Falling for Cha’Rolette

A little girl swung her legs in anticipation as the hover carriage came to a stop. Her filthy clothes had been replaced with the most beautiful ruffled dress she had ever seen. Her ta'atu had been cleaned for the first time in ages, and styled into a gorgeous braid. She felt like a princess. She felt like the luckiest girl in the whole universe. She was so happy she felt like she was going to burst.

Her tummy was full of the most expensive cookies she had ever seen, the shoes on her feet had been made just for her. Just for her, by a personal cobbler. She hadn't even known what a cobbler was, but as she rocked her tiny feet happily back and forth and admired her sparkly shoes, she decided that she liked cobblers.

She lifted up a filthy patchwork doll with misaligned eyes. "Cami... we're finally going home. A real home, can you believe it?"

Thuquan looked younger back then, and sported a rather unflattering mustache as he turned around and put his massive arm over the back of the seat. "We're here," he announced. "Now, when you approach Mr. Ssykes, it is important that you..."

"Daddy!" she squealed, opening the door herself and hitting the ground running. She could feel her feet pounding against the fancy stone floor as she ran towards the man waiting for her. Her stylish sun hat caught in the wind and blew off of her head. She opened her arms, her large innocent eyes full of joy as she neared him. How long had she dreamed of this day. How long had she waited for this moment. An entire lifetime worth of emotions bubbled up within her as she wrapped her arms around his waist.

Her head cracked to one side. Her vision blurred. Her face hit the marble as she rolled over onto her back. Cami scattered and rolled along the ground, coming to a rest at the foot of Thuquan, who scooped it up to keep the floor clean.

"Who said you could touch me?" The man with cold eyes asked, a look of disgust in his eyes. He had a fresh scar running across his face. The girl sat up and placed her hand on her cheek. Already it was swelling from the strike. Her large innocent eyes trembled in confusion, hurt, and longing.

Two more men stepped up. Their eyes looked almost as hard as her father's. They each had a son with them, about her age. She looked at the boys, but they refused to look back at her.

Before she could say anything, strong hands grabbed her, and a needle was thrust into her arm. It burned so bad she squealed with pain, but when her father raised his hand, she shut her mouth and covered her face.

"So you can learn," E'Duwag said. "The shot we just gave you will suppress your abilities during the trial."

"Trial?" she asked, but immediately regretted it, as another strike hit her in the face.

"There cannot be more than one heir to the Ssykes Dynasty. That is our most sacred law. We learned it over many hundreds of generations, and at great cost. It inevitably leads to war, strife, and infighting. With the death of my daughter, two of the branch families have made a bid for leadership. There are now three potential candidates. After today there will be only one."

The ground before them opened up into a deep dark hole. And the three children were tossed in, one by one. As the little girl fell into darkness, the hole closed behind her. "You will fight, or you will die," her father said. "Make your choice."

"Daddy!" she cried, outstretching her tiny arms, but his cold eyes offered nothing in return. Then, all was darkness.

* * *

A day later, three of the most powerful men in the galaxy stood before the opening again. Down in the hole, they saw two boys lying on the ground, bruised and beaten, clinging on the edge of death. Above them stood the girl. The innocence was gone from her eyes. She was battered, cut, and swollen. Her dress was a shambles, stained with dirt and blood. Her shoes were torn and covered in bile. Her ta'atu writhed about like snakes. She looked like a completely different person than she had the night before. She was a child no more. It had been cruelly stripped away. Only a tiny corner of her heart remained unpolluted, and already she was learning how to hide that.

E'Duwag Honrinar Ssykes only looked on in disappointment. "Yesterday, you chose to fight. That earns you one day in my house." He held up his finger. "Just one day. Today, you will make that same choice again, to see if you may earn your place tomorrow."

* * *

Cha'Rolette Ssykes sat in her quarters aboard the Kalia Greir, surrounded by windows of information. Her eyes looked the same as they did that morning in the pit as she worked feverishly. With one hand she plotted a theoretical course through an aetheric anomaly, with the other she created an economic projection on the zanzanite commodities market, planning out the exact moment that Ssykes Industries would sell its majority shareholdings in what she had already predicted would be a failing industry.

Through her crystronic plugs, she reviewed course work, took practice exams, penned essays, and applied for extra credit course work. Simultaneously, with her ta'atu, she practiced moving about smaller and smaller objects.

It was easy enough to punch a hole in the wall, any Issaguardian could do that, but refining one's talent in order to move only a single grain of sand at a time, was quite a rare achievement. The practical applications of such subtle manipulation were endless. She could use it to carefully stimulate the adrenal gland of someone across the negotiating table, alter their blood pressure, irritate a nerve, or if the situation called for it, pinch off a tiny blood vessel in the brain. Such actions were completely untraceable, but even more important than having those skills was the ability to defend yourself when such things are done to you.

The heavens knew she had saved herself on more than one occasion. In fact, to this date, there were only two people whom she had never been able to fully dominate. One was her father. The other was Gerald Dyson.

Cha'Rolette paused and sighed to herself. "Gerald..."

She reached up and placed her hand over her heart.

A knock at the door startled her. "Duchess, are you in there?" Gerald called out.

She snapped her fingers and the door opened, revealing Gerald standing stupidly in mid knock. "Oh, you are in here!"

"Where else would I be?" asked Cha'Rolette.

"No one had seen you, we thought you were asleep," replied Gerald.

"Tch. Do not confuse me with Faolan. I am not on vacation. There will be plenty of time to sleep in the grave. While I am alive I have work to do."

She went back to work, and Gerald could only look on in amazement. Each one of her many tasks were performed too rapidly for him to follow. The realization that she was doing them all simultaneously was mind boggling.

"I thought you had taken a leave of absence; why are you doing schoolwork?" Gerald asked, pointing to the one window he actually recognized.

"I have, but when I return to Central Exeter, I will have to make up the assignments and lectures I missed. While I do that, my increased workload will slow my progress on the scoreboards, giving the others a chance to catch up. By completing the assignments and course work remotely, I ensure that I will hit the ground running."

Gerald whistled as he stepped inside. Cadbury knew enough to stay out in the hall, scratching ineffectively at the metal deck for worms. "I never realized that you had to work so hard."

Cha'Rolette swiped her widows closed and turned to face him. "Look, Gerald, I know this might be hard for you to understand, but being a Ssykes isn't something that was handed to me. I have to earn it, every day. I had to work harder than anyone else to become the number one student in the school, and I have to work twice as hard to stay there. You know what it's like to be at the back of the pack, everyone ahead of you, longing to equal their pace, and I can sympathize with that, but you don't understand that it is also hard to be at the front, with everyone nipping at your heels, everyone hungry to see you fall. Everyone knowing that every stumble you make benefits them. All the time..."

Something made her back down and she turned away.

"Go on," he urged softly. He knew how hard it was for her to speak her mind, her real mind, even when it was just the two of them.

She looked up at him, and that little bit of that innocence shone through for a moment. "All the time wondering if the next step will be the one that earns his approval."

In that moment, she seemed more beautiful to him than ever. He wanted nothing more than to reach out and embrace her, to hold her close, to feel her warmth. But he knew in his heart that if he did so he would not be holding her just as a friend, but as something more, and so he stopped himself.

Instead, he placed a friendly hand on her shoulder. "I know it doesn't mean much, but just so you know, you already have my approval."

She reached up and placed her hand on his. "No, you're wrong. It means a great deal."

When she looked up at him with her large innocent eyes, he felt a desire swell up in his heart. He wanted to kiss her. By the gods, he wanted to kiss her so badly.

"Calm down," he thought to himself. "She's probably just using her powers on you again." Instinctively, he glanced over at her ta'atu, and realized that they were not glowing or moving. That meant that this was no trick or external force. The desire was coming from within him.

That realization scared him enough that he backed away. He tried to laugh off the moment, but it didn't work. She could see right thought him, and her disappointed expression cut him deeper than any insult ever could.

"We're almost at Orthianx, I was asked to bring you to the bridge."

Gerald turned around, his mind reeling. He knew two things: One, that he was falling for Cha'Rolette; and two, that he didn't know how to stop himself from falling further.