Kagaku Ninja-Tai Gatchaman Fan Fiction ❯ Daddy's Little Girl ❯ The Night Before ( Chapter 1 )

The Night Before
Original fiction by KayeKytte
Based in the AnimeGatchaman

The early morning display of natural pyrotechnics acted as a harbinger of the serious weather it preceeded. One particularly intense bolt reigned down and illuminatd a small cluster of harborside dwellings, showing even in the pre-dawn darkness every detail of their unkempt shabbiness. This bolt was almost immediately followed by a booming thunder-clap that rattled the windows in the tiny structures--and after the space of a heartbeat was followed by a heartrending cry from the uppermost attic loft of one old victorian style dwelling.

...it was all happening again, and now at sixteen she understood every detail of the incident that was burned forever into her young mind. Instead of fading with the passing of time, it had crystallized into a grotesque mural of fear, agony and death.

...the plane wsa going down, both eh engines were blown, the door opened and ripped from it's hinges. Her parents lay in teh center aisle---only her father recognizable even with the gaping hole that had once been his heart---her mother only a shattered, bloody husk.

In the time it had taken the small craft to plunge into the sea, Nikki had taken in enough material for a lifetime of nightmares.

...the acrid smell of burnt circuits and gears, the wailing of the wind, the force of pressure than pinned her to her seat, the almost injuman cries of the hysterical nurse, make all the more horrible by the placid, angelic slence from her elder brother.

She reached back, taking precious moments to snake her hand backward--luckily with, not against the unseen pressure holding her still--between the seats to take her brother's cold hand. Unresponsive.

She held on with all her might, until the plane impacted and the world exploded again in such a maelstrom of sight and sound that she couldn't make sense of anything.

She felt cold water, heard tearing metal, and worse still, no longer heard the nurse's strangled cries--still she held to her brother's hand. The enitre passenger section of seats floated clear of the wreckage and she fought with her left hand to free the strap that held her to the seat, unsuccessfully.

More noise... explostions.. then darkness...and somewhere in the darkness something pulled at her brother.... strong and steady...until they were pulled apart... and she brought her hand back, screaming for Taro.

Tears and salt water mixed to sting the bright red scratches down the inside of her wrist, where her brother's hand had been....

Nikki came back to herself with a start. She was sitting bolt upright in her bed, stark naked, trembling--somehow the bedclothes had fallen or been thrown to the floor. The walls of her room seemed to echo with the cry that had wakened her. Her own.

In angry reprisal for the sudden shrill sound, a dark shape on her window ledge shrieked and flapped its wings at her, every feather of its dark coat puffing with righteous indignation at the distrubance. It did not, however, fly away, content on its perch, safe against the weather and near enough to the human inside to be fed on a daily basis.

She jumped at the over-sized crow's call,then set about to putting the bed to rights, as if this was an old and tired routine. She chattered at the bird with a playfulness she was far from feeling.

"Tch, Ska. Calm down! You should as hell be sued to this by now, you've hearing it since you were in the egg." She pulled a dark purple satin robe on to coer her too-pink-to-be-Japanese skin, unconsciously rubbing at the inside of her right wrist.

"You're only jealous, you know." She chatted on at the bird as it shifted from one talon to the other. "You don't like my closing the window on you, if Nikki gets to come in out of the cold, so does Ska, right? Don't you look at me in that tone of voice, mister! But since it's raining..."

She opened the window wide, allowing the bird entry to the tiny loft, if he wanted it, then made herself a strong cup of tea, continuing the one-sided conversation to sooth them both. She sat down at a tiny table, adding Way too much sugar to her tea and reached for an expensive-looking business card with an appointment printed on the front. With Kozaburo Nambu of the ISO. It wasn't a casual invitation, more, it was the beginning of her assignment. She and several others were being assigned to more or less 'active but covert' duties in the stepped-up war with Galactor.

"Tomorrow's the Big Day, Ska. Kinda figured it'd happen like this." She drank her tea and watched the watery sky outside the octagonal window until the sun came up.