Well, I started this story on some other site, but I feel like I need opinions ._. Therefore, I shall waste board space by placing it here, instead! Muwahahaa~
.:Table of Contents:.
Postie One; ..... Prologue Postie Two; .... Chapter One Postie Three; .. Chapter Two Postie Four; .... Chapter Three Postie Five; ..... Chapter Four Postie Six; ...... Chapter Five Postie Seven; .. Chapter Six
It was dark; it was dank; it smelled like rotten sewage that had been left to stew in swamp water in hundred degree heat. But most of all it was small. Freaking small. How the architects had managed to build something as unbelievably miniscule as this was an engineering marvel, considering humans could still move around in the cramped area.
Nevertheless, the figure managed to slip into the almost non-existent slit that was the doorway and gradually it opened into a larger chamber, where a single piece of folded paper sat on a small pedestal. As the person opened the paper and hastily scanned the small, neat writing crammed into the tiny sheet of paper, an audible grinding of teeth could be heard resounding in the small chamber. The black clad figure crunched the paper up in a wad in one gloved hand, before stuffing it into the small backpack.
Everything had to be so dang small. Resisting the urge to swear, the figure slipped back out into the open air with barely a sound, footsteps light on the lifeless ground. The figure in black left no wake betraying its presence. It was, after all, a whisper on the wind.
Earth. What was once the beautiful blue planet of the Milky Way is how inhospitable, all life forms dead or dying, and no normal organisms can survive. Except for one.
Humans, before they escaped to other planets in galaxies millions of light years away, managed to engineer a type of organism just like them in every aspect but a couple; the new organisms were called Whispers, due to their god-like attributes. The Whispers were slightly stronger than humans, faster than their creators, and all boasted an average of 140 IQ bordering genius level. The draw back was that their average life time was only about two centuries, whereas healthy humans could live up to four. But what made them most valuable was the fact that they could survive the deadly levels of carbon monoxide and other noxious gases that now dominated Earths atmosphere, and survive the ungodly heat that the damaged ozone layer could now no longer protect the Earth from. Of course, they were few. There were only a few prototypes, and there were only two successful Whispers outside of Beta stage before the toxic levels rose so high that even the highly advanced filters of the Laboratory couldn't protect the Humans anymore. All of the Beta Whispers were packed away to join the majority of the Humans to evacuate the Earth. The official, remaining Whispers were tasked to engineer a type of vaccine that would transform humans into Whispers; or at least partial ones.
After a century of developing, they finally announced they had a possible cure.
The Humans living on Pacific, one of the seven major Planets, had sent one of their own to Earth; a boy named Richard. Their technology had advanced enough to allow them to land and stay for only a couple hours to construct a necessary operation center. They then left the sacrifice for the Whispers to try their cure.
The cure was successful, and Richard became one of the Whispers. Several things were different about him from the rest a True Whisper, though. The boy had always been frail, and apparently his human attributes had carried over to his life as a Whisper. He was always a bit slower, a bit weaker than the rest of his companions. The Whispers, wondering if this was merely a side effect of all Transformed Whispers, asked the Humans for more people to test on. Many people volunteered they wanted to taste the freedom of being much more than human. As the people filed in, all sorts of problems cropped up:
Some humans did not survive; others underwent severe personality changes; and yet others went through changes that could not be completely categorized. As the centuries passed, it was discovered that the Transformed Whispers had enhanced life spans, recording at seven centuries, as Richard demonstrated. He was the oldest Transformed Whisper known to Human and Transformed Whisper kind.
Several more differences cropped up with the Transformed Whispers their physical abilities was lower than the True Whispers had been, and their IQ average dropped about twenty points. What they lost in physical and mental strength, they made up for in elongated life spans. More and more people turned up for the operation. The population on the corrupted Earth grew, and soon life was once again thriving on the once poisoned Earth, a couple stray life forms popping up here and there.
All Transformed Whispers were banned from using any technology, other than in the direst situations, and everyone lived happily, with only a couple conflicts popping up now and then. The people lived as those in the medieval times did, but they forbade anything that would damage the ozone more than it already was, and with their life spans at a recorded ten centuries, the people bade their time, knowing that the earth would, in time, return to the blue glory that had once been its redeeming feature. Peace was abundant on Earth.
As the population of Transformed Whispers grew larger by the month, the Seven Planets Directors (as each Planets most powerful person was called) banned the operation. They claimed that the population was growing too large, but everyone knew that there was something else, much more serious than the rising population.
As of a couple months before year 2708, the Transformed Whispers had begun suffering a strange disease. It happened at first in small, contained areas, but no one died, and life continued. Until the second stage of the disease hit. Transformed Whispers began to drop dead like flies in a pool of acid, and soon, the population of Earth was savagely cut in half. Even their natural resistance to diseases did little to help them. In desperation, the Transformed Whispers began to pray to a god they labeled Kami, praying to be released from their torment. Strangely, after the deaths grew slightly past the half way mark, just as the Whispers of Earth began to loose hope, the Plague, as the disease had been begun to be known as, abruptly stopped spreading. Even those that had been dying made a miraculous recovery, returning to full health only days after the spreading stopped.
Of course, they did not survive unscathed. The Transformed Whispers that had survived began to be known has the Tainted Ones, named as such because of the strange markings that appeared only hours after they found themselves cured. They all had a marking in the shape of a celestial body; most common of all were stars, and a couple crescent moons. The ones that had been spared from ever contracting the disease began to fancy themselves chosen ones of Kami. After all, they had not been touched by the disease, and this must have been through their devotion to their God.
And thus, Earth was split into two factions the Tainted Ones and the Chosen Ones. The Chosen Ones discarded their title of Whispers, and stripped the Tainted Ones of their title also. As the hunt began for the Tainted Ones, and as war raged on, the Whispers all but completely forgot their former, peaceful existence, for war for domination of Earth had truly begun.
The Tainted Ones. The people were hunted by the far more numerable Chosen Ones, and as their numbers decreased, they became more and more venerable to the frequent raids by the Chosen Ones. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and the Tainted Ones retreated underground, becoming experts of the earth, constructing massive underground wonders, and for a while, their people prospered, new children once again filling the ranks of the Tainted Ones.
But as the Tainted Ones adapted to their new environment, different changes began to affect the Tainted Ones. The Whispers life spans were dramatically reduced to just a little over a century, and all but few lost their inhuman physical and mental abilities. A select few even were lost their immunization to the noxious gases that was Earths aerosphere. However, they did not loose their Whisper attributes for nothing; all gained one to three different abilities that helped them survive the unavoidable slaughter that was to come. But until the time came though, the underground dwellers set up small schools for people of the same ability to train together, in hopes of strengthening themselves; for they were now little more than humans with special powers.
Regarding the powers of the Tainted Ones, the children born underground had significantly more powerful Gifts, but the ones who had actually suffered from the Plague mastered their craft or crafts much faster than the younger ones did. The gifts ranged from mundane, everyday tasks like farming and cooking, to elemental based ones, like earth and fire, to physical enhancement, like speed and strength, to miscellaneous ones, like blade mastery. All children were tested at age three, and their status was determined within the first couple weeks of schooling. No matter what they were, each child was put into a class. The Majira, as the gifted people were beginning to be known as, were scaled on the power of their gifts. The ranks were known to be, from least powerful to most; Rui, Common, Moderate, Kei, and Dangerous.
Rui were the ones with the weakest Majira power; they might have had the most control over their powers, but they were not categorized on how well they manipulated their gifts it was only how powerful they were. It was a rather small group, but it was still second largest, at 20%. Common were the largest group, ranking a 65% of all Majira. Their powers were known to be average. Moderates were slightly more powerful than the Commons, and had a population of about 10% Kei, the second smallest group, was a puny 5%, with their powers as some of the most powerful among the Tainted Ones. However, there was still one more group. The Dangerous category was by far the smallest one, at 1% of all Majira. Their powers were considered a threat to the community, and if not properly trained, could wreak havoc among the underground world. It was a common fact that all children who inherited the Mark from their parents were commonly in the upper Moderate or Kei class, and a few had been dubbed alarming enough to throw into the Dangerous class.
Teressa Walker was one of them. She had been born premature, and had always been a sort of a runt, small in stature and light weight. But no matter how much she was bullied, she was always cheerful. Needless to say, this carefree manner caused several fights, and all of her opponents had been much larger than her. She had always gotten out of the fight with only a few minor cuts or scrapes, but the bully had never gotten out with something less severe than a deep wound. It had always been attributed to her unnatural good luck the girl had always been promising. As her small stature had not allowed the girl to participate in sports, or indeed, go outside often, the girl excelled academically, spending her free time studying or reading.
The girl had discovered her status as a Majira at age three; her most apparent ability was one to manipulate weather, but it had never been useful to her, as her homeland was underground. Her parents had hired a tutor for the girl until age five, when she had been officially been allowed to be sent to school. During the two years under the guidance of her teacher, the girl had found another Majiri; the ability to negate other Majiri. It had been quite useful for the girl once she entered school, for she had barely grown and was still the runt of the school.
Year 3008, September 8. The Majira Academy, Tainted Ones city of Fairhaven.
"Miss Walker, please move a little faster." The teacher sighed wearily at the diminutive girl. Even at age fourteen, the girl was still only five feet tall. The most recent weigh in reported a light eighty seven pounds. Her eyes shone like jewels set into her porcelain face pale skin was expected, as no one but the Raiders ever made trips above grounds.
"How do you expect me to move if these people are in my face and damming the hallway?" the ebony haired girl demanded, one slender finger pointed in the direction of the mob that was, indeed, clogging the hallways. The teacher raised one eyebrow before telling the class behind her to stay put while she checked it out. Of course, as soon as the teacher left their view, the kids swarmed up, joining and swelling the already existent mob. Teressa squirmed her way up to the front of the crowd, where, being as small as she was, she could easily see what was going on without being seen.
"A fight?" she muttered. Fights were rare, as teachers were strict and were, quite frankly, detention-happy. It wasn't a fight that excited her the most, though. It was the participants. Before her view was blocked by a veil of fire, the girl was quite sure she had spotted two of her childhood friends, along with the school bully and school heart throb. As the fire subsided, she could hear the distinct whistle of the school guards. The four people continued to maul each other mercilessly, until the guards were on them. It took two guards to tear Allen off of Kai, and another three to tear Kyra off James. Even though they couldn't reach them physically, Allen and Kyra were still yelling at the two on the ground, struggling vainly against the guards holding them back.
"Calm down, runts," one of the guards grunted, wincing as one of Kyra's fires scorched his face. Allen's guards were pale from the kicks he had managed to land on their stomachs, but they still managed to hold the two back.
Soon, the ringing voice of the school Principal resounded angrily through the crowded hallway. "Back to your classes, students! And the combatants! Get your behinds in my office, right now!" The three sent last glares at each other before doing as they were bid, but James dared to protest: "But, my arm! I think its As the fiery eyes of Hilda Doll landed on him, his complaint died off into a quiet, "Yes, Headmistress." The students continued to gawk as the four were herded away, but an ominous "Spectators will see sufficient punishment, as well," sent them hurriedly on their way back to class.
