[sub][h3][center]T H E   P R O M I S E[/center][/h3][/sub][hr]

She was so close that she could [i]taste[/i] success. Months of work and planning coming to fruition.

Arianna lived for that. The exhilaration of out playing and out maneuvering everyone at every step. Knowing exactly what everyone else was thinking because she herself was six steps ahead of them at any given time. Lying, and cheating, scheming, and stealing... whatever it took to get that rush. These days she didn't experience much else, and so she cherished that feeling that she could only equate to adrenaline. Feeling so little so often meant that she had almost become addicted to the chase- and with it the ebb and flow. Like a drug that hit so hard and felt so good with that weird sweet pain that it made the rest of reality seem blunted and gray. She busied herself, always. 

Arianna however, did not view herself as evil. Just... uncaring. Or maybe even self serving. Sure, she had pulled a bank heist just last week, and she had killed and killed and killed... but she forged legal documents for people attempting to buy homes, filled out job applications for others who couldn't save themselves, serviced countries, removed warlords and despots from their positions, and had at many points aimed ammunition towards the right kind of bad people. She was, in her own mind, a free agent.

And with freedom came the Lucifer effect.

This was, as all things were, a job. The job was almost done. Get in, make subject ID 'Merlin' give a man the ability to go from human to parahuman at will, and go home to collect payment. She had, as she always had, cheated, schemed, and stole her way to the top. Quite literally too. 'Merlin' lived atop the tallest tower at the end of the highest point of the spire, kept behind a steel jungle full of locked doors, fingerprint IDs, and retina scanners. She had been tasked, a knight errand (well, more of a mercenary), to find Rapunzel. There was something poetic about that.

When she finally made it through those airtight doors of six foot steel she was greeted with a feeling that she hadn't felt before. It was alien and incredibly familiar. Arianna felt like she was doing something very, very wrong. As if she was a child in a government building she have no business being in. As if someone was going to come and arrest her somehow, or shoot her in the back of the head with one of those nullification weapons, at any second. Arianna tried to brush it off, but the feeling got stronger and stronger as she paced to the opposite door- steal and lead just as thick as the last door was, and that's when she realized that she couldn't hear anything anymore. Like some awful tinnitus that was far, far more oppressive.

And then she heard it, the soft hum of music that somehow permeated through those the sterile white walls thicker than she was tall. She approached the final door, which opened uncontested. The soft music didn't change in volume, impossibly. But she was greeted with another assault on her senses. The room [i]smelt[/i].

But it didn't smell bad. It smelt... good. Arianna's whole body ached in sudden agony, her equivalent of a thunderclap headache. Bergamot, a base of lavender, oakmoss, hints of patchouli. [i]'You've always loved this one. It's called Life's a Breeze'[/i]

It smelt like home. Memories she didn't have.

The door closed behind her (when had she walked through it?).

She remembers sleeping beneath the trees. She remembers dreaming. She remembers being happy. She remembers the ocean, the salty-sweet mists and the waves embedded with turquoise. She remembers a lavender sky, a setting sun. She remembers singing to the jaded hills and the thistle coated clouds. She remembers his laughter, which reminded her of cornsilk and wheat fields. [i]I'll take you there someday[/i], she wanted him to say.

She especially remembers his eyes, wide and bright when he smiled, full of promise and holding the innocence of all the world.

But what she remembers most is the silence of each early morning, when the sun rises one ribbon at a time and the whole world is at peace. She remembers sighing, she remembers smiling. The candy pink clouds make no complaint to her authenticity and absorb all the sound around her like cotton—all except for the beating of her heart, because the heart is never silent. It's almost strange; she flutters her hand over her skin, and the lack of stark silence telling of an empty chest tells her what she fails to believe. Its there, a heartbeat from an organ she quite literally no longer possessed. For the first time since, Arianna found herself truly missing that familiar sound. The [i]thump, thump, thump[/i]—its absence had always been a sort of constant in her life, but it was different now. The subtle drum in her chest felt like a steady reminder of [i]who[/i] she was and [i]why[/i] she was and [i]what[/i] she was meant to be.

"Ms. [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwISVSxhjTc]Jervious?[/url]"

Arianna was suddenly struck with overwhelming vertigo. As if up was down and left was up and right with diagonal. Her legs felt weaker and she suddenly [i]needed[/i] to sit down. She fell back haphazardly- into the sheets of a bed. [i]Her[/i] bed. She felt her fingers run over the familiar stitching and of her sheets. This was so wrong, and so right and so-

"Who, how, where-"

She forced herself to focus on the little boy in front of her. He had short, but nearly combed brown hair. He had soft features like all young children, but what struck her the most was his eyes. Big beautiful orbs, the one on the right a shade of blue that was almost iridescent, and the left a spring green that would make the fields of Ireland jealous. He gave her a toothy grin- the kind only children could give when they were too innocent for their own good.

"We're in Shanklin, on the Isle of Wight. Its... 2022, I think." the he explained. "I'm Matthew."

She looked at him strangely. This place was familiar. She had been in the UK so many times for various things but she had never been hit in the gut-brain like this before. She had just been in space, dozens of miles in the sky. Was this his home? "Yours, actually." Matthew said, replying to her thoughts as if she had said them out loud. Her head snapped from her surroundings to the little boy before her and it dawned upon her that she had traveled thousands of miles and [i]back in time[/i] without even [i]realizing[/i] it. All of this was not even to mention the the strange drum of familiarity that was in her chest.

"Matthew, are you who I think you are?"

The boy seemed pensive, but was truthful. "I am."

"Why are we here?"

"Because when I looked into you, I saw a million things that were lost."

Arianna's hand clenched the bed sheets at his mention of this. She gathered some of the blanket and pulled it up to her face. When she inhaled, she could smell the fabric softener and cleaner. The scent of her home, and the scent of herself. It was dizzying. "Why did you take me here?"

"Ms. Jervious, we never left The Promise."

"Then what is this?"

"I..." Matthew began, opening and closing his mouth like he was trying to form words. "I wanted to show you what you were looking for. I can't change the past but.. I can give you a snapshot."

She looked to the boy and realized at once that there was nothing she could do to him. In front of her was a reality warping, time hopping, perception defining being that- while in theory could fulfill her job, couldn't be forced to do a thing. He likely stayed on The Promise because it was all he had ever known. Just like how she had chased that feeling of superiority. To feel alive.

"And the view." Matthew said offhandedly. Arianna released her sheets and tentatively stood up off the bed she was seated on. It felt weird, standing on two feet again.

"Why are you showing me this?"

"Because you wont remember it, but you'll remember the feeling." he said, almost too quickly. "And you have... a bigger part to play. So I wanted you to feel it again." he explained cryptically. He looked out the window of her room, a sad smile on her face. "I'm afraid whatever home down on Earth that you may have will be even less welcoming when you return." That caught her by surprise. Arianna hadn't often felt threatened. Even now when faced with a literal demigod, she wasn't feeling in any particular danger. However, there was a grave undertone to his little voice that rubbed her the wrong way. She hated when people did that- act as if they knew something that she didn't. "What do you mean?" She asked.

"That officer," Matthew said. "He started a chain of events that can't really be stopped now. You might want to look over the work of a certain Trevor Norton. His research might be of interest to you. More so than I [i]ever [/i]was." Matthew explained. He gave her another sad smile and sighed. "Our time is coming to a close, Ms. Jervious."

"I don't want to go." she said without thinking. She didn't want to leave this. She didn't want to go back to being [i]that[/i]. Not if she could just be normal again. She had always been jealous of how many other parahumans had kept who they were.

"I don't want to take you." he replied, and shook his head. "But... the final act calls, you don't want to miss your bow. Not for the part you've played."

And then, all at once, she was in that silent, stark white room again. That strange purgatory separated from the rest of reality by six feet of steel on either side. The doors leading to the room that she had been in but had never [i]seen[/i] were closed. If she listened really hard, she could hear the music playing. There was a beat, and for reasons she couldn't discern she raised a hand to her chest and was greeted with more silence.

She turned on her heel and marched with a mission. Away from the music and the mission. She couldn't remember why, she couldn't even remember past half an hour, but she could [i]feel[/i] that it wasn't the right course. Not anymore. She had a new objective: Figure out who Trevor Norton was, and what part he played in all of this.

It was time for a whole new game to begin.