Elfen Lied 1. Prologue: The World I Knew

**Prologue: The World I Knew**

I was riding my horse, Lily, across the fields of my family farm. It was bitterly cold and by consequence I was wearing a heavy pink jacket, black trousers, yellow scarf and a dark blue cap. As I galloped across the paddock to the fence line and prepared to urge Lily into a jump, she inexplicably panicked and bucked me off. I flew through the air, landed hard, and blacked out.

**/**

"Oww..."

That was the only phrase I could utter to even begin to describe the pain I felt as I regained my senses.

_Hang on. Where am I? I haven't even opened my eyes yet._

I slowly opened my eyes, wincing at the harsh sunlight. "Ouch...!"

I heard the calls of several different bird species as I picked myself up and examined my surroundings. I was in a forested area in late spring, which confused me. It had been the middle of a particularly bitter winter when I'd fallen off Lily's back. I was still in my winter clothes and felt like I was cooking under the layers. Breathing in a controlled pattern to calm myself I stripped off my jacket and tried to stand up, only for my ankle to twinge painfully, forcing me to drop onto all fours.

_Double ouch! I think I sprained it._

Biting back a sob, I crawled over to a nearby pond, intent on washing the dirt stains off my face. I slid my hands under my cap to remove it and stopped suddenly as I felt a bony protrusion on each side if my head just above my ears.

_What in the...?_

I removed my cap and looked at my reflection in the water. My hair was no longer blonde, but midnight black, and my eyes were crimson. Two cat-ear shaped horns, pale blue in colour, provided an answer as to what I'd felt when I took my cap off.

My heart jumped into my mouth. There was only one possible explanation I could think of, crazy as it sounded even to me.

Somehow, I'd wound up in the Elfen Lied universe.

I fainted.


	2. Chapter 1: Victim of Circumstance

**Similar to my Vampire Knight story "Vampire Life" event's seen directly from Maria's viewpoint will be written in first-person, while events experienced by other characters will use third-person perspective, sometimes a repeat of a scene will be used from another perspective. Hope you chaps aren't too confused.**

**Chapter 1: Victim of Circumstance**

I woke up to the feeling of something cold and wet on my forehead. My eyes blinked open and a soft groan escaped my lips.

"I was wondering when you were going to wake up."

The voice... it was Kaede, so I hadn't been dreaming after all.

"Where am I?"

"Kamakura Orphanage, I found you unconscious in the woods and brought you here."

"Thanks, I guess."

"What's your name? I'm Kaede."

"Nice to meet you, Kaede, I'm Maria."

I eased my new, younger body off the bed and stood with Kaede's help. I'd been fifteen years old going on sixteen when I'd had the accident. Now I was physically about six years old.

_This might give me an advantage._

I discreetly examined Kaede, noticing that she was round about eight. This gave me some time to try and guide her away from the Diclonius "killer instinct".

"_Do what you can for her, I have faith in you."_

_Who's there?_

"_Your conscience, you were brought to this universe for a reason, Maria,"_

_What reason?_

"_To show the Humans that the Diclonius species is not inherently aggressive,"_

_I'll try my best._

"_I know."_

My conscience quieted and I refocussed on my surroundings.

"Are you alright?" Kaede asked me. "You spaced out for a second there."

"I'm okay; I'm just a bit thirsty."

"Who wouldn't be after being unconscious for two hours?"

Kaede picked up a jug and poured some water into a glass which she promptly handed to me before smiling. "Drink up; I don't want you to get sick."

"Thanks," I carefully drank the water and Kaede refilled my glass. "I'm feeling a bit more clear-headed now, how about we go for a walk?"

"Sure, I've been told to show you around anyway."

I finished my drink, got up and followed Kaede to the door. We walked down the corridor, and I noticed she seemed to be keeping an eye out for someone, possibly Tomoo, but I couldn't say anything about him without making her suspicious of me. So I opted for a subtle approach.

"What's up? You seem nervous."

"I'm looking out for Tomoo and his little gang. They like to pick on me for my horns. I think they'll start on you if they spot you. You've got horns like me."

"Thanks for the warning, wanna be friends?"

"You bet, Maria."

"Thanks, Kaede."

"Oh, great," a voice groaned from behind us. "_Another_ girl with those freaky horns, give me a break."

"Leave Maria alone, Tomoo." Kaede snapped.

"I'll bet your parents abandoned you because you had those _things_ growing out of your head, didn't they?" Tomoo taunted me, acting as if Kaede wasn't even there.

When I didn't respond for several seconds he frowned. "I asked you a question, Bluehorn!" he shoved me, causing me to lose my balance and fall backwards onto the floor with a yelp.

I couldn't take it from this jerk; I broke down into tears, if anyone deserved to be locked up and experimented on it was Tomoo, not Kaede.

"You jerk!" Kaede spat, helping me up. "You should be ashamed of yourself, bullying a little girl like this!"

"Stay out of it, Oxen!" one of Tomoo's cohorts sneered.

I tried, and failed, to calm down.

"Aww," Tomoo sneered. "Does the little baby miss her mama?"

"What's going on here?"

"Nothing..." Tomoo pouted.

"Incorrect, I saw the whole thing from the moment you started picking on Kaede and the new arrival. If this keeps up I'll start handing out punishments to you and your little gang, you understand?"

"Yes, Ms Akaia."

"Leave, now."

"Yes, ma'am." Tomoo replied meekly. He and his friends bolted. Ms Akaia sighed and walked over to Kaede.

"Is your friend going to be okay?"

"She'll be fine; she's just a bit sensitive about some things." Kaede replied.

"What's your name, sweetie?" Ms Akaia asked me gently.

"M-Maria..." I was still in shock over being pushed abruptly by Tomoo.

"Well, Maria, how about we get you something to drink to help with the shock?"

"Th-thank you..."

"I don't understand why Tomoo thinks those horns are ugly." She smiled. "I actually think they're kind of cute."

"Really?" Kaede asked.

"Really, I'm telling the truth. If you have any problems in the future just come and see me, I'm happy to help out."

"Thanks, Ms Akaia." Kaede smiled.

"Just call me Jane, okay? People referring to me by title makes me feel like an old woman."

"Sure thing, Jane," Kaede replied.

Jane took my hand and led us to her office. Once inside she sat me on the couch and went over to a mini fridge. "What flavour soda do you want, girls? I've got orange, cherry, cola, lime and raspberry."

"R-raspberry..." I hiccupped, still struggling to breathe in the aftermath of my crying fit.

"I'll take a cola." Kaede replied.

Jane passed a bottle of cola to Kaede and a bottle of raspberry to me before grabbing a lime for herself and shutting the fridge. "Being the Headmistress of an orphanage gives me a headache sometimes. I'm not sure who would want to adopt somebody like Tomoo, he's rude, arrogant and stuck up." She sighed.

I'd calmed surprisingly fast after a few sips of my raspberry soda. I shot a look at Kaede who gave me a reassuring smile.

"Uh, Jane?" Kaede asked.

"Yes, Kaede,"

"Could you set Maria up as my roommate?"

"Sure, girls need to stick together after all."

"Thank you."

It was now late evening so we headed to Kaede's room. She took the top bunk while I slid into the bottom bunk. We both finished our bottles of soda before settling down. I was so tired out from the incident with Tomoo that I fell asleep the instant my head hit the pillow.

**/**

_4 months later..._

I woke suddenly, my eyes flicking open. I turned my head to one side as my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the bedroom I shared with Kaede. I glanced out the window, guessing that it was just before sunrise if the faint grey light silhouetting the shadowy forms of the nearby mountains was anything to go by. I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but found it impossible, I was determined to put off the day as long as I possibly could. Not wanting to disturb Kaede I quietly slipped out of bed and removed my nightie, pulling on my sweatshirt, track pants and boots and exiting the room. I padded down the near-silent hallways of the orphanage before sneaking out the back door. The cold early morning air felt refreshing against my face after the dream I'd had during the night. In the dream I'd been back "home" and my stepfather had been molesting me before Kaede had burst in through the door in response to my cry for help and forcibly pulled him away from me, demanding to know how he could be anyone's father if that was the way he treated me, the disgust clear in her voice. She had then told me to run and I'd dressed hurriedly, mounted Lily and galloped across the fields until the accident that had brought me here had occurred, thus ending the dream. I eventually found myself in the area where Kaede had found her dog in the anime and manga. I heard a soft whining sound and the dog in question suddenly poked his head out of the nearby bushes. Obviously realising how lonely I felt, he moved over to where I sat on the ground, tears welling in my eyes as I remembered the sexual abuse my stepfather had subjected me to. I felt him place his head in my lap and lick my hand.

"It's okay... I'm not... lonely..." I patted the dog gently on the back and scratched his neck, still silently crying from the nightmare. After a few minutes I stood up and started to walk back to the orphanage, noticing immediately that the puppy was following me.

"No," I said, causing him to stop. "Don't follow me. If you do..."

I shuddered at a mental image of the scene in the anime where Tomoo had beaten the dog to death with a vase.

"...I don't even want to think about it."

**/**

_Kaede was standing in a field on a freezing day she saw a house nearby and moved towards it, simply wanting to get out of the cold. She spotted a horse grazing on thin winter grass in a paddock next to the house; the creature eyed her curiously for a brief moment before returning to its activity. She was about to knock on the door when Maria's voice split the air in a scream of terror that told her all she needed to know._

"_KAEDE, HELP ME!" this plea was followed by a muffled thwack and a whimper._

_Foregoing politeness, Kaede kicked the door open and rushed into the house, following Maria's pained pleas for an end to her ordeal until she rushed into a nearby room to find Maria lying spreadeagled on her back, completely naked, with a man wearing a shirt and nothing else in the process of raping her._

"_Please, stop... I'm scared..." Maria whimpered._

"_I'm not done yet." The man replied nastily. "Now it gets fun..."_

_Kaede felt she needed to stop this right now. She stepped into the room and spoke in a clear, calm voice that clearly communicated her disgust. "Get your filthy hands off of her right now!"_

"_Who the hell are you?" the man barked, clearly pissed off at the interruption to his "fun"._

"_My name is Kaede, and you're hurting my friend for your own perverted pleasure."_

"_You've got some nerve, brat! Breaking my door down and accusing me of breaking the law!"_

_Kaede felt something stir inside her, four invisible arms reached out, grabbed the rapist and pulled him clear of Maria._

"_Maria, run; don't look back!"_

_Maria scrambled for her clothes, the same ones she'd been wearing when Kaede found her in the woods, before dressing rapidly and bolting out of the house. Kaede hit the man and sent him sprawling over the couch where Maria had been lying. She stepped over to him, grabbed his shirt collar and spoke to him in a harsh tone of voice. "I find it hard to believe any decent father would willingly rape his daughter, you're just sick." She punched him in the side of the head, knocking him out like a light, and made for the door. As she stepped through she stumbled, fell forward, and hit her head, blacking out..._

Kaede shot awake, breathing heavily, her mind reeling from the dream she'd experienced. She checked on Maria and discovered that the girl's bed was unoccupied. She started to panic but calmed when Maria opened the door and stepped through, her face streaked with tears. Kaede, concerned for her friend's wellbeing, climbed down from her bunk and sat next to Maria, who had sat down on her own bed. Kaede put an arm around her shoulders.

"Maria, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just had trouble sleeping, had a nightmare..."

"You remembered your father raping you, didn't you?"

"My stepfather, actually, how'd you figure that out?"

"I had a weird dream as well; I heard you calling for help and found you in the middle of being raped, I told you to run before hitting your stepfather upside the head with some kind of invisible arms."

Maria's face visibly paled. "Kaede, I need to tell you the truth about me, it may well be vital to our long term survival."

"I'm listening."

"For starters, where I come from, everything that you consider real, and even you yourself, it's all part of an anime and manga series, Elfen Lied."

"So, I'm just a story character where you come from?"

"Pretty much, anyway, it starts at this orphanage; if I can't either avert this event completely or convince you to keep calm, the lunch room here becomes the site of a horrific murder, one you perpetrated out of uncontrolled rage at the murder of a dog you were taking care of. The same dog I found while I was walking outside earlier. Those invisible arms you described are actually called vectors; they're capable of blocking massed fire from multiple MP5 Submachine Guns. They're also capable of being used as offensive weapons; they can fillet pretty much anything that enters their effective radius. You used them to murder Tomoo and three others when your rage took over."

Kaede cringed. She didn't want to be seen as a monster, so she resolved not to give in to her anger when Tomoo and his friends killed the dog.

"Afterwards you go on a murder spree, slaughtering whole families just to use their homes. You eventually meet Kouta, a young boy who's staying with his relatives over the summer. You initially walk away from him, citing your hatred for the human race, but, you go back to the spot where you met him, wait for him, and just as you're about to leave he comes up behind you and places a cap on your head, saying that if you're feeling insecure about the horns you should hide them, and on that note..."

Maria slid off her bed, went over to her bag, and retrieved her own cap from it before sliding it over Kaede's horns. "You can keep that."

"Huh, really?"

"Really,"

"Thanks."

"Anyway, the next day he takes you to the zoo, you play in the water after that and he invites you to the festival that night, saying that his cousin will also be there. When you ask him about his cousin's gender he says his cousin is a boy, knowing that it's what you want to hear. His cousin is actually a girl, Yuka. She's one of the main characters in the anime and manga."

"What happens next?"

"You run off and start crying, a short while after, a rude man bumps into you, thinks you're homeless and insults you. Two women show up and one comments that you're so strung out on drugs that you're talking to yourself. Another woman turns up and tries to help you... you lose control due to the taunting of your DNA Voice and murder them all with your vectors. People assume a bomb has gone off, but Kouta's sister, Kanae, can see your vectors and tries to tell Kouta what really happened. He doesn't believe her and you eventually kill both her and Kouta's father out of revenge for Kouta's lie about Yuka's gender."

"My god... that's horrific."

"You can change your future if you want to, you don't have to listen to your DNA Voice if you don't want to."

"I'm not going to become a murderer. I'm not the monster you described."

"That's the spirit."

"So, um, what can you tell me about the horns?"

"The reason we have them is because we're not human, we're an evolved strain of Homo sapiens known as the Diclonius. You're a Queen, meaning you're capable of birthing fully fertile Diclonii. I, on the other hand, am a Silpelit, a Diclonius born to an infected human. The virus that leads to Silpelit births is transmitted via our vectors, when we touch a human's pineal gland with our vectors the virus rewrites the victim's reproductive organs, causing any children born or sired by an infected human will be Silpelit Diclonii. Silpelits don't have any reproductive organs."

"What else about the vectors?"

"They're the result of a much larger pineal gland. Where a regular human has a pineal gland size of about five millimetres, our pineal glands are about the size of an egg."

"Hmm, well, we should get to breakfast before Tomoo and his creeps nick all the good stuff."

"I agree, let's go."

**/**

**A/N: What do you think? Give me your suggestions and I'll think about using them, just remember though, I won't be able to accommodate for everyone, so please, no flames.**


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Elfen Lied, Adventure, Friendship