Most of Lambastia's city life can be found along the southeastern coast of Norrega, where settlers feel they are safe from Nori Volcano at the northern tip of the region. Warm gulf winds ensure this region is the most habitable on the continent, though travelers are warned of the disappearances of many venturing too close to the Whisper Forest. Species from all over are housed at the Evelon Preservation Zoo.

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Postby Jaykobell » 02/25/2012 11:37 PM

The reason why Matthew claimed that Matilda was a cruel witch was because of how Matilda used her powers. Most of us didn't quite bother to think about it and used them as we saw fit. Some powers, however, are more focused on defense than offense or support. Foretelling the future or reliving the past didn't much for anyone besides myself; however, Libra had the ability to control an object's timeline. If the host is not used to using that power, it strains the host to use Libra's ability.

While Matilda's Libra was barely inconvenient for her, she still considered her ability to be special. Who she decides to help with it and who she decides to inconvenience with it was her choice and hers alone. In my case, if she agreed to return my body to a time before it was infected with that poison, she would basically allow me to cheat death. I'd implanted countless bodies at that point with all the strains, but no Libra host had ever even come closer to Matilda's level. As someone who was now dedicating her life to perfecting her abilities, it wasn't too surprising for Matilda to have become so powerful.

"I figured you can tell I'm not in good shape," I finally said, with just a little smile that was, admittedly, somewhat insecure. "It's a long story, but in a nutshell—"

"Oh, we have plenty of time," Matilda assured me, cutting me off abruptly and crossing her legs nonchalantly as she continued to stare at me with much curiosity. "Do tell me everything. I can assure you you won't endanger yourself if we do go about it the long way."

Part of me was relieved that she had taken the extra precaution of stabilizing me, but another part of me wasn't so pleased at the idea of having to tell my entire life story. But I should've prepared myself for it; that was how Matilda picked those she deemed worthy of being saved. If she considered that you were worth keeping around, then she would help you. If she thought you weren't all that important, then she would let you die. Her philosophy was as simple as that. "All right."

I didn't have much of a choice.
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Postby Jaykobell » 02/25/2012 11:51 PM

I wasn't sure where to start, considering it had been decades since the group had split, and even longer since I'd last seen and spoken to Matilda. Needless to say that this was going to be a huge trip down memory lane. "After the group split, I wasn't satisfied with where we'd ended things. With permission from my mother, I continued the project on my own."

"You continued the research?" Matilda interjected, and I had a feeling she would do it often throughout my story. In this case, she sounded surprised to hear me say that I had continued the project, despite everyone agreeing to drop it and move on with their lives. "Why would you continue to throw your life away on a project that I has no future?"

"I wanted to research my mother's strain, Sirius, since I had a feeling that was the strain that would lead to immortality; but I also wanted to research all of them more. At first, that was why I sought the other Creators; I wanted to know if any of them had notes or anything left from the project that I could use as reference." I was now looking at the ceiling as I told the story, since it was starting to make my neck numb to stay in that same awkward side position. "I found a few of them, but not everyone."

"There was nothing left to research," Matilda disagreed, and from the corners of my eyes, I could see her frown, perplexed. "Sirius is a savage strain that is not compatible with the human body. Hosts show improvement and stability at first, but like Leo, Sirius destroys the nervous system entirely."

"That's true," I agreed, and then I turned my head back to look at her again, "but not quite. I first started by implanting the gentler strains in multiple hosts, and after those results were conclusive, I moved on to Sirius. One host managed to handle it perfectly. She's functional, intelligent, and she's never shown degenerative symptoms."
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Postby Jaykobell » 02/26/2012 12:11 AM

As much as Matilda said she had no more interest in the project, at the mention of me succeeding in implanting Sirius into a human host, her curiosity clearly flared up. "Fascinating," she admitted, crossing her arms and giving me a stern look. "I'm surprised to hear that, Ashton. You're telling me you succeeded to implant the strain none of us could tame?"

She wanted to know if I was just blowing hot air or actually saying the truth. I knew full-well that I wasn't lying, but this was a test, and if I failed it, I would lose my only chance at living. "We'd barely touched Sirius. You all thought it was madness to research it, considering the side-effects it had on the hosts."

"Yes, because we were needlessly hurting people, Ashton. Once the strains connected to the brain, they became alive, and they grew up to be just like humans with sentient personalities and feelings." It was hard to explain just how the strains worked. They could be implanted in human beings, but they could also prosper in dead bodies. If the death had been relatively recent, the parasite could connect to the brain and reanimate the body and thereafter use it as its own. The closest analogy we could come up with was to compare them to computer plugs. Every laptop computer has a battery; once the battery is empty, the laptop can't work anymore, unless you charge it. The plug can be introduced to the laptop at any time, whether the battery still has energy or not.

By implanting a strain in a dead body, this gave the body a second life of sorts. Since the previous soul had already left, the strain, which is an intelligent life form, could use the body as its own and develop its own personality, feelings, morals, and ideas. If a strain was introduced to a body with a mind and soul, the person sometimes developed a few changes in their personality, but nothing that was too drastic. The host would also inherit the powers of the strain in question.

As such, by implanting something as savage as Sirius, the strain would grow and become sentient. It had a body and developed a personality of its own, like any human would. Because of this, the other Creators thought it was too inhumane to "create" life only to know it would ultimately destroy itself in the worst way possible. However, even that was up for debate; every host was different, and so was every strain.

It took me a while to think of a reply to Matilda's argument. "You need to make sacrifices in order to obtain something." But saying that was a terrible mistake.

"Is that so, Ashton?" Matilda questioned, and right away I knew that I'd put my foot in my mouth — if not both feet. "This is an interesting argument. According to your logic, in order to obtain what you want from me, you need to sacrifice something. Is that right?"
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Postby Jaykobell » 02/26/2012 3:04 AM

There was little I could say to argue with Matilda's argument now. "I..." I didn't know what to answer. I closed my eyes and managed to put my hands to my face; my arms burned at the effort, but the pain wasn't nearly as bad as it had been earlier. "It's not the same thing."

"It is the same thing," Matilda immediately retorted, and even though I was covering my face, I could feel her eyes glaring at me. "You were always the one saying that. You were always the one who claimed that it was necessary to sacrifice one life to save millions of others. You were the one who had no qualms about sacrificing others. As long as you got to survive... You didn't care about anything else."

I gritted my teeth at being told things that I didn't need to hear. I was weak, I was vulnerable; the facade had long been abandoned. Matilda was judgmental, and she was cruelly judging me. "That's in the past."

"It's not," she argued again, this time getting up and turning her back to me; I heard her shuffling about and I didn't feel her eyes on me anymore. "You haven't changed at all. You continued a project destined to fail from the very beginning. You continued to research something that doesn't bring anything to anyone." I could hear her move, her eyes glaring down at me again. "You're a selfish manipulator who seeks others only in order to save yourself. You only care about yourself, and if you'd need to kill others in order to save your own life, that's exactly what you would do. You didn't search for me to keep in touch or to be friends." I heard her walk closer to me, and again she leaned down close to me, close to my ear. "You're like a child playing a game, and if he can't win... then he'll just have to cheat. Just like what you're doing now."

I wanted to let my fingers sink into my face, and I wanted to scream; but I did neither. That's when they say that the truth is what hurts the most.
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Postby Jaykobell » 02/26/2012 3:23 AM

At this point, I really had nothing to say. I was going through an array of emotions, ranging from frustration to indignation to sadness. There was very little I could think of to counter her argument. It's hard to fight back against the truth. But of much of it was true? "I lived in a small village... away from the local towns. They wanted us to leave and relocate because they wanted more farming grounds. When we refused, they used force and burned down the village." I let one hand fall back down to my stomach, and I let the other hand cover the rest of my face on its own. "Because they had more power than us, they thought they could step all over us and take everything from us. I lost everything." My family, my friends; everyone I'd known and come to love had perished in a savage fire, all for the sake of greedy landlords who only cared about enriching themselves further. "When I got power... I thought I would finally be able to do the same. I thought I would be able to step all over the others, too. I had nothing to lose anymore. I could step over anyone I wanted, and there was nothing they could take away from me in retaliation. That's what I thought."

"That's what you still think," Matilda corrected bluntly, straightening up and looking down at me with crossed arms; I could see her a little now that only one hand was covering my face. "I'm no fool, I know very well that you're dying, and that is the reason why you came to me."

"I don't think like that... I don't..." I let my hand and arm slip down from my face, my arm just hanging limply over the edge of the sofa I was laying on. I sighed as I just let the tears flow, but without letting it go overboard. "I'm not like that. It's not just about me. It's not..."

I could tell Matilda was still looking at me, although with a softer look this time. She didn't reply to me right away, but she didn't stay quiet for long. "Who is it for, then?"
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Postby Jaykobell » 02/26/2012 3:37 AM

"Who is it for...?" I echoed, and for a moment, I hesitated. My words seemed to mean very little to Matilda right now. As someone who had lost many years of her life researching something unreachable, it appeared that she held a certain grudge towards the group as a whole. That was the reason why she refused to interact with us, hadn't she said? I tried to reach into my pockets; my arm burned from the effort, and so did my whole body, since I had to lift myself just enough to squeeze my hand into my pocket. I took out my phone and flipped it open.

I could feel Matilda glaring at me. "Are you going to answer me at all, Ashton?"

"If you won't believe my words, then maybe you'll believe... pictures," I replied, tapping the buttons and the arrows on my phone until I could get to the photo album. I sighed before stretching my arm towards Matilda, trying to hand the phone over to her. "Look," I urged her on, and although somewhat reluctantly, she took the phone from my hand and looked at the first picture.

I looked up at her as she looked through the pictures, hearing the soft clicking sound every time she pressed on the arrow on the little keyboard. Her expression changed, but it seemed like she still wasn't sure what to think about what she was looking at. "And who... is this?" she asked, which was sort of a rhetorical question.

"I'm sure you understand who it is," I started, but leaving it at that wouldn't quite do it. "Her name is Agnes... She's my wife, although we're not officially married." I lifted my hand where you would usually find an engagement ring, but both of my hands were still bare. "And then it's our two boys. The brown-haired one is Harvey, he's our oldest. The smaller one with the punk hair is Shawn; his mom can't fix his hair no matter what she does."
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Postby Jaykobell » 02/26/2012 3:54 AM

I saw Matilda's expression change, and that's when I saw my opportunity. "Agnes... is the Sirius host I was talking about," I started with, and although she glanced up at me, she seemed to be fascinated by the pictures she was seeing and went right back to them. "You know what Sirius does to the host. Like my mother, it increases the host's lifespan tremendously. Crawford... He wanted to get that part of my research, and so he went after her."

"Crawford? There's a name I haven't heard in years," Matilda mentioned in passing, looking up from my phone just for a minute. I assume she was trying to put a face to the name and was having a bit of a problem finding the right face. "Scorpio," she eventually said as she went back to the pictures.

"Right. He dragged her into this whole mess... I don't know what he did to her, but all I know is that he hurt her. I confronted him, and he dragged me into a physical fight. I thought I had him down and finished, but that's when he poisoned me." I lifted a hand up so I could take a look at it; a hand so weak and helpless due to this flesh-eating poison. "I let it simmer because I thought Hydra would be resilient enough to neutralize it. And in reality... I was just letting it eat my body from the inside-out for years."

After I was done explaining the story behind my condition, Matilda looked up from my phone to stare directly at me. "You... got injured because you were protecting her, then?"

I blinked slowly as I repeated her question in my head. "Yes," I replied simply, looking right back at her. "Because my children and their mother are my happiness... They gave me something to live for. They gave me the immortality I've been looking for all this time."
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Postby Jaykobell » 02/26/2012 4:16 AM

"What? Immortality? Your family gave you immortality?" I could see Matilda staring at me as if I'd gone insane and lost my mind. She didn't seem interested in the pictures anymore at this time; her attention was focused entirely on me and on what I was saying.

"When I proposed to Agnes to have a kid... I wanted to research the child. I wanted to know if the strains' abilities could be passed down genetically, and if they expanded or evolved through genetics and reproduction. Expanding the research was all I had in mind." There had been no honest desire to have children for any other goal, at the time. Agnes was the only Sirius host who had managed to connect with the parasite, and I wanted to further the project by going one step further. "I was glad when she told me she was pregnant with our child... I was ready to test lists upon lists of things, I was just waiting for the day when I could start seeing symptoms and various other things in the child."

I could see Matilda frowning a little, but she didn't intercept. This time, she was willing to let me finish the entire story before delivering her opinion. "When I was next to Agnes when she gave birth... Everything changed. It took me a while to really realize it, but what had happened... We had created life, and it was our responsibility to watch over that life. So small, so fragile, so ignorant... so fascinating, and so beautiful. How something can be so small and fragile, and how something can have just a little part of you inside." I raised my arms and held my hands as if I were holding something. "We named him, we fed him, we played with him... We taught him everything we know." I paused as I tried to find a way to continue my train of thought, as I tried to find a way to explain it clearly. "There's no way to explain it. By the time the boy had grown, I'd entirely forgotten about what I wanted to do for the research. The research didn't matter, nor did I want to carry it out."

I could feel Matilda becoming restless, and eventually she piped up. "What about immortality?"

I blinked at her question, hearing the impatience in her voice. "Immortality is just a concept. It's same way art is just an abstract concept. What do you define as art, and so, what do you define as immortality? When my son was born... After I heard him speak his first words, after I saw him walk for the first time... It hit me. I'd always wondered why my parents had bothered to adopt children. After my son, the answer was obvious, even if, even now, I can't put it into words. The children have a little part of you in them, whether by blood or not. They learn from you and, in return for what you teach them, they give you happiness. They give you something to live for. This feeling of being alive and having something to aim for, to protect, to raise... You're passing on your knowledge, your morals... You're passing on your spirit. I'll forever live on in my children, even after I die — whenever that will be. They will remember me and they will always have a small part of me in them. And that, to me, is what immortality is."
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Postby Jaykobell » 02/26/2012 4:33 AM

My eyes were closed as I tried to put words to something I couldn't quite explain or even understand, myself. Matilda wasn't saying anything, so I eventually opened my eyes and looked at her. We locked eyes, her face staring at me blankly, I assumed, because she was still processing what I'd told her. "That's why I'm here. I can't die now. I can't die and leave my boys behind, or their mom."

"What if they don't like you, as a parent or otherwise?" Matilda interrupted, turning back to what I'd just told her. "You may be right in that they'll remember you, but what will happen if you're not a good parent to them? What if they grow to hate or even forget you?"

"Sometimes I can't stand them," I admitted passively, not afraid to admit it. "Sometimes I wish it were still just me and Agnes. They're constantly running around and sometimes I lose my patience with them. Sometimes I make them cry because I'm too authoritative or strict with them. But ultimately, we put things back together and we start playing together again. I never got along with my father, and I ever will. But we still love each other, in our own way. I don't regret my children, and I never will."

Matilda continued to stare at me quietly, my phone still hanging limply from her hand. She walked up to me and bent down on her knees, flipped my phone shut and slipped it back into my hand. She held that hand into her own hands, quietly looking down. "You... You have changed so much."
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Postby Jaykobell » 02/26/2012 4:47 AM

"I never liked you, Ashton," Matilda went on after a short moment of silence, still holding my hand. "Even if you were Ethelred's son, blood-related or not. You were overconfident and cunning, and your selfishness knew no bounds. You were always so tremendously intelligent, but you kept using your intelligence for your own sake instead of using it for others." She was still looking down as she admitted everything, but she eventually looked up. "I'm glad you've learned. You're now mature and even more powerful than you've ever been."

I was surprised to hear the last part coming from her, but I could only chuckle at it. "Stronger? Look at me, I can barely stand on my own."

"You pushed yourself beyond your limits just to find me. You were in pain, but despite that, you kept on searching. You were looking for me because you can't leave your family behind. Ashton, anyone can walk over others and claim to have power." She squeezed my hand slightly and brought it up to her chest. "But very few people have true strength; very few can put others before themselves. That, really, is what makes you a powerful person."

It was my turn to stare at Matilda blankly, thinking over what she'd just said. Perhaps that was another reason why my family filled a void in my heart that dated as far back as my childhood. Perhaps protecting them was what was giving me this feeling that I was happy, empowered. "I guess so," I replied quietly, a small grin stretching on my face.
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Postby Jaykobell » 02/26/2012 5:12 AM

Matilda released my hand slightly and let it rest on my stomach. "I will grant you what you came here for. You want me to rewind your body to a time when it wasn't infected by the poison, correct?"

I stared at Matilda for a while, blankly, and almost letting go of my phone in the process. "You... will save me, then?" Despite our conversation, I knew Matilda wasn't all that easily swayed. Nothing was certain, and thinking the last part of our discussion would be enough to save me would've been a mistake.

"Yes. It will take me quite a few days to fix your entire body to the way it was, but I can certainly do it." She got up and straightened up, smiling down at me from above. "You'll need to stay here until I've regenerated your whole body."

I sighed and put my hands over my face again, once I'd managed to stuff my phone back into my pocket. I intertwined my hands and let them slide down to my chest, eyes watery and letting a few tears roll down. "Thank you so much, Matilda. Thank you so much."

She smiled some more, and her expression turned to a gentle, caring face. "Ashton, I have only one condition." I looked back at her without replying anything, but I hoped my curious expression was enough to urge her on. "Once you're back on your feet, let's keep in touch. I... I would love to meet your children, as well."

I didn't reply right away, but I returned the smile, bright and eager. "You bet."


~* The End
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