Even as she sprinted through the dark, cold, and damp clutches of the gloomy forest, the memory of that dreadful place was still a fresh wound in the young Naiana's mind. A downpour of heavy rain was just her luck, of all the days, the weather chose today and right now to put an end to the area's drought.

  The petrichor around her was a stark contrast to her current mindset and situation, being that of a constant oppressive sinking feeling in the pit of her gut as she ran.

  The descending water seeped into the ground below like a bond-corroding venom, morphing it from its once solid uniformity into a messy, sludge-like state, ruining the ground's strength and making someone as light as Naiana capable of leaving footprints. Much to her annoyance, not only was it hard to run, from her never having walked on anything other than perfectly smooth floors, but the clear trail of footprints made tracking her down a joke with how easy it would be for her pursuers, even without using any of the tools at their disposal.

  Hearing the distant cacophony of muted thuds, Naiana snapped her gaze back on instinct in the direction from whence she had fled. Recalling the reflective, looming shadow that the thuds undoubtedly came from, she knew one of her pursuers was closing in on her.

  A shiver ran down the girl's spine, knowing she'd be a sitting duck if the thing currently chasing her caught up to her. But, despite her intention and hope of getting away, the error of not looking where she was running came to bite her as she abruptly crumbled to the ground as a wet plop broke through the mostly silent forest.

  "What am I thinking?" Naiana murmured under her breath, doubt plaguing every corner of her mind as she struggled to free her foot from its muddy snare. Try as she might, it took all of Naiana's strength to pull her ankle free from the muddy puddle's clutches, its hold on her just as oppressive as the metaphorical collar the owners of that place had on her.

  Just recalling the feeling caused her to shiver even more than the cold rain had already forced her to.

  The scar inflicted upon her psyche from within the confines of that sterilised and unforgiving science room made calling that place her home a struggle, its heartless walls a constant reminder of the many experiments she was subjected to.

  "How did it all come to this?" the girl thought quietly, trying to recall how she'd ended up in such a perilous and precarious situation in the first place.

  Even before her abandonment, Naiana was, by every stretch of the imagination, an isolated and sheltered rich kid. Whether it be being homeschooled her entire life, put on a rigid schedule and curriculum by her workaholic parents, or never allowed to leave the confines of her parents' high-rise penthouse that overlooked every other building within the city.

  Day after day, night after night, every waking moment of her life was a never-ending cycle of studying academic books and journals that were as dense as maple syrup and as tall as a basketball player.

  Thinking back on it, Naiana couldn't recall a day when she wasn't studying under her parents' strict guidance and never spending as much as a single thought on anything else, even taking a break to catch her breath was off the table unless it was her bedtime.

  All of that came to an end.

  On a day like any other, she was whisked off to the facility without even an intentional warning or a chance to mentally prepare.

  The only reason Naiana wasn't completely blindsided by the forced departure was thanks to her struggling to sleep the night prior and overhearing her mother talking to someone.

  Although fragmented and muffled from her position on her bed, Naiana had managed to make out that the two adults' subject matter was undoubtedly about her, not that she had any clue what she and memor-something had to do with each other. Later on, she'd learn this person was one of the scientists who'd subject her to all manner of trials and scenarios, yet somehow less relentless than her parents were with her studying and lack of social interaction with anyone her age.

  Those two years she spent in that laboratory, or would it be a facility, where she was abandoned by her parents, couldn't be described in a positive light. No matter how anyone working there tried to spin it for the little girl, Naiana wouldn't budge on her impression of the place.

  Even with all its downsides, the callous complex of her entrapment had a singular upside: Naiana had finally been bestowed an opportunity she'd been deprived of ever since her first day of consciousness, the chance to interact with people her own age, as clunky as her nervous speech was.

  With the thought on her mind that her parents might come back to claim her, Naiana made it her mission to become friends with as many of the other kids she would be spending her newly experienced free time with, a promise to herself that stayed with her from that fateful first day onward.

  Mixed with clunky speech patterns and pinchable cheeks, her quest for friends was surprisingly easy for the younger Naiana. Whether it was due to the kids thinking it cute or simply entertaining, Naiana cared not for the others' reasonings, after all, in her mind, having them like something about her was preferable to them having no or, forbid it, a bad impression of her.

  However, during her self-imposed quest, there was one person way more daunting to befriend than she originally hypothesised that talking to everyone else would've been.

  The person in question, the teenaged boy known by the name of Zalto.

  At first, she thought the other kids and teens were being pedantic when they said "Zalto was kind of scary, if not an oddball at the least."

  But a single meeting with the guy in question flipped her impression of the others being pernickety, to them underselling just how much of an oddball he was.

  Naiana wasn't sure how one guy could be so imposing, especially with all the restraints on him. The only person who could match that level of impose naturally was her own mother; a feeling all too familiar to Naiana thanks to how often that woman would show that side of herself during business meetings with particularly hard-headed company owners/shareholders.

  The thought of maybe avoiding him for the time being crossed her mind, at least until she'd gotten used to having friends anyway. But for some reason she couldn't explain, a wave of sorrowful guilt hit her out of nowhere.

  For a moment, she thought the effects of homesickness were finally kicking in, but she knew there was no way she'd be homesick for her previous home life.

  It took the girl a second, but the revelation struck her; if she felt anxious just from meeting him, imagine how everyone who's lived with him every day felt about him.

  "If the other kids are avoiding him, he must feel isolated... like... I did"

  A fire lit inside her eyes, a sense of silent camaraderie, and a deep responsibility not to follow in her parents' footsteps... by fleeing to her "room" to formulate the best way to become friends with the guy, having never done it before, let alone with a boy so much older than her.

  Despite her initial fear of the guy, given he was constantly in a straitjacket, affixed with three large crystaline rods lodged in each arms, and a skin-tight eye mask that supposedly suppressed his will, Naiana slowly grew a strange attachment to the even weirder guy, trying every method she and some of the nicer scientist came up with.

  "Hurry, we can't let her get past the detection zone!"

  The robot-filtered shouting of her assailant snapped Naiana out of the daydream she briefly enjoyed, reminding her of the dire situation she was currently in and how close her chance of freedom was from being taken from her.

  In place of what she should be feeling, Naiana was left in bewildered surprise, her once heightened terror mildly subsiding, replaced by an overwhelming sensation she'd never felt before.

  Completely foreign to her mind and heart, the fluttery feeling welling up within her chest instilled in her a sudden burst of inner strength, empowering her with a second wind that allowed her to easily pull her foot free from the puddle's clutches. With the assailant drawing near, Naiana didn't dwell on where she'd been hiding and simply kept running in the direction the assailant wasn't occupying.

  "Keep running, don't let them catch you."

  That lone thought flooded her mind. All she could do was keep running, no matter how sore her bare feet became and screamed at her to give them the littlest break as the loud ringing thud of metal kept drawing ever nearer. However, in her haste to flee, Naiana failed to spot the obvious drop ahead of her until she had already begun her fall off of it.

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  Following a crunchy synpony of crushed leaves and twigs, luckily for her, despite her string of luck so far, Naiana found herself unharmed from the abrupt fall she experienced thanks to the large bundle of leaves and sticks breaking her fall, even if she still got a little whiplash.

  Staggering to her feet and crawling out of the makeshift safety cushion, Naiana found herself on a windy hillside road, weathered and overgrown with shrubs from years of neglect and lack of use. She peered around, half expecting to see a whole squad of people surrounding her, but the road was indeed unoccupied.

  Just as she thought she was in the clear and home free, the ever-familiar clang of metal erupted nearby, its owner closer than ever to the girl.

  She froze on the spot, her mind going into a haze as she shuddered at the sight of a floodlight creeping over the top of the hill that the abandoned road clung to.

  Slowly arching her head upward, she barely caught the large shadow that swept overhead before a looming, reflective figure landed right in front of her and blocked her in place.

  "Captain, I've located Subject G-03," a man piloting the mecha said over the speaker, his voice cold and startling to Naiana, given the robotic filter. The floodlight swept down, bathing the elephant-sized humanoidish mecha and the girl, giving the pilot a clearer view of Naiana as she hung her head low in her muddied white pyjamas.

  [Naiana is a very short, nine-year-old human girl; she has spikey, elbow-low pale teal hair with glowing cyan ends that resemble arrowheads, cyan eyes, and albino white skin]

  Seeing the metalic machine towering over her, she couldn't help thinking how it took it so long to catch her, kind of made her proud of herself in a way... at least, that's what Zalto would probably say if he were in her spot.

  But being caught still brought down her mood, after all the trouble Zalto went through to get her out of the facility, almost like she wasted his efforts for her — the thought was bittersweet to her in a way, even if she couldn't reach her goal, but at least she'd be back with her friends.

  "Come on now, you're a not-so-figurative step away from freedom, and you're here giving up? Although I suppose it's my fault for being terrible with knots."

  Like a beacon of hope, the voice of the aforementioned teen brought her some reprieve, getting a little comfort before her inevitable recapture.

  She waited.

  And waited, and waited, but no matter how long she sat there with her eyes closed, the cold surface of the mecha's hand never reached her.

  It took her a second, but it hit her. The voice she heard wasn't some last-minute attempt from her mind to comfort her, but in fact the guy himself, the point proven upon her opening her eyes.

  [Zalto is a very tall sixteen-year-old human male; he has neck-low and unkempt super pale cyan hair that is so pale that it appears to be faintly white, and slightly tanned skin]

  [Other than his black pyjamas, Zalto is wearing a pure white metal eye mask covered in amythest-looking engravings that sits perfectly snug on his face]

  Shooting her eyes open, the striking silhouette in the floodlight, who sheltered her from the light, left the butterflies in her stomach in a frenzy as she recognised— "Zalto? What are you doing here?"

  Crouching down to match her eye level, Zalto passed Naiana a cheeky grin, which the girl could easily guess he was winking at her from under his metalic eye mask. "Did you honestly think I'd let you go on your own? I mean, wandering around blindly is guaranteed to be a fast track for you getting brought back or even worse."

  "Worse?"

  "Duh? Like ending up working as a restaurant waiter," Zalto stated with a straight face, his mouth not budging in the slightest or displaying any signs of joviality. Even with the mecha overhead, Naiana failed to stifle a meek smile, the twiddling of her fingers only adding to the welling up of amusement she got from Zalto's bizarre comment.

  In her mind, this is the Zalto she'd grown to know, not the imposing guy of her first impression, nor the monstrous maniac that the scientist at the facility wanted to restrain, but the overprotective goof that she and the other kids came to know over the past two years.

  "Y-You, how did you escape from all of your restraints? That straitjacket's supposed to be able to handle the strength of a hundred elephants!" the female voice barked over the speaker of the mecha, her deranged squawking causing the lifespan of the speaker to plummet as even the quality of it melted into a gargled mess.

  With a light sigh of contempt, Zalto contemplated his next move very carefully, mostly on whether to be flashy or efficient.

  He swung around, his fist already clenched into an unstoppable force that cleanly connected with the mecha's outstretched arm. The swift impact flung the mecha's arm in an upward rotation, its motion getting more jittery the higher it went, before a loud, screeching snap shot from the joints as the arm pointed straight up.

  "Oops. Do mind my hands, they can be rather slippery," Zalto mentioned with gusto as the woman behind the mecha's speaker seathed and raged, tetering on deranged, incoherent murmuring.

  "Explain yourself! Zalto!" the woman on the speaker demanded, throwing in that she wanted to know how and why he was even out of his room at such an hour.

  "Wouldn't I be a bum if I just watched a little girl crying right in front of me, though you probably like hearing that now, don't you, Xinian?" Zalto teased as he raised a hand to the last remaining crystalline spike embedded in his arm.

  Clutching onto the spike, he yanked it out of himself without batting an eye or deeming it worthy of any recognition on his part.

  Unlike the guy who should've reacted, Naiana flinched from disgust at watching the wound on Zalto's arm rapidly fill in and heal at an inhuman rate, the squelching noise assaulting her ears causing her to shudder involuntarily.

  Peering back to check the girl was still behind him, Zalto's grin wavered for a second at her expression, needing to force his smile back on his face before Naiana could notice.

  "Hey now, there's no need to waste your precious tears no more, and you wanna know why, Little Lady?" Zalto teased again, running a hand over Naiana's face to remove the buildup of tears fleeing her eyes.

  She hadn't even noticed, be it from the rain raining down on her or from being so preoccupied with getting away, but tears had been running down her cheeks this whole time. She thought she must've looked like a baby from Zalto's perspective. As the last of her tears were wiped away, Naiana could only utter a trembling "Why's that?"

  "Because you should only spend your tears on people you care about, not these dummies, you know?" Zalto explained, adding he'd feel responsible if Naiana ended up losing her ability to cry in appropriate situations from her turning into a crybaby.

  Despite not following the logic of his words entirely, Naiana somewhat understood what Zalto was trying to get at, on a subconscious and emotional level at the very least.

  A light huff escaped from Naiana, her cheeks and lips puffing up in a pout at the insinuation she could ever be a crybaby, even if she had called herself that moments prior. But her pouting didn't last, given the towering mecha, its cold presence a stark contrast to the warming one of Zalto.

  "So, what'll it be, little lady? Still feel like giving up or follow through on that conviction you showed earlier?"

  "Obviously I want to keep going, duummie!" Naiana managed to say in a blur, her last word stretched out as she was snatched off her feet by Zalto. Placing Naiana in his arms, trapping her in a princess carry, Zalto felt a thrill of excitement shiver through his body as he imagined all the possible ways he could get Naiana out of the facility's grasp for real this time. "Glad to hear it. Now... what should I use, ice or decay..."

  "Don't go getting any funny ideas and do something flashy," Naiana grumbled, anticipating the hillside they were on being obliterated, engulfed in flames or ice, or something so outlandish even she couldn't comprehend it.

  Defensively throwing his hands up in a playful manner, Zalto stuck his tongue out in defiance before stating, "My my, I would never. After all, I- THINK FAST!"

  Zalto jolted his head to the side, generating enough force to barely lift his eye mask less than a millimetre off his face. But that small gap was all he needed.

  Thick, amethyst-looking tattoos that resembled pulsing veins shot out from his fingertips, sprawling up his hand but seemingly restricted to only covering it.

  The people behind the remote mecha didn't get the chance to heed Zalto's "warning" before the entire hillside became the hotspot of a blinding light, one so bright it turned the night sky blue.

  In a matter of seconds, the screen of the pilot remotely controlling the mecha was transformed into a single blob of white, which could've easily been mistaken for the early emergence of sunshine had a digital clock displaying 23:17 not been in the corner of the screen.

  Having reacted on instinct, the pilot had preemptively shielded his eyes to avoid being personally blinded by the flash, unlike his mecha's lens, frantically recalibrating to restore its feed of the hillside road. "Even on the job, I'm getting flashbanged by pretentious brats... ... great."

  With the feed restored, the most obvious of outcomes had occurred. Well, in this case, it wasn't a given with Zalto's other code names of Living Calamity and Battle Maniac. Pilot One cautiously turned his gaze towards his colleague on the tracker, hoping Naiana and Zalto were at least still within the base's perimeter tracker.

  But such graces weren't looking upon him, as he heard his colleague mention that two of the tracking signals went offline.

  Feeling a well-up of frustration, Pilot one aggressively slammed his face into the free space on his desk, startling his colleague so much it made him jump in his seat.

  Seeing his fellow pilot's screen was now free of their target, pilot two asked if this meant their pay would be docked because some of the "examinees" escaped, leading pilot one to groan in nialistic frustration. His anger was only matched by the lab-coat-wearing, short woman foaming at the mouth that she hadn't noticed any changes in Zalto's vitals to indicate he'd been using an ability on his restraints all this time.

  A little later, a long, drawn-out yawn of frustration fluttered through the dark confines of the penthouse bedroom. Sitting atop the king-sized bed, a woman sat, any defining feature about her seemingly obscured by design by the shadows around her.

  "Not only has my daughter gone missing, but the most powerful Paradox Memoria Ability Holder has escaped. Is that what you're reporting on Xinian's behalf?" Naiana's Mother grumbled exhaustedly from her bed, having been awoken in the middle of her beauty sleep at such a stupid hour of the night.

  Hopping to quell any potental wrath from the CEO, Pilot One stated with a bit of resevation, "If it's any form of reasurance, Madam, it seems your daughter and A-24 were both last seen together, so it's highly likey if we find one of them the other won't be that far away."

  "Yeah, that's to be expected, that Memoria Athority has always had a soft spot for the meek and defenseless, would've been vastly more costly to capture and restrain it otherwise," Naiana's father mentioned coldly over the voice call, not even dignifying Zalto with the proper pronouns and even refering to him as a thing on multiple occasions.

  Sighing deeply at her husband's comment, Naiana's Mother reluctantly uttered coldly, "Honey, must you be so crass? They are still people even if they're not fully human anymore."

  The guy only huffed in indignation, denying any implication that a full-blooded human could have such outlandish and supernatural abilities. The woman couldn't stop the callous groan within her escaping past her lips, wishing her husband wouldn't see things in such an us-and-them mentality.

  But she knew the daunting task that would be, so for now, she returned her attention to the one who'd woken her up in the first place.

  "And, tell Xinian when she wakes up to have some of the agents stationed at Cyialight Labs to begin searching the nearest city in the duo's last known direction," Naiana's Mother ordered even more coldly as her grogginess claimed more of her brain and ushered her to embrace her sleepiness.

  Following her order and not waiting for any signs of acknowledgement, the woman hung up both her calls abruptly, not bothering to fully comprehend the transpiring events as her groggy mind only cared about resuming her beauty sleep. Which she did, by employing the use of an extreme method unused by most people by slamming her head so hard into her pillow that she knocked herself out cold.