Broken Souls

Storms Brewing

"Bella, Dragon Rush!"

"Bella, Hyper Beam!"
"Bella. Knock it out of the way with your tail. Now."

"Bella!"

Another body slams against the wall. This time, it's a Weezing. Noxious gray-yellow smoke pours from its second, tumor-like head, which juts out just off the side of its first one. I watch it with the terrible curiosity of someone watching an atrocity on television. Some sadistic part of me wants this in my head. It burns itself into the back of my corneas, clogs the paths from my eyes to my brain and festers there...

"Are you okay?" asks Lance, putting a hand on my back.

I flinch at the touch, finally looking away. "A-are you?"

Lance laughs in a voice that sounds almost like a desperate goat bleat. It's so unprofessional that it almost makes me smile. "Mew, no. I'm so scared."

"You don't look scared." I point out.

"That's because Bella isn't." He winces. "Then again... You know what? I have an idea." His voice is paternal, condescending even, but I'm in no position to argue. "We should talk. It's the only thing that's going to get this infernal ringing out of my ear."

"About what?" I ask.

"Just imagine we're two normal people on a walk." he says. His eyes narrow slightly and I watch his fists tighten. No matter what he says, we're still both on the alert.

"Okay. So uh... how do normal people even talk? I've only had one human friend in my life." The emphasis on human, while completely unintentional, stings a little more than I meant it too.

"Ask me about myself." Lance suggests, completely ignoring that I may as well have been raised in the wild.

"Right." I struggle to think of a question. The path ahead is dark and the area behind us is covered in blood. "Favorite color?"

"Black and red." he says, swishing his cape upwards. Obviously.

"Music?"
"Classical. Pretentious classical."

"You sound like my OC from when I was twelve." I say, still gazing straight ahead. He puts his hand on my shoulder again and I look over to see him utterly confused, which makes me almost crack a smile in spite of how terrified I am.

"Your what."
"My original character. From a story I wrote." I explain. "He um... he falls in love at the end. With the antagonist. It was really explicit for a twelve year old but I really... really had no idea what I was doing. At all."

"None of us did."

There's another prolonged silence. Bella makes no noise except for the continued thump thump of her feet on the metal flooring and nothing else crosses our line of sight. The world before us is desolately empty. I feel my pulse quicken and then subside again at every noise.

"What's it like?" asks Lance. "I mean... the second time around."

"Great, sometimes. I've been happy occasionally. Sad, generally. What's really scary is when I can't feel anything." I admit. Anything echoes off the walls. I tense again, listening for the screech of some distant abomination of nature, and feel the silence creep into my lungs. "Tell me more about yourself." I struggle to divert the conversation away from me, begging for the quiet to end. "Do you have any family?"

"So many dragon tamers." Lance tells me. "All of them successful. I was lucky enough to be born a Goldeneye, like most of them, and then some more luck landed me in the champion spot. Had I become anything less, I probably would have been disowned."