AFIRE: fight for the Earth begins✓

4.4 AIJA

The story so far: 

---- Aija is a Volunteer at the Pristine School at Innermost. She works along with Zuri and Ze, who are her friends. Aija has run into the possible kidnapper. Zuri visits her family at Apper town. Zuri meets a girl – Nala – at her father's shop; Zuri likes her. Ze meets up with Zuri and Aija for dinner. He has fun and gets drunk. Ze offers to bring some water for Zuri from the dispenser in the basement of the building. He is hazy, drunk. When he doesn't find flavored water in their building he goes to a different building. He feels a sharp pain at the back of his head and falls unconscious.

---- Aija finds that Ze hasn't returned for a long time – she decides to go look for him as she is worried about the kidnappings. When she doesn't find him in her Apartment basement, she goes looking for him in another Apartment.

---- She stumbles upon a boy, Rez, hiding from his kidnappers. She takes him out of the basement into the cold night, where the boy's kidnapper catches up to them.

---- The man puts a blade into Rez's chest after an attempt to flee.

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****4.4 - Aija****

**Warning: Blood, death, violence**

Aija halted. 

Rez's scream came out muffled through the man's palm covering his mouth. Aija was stunned – she couldn't move. Nor could she find her voice as she looked at Rez gradually losing consciousness – dying.

The man removed his blade from Rez's chest and wiped the blood off on a cloth he took out from a pocket. He took out a glass jar from the inside of his jacket and opened it. The shape of the glass jar was familiar to her.

He said something in a language Aija didn't recognize – there only existed one language in the present day world. A girl came running towards them and halted much farther than them. Aija wasn't able to make out the woman in the dark, but she tried to ask for help.

"Help..." she said, her voice barely a whisper.

The woman didn't move, said nothing.

A voice in Aija's mind told her to run. But, she couldn't move, couldn't look away from the man.

When the man had finished chanting, a light emanated from Rez's body. It was blue; the blue of lightning. The sphere of light shimmered as it moved and floated above Rez's body. The man held out the glass jar, and the sphere of lightning-blue light settled into it. The man closed the jar, put it into his jacket, and stood up. The glass jars, Aija realized, were familiar because she had seen them before. The spy/kidnapper had been carrying them. So, they weren't magic or just hover-lights. They were something else entirely.

The man said something to the woman in the language Aija didn't understand. It made her wary for it was apparent now that the woman worked with the man. She knew she had to run, but Aija was frozen to the ground. The woman said something that sounded like 'nè.' Aija wished she could see the girl's face, but it was too dark, and the girl was standing far away.

The man gave her one look; the girl just nodded and left. The man turned to Aija and gripped his blades tighter. Aija alerted. She understood one thing – she was next.

She willed her body to move, to run. She didn't want to make any sudden movements lest he run after her before she was even prepared. He was immensely swift and had outstanding reflexes. She wanted to stall him for as long as possible for one wrong move meant the end of her life.