After her conversation with Elora, Alyssa decided to walk around and get herself acquainted with the facility. She wandered about the halls for quite some time, eventually happening upon the recreational rooms. [i]Hmm...sounds like there could be some pretty fun stuff in here.[/i] She thought to herself before eagerly exploring the area, looking in awe at the plentiful of games, activities, and the like. Though, in her eyes, all of the fancy games and activities were nothing compared to what Alyssa now found herself staring at through an observation window; a piano.

[i]They have one! They actually have one![/i] Alyssa thought excitedly as she quickly looked around to make sure nobody was around to see her excitement over the musical instrument, not even noticing the broken wood pieces of a pool cue and signs of blood laying on the floor. When she completed her quick analysis of the area and found that nobody was nearby to watch, Alyssa hurriedly opened the door - shutting it behind her - to find that this room was filled with several different kinds of musical instruments. Yet even as the sight of all the other instruments amazed her, it did not hold her back from taking a seat at the piano and examining it with awestruck eyes. She had never expected to find a piano here, as her previous training facility didn't have one, and she didn't think she'd be able to play one until this dreaded war was over.

The war...Alyssa's face of happiness reverted to a blank slate when that thought crept into her mind, and as her heartbeat increased slightly she began to worry about what might happen to her out there. [i]What if...what if I die out there?[/i] She thought as the piano seemed to be drifting away. [i]What if Elora dies?...no...no, she said Koehler helped her in that live combat scenario...he looks strong enough, he should be able to protect her...so long as he can keep himself alive too...but what about me?[/i] As Alyssa thought on she noticed that Elora continued to keep popping up in her mind, almost as much as the possibility of her own death. Once she realized this, Alyssa started to calm down, thinking about her earlier conversation with the frail-looking girl. She had felt good after having that conversation with Elora, and even just thinking about having made this new friend was calming Alyssa down from the fearful thoughts of combat with the Cruxi.

Eventually she came back to reality and began gingerly running her fingers across the keys of the piano sitting in front of her, gently pressing down on one every so often just to hear the lovely sound. Then, as if she had had her fill of hearing only the sad, single, and lonely little notes, she began to press on several of the keys in a short sequence of trial-and-error attempts to acquire a rhythm. After a few more moments of searching, Alyssa found a rhythm that satisfied her, and began warming herself up for a few moments more. Once she was confident enough, she began to play a song, one that she had known since she was several years younger...a song that immediately caused her eyes to water up, flooding her mind with memories of her childhood.

[center][hider=For Full Effect, Please Play This:][center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNhJYBwMynA[/youtube][/center][/hider][/center]

With only a sniffle more, she continued to play on without skipping a beat, mentally bent and focused on not allowing her memories and emotions to set root and control her. She needed to become a stronger person, to show no fear in the face of combat...to think of all the things she'd lost and not cry...but as the song continued, her hands and fingers moving like clockwork in a machine, Alyssa found her brave facade harder and harder to maintain. 

Suddenly, and without much warning, she was absorbed by her memories. She looked on with widened eyes as a younger Alyssa, who had just turned 10 years old, appeared in front of her. As she looked around, she could do very little to hide neither the tears that began to swell up in her eyes, nor the look of utter shock that appeared on her face as her surroundings materialized out of what seemed like thin air. She was sitting at a table, with a birthday hat on her head and a cake in front of her...and one by one her family began to appear around her and the table...first, her younger brother by 7 years, Clyde, who, for a moment, seemed to just be floating there. Next came her older brother by 4 years, John, followed by her father, who was holding the young Clyde up in his arms, and then her mother, and soon after her grandparents and aunts and uncles and so forth.

Even as the memory continued to become more and more lifelike, Alyssa did not stop playing the piano, even as the first few tears began to roll down her cheeks when she began to hear the voices of her family, all united as one, as they sang the "Happy Birthday" song to her. She sniffled a few more times as the memory continued on it's unrelenting path, as she watched all the happy smiles and faces...as she heard their cheers and laughter...as she saw her own beaming face, full of joy and sunshine, with a big smile sewn upon her little lips. Then came the presents...one by one she watched herself open them, seeing the look of delight on her young face as she revealed the contents to the light...then finally came the last, and perhaps the largest, of all the neatly wrapped presents...

Alyssa let out a quick, shortened gasp for air as tears began to flow from her eyes like water down a stream, staring with unblinking resolve at the present that now sat on the table in front of her younger self. For a moment Alyssa's whole body shook, as she inhaled in short, quick convulsions...staring onward with eyes paralyzed in what appeared to be fear, as her younger self avidly tore through the pink wrapping dotted with the images of hundreds of little kittens. By now, Alyssa's hands were no longer moving as she ceased to play her beloved instrument, and instead, the upper half of her body was now lying, collapsed and convulsing with each breath, upon the front end of the piano. And there she cried, carrying on for what felt like eternity...as the last images of that memory remained plastered within her mind.

Within the large present that had been wrapped ever so beautifully, with pink, kitten covered paper, was a lavender-colored dollhouse that came with two little dolls...and both of those dolls were girls; one with short blond hair, and the other with long brown hair. The memory seemed to freeze for only a few seconds, as Alyssa pressed her mouth against her forearm and released a muffled wail, resuming only to see what had been such a vivid and happy memory squandered by the utterly dumbfounded expression plastered upon her own, ten-year-old face...she hated that present, she truly hated it...she thought to herself that she was too old for dolls, and had even asked her parents to get her a musical instrument for this birthday...and instead she got the dollhouse set that she had asked for just three years prior. Internally, the young girl was outraged, but externally, she put on a smile and thanked her parents for such a lovely gift. Alyssa completely lost herself as she remembered how she felt at the time, unable to think of any situation where she had been more upset with her parents than right then and there...

Her now uncontrollable emotions did not let up, even as she could hear her parents eagerly telling her that there was something else they had to show her...and that was when she saw it...the piano, her first instrument, unveiled in the corner of the living room right before her very eyes as the blanket that concealed it was pulled away. She immediately lit up, and quickly hopped on the bench to start pressing on several of the keys in what would usually be considered an agonizingly terrible performance…but instead of contorting their faces in disgust, her family simply laughed as they saw her enjoyment. Then her parents told her that there was just one teeny weeny little rule; the piano belonged to the whole family, and if anyone else wanted to play on it…Alyssa had to let them. She felt slightly hurt by the fact that it wasn’t truly hers, but at the time she didn’t care…she just wanted to play it…

And with that, the memory ended; leaving an emotionally defeated Alyssa lying upon the front of the piano, pressing down against some of the keys as she twitched and convulsed with each attempt to breathe through her quivering lips. She thought about how she had put the dollhouse away in the back of her closet, never bothering to even look upon what she thought was such a disgrace of a gift. Little did she know at the time, but her parents would be killed by the Cruxi almost two years later…that dollhouse never once leaving her closet before then, as Alyssa could not forgive them for an entire year after that [i]one[/i] birthday. However, once her parents died, she finally pulled the old insult of a birthday present from where it had collected layer upon layer of dust for two whole years, opening it up to see the exoskeletons of deceased roaches and the now abandoned webs of long-gone spiders. The brunette doll was completely desecrated, much like the rest of the dollhouses’ interior, but the blonde had remained mostly intact. From that day forward, she hated the way she had felt towards her parents on her tenth birthday, going so far as to cut her hair to resemble that of that little blonde doll...

Alyssa remained unmoving for quite some time, completely unaware of the brutal fight between Yeshua and Koehler as she sat in the silence of the sound-proofed room.