"Huh? Me? Oh, I came from that world," Lina said. "I was kind of...you could say...mistreated for being different. Not physically, nor mentally, but somehow just different." Lina shrugged a little bit. "You know how it is with peer pressure and everything. I guess I couldn't keep up with that." In fact, Lina had been dreadfully abused, and all for no reason. Her parents had starved her, her friends had abandoned her, and there were the break downs, when she realized life was barely worth living anymore. What had brought her here in the first place
"Did you know anyone while you were back there?" Dan asked cautiously, but he tried to pull off the whole apathetic thing for the sake of the conversation, and for the sake of not upsetting Zell, who was still very snug with Lina by his side. Lina nodded and tried to see where this conversation was headed. No luck.
"Um... there's Jen and Amber," Lina said rather reluctantly. Had they forgotten her? "Um... Look...the thing is, a while after I got here, I became a sorceress, but in the process, I got amnesia. It was cured later on, but some bits and pieces of my memory are still missing. Why do you ask?"
"Ow, that smarts," Dan jokes. "Lina...how do I put this?" He pulled out his wallet and searched through a few of its pockets until he found a photograph. He held it out for her and let her take it--it was of them, maybe twelve years old and both smiling even though Lina didn't look very happy in it. "You don't remember, but we were best friends, Lina. Best of the best. Your parents didn't give you food, so I packed two lunches, one for you, everyday. After you left, I started searching for you. You left no sign or anything that you were going to leave.
"Your parents didn't even file for missing child. It was like they didn't care. I'm sorry, but that's just full of bullshit. Eventually, I think I stumbled upon Magality, into that very portal you fell into. Slammed my face into a load of grass the first time. But when I looked up, I saw this gunblade here," Dan said, patting the blade hanging from his training belt with great admiration. "I started coming back periodically. I was sure that you were here. Sure of it. But now, I'm staying."
Lina looked at him blankly, but through her mind was surging a million questions, memories breaking through the barricade, her thoughts were on fire. Until suddenly, it hit her like lightning. Ronny Calor, the boy she'd met that day standing at the side because peer pressure disallows decency. The boy who took up stick and jabbed at the school bully to save her.
"You mean..." she thought for a second, then pulled up the side of her sleeve to reveal a very faint scar just below her elbow. "This was right there in front of your house wasn't it?" Dan nodded. She would have leapt up on him and him a reunion hug, but a girl walked up from behind Dan and dropped a quiver of arrows to the side, and pulled a strand of highlight blue hair out of her face. She smiled big with her hazel eyes, her black hair pull down into two braided pigtails.