Mara's eyes popped open.  She didn't jump or anything, no gasp for air, no yelp of surprise, or anguish...they just popped open.  She lay there staring at the ceiling for a moment, before she bacame consued in her own thoughts; as she has done so many nights before this one, and will probably do for many nights after as well.

"Damon", she mutered under her breath.  She played back the dream in her head, blood was falling from the sky.  She re-traced her vision up to where a figure stood on a mountain of bodies.  It was hunched over as if in some sort of anguish, it's arms were wrapped around it's torso in what seemed almost like defeat.  Her brow furrowed.  That was ridiculous.  The amount of corpses clearly depicted victory; yet the figure had the appearence of a defeated man; body, mind and soul.

As she studied his appearence from afar; gigantic black wings ripped out of his upper back.  Blood spurted as they broke through theskin and made thier fantastic entrance.  The expanded magnificently and fiercely, giving off the aura of power, grace, beauty, and fear.  Mara's very breath was taken from her, as she gazed upon the winged, tortured soul.  She knew the pain well, wings were a gift, and a curse.  But these wings were different.  These were the wings of a constantly tormented soul; one consumed by darkness and despair, even in the afterlife.  These were the wings of a demon.

He looked over his shoulder at her menacingly, yet sadly at the same time.  His red eyes projected sorrow, and anger; and as he directed his gaze upwards, he stretched his wings to thier fullest, massive span.  Reeling himself backwards, his wings pushed forward a huge wave of khan, which would have been unseen if not for the bodies, chunks of earth, and impressive gust of wind the ran along in front of the blast like a pyroclastic flow.

Mara leaned back in the grimy bed she ha taken rest in for the night, and slowly opened her eyes.  Slumping down she pulled her knee up to her chest and cradled it in her arms.  She stared down at her bare feet and bit her lower lip gently.  That's when she had woken up.  She knew the man as soon as he turned around.  It was a man that Mara had suspected to have left her life ten years previously.  A man named Damon.  He was dead, how did he creep into her dreams now?

She glanced at the clock, 2:30am; Grid A time anyway.  "These ridiculous sleeping hours have got to be remedied..."  she thought to herself.  She got up from the bed, walked over to the window, and threw back the heavy drapes; letting loose a cornucopia of spicy smells that were purly Blue Haven.  She caught her reflection in the glass and examined it.  She turned to the side, and rubbed her stomach.  Her thin, yet muscular legs stuck out from a pair of low-rider grey panties, and the white wife-beater she was wearing was a little more than see-through, showing her black bra underneath.  Her long, dark hair flowed freely over her slender neck and sligtly broad shoulders; masking a scar made by Damon, so long ago.  Her green eyes blared through her loose, sweeping bangs, and she looked away quickly.  She didn't want to think about her eyes right now, her memories, Damon, or anything else for that matter.

She redirected her vision downward to the street below Griff's motel.  Griff, the owner, had always had a soft spot for Mara, ever since she first came to Blue Haven when she was a young child.  A delinquant with nothing and no one to live for, powerful and broken at the age of fifteen; Griff had hope for her.  He trained her and taught her to control her khan, as well as her emotions.  He had been the father that she so unjustly lost.

Blue Haven was an independantly rotating city inthe gravitational pull of Saturn, as to keep it in one, easily accessible spot.  It was a hide-out of thieves, pirates, demons, fancifuls (half-human, half-beasts), and any other freak of nature, or wanted man in the galaxy.  It was located in Grid A, Sector 7...the scummier part of the grid.  With Saturn's area acting as a convention center for the evil-doers of the galaxy, as far as the Galaxy Police, (GP), were concerned, this was no-man's land.  With so many enemies of the Alias around Blue Haven, it was absolute suicide for them to even set foot near the city, let alone in it.  There were barely any rules, and no structure. The scum, and the bartenders ruled Blue Haven.

You could find many people with colored eyes here.  Outside of Saturn's ring, in the other planets, and the domes; people with colored eyes were subject to ridicule.  "The Disaster" had forced the Alias to erase the memories of the people who survived it, therefor, all people who were born had no instinct, no depth.  All eye color was brown as a result.  Mara was the first child recorded with green eyes.  Any child that as born with colored eyes was automatically a story, and ended up in the news.  The family would be immidiately targeted, and usually broken up; taken to the Alias base in dome 410, and were never heard from again.  Therefore, children with colored eyes are usually abandoned, and turn to a life of anger, greed, and sin, hence Blue Haven.  No other record of green eyes had ever been found; and it made sense.  Mara considered herself one of the strongest people in the galaxy, possibly the strongest.  The only one that ever beat her was Damon.  She started to think about him again.  She looked out over the city, and her vision began to blur, as tears filled her eyes.

"No..." she said to herself, as she shook her head.  "No, don't do that. You're too strong for that."  Then again, as she tried to comfort herself with that thought...maybe she was too weak to cry.  The first time she cried was after her father was killed in front of her, by a demon.  She had been fortunate, as far as parents go.  Her father loved her, and accepted her, even with her eyes.  She was not so fortunate with her mother.  As soon as Mara was born, her mother vanished, and never contacted the two of them again.  The moment her father breathed his last breath, she began to cry, and it began to rain.  A cruel joke, or evil twist of fate, she thought; but when she fled to Blue Haven; the only other place that she knew as a child besides her home with her father, the rain followed.  And then it didn't stop.  That was when she met Griff.  He found her on the street, hunched over and sobbing.  Even after she stopped crying, the rain continued.  She spent little over a month depressed, but thankful for Griff's love.  It rained the entire time.  The media went mad with stories about Christ's return, and talk of "miracles".  Mara called it "damn rain", and, "the result of my depression".  When she said it in front of others, Griff would thump the back of her head.

"Christ's return...to much effing power is more like it." Mara muttered to herself.  The whole fiasco was  true testimony to the oblivion that normal people had to anything "supernatural" around them.  The rain that she had created flooded a good majority of Blue Haven.  Because she had so much power that she, at the time, had a hard time controlling, it would mess with the artifical atmosphere...hence, weather changes.  Negative energy given off, would work it's way into the atmospheric decipherer, and altered the protons, therefore, rain. Lots of it.  She was better at controlling it now, but she still had no idea why her emotions messed with her khan so much.

She turned away from the window, and began to walk over to a  desk where a small notebook lay with a pen.  She decided to start recording some of her stranger dreams in it a while back, when an astonishingly gruesome, re-occuring dream came to life in the form of a bloody attack on the mortals by the Black Diamond Alliance.

May 10th, 5060/Blue Haven/Griff's Motel

She noted the place and the date simply for her own records. It seemed like a good idea to make note of where and when they happened, just to see if a connection could be established.

Damon

She scrawled his name on the shet of yellwed pper and felt a twinge in her heart.  "This is going to be harder than I thought..."  she said to herself.

Mountain of bodies, demon presence.  Seemed almost like a warning, possible Black Diamond connection.

The Black Diamond Alliance.  The root of all of her problems from the beginning.  They were a collection of demon families.  Some of the most powerful around.  The Black Diamond and Mara's bloodline had been enemies since the beginning of time.  A quarrel between the races started with a demon woman, and a Tarken man falling in love.  The Tarkens. That was her bloodline, the Tarkens were supposed to be sacred creatures, but they lost some of their following during the Disaster.  The Tarkens had been blamed for it, or at least that's what the Alias has told everyone. Her gigantic wings gave her away.  Unlike Fancifuls, which were half human and animal hybrids, the Tarken's wings were a part of them. Tarkens were winged beings, and those wings could not be mistaken for ANY type of bird wing.  White, and iridescent, they were feathered, with a golden claw-like appendage protruding from the joint at the top of the wing.  She had to keep her wings hidden at all times, but she really didn't mind.  They hurt like a bitch when they broke the surface of the skin as they grew.  A common misconception about wings, Tarken and Demon alike, is that they can just dissappear. Not true.  They shrink in on themselves, and rest in 2 sacs that reside beneath the shoulderblades.  They sit here while not in use, however; when they surface, as a result, the skin rips.  All winged beings have healing powers for this reason.  The Tarkens were considered 'blessed' beings with control over 'light' powers, and the demons are, well, the opposite.  So the damn Romeo and Juliet story caused the entire brawl from the beginning.

Nowadays, The Black Diamonds were more a collection of demons and the more dissappointing versions of humans, than a giant demon family unit.  They took on anyone who could hold thier own in their ranks,  and NONE of them; even the mortals, were people you wanted to meet in a dark ally.

That was why when she met Damon, a former BD member, trusted within thier ranks, and revered throughout them; it seemed like the perfect opprotunity to take them all out at once.  He knew the ins and outs, he knew every member, all their weaknesses, and where their hiding spots were.  He was unbelievably stong, even by Mara's standards;  her death count was nine seventy-six, his was twelve sixty-four.  The two of them were unstoppable.  They began with the small obsure branches of BD,and slowly spread like an infection.  A first, BD's leader, Corvisual, a massive, and tremendously feared demon, was uneffected by it.  He assumed that it was one or two people that those particular branches had pissed off, the excuse wasn't too far-fetched.  Yet the demolitions kept coming, and they didn't stop.  By the time that Mara and Damon had reached the main stronghold, the rumor spreading was that it was a group of 20 with incredible speed, intelligence, and strength.

When they entered the throne room, imagine Mara's surprise when she discovered that Damon had not only been a former member, but the son, and rightful heir to Corvisual's prestigious seat in Black Diamond's ranks.  When the two of them showed up, on thier own blunder, they had underestimated the numbers.  Corvisual had both of them right where he wanted them, surounded byleagues of Damon's family, and powerless to stop the inevitable onslaught to come.  Mara was one of the last, and the strongest of her bloodline. Damon was a traitor...either way, they lost.  Falling in love was the worst thing that could have happened to this mission.  They were both going to die.

Damon let his demon be released, and Mara's wings broke the surface of her skin for the first time in decades.  They fought with fury and passion, the battle would be one that was passed on through spoken word for eternity.  They killed a good 200 or 250 members, eventually though, thier sheer numbers bought them victory.  Mara was taken down with one foul sweep of Corvisual's massive tail, too weak to fight back, and now pinned to the ground with two broken wings she was blood-spattered and defeated.  Damon had been brought to the ground and his wings ripped off.  A horrible dishonor for Demon and Tarken alike.  He knelt on the floor, held by two of his six brothers, bleeding profusely from his back.  He looked up to see Mara completely at the mercy of Corvisual.  His claws found their way to Mara's heart, and began to sink beneath the skin, glowing red-hot with khan.  She screamed out of sheer pain, a cry from the deepest part of her Tarken heritage that made every demon in the room cringe.  It was a terrifying, yet beautiful song of a scream.

Damon yelled somthing that to this day Mara had not heard, or understood.  Then, he broke free of his captors.  Mara had not seen what happened next, she only remembers Damon's bloodied face over her. She felt his firm, gentle touch on her neck as he held her head while warm rivers of blood ran from her chest, down to the floor.  He gripped her hand and said somthing to Mara, though she could not hear him over the ringing in her ears.  She was too weak to stay awake any longer, and that was all she remembered from that day.

She had woken up in Griff's room, at Blue Haven and immediately left to search for Damon.  She found him.  His body was hung in victory over the throne of Corvisual in the now abandoned Black Diamond base.  His wings lay on the floor beneath him.  Mara let out her wings, cut Damon down, and cradled his cold body with her wings wrapped around them...then she cried...and it rained.