//------------------------------// // Chapter 7 // Story: I'm Real // by Feeling Grand //------------------------------// There was a slam. Something collided into my injured side just as I was about to hit the ground. I was caught and redirected in my landing by a blue furry body... my eyes only getting a glimpse of it. But I felt so weak. I toppled over on the ground and just looked up to the dark starry sky above me. It had the infinite depths of space in it, and the blurry swirl of the cosmos... my eyesight feeling so battered and weakened in definition. My body more so than anything else. I just wanted to see my mum... my dad... "ANNA! ANNA!" I imagined I could hear my mum shouting these words to me. I could see her with her brown long hair, smiling at me in the distance. She was on a hill, smiling at me, joyously. "Mum...?" I said, worried. I looked around, sitting up and seeing I was on a hillside with white flowers and golden grass. "Where's dad?" "Anna, you must get up!" she said to me, with a warm giggle. "Silly... you're not meant to be here." "Huh...?" I said, confused. I looked around and saw valleys had fallen in on themselves, the sky pink and purple... the stars shooting across and fallen into the distance. "Anna! Anna!" It wasn't her voice I was hearing anymore. No, the voice was suddenly so much more hasty... panicky. I blinked my eyes, and the blurry sky reappeared in my sight. I suddenly saw a blue pony's face look down at me. Tears were around her magenta eyes, swelling in the corners and slipping down. "Don't die! You stupid girl! PLEASE DON'T DIE!" "R-rainbow...?" I whispered, my breath so weak and the pony looked at me, quickly in sorrowful hope when she heard my soft voice. "Anna! You stupid fool! You're dying!" "I'm what...?" I asked, and she pushed me up to a sitting position against a large boulder. I looked down to my side and saw my dress was stained with blood. It was soaked. I swallowed nervously, not liking this fact. I was too drowsy to feel upset about it, more just annoyed and tired that I'd have to get a new outfit. This dress had been one of my favourites. "She'll PAY!" Rainbow Dash just roared, as she glared her eyes back to the sky, and I followed where she looked, to see in the distance, a giant ball of lightning was hovering in the night in the far distance. But that ball had something in it... or more... someone. "Granny...?" I peeped, my breath not able to let out loud words and Rainbow just stood back on her four hoofs, getting ready to burst into the sky, but I begged her. "Don't leave me..." She looked back at me, worry in her eyes, and I could see... she really did care for me. All that showed deep in her soul was a remorse... a petrification, that she had let this happen. That she had let a ten year old decide what to do. And now how stupid she realized that decision was. "I love you, Anna." she said, tears falling down her eyes, and my own eyes widened when she said this. Like a mother, like a sister... like a friend. She exploded through the air a second later, and I saw her body silhouette against the moon, as she looked at Grace who's eyes shot in her direction. The woman screamed before the two lunged at each other... and the whole sky lit up with so much light that it was like an electrical storm had been let loose from the heavens. I watched from my fallen position as Grace zapped lightning bolts from her fingers at Rainbow and the pegasus sliced through the frying sky so fast she caused an explosion of a sonic rainboom before she collided into Grace, only to be flung away by a strength the woman held that I couldn't even imagine. I sat there, helpless... Rainbow wasn't winning... the fight seemed like it would never end. The two swung attacks at each other from every angle possible, lightning blasted out of them from every side when they did get injured. And here I was... bleeding to death. But I was so angry... feeling so much fury in my body and furious tears began to build in my eyes. I WANTED THIS TO STOP! I WANTED HER TO DIE! I WANTED TO SEE MY MUM WITH HER BROWN HAIR AGAIN, AND FOR MY LIFE TO NOT BE CUT SO SHORT BECAUSE OF HER! HER! HER! HER! Suddenly I felt it erupt in me, making me spring up on my legs as electricity burst out of me from the tips of my hair to the deeps of my body. I felt the tiny little blood vessels reconnect themselves. I felt the agony of anger being replaced by bright yellow light as my hair glowed a golden it had never done before and I began to float in the sky... Had I just died...? Was this my soul leaving its body? A second later, I realized the pain had gone and I looked down to my hands to see the lightning scars from Rainbow Dash had faded... and that I... I was floating about twenty feet from the ground in a ball of lightning of my own. I yelped frightened. How could this be?! I almost tumbled forward back to the forest below as the shock had overwhelmed me so much. But I stabled myself and didn't ask any questions. I was Grace's granddaughter. I was the granddaughter of a person not from this world. And I had inherited her golden hair... her blue eyes... and her blinding excruciating power to heal... And the thirst for blood. Her blood. I knew it was the anger that had set me alight... an anger I had never felt before and never wanted to feel again, but I shot up to the sky so high above and hovered there in fury as I watched Rainbow and Grace fight for the other's life to be theirs. I was flesh and electricity... but I knew those two were the very atoms of electricity compounded so close together to form bodies. The images flashed through my mind just then. Of Rainbow Dash's creation into this physical world. How she had been just electricity with no form bouncing around in a cage before it had grouped together to create life. And if electricity being bound together could create life... then electricity being unbound together could destroy it. I looked around, the two fighting and ignoring my angry lightning state in the distance... and then I saw it. A power line... where we kept the very strike and attacks the sky had to offer... where we kept the thing that gave us light in the dark. I stabled myself a little as I tried to move forward... to control my movements in the sky. I quickly discovered that I had to pull myself forward by electric strikes out of me and I did this urgently. I reached the power line and held onto the thick plastic wire, needing to snap it to let the electricity fly. But I didn't know how! I wasn't strong enough. I never would be. Rainbow suddenly tossed through the sky as she got shot by such a harsh strike of Grace's lightning, she couldn't keep her footing well. "Rainbow!" She looked at me, her eyes widening when she saw that I was alive... healed... shining. "Anna... you're... you're-" "Break this line!" I shouted at her and she looked at me lost. "WHAT?!" "Sonic rainboom into it and break it! I think I know how to defeat her!" "Anna... you're..." she didn't finish her sentence as we both heard a scream in the distance. "YOU!" Grace screeched. She blew up with such a loud explosion of electricity that Rainbow was flung further into the distance. I hung onto the wire terrified, but determined. Grace quickly crossed the sky in raging bounces and I ducked her strike as she tried to tear me down with a quip of her lightning. She floated there in light just feet away from me and I looked up at her, my eyes no longer needing to cry. To feel afraid. There was no point. I was brave. I knew I could be brave! "YOU'RE MEANT TO BE DEAD!" "No!" I said and looked up, seeing Rainbow lunging through the sky with such speed the sound barrier was about to break. "But you will be! You evil WITCH!" Rainbow smashed into the line, snapping it at the point of contact, and I saw the wire swing off into the sky as electricity sparked out of it. I swallowed, and pumped myself so full of electricity as I suddenly jumped up higher in the sky to grab the line and felt it sting me more than anything I had ever felt. Grace just laughed and shouted at me. "YOU STUPID GIRL!" I felt my energy being drained quickly, the electricity in me being pulled into the line's power and I dropped through the sky. I had to touch her! I couldn't be drained and let her not be touched by the only thing that could possibly work. But my worries were quenched as Rainbow caught me and flung me at Grace, the line's opening reaching forward before it touched the woman's body, and she screamed as suddenly... she was in agony. She grabbed me, trying to pull me away from her, but as we both fell through the sky, I tied the wire around her. We hit the ground, lightning still pouring out of us. Grace screamed in my ear... my own energy getting sapped and making me feel drowsy. "YOU EVIL GIRL!" "NO!" I screamed at her and tried to get away... as I felt too much of my life force was being sucked away into the wire. Grace's hand clutched me tight on the arm, not letting me free. "YOU WILL DIE!" she shrieked. "NO!" I begged, and tried to get away. Rainbow landed on the ground just before us and looked at me in terror. She quickly began to run forward to help me but I screamed at her. "STAY AWAY, RAINBOW! STAY AWAY!" Rainbow had tears in her eyes in horror... as I became weaker and weaker. But Grace's hand on my arm suddenly felt sparkly... felt like it was dispersing into bounces of light. I looked behind me and saw her body glowing and being sucked into the electric wire. Her skin was golden... separating... becoming less of itself. Being sucked away forever... being destroyed. And my own electric power was nearly sucked out of me. And once it was gone... I knew I had to get away from the wire... unless I should die. Within seconds of time, she was gone... the last that was of her was her hand that clung to my arm... still being sucked into the wire, and I tried to shake it off... moving away from the sparking of the electric line, but it held on tight. Finally I yanked it off and threw it into the fire of the wire's hell that was the very lights that had saved me. And she was gone. I took two weak steps away from the saving wire. Rainbow looked at me worried, before I realized I could no longer create electricity to heal. I collapsed. But she caught me in my fall and carried me on her back to a safer place. The woods were quiet then... dark... isolating... but beautiful in that they could hide and forgive what we could never. For they had been the only witnesses to the act of my grandma's destruction. And I had been the saviour... the murderor. The killer. I had inherited her blood... I had had her power deep in my core my whole life until only seconds ago. And now she was gone. I closed my eyes as I lay on Rainbow's back, my arms swung around her in exhaustion... just wanting sleep. But that wasn't the end to my story and my visit to my grandma's home in the woods. Rainbow opened up the door to the only house within a hundred miles. She entered it with me... turned on the lights... and said. "Anna... it's not over yet."