hanes_el
04-14-2007, 01:40 AM
This is something new that I thought I would try while I'm stuck in writer's block on Kalla (have the idea's, just can't figure out how to convey them).
I'm sorry if this is a little long but I wanted to get all the technical's covered in the first chapter allowing me to get to the action by the second.
And no, I could not think of a better first sentence, I'm sorry about that too.
As always, good and harsh feedback is greatly appreciated.
The Fertility Project
Chapter 1
Sara ran and ran and ran. Squeezing her dead child underneath her arms, she darted as far as she could; through the forests, over the plains. She slept little, ate little, and hoped to live more little. The infant, now several days dead in her grip, huddled pressed into its mother’s chest.
Dusk was breaking in. This had been the farthest by a long shot Sara had ever ventured from the community. This was in fact, the farthest anyone had traveled. Day and night flickered by in a quarter the time, her body worked at maximum efficiency, something lingering beneath the skin drove her beyond her human limits. The new planet was dangerous; Sara was disappointedly surprised that she had survived this far. She wanted to die, her life was one of ultimate shame.
Dusk faded darker. Sara stopped cold in her tracks as she reached the skirt of the forest; she dropped her lifeless infant daughter to the ground. With incredulous childlike steps, she walked from the rim of trees. Her heart didn’t know whether to beat insanely or to just stop dead. From atop the hill she stood, Sara stared down into the distant plains. From the books she was taught from, it resembled a beautiful borealis, but on the surface of the planet.
Brilliant colored lights sparked and flared across the land. The clouds above her reflected the glow over the entire black horizon. Distant thunderous roars and cries filled the chilling electric air. Sara stared down. There was movement in the farthest distance. What would possibly live in a place like that? What were those strange creatures down there, amidst all those terrifying lights and noises?
A gigantic white flare exploded across the land, burning the horizon in light.
PEOPLE! They were people! There were houses too; a whole city. There was never any knowledge of natives on this planet.
In the flare, Sara now could make out where the lights were coming from. Amidst the center of the city stood an outstandingly majestic building, one which looked about to crumble from the stresses of the lights. From her studies of spaceships, Sara assumed such a building to be a power containment structure.
“Sara,” a harsh whispered voice stung out. Sara jumped.
“Sara,” it stung again.
Sara trailed her sight down the hill to her left. In the glow of the neon lights, Sara could make out a human figure laying on the ground. A woman! A woman who knew her! Sara ran down to her. Did her people send a search party for her. She reached the woman and dropped to her knees. She was hurt.
“Take him,” the woman said. Sara didn’t comprehend her words. She just saw the woman offering her a baby.
“My people, dying from our own ignorance, please take, raise him. I sensed you coming, your deep state of emotion; I led you here. He’s just a few days old, will live through our faults.” The woman was weakening, her voice failing. Her dry words spoke in Sara’s language as if had she had only just learned them. “Nowhere on this planet our people can hide, our power rises from the ground itself. He has yet to attain power; can still live through this error. He will be weak, with no training, but, he will live, with you, wherever you came from. He can live as one of you.”
Sara seeing the baby outstretched to her hands, breathing so gently in sleep, knelt in the upmost confusion.
“Take him, run, do not look back, treat him as you would you own precious lost one. Please, do not let my baby die with me.”
A ribbon of bright green light reached from the city growing ever longer to Sara. Sara turned to its brilliant illumination.
“Take him now!” the woman screamed.
Sara saw the light traveling straight towards the woman and baby. Instinctively she grabbed the outstretched baby and rolled away from the woman. The babies cries awoke from the motion and Sara in her most curious state, turned to watch the woman. The baby stared into its mother’s eyes as the ribbon of green light erupted her body into popping blisters. The woman screamed in horrible pain, screamed for Sara to run, screamed for her to cover her child’s eyes.
----- - --
Sara ran all night. She had to get back home. She was scared. She was beginning to suffer from malnutrition. The baby would suffer soon as well. Although before, she hadn’t officially taken the time to care for herself in her long distant run to death.
Morning broke before Sara’s head began to clear. She had run away to die with her child. She was twenty years old and had finally had her first child. She was shunned for it. It was her last year to produce a child or she would be dropped from the school and sent to the plantations.
Sara had been accepted at sixteen years into Alimea’s Private University. Sixteen was the age all girls began their secondary education. Alimea’s was a small university on a modest budget. There were eight private universities and five public ones. Alimea’s was the second worst of the private ones, but still above all the public ones.
Four years at a university and no child was something no girl ever dared think about. Universities existed for two purposes, expansion of knowledge, and expansion of population. Sara had finally become pregnant. She was an explorer at soul though, and in exploring, she fell into labor. She gave birth to a beautiful baby girl under a tree, four hours away from the community. The baby last breathed two hours away.
A boy! Sara remembered the woman telling her to take ‘him’. The woman clearly had no idea of her people; if she did, she would see it better that the baby died with her. Life as a male in her community was not a life, it was slavery of the worst kind.
Sara bent down and sat the silent baby on the ground. She undid the strange garments that covered the infant and indeed found the small male reproductive organ. She let out a sigh as the realization came over her - she had just saved this newborn from an instant death to live out decades of slavery.
She picked the baby boy back up leaving his strange garments behind and curled him in her shirt. She thought it best not to tell of his true coming. Her people were not ready for that. And a bit more selfishly, she wouldn’t be an outcast. She horrified her own self when she even thought of how she would be almost a hero, a host to a male. The University would definitely extend her stay, most probably with a full scholarship.
As horrifyingly sadistic as it was, the thought was quickly suppressed. Several days went by with only the agony of her bringing this new child into a land of necessary evil. She only wished it would have been a girl. She wished and wished.
Countless days went by. Sara knew how to get back home from the stars and the sun. Why was it taking so long? Had this child’s mother done something to her when she sensed her approach. Were the disoriented days and nights not of malnutrition, but of some other source. Had she really moved so fast, guided to that spot in record time for the sole purpose of protecting that child.
Sara stopped instantly. She had not been around newborns often, maybe twice in her life, but when she had been, they cried, a lot. This one was silent. In her endless days of traveling, she interacted and grew with the child but not once did she hear it cry. Not after she first grabbed it. Not after she froze still, watching the child’s mother boil alive in front of her. Not after the child watched the same thing.
----- - --
The baby was nearing a month old when it and the ragged adoption mom walked into a out-skirting town. Marching day and night on little more than fruits and nuts, she was not a sight. Sara saw the women in the streets cry out in horror as they saw her half dead body holding a slightly moving infant in her shirt. All Sara could think of was how she wished with all her might that the baby was a girl. The small child in her arms shifted silently about in her loving grip, it’s sole reason of survival in its past month of life.
Countless woman raced to Sara. They grabbed the infant from her arms and began carrying both of them to the local hospital.
“What’s her name?” a woman asked looking down to the child.
Sara looked up startled. She peaked up over the shoulder of the woman holding the infant. It was a girl. She couldn’t understand. She thought all the way back through the journey; she knew it was a boy. But its mother; its mother said it had powers; who were those people.
“Jaden, her name is Jaden,” she uttered. A name fit for a boy and a girl she thought.
----- - --
Sara was dropped from the University for child endangerment and went to live with her mother. She knew that that she could not keep Jaden’s secret only to herself and finally convinced her mother of the spectacular story through Jaden’s constantly changing genders. As Sara’s fear of Jaden’s discovery cooled, Jaden stopped masking into a girl. Sara and her mother fought diligently to hide his true identity.
It was easy enough for a young, prepubescent boy. He looked well enough like an odd young girl and was declared mute, he never did talked. The doctors attributed ‘her’ muteness to her first month alive in the wilderness. Sara and her mother though sometimes thought they could hear his mumbled talking through his bedroom door when he was alone.
Jaden attended school just as all the other girls did. He was educated as a girl and in so, received all the knowledge the future generations needed to thrive.
It was year 193; Jaden was six. It was then when he learned why he had to pretend to be a girl.
Year 0 was when the settlers landed. A rough landing after losing course and breaking from their fleet. As a single carrier ship in a Colonial Fleet, only humans and few supplies were aboard. Lost in space, this uncharted planet was an unparalleled gift to the deep space scanners. Through a terribly rough landing and a skim of the atmosphere, the surviving settlers banded together to stay alive on the planet believed to be void of intelligent life.
The Fertility Doctrine was set enacted as the only means of survival. No rescue would be expected for hundreds, possibly thousands of years at the absolute earliest, even then, it would probably be by mere chance of a unsuspecting passerby. Mass reproduction was the only way to survive. It was also their job as colonists, even if this was not the intended planet.
The ship soon ran out of power and was abandoned. The native food supply was believed to be altering fertility. Males were being born at a ratio of one to every fifteen females; each generation worsened the gap. Most of the scientific equipment had been expended on the first generation. No short-ranged study could be conducted to study the food and the few males among the masses of females began using their new power of reproduction to gain total control of the population.
Males began fighting males for power. Men died. Baby boys were killed if they were born from an opposing male. The females rebelled.
Every human male was jailed, separated, and sold to the rising secondary schools. Males became slaves of reproduction. Higher universities locked the males away and extracted their semen and artificially inseminated the females. Lower ones chained the males to beds and let the females use them after classes.
Females quickly became fond of the latter. Male companionship after a hard day of studies seemed more fun than being artificially inseminated and sent on your way to the dormitories.
Male babies became property of the University when born. Sometimes they were kept, sometimes auctioned off. They were educated only enough to determine their potential IQ. A small university raising a child with a high potential IQ could make quite a lot of money selling him to a more prestigious school. Furthermore, if one male produced several boy children in his time, such a school could become prosperous selling the children or even wealthier selling the fertile father.
The history of male suppression was bad enough to Jaden. But Jaden learned even more from his classmates and their views on males. Even at six, his fellow female classmates talked about males as ragdolls and toys their older sisters played with in leisure.
Sara was one of the few females who did sympathize with males though. She herself did once view males as such, but she as well as all girls, do acquire some respect for them. The University forced that much on them. They were property, and one would be severely punished for breaking such property, psychologically or physically.
----- - --
Jaden was thirteen when he had to stop attending school. The girl’s all around him were beginning to mature. Jaden was no different. His maturing though was the opposite of the girls around him.
Sara and her mother knew that they could not hide Jaden forever. And Jaden showed no miraculous powers as he did a month after he was born. Sara’s frightening plan had to now come into play.
She pulled Jaden from school and left with him away from the community. Her mother stayed behind to cover them as long as they needed. The school immediately reported the abduction. Jaden was the top of his class in grades and he was repeatedly scolded for it by Sara. She told him that he was bringing too much attention to himself. Jaden said that he tried everything, but in the end, he learned everything too easily and it was too hard to be average.
Sara wanted desperately to bring Jaden back to his home and they two either live alone in the city or with anyone who might have survived. Jaden though refused to go. He knew the way, it was in his blood. Sara was unsure but knew she had a lifetime to explore in exile. Ultimately, the two lived in solitude just a few miles out of the community.
----- - --
Jaden was seventeen and was no less a man than an experienced warrior. The two quickly found out first hand why the community only stretched so far. Wild animals a plenty roamed free past the fences protecting it. At first, Jaden reacted with a miraculous instinct to save his mother Sara from a jaguar and kill it. In time though, as he grew both physically and psychologically, he relied more on his mind and body to fight and lost his powers.
Sara did tell him every now and then that he was subconsciously always using his powers. That was how he developed so fast. Beyond that, for the muscles he displayed, his physical strength proved much greater. Taking on a bob cat with his lone body as a weapon was unheard of for any male to her from any textbook she had studied.
Jaden was also as swift as the wind. He was an amazing runner and frequently scared his mother with the stories his new scars told about on exploration. She fretted most of his journeys to the community where he would spy from a distance on the woman. She knew he did it, for he always held a gleam of shame in his eyes when he returned. Sara tried her hardest but knew from his growing discomforts, she could not keep a teenage boy away from a community of thousands of women.
She was most scared of him singling out one female. In that, she knew from history, males make their biggest faults in life. Jaden’s would be his capture she thought. She sometimes laughed though at the sight of anybody trying to capture Jaden; he was a ghost when he wanted and a ferocious lion as he wished. His body was laden with the scars to prove his battles won.
Jaden was following in the treetops this particular day a group of eleven year old girls on a field trip. They were following two teachers outside the fenced area. The group of girls were huddled tightly together; they knew what dangers lurked beyond the borders. Beyond the fence though were experiences that every girl needed to know: fear, respect, and a sense of home, regards Jaden’s mother never cared for. They always stayed in sight of the tall wooden staked fence.
A strange bird sounded in the treetops. Jaden could mimic any animal he had heard just once. The girls squeezed together. One girl though looked up. Jaden saw her looking at him and an immediate surge of adrenaline pumped through his body. Was he caught? He vanished into the air. The little girl gasped at the sight of a half naked man in the tree above her disappear like a ghost.
He had learned a little while back that he could access his powers when he felt extreme emotions. He loved the feeling. He knew all too well the dangers of being caught.
Jaden froze. They weren’t alone. He listened. Waited. He then heard it again. A jaguar was casing the pack of girls. No one else had apparently heard it. The two teachers walked on with their bows hung over their shoulders. Jaguars never came this close to the fence. Had it followed him and then picked up the girls’ scent.
The jaguar was too close to the girls to lure it away. By the time an alarm would be raised and support be given, a few lives would be lost. The conditions were pumping amazing pressure into his heart. Leave and maintain cover, or help, and be forever known. The jaguar stopped lurking. He was ready to sprint. Jaden could not see his own wellbeing more valuable than even one of those girl’s lives.
Like the wind, he dropped through the trees to the ground. The jaguar broke into sprint. It’s feet thumping is all one could hear. At least someone heard. A young girl turned and screamed insanely seeing the gigantic cat sprinting at them, saliva trailing from its mouth with its eye’s focusing on its meal. The girl’s high pitched scream exploded through the forest scaring all other life silent.
Following suit, every other girl turned and mimicked the blaring pitch with incredible echo. Before the two instructors could draw their bows, Jaden blew through a bush, slamming the jaguar to the side. He rolled with the animal for several seconds. The giant cat attempted to bite him but he pushed his palm into its mouth and slammed the jaw bone to the side ripping it out of place.
Jaden pulled his hand from the mouth, sliding the lodged tooth out of his palm, and twisted the cat’s neck. Two snaps and the animal laid lifeless.
He stood up to look at the group of girls and found two arrows set in bows, facing his chest. He was scared of nothing. Standing twenty feet from them in animal skin pants and moccasins, Jaden knew even if he was shot by the arrows, even if he decided not to dodge them, he could still run. He knew pain. But opposite of his thoughts, the two instructors lowered their arrows. They were deeply intrigued.
Never in nearly one hundred and fifty years did a man look so defined and experienced. Jaden saw their fascination and slowly walked to them. The group of young girls stared in the most amazing awe at him. Girls at such a young age had generally never even seen a real live male. They had only seen pictures of men in books, mostly scrawny, some were of men they were to grow up and defile in a University.
Standing next to the group of girls and their instructors, Jaden waited. Would they make contact with him. He was virtually mute. He wasn’t going to talk. All the females stared at him in all his glory. One young girl stepped forward to grab his bleeding hand when an arrow struck Jaden’s back. Jaden tensed. Another arrow slammed and dug itself into his back. Poison! He hadn’t thought about that.
Jaden fell before the girls to the ground unconscious. The girls began screaming as he fell to his knees, then face first to the dirt below with two arrows lodged inside him. Two archers stepped out from the trees. Sent to investigate the horrific screams heard earlier, they had neutralized any immediate threat they found.
I'm sorry if this is a little long but I wanted to get all the technical's covered in the first chapter allowing me to get to the action by the second.
And no, I could not think of a better first sentence, I'm sorry about that too.
As always, good and harsh feedback is greatly appreciated.
The Fertility Project
Chapter 1
Sara ran and ran and ran. Squeezing her dead child underneath her arms, she darted as far as she could; through the forests, over the plains. She slept little, ate little, and hoped to live more little. The infant, now several days dead in her grip, huddled pressed into its mother’s chest.
Dusk was breaking in. This had been the farthest by a long shot Sara had ever ventured from the community. This was in fact, the farthest anyone had traveled. Day and night flickered by in a quarter the time, her body worked at maximum efficiency, something lingering beneath the skin drove her beyond her human limits. The new planet was dangerous; Sara was disappointedly surprised that she had survived this far. She wanted to die, her life was one of ultimate shame.
Dusk faded darker. Sara stopped cold in her tracks as she reached the skirt of the forest; she dropped her lifeless infant daughter to the ground. With incredulous childlike steps, she walked from the rim of trees. Her heart didn’t know whether to beat insanely or to just stop dead. From atop the hill she stood, Sara stared down into the distant plains. From the books she was taught from, it resembled a beautiful borealis, but on the surface of the planet.
Brilliant colored lights sparked and flared across the land. The clouds above her reflected the glow over the entire black horizon. Distant thunderous roars and cries filled the chilling electric air. Sara stared down. There was movement in the farthest distance. What would possibly live in a place like that? What were those strange creatures down there, amidst all those terrifying lights and noises?
A gigantic white flare exploded across the land, burning the horizon in light.
PEOPLE! They were people! There were houses too; a whole city. There was never any knowledge of natives on this planet.
In the flare, Sara now could make out where the lights were coming from. Amidst the center of the city stood an outstandingly majestic building, one which looked about to crumble from the stresses of the lights. From her studies of spaceships, Sara assumed such a building to be a power containment structure.
“Sara,” a harsh whispered voice stung out. Sara jumped.
“Sara,” it stung again.
Sara trailed her sight down the hill to her left. In the glow of the neon lights, Sara could make out a human figure laying on the ground. A woman! A woman who knew her! Sara ran down to her. Did her people send a search party for her. She reached the woman and dropped to her knees. She was hurt.
“Take him,” the woman said. Sara didn’t comprehend her words. She just saw the woman offering her a baby.
“My people, dying from our own ignorance, please take, raise him. I sensed you coming, your deep state of emotion; I led you here. He’s just a few days old, will live through our faults.” The woman was weakening, her voice failing. Her dry words spoke in Sara’s language as if had she had only just learned them. “Nowhere on this planet our people can hide, our power rises from the ground itself. He has yet to attain power; can still live through this error. He will be weak, with no training, but, he will live, with you, wherever you came from. He can live as one of you.”
Sara seeing the baby outstretched to her hands, breathing so gently in sleep, knelt in the upmost confusion.
“Take him, run, do not look back, treat him as you would you own precious lost one. Please, do not let my baby die with me.”
A ribbon of bright green light reached from the city growing ever longer to Sara. Sara turned to its brilliant illumination.
“Take him now!” the woman screamed.
Sara saw the light traveling straight towards the woman and baby. Instinctively she grabbed the outstretched baby and rolled away from the woman. The babies cries awoke from the motion and Sara in her most curious state, turned to watch the woman. The baby stared into its mother’s eyes as the ribbon of green light erupted her body into popping blisters. The woman screamed in horrible pain, screamed for Sara to run, screamed for her to cover her child’s eyes.
----- - --
Sara ran all night. She had to get back home. She was scared. She was beginning to suffer from malnutrition. The baby would suffer soon as well. Although before, she hadn’t officially taken the time to care for herself in her long distant run to death.
Morning broke before Sara’s head began to clear. She had run away to die with her child. She was twenty years old and had finally had her first child. She was shunned for it. It was her last year to produce a child or she would be dropped from the school and sent to the plantations.
Sara had been accepted at sixteen years into Alimea’s Private University. Sixteen was the age all girls began their secondary education. Alimea’s was a small university on a modest budget. There were eight private universities and five public ones. Alimea’s was the second worst of the private ones, but still above all the public ones.
Four years at a university and no child was something no girl ever dared think about. Universities existed for two purposes, expansion of knowledge, and expansion of population. Sara had finally become pregnant. She was an explorer at soul though, and in exploring, she fell into labor. She gave birth to a beautiful baby girl under a tree, four hours away from the community. The baby last breathed two hours away.
A boy! Sara remembered the woman telling her to take ‘him’. The woman clearly had no idea of her people; if she did, she would see it better that the baby died with her. Life as a male in her community was not a life, it was slavery of the worst kind.
Sara bent down and sat the silent baby on the ground. She undid the strange garments that covered the infant and indeed found the small male reproductive organ. She let out a sigh as the realization came over her - she had just saved this newborn from an instant death to live out decades of slavery.
She picked the baby boy back up leaving his strange garments behind and curled him in her shirt. She thought it best not to tell of his true coming. Her people were not ready for that. And a bit more selfishly, she wouldn’t be an outcast. She horrified her own self when she even thought of how she would be almost a hero, a host to a male. The University would definitely extend her stay, most probably with a full scholarship.
As horrifyingly sadistic as it was, the thought was quickly suppressed. Several days went by with only the agony of her bringing this new child into a land of necessary evil. She only wished it would have been a girl. She wished and wished.
Countless days went by. Sara knew how to get back home from the stars and the sun. Why was it taking so long? Had this child’s mother done something to her when she sensed her approach. Were the disoriented days and nights not of malnutrition, but of some other source. Had she really moved so fast, guided to that spot in record time for the sole purpose of protecting that child.
Sara stopped instantly. She had not been around newborns often, maybe twice in her life, but when she had been, they cried, a lot. This one was silent. In her endless days of traveling, she interacted and grew with the child but not once did she hear it cry. Not after she first grabbed it. Not after she froze still, watching the child’s mother boil alive in front of her. Not after the child watched the same thing.
----- - --
The baby was nearing a month old when it and the ragged adoption mom walked into a out-skirting town. Marching day and night on little more than fruits and nuts, she was not a sight. Sara saw the women in the streets cry out in horror as they saw her half dead body holding a slightly moving infant in her shirt. All Sara could think of was how she wished with all her might that the baby was a girl. The small child in her arms shifted silently about in her loving grip, it’s sole reason of survival in its past month of life.
Countless woman raced to Sara. They grabbed the infant from her arms and began carrying both of them to the local hospital.
“What’s her name?” a woman asked looking down to the child.
Sara looked up startled. She peaked up over the shoulder of the woman holding the infant. It was a girl. She couldn’t understand. She thought all the way back through the journey; she knew it was a boy. But its mother; its mother said it had powers; who were those people.
“Jaden, her name is Jaden,” she uttered. A name fit for a boy and a girl she thought.
----- - --
Sara was dropped from the University for child endangerment and went to live with her mother. She knew that that she could not keep Jaden’s secret only to herself and finally convinced her mother of the spectacular story through Jaden’s constantly changing genders. As Sara’s fear of Jaden’s discovery cooled, Jaden stopped masking into a girl. Sara and her mother fought diligently to hide his true identity.
It was easy enough for a young, prepubescent boy. He looked well enough like an odd young girl and was declared mute, he never did talked. The doctors attributed ‘her’ muteness to her first month alive in the wilderness. Sara and her mother though sometimes thought they could hear his mumbled talking through his bedroom door when he was alone.
Jaden attended school just as all the other girls did. He was educated as a girl and in so, received all the knowledge the future generations needed to thrive.
It was year 193; Jaden was six. It was then when he learned why he had to pretend to be a girl.
Year 0 was when the settlers landed. A rough landing after losing course and breaking from their fleet. As a single carrier ship in a Colonial Fleet, only humans and few supplies were aboard. Lost in space, this uncharted planet was an unparalleled gift to the deep space scanners. Through a terribly rough landing and a skim of the atmosphere, the surviving settlers banded together to stay alive on the planet believed to be void of intelligent life.
The Fertility Doctrine was set enacted as the only means of survival. No rescue would be expected for hundreds, possibly thousands of years at the absolute earliest, even then, it would probably be by mere chance of a unsuspecting passerby. Mass reproduction was the only way to survive. It was also their job as colonists, even if this was not the intended planet.
The ship soon ran out of power and was abandoned. The native food supply was believed to be altering fertility. Males were being born at a ratio of one to every fifteen females; each generation worsened the gap. Most of the scientific equipment had been expended on the first generation. No short-ranged study could be conducted to study the food and the few males among the masses of females began using their new power of reproduction to gain total control of the population.
Males began fighting males for power. Men died. Baby boys were killed if they were born from an opposing male. The females rebelled.
Every human male was jailed, separated, and sold to the rising secondary schools. Males became slaves of reproduction. Higher universities locked the males away and extracted their semen and artificially inseminated the females. Lower ones chained the males to beds and let the females use them after classes.
Females quickly became fond of the latter. Male companionship after a hard day of studies seemed more fun than being artificially inseminated and sent on your way to the dormitories.
Male babies became property of the University when born. Sometimes they were kept, sometimes auctioned off. They were educated only enough to determine their potential IQ. A small university raising a child with a high potential IQ could make quite a lot of money selling him to a more prestigious school. Furthermore, if one male produced several boy children in his time, such a school could become prosperous selling the children or even wealthier selling the fertile father.
The history of male suppression was bad enough to Jaden. But Jaden learned even more from his classmates and their views on males. Even at six, his fellow female classmates talked about males as ragdolls and toys their older sisters played with in leisure.
Sara was one of the few females who did sympathize with males though. She herself did once view males as such, but she as well as all girls, do acquire some respect for them. The University forced that much on them. They were property, and one would be severely punished for breaking such property, psychologically or physically.
----- - --
Jaden was thirteen when he had to stop attending school. The girl’s all around him were beginning to mature. Jaden was no different. His maturing though was the opposite of the girls around him.
Sara and her mother knew that they could not hide Jaden forever. And Jaden showed no miraculous powers as he did a month after he was born. Sara’s frightening plan had to now come into play.
She pulled Jaden from school and left with him away from the community. Her mother stayed behind to cover them as long as they needed. The school immediately reported the abduction. Jaden was the top of his class in grades and he was repeatedly scolded for it by Sara. She told him that he was bringing too much attention to himself. Jaden said that he tried everything, but in the end, he learned everything too easily and it was too hard to be average.
Sara wanted desperately to bring Jaden back to his home and they two either live alone in the city or with anyone who might have survived. Jaden though refused to go. He knew the way, it was in his blood. Sara was unsure but knew she had a lifetime to explore in exile. Ultimately, the two lived in solitude just a few miles out of the community.
----- - --
Jaden was seventeen and was no less a man than an experienced warrior. The two quickly found out first hand why the community only stretched so far. Wild animals a plenty roamed free past the fences protecting it. At first, Jaden reacted with a miraculous instinct to save his mother Sara from a jaguar and kill it. In time though, as he grew both physically and psychologically, he relied more on his mind and body to fight and lost his powers.
Sara did tell him every now and then that he was subconsciously always using his powers. That was how he developed so fast. Beyond that, for the muscles he displayed, his physical strength proved much greater. Taking on a bob cat with his lone body as a weapon was unheard of for any male to her from any textbook she had studied.
Jaden was also as swift as the wind. He was an amazing runner and frequently scared his mother with the stories his new scars told about on exploration. She fretted most of his journeys to the community where he would spy from a distance on the woman. She knew he did it, for he always held a gleam of shame in his eyes when he returned. Sara tried her hardest but knew from his growing discomforts, she could not keep a teenage boy away from a community of thousands of women.
She was most scared of him singling out one female. In that, she knew from history, males make their biggest faults in life. Jaden’s would be his capture she thought. She sometimes laughed though at the sight of anybody trying to capture Jaden; he was a ghost when he wanted and a ferocious lion as he wished. His body was laden with the scars to prove his battles won.
Jaden was following in the treetops this particular day a group of eleven year old girls on a field trip. They were following two teachers outside the fenced area. The group of girls were huddled tightly together; they knew what dangers lurked beyond the borders. Beyond the fence though were experiences that every girl needed to know: fear, respect, and a sense of home, regards Jaden’s mother never cared for. They always stayed in sight of the tall wooden staked fence.
A strange bird sounded in the treetops. Jaden could mimic any animal he had heard just once. The girls squeezed together. One girl though looked up. Jaden saw her looking at him and an immediate surge of adrenaline pumped through his body. Was he caught? He vanished into the air. The little girl gasped at the sight of a half naked man in the tree above her disappear like a ghost.
He had learned a little while back that he could access his powers when he felt extreme emotions. He loved the feeling. He knew all too well the dangers of being caught.
Jaden froze. They weren’t alone. He listened. Waited. He then heard it again. A jaguar was casing the pack of girls. No one else had apparently heard it. The two teachers walked on with their bows hung over their shoulders. Jaguars never came this close to the fence. Had it followed him and then picked up the girls’ scent.
The jaguar was too close to the girls to lure it away. By the time an alarm would be raised and support be given, a few lives would be lost. The conditions were pumping amazing pressure into his heart. Leave and maintain cover, or help, and be forever known. The jaguar stopped lurking. He was ready to sprint. Jaden could not see his own wellbeing more valuable than even one of those girl’s lives.
Like the wind, he dropped through the trees to the ground. The jaguar broke into sprint. It’s feet thumping is all one could hear. At least someone heard. A young girl turned and screamed insanely seeing the gigantic cat sprinting at them, saliva trailing from its mouth with its eye’s focusing on its meal. The girl’s high pitched scream exploded through the forest scaring all other life silent.
Following suit, every other girl turned and mimicked the blaring pitch with incredible echo. Before the two instructors could draw their bows, Jaden blew through a bush, slamming the jaguar to the side. He rolled with the animal for several seconds. The giant cat attempted to bite him but he pushed his palm into its mouth and slammed the jaw bone to the side ripping it out of place.
Jaden pulled his hand from the mouth, sliding the lodged tooth out of his palm, and twisted the cat’s neck. Two snaps and the animal laid lifeless.
He stood up to look at the group of girls and found two arrows set in bows, facing his chest. He was scared of nothing. Standing twenty feet from them in animal skin pants and moccasins, Jaden knew even if he was shot by the arrows, even if he decided not to dodge them, he could still run. He knew pain. But opposite of his thoughts, the two instructors lowered their arrows. They were deeply intrigued.
Never in nearly one hundred and fifty years did a man look so defined and experienced. Jaden saw their fascination and slowly walked to them. The group of young girls stared in the most amazing awe at him. Girls at such a young age had generally never even seen a real live male. They had only seen pictures of men in books, mostly scrawny, some were of men they were to grow up and defile in a University.
Standing next to the group of girls and their instructors, Jaden waited. Would they make contact with him. He was virtually mute. He wasn’t going to talk. All the females stared at him in all his glory. One young girl stepped forward to grab his bleeding hand when an arrow struck Jaden’s back. Jaden tensed. Another arrow slammed and dug itself into his back. Poison! He hadn’t thought about that.
Jaden fell before the girls to the ground unconscious. The girls began screaming as he fell to his knees, then face first to the dirt below with two arrows lodged inside him. Two archers stepped out from the trees. Sent to investigate the horrific screams heard earlier, they had neutralized any immediate threat they found.