Life as Bliss was certainly weird, but since the asian woman named Gabrielle told me I'm going to attend The School so I can make sure all of my intelligences stay even, I knew life as Blakely would be more intriguing. Even though I'm still considered the princess of the Emendatae. Maybe I would start with cutting my impossibly long hair. It brushed the small of my back when I walked.
While I was on stage, Gabrielle explained to everybody that I just came into the world a few hours ago, that I'm really sixteen years old and my birthday is April 12, 2198, but as far as how long I've been active, it's been about three hours. The way she explained it was complicated, so I'm just going to tell people I'm sixteen. The word "active" stuck out in my mind. Can they just turn me off and on like a robot? Am I just a test?
When I got off stage, Felix helped me down again, and then told me to follow him. When everybdoy else from The Lab left, he started talking to me again. "I know you feel it." He said. It alarmed me at first, like, Feel what? But then I figured it out. The air of Emendatae. Everywhere I went, I could tell something was wrong. Something about this town just wasn't right, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. And hopefully, Felix is about to tell me. "You're right to feel that way."
I wait for a second, and he still doesn't say anything. "What's wrong, then?"
It was dark, because the party after my "ceremony" was about three hours long. Everybody - and I mean everybody - tried to talk to me. A lot of people gave me their numbers and told me to call them later. I threw all of them away except one. Lily's. I took the piece of paper out of my pocket and held in between my fingertips, and I started to see a ghostly pink color floating around the edges of the paper, like really opaque dust was turning colors. I gasped and turned to Felix. "Look!" I wiggled the paper in front of his face.
"A number?" He asked. "I don't know how I feel about that. Is it a boy?"
I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. "You don't see it." I said. It wasn't a question, but he replied like it was.
"No, sorry hun. See what?" He looked at me with one eyebrow raised.
I lowered the paper and put it back into my pocket. "I don't know. I thought I saw the air around it turning colors." I sighed. What was that?
"Oh, that's just an aura." He seemed relieved, letting out a long sigh. "I thought you were going crazy."
"What's an aura?" I asked as we approached the Musical Section's gate. I could already hear the drums and guitars going off, even though it has to be at least eleven o'clock at night. Felix held up his identification and they let us pass through, bowing slightly. I knew I would never get used to that.
"It's something you see around people and objects, thought it's more common around and above people's heads." He replied, tucking his ID into his wallet and his wallet into the pocket of his jeans. Since you saw pink-" He stopped and looked at me like he was angry. "Is that a boy's number?"
"No." I replied confidently. Then I started laughing. "Your face was great!"
"Don't lie to me little girl!" Felix teased, shaking his finger at me.
"I'm not! Her name is Lily." I replied. "She was really nice." And she mention something about escaping this town, which I thought was interesting and frankly pretty ballsy to say to the... Princess.
"Are you a lesbian?"
"What?" I asked, a bit shocked.
"Are you?" He pressed.
I wasn't, but I decided to tease him. "Oh, I don't know, I've only been active for about a day. I could be anything, you know."
"Alright, alright," Felix sighed and stopped in front of the door of the brick building. "Enough of that. I asked that because a pink aura will represent a new romantic relationship most of the time. But it can also represent a person who is loving, sensual, and artistic. Unless it was a dark pink, then they could be immature and dishonest."
"Interesting." I responded, and I could feel my eyes getting wider, like somehow if I lifted my eyelids high enough, I could get more information faster. "So why are we here?"
"Well, I want to show you as much as I can about this place before you start going to school, and as your technical-father, I want you to know the truth as soon as possible." I tried not to giggle at 'technical-father' and focused on the task at hand. "Let's just say, you're going to be glad we went shopping for new clothes even though it's so late."
I looked down at my new outfit, which was just a simple grey t-shirt, blue jeans, and black and white tennis shoes. I had my hair up in a high ponytail and it still hit my shoulders. "Can I get a hair cut tomorrow?"
"I'm so glad you said it." Felix replied. "Okay, when we go in here, we're going to go down into the basement to meet a few friends of mine."
I nodded, and he opened the door very slowly. He peeked around the corners of the door and then went in, holding the door for me and closing it softly behind us. The place was bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside, even though I could barely see anything except for the size of the room and the outlines of chairs and a reception desk. I wanted to ask about the place, but I decided to wait until I knew it was okay to talk.
Felix waltzed in front of me and into the hall behind the desk, waving for me to follow him. We walked down a dark hallway, to the end of it, and then opened the door to go down the stairs. I held the railing and scooted long the wall to find the next flight of stairs. And then finally, when we got to the bottom, Felix pulled out a key from his pocket, shoved it into the lock, twisted it, and revealed an amazing room full of people who looked like superstars.
The room was warm, not physically, but if I were to describe the energy and the atmosphere of the room, warm and inviting would be the first two words that would pop into my mind. The walls had beautiful red walls and mocha-colored flowers painted on them, identical wood panels framing different sections of the walls all lined up next to each other. There was a beautiful stone fireplace in the back with about three girls hovering around it, all of them holding wine glasses and chatting, but none of them sipping on it. Felix finally announced our presence. "Alright, everyone. Settle down."
When the whole room turned to look at me, the air was cold. All that talk about auras before we came in here was starting to get to me, because I saw different auras surrounding people's bodies, some were white, some were deep red, some were blue, but one, way in the back corner, was black. "I'm just going to warn you, Alphonse - she can read auras."
The boy with the black aura chuckled, then leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. "Of course she can. Just my luck."
"These are getting really annoying." I said, and the whole room exploded in laughter. Even Felix chuckled a little bit.
"We know." Felix said. "We had the same problem. You can turn them off, though."
I glared at him like he was insane. "Are you kidding me? Why would I turn them off?"
He seemed confused and stumbled on his words a little bit. "W-Well... You said they're.. annoying, right?" He scratched his head, ruffling his blond hair.
"I can deal with it if it means I can get an inside look into someone's subconscious personality before I even talk to them. That's what it is, right?"
"Nice try, pipsqueak." Alphonse, the Black Aura, called from the back. He stood up straight and walked over towards me, everybody made room for him as he walked. When he got up close, the top of my head was at the bottom of his chin. I frowned. "An aura is somebody's mood. It's how they feel in the moment, not their true nature." His aura became wider and darker, not more black, but less faded. "And your's is certainly interesting."
"Al, knock it off." A girl with long, purple hair stormed up to him and punched his arm. Alphonse didn't even flinch. She gripped his bicep and mumbled into his ear, "Keep on her good side, will you? She could rat us out at any moment."
"I'm not worried about her snitching," Alphonse said, rolling his eyes. They were a weird color - dark blue with traces of light brown in them. In the silence, all I could hear was the sound of fire crackling. "But I am worried about something."
"My aura." I replied. I held my hand out in front of me and looked at it. What does that color mean?
"Bliss, Al is the only other person in this town who can see auras." Felix said. "When you told me you saw a pink aura around Lily's number, I knew I had brought you to the right place. But the reason we came here to begin with is because we want to talk to you about something very important. We want to talk to you about the true intentions of this town."
"And what would that be?" I asked curiously.
Felix looked at me with hesitation, then turned to the room. "We all think that this town is keeping people here hostage. Wiping people's memories and emotions towards The Lab, replacing them with positive feelings. The older folks here are the parents of the people in here that are your age, and they were smart enough to hide their children so that when they were born, they wouldn't have to be injected."
"Injected?" I asked.
"Yes, it's when-" Felix began, but then the energy suddenly changed, like a very dark presence entered the building, and I looked back at the door.
The room went silent, except for Alphonse. "Huh. So pipsqueak can read auras."
"Stop calling me pipsqueak, bigfoot." I retaliated. "And somebody put out the fire. Something or someone is in the building. And they don't feel too friendly."