La-Bastille

Verse Neuf - a girl named Breya

Verse Neuf – a girl named Breya

What stands built before us is a legacy of time, a perfect utopia with a heart full of imperfections. La Bastille isn’t just a place to live. It is a product of many lives put together. And lives that are lost in its battle.

—Breya Niffleheim, Academy Journalist, La Bastille 2089 AP

Breya is a star-student. And she speaks her mind with the wisdom of the ages. But only when she has to, because being a know-it-all never really boded well with people.

Her skin is almost a perfect alabaster, if it weren’t for the freckles that give her face a look of beautiful imperfection. Her long, knee-length hair so pale it appears like ghostly wisps around her. Although today she has her hair braided, making what was supposedly a waterfall of silver mane behind her back into a heavy club of tresses that she jiggles like a whip from side to side.

When she opens her eyes it brings her whole look together, with her irises bleeding out a shade between light blue and silver—a unique set of eyes from a vanishing gene pool known to be the Sages, or the keepers of the light, which explains her unprecedented talent at landscaping information, just like the sages from before the time of Christ.

Breya, the irrepressible journalist, investigates and stumbles upon clues to what is going to be a discovery that will put her name in the bowels of history.

Or so she believes will be part of history.

“Paxton, fix your camera. I’m outside the frame!” she tells her trusty, disheveled assistant, who is head over heels in love with her and yet she doesn’t give mind.

She is quite high-pitched and energetic, and has this demeanor that tells you of her cunning and unmistakable wit. Her voice is as inescapable as the look she wears. She’s always in fashion, and at the forefront of style. Not everybody can pull off a pair of neon-pink high-tops and a white fitted blouse with odd sleeves and cut outs. Trust Breya Niffleheim to look the part of a living, breathing advertisement.

“Hi, and good morning La Bastille!” she beams into the camera. “My name needs no introduction. But for the sake of those who didn’t catch last week’s pilot episode, well, my name is Breya Niffleheim, and today we will continue on our quest to finding hidden places and hidden meanings to what will be the last frontier—if it isn’t yet—of our future!” her choreographed moves are as natural as the wind, and she strolls with such understated finesse and eloquence as she goes about describing archways and old sculptures in Old Town.

She steps into the Mechanical District of Old Town, which is a preserved location with old marble paths and rustic metal details.

“Now, here’s an ornate staff sticking out from this gear mechanism,” she explains, sauntering round a large cog embedded on the ground, with the staff stuck in the middle pointing up. “It seems like one of the cogs may be missing.”

Breya continues her journalistic diatribe, describing the many cultural inflections that make La Bastille both a place of the future and of the past. Brilliantly-worked inlays of colored stones and bits of metal carved in odd shapes and sizes form a mosaic on the wall opposite the floating holographic information corkboard, where people stand to look and watch her do her journalistic report.

“The truth is all about finding the facts hiding behind the pages of fiction, I always say,” she announces with pride, pointing an irrepressible finger to the camera like it’s a challenge to those watching at home. “Ferret out obscure references, and follow arcane snippets of information with a nimble mind and an agile body is what I say—!”

At a young age, Breya took a discernible interest in studying the city she grew up in. She understood her affinity to the past and is fixated on linking history with the future. She has searched every possible ancient record using scraps of La Bastille’s history, found within the annals of the Academy which she had first-class entry, only because of her sly manipulation of police security.

She made it her mission to keep the citizens informed, posting maps and long-standing itineraries that direct people as to how to navigate the floating city. Old Town’s presence bleeds beautifully to complement the surrounding areas. It’s a historic neighborhood aimed at tourists, and as the people pass its history, they are welcomed by the advancements that encroach the rest of La Bastille. It’s like a bleeding canvas of one color to the next. Old Town, then comes New Town, then onto Grand Avenue and Central, reaching to the far end of the Atrium, which is the canyon overlooking the crystal spires of the Academy. Grand is not enough of a word to describe the floating city.

“It seems like the park attached to the station also has a long history, my friends. It is actually the ruins of a religious site of long, long ago...” she drawls to portray what is once a Catholic institution old forgotten. “As you may have already observed, everything is information and touch-driven in our city.” Her descriptions take her to a holographic panel which she manipulates with the use of her rigged ID—a proximity card she stole from one of the guards manning the front gates of the Academy. “Here you see today’s temperature as indicated on the hologram. Fancy stuff, huh?”

The park is a bed of green—a sea to all the gleaming glass, chrome sculptures, and old marble benches. A design exploit that is tribute to both La Bastille’s history and modern science. “Aah, what a nice spot to sit and rest.”

She points to the train stations. “From that point, the opening and closing of the gate is synced with the street cars, you see.” She wags her index. “So there’s really no reason for you to disobey traffic rules. Unless of course you want to answer to the Academy General, and that sure will not be pretty, uh-ah, no sir it won’t.”

With a conclusive breath, she wraps up her show. “La Purge looks like it’s been destroyed in an unnatural manner, as if in a fit of rage powered by a deeply held grudge. Time passed and the surrounding lands became increasingly uninhabitable. What used to be lush and fertile grounds have now become a never-ending carpet of wasteland. Decades stacked and what’s left of the world’s population became a concentrated populace closed off inside a city barricaded and walled off from the rest of earth. However, in its ruins lies its beauty. We are such a beautiful mistake, man-made or otherwise. But if you ask me...one thing is certain. This is home. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you for watching.”

Nothing escapes Breya, and with perfect timing she spots a boy at the corner of her eye.

“Hey Etro!”

“Breya,” he startles.

Etro stills. Breya approaches.

She casually shakes her head. “It’s been what? Ages?” She tuts and purses her lips. “You’re not hiding from me now, are you? Cause that won’t do you any good, you know...I’m just saying...”

“No, I’m not hiding. How can anyone hide from someone like you?” he wants to be sarcastic, but sarcasm is an element Breya is immune to.

“Hah, that’s right.” She boasts. “So, how are things with uh, you know...he who can’t be named.”

Etro exhales, forlorn. “The same can be said about yesterday and the day before. And as sure as hell freezing over is the same answer I will give you today.”

“Hm, still that bad, huh?”

“Yeah, still that bad.”

“Well...” she exhales, “Love is the only thing you can’t buy insurance for. It’s something you have to work on every day.”

Etro scoffs. “I think all my hard work is hardly working.”

Breya rolls her eyes. “He can be such a tool when he wants to be.”

“Be careful of what you say if you want to stay in the Valkyria’s good graces.”

“Oh don’t be so gloom and glum about it...” she dismisses with her hand, “Has he noticed your work on the pulsing pulsating thing? The uh...er...what’s your vibrating thing called again...?”

“Ugh, shame...and you call yourself a prized journalist.”

“Kidding...I was just kidding. How can anybody trump what is probably the most qualified work in the history of the Academy? Of course your Pulse Machina is the shit.”

“Geez, you sure know how to pick your words, Breya. That was very eloquent of you...very eloquent indeed.”

“There are no cameras here, honey. So lighten up. I’m not just some boring t**t people see on TV, you know.”

“I know...”

“You’re so sad, Etro. You make me want to kill myself sometimes.”

“Heh, you’d be doing us all a favor.”

A hit on the head.

“Ow...to say that hurts would be an understatement.”

“Don’t worry, Etro...soon he’ll come to realize your achievements and be proud of you. Everybody has a place in this world. It just takes time to know where it is.”

“For a young girl, you are ever so wise. You’re such a contradiction.”

Breya looks at Etro to read the boy’s face. In her eyes, the boy looks so right but feels out of place. What she really wants to peer into is what’s inside the young man’s brain.

“Do you really love him? I mean, really care for him?”

“You know I do...how can I not? ...he’s my brother.”

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Aw, will you look at that...I actually wrote something on a Sunday morning. EL-OH-EL.

Now, who is Etro referring to? What does he mean brother? ( O,O) Who’s the bro!?