Reforged

Chapter 1: Ruler of Rubble

April 8th, 4061

     Hello! I'm Xia! I'm the princess of planet earth, which is like totally galactic! Earth is such a quaint little planet, I love it! Being a princess is great! I snap my fingers and BOOM! I get anything I want! Within reason of course. Believe me I've tried and the servants are no fun.
         "No miss," they say, "We can't make you a ten story tall pudding cup."
          Well I still get lots of things I want so... That's great! And the war games are so interesting! I've died eleven times now, I've been counting! It's such an interesting experience! I've been blown up, burned, shot by a laser, died with an exploding planet, and other things! It's so cool to see other people's eyes explode out of their heads, just before yours do the same!
     Haha, did I trick you? To mask my intelligence, I've adopted multiple personalities, so my crazy smarts can be explained partly from the fact that I'm, well, "crazy". I have another personality besides Xia, who you just saw is an adorable spacecake with no realism or pessimism. She's kind of morbid too, but then again I'm a very morbid person. In any case, Xia's my least favorite. There's also Lax. She has too much realism and pessimism. She doesn't care about anything, and rarely speaks to anyone, considering them beneath her station. There's also another one. Her name is Laxia. She has just the right amount of realism, optimism, and pessimism, making her the "ideal princess". She's also a fraud, but she's the part I have to play the most. Who's the real you then you ask? Well I've been playing parts for so long, I can't tell anymore. But my real self does have a name, a name that's been a secret for as long as I can remember, one that no one gets to know. I'm known three ways. One is a mystery, but they really just don't put the name with the face. The other is the princess of Earth with multiple personalities. The other is the real me. I'd like to believe she has a personality too, if you strip the other personalities away. I don't think I could do that, or I couldn't pretend to be a part anymore. Then when people hate on the princess, it would actually be me. I guess the real reason I have different aspects is really just so no one figures out my real personality, my real identity. So they can just put my creativity down to being different. I live in a palace on Nindu, a continent in the center of Earth. It's like if the ancient Australia moved to the equator, in the middle of everything else. It's the perfect centerpiece. The war games have taken an effect on earth, and even though everything gets rebuilt it's never perfect, and after a thousand years of the war games the continents that used to be shifted in the major ways people wouldn't have thought possible.
     North America is now Shinal, and it looks almost exactly the same, but is slightly farther north. You can walk from Canada to Antarctica (which stayed in the same spot and is now called Anta) by using a small land bridge that now exists between the two. The countries have basically stayed the same, except countries don't exactly matter anymore, seeing as everyone is under Nindu's rule. South America turned about 15 degrees counterclockwise, and moved slightly south, though there's not much of an impact. It's now called Thinol. Africa fused with Asia, making one of the biggest land masses on any of the habitable planets. We call it Grandyli. And Australia... well remember how I said Nindu was like if Australia moved to the equator? Well that's what happened. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, maybe an apprentice rebuilder, which are the people who fix everything after the war games, messed up. Greenland also moved closer to the equator, so naturally the big city in America called "New York" (what an old name) has expanded to it, as it's only about fifteen minutes off the coast. They call it, obviously, New York. I could change the name, but America is very particular about its freedom, even if it is a semi-restricted freedom under my rule.
     Being the princess of Earth is certainly no easy task, especially when you've got the war games to deal with. There are other issues too of course, such as politics, repairs on shuttles, and keeping non-humans out of Earth. I know, I'm one to talk, however the people of earth really don't want immigrants from other planets "invading" their country. Illegal aliens has a whole new meaning these days. I've read the history books and really nothing's changed from when we thought we were just a planet. We are still stubborn, independent people, and the culture of the ancient United States, that somehow still stands, is what everyone acts upon now. So basically take a bunch of "Statesians" from back in the 2000s and make that the only kind of person in the world that exists today. It's hard to work with, that's to be sure.
     My room in the palace is actually very simplistic, if it isn't "Lax" gets mad at the ornamentation, "Laxia" thinks it's too much, and "Xia" has the servants dote on her every need, her surroundings always reminding her she's a princess. Just so we clear this up, I choose who to be whenever I feel like it, to keep people guessing and eager to please. I'll go ahead and talk about them like they're different people, even though you don't actually know who I am. Today, when I'm around other people, I'm going to be Lax. Meaning I'm wearing a black dress that makes me look paler than I already am, and my long purple hair is down and messy. Lax talks to no one, the oxygen tank is half empty, black by another name would still be empty, and stuff like that. I'm also wearing heels, which haven't gotten any more comfortable since when they started making them, way back in the industrial age. They've just made it so it's physically possible to invert your foot and be like a foot taller. I don't know why Lax puts up with this. My dark blue eyes are often a topic of discussion among the people on earth (aka the Terrestrians) because they say it was an omen of my love for space, and my want to rule a blue planet. They're actually part of the reason I got "elected" to be princess until the day I die or get impeached for doing something really stupid, which rarely happens.
     I sigh and put my diary down, remembering the day I wrote that entry, which was the same day I got that book. Flipping through the pages I realized three years had gone by since I got the book, it was now more than halfway full of my boring life as a princess. Full of Lax, Xia, and Laxia, and behind it all a person who was none and all of them at once.
     "Axi?" A voice at the door calls, shaking me out of my stupor. I remain silent. I'm Lax today, after all. "Axi?" The voice comes again, exasperated. I'm also exasperated and got up and opened the door without a word, though I already know who it is. Only one person calls me by that name. A boy with brown hair and vivid green eyes stood at the door. He's about my age but slightly older, a fact he often points out to agitate me.
     "Oh, come on, Axi. You know I can always see through your act," he says in reference to my current state.
     "Whatever," I respond, clinging to Lax's persona. I don't know how to act around him. So I have to be a personality around him, or I won't know how to act.  Maybe this is the real me after all. "You know you're not supposed to take too much time off to come see me Zack, yet you do so every day."
     Zack laughs, "Oh, Axi. You try so hard to disguise your true self. Why don't you just let go?" He asks. He's a remaker, or someone who rebuilds minor details that weren't quite made right after the war games. However, the monotonous, and sometimes dangerous work hadn't taken his sense of humor. If he didn't build things just right he was mocked, scorned, and sometimes even beaten by people, mostly his uppers, who weren't pleased. But he still smiles, I don't know how, and his green eyes sparkle like emeralds whenever he's around me. I wonder why.
     "Zack, you know very well why I can't do that," I say giving him a frown. He laughs and jumps onto the pink couch that's on the left wall of my overly pink room. Pink bed, pink couch, pink vanity, blue wallpaper, all trimmed in silver. However, it's small and cozy, and I happen to really like the way it was made. Perhaps I'll request it be built this way again after the next war game.   
     "Well seems to me you've already let go, Axi," he sys, "Cause Lax doesn't get drawn into extended conversations, and you've been talking freely for a while now." I curse under my breath as I realize he's right. Stars! Why can he figure out who I am, but no one else can?
      "Well I'm being Laxia then," I reply. Cosmos take him. No one's supposed to know that that's a fake too! He just laughs.
     "Well, Laxia wouldn't let a commoner lounge on the couch now, would she Axi?" I roll my eyes. He's exhausting, he calls me Axi cause he can and he can see right through the other three. Also, the other nicknames are taken. But he's right, I guess, even if he's a dork.
     "Mind telling me why you're here?" I asked, "Is it to give me more frail flowers that never last a week? More precious gems that I'm supposed to cart around on my neck, never to be used? More chocobombs that taste great for an instant, but then are gone forever?"
     "Nope!" He replies, smiling dorkily, "I just came to say hi to Axi before I go back to work."
     "Best get back to it then," I reply, snapping my fingers and causing a holographic clock to appear in front of his face, "You're going to be late. Again."
He just chuckled. "Someday, Axi, I'll get you to stop being so formal with me," he says as he walks out the door.

     Just as Zack walks out, my father strides into the room. "Laxia, Laxia, Laxia," he says, sounding disappointed, as always, "When you were little the only thing we talked about was how to change the government for the better... Now you've become just as corrupt as the rest of them." He frowns at me, obviously wishing I could be the daughter he always wanted.
     "Father, I've told you many times by now, it's not that simple! I can't just make laws that we want, because now I see the flaws in each and every law we wanted to implement. I'm sorry that you think I'm a failure of the highest degree, but if you will do no more than patronize me, then please leave. I will not destroy the planets laws so my father will finally accept me."
     He sighs and walks out of the room, but not before throwing over his shoulder, "Well at least your mother had the common sense to throw you into the streets when she was still alive!"
     I sigh, falling back onto the couch Zack just got off of, wondering why I couldn't talk to him. I pretend my conversation with my father didn't happen, it's always the same patronizing person coming into my room and frequently showing his disappointment in me. Why can't I talk to Zack, but I can hold my ground against my father? Zack was just another human, another weakling, another person beneath my station. However he did have bright green eyes, an anomaly even for the diverse culture of earth, it was a sight that I happen to enjoy looking at... Perhaps that─ 
    "Attention. Everyone on the outside premises, please retreat inside.. This is not a drill. The war game between planet Itonal has begun. They're the lead planet in the Juna system, and their main strategy is offensive bombing, weakening the planet itself and causing magma to spew out of the ground. They've announced that they want to discuss our imports and exports to other countries whose trade routes are through their galaxy. "Do not perish, do not be scared. Fight for our honor, little as it may seem. And most importantly..."
     "Fight for Laxia!" A billion throats around the world take up the cry and steel themselves, waiting for the inevitable destruction. My father's comment about mother still burns, even though he doesn't know she only threw me out on the streets to protect me. If they had found out I wasn't human, I would have been sent back home, away from my father, who back then I still loved. The only reason mom made me stay was so I could stay with him. But now all he sees is my mother's disappointing legacy. No one can question my mother, as she was killed in a shuttle crash on the way to Grandual. She had been going for a research trip and the shuttle disappeared. Many think it was the black hole nearby, and they're probably right. Now I have no one but a disappointed father and a dorky boy who I can't speak to. Wait. How long have I been lost in thought? The bombs start falling, the walls start crumbling. Too long. The war games have already begun.  Except, I don't want to go through this again. Even though I have to. Trade routes are important after all. I look forward to the negotiations.
     Even though for the next couple days I'll be princess of nothing but rubble.