Plants

Prologue

People say that children will follow the example of their parents.

It's a simple concept, in theory. A child whose parents are rude to the waiter is more likely to make the same snide comments; a child whose parents are doctors may be pressured into pursuing that himself.

And in the same pattern, the world created by the previous generations will mold and pressure the new into following the same regime.

Glimmering skyscrapers standing tall in a world of concrete and shining glass and metals- a fantastical dream, where industrialization has monopolized and humanity resounds at every turn- peaceful harmony between government and people.

This is what the previous generations created for this "luckiest generation." An impossible paradise, one which stands gloriously, like some great beacon of light.

However, in order to have a light so predominant, there must be inconceivable darkness surrounding it.

Within this monstrous capital, not one child has seen the pure green of chlorophyll in over three generations.

At least, that's what they want you to think.

That's how they want it to be.

Deep in the darkest shadows of the old Capitol- now decrepit and crumbling- there are the fairies of the underground, the children who raise forbidden seedlings with what little resources they can struggle out of the country's grasp.

As unnatural as the skyscrapers seem, children still live within them, unaware of the other side, that perhaps they don't have to live as they do. Their hearts have grown to match the steel supports of the towers, and the distinctions between man and machine seem lost.

She is one of them. One of those who follow the path carved by their parent's heavy metallic feet trudging down the same path until their youth was lost as well.Her name doesn't matter at the moment, as she is the same as the others. She is one of a million robotic children.

One thing separating her from the others, however, would be her outstanding capability to find herself in what could quite possibly be the worst situation most of the robot-children could imagine: getting chased by the Guardians of Peace- an army of clones of their Glorious Founder- into the old Capitol.

The path ahead of her was pitch-black as the late afternoon cast massive shadows over the entire district to the point which the marble roman-style buildings, dried fountains and barren plazas of dirt where grass once grew were darker than night, even with the light pollution that was beginning to seep across the sky as the sun inched lower.The marble buildings and their grand statues were crumbled and stained by acid rain.

The plazas were as dry as deserts.

The fountains stood like unfilled graves, muddy and dead.

A place forgotten.

Here she was, however, and she was certainly not dismissing her surroundings at the moment.

The girl has a name, now that she has caught their attention, now that she was no longer falling into line with others. Her name is Ava Giovanni, and it echoed from only a few alleyways to her west as she attempted to climb on to an old shop's roof from a wire fence alongside some empty plastic barrels.

Ava finally gripped the molding that wrapped around the flat roof, boosting herself up from her loose footing on the fence, rushing to hide behind a rusted unit of some sort that rested on the roof a few meters away.

She pauses and attempts to catch her breath. She hears the guards pass below with their noisy metal gear, and peers around the corner of the unit as she watches them latch their grappling hooks on to an old clock tower, swinging around to a separate part of the old city. 

Her short mousy brown hair falls over her eyes as she lowers her head in a sigh of relief, maybe she had finally lost them, or at least for long enough to escape back into town. She brings her bag in front of her, reaching into the contents jumbled by the run, and extracts a small teacup filled with some of the dust-like dirt, harboring a tiny yellow flower that seems to brighten up as it reenters the diminishing sun. She looks up at it curiously through her bangs, and voices her thoughts.

"Why all of this... for just this tiny yellow thing covered in dust?" She scoffs, her sentence broken by her exhausted breathing. Pulling out a cloth from her bag, she dusts it off slowly. As the weight of the dust leaves the petals, it straightens up a little, and the sunshine yellow peers through even more.

Hesitantly, she reaches down, touching the long leaves at the base that had caught her attention earlier, now a vibrant green rather than a muddled dusty color. The leaves were smooth, with hundreds of tiny veins running along the underside. Her eyes travel to the dull twilight colors of the decaying capital, and she feels the contrast hit her like a ton of bricks.

"Miss Giovanni, approach the edge of the roof with your hands up! You are trespassing on highly restricted property... it's time to face the consequences!" A gruff voice commands from the alley below and she hears the resounding echo of the warning shot one of the guards had fired into the air.

"...Shit." She shoves the cup in her bag as carefully as she can, standing up gingerly with her hands raised, her eyes down. She hadn't even heard them coming. These "men" didn't know mercy, and in cases like these, there was never a trial. No one was dumb enough to go out here, so there was no one here to notice another body.

She stares straight ahead, her eyes burning as she stands on the edge of the roof, grimacing as she hears them shuffle below. Thinking back to the moment when she decided to slip through a tear in the fence to retrieve the little colorful bastard now cradled in her bag, even while knowing the penalties that could follow, she winced a little under her breath. The phrase "curiosity killed the cat" was staring to show it's worth.

A thick rustle breaks her train of thought, and she looks below, the image muffled by the shadows caused by the building. Something resembling a thick blanket seems to shimmer below, she sees a glimpse of white and hears a shout, and the first guard of three is on the floor, wrapped in the blanket-like material, unconscious, his weapon and helmet lying next to him. The action repeats itself just a quickly for the other two before they seem to have even realized what had happened to the first guard to go down, a gunshot echoes sometime in between and by the time it's through, she isn't even sure which one had fired.

Three dull shots come in quick succession, and she feels her heart jump to her throat.

"Who's there?" She shouts below, lowering her arms and backing away from the edge, her eyes frantically searching the darkness below her. Falling to her knees, she pushes herself back further, crouching down behind the unit she had rested behind a short time before. She was sure she looked like a deer in the headlights as her wide eyes darted about in front of her.

A thin finger taps her shoulder lightly, and before she can scream, a matching thin hand covers her mouth.

"Come with me," a soft, monotonous male voice comes from a backlit figure standing beside her, wearing some sort of cloak. "You're not safe here."

She nods.