[center][color=gold][b][h1]Aerith Hastings[/h1][/b][/color][/center]

[center][i][h3]With Chieko And The Others[/h3][/i][/center]

[i]Resets: 5

Deaths: 4[/i]

[hr]

...Aerith felt something inside of her crack, loudly in her ears as if someone had stepped promptly upon a pane of straining glass. Her eyes seemed to go glassy, her face pale, and her movements seemed slower, more methodical...more forced even. She could barely look at Chieko walked off in her seeming huff, barely followed along at a distance as Chieko went along. All along the way, it was like the strength leaving her body mostly as if sapped by some means. 

The other seems to go along with her too. She watched as Quill tried to recover, as Chieko tried to "clean up after Aerith's mess" as it would seem. She listened as the Elder Sibling spoke, once more about things, as Quill spoke about the situation and Chieko as well. About her being helpful, about Hiro having the strongest ability, about how they'd all be rounded up for Chieko (and perhaps Hiro's if she had to guess) value to these demihuman rebels. The raw praise given to that girl, that little Japanese girl, that chunni....that idiot she'd risked herself to attempt to save so they could get somewhere safer than this. 

[center][quote][h2][color=chocolate]Do you like getting in peoples ways? Or were you just trying to selfishly play hero?[/color][/h2][/quote][/center]

She...she was no hero. Aerith herself knew that. A girl from a shitty family, not in the best situation but not in the worst. Just a normal human, a member of the swim team. Someone who since arriving here felt like she was being thrown into a spiral of insanity. 

So many deaths, and watching them happen in front of her eyes. 4 times, she'd counted. FOUR TIMES, she watched Hiro and herself and others die, adding one more time she'd been sat down to watch Hiro and Aer get impaled by weapons.

She had tried to organize this group of people, even...even just to share information. She'd stepped up and done her best so far, but Chieko, Yuuki, others just had to stomp on things. They just had to blame her and Hiro before for what had gone wrong, for all the resets, when even they had no idea how deep this rabbit hole had run. NONE OF THEM who had shrugged off listening before. They didn't want to listen until others died in front of them, and for what? 

[center][i]Utter Futility[/i][/center]

But...haha, hahahahah! It was just like back home now, wasn't it? 

We tried and tried and tried again. Mom and dad kept arguing, sometimes after drinking. Glass shattering, screams, the stains of blood they tried to wash out of the carpet and wave away. One minute angry and yelling at her or the others, and then going to the beach and acting as if it hadn't happened in the past. 

Brothers who reveled in tricking people into hurting each other. In hurting her, and her other half-siblings. Getting strangers to get into fights, and pushing mom and dad's buttons to get them to go off sometimes on herself and the other kids. Framing her for stupid shit she'd get obliterated for verbally before being dealt a punishment. 

A half-sister who thought touching her at night was ok. Someone who wanted to steal her clothes, made strange comments about "the smell of her hair" and acted like a freak. Yeah, a total freak, one who would blame her for stupid crap she did and claimed to love her deeply at the same time. Someone who attempted to manipulate her to get "time alone".

And the facade. The damned facades in public and around family, to get attention, to look normal, to make people think nothing was wrong. To make them think her siblings were angels...

It was no different than now, right?!

People arguing over ideas and tossing blame, posing as more than any of them were, dying over and over and watching horrors with you own eyes, a lack off coordination because people decided they did not want to listen to anything beyond their "little safe bubble", and now this...

[center][quote][h2][b][color=orange]...why would I settle for you when the very best is right here?[/color][/b][/h2][/quote][/center]

She just wanted to live. She just wanted Chieko, and Hiro, and Ashton, and even the others to live. Was that too much to ask for, to try to aim for, to try to acquire after so many tries so far? She wasn't even from this damned backwater world in a realm of the unknown!!!

....She was just another person kidnapped by this Talus fellow into a new world...and for what?

[center][i]The Promise of meeting someone that loved her, whom she had been willing to give all to and said so herself.[/i][/center]

It made the dark-haired girl crack a grin as she stood there listening to the others, though at the same time feel sick to her stomach. 

It was so foolish. Talus, that dark bastard, probably was laughing in his seat with some popcorn. Yes, watching those who stole the heart of "his beloved" from him, grinning at every crack that showed in them. He probably was, she could feel it in her bones now...like a clarity of sorts being placed upon her akin to a mantle. 

They weren't getting past this point. Not herself, not anyone like her, none of them. 

It was those fools like Chieko, who would ignorantly sign their death warrant.

It was those like Hiro, who had false impressions of power placed upon them.

Anyone but herself. Anyone but little, pathetic, powerless Aerith whose life only mattered as a bargaining chip in the "protective custody" of rampaging rebels. 

She even offered to help, any help at all, but was turned away like yesterday's news. Not even her efforts to draw attention to herself and off her comrades, or at least attempt to do something....mattered. She was no mind-reader, no clairvoyant, just someone who has suffered to get to this point.

[center][quote][h2][color=chocolate]I had everything under control! Every time I do something logical you all just get in the way![/color][/h2][/quote][/center]

That's all she did, really. Get in peoples' way, drag others along with her. Heh...just like with any friends she had back home, perhaps. 

She was illogical. Yessir, she had the brains and logic of a dead clam. She couldn't make a good plan, couldn't lead anyone, couldn't panic over the life of someone she'd seen sign her own death warrant with profuse lies. Lies that would only sink them worse and worse into this hell, to the same reset point, or into the same trouble otherwise. 

Was there nothing else but despair that awaited her at this stage? What else existed out there for her? 

Did anyone put real value into her as more than this sideshow stuck in the tracks of fate? Hahaha!!!

[center][quote][h2][b][color=orange]Not only that, but your ability is inferior when compared to Hiro's, isn't it?[/color][/b][/h2][/quote][/center]

She was [i][u][b][color=gold]worthless[/color][/b][/u][/i] to this world and the other one. Nothing she could do had value here, no amount of caution had done any good, no amount of words would do anything for her or the others. No amount of trying to save others, of attempting to not die, none of it mattered. 

How could it have ever mattered? Even Irene and Vasilis only had a bit of time left, bought by now on the repeated dying and frustrations of people from another world....all in a process they couldn't talk about openly without hurting themselves.

Did nothing here matter? How desperately her soul grasped onto the concept, how desperately it sought a logical and sane route for all of this. These things. These people. How much it still clung to the value of a life, even now, even after all of this, even as she felt her mind backsliding down a slippery slope.

Aerith reached down as the others were content to talk amongst themselves, and grabbed up something she had just noticed. A lump of scalding was with a couple of tools in it, and how it burned her hand to grab it since Quill's heated blade had made it so. That blade which had taken her life so many times, which she had been seeking to prevent Chieko from falling into...heh, that girl really wanted to die, didn't she?

[quote][h2][color=chocolate]Not that it matters now. [i]Someone[/i] tried to start a fire, and Quill hasn't come out yet. I will look for her. 

[center][b]Don't try and help.[/b][/center][/color][/h2][/quote]

Aerith gripped the hot wax and tools in her hand until it hurt, until she felt her skin and tissues underneath screaming at her with bloody and painful abandon. She then looked up at Chieko and the others, and stepped close enough to be seen by all there properly. 

[color=gold]"...You know, what, Cheiko? I've died by that blade of Quill's a few times. With your bold-faced lies, our lies that we have any powers at all, i didn't want you to suffer as i and Hiro did before. 

I didn't want you to know the added feeling of hot metal slicing open your stomach, of a poisoned dagger making mincemeeat of you insides as you can only watch yourself die in horror, of seeing others die in front of your eyes even more gruesomely and in detail than i saw you die in front of me the first time back in the poorer area of this city.[/color]

As Aerith spoke, several tears began to form in her eyes, and fall down her cheeks. But she did not stop speaking, merely continued clearly wording what she wanted to say despite everything. Some blood was trickling down her left hand, the one which gripped the hot wax and tools that even now were cooling as they torched her. A few drops by now were even falling onto the ground itself. 

[color=gold]"I kinda wish i had your innocence, your straightforward will and innocence. Because what you do, what Hiro does, what the others do, that is all that has mattered all this time. Me? For even wanting to share information, to attempt to save you or anyone else here like Irene and Vasilis, it's all for nothing. I. Am. Nothing. 

So i need to thank you for opening my eyes to that, for taking the side of a murderous bitch who probably has her own traumas, and for letting me see what my family back home and others here seem to have been trying to tell me.

You think Lord Talus is laughing at us, sitting back in a chair with some popcorn? Watching us die and reset over and over again? I don't care if it affects anyone hearing this right now, and you wouldn't care for any of it anywho. I'd just interrupt your 'daring plan' again, and everyone will just continue to blame me for what is going wrong all these times over.

So i'm sorry, to everyone. For ever caring. For ever trying. For ever...existing, here or otherwise."[/color]

With that, the dark haired girl cracked another grin as tears flowed down her face. She didn't even give others a chance to verbally respond, however, as she swiftly plunged the searing hot sharp tools into her own neck as hard and fast as she could at the same time as the last word left her lips. And she could continue to do it, over and over again, unless stopped otherwise or her body dropped dead without the strength to do it any more. 

She couldn't take it right now. Not back home. Not during this reset here.

If "that" person who loved her existed in this world, she wanted them to save her. Stop her, please, make it feel a bit better. She wanted for someone to tell her that her life mattered, that it had purpose, that something, anything she did at all since coming here mattered. 

But so far, all she'd heard was the echoes of despair, the pain of suffering, and the reassurance that she was of no value. 

Dramatic? Perhaps. But...after all she'd been through, at this time she had no other thoughts. 

[@Rune_Alchemist][@BrokenPromise][@Letter Bee][@Zelosse]