,” he said. “You could've done it yourself.”

 

“If I did, I would've been bored. These creatures are way too ugly and repulsive a species to even pretend to fuck. Besides, there's not too many species that are fit to fuck,” she explained with a proud smirk, “or be fucked, by a Saiya-jin warrior,”

 

Radditz laughed. “Well spoken, Suika!”

 

“I know.” She lifted a few feet into the air. “Let's go. There's a river nearby where we both can clean off before we finish up and go back. I have another assignment from Koola waiting for me upon my return.”

 

<><>flash forward<><>

 

Azure opened her eyes slowly and took a couple of tentative, but deep breaths as she lay on the cot. Moaning softly, she sat up slowly and stretched out her arms, and found them to be extremely sore. Grunting, she examined her arms and noticed a very light, small crescent-shaped scar on the inside of her upper right arm. Sharp pains began to make themselves known all over her body, particularly in her lower back and at the base of her neck.

 

“Sshitt!” she hissed, a hand moving to the almost burning sensation coming from her neck. A similar burning feeling was radiating from her lower back; in response, she arched backwards and moaned in pain.

 

Without warning, a new piercing pain grew in her stomach, as if a fire had started in her abdomen and was going to burn her to a crisp from the inside out. She doubled over, barely able to breath from the searing intense pain. In doing so, she toppled over the side of the bed onto the cold steel floor. Her insides began to feel as if they were being twisted into hot, fiery knots. At the same time, her core body temperature shot up and her ki shot down drastically. She was only able to gasp in a few short, difficult breaths until she lost consciousness altogether.

 

Mirai Trunks, who had stepped right outside of the room a few minutes prior immediately sensed the sharp drop in Azure's ki and stepped back into the room just in time to see her clutching her stomach and gasping fervently for oxygen before falling out of consciousness. Trunks knelt down at her side and put his arm under her body to pull her upright into a sitting position. He could feel that her skin was very hot and dry to the touch, though she had not started sweating.

 

“Shit! What the hell happened? Why are you so hot?”

 

He carefully picked her up and laid her back onto the cot. It was then that he remembered that during the fight with his younger self, one of her arms had been injured. He gently picked up the closest arm and examined it, looking for anything that might indicate a serious injury.

 

Well, this one's just short of being broken. That was a pretty hard fall she took earlier, thanks to Trunks. He sure did put a lot more strength into it than he needed to.

 

He laid her arm down with care before picking up the other one. As he was visually examining it, a little wave of jealousy overtook him. He closed his eyes, took a big breath then slowly let it out. “That lucky little devil!”

 

“What the fuck are you trying to do?”

 

Azure's demanding voice, tinged with pain, immediately snapped Trunks out of his thoughts and nearly caused him to drop her arm.

 

“I was checking it,” Trunks explained after a minute.

 

“What for? To see how long it would go without blood circulation?”

 

Trunks looked at her, lost for a second. Then he realized that he had been clutching her arm a little too hard. “I'm sorry. I didn't notice I was doing that,” he apologized, releasing his hold.

 

“Hn.” Azure sat up, wincing as she ran a hand slightly over her injured arm before she swung her legs off the cot to stand.

 

“Wait a minute - ” he started, automatically putting his hands out to assist her, but she brushed them aside.

 

“I'm fine,” she insisted.

 

Trunks looked at her incredulously. “How?”

 

Azure raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, how?”

 

“Well, after what just happened -”

 

“What just happened?” she sharply interrupted.

 

“You were only half-conscious when I first brought you in here. And just now, your ki just dropped dangerously low, and you actually fell out of consciousness this time. You seamed to be in a lot of pain right before that happened. But now you say you're fine. And that's without mentioning your nearly broken arm.” Come to think of it, right before you fell out of consciousness your ki spiked to the same level it was when you first came to inside the tank.

 

Trunks watched her carefully, as she paused to think things over. So that pain was real… What the hell is happening to me? she asked herself. It feels like I've been out of it for years. And the pain… that felt like it lasted for days, not just minutes!

 

The apprehension he saw on her face changed instantly to a more neutral expression when she realized that Trunks staring at her. She's just as confused as I am, he assumed. He noticed the change and waited for her to speak again.

 

“Why was I nearly unconscious the first time?”

 

“You don't remember?”

 

She huffed with irritation. “Fucker, if I did, would I waste my breath asking you?”

 

Trunks frowned at her tone. “You blasted a sizable stream of ki during your spar with Trunks!” Trunks sniped back, changing his stance to one that would rival his father's.

 

Now curious, she cocked her head at him. “Sizable…” she wondered aloud, more to herself than to him.

 

“But don't get excited about it. I know other humans that could do the same thing, and do it much better.”

 

She smirked, although her thoughts were on something else. What then? I fainted because I shot that…ki at the kid and it zapped all of my energy? That feeling was so familiar; it felt almost - automatic. I don't even know where that shit came from or how I even did it.

 

She glanced over at a less-than-pleased Trunks, who kept looking at her very skeptically. “Stop staring at me!” she demanded. “Why the hell are you still hanging around here anyway?”

 

“I'm supposed to take you to Father so he can kick your ass relentlessly and get a hard-on doing it!” he snapped back in a sarcastic, matter-of-fact manner, without thinking.

 

“I wonder how your dear old dad would react if he heard you say that?” she observed with a smirk.

 

Irritated by her attitude, Trunks growled back. Angered, he turned on his heel, looking to her as if he was about to storm out of the room.

 

He didn't even take a step before he whirled around and grabbed Azure by the neck, roughly hoisting her off the ground. The swiftness of his action took her totally by surprise. She winced a little in his steady, steely grip, moving her neck around in an attempt to get into a less restrictive position, while trying not to make it obvious that she was doing so. After a few tension-laden minutes, he set her down and glared at her with an evil-like smirk.

 

“Vegita won't tolerate your shit! You'll find that out very quickly and painfully.” Trunks looked her dead in the eye as he uttered that statement with an eerie quietness before releasing his grip. Azure didn't reply, but stayed quiet. Trunks turned around and began to walk out of the room. Pausing a second, she rubbed at her sore neck before she smirked and followed him down a series of hallways until he finally stopped.

 

Trunks pounded violently on the entrance to the gravity room. After a minute or so, the humming coming from inside of the room gradually subsided and stopped altogether. Moments later, the door slid open. An irate Trunks, followed by an indifferent Azure, stepped into room. Azure took a quick look around the spacious round room, as Trunks addressed his father.

 

“She's awake,” he said simply.

 

Vegita immediately noted the annoyance on his son's countenance and smirked in amusement.

 

“Go help Gohan with his small task for now,” he said, dismissing his son.

 

Without even looking at his father, Trunks turned and stalked out of the room, the door sliding shut behind him. Vegita was mildly curious as to what had changed his son's demeanor so quickly, but deduced that the possible reason was standing right in front of him. He turned his attention to Azure.

 

Azure, through the corner of her eyes, watched Trunks leave the room, and smirked slightly. The mocking look quickly left her face when she remembered where she was. Then a weird feeling came over her and she could only guess that Vegita was studying her. She stood silently off to the side, somewhat relaxed, while avoiding direct eye contact with him.

 

In the blink of an eye, Vegita was standing directly in front of her. Involuntarily, she stepped backwards at his unexpected movement. Vegita smirked slightly.

 

“I don't suppose that you're the reason the boy is pissed off?”

 

“That's a distinct possibility,” she said after a moment with some mild satisfaction. Not wanting to show that she was intimidated by his presence, Azure kept her eyes averted so that she didn't have to look straight into his. As much as she wanted to stay unaffected, it was unnerving for her.

 

“Hn,” was Vegita's comment as he started to stroll slowly around her, taking his time to take a good, long look at her. Azure's body kept its unmoving stance, but her eyes tracked him as much as possible. After he returned to stand in front of her again, he paused for a second to look directly at her before resuming his circling walk around her.

 

Azure cocked a curious eyebrow curiously when she sensed that Vegita had stopped moving and was standing right behind her. While he had made his circuit, she made sure to pay close attention to his subtle movements. Something signaled within her a warning to a possible strike to her back. She violently hissed, before whipping sharply around to take a few steps backwards. Right away, she saw that he had extended to strike her back with two of his fingers.

 

Vegita's face held an unreadable expression.

 

Crossing her arms over her chest, she turned away from him. “I'm perfectly fit and healthy, so you can stop with your little examination,” she added with a sarcastic sneer, “or are you looking for a good lay?”

 

Vegita arched a dark eyebrow at her and gave a seemingly amused chuckle. He took a couple of steps closer to her, leaning in to whisper evilly, “If I wanted to fuck you I would have already done so!” Then his voice dropped into a darker and more threatening timbre. “Do not insult me!”

 

Azure kept her body as quiet and still as she could, continuing to avert her eyes from his piercing ones, refraining from moving back a step. Vegita easily sensed her tension and lingered in her invaded space for a little longer before fading out, to only fade in a few feet away from her.

 

Standing relaxed with his arms folded, Vegita decided to proceed with another test. “Blast a ki attack at me!”

 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” she asked, trying to sound unconcerned.

 

Vegita snorted and stuck out a hand in her direction. The blast he fired passed just barely above her head, making her flinch a bit. Azure glared at him, both shock and annoyance reflected in her face.

 

“That, idiot, was a ki blast. You shot the same thing at Trunks earlier today.” Her earlier ki blast then was definitely instinctive. Why? “That will be your first lesson,” Vegita said after a moment of silence. Azure stood where she was, awaiting a further explanation. “Sit!” he commanded.

 

Azure hesitated, before sitting down Indian-style on the floor.

 

“You will not move from where you are until you can pull out your ki from within yourself and hold it in your hands for a full five minutes.”

 

Although she did not look directly up at him, Azure had a slightly confused look on her face. Ki…that…. She drew in a calming breath of air and released it slowly, lightly touching her sore arm.

 

“So, tell me,” she asked, unable to keep the sarcasm out her question, “Should I be feeling honored by the fact that you are the one training me, separate from the other two?”

 

Vegita smirked as he walked over the gravity room's control panel. “Don't try my patience! I have none for weaklings!” He set the controls to 12G's, mentally calculating that it would be just enough gravity for her to handle if she tried to move. Then he hit the start button and the room hummed, quickly increasing the g-forces within.

 

“Weak is something I'm definitely not,” she mumbled through clenched teeth as she was suddenly bent forward over her folded legs, flattened by the room's force. Vegita leaned against the control panel and smirked, unaffected by the increased gravity.

 

“I'll be the judge of that! Now shut up!” Vegita moved to stand across from her before gracefully sinking to the floor and arranging himself Indian-style, drifting into meditation.

 

Azure's features melted into a scowl as she managed to place both arms out a little in front of her, to help brace her body against the strong downward pull. As she ignored the pain radiating from her injured arm, then she forced her mind into a meditative trance so that she could summon the energy to sit up.

 

*~*~*~*~*