Parallel

They say when you die your life flashes before your eyes. I say that's a pretty disappointing gimmick. So as I lay on the bloodstained grass, barely aware of Blade's presence beside me, I wasn't getting a nostalgic, tears-in-your-eyes rerun of the lives and times of Trigger and her crazy friend. Nah, that would be too easy, too painless. Instead I clung to Blade's existence, the shimmer of incoherent thoughts that let off a distinctly Blade-ish vibe. I fought to keep my own mind intact and together as I went through the equal of a human "out of body experience" magnified by ten. Dying. No one had said it was any fun.

Trigger? A thought nudged its way past my mind's weak, almost nonexistent barriers and settled somewhere in my consciousness. I ignored it. My brain was still scrambled from the excruciation of death, or rather, what came after it.

Trig? The persistent yet familiar voice continued, still intent on getting a response. I groaned, sat up, and opened my eyes, bracing them for the sunlight that would pierce into my retinas.

"Trrrriiiggggerrrr," now Blade had switched over to vocal singing mode, which was never pleasant. I shook my head and found myself smiling.

"Well, we did it. Again."

"You mean we died again?" he asked. "…Or we lost the fight again?"

That's right. Blade had demanded if we'd died again. The concept was totally normal and not particularly alarming given our situation. To any other person on the face of the earth, death was final. For us, it was a new beginning. More on that later.

"Both," I said wryly. "But mostly, we're still ourselves…" I paused and glanced at his blond hair. Last time I'd seen him, it'd been red. "…On the inside."

Blade laughed. "Yeah, we've still got it."

I flopped back onto the grass, which was completely blood-free. That meant we'd gone Parallel, my term for our little talent.

A thought, one of my own creation this time, drifted into my mind.

"Remember how we got our names?"

A dark grin spread across his face.

"You mean from Parallel testing? When we were young and stupid?" He laughed. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw his head drop down next to mine. Now we were just two kids looking up at the sky. Normal, right?

"Yeah…" I murmured, half focused. We weren't suicidal, but how else were we supposed to test what we could do? Our real names were meaningless… Audrey and Aaron. Our new names, well… Trigger and Blade. Dark but cool. Laced with hidden meaning that no one seemed to get.

"How 'bout we explore our new world?" he suggested, changing the subject. "What say you?"

I laughed nervously at his intentionally poor grammar. This was the part I loved the most and yet it was what I feared the most as well: "exploring our new world". Because we never knew what we'd find. This was why I'd always been so bad at history the few times we'd attempted school. Every time we started over, history rewrote itself.

A/N: Well, here it is. The story that Jaime wanted me to put on fictionpress. And Monika, I can too write two stories at once! sticks tongue out