@April, Nav, and Lee (but, mostly April)--How did you feel when you saw Aurora appear alive all of a sudden after three weeks after she was captured by the dictator? You all thought she was dead after all. What was your reaction? What did you do? How did she look, anyway? You said she looked dead practically, so how? Did you try to ask her what happened and she refused to talk about it? You're best friends after all. Were you scared?
How'd you feel when she was first captured, too?
Where were you when you finally saw her alive?
MARA: Holy BEEEP long question! Guess it needs an equally LONG ANSWER!
**cracks knuckles**
_____
NAV: Oh boy. That's
not something I like to reminisce about.
APRIL: Me neither. It was horrible.
I have seen many comrades die in battle over the years, but when Aurora was captured, it was different. I actually SAW him take her. I remember it so clearly. We were fighting against a group of mercenaries on
Sambaal Hill...a huge mountain of grass built over a subterranean city on the planet Lilia'a Prime. The battle was particularly fierce and bloody that day, and Aurora and I got separated. I was on the bottom of the hill, fighting a losing battle with 3
slorpnoks, a species which can regenerate severed body parts at will. Aurora was at the very top of the hill, shouting orders to some of our subordinates as she fought with some robotic soldiers the Dictator had dispatched.
All of the sudden, the
Half Life came down through the cloud cover - something which almost never happened, and when it did, it usually meant that everyone in the vicinity was about to die.
NAV: I wasn't actually at this battle, but from what I understand, everyone pretty much freaked. Right?
APRIL: Oh yes. Understandably, we were all baffled when the ship stopped a few feet above the ground, and the Dictator himself walked down the rampway and off the ship. He was wearing some sort of strange device on his hands, and when Aurora fired her weapon at him, he stopped the shot with a force field. She just kind of froze after that. He walked right up to her as the entire population of the battlefield looked on in stunned silence. It all seemed so surreal. They exchanged a few words which I could not hear from my position. Then a sort of...I don't know how to describe it...black cloud? gathered around his hands, and he...it was so hard to see from where I was standing...he sort of shoved the black mist into her. It must have been some sort of sedative, because she just slumped over. Then a few of his robot soldier picked her up and he simply walked back up the rampway and into the ship.
NAV: And then you went totally spare.
APRIL: I bolted toward the ship, cutting down anyone in my path. I do not think I have ever killed so many at once before. But she was just too far away, and there were too many enemies. It was terrible. It was like one of those dreams where you are running after something, but no matter how fast you go, the thing that you are pursuing just keeps getting farther and farther away.
By the time I got to the
Half Life it was already taking off. It streaked off in to space, and I was left staring after it in numb shock.
NAV: Later, back on Planet Gorlock, when she tried to explain what had happened, people actually didn't believe her. It was just TOO WEIRD. The Dictator usually sends robots to capture people or uses a tractor beam to abduct them. Nobody thought he would leave the safety of his ship to actually come down and take someone.
APRIL: That was what frightened me the most. I would rather have seen Aurora killed in battle than taken away like that. The way he did it...it was so personal. I knew that something horrible awaited her.
NAV: After about two weeks the Gorlock High Council officially declared her dead, and we held a ceremony of mourning. Then people started fighting over all her stuff. It wasn't pretty.
APRIL: I was distraught. I actually
wished her to be dead, just to spare her from the suffering that would await if he kept her alive. Nav was the only one who held out hope that she would find a way to escape.
NAV: Ya but...I mean, come on. She's AURORA.
APRIL: Well, you were right.
NAV: A week later, something crash-landed in the jungle outside our encampment. April was out shooting things, as usual, so I was the first person on the scene. I came upon the crash site to find a twisted, steaming metal hull at the end of a half-mile long gash in the vegetation. Imagine my surprise when the hatch exploded right off the ship and Aurora stumbled out.
She was wearing a strange, alien-looking silver and blue suit, and was covered head to toe in what I initially thought was blood, but what actually turned out to be motor oil from the engines. He hair was free and floating in the heat from the fiery wreck, and although she didn't seem to be suffering from physical injuries, her face was drawn and pale.
I ran to greet her, but stopped short when I saw her eyes. She walked right past me, and I am confident that if I had reached out and touched her, she would have killed me on the spot.
LEE: At this point some of the other villagers and I saw the smoke from the fire, and we went to investigate. Aurora seemed very confused by our arrival, and Nav and I tried to calm her down by talking gently to her.
NAV: At last she seemed to recognize us, and then April showed up. April ran over to her, and Aurora just sort of slumped forward and fell unconscious. I carried her back to one of the huts, and the three of us stood guard outside to make sure nobody disturbed her.
APRIL: She did not awaken for 2 days. When she did, she was immensely tired and withdrawn. It took another two weeks until she was back to her old self.
LEE: When we tried to question her about it later, she told us nothing that we did not already know. We were all very worried, but eventually we ceased asking questions. We figured that it was best not to press her, since she was already clearly in a great deal of emotional pain.
NAV: And that was kind of...it. We didn't talk about it again after that.
APRIL: Occasionally she'd disclose little pieces of the story, but many of the details remained vague.
NAV: Man, talking about this sucks.
APRIL: I know.
~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =
