In Another World (on hold)

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Note to self, don't touch glowing balls of energy.

I was sitting at home, waiting for a bowl of soup to warm up in the microwave, and watching T.V., not really paying attention to it. It was November; it had just gotten cold enough for soups and my mother had made a large pot of my favorite: potato soup. My mother doesn't like to cook, but on very special occasions she'll agree to my favorite dishes, which were ironically the few meals she knew how to make. Soups were always my favorite, I don't know why but, unless it's over ninety degrees outside, I'll always be in the mood for soup. The other day my mom and I had a fight, so she was trying to make it up to me. We had a very strained relationship, revolving mainly around her having little care for basic human etiquette when it came to science. She had little regard for safety if the precautions would mess up her experiments. This was a constant fight among us, since she was the only family I had left. My father died when I was twelve and that might have been the start of my mother's insanity. They were both scientists, working on a project together, and my mother was convinced that he didn't die, that he had figured out the missing link and completed the experiment. I really didn't know much about the project, I was certainly more of an English and history nerd rather than a science and math nerd. Since my father's death my mother had become obsessed with trying to figure out what she thinks my father found, and we typically had a rule in the house; no experiments at home. This was the reason for our fight.

I had decided to forgive her – I disliked being mad at her – and make up with her properly once she got home. It was a long day at school, so this relaxing time was much needed. The soup was almost ready, only a minute more to go, and I started getting this weird feeling. It wasn't bad, just weird. It was like a sort of electric yet somehow calming. Then this feeling started to have a sound with it, a sort of low hissing sound, kind of like energy or electricity. I knew I should have been freaked out, but the calming feeling with it all kept me more intrigued then afraid. Then it became visual. A somewhat sea-green circle began to open, slowly and energy was pulsing from it, and I had this strange urge to touch the core of the energy located in the center of the circle. Of course this was a bad idea, this was a random and most likely dangerous circle of pulsing energy that is opening in front of me in thin air, touching it would be a typical white girl in a horror movie thing to do, so instead I called the only person I could think of that could possibly explain this.

"Mom, there's something wrong," I said, sounding a little afraid now, the calming feeling was turning to one of impatience and fear.

"What's wrong, are you alright, where are you?" my mom asked real fast, sounding nervous.

"I'm at home, something weird is happening," the noise was getting louder and sounding harsher.

"Arina what's that sound?"

"Mom, it's like a circle of light or energy, it just started opening in the middle of the living room."

"What do you mean? Get outside, I'm on my way."

"Mom, it's like it has feelings, it started to make me feel calm when it first formed, but it feels scared and desperate."

"Sweetheart, get outside."

"Mom, I really want to touch it, I think it wants me to touch it," the fear was still there but I couldn't shake the feeling of needing to touch it.

"Arina, whatever you do, do not touch it! Get outside, I'm ten minutes away," I could almost hear how fast her car was going but it was being drowned out by the sound, it was only getting louder.

Suddenly there was this pulling sensation, like gravity and it was physically pulling me towards it.

"Mom! It-it's pulling me towards it, it's too strong, and I can't fight it!"

"Arina!" I couldn't hear her, the phone was now on the couch and I was gripping tight to the back of the couch. Everything but myself seemed to be unaffected by this pull. My feet were in the air, aimed straight for the center of the circle, and my grip on the couch was slipping.

"Mom! I'm slipping I can't-" I lost my grip. I knew I was screaming but all I could hear was my mother yelling my name through the phone. My feet connected with the center and there was this burning pain that shot through my whole body, then it was darkness.

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ELSEWHERE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

"Please, I'm just trying to get home," the man begged before being knocked out and put inside the holding cell in the truck.

"We have to find a way to shut the portal down," the first man said. He wore a black mask and cape and his 'suit' was a mixture of blacks and grays. He was working on a keypad set up to control the portal, but then it became unstable and wasn't responding to the keypad.

"Maybe if we blow up the core it will shatter in on itself, it worked once before," the second man, more like boy, said. He was dressed in similar colors as the first man, but more gray than black, a symbol that he was the man in black's 'sidekick'.

"We can't be sure, it wasn't this out of control last time," the man in black said, or yelled as the sound the portal was making was becoming louder.

"We have to do something," the sidekick yelled back.

Suddenly the sound stopped and the light coming from the core became brighter, then it shattered. Where the portal once floated in mid-air there was now a girl, glowing softly the same color as the energy in the core. She suddenly stopped glowing and instantly dropped, luckily to be caught by the sidekick. The man in black was almost to shocked to move at first, the last time someone came through the portal they avoided the core, only making contact with the surrounding energy. In fact, contact with the core was supposed to mean certain death.

Two things were clear to both hero and sidekick, the first was that this girl was certainly not dead, and the second was that she was most certainly not from their world.