Chapter 9 - RCA

“Miss Natacha! Can we play again?” asked Holly the next morning.

Natacha raised a brow. Something was off about the zalavan. She had expected the little plant girl to be cowering and afraid after the rough beating she was dealt yesterday.

Not only was she back up and full of her usual pep but the only physical difference today was Holly’s hood was up.

“Are you sure? I’m not going to hold back if that’s what you’re hoping for,” warned Natacha.
“Were you yesterday?” questioned Holly.

Natacha smirked. “Care to find out?”

Holly beamed brightly, her usual innocence shining right alongside the morning sun. “I like surprises!” she cheered.

“Very well, two minutes.” Natacha extended her wings, just as she had done yesterday, and took off into the trees.

The zalavan chuckled. “I hope you like surprises too, Miss Natacha,” muttered Holly in her true voice, making her way into the woods.

Even if it was a repeat of yesterday’s exercise, Holly still didn’t want to get hit. Natacha did not know how to pull her punches, that much was obvious. The roots of Rullante di Radice did nothing to stop the runaway truck of a Resonator either. The little zalavan pulled her hood down further, she didn’t want to play her hand too soon.

She stopped next to a tree, struggling to catch her breath. Maybe that was something she should have worked on before she ever considered an expedition out of Inverna – her physical stamina. All the spells in the world meant nothing if movement options were limited by her muscles (or lack thereof).

The little plant girl took a breath, and in that moment, the predator swooped down from above. “Linfa Appiccicosa, Mosso!” Holly cried as she pushed off the tree. Natacha missed by a blade of grass, but Holly wasn’t done, she spun around and slammed the full force of her body into the bird, pinning her against a tree.

“You’re dead!” Natacha shouted, coating her body in electricity.
“No, I’m not!” Holly sang. The force of pinning the bird to the tree had knocked her hood off. Where red berries once hung now two cacao were sprouted.

Holly beamed brightly as the electricity coursed through her to no effect.

“You can grow other plants…” realized the bird. “And now you’re a lightning element.”

“I read it in a book once and wanted to try it,” Holly replied innocently. It was the truth and worked far better than she had hoped. The books didn’t say she’d gain the element of the plant growing. It was a useful trait, but a borrowed one. She hopped back, leaving Natacha against the tree.

“Cute trick but-” Natatcha tried to take off again, but found her wings refused to obey. “What the-”

“Oh, that tree is kinda sticky. I should have warned you, sorry Miss Natacha!” Holly falsely fretted. In her mind though, she wore the biggest shit-eating grin. She placed a hand on another tree, borrowing five of the seeds at the crown of the trunk.

“Colpo di Vite, Fortissimo.” The carnivorous plant licked her lips as a thick green vine materialized in her grasp. She cracked it like a whip, the distinctive snap echoing through the woods. With a twirl, she sent the loose stem towards Natacha, ready to inflict some much-deserved revenge.

However, Holly never learned revenge was a route to destruction, her undoing. In her haste, she failed to realize one very important thing.

“I still have arms.” Natacha held the whip in place, its kinetic payload totally negated in one move.
“Uh-oh,” was all Holly managed to utter.

The lightning element yanked the zalavan forward. It all happened so quickly, that Holly didn’t have time to even consider letting go. Where did it all go wrong? She didn’t have the luxury of considering an exit strategy as her face was rapidly hurtling towards Natacha’s swung fist.

THWACK!

That was gonna suck later.

---

“I really gotta stop waking up like this,” mumbled Holly, the vexation oozing from her voice. It was afternoon and she was once again alone. Her head pounded, though her nose wasn’t broken like she had assumed it would be given how readily her face had accepted the meteor of a fist hours prior. “Hrmph.” No matter, she still had passionfruit seeds to her name, so she capitalized.

One La Bella Vita later and she was in pain no longer. That left one more nagging issue: hunger. At least there was stew. Only stew. By this point, Holly had memorized where all the utensils were kept, so she made herself an afternoon snack.

She looked out the open window. Thick, dark clouds were moving in. A rumble of thunder informed of the impending storm. “Hm, should be interesting,” she mused to herself. Something to watch later. For now, it was food time. The little zalavan plopped herself down on the edge of the bed and got comfy while she blew off the first spoonful of stew to get it to a reasonable temperature.

While she ate, she committed to another root cause analysis session to analyze her recent failure.

Problem: I got my shit rocked.

Why?
Natacha punched me.

Why?
She grabbed my Colpo di Vite.

Why?
Her hands were free.

Why?
I assumed she was restrained.

“Ah…” The answer to her disastrous performance came to light. She set her spoon down against the rim of her bowl. “I assumed…” She furrowed her brow as she ruminated on that thought.

Holly hadn’t been out of Inverna for long, but she was already getting complacent. “I need to get out of here. See more Resonators, learn more,” she decided. There were no illusions in her mind that she would be the best fighter or anything like that, but she had to see them – Maestros. Her only experience with one wasn’t a good test of what they were really like. Books did them no justice either, as many things she had already experienced in her limited time free from the shackles of her birthplace.

This brought her to another problem.

“Still don’t know where the hell I am,” she mumbled, studying the remaining stew as if to scry a map from the cooked meat and veggies. Unfortunately for the little zalavan, they provided no such information.

The door opened, snapping Holly from her deep thoughts.

“Oh, you’re awake,” noted the bird, before making her way to her cauldron to check on the ever-boiling soup.

“Miss Natacha, are there cities around here?” Holly asked.

The lightning elemental stiffened. “Yeah. Why?”
“I want to try to find my way home, but I need to go to a city to do that,” Holly said, her usual false naiveté in full effect.
“Doubtful. Your people are well hidden. If you don’t even know what direction you came from you have no hope of finding your way home.”

“Well, I do remember the bad men took me out of the cave and we were really really high up. I could see the tippy tops of the trees!” The memory earned a genuine smile from the girl, she wished she had the opportunity to view that vista again during the day.

Natacha gave a short, pitying snort. “Do you know how many mountains are in Selvica?” asked the bird.
“Hmmm…” Holly did recall looking at a map of her home continent at one point, but couldn’t remember any specifics. “Dunno, how many?”

“Over 850.”

That was quite a few, a lot even. Now how in the world was she going to lie her way out of this one? “I’ll just have to check them all then!” The brute force method, Holly decided.

“Idiot!” Natacha whipped around; the wrath palpable in her voice. The sudden intensity in tone made Holly's heart seize up as her breath was caught in her throat. This wasn't like when they were practicing. The temper from the bird hit Holly in just the right way to make an unpleasant association in her mind, one buried deep. A core memory overlaid atop the present day, and what Natacha said next only solidified the connection to the past: “Who do you think you are?!” The furious scowl the bird wore made her seem much bigger than Holly remembered.

The little zalavan tried to keep her composure, but it broke as soon as Natacha moved her arm. She couldn't be sure of the bird's intentions, but instinct took over. With her flight reflex fully activated, Holly tapped into the cacao on her head. In an instant, she was out the window. The bowl of stew she had been holding splattered all over the ground. Not that she was a witness to the mess she caused – one Preschiverò had her standing outside of the cabin, the twin fruits on her head burnt away along with her borrowed affinity for lightning.

However, Holly was not focused on that, but on her own breathing. Her short, panicked breaths, the tears in her eyes. She didn’t see the firm, but ultimately kind bird at that moment. Repressed memories reared their ugly head. She gripped her chest as Natacha’s confused gaze studied the panicked Resonator now outside her house.

Holly shook her head slowly, stepping back with timidity, before she turned and darted into the woods full sprint. A trail of tears washed behind her as she escaped with even greater haste than she had ever pushed her body before.

She ran and ran. She had left some of the seed satchels she made back there, but she still had one with a healthy mix of cacao beans and passionfruit seeds. Specters of an enraged visage directed at her. Holly yelped in fright at the imagined rage and picked up her pace further.

“Yes! I’m an idiot! Is that what you want to hear?!” Holly screamed to an audience of none. “I won’t bother you more! Please have mercy!” Though the woods were empty of any pursuers.

She ran and ran and ran, weaving through the trees at a clip previously thought impossible for the young girl. It all came crashing down as she hooked her foot on a root and slammed face-first into the forest floor.

The zalavan trembled, unable to ebb the flow of tears that spilled. A combination of pain and fear wracked her body. “I’m a stupid fucking idiot. I’m a stupid liar…” she sobbed.

A balled-up fist struck the ground. “Stupid stupid stupid…” whimpered the girl as the clouds finally opened up and the storm began.