CHAOS FINALE
Episode Six: The Broken Shield

        Story settings; Liv is falling into a deep depression. Spying around her a world in turmoil and even worse, seeing those who are destined to stand and fight. For what reason would she ever take that so-important line of duty? It may end up costing her something in the long run, for a single push will shatter her permanently.

Opening
        Settling in the new housing with some new faces, Liv hasn´t said a word. All she can think about is her past and the rare moments she focused onto Gwydion. With each beat of her heart, something urges her on and when Ananke appears again, she finds herself almost believing in the power of light.

        Silence, a cold realm of nothingness, of solitude and a emptiness. Short shots of silver light flashed in front of her eyes, blinding her time and again. And as Liv shifted in her sleep, the dreamless state giving way to wake, her tears fell down the sides of her cheeks to land in the mussed hair. Staring up at the ceiling, she heaved a slow sigh.
        "Good morning!" Carmen sat primly at the feet of the small bed. "How are we feeling?"
        Liv sat up and moved automatically. Her eyes never even flicked over the cat.
        "And I am doing great! I´m gathering the soldiers as we speak and you know what would be really great? If you joined too!"
        This was met by a stony silence.
        "Not a morning person, I completely understand. But you must realize, I will not give up. I was given a mission, if you will, and you are a part of the whole solution. No matter how small, we all will be strong together."
        Carmen paused. "Together." She repeated slowly.
        Liv had finished pulling out her things. She had been given the second bathroom, since it was attached to her room and went into the said room, still speechless.
        Outside, a young girl moved with fluid movement. Her eyes stared around the tall buildings, surrounding the blue skies as the sun blazed brightly. Her apple green eyes glittered as her blonde hair ruffled in the slight winds.
        She turned a corner toward a residential area, an enclosed cul-de-sac. With no effort whatsoever, she approached a bright, cheerful pale almond house, a two-story building with a porch covering the front width, the wooden steps a opening of a welcome. She knocked on the door and waited.
        "Hold on!" Gwydion grumbled. Having woken up by his grandmother´s enthusiastic, "it´s a beautiful new day, Gwydion!", very early on, he had taken to unpacking the last bits of his boxes. He approached the oak door, opening it and then stilling. "Yes?" He asked blankly.
        "Hello, My name is Perdita Damia. I met Liv Tavor a while ago. May I speak to her?" Perdita smiled brightly.
        It took a moment for Gwydion to react. He flushed, realizing he had gotten lost in the woman´s gaze. He was, once more, reminded of something he couldn´t quite place.
        "Here, please enter." He waved her in with a grand flourish. "I will get Liv.. if she´s still here." He added softly to himself. "Please, be here.."
        "Liv?" He knocked on the door lightly. "You have company."
        He waited for a moment before raising a fist to knock again. The door flung open, her face reddening. "Ah, are you all right?"
        Her head bobbed up and down wildly. "Great! There´s a Perdita Damia here to..."
        The door slammed in front of his face. "See you but I guess that won´t be happening anytime soon."
        "Let me go in," he jerked, hearing her voice so close to his ear. Perdita stood just behind his side, a few inches from him. "I really need to discuss things with her."
        She didn´t get far before there was the sound of a small stampede. Gwydion idly wondered how a single cat could make such noise.
        "HEY!" Carmen attempted to halt but she began it on a carpet that only flung her forward as she shrieked. Crashing into the wall, she staggered around a bit before shaking her head. "I need to talk to you!" She told the desk leg.
        "A little more to the right, Carmen," Gwydion offered.
        She shook her head again. "I´m seeing double...."
        "Hello." Perdita knelt down, resting her elbows on her bended knees. She rocked carefully on the heels of her feet. "Who are you?"
        "I am Carmen and you are.."
        "A sailor soldier."
        "...Right.." Carmen had sucked in her breath and then let it out breezily. "That´s great! But I..."
        Before she could continue, Perdita stood up again. Turning toward Gwydion, who was staring at her without knowing it, her face just barely tinted red. "Yes?"
        "Oh, right.." He stepped away from the door only to watch Perdita march right in and close the door firmly  behind her.
        "Guess she doesn´t need me," he said weakly to Carmen.
        "Love struck fool..." Carmen muttered to herself.
        "Enough of this," Perdita began instantly, zooming on the still girl. "You must stop hiding."
        Liv stared at the floor, her eyes dull. "Liv, you must feel it. That connection, that need? We were born to protect," Perdita touched the girl´s shoulder. "I came all this way to help you. I know what it´s like to have nothing, to not understand why we exist in this hellish war. You and I.." She smiled gently. "We are a lot alike. But there must be someone out there worth fighting for. Even for a single person, it is so important to stand."
        Liv shook her head slowly.
        "Then why do you still carry it with you? The pen that graced your fingers, that is hidden on your person. That each time something bad happens, you hold it all the more tighter?"
        Liv´s head jerked up.
        "I know it hurts but even a single person can make a difference."
        "The anger... the rage in my father´s eyes. The pain in my mother´s eyes. When I was needed then, I couldn´t be. I have nothing to be now.." Her voice was raspy. Her eyes closed. "Nothing in this world would turn me around."
        "Not even love?"
        Liv got a sudden mental picture of Gwydion. Her face gave away her emotions. "I don´t deserve it."
        "You´re wrong there. Everyone needs to be whole and love is a powerful side to it all. If you could, would you fight for the one you loved, no matter what?"
        "I want to.." She whispered.
        "Think about it," Perdita turned away. "I´m sorry to have barged right in but we need all of us together and soon."
        She exited the room, closing the door gently.
        "How´d it go?" Carmen asked carefully.
        "I like to think that I reached something," Perdita leaned down. "Carmen, be warned of those of the Lost. They are not as they appear to be."
        "Who are the Lost?" Carmen asked quizzically.
        "You will know soon enough." And the front door closed with a click of finality.
        "Damn it, she didn´t even look at me," Gwydion muttered from the living room. Sprawled causally on it, he leaned his head back. "Not fair!"
        Liv managed to get out unnoticed a while later. Her mind buzzed with thoughts but all of which were about her past. The faces of her parents that haunted her drove her to near insanity. She pulled out her locket to gaze at them and the rest of the family.
        "Last one left.. am I to end it all here?" She asked them, expecting an answer.
        A wind picked up, warm and soothing. A gentle light settled around her as she moved, her head cast down as if she refused to look up.
        ‘I want to... I do want to.. Believe in such things as light and love. When all else has gone dark, have I truly lost myself?´
        She rummaged in her pocket for money as she boarded the bus to anywhere. She sat by the window, watching the faces blending together as she sought one of them that she could possibly think of protecting.
        ‘If we are born to fight, than what is the purpose of being human if there´s no time? Where is our peace now?´
        The sun continued to shine above as she became lost in her thoughts. She got off at a random stop to find herself across the Sea of Serenity Botanical Gardens. She wasn´t even aware of it even being open. It looked deserted, left to become wild. The only thing left visible on the sign was the word Serenity.
        That was something Liv definitely needed. She entered with little care of being caught in case this was an now restricted area. But she met up with no one else but her shadow.
        She kept thinking of who she could possibly fight for when she realized that the person she kept thinking about was who she was trying so hard to say it wasn´t. But when he didn´t even see her, that one special person that made her feel something more human than a shell, was it worth all the heart ache?
        "Of the thorns of the rose, doeth the heart bleed. A gaze most morose, does break the warrior creed," came a soft voice. At first, she thought it was from the winds before a shadow fell over her from high in the air.
        A floating man with blazing red hair that was longer at the front with two thick tendrils of dark navy blue cupping his face, his hollow blue eyes looked out. Dressed in a dark cerulean top with a collar and the short sleeves torn, a metal of navy blue covering the bottom half in diamond shaped bits, the dark brown pants fit tightly down the thighs and what was visible of the calves. The dark cerulean boots reached just before his knees. It has a narrow dark navy blue tongue, with it pressed flatter by the tightly drawn shoelace.
        He wore a dark brown band across his chest, along his back hoisting a rather pinkish hammer-like weapon. His arms were covered from his hands to the elbows in first dark navy blue fabric with an overlapping dark brown that ended at his elbow.
        For a moment, a spark was seen in those empty eyes before dispersing as he hit the ground, pulling out his weapon. "I be the one doest named Vulcan. Pray tell, what be you?"
        Liv stepped back slowly. The light that should´ve been around this person was as black as night. "Who.. who are you?"
        "Did I not speak, oh Holy Star? I be the one Vulcan of the Mercury Worlds," his head tilted to the side lazily, his predatory smile stretching across sharp teeth.
        "You.. you´re insane."
        His throaty laugh echoed around her. "Oh, this be so wondrous, a soldier upon a soldier upon a nothingness." His eyes sparked again. "I be Vulcan, the Blacksmith."
        Fingers coasted over the handle of his hammer, the pointed bits at the heavy end falling out to create two, very heavy chains of dark navy blue, glinting silver blue in the sunlight. He spun it to swim around him, breaking him again and again from sight in blinks.
        It fell down at his side with a ruckus that caused the earth to move under it. The hole crumbled inward from the intense weight as his smile darkened. "For what goal is it to stand when the ground is not there to land? You be on the wrong side, woman."
        "Liv!" Carmen came crashing toward her. "Transform NOW!"
        "I... there´s this guy.." She began.
        Carmen screamed as Liv felt the wind break next to her by inches. Turning as if in slow motion, the chain was being pulled back as Vulcan´s dead gaze met hers onward. "Do not turn from me." The anger liberated him as he lunged, raising the chained hammer without a second thought.
        "LIV!"
        She moved too slowly, falling to the side as she grasped a shoulder. "Ahh.... stop.. I´m not.. I can´t.. please, NO!"
        "Tarot Deduce!" Star energy blazed out as Vulcan pulled back, his chain lighting up in the heat cast by the attack. "Get away from her," Gwydion spoke coolly. "Who do you think you are?"
        "I be who I be and only me," Vulcan´s singsong voice snagged in the wind. "Oh, how troubled we are to be, to never know to be free." He moved to attack as Gwydion moved to fight him physically.
        "Behind you!" Liv shouted as the chain roped around Gwydion´s heels snaked, catching him off guard. He fell in a heap as it wrapped around him. His eyes widened in terror as the chain pressed against his throat.
        "No one to stand for you, now is there, fool?" Vulcan asked softly. His head tilted as he raised the hammer ever so slightly.
        ‘It´s happening.. all over again. I can´t let this be... I have to do this.. I have to, no matter how much I don´t!´
        "Liv!" Gwydion´s choking voice awoke her. Her hand was so tightly grasped onto her pen, the feeling in her fingers were gone. "Please!"
        "Amaltheia Power, Make Up!" She felt the sensation of deja vu and then a emptiness swallowing her. The energy built around her to slam into her empty being, filling her to the brim as she struggled to not scream.
        Her silver tiara rested upon her brow, the pink gem glittering dully. She wore a crisscrossing choker of true blue. Her collar was a dull pink with two colored stripes, the inner one green and the outer one true blue. She had a green round brooch, outlined in silver rim, that lay over an oversized true blue bowtie. Her bodice was sleeveless and without the additional roll of fabric at the waist, going into the pink skirt with a visible seam. Around her hips, resting slightly loose was a green strap with a oval gray gem in its center front, resting just above her crotch, that had a green loincloth fall from it. The sign of Jupiter was etched in black upon it. From the back, falling from the green strap were two blue tails that opened up at the bottom toward the mid-calves. Her gloves were halfway up her arms, a true blue. She wore slipper shoes, a dull pink with green roses on the top of her foot, along the edge.
        "Let him go!" She screamed, grasping a chain. It pulled away effortlessly as she threw it the side, her chest heaving.
        Gwydion rubbed his throat, tearing the other one away from him. Vulcan seemed eerily fascinated by Liv´s transformation.
        "So inside that heart set free, exists the key." He whipped the weapon around his head. "This is the end of the light and time of the darkness. Be warned, says I!"
        "Amaltheia Screensaver!" Hands pressed flatly forward as a filmy barrier formed, the chains bounced harmlessly away.
        "For another day I leave you be, but you shall never, ever be truly free.." Vulcan warned before disappearing effortlessly.
        "Are you all right?" Liv reached out hesitantly. Gwydion waved her away, nodded shortly. "But you.."
        "Fine, thank you. And for saving me then," he gave a slow smile. "I bet Carmen will have a field day.."
        "Carmen?" He turned around, looking for the cat but she was long gone. "Great, I´m not looking for her. She can walk home!"