Masenia: Chapter 1 When Everything Just Clicked (Patreon)

Chapter 1

When Everything Just Clicked

Anhnk-Anhnk-Anhnk

A loud blaring sound carved its way into Maria’s peacefully sleeping brain, and suddenly centuries of survival instincts kicked in, sparking into life and providing the defensive measures needed to continue enduring for one more day.

WHAM!

A knife hand struck out, striking the offending noise producer, hard.

Crunch.

The sound of breaking plastic could be heard. As Maria felt sharp jagged chunks trying to bite into her hand. No problem, Maria had been bitten multiple times before, the trick always was to sink your hand deeper, and force the monster to open their mouth wider, the best way to do this was to twist the hand in, then reach down and grab the tongue violently. Realizing this on some primitive level, she moved, her mind still not catching up to the environmental factors around her. First, she was covered in layers of blankets. Second, it was slightly cold out, despite her body knowing she was in a cave system, but caves were warm, right?

Her mind had already begun scanning the area for additional threats, but so far the environment she was in was odd, and her senses screamed at her to wake up. That was why she rolled out of bed, well at least she attempted to roll out of bed, a pile of blankets made this tougher than one would expect, but she managed to even as her hand cut its way through the annoying beast’s mouth. Then rising to her feet, she was surprised to find that the animal that clung desperately around her hand it was light.

Then for a moment she wondered what exactly happened, as her armor was gone, all her weapons were gone, she felt naked, vulnerable.

Click.

“What are you doing.”

Light flooded the room showing a bleary-eyed Maria standing in a full combat pose, while a vicious monster clung to her hand, only to find out with a start reality that it was an alarm clock.

Maria paused, staring at the device that now clung to her hand, while she quickly scanned the room to find it an odd shade of pastels, colors that would never survive for long. Then with a start, she saw her siter.

Badump.

For a moment, her mind raced trying to figure out if this was some type of trap for a moment, as her sister had died during the initial waves. She was on the front lines, while Maria had originally hidden. Then, just as quickly as the new thoughts came to her, they disappeared in the way that only dreams can. One second she understood life, the universe, and everything. Then the next she was just Maria, standing in her room, with her twin sister shouting at her, while she had an alarm clock strapped around her wrist. To put it short, it was a Monday.

“Jesus, what is your issue?” Anita, Maria’s twin asked.

Maria who still had slightly less than nothing to go off of on what had just happened, just stared there for a moment, before realizing she needed to get ready for school. Or at least she would, a quick glance of the corners of the windows showed that it was still dark out, that there was still plenty of time left before she would need to get ready for school. Then it hit her, she had stayed up late playing her game, then only remembering at the last minute that she would need to study for her various tests today.

“Sorry.” Maria said a little sheepishly.

There was a pause as Anita just stared at Maria, who despite no longer feeling a need to defend herself, still held her body in an attack posture.

“You okay?” Anita asked suddenly looking at her twin sister like she had grown three eyes.

With a slight scare, Maria reached up to see if the third eye was still there, nope that had been part of her dream as well. She couldn’t remember her dream, the only thing she really remembered was that it was tough, and scarry as all get out. Speaking of which, her clothes now clung tightly to her, as she had apparently been sweating for most of the night. This was odd as her high Vitality should have negated such loss of heat. Then with a slight scare, she realized belatedly that she couldn’t pull up her status screen. Then shaking her head, she realized it was all just a dream. Everything was just a bad dream.

Then remembering that her sister was still staring at her, she did the only thing she could, she diverted.

“Yeah, you, just waking up early to knock out my homework and what not.” Maria said, pulling on her own memories that seemed like they happened so long ago.

GROAN!

“Ohh, don’t remind me.” Anita said, as her own body began to complain. Seeing the look of shared mutual pain, Maria felt a little warmth that can only be experienced by two souls who experience the same hardship together. In this case, it was the fact that she and her sister had celebrated the rejoining of having to share the same room, while Juan their brother and future college drop out moved back home, thus forcing the twins to bunk together, while the family prepared for his temporary stay back home. To celebrate, and partially as a form of protest Maria and Anita had spent the entire weekend binging video games together, while catching up, it had been fun.

“I know.” Was all Maria could say, honestly, compared to her dream, the idea of Calculus being the current bane of her existence seemed light by comparison. “One second, I’m going to need to shower.” Maria said, as she pulled up the still dripping clothes from her skin.

“Guh, that is all those blankets you sleep with.” Anita said, in the way that only a twin who knew better could say and get away with.

Maria just rolled her eyes, before leaving to shower and come back.

By the time she got back a bleary eyes Anita was up, still wearing her pajamas, but she at least had her books out as she stared vacantly at the text books.

Seeing the state of self-inflicted pain Anita was already in, Maria took a deep breath, and prepared for her own self-inflicted torture session. Pulling out her book, she opened the page and stared, though something was odd.

Looking at the page before her, the words clicked. The math seemed to roll around in her mind, slowly whittling down the numbers presented, until finally a singular number remained. Writing it down, she paused, as she then flipped the page, and was surprised to see that it was correct. Suddenly, she felt very odd, why did she even have a book with pages? Shouldn’t everything be digital?

Then with a slight shake of her head, she realized that this was her parents trying to do better, to push Anita and Maria further than they had with Juan. This was another point of contention for the twins, as the two realized that part of their special attention they were now being subjected to by their parents was in no small part due to the glorious underachievements of Juan, their college dropout older brother and intense source of embarrassment for her parents.

After a few minutes of silence, where Maria just worked her way through the book before her, Anita called out. “You ready for practice today?”

“Practice?”

Anita just stared at her for a moment, no doubt trying to see if she was just pretending, or if she had genuinely forgotten. After a moment of intense staring, Anita was fairly certain that her sister was not faking.

“Yeah, remember, part of our earning scholarships, because our parents will not be able to pay off three sets of student loans, so if we want to go to college and get out of our joint living arrangement, then we need to apply ourselves now.” Anita said, a note of bitterness to her voice.

With everything going on, Maria couldn’t help but feel the logic from both ends. Her parents thought that Juan had nothing pushing him to succeed while in college, as such she just partied rather than applying himself. To prevent this from happening with her and her sister, her parents went a few steps deep. First, they destroyed the sense of hero worship that they had in their brother, but forcing them both to share the same room, making it so the two would not be tempted to follow in his footsteps. Then to twist the knife even further, they felt making the twins work for a scholarship would be the way to go. Honestly it was a simple, but effective plan. Every day the two would come back to their room and realize that the only way out of this scenario was to press themselves to do better. Also, Maria noted that at least a small bonus to all of this was that they would be less likely to have boys and other distractions over as the twin would be right there in the same room. Honestly, looking at it objectively, Maria could see the reason her parents went with this approach, not that she would ever admit to anything like this with her sister who was still too emotionally close to this whole scenario to look at it objectively.

Still, Maria felt fairly confident with her math skills, making quick work of each set of problems, before going onto the next step.

Finally, after she was done, she just sat there, waiting. It was still early, as her phone told her. A phone, how long had it been since she last saw one of these? Holding it, she could almost swear she felt the emotional residue rubbing off on her, as she felt thrilled by holding the device, a device that she herself had obviously cherished, if the emotions she was feeling from it were any indication. While there were powers that helped improve the ability to read emotions tied to an object, a person with a particularly high Perception could do the basics of a psychometric scan, particularly if they were scanning a personal item that they had bound with their emotional energies.

With so many emotions tied to her phone, she felt compelled to open the device.

Beep.

Child Lock in Place.

Looking at the message Maria shook her head in disbelief, had she misremembered her passcode? Surely she hadn’t, especially given the way her fingers all but flew through the pattern. Though it had been a long time? No wait, that was just her dream talking.

“Watch out, Dad is likely getting the message now that you are trying to access your phone early.” Anita said, having heard the beep and turning to face Maria.

“Early?” Was all Maria got out before her question was interrupted.

Knock knock.

Rattle.

Two quick knocks followed by the rattling of the doorknob, an old memory of hers surfaced, one where she dreaded this very type of interaction.  This time however, Maria didn’t mind.

“Just what do you think you are doing?” Their father demanded, coming in, holding up his phone that clearly displayed the message.

Unauthorized login attempt Maria Alvarez.

Seeing the message from the far end of the room to the door, Maria realized that there was something odd about being able to read the small message so clearly. Normally such a message would have been impossible to notice from such a distance. But today, her heightened senses seemed to pick up the small details from this distance with ease. She had noticed a lot of those types of things this morning, the way she was able to literally knife hand strike her alarm clock. The way she was able to just understand the math problems that had been eluding her for so long, and the way she could read a phone message from across the room.

Normally under such a serious statement first thing in the morning Maria would clam up and cower. But today, she didn’t feel any such inclinations to flinch away, instead she brazenly looked at her father and declared, “I was done with my work, so I thought I’d check my phone.”

“Done? Your book isn’t even open, look at your sister, being the good one. Her book is open, and she is clearly trying.”

During the whole conversation, Maria just stared at her father, a note of annoyance in her glare.

“Fine, then. You don’t want to follow the rules of this house, you will realize your actions have consequences. No phone for you.” Her father said, as he came over and stole the device from her desk, its bright pink casing clearly making it stand out on the desk.

Maria for her part just stared at her father with her arms crossed, an uncaring gaze filling her expression.

“You don’t care, fine. It’s gone for a week.”

Maria knew at one point this would have been the end of the world to her, as the phone was her everything, but for now, she just couldn’t care. It had been so long since one of those, pink or not, was relevant that she couldn’t bring herself to care. Of course, that was more of the dream talking, but the more she thought about it, she felt like part of her very soul had changed during that dream. While she couldn’t remember everything, she did feel that she had changed in some distinct way. Part of that change boiled down to the fact that the nostalgia of a phone was a minor comfort to have.

“You don’t care?” Her dad asked, looking for some type of reaction out of her.

Maria, even if she did care, she wouldn’t let it show on her face, but the truth was, this entire power play was minor and myopic in scope. In the back of her mind, she could see the message, the fear of having one or both of his twins also fail to leave the house would be too much for him. Still, Maria couldn’t find herself faking caring about such a minor thing. Also, if her memory recalled the phone was on complete lock down during the school day, and only active once their afterschool programs ended.

“Fine. A month.”

Still no reaction, rather than doubling down on a tactic that clearly wasn’t working, her father changed his approach. “I guess with your phone gone, you will need to attend practices with your sister, so we can pick you up together.”

Idly, Maria realized this too had been a thing. Maria had chosen the violin and the drums as her instrumental and focuses, as it meant she wouldn’t have to do sportsy things. Her twin, had always been the more athletic of the two, going out for soccer, field hockey, basketball, track, and even softball. She knew part of the reason why Anita had to try out for so many sports teams was mainly due to the fact that taking the drums would mean Maria would be on the marching band that would play during different parts of Anita’s games. Her father of course, thought that focusing on sports would mean she would get more scholarship opportunities, than just being a band member would. Fortunately, her mother had helped, but now her father seemed keen to use this moment to finally get his way.

Honestly, Maria couldn’t find herself caring.

Seeing that he was still not getting a rise out of Maria, he twitched once, then just shook his head in anger, before slamming the door shut behind him as he left.

Wham!

Silence.

Maria stared at the door, her senses noting the lack of steps away from the door, along with the fact that a silhouette was clearly visible underneath the door frame.

Despite this, after a moment Anita who had been completely still, not wanting to draw dad’s attention while he was in the middle of one of his tirades, turned and said, “that was awesome.”

Maria just held up her hand, “don’t say anything incriminating, he is still outside the door now, listening in on us.” Maria said, speaking out loudly enough so that her father couldn’t help but hear.

There was the slight movement of the shadow for a second, no doubt where he seemed he wanted to listen in still, but then moved.

Thump, thump.

The sound of footsteps moving away could finally be heard, but they were odd, uneven steps. Somehow Maria could distinguish the difference between his regular steps, and steps that were designed to be purposefully louder. Then she heard it.

Rustle, rustle.

He had come back, shaking her head, at the antic, Maria just stared angrily at the section of the wall, where she knew her father was hiding, listening in on their conversation.

“Wow, what was…” Anita began, but Maria just held up her hand to stop her.

“He hasn’t actually left, he is just standing by the door.”

Silence.

Badump, badump.

This time a few seconds later the distinct sound of feet going down the stairs at a regular cadence could be heard, this time it was clear that her father had finally given up the act. With that, Maria lowered her hand, a clear indication that it was safe to speak.

Anita just stared at her sister for a moment, clear concern in her gaze. “What happened to you?”

Maria just stared at her twin for a second. She wanted to protest, but couldn’t disagree, something had changed, but for the life of her, she couldn’t quite place her finger on what exactly had changed.

“Bad dream.” Is all Maria could answer.

Anita paused, her mouth open, as she just stared at her twin. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Hearing that Maria paused and wanted to, but honestly she didn’t know what she could, or even should say. Everything just felt so odd, and worse while her nightmare had frightened her, right to her very core, she couldn’t understand why her dream had been so scarry. This all dealt with the fact that she couldn’t for the life of her remember what it was that her dream was about, only that it was seemingly the most important thing she had ever experienced.

“I can’t.” Maria began, and then saw the way her twin’s posture shifted, seeing that, she decided to tell the truth. “I would if I could, but honestly I don’t even remember what it was about.”

There was a pause as Anita seemed to take in those comments and truly try to evaluate them. Then after a moment’s hesitation, she paused and nodded. It was clear that she still had her reservations about what had happened to Maria, but she at least seemed to believe that Maria for her part didn’t know what the dream that shook her so much was about.

Anita was about to turn back, when she looked at her sister, and then with a look of shock, asked. “What did you do to your hair?”