It's finally here; chapter two! Maybe next weekend in between Conference sessions I'll upload the next five chapters of Kitsune Assassin Yuki, too...
ALSO, as a disclaimer on that note, the Elementals are completely fictional and something from my imagination.
Israel’s POV
“Wait… I’m WHAT?!”
“I was afraid you’d react this way,” the green-clad girl sighed. “I hoped I would be able to explain this to you myself, but I suppose it is Hanase’s job, considering she’s the oldest of us…”
“No,” I said, “You’re the one who dropped the bomb, now I need to know what the heck is going on here!”
“You’ll get an explanation, believe me,” Sakura responded as she stood up to leave. “But it’s up to Hanase-san to do that, not me.”
“Just who is this ‘Hanase-san’ you keep talking about?!” I shouted, now standing up as well, looking the girl straight into her eyes.
“Sakura, is he up ye – oh, so he is.” There walked in another young woman, somewhat older than the first… and dressed a lot more… extravagant? Odd? I don’t know how to describe it. She wore a flowing blue dress with a sash that had the kanji for water embroidered on it, matching strikingly well with her hair and eyes, which were also blue. For a moment, I almost thought she had escaped from a really elaborately drawn shoujo manga. If the brown-haired girl was really telling the truth, then this woman must have been the elemental of water.
“Oh, Hanase-san!” Sakura replied. “He’s awake now, but yeah… we’ve kind of gotten off on the wrong foot, you could say.”
“Well, we can fix that,” the blue woman said confidently as she sat down in front of me, motioning me to do likewise. Seeing no other option but to comply at that time, I took back my seat on the floor. Upon me doing so, she began to look at me analytically, scanning her eyes from my head to my toes. She pulled my face closer to hers and looked carefully at my eyes before she spoke.
“Hmm… you seem to have developed normally over the last three years. But purple… even for us that’s not a common eye color. They are pretty, though…” The “three years” part got my attention immediately, but at that very moment just made me confirm even further in my mind that these girls were nuts. “Oh, don’t worry, you haven’t missed much,” she said calmly as she continued her analysis, almost as if she had read my mind. Or she was really adept in her knowledge of the human psyche. “Your human life is long behind you, anyway.” She finally finished and sat patiently. “If you’re going to tell us we’re crazy, now’s the time.”
“Crazy?” I snapped. “More like insane! What do you mean by ‘three years’? And what’s this ‘elemental’ crap you keep talking about?!”
“Okay, outburst’s done, my turn to talk,” the woman continued before I could get another word in edgewise. “First, allow me to explain to you who we are and who you now are, and why you’re here instead of the Spirit World. To start with, I am he Elemental of Water, Hanase Mizusa. Sakura’s already told you her element, I assume, and the only other male Elemental besides you at present, the Elemental of Fire, is currently not present. And-“
“I’m the Elemental of Air, right? That girl already told me.” I pointed to Sakura.
“Exactly!” the woman said excitedly. “Now, for the reason you’re here. Three years ago tomorrow, you were hit by a car. The night before, Sakura has received word from God via the Dream Realm that you were to be the next Elemental. So, after the doc pronounced you ‘dead,’ you came to us by divine teleportation (don’t ask how it’s done, ‘cause not even I fully understand it), and you began to Change to the form you are in now. For most female Elementals, the process takes anywhere from a few hour s to a week. But for males, sometime it can take a year or more. Such is your case.”
“So, what you’re saying is,” I started, “That I’m now in control over a certain element, but everyone I knew and loved from my human life thinks I’m dead… and I’m now sixteen?”
“Cute and clever,” Hanase said, seemingly impressed by my deductive reasoning. “But yeah, that’s the jist of it. It’ll take some time for you to lean control over your powers, but in time it’ll come to you. The thing is, though we’re dead to the generations in which we were born as humans, we still have to live normal lives on the human side of things and act as normal people most of the time. After all, someone’s gotta pay the rent for this place.”
“Okay…“ I said slowly, accepting this crazy fate more and more. As much as I found it hard to believe, part of me preferred this to being dead, especially with Hitome’s grief-stricken denial of my ‘death’ still fresh in my mind.
“Which is where you come in,” Hanase continued as she handed me the form for an entrance exam. “From now on, you will no longer be Jacob Johnson, but you shall be Israel Kazehara, the newest student to attend Shinozuka High School. But that also brings up a concern,” she said, locating a pencil and then giving it to me so I could begin the exam… even though I don’t know how she would expect me to complete a high school entrance exam when I was only just starting 8th grade when I ‘died,’ but knowing how these things work, she probably would mention an explanation for that later. “Sakura told me that you used to always go by the name Jacob in your human life rather than your real given name, which was Israel.”
“Yeah, so…?” I said as I subconsciously started working on the exam without even realizing it.
“You can’t do that anymore. As far as the world knows, Israel ‘Jacob’ Johnson died three years ago in a hit-and-run. In order to protect our identity, you need to act accordingly. There is a very good reason why our existence has been concealed for so long; as God’s secret legion of angels, the world is not yet ready to know that we are of that legion, or that such a legion even exists apart from the Archangels.”
“Well I figured that,” I said, still unconsciously filling out the exam, until I realized just what I was doing. “Wait a sec –“
“Yes, we’re angels. And now, so are you,” Hanase said, as if assuming that this were what I was about to ask about.
“Yeah, I got that pretty quickly, too,” I said, pointing to the half-finished exam and showing it to Hanase. “How the heck is this happening?! And why do I have the feeling I got all of the answers right so far…?”
“Oh, just another part of the Change.”
Fiction: 03/29/08 | Posted By: cardcaptorryoko | 0 comments | Original Anime and Manga
