Mimicry!

-- Lewis --

< Hey Lewissss~ >

< ... >

< Lewissss~ >

< ... >

< Lewis answer me~ >

< ... >

< Don't make me throw ourselves out the window~ >

< Am I not allowed to sleep...? >

< Nope!~ We had a promise, remember? >

"mmrggghhhhh FiNe," I groaned out.

< Don't you just love waking up at 02:00~ >

I forced a chill down my spine, knowing that she'd feel it.

I was not a morning person -- either sleep a full night or don't sleep at all. There's no middle ground. None.

< You owe me. >

< Owe you? Lewis you're doing this cause you owe me~ >

I was too tired to argue.

< Are you... still gleeful because of the money...? >

< I suppose~ But that doesn't matter, hurry up and show me! >

I slapped myself a few times, waking myself up a bit more.

< Fine. >

"Riselaesuu," I whispered -- feeling my core turn my pure sparks into life sparks. I waited for my lungs to fill with the soft and comforting life sparks.

'Aeseaesele,' I said, completing the chant. The word didn't leave my mouth as sound, instead it appeared as a multicolored mist.

The mist grew in size and changed in shape, turning... human. I closed my eyes as an odd wind blew over me.

< What the... Lewis..? >

I opened my eyes to see... me.

Well, not 'me', but the vessel in Aeryn's form.

< Did you just... split our body...? >

"Not quite. I mimicked it and placed my consciousness inside of it," I said, pondering if that was all there was to it.

Renvin was so much simpler than these... sparks.

"I see.. We can act like normal people now!" She was gleaming again.

Was it really this easy to please her?

I mean... I'm not complaining....

"I can't hold the body for too long, but the more I train, the longer I can keep it up."

"Well, no kidding," She looked at me with a concerned look, "of course training would make it better..."

"Two in the morning, Aeryn, two in the morning."

"Quit whining, Mr Assassin~"

"Oh be quiet, I'm sure I was a better assassin than you."

"Maybe, maybe not~ You got anything else to show me?"

"Well... I've improved my Synthetic Arts and my Deconstruction arts, and started progressing my understanding of Mind Arts, but other than that... not really," though honestly, there was something bigger on my mind than what arts our angel had taught me.

"What about how sparks work? What they are?"

"Oh right! Our little guardian angel did tell me a few things."

She gestured for me to continue.

"Hang on... I'm tired and my brain's a scramble..."

"Sparks are pretty much particles that exist within everything. 'Within the empty space within atoms', is what she said," whatever an atom was, "They usually exist in a 'pure' state, where they have no 'flavour'. Our cores take in sparks, and refine them, giving them a flavour -"

"Which happens during chanting, right?"

"Yeah - the refined sparks are pushed around our body through our ECS, or Enhanced Circulatory System."

"Interesting..."

She had started pacing during my little lecture, pouring over the new information.

I almost sunk back into my mind to check if I had missed anything, but alas, a certain something distracted me.

The last time I 'saw' her was back before the attack, when we were studying in the Mental Plane.

Even then, I never truly looked at her

Now, as I sit here watching her lost in thought, I felt a childish rush of emotions.

Her long, silky light silver hair flowed like water around her, moving perfectly in sync with her figure as she paced around the room.

Her piercing pale red-violet eyes, still having a tinge of that earlier glee, seemed to be gazing into a world that only she could see.

There was just something about her presence that put me at ease.

Her slim body was only made more attractive by the clothes that subtly outlined it, but it's the way that her whole person moved together -- with a grace only attained by mastering the art of graceful motion -- that was the most captivating.

Her.. was she always blushing?

"You know... I can still feel your emotions..."

Ah.

"I- uh..."

"Forgive and forget?" She asked.

Huh? Forgive?

Did she think I was thinking of...

"Aeryn you misunderstand I wasn't-"

At that moment, the cloned body crumbled as I blacked out.

I'd subconsciously burned through my internal sparks.

Fortunate timing...

-- ... --

Tonight was the night a group of prisoners would put their plan in motion.

Some of the other prisoners had decided not to join in -- preferring to rot in prison than risk their lives to escape.

Foolish.

Hadn't the conditions gotten worse since the previous escape? If this group was successful, then they'd be treated worse.

It had always confused me on why people seemed to act in direct opposition to what would be best for them...

I turned my focus back to the girl on the floor.

Over the past few days, I'd grown some sort of attachment to the young blonde.

How had anger fueled her will to live so much?

At times I almost found myself wanting to cheer for her, though I knew such emotions were only remnants of the past.

She had been laying on a bed -- more of a platform extruding from the wall -- staring up at a moonless sky through some slanted bars.

"It happens tonight," a voice whispered through the darkness -- the guard who'd been helping them.

She slowly sat up, stretching her arms.

No words needed to be spoken for her confirmation, for one only needed to see her eyes for an answer.

She grabbed the four sharpened metal 'blades' she'd sharpened over the days, strapping two to her thighs and two to her hands.

The blades weren't anything fancy like steel -- they were pieces of metal she'd found in the courtyard or on the outside walks they had been taken on for exercise -- they looked as if they belonged in a slum's butcher shop.

She slid down off the platform and stood there quietly, waiting. The guard didn't say anything else; instead, they simply unlocked the door and left.

The girl waited patiently until all sound faded away before stepping out.

I wondered, was this all just some trap for the guards to reduce the prison population?

Unlikely, there weren't really any prisoners in the camp apart from the ones taken during their most recent raid...

Interesting.