Vision Of Escaflowne Fan Fiction ❯ Ayashi no Kijutsu ❯ five: the fight for a memory ( Chapter 5 )

Hitomi, Aya, Touya, and Yuuhi find out more about the secret box and how to summon it, and plan to acquire somehow this magic. But it's really not that simple. The process will require perfect timing and defense, as the enemy is also planning their next move---to steal the box once Aya summons it.

And here is how the battle for that lost memory in the box ensued...

AYASHI NO KIJUTSU
(Eerie Magic)
Chapter Five: The Battle for a Memory

The four had waited more than patiently for the coming of sundown. It was quite literally only a few moments, actually, but to them, it was about the equivalent of a million long years' wait, naturally. They stood close together in the semi-darkness nervously and waited for the sundown for about two minutes. No one really knew how the "say a prayer at sundown" was going to affect any real summoning, when one thought about it logically. But they had figured that it was better to stand in the path of the Tennyo, and wait for the exact moment of sundown from that point on the earth.

And when sun finally sank into the distance with a tone of finality, no one really had the heart to admire how beautiful it really was. Aya whispered in a low, but firm voice (she was determined to carry this mission out, no matter how nervous or scared of the truth she was. For it was an important mission, albeit a simple one), her prayer to summon the magic at last.

"Spirits of the past," she said, "please hear me. I now need your aid in this battle. I need to know what I am up against, and what I should do. Give me the box that contains the secrets of the past, so that my allies and I may learn of the past and seek guidance from my ancestors...."

---

"She's saying the prayer," the leader of the team whispered tonelessly into the microphone attached to his headphones.

"Remember the order. Intercept them only when they have the box and are heading for their transportation," Ganjii said, over the phone line.

"Hai," the man's face was expressionless.

---

"Van-sama," a middle-aged woman approached him respectfully, "May I," she looked to Van and the elderly Draconian standing besides him for permission, "have a word with you?"

The elderly Draconian said to Van at this moment, "Van-sama, this is Rayin (A/N: Pronounced RAI-in, in one quick stroke), the fortune teller of our clan. She is young, as she is only at age thirty, but she is especially blessed in the sight. She may provide some useful information."

"Very well," Van consented.

---

As if in response to Aya's prayer, a low breeze blew softly towards them. And a small box the size of a thumb appeared in thin air, surrounded by a faint blue aura. Aya stared at it for a moment, and reached out to hold it in her hands softly. It was like a dream, somehow, for it flared for a moment, as if recognizing her, and then the aura faded almost completely away, as the box seemed to consent and floated into her hands. Aya nodded to the others after a moment of uncertainty, and the four started walking quickly to the car. All this happened to Aya, but she neither felt the urgency or panic that one would normally feel in such an important situation. It was as if she was someone else watching. As if it was only a dream.

---

"She's got it," the man clad in black muttered, "I'm giving the order."

---

Hitomi slowed a little, struggling to hear. Was that a muffled yelp she just heard? She turned around for a second to confirm that tought. Sure enough, a body in black, faced down, lay near a bush.

Who... she thought.

"Touya," she said through her teeth strenuously, "something's wrong."

"I know," Touya replied just as quietly as she had spoken, "just continue and ignore."

"Okay," she quickened her steps to catch up.

About forty yards later, however, they were intercepted by four swift men. While Touya and Yuuhi tackled two of them in quick (but precise) hand-to-hand combat, one of them grabbed Hitomi. The one man left proceeded to kick Aya deftly in the stomach. She dropped the small box on the ground, and at the same moment, Hitomi got loose of the grasp on her and dived for the box, followed by Aya and the two men the girls were against.

However, Touya and Yuuhi had disposed of the two men they were fighting against by now, and they managed (even at their breathless state), with Aya's and Hitomi's help, to get rid of the remainder two as well. And when the four, with the small box, were running for the car again, no one on the enemy's side was even remotely close enough to intercept them.

---

"Yokatta!" Suzumi welcomed Aya, Yuuhi, Hitomi, and Touya back, "You all came back safe and sound! Did you manage to get the box?"

"Yes," Aya placed the small box on the tatami-matted floor with a sense of quiet calm, the calm that she felt whenever she looked at the box, "we did."

"Good," Yuuhi's father had appeared at the doorway noiselessly, "we can proceed to open it, then."

"It's encased in some sort of moldable material," Hitomi noted.

"It's pretty hard, that material," Yuuhi agreed, "But we could probably just peel it off with a knife or something."

Aya nodded, "The material is probably there to protect the box itself."

"Here," Touya said, pulling out a pocket knife, "cut it with this."

"I'll do it," Hitomi volunteered. Touya silently handed the knife to her, handle first, and she proceeded to delicately cut through the thin material with careful precision, so that the knife would not hurt the box. In reality, the box wouldn't really have been hurt even if she had tried to slice it with a very sharp sword. It was obviously protected by magic.

When all of the casing finally came off, everyone let out that breath they were holding, and Hitomi handed the box to Aya without a word, while Yuuhi's father collected the scraps of the material that Hitomi cut off into a plastic bag for observation later. Suzumi turned on a tape recorder (to record down important information). Aya took the box, and gingerly lifted the top of the dark wooden box off (the box was shaped from two parts, one smaller than the other [that being the top] to fit snugly over the bottom). It was a few seconds before anyone could see what was in it, because immediately, a blue light shone brightly in the room from the box. And when they tried to look at what was in it, all at the same time, the light shone again, creating an light image in the air. The image was one of a woman's.

This woman had the trademark characteristics of a Tennyo. Her hair was that of a purplish blue, as her eyes were. Her face was gentle, her nose small, and her mouth was pressed together in a soft line. She was deathly pale, equally simple strap sandals. It was apparent, from what clues they were given from the myth itself and this woman, that she was from the time of Atlantis.

"Greetings," she said softly, "I haven't much time, but I feel an obligation to speak to you, destined ones, of the past. I am a memory. The memory, in fact, of the first Tennyo. And I am to tell my story."

---

My name is Eve. The people who created me named me after the first woman. For, they said, I was the first real woman. I was created, yes, by human hands. My purpose is a slave. A sexual slave, mostly. I was created to be the wife of the Emperor of the Atlanteans. There were many, actually, before me. But all were tested over long periods of time by other men. I am the first perfect woman.

My race was created by a powerful kingdom, Atlantis, whose people are accordingly called Atlanteans. This kingdom was headquartered in the center of the Earth at our time. I have slept for over ten thousand years here in this box. According to Atlantis calculations, the ruins of Atlantis would be near what is now your south pole, as the poles have shifted much over the years.

I say that the headquarter of Atlantis was at the center of the Earth. But our continent was surrounded by others as well. Our continent was called the Central Continent. To the north, there was two great continents, connected by a narrow strip a land. That was called the Joint North Continent.

To the east, there was a great continent of strange people with dark hair and pale skin, with small eyes and small stature. This great continent had many people, though not as many as the Central Continent. This continent was called the East Pagan Continent, for the people there did not believe that the Atlanteans were gods. But these people were the ones who had given us many different types of materials of all kinds---clothes, stones, and other things. This is why they received the gift of wisdom and warfare [A/N: That sort of makes sense, doesn't it? Asia is the continent that invented paper, gun powder, and many other things besides].

To the west was a whole new world. There was a continent filled with dark-skinned people. This continent was where, Atlanteans said, all mankind's ancestors came from. This is why the Noir Continent [A/N: For those who did not know, noir means black or dark in Latin. No, I'm not being racist. I imagine that this is why the Atlanteans' mind frames would work] received the richest treasures from the Atlanteans. They received the magic of music [A/N: African people (that's African-American too) have an incredible sense of rhythm!].

Further west was land almost unknown to us. It is connected, as the world is round, to the East Pagan Continent. It is not exactly a separate continent. Because of the different race that lived there, (for they were fair skinned, like Atlanteans), it was named a separate continent, the Continent Surrounded By Water [A/N: Fact from my geography book: Did you know that Europe is also called the Peninsulas of Peninsulas because it's one giant peninsula, but has many smaller peninsulas on it?]. This continent's peoples looked like Atlanteans, and were beautiful. That is why they received the gifts of art.

These were the main land-masses, and there were others. They were given various gifts too, but none as great as these largest lands. My creators ruled over the world. They interacted regularly with these people, and their technologies were far greater than all others. They obeyed the Atlanteans because they feared the technology that Atlantis possessed. They did not realize for a long time that they were superior in numbers, and could have destroyed Atlantis easily with a little careful planning.

But I suppose one must consider that Atlanteans installed many different machinery over the world. The most advanced and accurate being the world-wide web [A/N: No. That is not a pun or any joke. It's what came to mind when the plot first came up.] of posts where the Atlanteans viewed the stars and predicted the future. All of these posts are hidden as temples, churches, or various landmarks of the sort, mostly religious.

These posts were placed strategically. All of them were marked with some sort of a straight line pointing north. For example, the Joint North Continents was divided into North and South.

The South part of the continent had especially many technologies. This is where Atlanteans placed their most perfect direction marks---the stone spheres placed strategically to tell a direction from another.

[A/N: Yes, these stones really exist. They're HUGE (about 3-4 feet tall each. That's big. This is 10 thousand years ago we're talking about. It's amazing that they can create SPHERES already. Perfect ones). These stones were placed yards, or even miles apart, to tell direction, with a set of three on each location. How do they tell location? Trigonometry. Study a bit of Geometry and it'd be quite obvious. Ya know, the whole right triangles and length thing. They did something with that or something. Ugh. History's confusing. So's Archaeology.]

Here in this sub-continent [A/N: Being brainwashed by my Geography teacher, I used that word. Sub-continent means a landmass shaped like a continent, only smaller. In this case, a landmass that is shaped like a continent, but is not quite considered a continent. I know I know. Don't tell me. It's now South America, a separated continent from North. But this is 10000 years ago. Don't argue with me], there were many temples. For the civilizations here [A/N: For the South American history impaired, those are, to name a few, the Incas and the Mayans. I know. I'm strange. What can I do? My dad was a history major. It's in my blood] believed in the power of nature [A/N: That's mostly true in terms of South American ancient civilization religion and philosophy].

The roads leading up to most of these temples point north, placing the temples directly at the north ends of roads [A/N: Again, mostly true. Only a few were actually at the north. I must remind you that this is not our "north," or north pole that we're talking about. It's their's. Which was, at the time, roughly around Hudson Bay in New York state.. Those who believe in this particular Atlantis theory call it the Hudson Pole Bay].

And this is roughly the layout and the best technologies of Atlantis. These things were what made them proud. This is what made them feel that they deserved perfect women. And so they cast aside their normal women and created us to be the ultimate wealth. We were worth more than gold to the men there.

A Word To the Reader About This Chapter
Thanks again for reading. I can't thank you all enough for reading and reviewing. I give special thanks to Grrl N for reviewing on every chapter so far on fanfiction.net! What I would do without you! Thank you, everyone, for reading. This fanfic would be completely pointless without you, the reader. I'm sorry that the last few chapters have been dry, short, and boring, and I hope to improve as I go on. Please read on and comment. Authors can only improve so far without comments and find so many mistakes unless they were pointed out to us. Rayin's name came out from no where in the back of my mind. If another fanfic author had a character with that name (particularly a Zelda author--I've been reading a lot of those), it's probably stolen off his or hers. And I'm sorry for that. If you have a character with the name Rayin, please review or e-mail me and inform me. I'm really not sure if I came up with it myself or if someone else created it.

Author's Random Ramblings:
Ugh. Life is pathetic. And I know some of you are wondering what the fucking hell the dedication means. It's, as you can see, Edwin's birthday on Monday. I tried to get him a gift---I really did. I owe him that much. In fact, let's applaud Edwin for giving me what he gave me for Christmas---Ayashi no Ceres, the complete TV series on CD-R. That's why this chapter is dedicated to him. Because I couldn't find a gift for him (and he has to live with getting money instead) and because I wouldn't have seen all of the series without him. This fanfic probably wouldn't exist without him. And he probably doesn't know that nor care. XD Margareth, however, deserves this dedication (Imaginary-Edwin-In-Amy's-Mind: And I don't? *anger anger*). She drew a beautiful picture of Akito Hayama from Kodomo no Omocha, dedicated to my original story (about my life), The Last Maple Leaf. Love you Margareth!

Ramblings About the Process of Writing This Chapter...
The first 7 kb of this chapter came pretty much easily. I had a bit of inspiration, although upon re-reading the draft, I found the section dry, boring, and unoriginal. Most of this fanfic has become sort of a rush job because of the pathetically busy life I lead and because of the lack of inspiration, for the most part. I'm glad that people like it, really. But as much as I'm proud of the fanfic itself, I'm not really proud of how the context is. I love it, in a general sense, but I don't like what I did with it. I could've done so much more...

The rest of the chapter came rather well. I like it. It's long and it's boring and historical. Yum. Ugh. I'm brainwashed by evil creatures disguised in what they call "educators."