Pride x Familiar (4 page)

Damn, this phenomenon was too weird.

Try as I might I couldn’t move in time to stop
my assailant from landing on my midriff. She straddled my waist,
and I felt the heat from her smooth thighs penetrate my body.

Maybe dying in slow motion wouldn’t be so
bad.

I looked up into her pretty face and saw the
elation on her features.

She looked genuinely happy as she raised the
blade over her head.

“Sorry…this…will hurt…a little….”

I reached up as fast as I could but my arms
moved unbearably slowly.

She brought the blade down and I felt it pierce
my chest, but not my heart.

Blood spurted onto her hands. My blood.

A few droplets landed on her cheeks.

Great. I marred her pretty features.

Then I realized I was probably going to die if
my body was spouting so much blood into the air.

The weird time phenomena started to fade and I
sensed my surroundings begin to move at a normal pace.

She pulled the knife out of my chest.

If it hurt going in, it hurt twice as much going
out.

I struggled to breathe and convulsed on the
rooftop while she sat on my midriff.

“Don’t worry. This is sure to work. Arisa is
positive of what you are, and she’s not the only one.”

My vision was growing cloudy. I could barely
hear what she was saying.

But I did see her pull out and uncap something
that resembled a pressurized needle.

She plunged the needle into my neck.

I felt a surge of liquid flood into me.

“She’s not wrong. She was right about me—she’s
right about you. She’s definitely not wrong!”

Her elation was turning into desperation.

What the Hell was she saying about me?

Then she leaned close to me.

I smelled the scent of her hair and her perfume
as she whispered.

“I’m sorry. This part is going to really
hurt.”

What—you don’t think I’m in pain already?

She was looking at me, our noses only inches
apart, when a burning sensation that exceeded the volcano of pain
in my chest suddenly spread from my neck to the rest of my
body.

If she hadn’t been holding me down with her
arms, I might have thrashed myself to pieces.

As it was, the only reason I couldn’t scream was
because I had no air in my lungs.

That and the fact her mouth was smothering
mine.

Damn it! What a way to commemorate my first kiss
– on the rooftop, with a knife wound to my chest, and a hot girl
straddling my pain wracked body.

I passed out without getting the opportunity to
be grateful that I did.

When the Cataclysm ripped the galaxy apart for a
radius of fifty three light years, it left behind the Hurakan
Nebula.

Basically, the nebula formed from the remains of
numerous planets, moons, and stars blown to bits by the trans-light
shockwave.

That was more than two centuries ago.

Two hundred and twenty seven years to be
exact.

Twenty years later, humanity had picked up the
pieces and put together two spheres of political influence.

But the Prides were exposed and all Hell broke
loose between Regulars and the Aventis.

The Regulars lost, the Aventis won, and peace
settled upon the colonized remnant of the galaxy – one little
corner of the galaxy.

Then the Prides initiated the Pharos
Project.

To build a colony within the edge of the Hurakan
Nebula.

It took forty years to build. First, asteroids
of sufficient size were found. They were debris from the numerous
planets that were smashed to pieces by the Cataclysm. Today, we
call these asteroids The Islands.

Five Islands tied together by powerful
effect-fields, and numerous cables as thick as inter-habitat
buses.

Giant caverns more than a dozen kilometers long
were scooped out inside each of the rock islands. These came to be
known as the Habitats. Immense tunnels connected the habitats
within an island, allowing people to commute between them. However,
pressurized and atmospherically sealed trains ran between the
Islands, transporting hundreds of passengers at a time.

I was ten when my parents died.

They were killed in an explosion set off in the
largest starship dock Pharos had to offer – the Harbor Sphere of
Island One.

A massive empty sphere six kilometers wide, with
a hundred docks and berths cut into the rock wall of the
harbor.

My parents worked for a shipping company as
dockside managers.

That day a bomb was triggered inside a super
freighter that had just pulled into the dock.

The vessel went boom.

The dock went boom.

My parents and hundreds of others died in an
instant.

That was the day before Pharos was due to
celebrate its centenary.

As historians would call it, it was a Day of
Infamy.

A centenary marked in blood.

The ones responsible for the explosion announced
their existence to the people of Pharos.

They declared their opposition to the
Prides.

They went by the name…Crimson Crescent.

(Haruka)

The start of a new school year.

At least I wasn’t starting the year at a new
school.

I had transferred into Galatea Academy seven
months ago, once my body acclimatized to the Avenir Symbiote.

Galatea Academy was one of five premier schools
in Pharos catering to the Aventis.

For a colony that consisted of five immense
rocks or asteroids, Pharos was the hub of all commerce and traffic
into the Hurakan Nebula. The asteroids were referred to as Islands.
The smallest was thirty kilometers long and twelve kilometers at it
widest. The largest, Island One, was fifty seven kilometers long
and twenty two kilometers wide.

Galatea Academy was located inside Habitat One,
Island Three, District Dee-Three.

It was a school exclusive to the Prides.

No Regular humans.

Just us Aventis, and a number of Familiars.

When I first joined the Avenir Pride, it took me
as long to get used to the changes in my body, as it took to grow
accustomed to the new school.

That was to say, it didn’t take me long at all.
That was because I was welcomed with open arms by my new
classmates, and that made the transition easier.

The girls in my class made me at home as best
they could.

And the boys did their best to put in a good
impression – for obvious reasons.

Because I transferred in halfway during the
school year, I had to work extra hard to keep up with the slightly
different curriculum. But I persevered, and by the end of the year
I found myself in the top ten in my class, and the top twenty in my
year.

I was ready to begin my second year of high
school with a great deal of pride in what I’d accomplished.

I knew I hadn’t disappointed my family
either.

If anything, my parents were even more proud of
me than before.

Although, there were times I hated the way they
bragged of their daughter joining a strong and influential
Pride.

I worried my mother would start asking me when I
would start dating seriously, and had any good prospects come
alone.

I politely sidestepped the issue each time.

I couldn’t date anyone seriously.

I didn’t have the heart to do so.

My heart was in pieces, and I had no way of
putting it back together again.

I forgot to mention that I cried so hard after
that day I really wanted to die.

I cried hard for a week.

My parents believed and rightly so that Caelum
was at fault. My parents never liked him. They pitied him, an
orphan of the state after his sister – his sole remaining relative
– died. They sympathized with his circumstances.

But they never found him worthy of me.

And for that I could never forgive them, nor
love them like a good daughter should.

And because I loved Caelum I was afraid of
telling him how I felt.

I was afraid of hearing him say ‘no’.

In the end, I missed my chance to tell him.

When I calmed down and thought about our
circumstances, I realized that maybe Caelum was right.

It hurt like Hell to say goodbye, but he’d given
me the clean break I would need in order to start again as an
Aventis.

To start my new life as a member of the Avenir
Pride.

But regardless of the reasons, the end result
was a hollow shell.

Me.

I spent time with my new friends.

I spent time with a boy every now and then, and
joined my new girlfriends on double dates.

A met a special boy, and little by little he
began filling the emptiness that consumed my heart.

And then something happened – something I never
dreamt of coming true.

I saw Caelum again.

And he threw my world into a spin.

#

(Haruka)

He stood at the front of the class room.

As a transfer student it was required that he
introduce himself.

I felt my heart beating so loudly I thought my
classmates would hear it too.

But they were all eyeing him warily, and I
quickly understood why.

I looked at him, studying what I could see of
him.

He looked a little taller, and he stood a little
straighter.

He’d lost some of the fat on his cheeks and the
uniform hung well on his body.

His black hair was thick and neatly combed.

He looked older.

He looked…harder, as though he’d acquired an
edge he lacked before.

I was starting to understand this wasn’t the
Caelum Desanto I had known for so many years.

This wasn’t the Caelum that I held in my arms
when he cried at his parent’s funeral.

We weren’t children anymore, and that was more
than evident in the aura I perceived emanating from him.

It was an aura that quietly, confidently
challenged the classroom.

He spoke his name, enunciating it with
precision.

He greeted the classroom, the teacher, afforded
the usual pleasantries and stated his hopes for a productive
year.

I listened to him, yet like all the students in
the class, my eyes were inexorably drawn to the left breast of his
uniform’s blazer. Since becoming an Aventis, my eyesight had grown
preternaturally sharp, and I saw the reason my classmates were wary
of him.

Two badges pinned side by side.

One held the crest of the Pride he was
associated with – the Lanfear Pride.

The second marked him as a Familiar – neither
Aventis nor Regular human, but something that lay in between.

Yes, it was clear now. This was not the Caelum I
remembered.

He was not the Regular young man I’d left behind
seven months ago on that school rooftop.

Caelum Desanto afil Lanfear.

That was his official name now.

I swallowed again, wondering if it was stomach
acid I tasted in the back of my mouth. Or was it bile? As I
swallowed, I turned my head to look at another member of my
class.

She sat at the back of the room, her long raven
dark hair framing her heart shaped face. She sat with a perfect
posture, as though raised from an early age with all the teachings
of a child born into a privileged family. Yet as far as anyone knew
she was an orphan of the state.

An orphan of Pharos just like Caelum.

I watched him walk down an aisle of smart desks
and seated students.

He walked to the girl at the back of the room,
and sat at the empty table on her left.

There were a number of empty tables around
her.

For as long as I’d been a part of the class – a
mere six months – she had always been alone. She had sat alone,
eaten alone, studied alone, and played gym activities alone.

But now she was no longer alone.

She had Caelum sitting to her left.

I watched him nod to her politely, and she
returned it with a faint smile.

They wore matching badges on their blazers.

My heart felt like it was being squeezed by an
iron fist.

He had swept his gaze over all my classmates. He
had surely seen me seated by the window, a third of the way down
the length of the classroom.

And yet, he had walked down the aisle between
the smart desks with his eyes focused solely on one individual –
the girl that was a Familiar just like him.

Caprice Steiner afil Lanfear.

Not once did Caelum look my way.

My vision swam, and I couldn’t prevent my
stomach from beginning to heave. I raised my hand, then mumbled
something as I staggered to my feet and then stumbled away from my
smart desk. I was aware our homeroom teacher, Ms. Clarisse
Fauntine, was speaking to me, but I couldn’t understand a word of
what she said.

I ran to the girls toilets and fell into an
empty stall. With my head above the toilet bowl, my stomach heaved
and emptied its contents.