Dear Diary, a condensed historical account: "Walking the Universe"

Dear Diary - Walking The Universe

    Lara Night started out in a fairly typical family, though one she was thoroughly dissatisfied with. Her father was only vaguely caring, but also possessive, emotionless, and prone to temper tantrums. Her mom was the exact complement to that - a quiet, submissive, easily malleable personality.

    The latter made it easier when her dad would go into bouts of anger and begin yelling. He never harmed his wife, but he would scream, thrash about, and smash inanimate objects before storming out. Sometimes he wouldn't return for hours, sometimes not for days. And Lara's mom would always forgive him and allow him to return.

    That last part is what angered Lara so much. She took after her father a bit, only to a different effect. After he'd yell, and smash things, and leave, Lara would run downstairs and yell at her mom some more. How could she just let him do this? Why doesn't she speak up and stand up for herself? Her mother always had the same answer - it was all about love, and she wouldn't understand.

    By the time Lara became a teenager and felt old enough, as well as physically and emotionally strong enough, she began confronting her father herself. If he raised his voice or smashed something, she would yell back to defend her mother. She would threaten him, and tell him to leave.

    Ironically, it worked. Her father built up more respect for her than for her mother. But since Lara had to go to school, and she spent part of her time listening to music, he'd occasionally take advantage and do his yelling and smashing when Lara either wasn't home, couldn't hear, or was asleep.

    Lara wouldn't stand for that, though. By the time she reached her late teens, she found her mom crying one day and knew exactly what had happened. She took her mom's car and went searching for her dad, and knew exactly where he was going. She was literally weeks away from going away to college and she figured since she was leaving anyway she had nothing to lose by airing her grievances.

    The family had a vacation cabin in the woods that was never used. It was the object of many fights - while the father liked the place, the mom didn't, and she quietly resisted going, wanting him to give it up. But he kept the place for some solitude during fights. Lara knew that, and didn't tell her mom - partly because when her dad did leave, Lara wanted to know where he'd gone.

    She drove up the cabin and burst her way in. Suffice to say, she learned all about how sex works in just a few seconds. She wasn't seen until she cursed the two of them with all the air in her lungs.

    Lara returned home in a rush and send her mom to her grandmother's house. Being packed herself already, Lara made the decision to leave for college and never return.

    That's the last she remembers of her parents. Because the next thing Lara Night remembered was being rescued from deep in the woods by a self-proclaimed adventurer named Sharon Holmes. Lara still has no idea how she got there or what happened, but she does know that since that time she's developed all kinds of extraordinary abilities.

    British born Sharon and a neighbor and friend of hers named Charlie Lewis, also British, both helped Lara learn the ropes when her abilities were discovered accidentally during a thunderstorm. Her unusual eyes, her irises seeming to look almost like polished pieces of glass with no color, were something she was born with. But her latent talents are what truly made her stand out.

    She quickly learned during an attempted burglary that she could send arcs of pure electricity from her fingers. Shortly after that she learned that she could absorb electricity and electrical energy as well. With the help of yet another friend who was into the whole holistic approach and the hidden power of the mind - her name was Rika Hisashi - Lara began to stretch her power and mold it to her imagination, making such things as shields, and eventually learning to transport herself short distances.

    As she began to master her talents she realized she became more sensitized to emotions of others, and sudden shifts in invisible yet powerful forces that permeated everything around. She never learned how to interpret those completely, but would get sudden unexplained ominous feelings or elated feelings and interpret them fairly accurately based on circumstances.

    All the while Lara learned things from her friends as well. Sharon Holmes encouraged her and gave her the bravery she needed to explore her abilities rather than hide from them. Rika Hisashi and her sisters helped Lara put her abilities to practical use. And Charlie was always a willing ear to talk to when Lara didn't quite feel brave or strong enough.

    Eventually a powerful being named Shema took notice, and appeared to Lara as an aged mirror image of herself. Shema explained Lara's destiny - that she would be one of a few chosen to correct major calamities in the universe so they don't cause massive destruction and loss of life. Shema was a creator by nature, and not much of a destroyer or a fighter. She loved too much, and therefore appointed a few powerful creatures like Lara to protect what she loved.

    Lara of course was sent home feeling stunned. She explained her predicament to her friends. While they were all happy for her, she was terrified. She told Charlie about it after everyone else left her home, and even cried about it. He stayed with her and helped her through the difficulty by gently encouraging and distracting her.

    The next day, with her friends' support, Lara took her place in her world's history. There were many, many heroes on her world. Not enough to always be around, but rather like famous movie actors, making brief appearances to do what they needed, and then vanishing into seclusion. Since childhood Lara watched them on television and wondered who would clean up the damage left behind.

    So Lara vowed to be different as she took her place among them. She worked with her friend Rika to use her abilities to literally clean up after other heroes for a while. She meant it to be a low-profile way to use her power, but as it turned out, she became quite famous for it. Lara Night ended up on magazines and being offered endorsement deals. She was very choosy about which offers she took, because she had a gentle and kind reputation to uphold. Rika served as her agent so Lara didn't have to negotiate on her own.

    Because of that, as her powers developed further she only used a small fraction of her abilities. She was always afraid of what would happen if she used her full abilities - someone could be hurt, property could be destroyed. It frightened her, in fact, any time she learned something new about her abilities, and she always wanted to feel like she was in control enough to protect those around her.

    Meanwhile her relationship with Charlie became gradually closer until they were literally living together in Lara's new home. Due to the sudden fame she had to move into a fairly quiet neighborhood and hide behind walls and security. Her solitude came from that and a Japanese style garden in the back yard designed by Rika's older sister Susanna. Rika insisted on it so Lara could meditate there.

    But not all was great in paradise. Charlie was quite a few years older than Lara, and was in a hurry to get married and have children. Lara wanted to live a few more years of carefree youth, and the prospect of getting married when her parents used to fight all the time didn't appeal to her. The situation eventually came to a head, and Charlie decided to move out. Lara understood why, however, and Charlie promised not to give up on her entirely. So the two remained friends since.

    Secretly Lara remains quite broken-hearted over mistakes she believes led to her current state of loneliness. She lives by herself, and when she's not at home she travels alone. While fame still hasn't left her - as a 'perfect blonde' the world of magazines and endorsements is reluctant to let go of her - she spends much of her time by herself, isolated to keep her sacred privacy.

    That got boring, however, so to avoid fame and essentially her own life, she began travelling extensively, at first to exotic places on her own world - it was easy since she could transport herself there without using conventional methods of travel. Eventually she learned there was no limit on her self-travel ability - a power that's rare to the point of almost being unique, meaning Lara was always free to seek solitude that way - and she began visiting other universes just to see what was there.

    She never spends much time in these other universes. It's mostly to visit and observe, and she usually only meets people and interacts in passing, meeting and losing friends like a person would on a summer getaway. The Parodyverse is the first universe she's visited where she decided to do something different, to visit more than once, and attempt to keep the friends she made.

    As a bonus, the Parodyverse is an ideal testing ground for Lara. She has a small group of friends there - other than that she's completely anonymous. It's a world like hers with many heroes, only working in secret. So most things she does in the Parodyverse wouldn't make much of a splash - she can gradually try out new abilities she's been afraid to try before, anonymously, as long as she lets her conscience guide her.

    Lara isn't one to blindly trust her abilities. Over time and as she travelled to different universes, she tried to educate herself about uses for her own powers with the best resources she could find without involving too many people and increasing her risk of running into someone who was interested in exploiting her rather than just the research.

    She learned that there is essentially a field of energy within her, as there is with every living creature, but hers constantly refreshes from electromagnetism around her. And unlike anyone else, she could control the field, projecting parts of it outward, discharging some of it outside her body in the form of electrical arcs, and even become one with it, allowing her to travel anywhere energy can go. There is a secondary effect, too - she's learned that the electrical field within her is extremely sensitive to astronomical effects that change the universe. If something very bad is coming, she'd probably sense something is wrong long before it arrives.

    At some point Lara also learned that she often seemed to be able to tell if someone was lying or meant her harm. But she's still not sure if that's an extension of her energy power or if she's just adept at reading body language and eye movements. She does always look at eyes first, since they are the window to the soul.

    Because all living creatures have similar yet less powerful energy fields, Lara found she was able to heal or reconstruct the injured - but not revive the dead - by supplementing their energy and forcing the body to use the excess for rapid healing. It has limited use - she can't completely heal someone who's badly injured, that person still has to recover on their own.

    During her most recent trip to the Parodyverse, Lara Night made a promise to herself to try not to get involved too much. Because of her travels to different universes, she has become acutely aware that the 'footprint' she leaves is one that doesn't belong, and therefore needs to be as small as possible. It's not a decision she made lightly - it's torture for her, having to reconsider her role every time one of her friends comes back injured and she wishes she could have protected them.

    Each time that happens she feels anger build inside her for a moment, a need to go out there, somewhere, and unleash some cosmically destructive power to dispose of the enemy once and for all. But like with anyone else, that's just a daydream from someone who needs to let off steam. She knows the reality all too well - that if she did meet one of the Parodyverse's biggest bad guys, she'd probably become scared and go into defensive mode. Which would protect her and her companions fairly well but won't help them win either.

    She is constantly struggling like that, halfway between being effective and being amazing. It's the reason she's had an unusual personal life, including the accidentally well-known night with CrazySugarFreakBoy!. Once in a while she believes she has to follow through on a daydream just to prove that she's not always frightened of everything. And she hopes that one day she'll have the guts to follow through on something that will lead to being extraordinary.

-- Story written and copyrighted (C) 2006 by Jason Froikin, and may not be
-- reprinted without permission.
-- Yuki Shiro designed by Jason Froikin, based on designs by Masamune Shirow
-- Liu Xi Xian and the Psychic Samurai are original design by Jason Froikin
-- Lara Night is an original creation by Jason Froikin

Post By Anime Jason Fri Aug 18, 2006 at 02:22:40 pm EDT	Subject Dear Diary, a condensed historical account: "Walking the Universe"

	[New] [Edit] [Email] [Print] [RSS] [Tales of the Parodyverse]	Next In Thread >>