Fan Fiction ❯ A Kiss In Time ❯ The first three chapters ( Prologue )

Earth

2532 C.E.

"Why me? Why the vice-president.." he asked, suspicious, furious. As if global warming wasn't enough. No, the world had to give them, aliens claiming to be Elfs and ogres, and now blackmailers, all in their first term of office! "If you want power so badly, why not blackmail the president?"

The words hung in the digital space between them. Vice-president Lornez felt like he could leave claw marks on his desk as he stared at Chang Bao-Sheng's calm, infuriatingly confident face. He wasn't even an American! To be blackmailed by some fucking Frenchman who was a Chinese on top of it… it just galled.

"Why you? Because you want to be the next president," Chang said, his voice smooth as black lacquer, elegant and sharp. "And because you're the one that raped that girl, and told your agents to kill her. Because you will likely be the next president, and you obviously need judgment assistance. Do sit down before you have a heart attack. That would be a problem for both of us, oui?"

Lornez studied this man. It was their first contact, first open contact. The package, actual paper package had arrived to his home two days previously. Inside were photos, perfectly clear and untouched…. Of him standing over that stupid cowering alien girl. She had looked like an adult to him… at the time. She had records in the US going back fifty years, so how in fuck was he supposed to know she was really only a child.

Now, he forced himself to take a breath and drop down into his seat. Someone was likely taping this conversation too. What he'd done would come out, one way or the other. He reached for his black onyx pen, then nervously started tapping it against the oak arm of his chair. "What the fuck do you want, Chang? That girl was an alien, not even fucking human anyway."

"That girl," Chang said, dark eyes flashing dangerously, "Was Elf-kin. They've been here longer than our species, so if any were going to call anyone else alien, they'd be more entitled than you. That is, however, aside from the point. You and I will come to an understanding. You will consult me. I will know all you know. Or the world will know .. in full, un-retouched details how Elf children scream when you play with them."

"Fuck you!" Lorenz rose then, pacing around his desk. The video display followed him, sending his video movements to Chang as he could turn and look at Chang.. see the man moving through some fucking Chinese martial arts sequence. "Who do you think you are? Some modern Caine or something?"

"Oh, no," Chang said, black hair flowing over his shoulders as he turned in the kata. "I have no altruistic goals with this. Through you, I will rule the world. Come now, Lorenz, do you not wish to rule the world?"

The American clenched his fists and watched Chang deliver a series of kicks to the air, high enough that he would have been hitting someone's head. "That's it? You just want information?"

"And your cooperation," Chang reminded him, just finishing with the kicks on the other leg before turning back to the vid display on his end. Sweat showed through the light blue silk gi he wore, traditional Chinese, very elegant. "You'll find our relationship less painful than she did."

"You bastard!"

Chang smirked, dark eyes almost laughing. "I have never raped a child."

"She was fifty!"

"And not a gray hair. Do you agree?"

"Let me think about it!"

A faint flicker moved across Chang's face. "At four o'clock today, I will air not only the tape of you and your playmate, but of Kirsma when she spoke with your president. Let us see, now that is four o'clock Virginia, that will give you five hours to think. Message me when you've decided," Chang said and terminated the connection.

Sitting on the wall near where he started another kata, his adopted daughter watched him. "You gave him the impression we were in Paris."

"Can't have him sending his friends to interfere with us, now can we?

She drew both her knees to her chin, balancing neatly on the wall and watched the sunrise. Her race was open to interpretation, a little Caucasian, a little Thai maybe… maybe even a little African. Her face was oval, smooth skin, dark brown eyes, long smooth russet hair, darkish skin though, and eyes that were Asian of some kind. "We should just kill him."

She'd seen the tape of what he'd done. The world had never been a safe place to Niji, not even after Chang had found her on the streets in Cairo. Her gifts though, like his were special, maybe not unique, but certainly set her apart. A child with the gift of healing by touch… alone on the streets of Cairo. She was glad he'd found her.

Adjusting one of her black gloves she wore, she tried to catch his eyes. "Tell me again, oh Oracle? Why don't we just kill him dead?"

In the vice president's office in the White House, Lorenz hung up the phone… relieved, he sat back in his chair. US Secret Service was the best in the world. Chang would be dead by four o'clock. Lorenz was comfortably sure.

Chapter One:

3:58

Bullets zipped and tore through things around him, but the vision didn't care. It grabbed him, playing out on the inside of his eyelids like some wide screen movie. Fire rolls when its and fast. The fire in this vision rolled over cities as if they were paper models. The scale of the vision gave no room even for the sound of human screaming… instead it was oceans boiling and the glass from sky scrapers shattering with a million tiny bell like tinkles. Chang Bao-Sheng stood there, eyes closed to the invading Secret Service agents as he watched the vision finish…. On an Earth were fire held more life than what was left.

His penthouse, it already burned. The scent snarled in his nose, but he didn't waste time refusing to believe. Time moved so slowly, layer on layer, the future and the present overlapping as one minor. It took little effort for him to step aside from bullets… as they weren't really shooting at him anyway. The very small earphone clipped to one ear, that doubled as his telephone audio played old Celtic music into his personal space and he thought how like a movie it seemed.

A female Secret Service agent rushed him, her black riffle held in front of her, and he saw her use the butt to smash his face. Layers. Seconds before she reached him, he side stepped, hand gliding through the air, moving the butt of her riffle away, while the heel of his hand impacted her face, breaking her nose in gush of bright red. The ear peace beeped, signaling two minutes to transmission.

Hundreds of miles away, fans gathered in New Yankee Stadium. Huge screens at either end showed bouncing cheerleaders, impossible stunts, flashing costumes, stats from proceeding season, and 500,000 fans were about to see footage of the 'alien' leader as she demanded the return of stolen Elf-kin babies, see the very popular vice president as he has a fatal encounter with another Elf-kin, a fifty year old Elfish child. Children. The world was very small, no matter how many layers one had to it. There were though, Chang paused in his thought and flung a third century Chinese tea pot at the head of an agent about to corner Niji, who was looking all together paler than he'd like, and so there were two things Chang Bao-Sheng valued in the world, well, two things after power. Children. Freedom.

Freedom without truth was like florescent sunlight. It looked good only if you weren't thinking about it. And if truth brought war? What was it that the American Patrick Henry had said? Something about a revolution every so often being a good thing. The water rose around modern civilization. The temperature rose. Technology saved. It destroyed. The Elf-kin who were coming out from hiding now.. they were not aliens, they were not myths. Chang called to Niji and she turned with just enough time to miss a bullet that took out his favorite Monet. Shock thinned her face, de-aging her. This place. Their home. It was a castle. It was a castle over run.

Just like the world, thought Chang as the one minute beep sounded in his ear, irritatingly interrupting his favorite song and he knew, without any vision, that it would be the last time he heard it. Violin layered over flute and he smiled. He had paid dearly for the information about to be seen by 500,000 sports fans, and then broadcast around the world in less time that it would take for him to finish breathing, no doubt. Death for freedom. His fist snapped out with cracking force against another agent's jaw.

It wasn't so bad, really, these last 50 seconds. Niji died better here than on the streets of Cairo where he'd found her. It was a deep disappointment to him that she'd never opened the power center within her, that jewel like core that he sensed in her, but her bitterness cocooned up like a dead butterfly.

Her voice called his name. Terror. 30 seconds beeped. Here world, he whispered. Truth. Don't give me power. Don't listen to me, but have some truth. He turned to her, to give her what comfort he had left to give. Wide eyes, dark, her olive skin pale as parchment. No agents were near her and Chang frowned. This was the girl who had thought it best to just kill the agents of corrupt government, asking in her childish, but aged by street war, hunger, abandonment, "Tell me again, oh Oracle? Why don't we just kill him dead?"

In time. He would have. Explained. Pain… blossomed through his shoulder.. for a moment he thought his eyeballs would burst to flame.. then it was smaller.. almost no pain at all.. his fingers reaching to his shoulder.. red on white linen. Red on the dark almond color of his fingers.

"Chang! It's an angel! Did you see the angel! Chang!!!" She screamed at him. The beep for 10 seconds sounded. Fools. He could die. The information was already rising through wires towards the screens. He wished he could watched from the camera his own agent was wearing. Watch as truth hit then spread around the world. "Chang! The angel is cold!"

Her damn black goth clothes. He couldn't tell if she was bleeding or not. "Niji!"

One black gloved hand reached out to him.. and he understood.. though he didn't. She was falling backwards. Blue light opened around her, spreading so that her feet had nothing to stand on. Fifty floors of high rise below and the blue light was eating the floor. Angel hell!

He elbowed an agent, but his other arm hung without response and she screamed, her black gloved hand the last thing to remain, the fingers spread wide, disappearing into the light like it was some water to drown in.

Truly frightened now. Chang's own scream cut through the layers and he dove, shoving a table towards the last agent to still be active.

His shoulder hit blue… blue ice with now solidity.. and he fell.. head first, spiraling… but he could hear his daughter's screaming. Hearing was good.

Chapter Two:

Earth

Year 2707 C.E

175 years of war. Rising waters. Magics that made love to technology for good and ill… the world was a brand new place and history seemed more like mythology all the time.

Cory insisted Tam study, history, ecology, mythology, languages.. everything. Tam didn't mind nearly as much as he let on.

The elf was practicing armed combat with him today though and Tam liked that much less than he let on.

Swords clashed, the two of Cory's and one in each of Tam's hands. Cory stood a head taller than Tam, paler, his elfin ears shimmering with silver rings and chains. His cornsilk blond hair, short enough to just halo around his head, catching the sunlight carried in by the fiber optics… He spun, hair flashing, tight silk clinging to his chest, thighs and his swords, long and of a golden hued metal crashed down against Tam's.

Tam held the Elf's swords above his head, his own black matte swords in a X over his head. Black swords that seemed to almost fuse with his hands… tanned skin, bright red hair that hung down his back, swinging from side to side with energy left over from his own spinning into the block. "Why are you moving so slow! I thought you weren't going to give me an easy time!"

Without the silk the elf wore, Tam just had black pants, pilot pants, with too many pockets to be good for fencing. Bare-chested, scars form his life showed… the three small incisions from when they'd added the human/elf magic/tech to his body were most recent, and still pink, like a claw mark over his left breast. A bullet scar had his other shoulder, and a burn on his belly, but the skin still moved fluidly over his body, over muscles that suggested a very active and well trained body.

He shoved Cory's swords up, over, with one of his, the other, flowing, becoming almost liquid as it dropped down towards Cory's belly, like a black silk ribbon until it reformed, harder than any known alloy, aimed straight at Corry's midsection… the other sword had melted around Cory's, ribboning into them then hardening again… Cory let go and leaped backwards, hands up "You think I was giving it to you easy? Hell's tits, Tam… the dragon is active in you! Look what you just did!"

He lowered his hand, his sword too locked around Cory's gold ones to just let them go. Surprised made his eyes wide. Violet surprise! He shook his hand, instinct to get the golden swords free. "How in hell!?"

"Relax, Tam," his trainer said. "Enough for today." In pure Elfish, a dripping language of soft vowels and singing tones, Cory convinced the magic that had taken hold in Tam to let go, to relax and return to normal… Both black swords, like drying ink… slide back up to disappear into Tam's skin, leaving his hands empty and the golden swords to clatter to the dojo floor. "You're making wonderful progress, Tam McOwen."

"Yeah, I need a drink," he breathed, staring at his now human hands. "I want to take the rest of the day, go think. Do you think She'll accept me as a Knight? That this will really end the wars?"

Cory eyed Tam. The little human was brave, smart, caring…. and a risk. "You know you can not drink alcohol now."

"I know. I wouldn't. I just need to think some." Tam padded bare footed across the polished wood floor. "So, tell me again, just humor me. If she accepts me, we can make more people like me.. and take down the Emperor and bring peace and safety to Human and Elf-kin.. it'll be this new thing all together?"

"That is the plan," Cory affirmed. Elfs did not forget things. Did not doubt. In the two thousand years that Cory had lived with humans, he did not understand how someone as smart as Tam could know what the information was, and still want it repeated. He had moved behind the bar at the end of the dojo and poured Tam a tall glass of blue algae tea. "You will be Kirsma's Knight. Then there will be others. We will end the wars between Human and Elf-kin."

"Yeah, that's the plan," Tam took the drink, sipped at it, glad that Cory had at least made it sweet for him this time. "You are now a little bit Human, a little bit Dragon soul, a lot Human nanite technology, the fusion of all that is best of our worlds. Was that enough of telling you again?"

"Yeah, that'll work." Tam finished off his drink, and moved towards the balcony, "The rest of the world's not like Neo-Seattle, Cory, it's a dangerous ugly place where we couldn't be in the same place, at the same time. Elf-kin aren't any nicer than Humans, yah know."

"I should know that better than you," Cory said, hopping up to sit on his bar, lotus style. "I was around when they crucified Christ, the whole crusades things, both world wars, little boy-hopper! You should listen to your mentor."

Tam turned, smiling. "That show used Grasshopper. Old references… man, Cory, what in the fuck is a grasshopper."

"Small insect, crunchy, kinda spicy." Cory said, grinning, sipping his own juice. "So take the day off. I'll see if I can import you some grass hoppers. I like ladybugs too."

"Lady bugs?" Tam did not want to know. He just didn't.