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 Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 9:11 am
 This layer is reserved for the private training of Elizabeth and Aleia. Please keep your prying little noses out. Any trespassers will be thrown out of the training area immediately. (and gray listed!)
As you enter the the second floor, you see it is split into two main areas, both filled with layers. One section has a sign that says "Battles" and the other says "Training." In the middle, dividing the two, is a desk where a Native American women sits, reading a magazine. She looks up as you approach, jots down your name on a piece of paper and hands you a ticket, pointing you to a layer with a corresponding number on the Training side. "Please abide by all the rules and see me if you have any questions. What I'm paid for."
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Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 5:10 pm
Entering a New World
Elizabeth glanced one final time at the women handing her the ticket. She did not seem very talkative, nor very friendly, but it simply wasn’t her job to socialize. Nodding curtly, her eyes on the sign that proclaimed “battles,” she thought of how Aleia would look when she fought. ‘I need to get her to move before I can do that, and get to the layer before she can move,’ she thought to herself. She turned from the battle section to the one marked by the sign saying “training.”
Glancing at the layers as she passed, she saw that fewer than a quarter of the available seats at any given layer were occupied, and only two were actually having their angels do anything. She was tempted to watch one of them, for the Deus seemed experienced. Yet the other one she did not give a second glance. It was that girl she had met in the park, the red head. She arrived at the thirteenth training layer, the number on her ticket. Setting down the canvas bag, she pulled her precious angel out of it.
Aleia’s red hair seemed to shine in the artificial lighting. Somehow, Elizabeth got the impression that in places like this, the inanimate object was at home. She shook off the feeling and stood, looking around the room. “I guess I put this on...” she said hesitantly, picking up the headset and glancing cautiously at the two other people in the room who seemed content to just watch their angel lie there.
Slipping the device onto her head, she nearly shrieked when the small wings on its sides popped up. Glancing furtively at the other to Deus in the room, she ascertained that neither had seen her. Yet she couldn’t hide her astonishment when, as the device turned on, something other than just the layer which she was staring at was visible. They seemed to be statistics of some kind. Disregarding them as unnecessary for the moment, seeing as she had no idea what they meant, she turned her gaze onto the angel in her hand.
She adored her first angel, and yet felt something was off about the outfit she had created. Shaking off the feeling as she had so many times today, she tuned back to the layer. “How do I get her on the layer,” she murmured to herself, pondering over the entrances she had seen when she had looked up clips of battles online. There was one thing they all seemed to have in common: throwing the angel and saying the entry phrase. She didn’t want to throw her angel, yet she had no choice.
“It’s what their made to do,” she muttered, attempting to reassure herself. With a movement that she would have described as deft, though perhaps few others would have agreed, she tossed Aleia toward the layer. “Do you believe in magic, little Aleia?” The entry phrase left her mouth in a timing that seemed to be precise. The angel came to life as it passed onto the layer, yet continued in its trajectory without any contradictory directions.
When the medium-sized angel hit the floor of the layer, she collapsed. Without any idea how to make her do anything, Elizabeth panicked. Would her angel be defective? Would the mechanisms she had so painstakingly researched fail to work? Attempting to calm herself, she sorted through her thoughts. An angel moved by the conscious direction of its Deus. That meant, of course, that if she did not tell the angel to do anything, it would simply be a doll lying on an extremely high-tech table. Perhaps if she consciously willed Aleia up? She concentrated, and the angel made seemingly random movements. “Focus,” she reminded herself, “Focus on what you want to do.” Nonetheless, it was still five minutes before she managed to make Aleia get shakily to her feet.
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