#with a normal drawing then the most insane abstract piece possible

[creatively-cosmic]

Don't be selfish for the old designs, now leave your worries all behind!

Please try to fight it, all these new designs will leave you failing every time now!

[keilemlucent]

lavender latte: iii

(T (for now!))

hawks | takami keigo x reader

ao3

chapter 1   ||   chapter 2   ||   chapter 4

word count: 4.2k

a cheeky drink and some mutual sabotage. 

warnings: oh no, they say s*x, fluff, pining, the usual, and a wittle angst on the side, reader smokes cigs bc its a salem trademarked fic thing

enjoy folks ;^) the whole of this piece is gonna be about? ten chapters. so. hold on tight!!!

beta read by @keiqos, heart EYES

||||||||||||||||||||||||

“Let that sit for a second or you’ll burn yourself—”

“Don’t need to tell me twice, angel. I know the drill.” Hawks replied with a wink.

You weren’t ever going to get tired of that.

You really expected Hawks to disappear out of your life. You really, truly expected him to run off for good. How many bigger, better, and more important things did he have to do? Even if you managed to speak to him and regard him like any other customer (or, perhaps acquaintance, and more recently, friend — ), your mind swam with insecurities that only seemed to get worse over time.

You were waiting for the metaphorical thread to snap.

You waited for the day Hawks simply would stop texting you flirty bullshit on a somewhat regular basis.

But, holy fuck, the dude didn’t.

 You couldn’t think of why. You weren’t complaining about the attention, but you also were terrified of getting too used to it. Hawks was a part... bird (?) right? He was flighty by nature.

Despite this, Hawks continued to not only text you but also stopped by the shop fairly frequently for his special, quirk-fueled beverage fix. Politely, he’d text you the day before he planned to make an appearance to check and see if you were working, and then show up the next day like it was nothing. 

He usually wouldn’t stay for long; the hero was ungodly busy and always on the move. But, he always took the time to flirt and get a full description of his drink before dashing out to save the world once more. 

Most days he visited were his ‘hero work’ days. He’d appear in his costume, done up and dashing for a sip and a quick talk before disappearing once more into the skies. Every once in a while, Hawks had an ‘office’ day where he’d be confined to his agency to catch up on his insane backlog of paperwork. On these occasions, Hawks would talk (stall) at the tea shop for as long as possible. You talked and joked with him as long as he would let you. Sure, it put you behind on work, but no one at the shop was going to tell you off for fraternizing with the number two hero (whose repeated presence was drawing more customers anyways). You both reveled in each other's attention, drinking in the other’s slowly softening smiles and quick wit. 

 On this day, Keigo’s wings were the shittiest they had been in a while. Plucked and almost barren with how much he’d been working lately. Total exhaustion seemed like it was constantly on the horizon, tugging as his eyelids and weighing down his chest each morning.

It was easier to get out of bed when he got to think about seeing you.

Sure, your drinks were a perk. Very much so. He was getting so used to the artisan beverages you crafted that the taste of his normal canned coffee was starting to bother him. 

But, what his real thrill in visiting the tea shop was that he got to see you, and that made his heart pound. 

He sat across from you, looking down into your newest drink. It swirled between dark and milky, a heady, rich aroma billowing up with the steam it produced. He had requested something ‘surprising, new, and horribly caffeinated’ as deep fatigue was the worst villain he’d likely see that day. You had just nodded, cheekily starting to prepare his drink with a bounce in your step, pupils going wide. 

“I feel like you’re gonna start running out of ideas one of these days,” Keigo laughed, adjusting himself on his stool, gloves and jacket removed. He almost looked like a normal patron.

 You grinned to yourself, idly cleaning around you as you often did, “I dunno, I’ve got a lot.”

Hawks raised an eyebrow, “Tell me about them.”

“Nope, top-secret,” You shook your head, digging into your apron to flash him the small notepad you carried on you.

Scrawled in nasty handwriting, you carried your many ‘feeling’ ideas around with you. Different concepts and abstractions all scribbled down, a nice long list to look back on whenever Hawks would make his appearances and his own vague requests. Your backlog of ideas made it easy to find something more than suitable to make for him.

When Hawks saw your notepad his eyes widened, tilting his head and a devious smirk coming to his lips.

Your expression fell, and you stuffed the papers back into your pocket, hiding your hot face by idly cleaning some more. 

You left yourself very open for teasing, it seemed.

(Not that you or Keigo minded.)

“You keep a little list of all of your ideas! I’m beyond flattered,” Hawks ran a hand through his hair, flashing a cocky smile for you. 

“I have to stay prepared, can’t be disappointing my celebrity sugar daddy,” You winked as Hawks’s eyes went wide, half-hearing a choke get caught in his throat. (You loved it when you were able to get him visibly flustered. What a treat.) You nodded down to the drink, “Should be good to try now.” 

 Keigo really liked spending time with you. He knew it was always fleeting and short and consistently he wanted to find reasons to stay with you at the tea shop counter for longer and longer. Your quips and chides continued to get quicker and more clever and he was having an increasingly difficult time keeping his cool around you. Most of the time he smoothed himself easily, not showing a trace other than that which he neurologically couldn’t control. 

But sometimes, you were bold enough and ballsy enough to get him to gag on his literal words and he was positive that you were the only person to ever have him break composure in such a way. 

He covered his weakened poise by sipping the new drink, mindfully letting the taste wash over his tongue.

Increasingly, you’d been changing up the so-called ‘vibe’ of your beverages. It seemed like each time Keigo dropped in, you had something new and vibrant to show him. 

This drink was particularly different.

The taste was rich, dark, and smooth, rolling into the back of his throat and down his spine. It coated his insides with a warm, low heat. Peeking through were sweet, light accents, warm but almost... teasing?

His dick twitched.

 Hawks’s mouth dropped open, any and all professional veneers dropped as you just beamed so fucking smugly at him. 

“What do you think?” You leaned a bit forward, bouncing on your toes with excitement.

“Is... Is this supposed to taste like sex?” Hawks asked, taking another mouthful to confirm. Based on the way his eyes briefly shut and some of the tension rolled from his shoulders, he thoroughly confirmed it.

“Technically, it’s crafted based on like... a late-night rendezvous. I left it fairly up to interpretation beyond that. The rest is on you.” You shrugged, still bouncing as Hawks took another chug.

“What the fuck, (Y/N),” Pleasant shock colored his features, but clear amusement stretched across his lips as he continued to drink. 

“You wanted something surprising and horribly caffeinated. That’s a dark chocolate mocha with two extra shots, our in-house raspberry and rhubarb syrup, a bit of white chocolate syrup, and a few of my add-ins as well. It’s pretty different from what I’ve made you before,” You blinked at him, stomach twisting as his expression remained unguarded. “I... I probably should’ve asked before giving you a drink that definitely could’ve been taken as sex. That’s my bad. I can remake you something else if you’d like?”

 Keigo shook himself from his stupor, shaking his head and quickly regaining his composure. He took another sip to emphasize his words, “No, nope. It’s okay. Definitely okay. The drink is really good. I’m just now wondering something.”

“And, what’s that?” You asked, reaching behind the counter to grab your own iced beverage.

“Can your quirk be used to manifest bad feelings and concepts, just like good ones?” Keigo asked. Normally, he’d add more nuance, but he was getting impatient and sloppy around you. He’d have to keep that in check.

Especially with the way your shoulders drew up and tensed. You turned a bit away from him, any and all potential for eye contact torn away.

He hit a nerve.

“The type of abstract feeling doesn’t matter, I can emulate it,” You replied, pulling at your nails. Keigo had long picked up that it was one of your habits when your anxiety spiked. 

He dropped it, but didn’t forget. There were public files on quirks. Maybe he’d look into it. Maybe. It felt a bit invasive, but considering plenty of that data was freely accessible, it hardly was an invasion of privacy, right? 

(Except for the fact that it obviously made you very uncomfortable to discuss the more unsavory potentials of your quirk.) 

(He just wouldn’t tell you.)  

Keigo switched topics, easily rolling away from the topic, “Any particular... event that inspired this one?” 

You pressed your hands into the counter, leaning over it to glare at him, “Are you referring to something with that comment, Hawks?”

He shuddered when you said his name, but you don’t notice. 

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not,” Keigo shrugged easily, going for another sip.

 The drink was inspired by the several day cinematic, wine-bender you went on a week or two prior. An entire weekend with just you, your cats, three entire bottles of wine, and a backlog of movies to catch up on. You tried to consume lots of different types of media, but what had been catching your eye lately had been anything with gushy romance for fairly obvious reasons.

(There was an embarrassing amount of ideas for drinks that were a bit too romantic to properly indulge with your quirk. You’d never tested the limits of how certain feelings could manifest, and you weren’t quite ready to face the reality where you could make people nut from caffeinated milk.)

“It is good though, the drink,” Hawks smacked his lips together as if it would make his coming analysis more credible. “It definitely does taste like sex, but more so complicated. Darker.”

“Deeper.” You smiled. “Your palette is getting more refined. I’m proud.”

“Are you saying it was bad to begin with?” Hawks pouted, flashing you falsely weepy eyes and a puffed out lip.

You rolled your eyes, “Yes, you yourself have admitted this. You drink canned coffee still, so I can’t even call your taste good.”

Hawks gasped, putting a hand to his chest, “I’m hurt, truly wounded.”

“I’m sure you are, tailfeathers.”

“I really thought I had reliably moved up to ‘birdboy’, angel.”

You snorted, covering your mouth with your hand, “Just goes to show how quickly the tables turn, tailfeathers.”

Hawks’s pager suddenly chimed, a familiar sign. He took a quick look at it and sighed, moving to re-robe. You were surprised by the speed at which he did so, and the way he became tense so quickly. 

It made you realize that he was always tense.

(Unless he was talking to you.)

“I thought today was an office day?” You asked, a bit of a disappointment clouding your voice.

Hawks just gave a small smile, fully plastering back on his heroic facade, “Duty calls. Lots happening lately.”

He flicked his visor back over his eyes, slid you your normalized wad of cash, and whisked himself out the door, immediately taking to the skies from the streets.

He’s in a bit of a hurry.

He... didn’t even say goodbye. 

Wonder what’s happening?

 Truthfully, Keigo was a bit startled by the notice on his pager. The whole reason he’d started patrolling the particular neighborhood the tea shop was in was because there was word of a villain syndicate working nearby. It hardly seemed right for the neighborhood, but Keigo knew that villains hid anywhere. Whatever they were planning was still relatively shrouded, but it was clear that it needed to be treated delicately. That particular neighborhood was rife with pedestrians, businesses, and homes and any sort of villainous activity had the possibility of reaping a heavy amount of collateral damage. Keigo and the Commission had been on their guards about it, but things had been steadily becoming more intense over the past few weeks. 

Plopping himself on a rooftop, Keigo took up residence to stake out his newest lead, watching figures and silhouettes in a nearby office building.

 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

 Funnily enough, the rest of your week went horribly. Just downright shitty. You figured at some point, things would let up, brighten, but they didn’t. Each day brought some new, personal calamity. 

The first was a trip to the emergency vet with one of your cats after she swallowed a hair tie. An expensive vet bill later, she was perfectly healthy, but you remained wracked with anxiety. 

Another day, the owner of the tea shop paid a visit to chew you out for your newest tea blends not fulfilling his picky seasonal requests. You were relieved it had nothing to do with how Hawks monopolized your time. Still, getting yelled at easily within earshot of both coworkers and customers made your insides twists. 

The final small disaster was when a particularly asshole-ish customer chucked a hot drink all over you and your cute white sweater. One of the younger openers had been dealing with a difficult patron and an incorrect order, nothing out of the ordinary. When you tried to step in and de-escalate the situation, the man ripped the lid from his cup and splashed you with the burning liquid. You held back any sounds of pain even as your skin stung like hell when you offered to remake his drink.

One of your managers luckily allowed you to go home early. Thank god.

By the end of your shitty week, you fell into your apartment and just cried. White sweater stained and day feeling fairly ruined, you let yourself have a good, solid sobbing session to just release how terrible things had been. 

It would pass, you knew. But it sucked at the moment.

It also didn’t help that Hawks had been particularly absent after running out the last time he came around. He’d still managed to shoot you a funny text or two, but mostly, it was silence from him. You rationalized it by reminding yourself of how quickly he flew off at the end of his last visit, hero business forever more pertinent than you and the shop.

You reminded yourself to keep yourself grounded in Hawks obvious impermanence, even if you were starting to get used to (and really like) having the hero around. 

You decided that your Friday evening would be good. You treated yourself to a hot shower, noting with a hiss the pink scalded skin that covered your chest from your collar bones to just below your breasts. You threw on a facemask and uncorked a bottle of wine you had been saving for a rainy day. 

You clicked on one of your favorite shows, an older cartoon that brought you consistent comfort in times like those. Curled up with a knit throw blanket and your healthy cats, it did help soothe the burns, mental and physical.

That is until you got a bit too drunk on red wine and it turned into sad drunk.  

So, you made your way to the roof.

You weren’t fucked up beyond belief, despite the fact that you were towing an open bottle of red in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the left. The cold would sober you up, along with the nicotine. You hoped it would force you out of your head. 

Upon throwing open the door to your apartment complex’s rooftop, you were made very aware of its wintertime disuse. The gardens that grew during the summer were snowcovered. The chairs and tables for lounging were in a similar state. You didn’t mind. 

The view was still nice. 

You set down your bottle and zipped up your coat. Quickly, you brushed off the flurries from a rickety lawn chair and plopped yourself down. You threw on some music from your phone, playing some sweet, old songs that made your chest ache when you needed it to.

The city stretched in front of you, beyond the rooftop. You didn’t live in a particularly wealthy district, but there was no shortage of dazzling neon and bright street lights dotting the ground below. You watched how the rest of the city stretched far beyond your little pocket, still gleaming with multi-hued lighting and dazzling in the wash of the crescent moon.

You took a swig, fishing for your self-dubbed ‘sad cigarettes’ and lit up. With your exhale, you watched as smoke lazily swirled away, carried by the soft winter wind. If you were any less drunk, you’d be freezing.

A shadow, winged, fell across the snow. 

“You know, I get nervous when I see pretty girls on rooftops with bottles in their hands,” You jumped at the voice, whipping your head to the source.

Hawks stood, scarlet wings fanned outwards, on the lip of the rooftop. 

Your eyes widened.

You took another sip.

He gave an affectionate laugh, jumping down into the area where you were seated.

 Keigo had just been out on his normal, nightly patrol. The leak had been correct and he’d been stealthily tracking the villains while completing the rest of his hero duties. He was able to laugh off his exhaustion, but it was starting to eat him. Several cans of coffee a day was hardly doing it for him. He hid his sleepiness and aches well, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t difficult. All the same, his typical roles had to be fulfilled. 

He was surprised to see you, all alone on a rooftop with a lit cigarette between your fingers. Keigo let himself be surprised before noting that ‘ yes, you definitely probably live in this apartment building and you’re just outside to smoke’, but the sudden jolt of panic he felt was crushingly unbearable. 

Mostly because it was personally protective and not heroically instinctual and he couldn’t start acknowledging that aspect of his feelings for you. Not yet. 

Keigo walked towards you, asking, watching you blink blearily at him “You doing alright?” 

Eyes downcast, you shrugged, “We all feel shitty sometimes. Just depends on how you cope, ‘ya know?”

“And how do you cope, (Y/N)?” Keigo asked, pausing before brushing off a chair. “Mind if I join you for a bit? I could use a second to rest my wings.”

You nodded, almost offering him the bottle, but quickly pulling it back to your chest before taking another inhale. Offering a pro hero alcohol while he was pretty obviously working seemed like a bad move, even in your tipsy state. 

“Most of the time, I watch nice stuff and distract myself, like most people, ya’ know?” You exhaled as you smoked, relishing the nicotine buzz. “Sometimes, though, I just feel extra shitty and need to extra cope.”

Hawks hummed in agreement, sitting back in the chair. His wings were folded up and over its back, the longest feathers trailing in the small snowdrift behind him.

“Do you get cold, being in the sky all the time?” You asked, eyes going cloudy as you stared up at the lights of the city and higher into the sky. 

“Most of the time,” Hawks chuckled, throwing his arms behind his head, “I’ve told you this, angel. It was one of our first conversations.”

Your eyes widened at the realization, mouth open with a hearty laugh.

 It made Keigo’s eyes water a little. He blamed it on the wind. 

 “I’m silly, I can’t believe I forgot,” You nestled back into your chair, tracing the lines between constellations. “It’s the whole reason you came to the teashop in the first place.” 

Your voice resonated, focus foggy. Somewhere else, old memories played in your mind, recounting your first few meetings with Hawks.

A warm, small smile stretched across your face as you traced the stars. 

 Keigo watched, enraptured. You were cute, especially like this. All bundled up in your winter coat, half-zipped. There was a lot less stress in your shoulders than he normally saw at the shop, especially as your thoughts were so far away.

He wanted nothing more than to commit the contours and shadows of your face in the white moonlight to memory, never forgotten in the blissful cold. 

 You interrupted his thoughts so beautifully.

 “Thanks for talking to me.” You took a sip from your bottle just after speaking, half-drowning your words, but Keigo caught each one. “I appreciate you.” 

“P-pardon?” Keigo couldn’t tell if you caught his stutter, but even if you did, you didn’t show it. The comment felt like a jab to his jaw, half-knocking the wind of him and turning him into a filthy masochist. He’d take any whiplash if it meant you saying such kindnesses to him. 

How could you just say shit like that?

What exactly did you mean by that?

Why did your attention make his legs tremble?

You turned your attention from the night sky to Hawks, something like uncertainty bubbling in your chest, “I appreciate you, ya’ know? Coming by the tea shop still, teasing each other and shit, you humoring me—”

Hawks interrupted you, feathers tensing at his back.

“I’m not humoring you.” Hawks deadpanned, staring at you oddly seriously. The yolks of his eyes seemed even more intense in the neon and night light. 

“You’re... not?” 

There was utter disbelief in your voice, accented by the way your jaw was half-opened.

Hawks shook his head, standing in emphasis, feathers fluttering as he did, “ No, angel. Not at all. I visit because...”

I like you.

“Because I like your drinks.”

  Because you make me feel good in a way I’ve never felt.

“You’re fun to talk to, too. Added perk.”

  Because I want to hear your voice when I breathe and when I die. 

“I enjoy it, you know? You're fun.”

 Some feeling in your chest, something full of hope, crushed itself and compacted to the point of pain. You sniffled at his admission, blaming it on the cold. In a fucked up, sad way, part of you was so relieved. 

He likes the shop. He likes your drinks. 

He’s around because he wants to be. 

But not because you’re special to him. 

 His words reminded you of your insignificance in Hawks’s life. No matter how much you craved his attention and words, and more recently found yourself staring at the plumpness of his lips and the curve of his cupids bow and daydreaming about how much you wanted to lean over the tea shop's counter and kiss the constant, teasing smile off his face—

But.

You don’t matter that much to him.

Sure, he likes you, but he’ll never feel the same way about you. 

 You made the decision then to make the most out of Hawk’s affections and sweet words. You’d take what you could get, even if it was fleeting and probably  eventually heartbreaking. It seemed smart, to refuse to get your hopes up for someone so unattainable.

 You let out a shaking sigh, “Thank you, Hawks. I appreciate you coming around. You really light up my day.”

 Keigo saw the fall of your face and bottled himself up. Shoved down everything. Fuck his feeling, fuck how he felt about you, this was all fucking terrifying. It was getting to be too much and he had to try and control himself.

Just like he’d been taught so well.

He was just so happy to be around you. He could squash his feelings, even if they were fairly obviously somewhat mutual. God knows that he didn’t know how to handle anything like that.

On the gods, his pager beeped.

 “Duty calls?” You said, standing up yourself and brushing off the stray snowflakes. 

“Seems so.” Hawks sighed, nodding, “Thanks for letting me rest here. It was good to see you, (Y/N). I’ll see you soon, okay?”

You waved goodbye as Hawks disappeared as quickly as he came, launching himself from the roof with the heavy sound of wing beats. 

Soaring away, Keigo risked a final look at you. He swore he saw tears in your eyes.

He forcibly repressed his feelings, reminding himself that your company, words, and quirk-made beverages were more than enough. The flutter in his chest when he thought of you wouldn’t rest, but he could learn to ignore it. 

 On the roof of your apartment, you felt fatigue in your bones and wetness on your cheeks. You ignored both in favor of smoking another cigarette, soft, melancholy music being your only constant, reliable companion. 

You reminded yourself that he, Hawks, was a temporary fixture, more flighty than most and liked you just enough and for surface-level reasons. You could take that. You’d do anything to be around him more, even if it never amounted to anything. 

You, just as Keigo did, pressed down any larger feelings.

 (The thing about feelings, though, that neither of you was very good at remembering, was that they don’t go away. Sure, you can let them go, but that takes time or a practiced mind!)

(When you take feelings, big, aching, soaking feelings and shove them down into the deepest parts of you, they just tend to make you bleed. The ‘hidden’ feelings color your blood as it spills, even if you don’t notice when it falls and its change in hue.)

(One can only hope that both Keigo and you listened instead of lied.)

 Both of your hearts ached, and neither of you fully understood why.

[robalchemy]

Coming Out Of The Empath Closet

Like most of these posts, I’m never really sure where to begin or how to lead in...But the title says it all; I’m an empath. So why write a blog post about this? Why make it public? Why make it a big deal? why even share it at all? Well, that last question is the biggest one I’ve been faced with most of my life. Why WOULD I share this about myself in such a close minded world? Why would anyone dare to allow the deepest parts of them out for all the world to see? It’s absolute insanity in our self-centered, closed minded, drive-through, fearful, dogmatic culture we call the western world in 2019. And I’m JUST bringing this out at the age of 35, so could you imagine trying to explain this to the school psychologists in the early 90′s? That would surely have been a one-way ticket to ALL the anti-psychotic drugs! Okay, so there’s a LOT to unpack here, so let’s just take it one spoonful at a time, yes? My biggest reason for bringing this aspect of myself out into the open is primarily for anyone else who’s in the same boat as me, but for a multitude of reasons, is perhaps conflicted by it. And believe me, I’ve been through ALL of these barriers time and time again. You never know what anyone will think. And this concept of normality and fitting in has been just pounded into us so hard for so long. Maybe you’re worried that your friends or family will think you’re crazy. Maybe you’re beginning to question your own sanity. Maybe people have TOLD you you’re crazy. Maybe people have put you down for it. Maybe people have made you feel like the absolute dumbest piece of shit that the face of the earth has ever seen for being so fake and ridiculous. Maybe religious people in your life want you to believe you’re all up in the devil. Maybe people have said it’s just a phase. Or that you’re fishing for attention. I’ve been to all of these places more times than I could recall.

And I WANT to tell you that this is all somehow not true, not real. I WANT to tell you that. But unfortunately, people’s judgments are VERY real, whether we like it or not. And so many of us can FEEL these judgments in so many ways. For me, I feel the intention other people have in conversation. I (more often than not) already know what their point is going to be before they’ve even finished the first sentence. I know when someone is lying to me. I know when someone’s trying to manipulate me. I even physically feel when someone is THINKING about me. (It feels like an extreme hot flash running up and down my spine and in my head.) So yes, judgement has, does and will happen. We can’t change that, nor is it our duty or right to change ANYONE. That’s not what any of us are here to do. So what should we do about both negative reactions or even just FEAR of negative reactions? Not a damn. Freaking. Thing. Which brings me to my second point of why I’m bringing this up: If we can’t be honest and true to ourselves, what CAN we be honest and true to? The truth here is that we all have the things and characteristics that make us US in this life. Would you be ashamed that maybe you have brown eyes? Would you shame someone else for liking ice cream? Of course not, it’s absolutely absurd! And these abilities that in truth, EVERYONE has - Are no different. These are just other characteristics of the way we are that are immutable. We can’t change them. We can’t delete them. So why not embrace them? That’s a question that would have made me VERY nervous even just months ago. In short, this is who I am. It’s who I’ve always been, since childhood. And it’s been a major factor in leading a VERY misunderstood life. Personally, I was VERY lucky to grow up in a family that was very open minded to these things. It’s not like I was identified as an empath and knew I was empathic when I was a kid. Back in the 90′s, that term was akin to ‘Witchcraft’ and late night infomercials for “JoJo’s Psychic Alliance Hotline for $5 a minute”. My Mom was strongly empathic, my sister is probably the strongest empath of any of us, and my Dad even developed some of his abilities later on in life, as well. (Although I’m probably closest with my Brother, but I really have no idea where he stands with any of this, and that’s completely okay too.) Growing up, my Mom always just described me as being very sensitive. And that really IS a very apt description. But she knew what I had from day one, whether she shared it with anyone or not. I’m not sure what my sister recognized in me at that time, but still, in some ways she could read me better than anyone. I also grew up OBSESSIVELY creative. And I haven’t changed even a little bit. This is a very common trait among empaths of all varieties - I don’t yet fully understand why, but somehow it also seems very fitting. As a creative soul, I can see possibilities that nobody else can. I can process certain kinds of abstract concepts intuitively and instantly. I can visualize almost to the level of hallucination, that’s how I always knew where to put the lines when I’m drawing. So even aside from all this empathic stuff, my brain was never wired “normally” to begin with. And growing up - The schools, psychologists and so many teachers saw this and insisted to my parents that something was wrong with me. I had to be “fixed” because back in those days, not fitting into the same box as everyone else was BAD. This was just the tip of the iceberg for a central theme in this life for me. So just for fun, I’d like to get into the specifics of some of the things I experience that maybe not EVERYONE else does. Since childhood, my main “odd” experience is that I feel the emotions and intentions of either those immediately around me, those I observe or those I interact with. This is actually the trickiest part of it all for me, because for decades, I had no idea that many of the things I was feeling weren’t mine. Can you imagine how screwed up that makes a person feel? The thing that made me aware and able to discern which emotions were and weren’t mine was...Well, it was freaking OBVIOUS once I began opening up to new perspectives. I knew I wasn’t perceiving the world incorrectly, yet my emotional reactions often did not remotely suit the circumstances I was in. I was just so used to it that it was just a part of life for me, and second guessing my own thoughts became normal. This caused me to repress it for so many years, but it never went away. It just kept getting more and more pushed down and compact over my lifetime until it reached critical mass and EVERYTHING I’d built up over this life began exploding out of me since it had nowhere else to go. I experienced this as chronic, severe long term depression and anxiety in recent years. That’s a long story unto itself that I’d rather not go too deep into, but the point is: Being THAT unhealthy and repressed nearly cost me my life. I became a borderline alcoholic, because that was the only way I knew to feel better. I also became obese. (Fun fact, in the last year, I’ve dropped ALL that weight!) And many times, I was borderline suicidal. I even went through several psychologists who were at a complete loss and fired me as a client because they couldn’t help me. Friends, THIS is what happens when we fall out of alignment with ourselves. This is why being true to ourselves goes FAR beyond a warm fuzzy sentiment. Now imagine being able to feel the intentions and emotions of anyone you direct your attention toward or interact with. Even through a screen. Now take a look around at the world we’re living in right now. It’s so disturbing and unspeakable to me that I don’t even want to go into examples, because even just tuning into the very concept of these negative emotions hits me so hard that I can feel it physically. And as much as I hate to say it, I live in Canada’s Arkansas. The part of the country I live in is Canada’s undisputed capital of bigotry, racism, xenophobia, selfishness and just fear driven hate in general. And I’ve lived here for 35 years. Just do the math on that and maybe you can begin to see how challenging it can really be just EXISTING as a person with empathic abilities. Now, the root word of ‘empathy’ is - You guessed it! So for me, this also goes the other way. When I see the VICTIMS of all this hate, I feel it exactly as they do. En masse. I can’t even begin to emphasize how strongly I feel it, and how much it hurts beyond what physical pain can offer. Because you can relieve physical pain sometimes, yes? This has created for me the challenge of even HAVING any faith or good will towards humanity when I can FEEL what we do to each other every minute of every day. Yet, in spite of all this - I’ve lived my life with an inexplicable and very deep sense of compassion and wanting to HELP this world, in spite of knowing what it’s capable of and the things we do to each other without so much as a second thought. I can’t even stomach how anyone can exist that way. On the flip side, I don’t come across genuinely highly positive people very often, but when I do - OMG WHAT A FREAKING RUSH!!!! I’ve never done cocaine, but that’s what I imagine it must feel like. Occasionally, I come across people who truly have the highest of intentions and hearts full of love and good humor. I feel it as soon as they approach me. When this happens, I get a very light headed rush, the world starts to look REALLY bright or “bleached” and the internal feeling is like a combination of excited butterflies in the stomach, an absolutely ELECTRIC surge throughout my entire body, very warm pins & needles that give me goosebumps, and I just instantly want to take this person, clone them 30 or 40 times and go to a party with only them. It is the starkest contrast I could imagine. So that’s the basic version. If we want to go even DEEPER into this rabbit hole, I would only tell you about the most recent MONTHS of my life. I can’t even begin to describe the work I’ve been doing on myself and where its taken me. (I will in the near future...) But in short, I’ve begun to accept, embrace and develop these parts of me. Well actually, they’ve kind of been developing themselves. So before, I was basically limited to the definition of a physical and emotional empath. In recent months however, I’ve been cracked so wide open that I’ve been experiencing things that I had no idea my mind was even CAPABLE of perceiving. To name just a couple - The degree of the sensitivities I’ve always had have increased ten fold. If I’m chatting with someone online, I can feel them to the point of their pulse. This is not an exaggeration. I’m willing to bet that some of my friends who are reading this right now are friends that I’ve been chatting with on messenger, and I’ve said something like “Okay, let’s change the topic because I just felt your heart rate spike and your adrenaline kick in”. (I actually feel much more than that, but I still want my friends to TALK to me, so I’ll leave it there for now!) I can feel the intentions and intensity of the energy of people around me in traffic. This tends to be not so much emotional, but rather I feel a spectrum of the quality of people’s energy from SHARP to GENTLE. Those are honestly the best words I can find. Not strong and weak, intense and mellow, but sharp and gentle. Another interesting thing I’ve noticed of late, is people will just randomly start pouring their hearts out to me. Perfect strangers, it can be just helping a customer at work or paying for gas at 7-11; And 2 sentences in, they begin rattling off their entire freaking life story. People give me EVERYTHING. Constantly. This used to happen occasionally, but in recent months, it’s been almost every day that I’m in public, often multiple times a day. This goes beyond just chatty people, it’s flat out rigorous. For me, this is kind of a trap, because once it starts - I can’t get people to stop even if I shout at them to shut up. (Not that I do, that one’s just an allusion.) I don’t understand exactly why this happens, but I have a faint idea that some part of people, probably subconsciously - Feel my receptivity and take it as an invitation to pour out everything they’re holding in. I’ve always been uncomfortable in large crowds. Hell, you don’t have to be even remotely empathic for this! Needless to say, this has also been taken to the extreme. But on the flip side, I can also feel nature every bit as strongly. Being in nature has become my drug in recent months. It takes absolutely everything in me that’s heavy, and replaces it with the most merciful rejuvenation and love that I think I’ve ever felt in this plane of existence. It’s like being beaten up at school by bullies all day, then going home and just crying in your Mom’s arms - It’s something I can’t even come close to putting into words. It’s sentient, and it feels me as I feel it. It’s beyond catharsis, it’s beyond being understood. That’s truly as close as I can get to describing it, I literally don’t have words for it. When I go walking in the ravine by my house, it feels like the trees are my oldest friends who know me better than I know myself. And they know exactly what I need and how I need it. 20 minutes among the trees does more for me than anything any human has ever been able to make me feel, with the sole exception of my wife. It’s unconditional mercy. And to think, I used to think this kind of stuff was for tree huggers...Well, maybe try actually hugging a tree, and see where that takes you! Like I said, there’s a LOT to unpack here, and I’ve only started to scratch the surface. But I can only type so much in one sitting, so I’m going to leave this post as it is here, save for a couple closing words for anyone who resonates with this... Again, the point here isn’t to show off these things or claim that I have something others don’t - We ALL have the exact same abilities to the exact same potential extent. Some of us are simply at different points along our own journey and evolution, there’s no rank to this or any sort of being above, below, ahead of or behind anyone else. We’re just all at different points of our own unique path, and no two among the approximately 8 billion people currently on this planet are the same. So truly, there’s no pissing contest here, so please don’t interpret it that way. The point is to simply SHARE for a couple purposes: To give anyone out there going through similar experiences validation and hopefully a bit of courage to embrace this aspect of their path rather than fear it, be ashamed of it or resent it. The second point is that in sharing this, I’m simply taking my own step towards being as authentic as I can be. This is simply who I am, it’s who I’ve always been. We can’t deny our truest nature and we should never be ashamed of it, and in putting this out there, I’m being true to myself so that hopefully others can be inspired to be true to themselves. Thankyou for helping me realize more of my own personal truth in sharing this with you!

[decimatoroflight]

Book of Darkness: Chapter 6

Decimator of Light: Book of Darkness Chapter 6: His New Title

             “Please, enter!” the Sovereign’s voice chimed from inside the room, and Frio gently pushed Cin past the steel door. The teen looked back to her, easily preferring her over the old man, but she merely gave an enthusiastic wave and shut the door with a heavy slam. Cin heard her footsteps in the hallway, moving further and further away, and with every step, he could feel more dread welling up in his stomach. When he could no longer hear her at all, Cin swallowed nervously and looked back to the brown-haired man sitting at a polished black desk in front of him and quickly realized that he was in some sort of office.

             The room wasn’t nearly as bare as the corridor had been. There were paintings and what appeared to be framed poems or lines of prose covering almost every wall. The paintings were beautiful, done in bright colors, some realistic, some the most abstract Cin had ever seen, all in differently-sized frames. Every inch of the walls were covered in some sort of framed masterpiece. Right above the Sovereign’s head was a painting of the entire Zero Squadron saluting, although Frio was missing, and instead, there was a stocky man missing his left ear, and next to that portrait, there were portraits of other Squadrons standing in formation with different numbers on their headbands. There were seven other Squadrons according to the paintings, not including the one that had had kidnapped Cin.

             The boy could only gape as he stared at the pictures, mentally debating whether they were actually paintings or simply photographs. But he could make out the changes in thickness all along the piece caused by the layering of paint and found himself even more impressed than before. His eyes just began drifting towards a poem sitting on the edge of the Sovereign’s beautifully designed desk when the man spoke again, unconsciously crumpling the paper up as he did so.

             “Please, please, Decimator, sit down! I would never expect you to have to stand before me like a common soldier!” He chuckled at this comment, but Cin didn’t see what was so funny. Nevertheless, he sat down in the elaborate chair before him, heart already racing, his throat drier than it had been the entire day. For some reason, this man gave him a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he attempted to figure out why as the long-haired man continued to speak.

             “Now, I am sure you have countless questions for us. And your assumptions are likely correct, Decimator,” the glee with which he used that last word caused chills to run down Cin’s spine. “I am the Sovereign of Darkness, humble guide to the beings here and should-be protector of the nothingness that we are losing so rapidly. Now, I think you know we would not have Extracted you if it had not been of utmost importance. And as you likely have guessed, The Others have found out about your situation and your power, so we had no choice but to--”

             “I don’t have a single clue what you’re talking about,” Cin finally interrupted him. He couldn’t take sitting and listening to this strange speech anymore. As soon as the Sovereign had begun explaining, Cin had once again become completely lost. He spoke to Cin as though the teenager was supposed to already have a clue as to what was going on, as though this had all had been some great plan finally coming into play, as though Cin had been waiting for this the entire time. He hadn’t. “Look, sir, Sovereign or whatever you are, I think you have the wrong person.”

             “I beg your pardon?” the Sovereign looked at him expectantly, as though awaiting the ending to a very silly joke. When he received no punch-line, he furrowed his brows in concern, studying Cin’s face intently. After a moment, his smile completely vanished and his eyes filled with concern. “You...You do, of course, know who you are, what you are to us, do you not, Decimator?”

             That word again. It was like some sort of title, like ‘Sovereign’ was. Cin felt a twinge of annoyance towards it and felt it best to make it clear that the strange title was not his.

             “Vincint Luna. Or just Cin. That’s my name. Not ‘Decimator’ or anything else fancy like that. Look, I think you accidentally grabbed the wrong guy.”

             The Sovereign stared at Cin with a blank expression, as though unable to completely understand what he had just been told. Finally, sudden understanding flashed across his face, and the Sovereign covered his mouth to hide his gasp of horror and disappointment.

             “Oh...Oh, dear...Oh, goodness...” he frowned, shaking his head. “It must be...It seems as though you were considerably more locked off than we first thought. That we could have possibly imagined. You must be so confused...”

             “Locked off?” Cin furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “Hey, I’m not locked off from anything, I’m not deprived of anything, I’m not abused in any way! Seriously, I think you just have the wrong guy--”

             “Oh, my dear boy. A thousand apologies -- but that is impossible,” the old man said, shaking his head. He looked to Cin, his dark eyes filling with pity. “I am afraid...Vincint Luna...that it is you who has the wrong idea -- concerning who you truly are.”

             Cin stared for a minute, trying to register what he’d just been told.

             Not know who he was? That was a good one. He knew himself -- his physical limits, his thought patterns, his strengths, his weaknesses, his secrets -- better than anyone. He knew his family, he knew his friends, and only he knew his plans for the future and his actions in the past. He was Vincint Luna, the lazy, underachieving, high school senior painter who was quickly starting to hate the guy in front of him. No one could change that or even debate otherwise.

             “What the heck, man?” Cin couldn’t suppress an awkward laugh due to the sheer silliness of the situation. A lot of crazy things had happened that day, but that couldn’t suddenly, magically change who he was, no matter what the man seemed to think. “You’re kidding, right?”

             The Sovereign’s frown deepened, and he leaned forward, clasping his hands together so tightly they turned white. He must have been trying to hide his panic and was doing a decent job keeping his tone steady and gentle as possible.

             “Vincint...Goodness, how can I even begin?” The Sovereign took a deep breath to steady himself, mentally searching for the right words before speaking, “Well...Have you not noticed how you are not like the others in the Gray World? How you seemed to avoid harm, had ideas appear without prompting, understood things with little systematic work to be able to do so? How the light always hurt your eyes? How your eyes are identical to all those in your dreams?”

             The last comment sent a powerful jolt through his entire body. Cin swallowed slowly, trying to shake the statement off. True, he was luckier than most, and he did have sensitive eyes. But the dream remark was wrong. Well, half-wrong. Half the people in his dreams, ones like Enatha, had pure-black eyes, yes. But the other half, the people like Alanore, had no blackness in their eyes to speak of, only pure color. But how? How had that man known anything about Cin’s dreams in the first place? The teen had stopped trying to tell anyone about them when he was six. The only time he even mentioned them anymore was when someone had asked him what he was drawing, and even then, Cin had always only responded with, ‘It’s from a dream’. His conversation with Kazuko and Mark about them had been the most he’d said about his dreams in years.

             Nevertheless, Cin had never considered himself to be one of the people from his dreams. He had seen small similarities, yes, but he was a normal teenager, and there was no such thing as a pure-black eye. His eyes were brown -- just very dark brown. He wasn’t like the people in his dreams. It was impossible.

             “My eyes are brown. That’s a really common eye color,” he finally said.

             The Sovereign winced with disappointment at that answer. “No, my boy. Your eyes have no color. Your eyes are the same as every other citizen here -- your eyes are pure Darkness. Perfect nothingness. You know this. You only lie and pretend your eyes have color to be like others around you in the Gray World. But you are not like them.”

             “Why do you keep calling my home the ‘Gray World’!?” Cin snapped, glaring now, angry that he was being lectured on what he was supposed to know about himself. Who was this man to tell him what his own eye color was? His family had brown eyes; he had brown eyes as well. His were just darker.

             “It is not your home, Vincint,” the man said, his voice slightly strained with the effort of keeping calm. “It is that entire world. The dimension in which you once lived. That is what we, the Darkness, call it. The Gray World.”

             Cin stared blankly again. “My...My what? ‘Dimension’?” Cin snorted at the mere thought, unable to express a small grin. This old man was sounding crazier by the second. Part of him was in disbelief at the nonsense, but the other part was getting more and more annoyed at being lectured like he was the one who didn’t know anything.

             “You are surprised?” the Sovereign asked, seemingly surprised himself by Cin’s comment. “You cannot possibly ignore the differences between the two dimensions. How light is unneeded to see here. How the states of matter are different from the solid, liquid, gas, and plasma you would be used to. How there is a fourth dimension here, allowing us to make use of the Darkness when we so need it -- the extra level that the Gray World’s dimension lacks. They have but three dimensions. We have a fourth, here. We...are Darkness,” the Sovereign opened his arms to motion to the area around him, clearly beyond proud of this final comment.

             Suddenly, Cin couldn’t breathe, he was laughing so hard. As terrifying as the idea was that he had been kidnapped by some insane cult, the fact that they believed such nonsense was simply too funny. He continued to laugh, beginning to think that he was on some sort of show or in the middle of some very terrible joke.

             But slowly, very slowly, his laughter began to die, as the Sovereign continued to look at him with an unmoving expression, not surprised, not even disappointed in his reaction. Cin’s smile turned into a frown as, slowly, reluctantly, he began to consider what had been said to him.

It was insane. Everything that man had said was utterly insane and something only some sort of sci-fi obsessed dork could have thought up. But the problem was, he had seen utterly insane, unexplainable, borderline science-fiction things happen in the past few hours. His wounds had vanished because some hands had hovered over them. He had seen ice turn more solid than he had ever thought possible. He had been hit with splinters from trees that had exploded because a woman had pointed at them. He had seen the man now sitting before him vanish in the blink of an eye. He saw everything around him clearer than he ever had before in his life, and yet everything was in perfect darkness. He could practically feel the emotions of those around him, his senses were so heightened.              Even if this old man was crazy – how could he possibly explain everything that had happened to him? To think there was a normal, logical explanation for it...Maybe Cin was the crazy one. As much as he truly wanted it to be, this man’s ideas wasn’t nearly as impossible as Cin had first thought. That thought suddenly made Cin feel incredibly heavy -- sick, even -- for considering such a possibility.

             “If I may infer – it appears you are beginning to see the truth of this predicament,” the Sovereign said with some relief in his tone. “But, I also believe that you need much, much more explained to you. I cannot possibly imagine what could be going through your mind at this moment, but I assure you, I will do my best to inform you of this situation, and I shall be telling you only the truth.”

             Suddenly, the Sovereign was gone.

             Cin jumped as he felt a hand touch his shoulder and whirled around, heart racing. He was only slightly relieved to see that the old man was there, patting him sympathetically.

             “How...how do you do that?” Cin stammered, not trusting the man enough to think he would get the whole truth, but too desperate for answers not to listen. His heart was racing, but he still felt a slight chill from the man’s touch.

             “Oh?” The Sovereign blinked in confusion at him, suddenly appearing in his chair again. When he saw that Cin jumped a bit when that happened, he finally understood what had been asked. “Oh, dear, of course. You mean my Ability.”

             “Excuse me?” Cin didn’t see how it answered his question at all.

             “It is the term we use in the Darkness. You see, while the Gray World has three dimensions, ours has a fourth, as I have explained. Where there is Darkness – where nothingness exists, that is. No space, no time, nothing that usually exists in the “emptiness” you have in the Gray World. Our people, everyone who was birthed from nothing, can manipulate this aspect of our world. We each are Able to pull things into this Darkness, at least temporarily, and this is known as their Ability. Some very, very talented individuals can even pull something from nothingness, but let us not get ahead of ourselves for the time being. For the average being, there tend to be several different classes of Abilities, depending on what sort of matter or force they are able to pull into the darkness. For instance, I believe you recall the Zero Squadron – the individuals who Extracted you?”

             “Er, yeah,” Cin was trying to keep up with everything that was being said, but at the very least he remembered the people who kidnapped him. It was all so difficult to believe, and yet, he had no choice but to trust the man after everything that had happened. All he could do was memorize as much as he could to try and test out the information later.

             “Well, their leader, Captain Veder, can nullify the pull that gravity has upon him. He pulls that force of gravity that should be effecting him into the Darkness, temporarily. He does this by will, and thus can be weightless whenever he so wishes, and because this is his native-born Ability, a natural capability of his body, his body suffers no physical damage for it. This Ability is called Floating, and he is what we call a Floater. But this is but one Ability. Another example: the man with the impressive amount of muscle, Sterk, has the ability to remove mass from inside of him and temporarily store it in the Darkness. This allows him to run at impossible speeds and to strike quicker and to kick faster than most. He only has to carry half the mass one usually would, though he begins with the same amount of energy of someone with a heavier mass, and that excess energy goes into increased speed. Like the Captain, this effect on his own body causes him no harm, as it is what he was born to be capable of, and we call him and those with the Ability Hollowers. Then we have the woman who escorted you to me -- Frio is her name -- that sweet girl can momentarily pause the motion of all the electrons in a small area. She stores the energy needed to spin the electrons in the Darkness. Usually, this causes the atoms in the substance to form an ideal orientation and take the most powerful solid form it can. When her power fades, the electrons continue normally, as though the energy had never been removed. Unfortunately, energy cannot ever be permanently removed -- merely suppressed momentarily in nothingness. Beings that have the same Ability as Frio are called ‘Welders’. And Abilities like these are fairly common, but very vital to our Squadrons.”

             Cin blinked, unable to do anything else. Cancel gravity? Reduce mass? Stop electrons? The last one made even less sense to him because he’d almost slept through all chemistry. All he knew was that atoms had electrons and they spun, but he was pretty sure them just stopping was something that made no sense at all. It was like he was in a comic book where the impossible occurred left and right because physics just didn’t apply or maybe because the creator was too lazy to get the information right. But he could not argue. It all fit; Veder floated around like a feather, Sterk was unnaturally fast for someone his size, Frio had caused the snow to take a solid shape he had never seen before. So far, everything was consistent.

             “Now, Pila!” the Sovereign continued, his voice filled with pride. “She is very vital, and her power is very rare. She is what we call a Pauser. She is able to temporarily stop the flow within any circuit. Water, air, and most importantly – electricity. I think you can see how vital this is in the Gray World, where electricity flowing through wires helps humans attain light and mechanical energy and even conversation and facts from far away. There is a Pauser on every Squadron, and the Pauser helps on every mission to make sure that the Gray World stays peacefully unaware of our small excursions. The humans merely assume it is a power outage or that their devices have ceased to function.              “Oh, and the most recent individual you had seen. She is known as a Reverser -- just as vital as a Pauser, but so much rarer that we do not allow them to go on missions or technically become members of Squadrons. They actually remove the effects of time from a certain area, causing everything to go back into the order it had once been in. It is one of the very, very few Abilities that permanently remove something into the Darkness. If continued long enough, this Ability can cause matter to go back to when the atoms within it first formed, though I don’t believe anyone has had the sheer power to be able to do such a thing in generations. Usually, Reversers are used in the same manner as...what are they called...as doctors, in the Gray World. They bring our bodies back to their original states in cases of injury. They are some of our most respected beings in the Darkness; saying anything rude to them is not permissible.”

             The Sovereign paused just long enough for Cin to realize he was waiting for some sort of reaction. So Cin nodded awkwardly.

             “Of course, there are several other different categories for Abilities, outside of those within the Squadron. I, for one, am a Porter. I temporarily bring space into the Darkness. I use my Ability to thus travel and to reach different places without movement. This was one of the original, innate uses for Darkness, really, to travel -- but different ones came to be, and now the Ability I have is usually used to deliver messages or packages. Everyone can use the Darkness to travel to the lower dimension, to the Gray World, but only those that can instantly traverse a distance within a dimension are called Porters.”

             “O...okay,” was all Cin said, leaning back a bit against the chair, looking down at his hands, and pausing for a moment to try and let everything sink in.

             He was numb. That was the only way he could describe it. Everything he had once known, everything he had believed possible, had suddenly been flipped on its head. It was as though even his hands, things always so close to him, were now foreign.

             Another dimension? And it was possible to reach it? And he, of all people, had somehow been pulled into it? He was no longer on his home planet, he was no longer even in the same universe that he had been raised in. But what bothered him most was that he felt that this was...right. That this was all true. That this was how it things were supposed to be.

             The viscosity of the air, the lack of light, the ability to feel everything around him -- this felt right. It was like Cin’s body had been struggling and straining his entire life, and had finally returned to where it felt most natural. And he didn’t like it. He didn’t like the sudden feeling of strange, unwelcome, never-before-felt belonging. No, he didn’t get along with all people back home, yes there had been bullies of all sorts as he’d grown up. But he had a home, he had a family, he had friends that made him feel welcome. He’d never thought for a minute that in his own home, in the place where he was loved and accepted most, he somehow didn’t belong. And suddenly knowing that he had been foreign to the world that he had grown up in made him sick inside. He shouldn’t have liked this new place more than his home; he had no friends, no family, no reason to prefer this darkness over earth. But his body told him otherwise.

             The unfairness of the situation started to cause a rage to boil in his gut. If this place was where he belonged, why would he have grown up in the so-called Gray World, then? Why would he have been given a life there if it hadn’t been where he belonged? Why had this old man expected him to know all this beforehand? Did he miss some sort of memo? Was he kidnapped and left on earth? And why was this place called the Darkness? Why would he belong in a place named after the source of nightmares, malice, and all evil?

             Cin slowly lifted his face up to look directly at the Sovereign, not entirely sure what he was feeling. He knew part of it was anger. Anger at the Squadron for bringing him there, anger at the man in front of him for telling him that everything he had ever known was wrong, anger at being taken away from his friends and family. But another part was relief, which he felt due to the strange sense of belonging, relief that he wasn’t so much different from others at home by sheer coincidence, that he wasn’t simply a freak. But this relief made him feel sick, as though all the happiness he had ever known in his life was suddenly somehow tainted. More than anything, though, he was worried. Worried about what was going to happen now. Would he ever see his mother, his father, his little brother, or his best friends ever again?

             “What do you want from me?” Was the question that left Cin’s mouth.

             “Hmm,” the Sovereign folded his hands on his desk, thinking deeply on the question. After a long pause, he decided to start from the very beginning. “Well, when this dimension was created -- the cause of which is still heavily debated about to this day -- The Others were created, as well. We lived separately, and thus we lived peacefully, and no problems existed within either realm. There was no pain, no suffering, no hatred. But our worlds met, and everything you know within the Gray World was created as a result of our realms interacting.”

             The Sovereign had hatred in his voice, though Cin wasn’t entirely sure for whom that was.

             “This new, lower dimension connected with ours and the realm of The Others, and each life form on the Gray World connected to one Other and one being of Darkness. With our help, life in the Gray World grew, differentiated, and evolved, became stronger, became what it is today. To this day, The Others, the Darkness, and the Gray World are all connected to one another, and as a result, all interdependent. But with the creation of life in the Gray World, the problems began between the Darkness and The Others.

             “As it turned out, for The Others to use their disgusting powers to manipulate the Gray World to their liking, they must leech off of the Darkness. And the easiest way for them to accomplish this is to steal it directly from the beings of Darkness, the life force of our own innocent people! The Others do nothing but create, they do nothing but increase and enhance -- The Others suck in all nothingness, all potential from my people to create their so-called ‘life’. The more of this ‘life’ that is created, the more Darkness that is used up, and the more our people suffer because of it. After decades of this abuse, we now fear that there is no hope left; that soon, the Darkness will all be turned into one, large, used-up canvas, not a single space left for anything else to be added. And the worst part is that our people are utterly helpless to do anything to stop this disgusting violation of our realm.”

             The man’s hatred grew with every word until his face was red and a vein was bulging in his forehead. Cin was afraid his teeth would crack from how tightly he was clenching them.

             The story was interesting, and he felt sorry for the people, but Cin didn’t really see what any of it had to do with him specifically.

             “So I somehow ended up on Earth? And you took me back because you need more soldiers?” Cin asked after a moment. It was the only thing he could assume from that story. There was some unstoppable enemy, and so they took back one of ‘their people’ from earth? Had be just been some sort of back-up his whole life?

             “No, my dear boy, no,” the Sovereign said, a smile finally reappearing on his lips. “You, you are no mere soldier. You are no mere being of Darkness. You are what our legends have been speaking of since the first being of Darkness made contact with the first Other. It has been told that when we are at our weakest and on the Darkness is on the bring of being used up entirely, a being shall appear with the capability far greater than any other -- the power to create nothingness. The Ability to create Darkness, itself, and save our entirely realm.”

             Cin shrank away as this was said, the sick feeling in his stomach suddenly doubling. There was a hunger in the man’s voice as he spoke, a desperation that Cin didn’t want to have any part of. But the man’s dark eyes remained locked onto Cin’s face as though the teenager was the one secret weapon that could destroy his enemy in a war.

             “You, my dear, sweet boy, are the savior to the Darkness. You are the only one that can destroy The Others and permanently stop their abuse of our source of existence. You, Vincint Luna, are the Decimator of Light.”