Enemies

Memories

Stepping into Dazai's place, Ren immediately changed into something more comfortable and slumped down on the couch, falling asleep almost as soon as she lay down on the couch.

She found herself standing in front of a house that had been torn down and destroyed, with pieces of rubble littered everywhere, smoky ash scattered around, a burned smell staining the air. Looking around her, she saw smoke rising out of the ground somewhere, and two bodies bleeding on the ground, torn apart with holes oozing blood and guts covering every inch of them. The sudden sight of a dead body made her freeze. Someone had died. A life had been destroyed, and someone's story was erased and lost to time. Clasping a hand over her mouth to hold back tears which were beginning to cloud her vision, she looked at herself. There were a few shouts in the distance, and men running over to where she was. Trying to move, Ren felt like she was frozen to the ground. Her pulse quickened as her eyes widened, trying to figure out what was going on. Her legs were chained to the dirt underneath her, dragging her down into the ground, the metal digging into her bloody, dirtied legs, even though they weren't restrained at all. The men were getting closer to her and she heard someone running in front of her. In that moment, the person had seemed to summon dark shadows which were fairly small and attacked the men. The shadows seemed to be alive, and they twisted and turned through the air, creatures that surrounded her. The person in front of her seemed young, maybe 7 at most whose features resembled hers, and Ren watched as the shadows did some amount of damage, but were fairly useless.

"REN!" They fell over, caked in blood and dirt as they screamed out her name in desperation as they saw her staring, paralysed at the sight in front of her.

"KAZUMI!" She yelled his name without even thinking, tears streaming down her face as she found the strength to sprint over to him, her legs freezing up.

The men pointed their guns at her, no signs of life or remorse in their eyes and right as they pulled the trigger, someone threw themselves in front of her, shielding her with their body as bullets pierced him, his insides spraying out. Kazumi collapsed, his expression vacant as he stared up at the sky with crimson red leaking out on to the ground, staining her white outfit and slowly spreading and consuming her view of the world, warping the way she saw everyone. To her impressionable mind, this was what the world was, not the comforting family environment she had inhabited and she was going to have to live and survive there. Everything around her became fuzzy as she began to feel dizzy.

Blood...

"So this is the the sister to that boy we were meant to get. Tch, let's kill her. We have no use for her anyways." She heard voices as she stirred slowly, everything slowly fading into view.

Her body felt like cement, unable to lift itself from the ground, but she slowly pushed herself up, her arms trembling, trying not to collapse.

"What if she has a gift? We could use her then. Then she won't be completely useless." Someone else said, and they were fidgeting under the gaze of the other man.

"What are the chances? Give me her profile." The first person snatched something from the second person's hands. "Takahashi Ren, 3 years old, younger sister of Takahashi Kazumi, daughter of a regular citizen. Intelligent for her age. No signs of having a gift. See?" She sat there trembling as she sat up, but what the men were saying was slowly sinking in.

They weren't here to help her, or give her a hand to hold. A world completely different to the one she had lived in up until that point. To them, she was nothing more than a pawn, one that they could easily sacrifice if they felt it necessary, or one that could become a powerful queen if used correctly, but right now she had just started. A helpless nobody who was always the second choice. Someone who was left behind. Someone who people didn't pay as much attention to because she was normal. As if being normal were a bad thing. Reaching up with her tiny arms, she sunk her teeth into the man's hand and didn't let go, watching him thrash around and trying to shake her off.