When they broke the chains, she stood up and walked with them towards wherever they were going.
***
After nearly five hours of them talking while the silver haired girl stayed quiet, they finally reached a large white van with a caravan on the back.
"Did I just get kidnapped again?" The silver haired girl asked as they all stopped walking.
"No, you didn't get kidnapped. We just have a... questionable living space," the lady with wilted hair answered.
Then she gasped, "Oh how rude of us, we haven't introduced ourselves, my names Gatsdia." She then pointed at D' Azzaro, then at the genius saying his name was Moreau, then she pointed at the girl with the black bob cut and said her name was Menti, then lastly, she pointed at the ginger guy and said his name was Sparrow.
She then turned to the van and said, "And the name of our ride is the Douquep."
They walked into the caravan; it was nice and small, nothing special, it was just a cozy place. A small little kitchen area near the middle, a stove and fridge being the only notable parts of it. To the left was a bookshelf and some beanbags to the left and right of the bookshelf to just chill and hang out at, a small radio and cassette player on a table in between the beanbags. To the right was a bunch of beanbags of various colors laying on the floor.
'This certainly looks cozy', the silver-haired girl thought as she looked around.
Then Gatsdia sat her down on a bean bag as they all stared at her intrigued. "What should we call you?" She stared back, wondering the same thing as them.
D' Azzaro walked out and closed the door behind him as they kept on thinking. They heard the vans engine, then they felt the caravan start to move. They kept on staring at each other. Then Gatsdia pulled a couple of dictionaries in different languages out of it and started flipping through the pages while staring at silver hair. The others just kept on staring, slowly getting more and more impatient.
Then Gatsdia pointed at a word in the Spanish dictionary, "Estrella, estrella means star, estre-lla, estre..." She thought for a moment rubbing her nasion.
Then she snapped and looked at the silver-haired girl, "Astra! Your name from now on is Astra! Do you like it?" Astra nodded, she wasn't really sure if Gatsdia's logic made any sense, but she was willing to take any name for now.
She also thought the name was pretty.
"Anyways, we need to see your powers! NOW!" Menti said excitedly as she went to the little research area and opened a little compartment under a microscope and pulled out a vial with a black liquid that had white spots constantly moving like explosions in it.
"That looks like it could kill me. No thank you," Astra said while turning her head away from Menti who was shoving the vial in her face.
"It won't kill you, the white explosion looking parts in the liquid are from the air buildup, if you open it and wait a couple minutes you should be fine. I highly recommend waiting, unless you want to contract The Yellow Death. Which doesn't help with the reasoning, but if you do drink it, we can help you get your memories back." Moreau said while looking at some minerals in another drawer of the research lab.
Astra had heard of the yellow death, it was a disease that had recently appeared, the symptoms being yellowy skin, bloodshot eyes, bleeding gums, black vomit, and fevers that could go up to 110 degrees. It was nearly impossible to survive it, 87% of recorded cases ending in death no matter what doctors tried. The other 13% were considered miracles, and even if they did survive, the disease left quite a nasty burn. Once you recovered the disease wasn't done, it would build up in a single spot, most commonly one of your lungs or pancreas, and stay there. Leaving you to have either limited movement, or limit what you can eat, there being a high chance that the disease would come back if you ignored the limits.
Astra finally took the vial. Wanting to get her memories back she opened it and let it settle. "Where did The Yellow Death even come from?" Moreau glanced at her and smirked while looking through a microscope, "I guess we have a little detective with us now, don't we?"
Astra rolled her eyes, 'A detective huh? Would I be interested in that?' She wasn't really sure, after all she still wasn't used to her new situation, and she never had the chance to see what she liked. But she did want to know the answer to how The Yellow Death came to be on more than a scientifical level, the thing was that something like the Yellow Death wasn't going to help her get her memories back.
She already knew the basics from textbooks she read one time while working under a scientist. 'Oh yeah that guy! What was his name again?' Astra thought for a while.
***
The caravan suddenly stopped moving, and the engine of the van dragging it wasn't heard either. Astra didn't remember sitting on a bean bag for 2 hours, yet she still couldn't seem to recall anything about the scientist. Just that she worked under him once, and a small amount of the basic scientific methods and theories she read while working under him.
Astra looked around and snapped out of it once saw Menti staring at her. "You've been holding that vial for 2 hours now. Just drink it already! I want to see your powers!"
"Oh, uh, yeah that..." She looked at the vial for a moment, the white parts were standing still, but hey still looked like splats of paint. She gulped, and drank it in one gulp, trusting in Moreau's word. She sat there for a moment, not feeling any different, then she suddenly saw what seemed like shattered pieces of glass with random people in them, all of their faces being a void. Then it suddenly fixed and her vision was back to normal.
'What the hell did I just see?' Astra thought as she looked at her hands, there was now a butterfly like mark on her right hands palm. The mark was like white paint, but if it was able to glow with a black outline that made it seem like it was a hole in her hand. She sighed, she wasn't relieved, but at least she didn't nearly break for nothing.
They all stared at her concerned, as she felt the caravan moving again. What was the reason for the stop? She didn't know, but she didn't really care either, she only cared about whatever she just saw.
Then she suddenly heard what sounded like a train. She looked outside of a window that in the back of the caravan and saw 4 German Sheppard like dogs chasing them. But they weren't at all dogs, as the main body and head for each of the 4 was a steam engine train. The paws on their front legs being train wheels as the tracks shot out of the front of their legs, a transparent liquid shooting out as the tracks shot out. Then went under their paws, shot up into the stomach from the force of their running, where their stomachs consumed the tracks and they came back out of their front legs.
Astra stared at the train dogs in confusion and horror, "What the fu-"