If Only For a Moment | Teen Ink

If Only For a Moment

May 10, 2016
By Triple_Ess BRONZE, Montgomery, Illinois
Triple_Ess BRONZE, Montgomery, Illinois
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Chapter 1
Tick. Tick. Tick. The oscillation resonated within Gwenifyr d’Ivri’s ears down to her soul. Gwen was trapped within the bright white walls of her mother’s laboratory with only the sound of the clock as a friend awaiting her mother’s arrival. Nonetheless, Gwen was content with the enclosed environment. Over her 17 years of living, Gwen was trained into learning how to infuse magic into technology appropriately named Hextronics. With her knowledge on the science, she was able to finally finish herself her own rune covered hoverboard. The hoverboard, which Gwen named Viper-SI, only had one issue. She couldn’t figure out an essential power source for it.
Sighing, Gwen threw her blueprints up annoyed about the predicament she had with the Viper-SI. Just as the final blueprint touched the ground, the door to the laboratory slammed open and a woman, whose eyes shone like emeralds and fare hair washed down to her shoulders like a white waterfall, hurried over to a table forced everything off of it letting all of it to crash to the floor. Gawrelle d’Ivri, Gwen’s mother, made room on that table for a canister that held a withered plant. The plant was pulsing a ghastly green light in the cracks of its dark bark. Curiously, Gwen wandered over to the glowing plant holding the Viper-SI.
“What’s up with that plant…?” Gwen wondered.
“This plant as a special power. There is some sort of energy dwelling inside it and it seems to be never ending. It’s been like this for two years according to the village we found it in,” Gawrelle answered.
“Never ending…” Gwen repeated then her eyes beamed, “You mean we can use this for the Viper-SI?!”
Her mother smiled, “Not just that, but the whole city, and maybe if we can, the entire world!”
As the two of them were talking about all the opportunities of what they can do with this extraordinary discovery, the plant started to shudder with in the clear canister. The pulsating light started to flash faster and brighter. The lights within the laboratory shattered making the place go dark, except for the ghastly green, pulsating light emanating from the plant. The blackout caught the two’s attention. A conscious, almost like a soul sprouted within the plant. The conscious felt threatened Before either of them could say a word, wave of energy erupted from the plant slamming into the mother and daughter sending them flying. The Viper-SI took most of the blow for Gwen, but her mother had nothing to take the blast. She disintegrated on impact with the wall, leaving a burnt image of her body on the wall. The wave of energy triggered something within the hoverboard, giving it the same pulsating green that ran through the lines of the machine. Just as Gwen hit the wall, a swirling green vortex appeared on that wall causing her to fall in. In the few seconds of the wave of energy and being sucked into the vortex, Gwen blacked out.

Chapter 2
Gwenifyr d’Ivri woke up in a brightly lit greenish alleyway, with an aggravating headache. Her eyes wandered around the alleyway. There was something off, but she could not put a finger on it. Gwen concluded it was probably because everything had a greenish tint to it all, but she dismissed that off as just the natural color of the slums in the progress city, Suin. Looking around, Gwen found the Viper-SI on the ground near her and picked it up. Puzzled at the markings which now glowed the same green as the plant, she shook her head. Trying to remember exactly what had happened was putting too much stress on her brain increasing her headache. Gwen slowly made her way out the alleyway, practically stumbling all over everything on the ground.
Looking around the street, Gwen saw a man wandering by. She made her way up to the man as casually as someone stumbling and having to use the wall of the nearest building for support could be. Gwen got a few meters close to the man before it seemed like the man had just saw something that terrified him in her direction. He quickly turned and ran before Gwen could even say, “Wait!” She then turned around herself and saw nothing. Gwen’s aching headache throbbed as she tried to figure this out. She looked around and then saw something that shocked her. Looking up at the sky, Gwen saw the moon, the stars, and the night sky, but when she looked around she only saw the world as if it were daytime. She stumbled around holding her head in one hand, in complete disbelief. Before she could ponder this phenomenon more, she found herself surrounded by what looks to be street thugs. The leader, or who Gwen thought was the leader because he was the one holding a gun while the others carried only crowbars or pipes if that, walked up to her.
“Looks like we got another freak in our turf again, boys” he said back to his companions, emphasizing the word freak, “Now, Twinkle Eyes, time for you to learn the lesson for walking in on our turf.”
“Twinkle Eyes…?” before Gwen could even repeat and as if on cue, the brightness flashed on and off a couple times until the world seemed to darken with only the faint glow from streetlights and the dim pulsing of the Viper-SI. The leader walked up Gwen pinning her against the wall of the building with his gun to her chest right above the heart. Being pinned at gunpoint, Gwen had dropped the Viper-SI.. BANG! The leader pulled the trigger, the bullet traveled, and pierced Gwenifyr’s heart. Gwen’s whole body braced and closed her eyes, but she still was conscious. So, this is death, she thought to herself before hearing some scuttling in front of her. She opened her eyes to see the gang of thugs stumbling back. She looked down at herself and saw a hole that went straight through her heart. A ghastly green was emanating from the hole, but no blood. Gwen jumped seeing this and tripped over the Viper-SI. She her mumblings from the gang.
“....never happened with the others…”
“....monster for sure…”
“...straight to the heart…”
“If a bullet to the heart won’t do it, then one to the head will!” the leader said, clearly shaken by this experience. He rose a shakily gun-grasped hand pointing it towards her. Gwen, who was even more shaken up by this than the leader, slowly got to her feet. She felt an unusual feeling in her feet making her look down. Gwen was standing on the Viper-SI. She tried to step off of it, but found her feet stuck to it. BANG! The second bullet was released. The noise triggered the brightness to come back on, making every shadow fade away. She looked up to see that everything around her had stopped. No. Just extremely slowed down. The bullet was still approaching her at a lagging speed. As soon as the bullet got near Gwen, she had a thought one that didn’t feel like her own, but still listened anyway. Gwen turned the bullet a full 180 degrees back at the leader. As she touched it the bullet glowed green and everything returned to its normal speed. The leader fell to the ground. The rest of the thugs freaked out and started running. Looking down at the leader’s limp body didn’t phase Gwen at all. A ghastly green mist started to pour out of the body and sweep towards her. Her body seemed to welcome it and the mist was quickly absorbed into her. Lightning went through her veins and she shook with energy. Gwen rose up off the ground and raced after the fleeing thugs. After her re-encounter with the thugs, Gwen went back to her mother’s laboratory and grabbed a little Hextronic turret called the Mini-HDR. Placing it to her wrist, it quickly fused to her just like the hoverboard. Because of the magic involved, Gwen could easy will the hoverboard to move and the turret to shoot.
Chapter 3
Days blurred into weeks. Weeks blurred into months. Months to years. Gwenifyr d’Ivri didn’t age. Over the years, she had started to feel less and less and soon started to kill and absorb people in the of the Suin whenever she felt like it. Absorbing people made her feel like the she was still alive. Other than that Gwen had fun playing and testing her new powers of extreme speed, night-vision, and never dying from what should be fatal wounds.
As Gwen  rushed around a corner, she was hit with something searing. She spiraled out of control hitting a building and then slowly fell to the ground. The blow knocked her night-vision out, making her notice it was night. Her shoulder burned hotter than the sun rays during the hottest point in June. Gasping out in pain and clutching her shoulder, Gwen looked around to see what dared hurt her. She finally saw something casually approaching her in the dimly lit street. A man with skin to match the time and braids that reached down just past his shoulders. He was walking up with two chrome pistols, one bigger than the other. Each had the same strange markings.
“The rumors were true then. There is a monster like you in this city,” he said in an icy tone.
“How did you hurt me…?” Gwen barely choked out from the searing pain in her shoulder that was slowly fading.
“Holy light,” he said in the same cold tone. White light started to build up in his gun, as the barrel was pointed straight at her. Gwen knew she didn’t have enough energy to use her turret to successfully kill the man, so she had to get away. Just as the light of the gun was shot out, a portal appeared behind just as it did the last time she was in danger and pulled her in closing before the light entered as well. Gwen woke up under a wall of faces with another killer headache. Looking up the faces painted on the walls, sent visions of faces of everyone she killed. Emotions started to swell up inside her. Pain. Grief. Sorrow. Regret. Gwen always felt a tiny bit of this, but the absorbing people’s essence gave her what she called the “Rush.” The Rush suppressed those emotions and gave an electrifying experience. There was no Rush now and she broke. Glowing green tears, welled up in her eyes and made their ghastly escape down her cheek.
“What have I done…?” Gwen asked herself.
“A lot of bad stuff,” replied a voice from behind her. She turned towards the voice. She looked up and saw a boy with the same dark skin as the man chasing her, but a really tall white mohawk. He had a light smile on his face. He was carrying a light blue sword-looking type weapon that had a curved end and wearing some strange technology contraption on his lower back.
“Who are you…?” Gwen asked slowly.
“Call me, Echo,” replied the boy. His face was suddenly serious, “Now, I should kill you for what you’ve done, like the man with the guns, but I’m not going to. I know you weren’t in control. The shadow essence that possesses your body was.”
“What?” was all Gwen could manage to mumble then she shook her head clearing it. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen it a lot of times before,” Echo said, looking up at the wall of faces. “And I know you can overcome it. I’ve seen how hard you work on things you try at. Like when you walked down the streets with your mother, still working on that hoverboard of yours, which is pretty sick I have to say.”
“Have we met before?”
“Let’s just say in another time we have,” the boy answered looking back down at Gwen.
“I don’t understand…”
“You don’t have to. Just understand this. I like you, would’ve killed you otherwise if I didn’t. I don’t want to see your face on this wall.”
“But… But… I killed so many people! Done so many bad things! Why did you not kill me?”
“We all make mistakes, Twinkle Eyes. Now hurry and go. Lucien, er, right you don’t know him by that name. Uh, the man with the guns from before is going to show up soon.” the boy said. Right on cue, a burst of light was shot for Gwen, but Echo deflected it with his sword-type weapon. Lucien wandered in sight.
“So you are going to side with that monster, Boy?” Lucien called out.
“Go!” Echo yelled to Gwen, and then dashed towards the man with his weapon out. “You wouldn’t understand, Old Man.”
Gwen didn’t want to leave. She wanted to curl up and just fade away. But the boy, Echo, gave a spark that rekindled the warmth inside her pale skin. She hovered up and dashed away.
Chapter 4
A month has passed, since Gwenifyr d’Ivri left Echo to fight Lucien. She hasn’t seen either of them since. Gwen kept to the dark parts of the cities, with a hood over head hoping none will see her. It was another long and lonely day for her. Gwen was half asleep when she felt the earth shake. This woke her up fully. She saw smoke billowing up around a part of the city. Buildings toppled. Explosions rang out. Gwen had to know what was causing this. She took off extremely fast, making it seem like she was just a blur to normal people until she appeared at the sight of the disaster. Fire raged all around. Rubble was everywhere. Standing in the center of the chaos, was a really pale girl with long blue ponytails. This girl had a bunch of guns all around her. She seemed to be loading the last rocket she has left into a big rocket launcher.
“What are you doing?!” yelled Gwen.
“Destroying things, duh.” the girl said with a no-brainer look on her face, as she slung the rocket launcher on to her shoulder and picked up a mini-gun putting the strap around her other shoulder so it dangled at her side.
“You can’t do that! You’re killing people!” Gwen winced at her own statement, remembering the faces.
“Exactly! Now, what final building should go for now…” she mumbled to herself before looking up at the tallest building. The building that used to be Gawrelle’s laboratory “Of course! Why haven’t I destroyed that one yet?”
She took aim with her rocket launcher and pulled the trigger.
“NO!” Gwen screamed as she took off after it. Everything slowed down. She jumped up and started grinding across a building going the same pace as the rocket, jumping from building to building. Gwen tried to will herself to go faster, but couldn’t. She tried to will something, anything to happen so she could she stop it. “But how am I going to?” she thought to herself, “A monster like me can’t stop a rocket.” Gwen started to slow down. Just then a voice in the back of her mind spoke up.
“But a hero can…” it said. The voice was familiar to her. It’s been years since she last heard it.
“Mom…” Gwen mumbled.
“Yes. Now, there’s only one thing you can do. Will you do it?” Gawrelle’s voice spoke in Gwen’s head.
“Yes,” Gwen answered. Gwen started to speed up as two portals appeared on two different buildings. The first in front of Gwen on the building she is grinding on and the second directly in front of the rocket on the laboratory.
“You can be this city’s champion, if only for a moment,” Gwen’s mother said to her.
“If only for a moment…”
  Gwen jumped inside the portal and in a huge ghastly green, spectral burst, appeared out the other one heading straight for the rocket. Mustering all the power she had, Gwen created an green aura around her, hitting the rocket dead-on. The explosion was absorbed into her, however she still took the impact. Gwen spiraled out of the air with great speed. She slammed into the ground and broke through into the sewers below. Gwenifyr d’Ivri was never seen again. Her face was added to Echo’s wall. The girl with the guns was never caught, and she left her calling card, a “J,” in her place. The city will hold rumors about some hooded girl who saved the laboratory which in its destruction would have cause a great number of buildings to crash. However, those are just rumors, just like how people claim to have seen a ghastly green glow below, in the sewers. 



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