Original Stories Fan Fiction / Realism Fan Fiction ❯ Aqua ❯ Rescued ( Chapter 1 )

Rescued

 

Aqua sat beneath the blossoming cherry tree apparently in deep meditation. Her head slumped against her chest as her meditation turned into slumber, her auburn hair falling around her eyes as her breathing became slow and regular. She jerked awake an hour later and found that the sun was directly overhead.

 

Sighing out of boredom, she leaned against the cherry tree's trunk and listened as the gentle breeze wafted through the tree's branches. She raised a hand to eye level and examined it, with nothing better to do and trace one of the many thin, intricate scars that her father had made sure to leave on her.

 

Scars. Pain.

 

Those two words seemed to go hand in hand with her past. There had never been a moment in her younger childhood that she couldn't remember her father beating her for one reason or another. He seemed to have reached the conclusion somehow that it was her fault that her mother had left them when she was only three.

 

He had abused her in more than one way. Mentally, emotionally, physically… There was more than one way to abuse a child. She had no grandparents on either side of her parent's families, but she had an uncle. She had met him and his family once, but they had shunned her right away for being her father's daughter and that had been the last she had seen of them, not that it really mattered.

 

She sighed and placed her hand back in her lap. Though her friends were constantly bombarding with questions about her scars and family life, she kept it all bottled up and remained silent. It was her business and hers alone, not her friends.

 

Friends. Fri-end-s.

 

What a foreign and useless word. No one she knew really cared about her. Of that much she was certain. Ever since Social Services had shown up a year ago and taken her from her father's custody and placed her in a co-ed boarding school, she had remained detached and aloof. No one even knew her real age, though many of the other girls in the school liked to get together and gossip about what they thought her home life had been like and what she was really like.

 

Aqua was fifteen-years-old with her sixteenth birthday looming on the horizon, not that she really cared. Her age was just a way for her to mark how many miserable and useless years she had spent alive. Life was pointless she had decided a long, long time ago, though she was unwilling to relent it for reasons unknown to herself.

 

With the wind drifted shouts of laughter and merriment. She closed her ears to the repulsive sounds. She would never be apart of those sickening people, so why torment herself by listening to them. They had never known true horror or pain or despair or hopelessness or any other horror that she didn't care to list.

 

When she had first arrived at East High boarding school, she had been forced into counseling. They had tried to get her to talk about what her father had done to her, but she shut up tighter than a clam and refused to utter a single syllable about her past. It was done and over with, why relive the horrors?

 

A high, strange whistling brought her out of her stupor and back to reality. Aqua got to her feet and stretched. She looked around, but saw that this strange whistling disturbed no one else. Seeing that some of the other girls had noticed that she was up, she stuffed her hands in her jeans pockets and turned on her heel and walked into the forest on the school grounds, commonly called Hangman's Forest due to its history of having criminals hung from its trees in olden days.

 

There were rumors about Hangman's forest that frightened everyone but Aqua away. She liked it there, it was quiet and peaceful, besides no one else would dare follow her in for fear of getting snatched up by some crazy person, or so the rumor went. No one really knew where the rumor originated; they just knew that it was as old as the school. Aqua didn't really care, not that she really cared for much.

 

She kicked a stone in her pathway and watched it ricochet off one of the tall nearby oak trees and hit a squirrel in the next tree over. Aqua had a hard time keeping a small smirk from showing on her lips as the squirrel chattered angrily at her as she walked on her way. Her smirk faded, as did the squirrels indignant chattering, the further into the forest she walked. She followed the winding trail that lead through the forest and ended abruptly at a small, abandoned, run down wooden house beside a large lake.

 

She entered the house and walked across the creaking floorboards, through the old kitchen to one of the back bedrooms. Aqua had discovered the old house about a month after she had arrived at East High. She had been being nagged by a boy to go out with him, for she had been the object of affection for many boys for some time, and he had gone so far as to corner her one day during the class they had together.

 

~Flashback~

 

“Hey Aqua,” Shane said shyly, “I hear that you don't have a boyfriend.”

 

Aqua stared coldly at the black haired boy. To most of the other girls he would have been good-looking, but to Aqua he was just as repugnant as all the others in the school. “What of it?” she asked coldly, turning away and walking to her seat.

 

Shane wasn't the least bit perturbed by her lack of interest; he was confidant that he could have any girl he wanted. He followed her to her seat and leaned over the desk and said, “So, I was wondering if you would like to go out with me?”

 

Aqua didn't even glance up from her desk, as she answered, “No. Now go away and never speak to me again.”

 

Shane, not being one to take rejection too well, frowned and seized her wrist and said, “You'll go out with me if you know what's good for you.” Then he squeezed her wrist so hard, the bone began to crackle.

 

Aqua lunged for his hand and bit him. Her teeth broke the skin and drew blood. Shane howled with pain and released her. She let go of his hand, grabbed her school bag and ran out of the classroom before anyone even registered that anything had even happened. She didn't stop running until she reached the school forest and plunged a good ways in.

 

~End Flashback~

 

* * *

 

Outside Earth's orbit a black-haired, hazel-eyed teen desperately fought off a swarm of enemies that were determined to capture him. He was tiring quickly, but he refused to be captured, he would face torment worse than death if he was. It had happened to so many of his kin that it was enough to just hear about the tortures that the Letrangra were capable of to make him want to avoid them at all costs.

 

This is the last time I venture away from my home world and into forbidden territory without an escort, he thought, desperately fending off the next wave of attacks from the squad that had been chasing him over what felt like half the known universe. He missed one of the fireballs and got hit squarely in the head. Lights blinked in front of his eyes as he saw the Letrangra Captain call a halt to the attacks and venture towards him.

 

Out of desperation, he threw all his remaining reserves into a spell that would thrust him backwards and, hopefully, far away enough to escape capture and torture. He was sent spiraling down to the planet below's orbit and sent plummeting towards the green, green ground. He soon lost sight of the Letrangra and landed, with a resounding SMACK, in some sort of foreign clear, blue liquid. Before he blacked out from lack of air he saw what looked like a female Night-and-Gale of his race pushing through the odd liquid towards him.

 

* * *

 

Aqua looked up as she heard the odd whistling return, but louder this time. It was shortly followed by a resounding SMACK as water sprayed the wooden house and dripped down through the thatched roof. She got up and quickly made her way back outside to see what had made the disturbance against the water.

 

Crouching beside the lake she squinted into the water and saw nothing. She stood and stretched and glanced around. Having nothing better to do she decided to go for a swim, besides it was the middle of summer and over 105 degrees Fahrenheit. She removed her top and jeans and plunged into the cool waters. She resurfaced and swam on her back for a few moments before she flipped over onto her stomach and dove back down into the depths of the lake and easily gliding through the waters.

 

Having grown up with a river next to her house, she was a natural born swimmer, considering how many times she had had to escape her father's wrath. The deeper she swam, the darker it became. It was almost as if the lake had no end. Just as she was about to turn around and head back to the surface for air she spotted a boy around her age sinking into the depths of the lake some ways below her.

 

Suddenly intrigued, she kicked her feet and managed to go deeper. Every foot she went down there seemed to be a growing pressure on her lungs that made it more and more difficult to hold her breath. Not soon enough she came within sight of the bottom of the lake and saw the boy hit it.

 

Her lungs screamed for air, but she pressed onwards, determined to grab the boy and take him back to the surface with her. As she came within reaching distance of the boy she gasped for air and inhaled a lungful of water. She gagged and tried to breathe, but continued to gulp water down. Snatching the boy up by the wrist she kicked out and swam as fast as the extra weight she was hauling allowed her to. By this time she had inhaled several mouthfuls of water and was desperate to get to the surface.

 

She briefly considered releasing the boy to get to the surface faster, but decided against it since she had gone through the trouble of almost drowning herself to rescue him. When her head at last broke the surface she coughed water up and gulped air down by the lungful before she finally pulled the boy's head above water to get an arm around his upper torso and do an awkward backstroke to the shore.

 

When her feet brushed solid footing she stopped swimming and pulled them up onto the dry banks and dropped the boy on his back and collapsed next to him. Her muscles threatened to cramp from over exertion as she hauled herself onto her hands and knees and lowered her ear over his chest to see if he was breathing. Finding that he wasn't she punched him several times in the stomach, not knowing proper CPR, to make him spit up the water he must have inhaled while under water.

 

Once he spat up some of the water and began to gasp for air, she gave a shuddering gasp and collapsed next to him with her head on his shoulder. Stars blinked in front of her eyes as she passed out.

 

* * *

 

As he slipped in and out of consciousness he recalled the foreign liquid that he had landed in and briefly wondered why he still wasn't being suffocated, or why the Letrangra hadn't some down to the planets surface to capture him. During one of his brief periods of consciousness he felt a warmth on his right shoulder that did not belong to him, though he was too weak to lift his head and find out what type of creature was next to him, Prince of the Night-and-Gales.