Concept of Interface. The Adjutant's First Aeon
T-there uh…. There's a naked woman in on the couch next to me. I sprang my eyes open like a convict getting electrocuted, still mentally reeling from what I could only presume was an unwelcomed nightmare taking root in my mind. My forehead was sweaty and my eyes were watery, plus there was no steak or lobster to be seen anywhere so I had every right to complain.
Partially. Any other fourteen year old boy would jump for joy at a girl showing up out of nowhere but such things happening without context was concerning. Very concerning.
"How did she even ..."
Part of me hoped it was just Ria wearing a gold wig, but in closer inspection it became apparent to me that the nameless intruder was in fact not Ria. I learned in to check if she was still breathing. Hey, if I'm gonna be arrested for this I'd rather be charged for kidnapping instead of murder. I brought my right hand to the woman's nose and was immediately bombarded by a stinging sensation on my left hand.
I swiped it up to my face to bite on the annoyance of the sensation only for a pop up ad to appear in mid air. It looked like a tablet, or really a smaller, budget size TV. Ah, yes it looked like a computer screen but smaller and more transparent. And it was also floating in mid air. Rather, it was floating off my left hand.
I tried shaking it off a couple of times to no avail. All that really did was cause the screen to glitch out somehow and that just made my hand itch even more. After a few seconds of shaking I stopped and studied the screen instead.
It was still very much ghost-like but it had scribbles on it. Lots of scribbles. My name was one of those scribbles.
[Timothy Reach]
[Administration Rank 1]
[Aeon: 1]
[Pantheon Rank 1]
[Summons
{Althea
{Level: 1
{Weapon: Sword
{Element: Wind
{Script Sect 1
"A warrior and ruler of a long forgotten kingdom, whose sword is rumored to have slain dragons and reduced mountains by half their size. A worthy sacrifice for the Reach."
Ominous…..I thought.
More than anything, I wanted to wake up from the dream that obviously building up into some sort of video game plotline . A video game I did not sign up for in any way, shape or form.
This will be a problem for a later Timothy. Not to mention it got my last name wrong. Reach?
I'm a "Strife" ominous looking interface thingy.
"Timothy?"
"Gah!"
No sooner had I gasped like a frightened school girl, almost entirely on instinct, ugh, who am I kidding? Completely on instinct, I shoved my blanket over the naked woman slumbering on my uncle's couch then turned to face who was calling me.
"Miss Jean," I cried nervously. "Good morning…"
"Morning," she yawned. "Did you sleep well?"
Oh I slept alright. Slept so hard I didn't feel a stranger sneaking into my bed- couch! Gah, same difference.
Admittedly, during my slumber I did hear a sort of robotic voice counting down like some sort of alarm but everyone knows what we do with alarms. We ignore them until they get too loud to ignore.
"Timmy?" Jean snapped me out of my delusions.
"Yes, Miss Jean. I slept wonderfully."
"Miss?" she echoed.
"Nevermind that." I switched topics. "Have you seen Ria?"
Translucent screen aside, I still wanted to believe that the naked woman on the couch was Ria. It had to be, otherwise someone was getting charged with something. I mean it's not like I did anything un-decent with her but the whole situation felt illegal even if only on a social level.
"Un-decent"?
Have my linguistics really faltered that painfully hard? Why though? Oh yeah, it's because I'm panicking, yeah that makes sense.
As I wrestled with my brain about grammar and other great topics, Jean looked at me with a confused look on her face. Like I said a word that didn't even fit in an imaginary dictionary.
" Jean?" I asked again.
"Sorry, you just confused me. W-what's a 'Ria'?"
I couldn't believe my ears even on a superficial level. 'What's a Ria'? She had to be joking. My shock spoke for me as my mouth only so much as managed to form a confused "Huh?"
"I'm sorry," Jean apologized. "You know I'm the familiar with you kids and your modern slang. It's all new to me."
"New to…. What are you talking about?"
"This 'Ria'. Oh, don't tell me! Is it a clothing brand?"
"N-no….."I stammered. "Ri-Ria is a person. An Aeo- an Angel."
I caught my tongue halfway through a false confession. I felt the word fighting it's way up my throat, it almost slithered through my lips. Aeon. I don't know why but my heart knew that Ria was an Angel. One I spent my entire life with. But my brain….my brain argued that she was an Aeon. And up till five minutes ago, Aeon was a foreign word to me.
"Is this a girl you're crushing on?" Jean teased completely oblivious to the situation. "Oh you kids and your young love. Though, I gotta say Alth-"
I cut her off mid sentence and beaded for my uncle's room. If Jean was playing a prank on me then my uncle had to have been the one that put her up to it. Jean on her own would never joke about not knowing Ria. Joseph? Yeah, I wouldn't put it past him. I swerved past Jean and slammed my uncle's door open, my gaze meeting the sight of a vacant room.
Joseph's bed was a disheveled mess, courtesy of Jean no doubt. But there were no blankets on the floor, not even a beer bottle to be found there for that matter.
"Where's my uncle?" I muttered.
"I don't really know…." She sighed. "He must've gone out to get drunk again."
In the middle of the night? That I believe. Him cleaning out the mess he made before heading out to drink? I find that difficult to believe.
I moved from my uncle's room to my own and slammed that door open. My room was just as vacant. Worse yet, there was a disheveled mess on my bed too. That was where I left Ria last night as she slept and by the looks of things, that wasn't an illusion. So what happened? Did she leave before I woke up? If that were the case, Jean wouldn't be acting like she was some sort of foreign idea.
"Ahhh!!" Jean screamed from the living room.
I ran from my room into the halfway to find Jean covering her mouth with her hands. I half expected a Demon of sort, even a small one, but my mind braced me for something more simple and mundane like a rat…..or a cockroach.
"Timothy, how could you!?" Jean scolded as she covered the naked woman with her pajama top. "I know she gets up to such habits but all you're doing is encouraging her if you leave her like this. For Christ's sake, you're too young to be seeing a girl in her bathing suit."
Wait. The way she was talking…she spoke as if she knew the naked woman. As if she's known her for a long time for that matter. Worse yet, she spoke as if myself and the naked woman were involved with each other somehow. I shuddered to ask but my mouth moved before I could think.
"D-do you know her?"
"Of course I know her." She snapped. "She's your Angel!"
"An...Angel? Me?"
Even my own hand was shocked. So much so that my left index finger pointed at me in shock too. Less in accusation and more in surprise. I wanted to correct her but instinct wanted things to play out. The events seemed too…..concise…too convoluted to be a prank. One, my uncle was too lazy to plan anything like this and even if he wasn't he would have to hire some sort of stripper to sleep naked next to me for who knows how long and Jean would die before EVER letting anything like that happen.
And the way she dressed the naked woman, that wasn't the way one would dress a stripper.
"Jean.." I coughed. "W-what's my Angel's name again?"
"Really? You forgot?"
"A-uh- y-yeah….Yeah, I…. forgot."
"Timothy. You named her."
"I mean, I didn't forget…. I'm just checking to make sure you didn't forget."
"Really? How could I forget poor Althea?"
Thank the Heavens, the judges, the jury, the comedians, the hypnotists and the writers for this woman's...lack of attention to detail.
Stupidity. He meant to say stupidity. This may very well be the last time I voice myself as the Author of this story. Peace
...Well...that was weird.
4th Wall breaking aside, my mind still spun around the fact that I had an Angel named Althea. At least…according to Jean I did- do. I then immediately thought back to the translucent screen that invaded my face when I first touched…Althea. More specifically, to the words that were inscribed at the bottom of the screen.
"A warrior and ruler of a long forgotten kingdom, whose sword is rumored to have slain dragons and reduced mountains by half their size. A worthy sacrifice for the Reach." A worthy sacrifice for the 'Reach'? What does that mean?