'God, what am I doing here?', Avery thought as she opened her eyes and stared upwards. She didn't even have to really look around to know where she was: Shinkai Shigai, the one place she had been hoping she wouldn't appear in when she went back through the dimension door to her own world. The scent of nature surrounded her: but it was dead at best. All of the flowers, the ivy, everything that had been made to grow to cover up the ugliness of the white walls the previous ruler had had were dead. It cast the place into an ugly view, something far uglier than it had been when it was just plain and white.
She was currently on her back, staring up at the sky, sprawled in one of the many parks Shinkai offered - the exact park she had been in with Houjin all of those years ago when Natalie had arrived in that ship with all of those soldiers. The park brought back memories, but she couldn't tell if they were good ones or bad ones at this point.
A lot had happened in that other world - including the fact that she had technically been kidnapped by Alec Kane, and one of her very best friends had done nothing to stop it. Had done nothing to get her back: which felt like the ultimate betrayal. Of course, she had had no interest by that point in leaving Alec's side. She hadn't even fought him to begin with when he kidnapped her. But, that was besides the point sinice her friend would have had no way of knowing that. Then she went ahead and got put into a position of power of Makurra after all of that drama had gone down, had involved herself in the Dark, which had basically been a great big middle finger to Hanagakure and Yokuchigakure - both places which her friends resided. In a way she had done it out of some sort of sense of revenge: a betrayal against them because she had felt like they had betrayed her.
Where they even her friends anymore?
She doubted it. She could picture what a reunion with them right now would look like - it would likely turn into an all out war until either she was dead, or they were.
With a sigh she sat up and looked around, taking in all of the dead things. She took it as a sign that perhaps it was time to move on with her life - she had held on to her friends from that horrible school long enough. It was time to make her own way in the world, to go reconnect with the people she had met and got to know so well in that other dimension. She was sure they were back, and could easily guess they were in the city she had heard about: Edge. If she was lucky it wouldn't be so hard to find them, if not... well, she wasn't going to give up searching.
She got up from the ground, taking a moment to dust the dirt and dead plant matter from her clothing and hair and then started walking, right out of the park and into the main street of the city: the whole place was in poverty, run down, destroyed... Five years of having no one to rule these people had taken it's toll, but she wasn't willing to try and put them back on their feet: she couldn't do it alone.
