by Kayla W
Regaining Composure
Kayla Worthington
Copyright 2014 Kayla Worthington
Prologue
Tap, tap, tap...
Tap, tap, tap…
Tap, tap-
“Kyuki, stop tapping on your your desk! God forbid it’s the most annoying thing you could possibly do! You’re distracting your peers!”
The teen rolled her eyes at the shrill teacher. Maybe if she were actually teaching something, she wouldn’t have even heard the girl’s nails tapping impatiently against the desk. It wasn’t even that loud, anyway. It wasn’t distracting anyone, as far as Kyuki could tell.
The teacher glared at her student before turning back to the whiteboard, marker in hand, probably reading the girl’s thoughts and beginning to teach. She wrote down assignment after assignment after assignment…
This class couldn’t have gotten any more boring.
“Alright class, please open your textbooks to page 4,058 to our new unit on the process of yarn. Sometime this week we shall also watch a documentary on it.” Said the teacher, as she turned back towards the class.
Kyuki Sayomi stood corrected. Her, along with the rest of the class, let out a loud irritated groan. This was going to be a long, tiresome day.
Chapter One
Kyuki stepped out of the school, sighing with relief, a faint trace of a smile now on her face. It was great to finally be free from the terrifying and downright awful facility, also known as school.
Though, the school was really only one of the only things Kyuki hated about her town. Other than that, the town was pretty quiet and nice. Serene, even. It had a reasonable amount of people there, not overflowing but not empty, and most of the people were nice and considerate. Sure, there was always that dumb neighborhood bully or that naggy old woman, but Kyuki didn’t paid no heed to them. And with the town being so quiet, she was free to stargaze or research without interruption. That is, when she wasn’t in school, of course.
Stargazing was her favorite thing to do, next to research. Kyuki loved observing the different types of stars and constellations, and would happily search the internet for the next comet or planet sighting. Despite all the new nicknames it’s earned her, she couldn’t be happier with her calling.
Ignoring most of the shoves and pushes from the other teens who longed to get home and away from the school as well, Kyuki began the long walk back to her house.
She didn’t notice the trouble-making delinquent stalking behind her.
“Hey para-geek! Gonna go home and watch for the stars?” He snickered to Kyuki, watching for her to turn around, and waiting for her reaction.
Kyuki merely grit her teeth in annoyance, and slowly turned to the delinquent who had teased her.
“So what if I am? It’s none of your business, anyway.” She growled angrily.
The boy stuck his lounge out at Kyuki in response. “What’cha gonna be lookin’ for? Shooting stars or aliens? Hah!”
Ignoring the last statement, Kyuki turned and walked the other way, her mood no longer mellow as it was a moment before. She got angry very easily, especially when it came to this topic in particular. Ever since she’d announced to her peers that she was into paranormal and astronomer things, everyone had teased her on it. Well, either teased or contradicted her.
Either way they were both annoying and slightly offensive.
After several minutes of angry stomping and curse words to herself, Kyuki arrived home. She walked into the house and slammed the door shut behind her, frustrated.
“Kyuki! What did I tell you about slamming the doors? You’re going to make the neighbors call the cops.. Again!” A male voice yelled from deeper inside the house. Also known as Kyuki’s abusive and very irritable uncle, Chad.
Kyuki rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She mumbled, walking upstairs to her room. She left her backpack at the door and shoes.
Once she was in her room (she was careful to close the door quieter this time, not wanting her uncle to protest any further), Kyuki glared into the mirror at herself . Her black hair flowed down to her shoulders, and her light blue eyes shone angrily through her thick glasses. Her red, baggy hoodie coated most of her body, including her hands, and black sweatpants covered her legs. Her usual attire.
Kyuki sighed, walking over to the window and staring at the dark sky. Soon it’d be dark enough for her to go stargazing, looking for comets and shooting stars, and if she was lucky, planets or spaceships (although no one believed that she’s seen a spaceship). Although everyone else said it’d never happen, Kyuki longed to meet creatures from the stars. Aliens. Foreign species. Non-human beings. Kyuki knew that there had to be some other living life form somewhere in the universe other then humans. There was a huge, vast universe with so many undiscovered planets. We couldn’t be as narcissistic to believe we are the only ‘intelligent beings’ in the entire universe. Heck, there could be an exact copy of the Earth somewhere! You just never know. Anything is possible.
Still standing in front of the mirror, Kyuki slumped a bit, her anger fading and being replaced by a sad frown. As much as she longed to meet foreign life forms, she longed for something more. Someone more.
A friend.
As corny as it sounded, that’s all Kyuki ever wanted. No one liked her at school, and most of the times, it seemed no one liked her at home, either! Her uncle seemed to dislike her just as much as the kids at school did. It was unfair. In a way, Kyuki almost thought of herself as an alien. She was just so different from everyone else that it seemed that not only that she didn’t fit in, she didn’t belong. She felt foreign and alienated from the rest of her peers, andas much as she hated it, that’s how it was and probably always would be.
Kyuki sighed, moving away from the mirror and to the window. She rested her head on the windowsill and watched the last of the sun fade away into the blackness of the night. Slowly one by one, white specks dotted the sky, making the dark vast sky look less intimidating.
Kyuki watched for a minute or so, before standing up. “Might’swell go get my stuff set up...” She mumbled to herself, walking out of her bedroom. “Uncle Chad, I’m going stargazing!” She shouted downstairs.
“Yeah, yeah, you go do that. I’m havin’ Teresa over later, so don’t disturb us or I’ll make sure you wish you were never born!” Came the angry reply back. Kyuki clenched her fist and swore under her breath. ‘Teresa’, was her uncle’s flavor of the week (also known as one of many of his girlfriends that he keeps around for only a week or two before ditching the girl for another one. Which, is certainly not the way to find your soul mate).
Walking out the back door, Kyuki began adjusting the telescope so it was affixed to look at the area of the sky with the most stars (which was kind of hard, considering the whole sky was filled with stars). When she was satisfied with the position of the telescope, she looked through it.
The stars looked even more beautiful up close! Each one seemed unique in its own way, and they all shone like diamonds, twinkling brightly against the black night sky. This was one of the many privileges of being an astronomer; not only did you get the research about stars, comets, and planets, but you could also look up and actually see them.
Kyuki found herself staring in awe at the stars. She blinked and pulled away from the telescope. She finally remembered what she was actually out here to do. A peer from school told her that tonight, a rare shooting star would streak across the sky. It was said to only happen once in a millennium, so obviously you’d want to see it now, or you’d never see it again.
The thing was, Kyuki had never even heard of the star. She knew about almost every star, except that one, apparently. However, considering Kyuki was studying to be an astronomer, and was supposed to
know every star, she deemed the story about this shooting star unlikely.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to check it out, of course.
Refocusing the telescope, Kyuki searched the sky for the shooting star. When she couldn’t find it, she decided to just wait.
So she waited.
And waited.
And waited…
But it never came. Kyuki scowled. “There is no stupid shooting star. What a waste of time.” She stood up and turned around, going back inside, when saw a bright light. She turned around quickly, seeing a bright streak of light tear through the atmosphere. Kyuki’s eyes widened and she smiled. So the shooting star was real!
She watched the shooting star continue to fly across the sky, before her smile slowly faded. “.. Huh.. It looks like it’s coming towards me..”
Chapter Two
Kyuki screamed as she took cover (why she didn’t go inside, is a mystery) as the ‘shooting star’ crashed onto the Earth’s surface, making a loud ‘boom’ noise upon impact to the ground. The impact shook the ground, and Kyuki fell off the porch and into the backyard, in front of the ‘shooting star’. It took a few minutes, but Kyuki forced herself to shakily stand up, her knees wobbling, as she took small steps towards the… thing.
Closer observation showed that the thing was a spaceship (if she wasn’t so afraid, she’d actually be very excited) and it was very badly damaged. Smoke rose from the destroyed ship. Kyuki was unsure of its color due to how badly burnt and charred the ship’s exterior looked. There was no way it’d be functional again. It almost seemed like if there was anything inside the ship, it couldn’t have survived.
Or so she thought.
Kyuki leaned against the ship, observing it closer. It looked very advanced, so right away she knew it couldn’t be from Earth. She rolled her eyes. “People on Earth are too stupid to make things like this anyway.” The letters on the side of it were some weird written out language that Kyuki couldn’t read. The letters looked foreign and odd. Nothing Kyuki had ever seen before. All the windows of the ship were broken, and glass was all over the yard. Every side of the ship was dented and bent inwards. The whirring of the ship came slower and slower until it eventually stopped.
She continued to observe the ship until something caught her off guard. Kyuki’s heart froze in her chest when she heard someone… Or something, coughing inside.
She spun around on her heels to see something she thought she’d never see.
A figure stepped out of the entrance of the ship, coughing and hacking from all the black and heavy smoke that surrounded his or her ship (Kyuki couldn’t really tell the gender). Despite the lack of light, Kyuki could make out some of the being’s features. It had light pink skin with several darker pink dots surrounding the being’s face and neck, huge grey eyes, two antennae that hung down close to the creature’s legs, and on each hand there were only four fingers, which looked more like claws than fingers. Its body was thin, and the alien itself was very short. It wore a black shirt with some symbol on the shoulder and had black tights. On its hands and feet were white gloves and white boots. It possessed a very angry glare towards its ship.
And Kyuki was scared out of her mind.
She took quivering steps backwards, afraid. She knew she should have said something like, “we come in peace, please don’t roast our faces off”, but any words that could’ve been said froze in her throat.
The being heard Kyuki move, and quickly turned it’s grey eyes to her. It’s gaze caused her to stop, and they just stared at each other. Neither moved. Neither talked. Just eerie dead silence. Kyuki could feel the tension in the air.
Finally it scowled, and turned back to its ship, grabbing a loose pipe and pulling it off of the ship. Kyuki was curious on what it was going to do, until it turned back to her, smacking the pipe against it’s gloved hands. Kyuki was about to be mauled. By an alien.
She tried to scream, but her mouth wouldn’t move as it approached her. She was frozen,her feet refusing to move underneath her. Finally, when she collected enough wits to turn around and run, it was too late. The alien had her by the hood of her jacket, and before she knew it her vision had blurred and she fell to the ground. The last thing she remembered was cold sloved hands around her waist, hoisting her up.
...
Darkness. Silence. It was the only thing that filled Kyuki’s mind as she tried to open her eyes. She looked around. Was she dead? And if not, where was she? She heard shuffling and automatically she knew she wasn’t alone. “Hello..? Who’s there?” She asked, afraid.
“Hello.”
Kyuki felt her heartbeat thump quicker. Yup, definitely not alone. “W-Where am I? Who are you?!”
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out~” The voice cooed in a teasing voice.
Kyuki’s eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness of the room, and she squinted at the darkened objects of the room. She still couldn’t see a thing. She sighed in frustration, before trying to stand up… But she found herself strapped down. She struggled underneath the seals that locked her to whatever she was strapped to. It felt cold. Maybe it was a metal table? “Let me go!” She growled, forcing her courage to surface. However, deep inside her, she was panicking. She was fearing for her life.
“Not yet. I want to… observe you.” With that, the lights flipped on.
Kyuki winced at the sudden brightness, but slowly regained her vision. There again, was that weird looking alien-thing, standing in front of her, a malicious smile on its face.
“Human.” It greeted. Kyuki only struggled against her restraints in response.
“A-Alien!” She tried to hiss in reply. She didn’t want to show this thing that she was scared of it, but obviously that wasn’t working out. She struggled more.
The alien smirked. She walked over to the table Kyuki was strapped to, gingerly rubbing a finger across her cheek (which caused Kyuki to stop struggling and try to leanback away from the alien as far as she could).
“But oh, you are too quick to assume.”
Kyuki narrowed her eyes, forcing the fear back down again. “Excusing your horrible manners, care to tell me your name?” The alien cackled loudly in response, before half glaring and half smirking at Kyuki again. “I don’t follow your stupid Earth rituals. However I will give you the gift of my name.” The alien raised its head up proudly. “My name is Fiz. Tell me your name, human.”
Kyuki frowned. “Kyuki. What are you going to do with me?” Kyuki looked closer at the alien, and she decided it was female. She had long eyelashes and she was very slightly curvy. But then again, all of her kind might look like that.
Fiz looked as if she was in thought, before shrugging. “I really have no desire to harm you. You’re the only one who didn’t react badly to my presence.”
Kyuki tilted my head, confused. “What do you mean?”
Fiz rolled her dull colored eyes, glaring at her claw-like fingers. “The first time I crashed onto your planet, an earthling-thingy saw me. He started freakin’ out, sayin’ he was going to take me to the ‘cops’, whatever that is.”
Kyuki was slightly confused on what Fiz meant by ‘the first time’. How do you crash on a planet twice? Brushing the thought aside, shereturned to Fiz’s tale. “What’d you do?” Kyuki asked.
“Oh, I just wiped his memory.” Fiz replied, shrugging, as if it weren’t a big deal.
Kyuki remained silent, unsure what to say. “So.. Um.. what exactly are you doing here on Earth? Why’d you crash here?”
“Oh, I was actually trying to find my home planet, Salpone, but I accidentally crash landed here.” She giggled. “What’d you think I was gonna do? Destroy your planet?” She smirked and rolled her eyes. “I have better things to do with my time. So I suppose I ‘come in peace’.”
Kyuki sighed, mostly of relief. After a moment, she raised an eyebrow “Then why am I tied up?”
Fiz grinned, untying Kyuki from the table. “At first, I thought y
ou’d be afraid of me and go off tellin’ everyone that an alien crash landed here. You were so terrified of my presence, so that had to be the only explanation. That’s why I knocked you out. When I realized you were harmless, I tied you up to give you a small scare.” Kyuki hopped off the table, and Fiz playfully slugged her in the shoulder. “No hard feelings, right?”
Although very weary, Kyuki managed a small grin and a nod. “No hard feelings.”
Chapter Three
The rest of the night was basically long conversations between alien and human. Fiz even showed Kyuki her house, (or as she called it, a base) which was pretty amazing. When Fiz first crashed, she apparently tried to run to the nearest house to hide in. Luckily, the one she found first was abandoned, so no one investigated it or anything. Within a few hours, Fiz had transformed the little house into a base of her own. Within the base, there were lots of weird foreign devices, and Kyuki asked about a lot of them, to which Fiz explained them proudly. Turned out that Fiz was an expert engineer and was GREAT with technology.The thing that shocked the young teen most was the lab she had constructed in the basement.
“Whoa!”Kyuki said, awestruck. She walked over to where many of the machines, chemistry tools, and computers were. “You built ALL of this?!”
Fiz smiled. “Sure did. I bet this is much more superior then your Earth technology, hm?”
“You bet!” Kyuki agreed. Truth was, most humans were completely stupid. Full of greed, unkindness, and stupidity. Even a person of their own race could admit that.
“So human, what do you specialize in?” Fiz asked, her long antenna twitching curiously.
Kyuki was holding one of the devices and was looking at it closely, one eye squinted at it. “What do you mean?”
Fiz leaned against the lab wall. “What do you do best? … Like a hobby. Or a job. Or something.” Fiz explained.
