Ambivalent Pride (Closed)

[Bishiglomper]

It was early in the afternoon. Though it was a school day, there was one student that wouldn't be found in class. Aside from the first day of school, her desk had remained empty for the next two weeks.

Hamasaki Sayuki sat alone in a vacant park. It had once been a popular playground years ago, she could tell, but now stood unkempt and surrounded by woods and abandoned buildings at the edge of town. It wasn't the greatest part of town, but Sayuki felt she was unnoticeable in the seclusion the trees and overgrowth provided.

The sun was kept out, offering much shade in the summer heat. A nice breeze swept through and her skin was kept cool though she still perspired.

Saaya's hair was pulled back into a ponytail, pulled just high enough to keep off her neck. She was dressed casually, sporting a simple blue and white tank top with white shorts. She wore tennis shoes, pulling her socks high as some of the brush underfoot was high enough to scratch her skin.

She wore a pair of worn cloth gloves that were 2 sizes too big, and a matching arm guard which she wore on her right forearm. On the same wrist a silver chain sat. Colorful star charms adorned it, save for one silver David's star that hung downward.

Saaya currently sat upon a rusty merry go round in the middle of the area. The bars were chipped of paint, stripped entirely at the tops showing the rusty copper color of the metal underneath. The whole of it was tilted as the base was bent. With her knees drawn up under her and her back against the middle post, Saaya peered at the pages of a thick, worn leather notebook. She stared intently at it as though near-sighted, her nose mere inches away.

The text was hard to read. It wasn't a manufactured printed one, but instead had traditional penmanship scribbled on it's pages. Many of the pages were smudged, and some were indiscernible entirely. A few had personal notes and a handful of pages were left blank in the back.

This was a journal that had seen many hands, many different thoughts and instruction handed down through the ages. A family heirloom, if you will.

This had belonged to the Quincy of her clan.

[Bishiglomper]

Sayuki could remember watching Masaharu sitting in the basement reading the worn book with only a dim bulb hanging overhead.
Barely out of junior high, her brother still sported distinct freckles that wouldn't fade until after high school. His scarlet red hair shaggy and falling in his face; often causing him to brush or blow away the strands that barred his vision.

He had found it years ago when he was playing in the basement once; the little black, leather bound journal. It started with a light curiosity, perusing the contents of their parents basement. Some of the stuff down there was ancient. ...To them anyway.

Saaya was still just a child when they went exploring through the boxes one summer. They discovered a cupboard under the basement steps, which had been blocked by a sturdy bookshelf. Her older brother managed to turn it to make the cupboard accessible. The boxes in there were the most dust-covered they'd ever seen. It must have been an inch thick!

There were many artifacts that they couldn't distinguish. Uniforms of some sort took up one box while various tools and artifacts resided gently packed into another. Cloaks and capes were hung deep in the back of the cupboard. Though also covered in a thick layer of dust, they were well protected by simple plastic garment bags. Not a wrinkle in the crisp white fabrics, nor a speck of dust.

Whatever they had been used for; for the amount of time they were hidden away... they were immaculate. Masaharu had been impressed. He didn't dare open the bags in fear of dirtying them. Sayuki wasn't interested. She found herself something more exciting.

In one smaller crate were a set of charms, tightly wrapped in aging-colored paper. She thought they were pretty, the silver crosses and pendants on silver chains.

She picked one up that was shaped like a David's star. It looked like a charm, not flat but the lines overlapping in perfect symmetry which gave it a depth, much like the other pendants and pentacles in the box. A silver ring circled the star, about half the circumference.

She asked Masaharu if she could have it. He didn't see the harm, so long as she took good care of it. It immediately donned her wrist with the help of her brother. It had found it's permanent home. Over time colorful metallic star charms adjoined it.

Masaharu skipped going through the chains and opened another box. This one held papers and documents. That's when they found the books.

It was through those same books that Masaharu had discovered the secret of their family. Their "clan", they referred to it. The Quincy.

[Bishiglomper]

Her brother had brought the strange documents to their parents, but they didn't know anything about it. Or they were refusing to acknowledge it. Either way, they were no help in her brother's sudden fascination toward their ancestry.

They left them to their own devices though, which suited her brother just fine. Masaharu was intelligent. He found his own answers in the tomes and papers hidden away in the back cupboard. It didn't take him long to figure out how to absorb spirit particles and form it into a physical shape.

That was a very eventful few weeks for them both. Not knowing they came from a spiritually gifted ancestry line, the Hamasaki siblings had a pretty normal childhood. Spirits or the paranormal didn't plague their lives as most spirits tended to do with people with a higher concentration of spiritual energy; but the moment Masaharu and Sayuki started playing with their latent abilities that all changed.

Masaharu started seeing them first. Understandable, seeing as he was the one putting theories into practice. His little sister simply tagged along to watch in fascination. The first time Masa saw a spirit was a very peculiar experience for him.

Sayuki could remember his expression. He was startled at first at something, then stood there staring off into the distance, fascinated by whatever it was he saw. Saaya wished she could see what he did.

Things started happening then, more and more often. It was starting to make her nervous. Were there really so many spirits around? And why couldn't she notice them, why haven't they always been able to see them? According to the books, many of the Quincy started very young, born into the world already privy to the world most humans overlooked.

She got her wish. At first she thought her paranoia had gotten to her, seeing things out of the corner of her eyes or seeing things that seemed out of focus, blurry. Feeling like someone was near, but never seeing anyone.

Sayuki started developing her own spiritual awareness. By that time, Masaharu was already almost used to the fact that he had to see the world through new eyes. The experience drew them closer together.

Now that she was inadvertently involved, she too tried to learn more about it, to practice long lost abilities alongside her brother. It was so much easier to learn off someone as opposed to learning by text.

By midsummer, both Masaharu and Sayuki Hamasaki had developed the basics skills needed to begin training like Quincies.