Chapter Text
*Chapter 1: Emergence*
All around me, there is a faint softness. Where all you can feel is comfort and a type of floatiness. I think someone would describe this as ‘dark’, but one cannot describe and truly capture the essence of this feeling. It is comfort in the purist form that one can experience. Yet all good things must come to an end.
I don’t really realize I am waking up until I am awake, when all that incapturable comfort disappears. My eyes open, and I am treated to the truly glorious and magnificent sight of the red brick wall in front of me. I look around me, confused as to what is around me. To my right is a large garbage container, the kind trucks stop by to take away. To my left is an opening to a street, where people walk by, and the occasional car drives down. The stone I am on, ‘concrete’ my mind supplies, is flat but rough. It could probably wear me down to nothing from the right circumstances. The odor wafting from the garbage near me is foul, causing me to frown and wrinkle my nose in disgust. Looking down at myself, I appear to be dressed in some kind of suit. Black shorts, short-sleeve white shirt and black suit jacket, black tie, black gloves, and black heels. Examining my arms, they are incredibly pale, partially translucent, and even sparkle like a gem in the low light of the alley.
“...” trying to use my voice, not a breath comes out. It occurs to me that I have not taken a single breath since I woke up. In fact, I haven’t even blinked. A short gasp leaves me as I force a breath into myself, before I exhale slowly. In and out. In and out. Over and over I continue until it feels automatic. I repeat with blinking. Open. Close. Open. Close. Until this too happens on its own. Moving my gloved hands underneath myself, I push myself off the floor of the alley and stand upright.
I make my way out of the alley and on to the street it leads to. Looking around, I see beings, typically similar in size and appearance to myself, but with radically different details. I see beings where the difference is more arms, visible gills, horns, and more. It appears I will not have an issue blending in. My mind tells me that these beings are called humans, but it also tells me that I am not the same.
I wander through the streets, taking this turn and that throughout the city. Despite my similar appearance, something about me still stands out. Multiple times throughout my wandering have humans stopped to point or stare. They don’t seem hostile either, so I continue on as if nothing is wrong. Something that sticks out more than myself however, are humans that wear bright and flashy outfits patrolling the streets. ‘Heroes’ I think they are called. Other humans flock to them, talk to them, adore them. They might even worship them, if all the signs with various hero faces on them mean anything. I have taken an effort to avoid these heroes. If I want to blend in I need to avoid authority figures. Whenever I see a hero, I take a detour in another direction.
Who even am I anyways? I wrack my mind, trying to come up with something. My mind, usually helpful in supplying this, that, or the other, comes up completely blank. I can't remember anything. Be it age, height, where I lived, or the face of my mother. I don’t even know if I HAD a mother! I seek to rectify this, I look into the window of a shop near me and stare at my reflection. A cute face stares back. With short, sparkly, blue curls and deep blue eyes. A name comes to me, Sapphire. I have something I know about myself now. Mollified, I continue my stroll.
Eventually, my aimless walking leads me to a small green zone, ‘park’, with trees, paths, and open fields. I move through them, and I feel my body warm. I walk through one of the fields, tilting my head up, closing my eyes. The sun beaming down on me feels blissful, and nearly reaches the same comfort from before I woke up. I gently set myself upon the grass, arms and legs stretched. The sun calms me, warms me, I feel full. A drowsy feeling floods my brain. I am not ashamed to admit that the soft grass and the warm sun put me to sleep.
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*CRACK* I am awake and my chest is in terrible pain. There is a blurry shape sitting above me, hands on my chest. I think it’s one of the humans based on its outline. Not taking any time, I swing my head forward in an attempt to headbutt them. “Woah!” the assailant cries out as they rapidly pull away. “Thank goodness you’re okay!”
My vision focuses and a human with long voluminous black hair and strong blue eyes is revealed. Based on proportion, I assume the human is female. "It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you." She intones carefully. "You broke my chest!" I wheeze out. A pained expression crosses the woman's face. "I hope you can forgive me, It was your ribs and your life." She says, frankly. Immediately I know what happened. I had stopped breathing for my sleep, and she had come across me in the park.
"I don't need to breathe." I say to her, eyes flat and tone slightly agitated. I hope she picks up on the implied message. By the look on her face, she does. "I am so sorry! I thought you were dying." She says, verifying my suspicions about the situation. "Well, in any case an ambulance is on its way." She calmly says, which sets off every alarm bell. My mind floods with thoughts of bills. Bills I can't pay because I am broke. The next wave is of my cover being blown, because… I'm. Not. Human.
Shit
I try to get up as fast as possible, but I am slow on the draw. The human woman is on me in an instant. She wraps her arms around me tightly, not giving any wiggle room. "It's okay! It's okay!" she says, probably trying to comfort me. It is not comforting. I continue to struggle and try to get away, but she has me in a vicegrip. All the while, the woman tries and fails to soothe my panic. As I continue to move against her, a sweet scent starts to fill the air, and an artificial calm floods my mind. Shortly after, I start to feel drowsy again. My strength begins to fade and my eyes begin to droop. As I weaken, the woman says one more thing. “Everything will be better when you wake up, trust me.”
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‘This is not what I expected my day off to be like.’ I think to myself. I am currently sitting next to the hospital bed of an unidentified teenage, likely no older than 13, girl I found in the park I was walking through. The girl herself is not that big, probably no taller than 160 centimeters. While she was well dressed, she was sleeping in the grass of a park. Was she disowned? All I have is a mystery girl and speculation. Despite her dainty look, she is actually heavier than me, and packs quite the mean punch. The doctors had to patch me up a bit as well. I close my eyes to recall what led to this point.
I was walking home from a night out and decided to cut through the park. As I am navigating I look to my right out to the grass, and see a well dressed young girl who appears to be sleeping. I go to wake her up so she can get home, but she isn’t breathing. I checked for her pulse and felt nothing! She felt far colder than she should have too. I quickly called an ambulance for her and got to work. I tried to deliver CPR but for some reason her chest would not move. Again and again I tried, until something finally gave way with a loud crack. She was up in an instant, and tried to bash my head in first thing. I managed to calm her temporarily, but upon mentioning an ambulance, she went right back to panicking. I was eventually forced to put her to sleep with my quirk because I quite frankly could not keep holding her. After a rush to the hospital when the ambulance arrived, I sat myself next to her bed first thing. Which leads us to now.
There is no beeping heart monitor for her, because her heart does not beat. By all accounts, this girl should be dead. Yet between my testimony and her not decaying, she is not put straight to the morgue. Then again, even if she was dead, she probably would not fully decay within anyone’s lifetime. Her body, as it turns out, is mostly made out of blue sapphire, with a quartz outer shell. Finer bits like nails, eye sclera, and teeth are also quartz. And yes, even her hair is made out of gemstone. Yet somehow, the rock becomes flexible, behaving exactly the way normal hair would.
None of that matters right now, though. What matters is the fact that this girl has ZERO identification. None! Not one record! It’s like she has never existed, like she just popped into existence. It makes sense she would be terrified of going to the hospital if she legally does not exist. A dark picture starts to form in my head, of an escaped child servant who has no identification, no money, and no home. If nobody claims this child by the end of tomorrow, I am taking her home with me instead. I’ll eat my hero license if I let something bad happen to her.