saveyourbrain | "Five Years Later..."

"Five Years Later..."

A Good/Bad Ending Meme

Happy First Anniversary, Save the Earth.

Let us celebrate by speculating on where our characters might be in another few anniversaries - pick one or both of the below and do a little babble/blurb - and from there, o' course, freely springboard off of others... or play/thread in the hypothetical scenarios, if you'd like.

Good Ending
Congratulations, Numbers Club - you've fended off the supposed invasion, after a global chase and monster attack and pseudo-political fight one after the other! With the last of the Enemy fleeing and your lot as Earth's heroes, you've got no need to hide yourself any longer - and look how much you've grown in all that time! What have you been up to - and now that you've saved the world, what will you do next?

Bad Ending
...Or you've failed to do any such thing. The alien invasion has succeeded and swarmed over the world. They've overtaken humanity, and the Noble Numbered might be desperately putting up a last-stand defense, hiding their heads, giving in, or on the edge after a string of failures - on a case by case basis. Everyone is bound to react to the apocalypse - and failure to Save the Earth - in different ways.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Raye had been one of those to fall early in the opening shots of the full-on invasion. Even as she and Senketsu had soared over the battlefield, a lucky shot from one of the invaders had struck true and nearly sliced her in half. She'd spun out of the air then, dropping to the ground and out of sight. In the chaos of those early days, very few of the fallen had been recovered and with whatever system kept the reincarnates linked through the network breaking down, there was no way to contact anybody to find out if they'd survived.

Nobody could be blamed for thinking that Raye was gone forever after that.

Years later, there was a newcomer in one of the remaining human cities. A refugee from the looks of her, cloaked and hooded from wandering the scarred landscape outside the stronghold walls. She only stopped when the screams started.

People flooded out into the streets in a panicked scramble, followed close behind by one of the aliens' monstrous weapons, a vaguely humanoid shape that looked like it had packed a couple tons of Earth and rock onto itself.

"Are you fucking kidding?" The cloaked girl stood her ground as a trashcan sized fist of rock comes down at her. A crashed echoed off the walls, dust kicked up into the air, and when it cleared, she was still there, holding the fist at bay with a red... very distinctly shaped weapon. "I can't even get any peace and quiet in here?"

With an almost casual flick, she shoved the hand away and spun the Scissor Blade around.

"Disappear." And brought it down. The beast stood still for a heartbeat. Two heartbeats. And then the two halves of its body slid apart and crumbled to the ground. A small rush of wind kicked up, and blew the hood off of her head to reveal a face that just might be familiar to at least one on-looker out there.

It had been too long ago to properly recall the fight, but the image of Raye falling out of the sky still stuck painfully clear in Rakka's mind. She'd never forget how horrible it looked, and how hard she'd tried to get to the body to no avail. Eventually the fighting had just turned too bad and she'd been forced to run, something she kind of regretted every now and then when she was feeling especially down.

The city she eventually ended up in accepted her at first like some kind of prophet. Sadly, that changed rather quickly as her lack of powers and her sinbound wing proved. Soon, she became an after thought in the populace. Just another person trying to survive.

And then the monster came that fateful day. Rakka had tried to stand up to it, letting it feel the wrath of her lightning staff, but it wasn't enough. She was sure it would end that day...

And then it didn't. Slowly, the Haibane picked herself off the ground and watched as the monster was sliced apart by this newcomer and they revealed themselves to be... Well, Rakka could have sworn she was hallucinating, what with the sleep deprivation. No matter what though, she wanted to believe...

"...Raye?"

Raye watched the monster crumble away to dust, almost distantly. Once, destroying the thing may have felt like an accomplishment, like a blow had been struck on some level but now... now it was just one of a hundred, a thousand. And there were a hundred thousand more still waiting for her.

Even her anger, one so explosive and overblown, seemed muted to some degree, simmering away beneath the surface. The Scissor Blade folded up and vanished beneath her cloak as she started walking, stepping quietly over debris.

When Rakka spoke up, it had already been so long since Raye had heard her voice... indeed so long since anybody had even spoken her name, that she actually continued a few more steps before it finally registered. She stopped dead in her tracks, and turned her head slowly toward the girl... no, the young woman who had called her name. It took another second for the flat look in her eyes to shift to wide-eyed recognition.

"Rakka...?"

There were always too many monsters now. It had almost become normal to deal with them as they came. Not much you could do about it unless you were well armed, and even then they were pretty formidable.

None of that matters at this point. Not the monster, not the panicked people, all that mattered was the fact that Raye Satterfield was standing before her for the first time in forever. Alive. She was older, like Rakka herself, but she still looked the same. That familiar attitude, the red scissor blade that cut through anything. It was her, it had to be her.

"Is..." She didn't know what to say, multiple emotions fighting for supremacy inside her. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes. "It's... it's you, isn't it?"

Fortunately, Raye is nothing if not well-armed. That and, as she learned on that day five years ago, she has a few more tricks up her sleeve that the monsters running the world were definitely not prepared for.

For a moment, she just stands there looking almost confused, like she was trying to remember how to respond to seeing a friendly, familiar face. Or maybe just how to interact with something that isn't trying to kill her. Tense and wary, she almost looks like a wild thing, wrapped up in a dusty cloak marked with small tears and holes from bullets and energy weapons alike. She doesn't look like she's seen a mirror in some time either. Her face is smudged with dirt and her hair is windswept and wild, and looking like it's been subjected to more than one rushed hack job with whatever sharp object was handy at the time.

"Y..." she finally answers, turning to face Rakka, worn sneakers crunching on what was left of the monster's rocky body, "... yeah. It's me."

Confirmation was all that she needed. It had been so long since she'd heard Raye's voice, the last had been during that fight five years ago. It was jarring to hear it now, tough like it once was but grown up as well.

The wind blew aside some of Rakka's long, brown hair from her face. it was dirty and clearly hadn't been cut in a long while. In all regards, her own appearance was opposite of the woman in front of her. She wore simple clothes, jeans and a shirt with a hoodie that were as torn and dirty as Raye's cloak. Her wing, her only wing, stuck out behind her right shoulder, the feathers black from dirt and something unknown.

Wordlessly, Rakka took a few steps towards Raye. She was still bewildered that she was alive. How could she be alive?

Raye shifts back half a step when Rakka moves toward her, looking away. The answer to her unspoken question, how the hell was she alive, was one that had haunted her for some time, until her Echoes had brought answers. And names.

Kiryuin Ragyo.

Harime Nui.

Her beating heart being held in the hand of somebody she'd hated more than anything else. She knew the truth now. Knew what she'd been turning into ever since the first time she'd put on Senketsu. Knew that she didn't belong among the human race anymore.

So she doesn't move closer to Rakka when she comes closer to her.

"... It's been awhile."

"Yeah... it has."

Five years was a long time, long enough for Rakka to fully understand just what she was as well. A Haibane wasn't an angel. They were just people with wings and a halo, lost among people who were lost themselves. She knew less about herself now than she did back then, not that it really mattered anymore. She was basically nothing.

"...You died. I mean, I thought you..."

"Five Years Later..."

Inspiration struck. Feel free to ignore if this is too old now

never too old!

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