Chapter 50: Temporary House
"This here is the neutral zone. It's called like that because it isn't regulated by the powers from outside and the big internal bands aren't monitoring it either." Eve said as they turned one corner.
They walked for fifteen minutes as the traffic of people reduced. Charlotte saw how there were less suited and formally dressed folk, dressed in cheaper clothes and even some ragged ones, being not different from the first ones she saw the day before.
"I see, how many internal bands are here again?" Charlotte asked with interest in her voice.
"I dunno? There are a lot, but there are seven major ones. They share almost the same territories but their business is different, so they don't bother themselves."
"I see. Then it's easier to live here, I guess."
"Not exactly, here there's no governing power, so it's more chaotic. At least it's cheaper but one can't come and go as one please, you can't go missing like that." They once again crossed a street and started walking through a road without much people.
Charlotte didn't say much but kept her eyes open to her surroundings. They arrived to a ten floored building with destroyed walls Eve entered without much thought, she opened the door without any key and strolled inside. Charlotte followed with a raised brow. They climbed the stairs at the end of the worn down corridor, it only had two lights, the one just after the door they crossed and a central one, everything else was shrouded in darkness. There were only two doors at each side of the corridor of the first floor. From the second onwards, there were three.
"Isn't it dangerous to leave the front door unlocked?" She asked once they reached the eight floor, apparently she was destined to climb stairs to get to a residence in this life.
"Why?" Eve asked back as her breath hastened.
"Well, what if someone wanted to get in and mug up things?"
"Anyone who wants to will get inside anyway, so why bother."
"Ah, true."
Eve stood in front of the second door on the right wing and looked through her pockets. After a moment of fumbling through them she looked back at Charlotte with her tongue out and made a silly face.
"Ops, I forgot my keys." She said before hitting the door. "Mom! It's me! Open the door!"
The door swung open before a minute went by. A lady in her thirties stood with half opened eyes and a frown in her face, her faces over her hips and her elbows high to the sides. She had a darker shade of brown than Eve's and her eyelashes were thinner.
"What time do you think it is? What have I…" She paused when her gaze studied her daughter's face. "What happened to you?"
"… I'm sorry, but it was not my fault! Hiro here saved me!" She pointed at her side and the lady finally realized her daughter's uninvited guest.
"You… No, come in. I want you to tell me." Eve's mother let her shoulders fall as her face softened, albeit frowned in a different way.
The two followed the lady to the living room where a young girl munched on some chips, she had her hair cut to shoulder length with a shade lighter than Eve's. She had already changed in pajamas and was looking at a normal sized TV in the wall. The living room had two couches, one which could hold up to three people and a single seated one where Eve's sister was, there was also a chair near the TV. At the other end of the room was a table with four chairs similar to the last one and a basket in the middle of it. Charlotte also saw a painting in the wall.
"So, tell me what happened to you." The mother said as she sat on the big sofa and turned off the TV.
"Hey! I was watching it! It's the most exciting part…" The little girl turned her head to her mother and kept her mouth shut, she then looked to her back where Eve and Charlotte were and then at her mother. "I'm, leaving you, good luck sis."
She stood up and ran away to the other side of the room, past the table where a corridor was. Eve waited until the little girl was completely out and went to sit on the one person couch, Charlotte stood behind her.
"So uhm, well. She's my mother and this is Hiro, he saved me from an assault." Eve fidgeted with her fingers as she started to lower the tension her mother exuded.
The lady sighed and looked at Charlotte for once. "Sorry, this isn't something I'm used to. My name is Sheryl and the little one before was Emily. You can seat wherever you like, for now you have my gratitude." She then returned her sight to Eve and waited for her story.
*****
"I thank you, really, you saved my child's life." The mother said with a relieved expression, the muscles of her face somehow relaxed and hard at the same time.
An hour had gone by as other things happened. Sheryl had brought them to the bath as soon as Eve said she was stabbed and looked at the wound. She didn't know what to do with that kind of wound so she just put back on the gauze. Eve then continued it and her father arrived, so she had to start once again and he did the same Sheryl did.
"You can stay here for a while, there's no problem." Her father, Tristan, had a weary expression. "It's late already and you don't have a place, right? It's the least we can do."
He had ran outside looking for Eve for more than an hour before coming back in with a bitter expression, only to find her already back. He was only a little taller than Eve and Sheryl, around 165 cm. His blond head and slim figure made him look weak but his tonned muscles told a different thing. Charlotte wondered why this family was so short but then again, she was shorter than them, except for the sister that was still around 14.
"Yeah! We can sleep together!" Eve jumped to her feet and hugged Charlotte from the back.
"Don't even think about it, you'll sleep with your sister. And he'll use your room."
"Mom!" Eve put more force to her hug and Charlotte felt she her lungs ask for air, she touched Eve's hands but the girl kept on talking to her mother.
"You'll do whatever you want once you leave my house!" Was the last thing the mother said before the Tristan finally calmed them down.
"Hmph!" Eve looked away in dissatisfaction, still Charlotte in her hands.
"Really, kids these days…" Charlotte said without much thought.
Everyone looked at her, she made a soft sound and looked away.
"Even if you're older than her, you're still a kid, you cannot say that kind of thing." Sheryl shook her head slowly with closed eyes. "You want something to eat? I'll prepare something quickly before we go to sleep."
"Oh, okay. Thanks." She scratched her temple as her cheeks grew pink.
"Beware, mom. He eats a lot! You have to give him like, uhm, four servings?" Eve finally let Charlotte go when Sheryl went to the kitchen and sat on the single couch.
"Well, three are plenty enough, but I can do with a normal one, there's no problem." Charlotte breathed in hard as she was finally free, her hand on her chest. "I thought I was gonna die."
"Hey! I didn't hug you that hard! You should be grateful someone like me did so!" Eve smiled and clapped her thighs with her hands as she started laughing. After her fit was over, she looked at Charlotte who stood in the middle of the room. "You can sit where you like, be free."
Her parents made a quick work of pastas and ground beef and brought it to them. Charlotte was on the big couch and before she got up to go to the table, Eve told her it was alright to it there. Charlotte ate two servings with delish and thanked the couple, they stared at her for a moment before they went back to the kitchen and brought another dish of past and carbonated beverage for them all. They talked for some time after dinner and decided to go to sleep.
Charlotte followed Eve to her room through the corridor Emily went in earlier. Before she could see any room, she saw the kitchen with lots of chambers and a fridge. After it were three doors and got in through the first one with Eve. The room had a single bed next to a big window and a desk with notebooks and magazines at its foot. On the other side was a wardrobe and in the walls two posters of people with modified parts on them Charlotte had no idea of.
The first one was of a guy with a big hand and a mouth guard, both mechanical. The other one was of a team of four people, the first one had his left arm changed and something in his abdomen, the second had both legs and the same thing in his abdomen, the third had all extremities changed and the last one was in a wheelchair, she was the most normal looking of the four as she didn't have any changed part.
"What's that?" Charlotte asked as she touched abdomen thing on all of them.
"Hmm? Oh, that. It's a transmitter, it helps the team keep in contact and allows them to communicate without having to speak loudly." Eve said as she took a quick glance and took out her pajamas along from her wardrobe. "So, you like it?"
Charlotte tilted her head as she continued to study the people in the poster. "I dunno, I don't even know what they do."
"Eh, no, not that, my room!"
"Oh, that. Sorry, I was distracted by this, heheh." Charlotte looked around the room and saw nothing new from her first fast glance. "It's cozy and without much things, I quite like it."
"Right! Hey, I'm going to sleep now, I got classes tomorrow."
"Classes? You go to school?" Hearing a term she didn't think she'd hear here, she looked at Eve with her eyes wide open.
"Of course, you don't have them outside?"
"No, well, yes, but I thought you didn't have in here."
"Of course we do! It's necessary to get any decent job. The classes are boring though, so I don't pay much attention." As she was to take off her shirt, she paused and realized Charlotte was still looking at the poster, she pouted and decided to better change in her sister's room.
"I'm gonna show you what's it about tomorrow." Eve jumped to Charlotte and gave her a peck in her cheeks before she fled like a criminal.
Charlotte stood in the room alone, not knowing how to react. <She sure thinks I'm a boy, right? What to do… I'm seducing a little girl without doing anything…>
She took off her shirt, all the bandages underneath and touched softly the scorch in her back, she cringed and then looked for the ointment for burned skin, even if an eschar was formed already, she still had to apply it, that's what she thought. After she applied it with some difficulty, she realized she could do it in the External Projection and sighed.
*Knockknock.
She froze, and looked back at the door. She then gave it her back and closed her eyes.
"Hey Prism! Activate the Disguise Form: Kid!" She said as she willed the External Projection and came out of the Crystal's Space.
"Yes?" She felt how her chest constricted in a visible way, she was topless and now breast-less.
"Sorry, I forgot to tell give you sheets to sleep with and well, other things to know. Can I come in?" Eve answered quietly, almost in a whisper and Charlotte had to strain her ears to listen.
"Yeah." She answered without much thought and turned her head back to the bag, she looked for a t-shirt comfortable enough to sleep in.
Eve entered and stood frozen in the door's frame, her eyes fixed on her back. "Is it painful?"
"Hmm? Oh, this?" Charlotte pointed with her thumb over her shoulder. "I believe yours is worse than this now, before though, it certainly was a pain."
"How did you got it?" Eve moved to her bed and sat on its edge.
She faced Charlotte's front and saw nothing in there. Charlotte raised one brow, "What are you looking at?"
"A-ah, sorry, I thought you had a scarier wound there. I looked without thinking, sorry." She averted her eyes and looked to the wall in the other side of the room.
"Why would you think that?" Charlotte took out a t-shirt big enough and put it over her head.
"Well, you had it bandaged before, no? I thought, if you gave me the bandages of such an injury, then the ones on your chest must be worse, so…"
"Oh." She hit her head in her mind and cursed at her own idiocy. "Well, I have it because it calms me down. Nothing much important."
"I see, about that one in your back…?" Eve returned her gaze to face Charlotte's face once more.
"I was in a fire before I was brought here. Nothing much, it's been… More than a month now… No, two months, woa." Charlotte opened her eyes wide and her hands stopped moving. She looked past the window and remained silent for some minutes.
"I'm sorry to make you remember something like that…" Eve said, unable to endure the silence.
Charlotte looked at her uncomfortable face and sighed. "Don't worry, it's just, it's been two months since then. Time sure flies by, huh. I didn't even realize. Anyway, what did you want to tell me?" She looked down at the brown blanket Eve had on her lap.
"Right! This." She left it over the bed and walked to the window's handle. "We don't have fans so now that summer's about to start we leave this open, we're pretty high so there's no worry about it. But then there are nights where it's too cold, so use it if it gets cold, also, the restroom is in the kitchen. If you want to take a bath you'll need to wait 'till tomorrow because the only one in the house is in my parent's room, sorry."
"Thanks a lot. Until tomorrow then. Sleep tight tonight." Charlotte smiled as brightly as she could and Eve's breath halted in that smile, so she looked away once more.
"N-no problem, have a nice night. You'll be coming with me tomorrow to school, okay?"
"Huh? Eh, okay?"
Once Eve was out again, Charlotte sighed and undid the script, her breast free once again and filling up the t-shirt, only a little.
<I need a way to do this without the need to get in the Crystal's Space.>
She tossed her body on the bed and covered it with the brown blanket Eve gave her. She closed her eyes and looked around the colorless space. There were blacks in her sight, though only small spots compared to the almost black vision she had before. She worked on them with Prism's help so she wouldn't be malnourished once again and fell asleep after thirty minutes.
On the next morning, Eve woke up feeling tired in her body. She wasn't any thinner as she paid attention to it this time. Sheryl agreed with Eve's idea of going to school.
"I already know everything there's to know from school, so there's nothing for me to learn there, I think." Charlotte expressed her unwillingness and tried to avoid going there at all costs.
"You do? Aren't you the intelligent one? You have the diploma then?" Sheryl asked from the kitchen where she was preparing breakfast for the family who seated around the table.
"Eh, no." Charlotte didn't know how to answer, she obtained one from her school years ago, but she couldn't use it nor had she brought it with her.
"At the very least you should go there and ask to get one, without it you don't have much to do here except being a criminal."
"Yeah, that's right."
"Yes! And I'll show you my school around, and my friends! They'll love you!"
Sheryl then brought their breakfast, some scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onion and bread for two full families. Charlotte ate half of it.
"You sure can eat, huh." Tristan said when Charlotte finished her fourth dish.
"I got a special constitution, so uhm, sorry for eating so much."
"Don't worry about it. It's the least we could do as you saved our girl." Tristan reassured her and went back to the kitchen with empty dishes in his hands.
Charlotte and Eve got ready to part. Eve's school didn't have a dress code so she wore anything she liked and a little gauze over her right temple and cheeks where she was hit. While Charlotte just put anything she found without much care after bandaging her chest, it was becoming a core to do it all the time but she still wanted to keep low profile. They then went out of the house and walked to school.
"A degree, huh." Charlotte started two streets after they left.
"Yes?" Eve stopped on her ramblings about the different kind of entertainment they had in the city.
"Why's there the need of a degree?"
"It's obvious, no? To know what you can do."
"It's written in there?"
"Yep. They put the scores you get and also whatever else you want to be evaluated in there. Though it can't be as advanced as the ones in colleges, it could help to find a good job."
"College? There's college here?"
"Well, they're not like the ones in the outside, I think, but we call the that. It's just a private school to learn more things, but it's way too specialized, there are only four in the city, one of medicine, one of construction, one of robotics, and the last one… I don't remember." Her little finger knocked on her chin as she looked to the sky, mumbling about the areas she didn't mention and shaking her head.
They arrived to a building five blocks from Eve's house, it looked the same as everything else but was smaller, only five stories high. There were no guards in the entrance and Eve simply walked in, Charlotte in tow. She went to the third floor and entered a room. Inside was a normal looking classroom, though fully vandalized with graffiti and old, scratched desks. The ceiling wasn't better as half the lights were broken or simply didn't work. A white board stood at the end of room and windows opposite from the door the two were standing in. The room had almost forty teenagers and they all talked as loudly as they possibly could, Charlotte thought back to a stadium or something similar while frowning at the noise they made.
Eve went to a group of three girls near the window and greeted them, after a while Charlotte arrived at her side.
"Look! He's the one who saved me! Ask him if you don't believe me!" Eve grabbed Charlotte's hand and put her in front of three girls, she then hugged Charlotte from behind as she did the previous night. Her hands surrounded Charlotte's neck and her head rested on her shoulders.
The three girls rolled her eyes and looked at Charlotte.
"Is it true? She was almost rapped?" Said the tallest of them. She had black hair and a ribbon over a ponytail she grabbed with her right hand over her left shoulder, touching it with her fingers.
"Yeah." Charlotte nodded and the other girls started talking about how had Eve felt at that moment and how they met.
When they asked her what she did young man entered the room. He carried a suitcase in his right hand and his clothes were simple and casual, he had a tired expression and an unshaved face.
"Hello everyone, I'm going to start now." He said without much emotion and only four kids on the first row of desks after the board answered him.
He then started to speak loud enough for the kids who greeted him and Eve's group of friends kept on talking, along with more than twenty others. Charlotte kept looking between the two groups and stopped talking to the girls, whom in turn ignored her. The first hour of classes went by in a flash as she stood in a daze. The unkept man then bowed to the kids, gave the general class his farewell and parted from the room after some answered him back.
Ten minutes later, another man entered the classroom and taught those who paid him attention.
"I… I'm going out for a bit." Charlotte said to the group of girls talking at her side, half an hour into the class. Her expression was grim and her brows knitted in a strange way.
She sat next to the front door a looked at the sky.
"This's normal here, huh… How weird."
"Shouldn't you be in class?" An old woman's voice rang from her side, she wore a red suit and was the first one Charlotte had seen wearing something formal.
"Sorry, my head was hurting…" She said before she looked back to the sky.
"Did you go to the nursery?" The woman answered once again and approached her.
"Not yet, I think it'll be gone in a while."
"Has it happened before?" The old lady extended her hand to Charlotte's head
Charlotte slapped the hand away, panic written on her face. "I'm sorry. My hand just…"
"…" The woman opened her eyes and looked at her hand, she brought the slapped hand to her chin and said in the same soft voice as before. "Don't worry, I'm just looking if you have fever, can I?"
"Eh, uh… Wait, uhm, yea, you can." She nodded and closed her eyes.
Charlotte entered the Crystal's Space and activated the script of the Disguise Skill: Face.
"You don't seem to have a fever, do you have a sickness of any kind?" The woman said with a light frown and touched her forehead with the same hand.
"No." Charlotte shook the head. "This is normal, it just happens from time to time, nothing worrying, really."
"…If you say so. I've never seen you here before, are you new in this sector?"
"Yeah." Charlotte smiled and continued back at the sky. "Hey, can you tell me where can I ask for a degree?"
"Those are better off not bought," the lady frowned at her words and the tone of her voice hardened, "if you want one from me, you need to make the annual exam until you get yours."
"That's what I meant, sorry. I wanna do that exam." Her voice didn't change at the lady's tone, she just kept her sight on the whitish gray clouds.
"You need to wait for the academic year to be over, they're done at that time."
"Can't it be done faster? I need to somehow get it soon, I live alone, you see."
"… You need to pay for it." The lady relax her voice at the end and sighed at the kid in front of her.
"Oh, that's perfect!" She turned her face to the lady and saw she was also looking at the sky. "How much is it?"
"Around this period, I believe it's around 100 FC. You want to do it now?"
"Huh? That's cheap…" Charlotte said as softly as she could. "Not yet, I need to get the money. Is there any requisite to make the exam?"
"Not particularly." The old lady said as she also lowered her head and started talking with Charlotte about the things required and the knowledge she was to be asked along with those she could ask to be examined with.
"I need another ID…"
"Hiro! I was looking for you!" Eve's voice came from behind, startling Charlotte who jumped to her feet.
"Sorry, my head started to hurt…" She said as she sat again and motioned for Eve to sit beside her.
"Again?! You need to go to the hospital! You could be seriously sick!"
"…" Charlotte kept her mouth shut for a moment and talked no more of the subject. "… Hey, why don't you pay attention in class?"
"Huh? Why should I? We always ask those who pay attention during the lessons if there's any test and that's it."
"… Isn't that too irresponsible?" She massaged her glabella as she lowered her head.
"Really?" Eve tilted her head. "Is your head hurting again?"
"No, but seriously, you should pay more attention in classes." She looked Eve to the face and started preaching her.
Charlotte remembered as she was getting to the most important part the discussion she had with Dordive's father long ago, she defended herself the same way Eve was doing now. She started laughing loudly and without reserve, after some minutes, she held her stomach with tears over the corner of her eyes.
"Sorry sorry," she said after calming down her breath, "I remembered something funny from the past."
"… Can you tell me?" Eve asked with puppy eyes and her hands over her mouth.
"Well, you wouldn't understand…" She rolled her eyes at Eve's expression.
"Hmph! Then explain it to me so I do!"
Charlotte smirked at her, "When you get your degree, I'll tell you. Before that I won't. Hehehe."
"What! Why!"
As Eve started another argument, the old lady came again and shouted at them to go to their respective classroom, or to go out of the building where they won't disturb anyone else. They went to the classroom, Charlotte sat on the last row where people kept on talking about stupid things and let her mind wander around.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone