"Hey! Come back here! Just wait until I get my hands on you, you little thief!" Shouts a middle aged shopkeeper.
"Trust me old man, I wouldn't do it if I didn't need to! If I get some money sometime soon I'll give you back twice as much!" A young hooded girl carrying stolen apples shouts back as she dashes down an empty alleyway.
As she runs down the alleyway, she notices that there's something at the end of it that looked strange, to say the least. It was humanoid, but it was certainly not human. As she got closer, she started to feel shockwaves coming from the area where this creature was. After the first few shockwaves, she could see the creature was fighting someone. Two young men, in fact. The shockwaves themselves were a product of the battle. Each one was coming from attacks on the creature.
"Go all out! You're on offense, and I'll take care of damage control. Got it?" Says the hooded man to the blond haired man.
"Yeah, yeah, just get ready for impact." Says the blonde hair one as he continues to strike the creature. As he does this, the hooded man seemingly disappears and reappears in rapid succession in various places, catching debris and creating what appear to be shields made of water to absorb some of the shockwaves. After multiple attacks connect, the hooded man appears at the end of the alleyway in front of the thief.
"You shouldn't be here right now, it's dangerous." He says as he picks her up and takes her back the direction where she came from.
"HIRO, GET BACK OVER HERE!" The blonde man shouts.
Hiro, the hooded man, drops her and disappears yet again, leaving behind a trail of fog in his wake. Mere moments after his disappearance, the girl attempts to stand back up, and a massive shockwave hits her and knocks her over. Being disoriented, she struggles to get back up.
"Ugh... Ears are ringing, whole body hurts, but still alive... I think." She says to herself, as she looks around to see what happened.
"There you are, you little brat!" Says the shopkeep from earlier, having found her.
"Not now. I gotta get away, but I can't move too well right now. Got... To... Get away..." The thief closes her eyes and she feels herself move as she passes out.
.
.
.
"Name: Rose Trunick. Age: about 16 years old. Short brown hair, brown skin, 5 feet and 4 inches tall. Was arrested yesterday, September 26th, 1222, for several accounts of theft in the capital. Sentence: undetermined." Says a guard in heavy armor. "Be advised, if you teleport away from this place, you will be hunted down and executed for resisting arrest. You are to wait here until the Royal Family decides what to do with you." Says the guard as he turns and walks away. As the guard leaves, Rose looks at her surroundings and sees that she is in a prison. She also notices that it's completely empty, with nothing to accompany her other than the plain gray walls and a thin mattress.
"Hello? Anyone else in here?" She shouts in the empty prison, to no response.
"I'll take that as a no." She mumbles to herself.
"That guy said I'd be killed if teleported away. How would I even do that?" She questioned herself.
Thinking back on the series of events that led to her capture, she remembers the feeling of moving after closing her eyes but before she lost consciousness.
"So if I try the same thing from last time, I should be able to do it again. In theory, at least."
She closes her eyes and imagines moving to the other end of her cell, a few feet away. She tries and immediately feels a weakness rush throughout her body. As she opens her eyes, she realizes that she did indeed move, but it also seemed to suck almost all the strength out of her body. She started to get a bit lightheaded. She felt like she was tired, but more so mentally rather than physically, as if she had solved a difficult puzzle.
"One... more... time..." Rose mumbles to herself while aiming her newfound teleportation at the flimsy bed in the corner. As she closes her eyes and teleports to her bed, she feels herself struggling to open her eyes and falls asleep.
When she wakes up, there are two meals of soup and bread waiting for her at the edge of her cell, one of them is noteworthily cold, and a guard walking away from her cell.
"How long was I out for?" She asks the guard.
"About 10 hours." He says without stopping to turn around as he disappears down the dimly lit corridor. She grabs the food and plans out her time while she eats.
"The first time I teleported, I could only do it once before passing out, but after a day of practice, I can do it twice before passing out." She mumbles to herself in between bites of bread and sips of soup.
"I could probably get pretty good at this teleportation thing while I'm in here, since I have food and a safe place to lay my head at when my energy is spent. I wonder how serious that guard was about being hunted down and executed for running away from here. If I get good enough at it, is there really anyone who would be able to find me, let alone catch me?" She says confidently about her newfound ability.
"Welp... Back to training!" She says as she finishes her meal.
Rose's training went on for three weeks with excellent results. She was now able to teleport dozens of times in one day without resting. One day, after she finished her training for the day and went to sleep, she awoke with a young man with short black hair in a long white coat in front of her cell, but he was different from the guard that normally came to deliver her meals.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you were enjoying your time here." Says the man.
"Who are you and why are you here?" Rose questions defensively.
"My name is Hiro, and I'm here to make you an offer. You should come work for the Royal Family. We can give you a much better place to live, better food to eat, and we'll pardon your crimes." says the man.
"Even though that sounds good, who are you to even offer something like this? And why would you give a job to a criminal?" She says, this time standing up looking at him through the cell bars.
"Who am I? I am the new King of Rahu, and you ask why I would offer you, a criminal, a job with the Royal Family? Because I am in need of someone with your ability. I also believe that you could be doing much more than committing petty theft with an ability such as yours." He states while meeting her gaze.
"King? Of all of the excuses you could've come up with, that's what you decided to say? You're saying you took the throne from Vanessa? The greatest King to have ever ruled over any nation, has stepped down and you succeeded her? To put it bluntly, I don't believe you." She says, turning away, crossing her arms in defiance.
"You don't believe me. Ha... I would say it feels like I'm arguing with a child, but I actually am arguing with a chil-"
"Hey! I'm standing right here and can still hear you! Look, all I'm saying is that if you want me to accept your offer, prove to me that what you are saying is true. I want to take you up on this offer, but I can't just go along with some random person claiming he's the new King." She states with a hint of sass in her voice.
"Fine. I'll humor you. How about we make a wager? I let you out of here, for one minute. If you can evade my capture for the time limit, I'll stop chasing you and allow you to take a lump sum of money from the palace's treasury. However, should you fail, you will be forced to work for me at the Royal Palace. The only rule is that we must stay in the kingdom of Rahu." He says with a smirk on his face.
"That's fine by me, as long as you keep your word, regardless of who wins." She says while doing a few stretches.
While pulling a coin out of his pocket, Hiro says, "Good, We will start when this coin hits the ground. The exit to the prison is the door straight down this hallway." He opens the door to Rose's cell and flips the coin.
As he turns his back to face the door, she notices a fog start to roll out of his coat. Upon seeing this, she remembers that he was one of the two men who were fighting the mysterious creature three weeks ago. This realization sends a shiver down her spine, making her feel as though he might actually be telling the truth.
01:00
As the coin touches the ground, Rose teleports outside the door and immediately notices that there is a thin fog covering the area in front of the prison. She begins running off in a seemingly random direction while looking for a vantage point. When she spots a tall enough building, she teleports to the top of it and sees the fog covering the entirety of the city, and even further than the eye could see, likely spreading even further away and growing thicker by the second.
00:50
Rose spots Hiro, running and jumping between buildings looking for her. She feels a sense of relief since he hasn't found her yet, but as she thinks this, he turns and looks her directly in the eye from a distance, causing her to panic.
"How did he find me? It looked almost like he knew where I was despite looking around in the wrong area previously." She thinks to herself while looking for another building to teleport to. While she's looking, she notices that fog is rising, as if it's climbing the building itself.
00:40
Rose looks back to where Hiro once was and sees he has moved away from where she last saw him. She turns around to look for him and sees the fog start to materialize into Hiro's form about two feet in front of her and attempts to grab her. She sees this and teleports instantly to another building off in the distance. Before she has time to catch her breath, Hiro reappears behind her, attempting yet another grab, to which she responds with another teleport of her own into an alleyway. Hiro follows in the same manner, which starts a series of rapid teleports from both of them for an extended period of time.
00:10
"I'm almost there! Ten more seconds 'till freedom!" She thinks this to herself, trying to stay optimistic despite the fact that she was draining herself quite quickly trying to keep pace with Hiro.
This had been the longest, most exhausting 50 seconds of her life, but in ten more, she would have the freedom she desires without the struggle that had accompanied it previously.
"Two more teleports, then one more up high as far away from his fog as possible." Rose thinks to herself as she formulates a plan.
00:08
Rose teleports twice and Hiro follows as expected, but she notices out of the corner of her eye, Hiro throws something upwards. She can't make it out through the increasingly thick fog, but she chooses to stick to her plan of teleporting upwards, attempting to teleport several hundreds of feet into the air to get above the projectile before it gets to its destination.
00:05
"What? There was fog this high up too?!" She says as her heart sinks, seeing an immense sea of fog around her hundreds of feet in the air. In the same moment, she feels Hiro's arms wrap around her, and they begin to plummet to the ground.
"You did well, for someone who just awakened her ability a few weeks ago. However, I couldn't call myself King if I couldn't catch one petty thief. "He says to her, as the wind begins to howl past their ears as they approach the ground. Rose, through her tired eyes, sees a water bubble start to encase them inside itself. Once they touch the ground, the bubble pops, breaking their fall.
"So, this seems like I lost, right?" Rose says while standing back to her feet.
"Correct. You work for me, starting today. But don't worry, it won't be as bad as you're thinking. While I did say you would be forced to work for me, I'll try my best not to restrict your freedom too much. As long as you behave, you'll be treated well. You have my word." Hiro says while dispelling the fog, revealing the slumbering night time of the capital.
"Let's go back to the palace and rest for the night. Can you walk, or would you like me to carry you?" Hiro asks.
"I'm not that tired. I'm pretty sure I can manage." She says as she stumbles while attempting to take a step. Catching her, Hiro squats down and gestures for her to get on his back.
"No need to act tough, I've got you." Hiro says. She reluctantly takes his offer and climbs on his back. "We have a long enough walk back so feel free to ask any questions along the way." He says to Rose, only to be met with snores as she falls fast asleep.
"If that's all it takes to tire her out, we have our work cut out for us." Hiro says as he chuckles to himself, making his way back to the palace with Rose in tow.
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Prologue END
ns 18.68.41.137da2
