Music!Balamb Garden
...Water. The soft cascades of water against the ears. No sound of submerging. No sensation of breathing. An endless fall into a sea without an end.
What was it like to
hit the bottom? The single question in mind was all she heard as she looked up with empty eyes. Oxygen had long left her body, and yet...The asphyxiation had not yet hit as she continued this drifting. Further, further into the dark, further away where the rays of the sun couldn't hit her. Further down where she couldn't be heard no matter how loud she screamed. It was...ironic, in a sense, to think about it. An irony unlike no other as her vision darkened once again.
Her family was dead. Burned in fire.
Yet, here she was, drowning.
Which was worse? To feel your skin peel away and melt from the bone? Or to claw helplessly at the water surrounding you and taking away your precious air?
Have you not slept long enough, little dreamer?The voice of the being above mortal comprehension. The one that took hold of her eyes and voice when the time came. Flashes of beings came along -- her parents, smiling with her little brother on her father's lap. Her classmates, all able to talk with such ease as she hit behind her little doll and her quartet of orbs that swelled with potent magic-
Duncan. Her Instructor.
She had been talking to him...What made her drop like that?...
Even now...in this water, she was worried. Was he...alright? Were her classmates safe? How was everyone? They would be mad at her for not being with them, wouldn't they?...
Those eyes brightened a bit as that sick feeling came over once again. That feeling that someone she cared about was going to be lost...
It started again.
The helpless clawing. The asphyxiation finally kicked, making her choke on the water that suddenly made itself present as she tried to swim against the current. It hurt to even try...but...
What if someone actually needed her for once?More strokes to get out. More struggling. That was it. Struggle. Struggle. Struggle until her heart gave out -- her whole life was what it had to be, even with her family was gone. She had to keep going even when she wanted to die like this from this desperate guilt, this unsatiable pain. She had to keep going. And with each waking moment of this realization, the pain only made her get closer and closer to that surface as she swam up from her sleeping float.
She had to struggle for every damned thing she was worth to keep what was important to her.
The first breath was revitalizing, bring her body back to life as she nearly fell out of the bed and off of the IV machine that she was hooked onto. The next made her want to scream as her body begged for more of the oxygen that it had apparently been denied by her as she had been in this coma. The third had her shoot up as she looked up. Hair a mess, orbs finally springing to life and encircling her, eyes particularly glowing as Visionary repeatedly moved images of her squad and Instructor in a town -- a familiar one at that. Flashes of them in...
Timber. They were so far out-
"BLIZZARA! It rang in her ears. Almost as if it had been cast next to her. But it wasn't her or anyone else...
One of her classmates. A fight?...
She needed to get there.
And she bared her teeth as she yanked her arm from the IV, bared the pain as she forced herself up and looked down at her body. She needed to get dressed, needed to get ready...
"Where do you think you're going, Munashii?"
The doctor. Damn...The cranky woman herself. Yet, this time, Eika couldn't comply as she grabbed Nom-Nom and gazed at the woman with determined eyes -- a gaze that showed that she was awake and more than ready to go out and to what she needed to.
"I can't stay. Not even if I just woke up."
The exasperated woman looked ready to hit her with her clipboard at that, even if she knew she couldn't exactly stop her from going at this point with that fire in her eyes.
"And why is that?"
"...Because my classmates and my Instructor need me. And I would die for them."
Words spoken with a resolution that didn't need to be questioned, she ran right past the woman to get to the dorms to get changed. The first step had a water spell cast to wash away at her body as she stripped off the clothes from before, fire mingling in to keep it heated and soap inexplicably handed to her by her Doll. A set of potions -- five regular, give Hi-Potions, and three Phoenix Pinions, were stuffed into her pack with an Ether given to Nom-Nom to hold. A change of clothes to something fresh, and she didn't even bother to glance at the others calling her name as she sped out and right through the exit gate of the Garden. The guard even called to her as she jumped through the smaller gates, but to hell of she cared to explain herself.
That quartet flew right by her side, and with a jump, she was more than intent to surf her way there as she landed on two of them and used the other two to push herself up to keep her body from falling forward.
"Fire...Ah...
Fira!"
Junctioning a mid-level spell into her orbs-
"
Thundara!"
Correction. Two. But for what reason? Simple. To propel the orbs forward, to make them go faster, to cover land quicker.
Because even if her family was dead, and she couldn't save them, she had people that she could. And goddamned if she wasn't going to risk her life trying.
Because they were the people that she would die for, without any more hesitation.