Chapter 1
Not School
Carmine Agani was not the most remarkable boy imaginable.
He was handsome, he supposed. He liked his bright blue eyes and who didn't like a healthy tan? But he still wasn't the most popular boy in school, nor was a he a social outcast. He did get into the occasional fight, but that was mostly resulted from trying to defend his adoptive brother from jackasses.
Alfeo admittedly was not exactly the textbook definition of 'normal.' Being the only legit albino in the school tended to make one stick out. It didn't help that he literally appeared out of nowhere with no memory of his original family and with no documentation whatsoever. Until Carmine's police officer mother found the boy, Alfeo didn't exist.
It didn't help that Alfeo sometimes rattled to himself in what sounded like gibberish to everyone else listening, liked to stay up at night scribbling down notes that also looked like gibberish, and sometimes just completely failed to understand everyday concepts. Carmine honestly didn't mind, and even thought it was kind of cool because he thought it meant Alfeo invented his own language, like J.R.R. Tolkien did. And the 'failing to understand everyday concepts' could be chalked up to the total amnesia.
Other kids didn't have the same point of view as Carmine, and since Alfeo was sickly on top of everything else, it made him an easy target for bullies. It wasn't as bad as it was before; being the son of a cop gave Carmine the added benefit of knowing how to defend himself.
However, outside of that, Carmine just blended into the crowd of his High School located in Italy.
And right now, he was very, very tired.
He had spent all of five minutes in the school library and he could feel himself about to fall asleep at the table he sat at. His head kept jerking dangerously foreword, and his eyes refused to open any further than the half-lidded state they were currently in. There were dark bags under his eyes no doubt, though he didn't have a chance to look in the mirror yet. Right now he was reaping the consequences of forgetting to study for a big math final and pulling an all-nighter to make up for it.
Maybe he should head to the nurse's office. If he's about to fall asleep sitting up, it might just be better if he took a lie down. His next classes were done with finals, so it wasn't like he was missing anything important.
It took him a moment later to decide he was too tired to head to the nurse's office, instead opting to lay his head in his folded arms and close his eyes.
A quick power nap wouldn't hurt right?
The librarian was cool, she didn't yell at you if you opted to take a quick nap, though she would force you to head to the nurse's office if it lasted longer than twenty minutes.
With that in mind, Carmine sighed and relaxed, falling asleep moments later.
Hours later, Alfeo would come into the library, expecting to find his brother after looking everywhere else, but was quickly horrified to discover the only thing he could find were Carmine's things still strewn across the table.
And their owner was nowhere in sight.
A person would never really expect the son of a cop to disappear, from the middle of his own school no less. There was a massive investigation, one that would ultimately result in nothing being found.
Carmine Agani, for all intents and purposes, had disappeared off of the face of the earth.
And no one in the little town in Italy would ever know just how literal that statement was.
~*FH*~
Carmine didn't wake up until hours later, exhaustion getting the better of him and causing him to sleep uninterrupted, blissfully unaware of his sudden displacement. That is, until he opened his eyes to find himself propped up against a tree instead of slumped over the table in the library. He was in the middle of what looked like the thickest forest he'd ever seen in his life.
It took a second for his brain to register the place as "not school" before he sat up like a rocket with a confused curse.
"What the-" He began in Italian, whipping his head to and fro, trying to discern what had happened. "Where the Hell am I?"
He quickly got to his feet, anxiety coursing through him and making his heart race. Taking a second to force himself to calm down, he looked around his surroundings and listed off his own observations of his current condition.
He didn't feel hazy, drowsy or nauseous, obviously could move and keep a steady pace. And a quick look at his arms revealed no visible puncture wounds that suggested he'd been injected with something. That meant he either hadn't been drugged at all, or had been forced to ingest something and simply slept through the unpleasant side effects.
At no point had he been restrained with anything. There were no visible marks on his wrists or ankles or anywhere else that suggested he'd been restrained. Even duct tape left residue and marks, so if he had been tied up with something he'd see the telltale signs of such.
A quick look around revealed that he was completely and totally alone.
It was recognizably a forest, but it wasn't like any forest he'd ever seen before. The colors around him were amazingly saturated, and the trees were bigger than any kind he'd seen before. But they were twisted and their roots exposed, entwining with the earth in arches.
So what was the conclusion?
Someone had somehow managed to sneak him out of his crowded school without being seen, drugging him, restraining him, and then transported him into the middle of a forest and left him to wake up on his own.
And that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
For one thing, he should have woken up at some point. If he hadn't been drugged with anything, unless he was in an effective coma he should have jolted awake the moment someone tried to move him. And if he'd been knocked out by chloroform, that'd still only last a few minutes.
And how in the hell did they get him out of his school without being seen? It was a crowded school; you couldn't just sneak a kid out in without being seen! Somebody should have seen them and flipped their shit before immediately calling the cops.
And finally, why in the hell was he alone?
Child abduction cases had a few common reasons.
One, it was a divorcee trying to steal their kid back from their other partner. His parents weren't divorced and weren't even considering divorce, so that was off the table.
Two, it was ransom; they thought the kid they were taking was from a rich family so were trying to use the kid to extort the parents. Again, off the table because while well off his parents weren't rich either.
Three was a rather horrifying reason that Carmine honesty did not want to overthink, but it was one that would likely end up with him bloody in a ditch somewhere.
But if that were the case, his kidnapper would want complete dominance and control over him. He would have woken up chained up in a cage, not propped up against a tree in a forest. While he wasn't exactly complaining, if a serial killer (and/or worse) really had kidnapped him, he should not be having this much freedom to move about with the possibility of escape.
Unless the kidnapper in question was intending to hunt him down, like a hunter and prey type thing.
Carmine felt the color flush out of his face at that thought, and suddenly he couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't quite as alone as he thought.
All right, so his first priority was getting back to civilization. The quicker he could call the cops, the quicker they could catch this psycho, because this guy (or girl) had to have other victims to pull this off without getting caught. To do that, he needed to figure out where he was within the forest.
After studying his surroundings once more, he decided he could probably climb up these trees without worrying about their branches breaking. They were thick and the branches looked steady he clambered up the nearest tree and headed towards the top. He quickly peaked over the top of the tree, looking around at the forest that surrounded him. He could see the edge of it, leading to a desert like canyon that he didn't recognize from any of his geography classes.
He could also see a small pillar of smoke wafting not far from the-
Wait. SMOKE!
Smoke meant people!
And people meant someone that could help him!
He paused just before he took off after reaching solid ground again.
What if the smoke was coming from his kidnapper? He could be walking right into the psycho's grasp!
It only took a second's hesitation before he steeled himself with a determined look.
Even if it was his kidnapper, they were bound to have something useful on them, like a weapon he could take and defend himself with.
And the possibility that they were actually people who could help him was well worth the risk.
He just hoped they could speak Italian, because he was fairly certain he wasn't in Italy anymore, however that was possible. Italy didn't have any forests like this, at least none where he lived.
With that in mind, he took off in the direction he believed the smoke was coming from.
No less than half an hour later he came to a skidding halt, hearing voices in the distance. He only listened for a second longer before deciding they definitely weren't his imagination before diving behind a tree and a bunch of bushes.
If he could listen in on their conversation, maybe he could find out for sure if they'd hurt him or not. And if they were, then he'd at least have the element of surprise on them.
He didn't have to wait long for the two people in question to come into view.
And he nearly screamed right then and there, his theory of being kidnapped by some psychotic hunter tossed straight out the window, with the unconsidered theory of 'alien abduction' suddenly becoming much more likely.
Because neither of the people in front of him were human!
One of the monsters was over a head taller than him, a good deal more muscular and also had deep green skin, purple tattoos, and black hair that practically stood up straight. The other was closer to his size, and a girl (he thinks) except she was covered head to toe with deep orange fur, with for real cat ears peeking out from beneath wild red hair. The green guy wore a bright red tunic while the cat girl wore some kind of grey ragged wraparound sundress with a darker grey sash.
Both…creatures seemed to be having some kind of pleasant conversation, one that Carmine had no hope of understanding because they were speaking complete gibberish from his perspective.
They were completely oblivious to the panic attack Carmine was slowly slipping into, his brain trying to make sense of a situation that should be, by every single stretch of the imagination, physically impossible outside of some sci-fi TV show.
There was one thing he knew for certain though.
He wasn't leaving this damn spot until these guys went away!
At least…that was his plan, up until the cat girl's nose visibly twitched, her ears lying back as she sniffed the air.
Oh no.
Oh no, no, no, no!
Cats were not that good at sniffing people out! That was just something they did with cat people in cartoon shows, she couldn't seriously be-
He felt his heart plunge into his stomach when the cat girl confirmed his fears when at the green guy's prompting; she pointed at the bush he was currently hidden in
Oh God dammit.
Panic made his pulse race as the two slowly approached his hiding spot, his mind frantically trying to decide on what he should do next. Should he stay and pray they got distracted like in the movies? Should he make a break for it, come out on his own and attempt to talk it out, take advantage of the element of surprise he was about to lose, what?
In the end, he decided that coming out on his own would be the better option.
With some hesitance, he took a deep breath and stood up, startling the two creatures into jumping back a bit. The cat girl's ears were standing straight up and the green guy's small eyes were almost perfectly round and –holy shit he just noticed that the purple tattoos actually extended to the guy's eyelids! Carmine could barely take a flu-shot without freaking out over needles, forget getting his eyelids tattooed!
He quickly shook that off as he tried to speak.
"I…I…uuuhhh…" Carmine stuttered out looking around frantically as he tried to figure out what the Hell he was supposed to do. "I…I come in peace?"
Had he been under different circumstances, he might've face-palmed for using that dumbass cliché.
As it stood, he couldn't take his eyes off of the two creatures staring at him like he was the bizarre alien…that in hindsight was probably exactly what he was from their perspective.
Squirming under their gaze, he finally decided that he should take his leave.
"Um…look," He decided, slowly backing up with his hands raised, "I'm just gonna leave now and pretend this never happened, I'd suggest you guys do the same. Just leave me alone and I'll be out of your hair in no-"
Just as he was about to back out of arm's reach, the green man decided he wasn't about to let him leave so easily and seized his wrist with what felt like bruising force.
"H-HEY!" Carmine exclaimed, digging his heels into the ground as he was dragged back forward. The green man saying something he still couldn't understand, but he looked angry. "Let me go! I'm sorry but seriously I'm not here to hurt anybody, I just want to go home!"
He clawed at the taller guy's hand, which did nothing to even hurt him because he had way tougher skin than he looked. Fear, desperation and the ever present anxiety rose in his throat like bile, the two discussing something that he became convinced was probably his gruesome demise.
"Let go." He pleaded, throwing his weight against his captor, before screaming louder. "LET GO OF ME!"
As he panicked, he felt a rush of something warm coarse through his arm. And then, in one brilliant flash of light, what little sense he could make of the situation was swiftly shattered.
His free hand started to glow, and before any of them could react a shot of light blasted from his palm. It startled the creatures enough that his other wrist was released so the green guy could dodge the blow. It barely missed his pointed ear before crashing into the tree behind them, leaving a great big crevasse in its wake.
All three of them stared for a second, Carmine's jaw hitting the floor, his head dropping to stare at his still smoking hand. When he looked back up, the two were staring at him again.
And they looked really, really pissed, glaring at him like he'd just signed his own death warrant. He could feel the color slowly draining from his face, slowly coming to realize the gravity of the situation. Carmine stared at them for a second longer before grinning sheepishly and then bolting in the opposite direction, cursing in Italian as the two creatures quickly pursued him.
"JESUS FREAKING ALMIGHTY CHRIST! WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST DO?!"
Not bothering to even try and stop for an answer, Carmine just weaved his way through as many trees and brush as he could, desperately trying to outrun the two monsters chasing him.
Was that-
Did he just-
WAS THAT SERIOUSLY-?!
He ducked behind a tree, panting hard as he took a moment to catch his breath. Still panting, he leaned out from behind the tree, looking behind him into the misty forest with no sign of his pursuers. He couldn't even hear them chasing him anymore.
After checking the other side to make sure he didn't make the same mistake as people did in movies, he spun around with his back pressed against the tree and a relieved puff leaving him.
He did it! He had no idea how he did it, but he actually outran-!
His happy thought was cut off by a string of curses as the cat girl suddenly swung upside down in front of his face. Another shot of light just barely missed her as he scrambled backwards and hit his head on the tree. The forest started to spin like he just got off of a Tilt-A-Whirl and it didn't take long for his heel to meet a root.
A puff of dirt was kicked up as he fell onto his back, striking his head again with a yowl of pain, not noticing the sympathetic flinch he got from the cat girl as she got down from her branch.
"God DAMMIT you jerk-!" He hissed, clutching at his head, feeling the oncoming headache starting to set in.
She said something that he had a funny feeling was something along the lines of "well that's what you get for running."
He was about to snap something very rude at her when something caught his attention.
"Wait. Where's your green friend?"
As if right on cue, he felt his heart plummet as a familiarly shaped shadow suddenly loom over him.
He barely scrambled to his feet when the green guy grabbed his wrist and pulled him back.
This time Carmine actually growled in frustration, aiming a kick at his assailant's knee and nailing his target. He grinned a bit maliciously when the green guy yelped, though it quickly melted when he received a menacing glare in return. Another shot of light made it past the green man's head, and good God, did he need to work on his aim.
He tried not to focus on the fact that he seemed to have accepted the impossible fact he had magical powers now.
"LET ME GO, YOU GREEN OAF!" He yelled, struggling to escape the guy's grasp as he aimed another kick at the creature's shin. Surprisingly he managed to put up a good fight, the green man struggling to keep a hold on him without getting kicked again.
Unfortunately he ended up getting wrestled to the ground, another flash of light hitting some innocent tree, though in his defense this time his assailant purposefully pushed his arm away to misdirect it.
The green guy got a knee in the gut for his efforts, which only served to enrage him further. Not that Carmine cared at this point; if he was going to die he was going out fighting!
A bloody lip, nose and what was probably going to be one hell of a shiner later, Carmine found himself pinned with his wrists far apart and unable to use magic to hit the guy. The green man had received a bruised cheek and probably a bruised forehead from when Carmine had head-butted him, quickly realizing the folly in that decision when stars started dancing across his own vision. It was during this daze that the creature took both of his wrists and pinned them far above his head.
The Italian boy had just been about to say his prayers when a new, deeper and a hell of a lot more terrifying voice suddenly barked at them. The green guy almost immediately let go of him, and he was about to make a run for it when he was hauled up to his feet and both his arms twisted behind his back.
He made no attempt to hide his groan of horror/exasperation when he turned around to see his new captor was a huge cat-man. Probably the cat girl's dad if the fact that he had the same exact coloring and curly red hair as she did; the only visible difference, besides the obvious, were their eyes, his being violet while hers were green, and also his hair was a lot longer, reaching towards the middle of his back.
The cat man was also wearing nothing but a raggedy gray loincloth, a fact that he desperately tried not to focus on for the sake of his own sanity.
With no other choice, he looked up at who had yelled at them and felt his jaw drop as the color once again drained from his face.
Oh dear God.
Another green man, except this guy was even bigger! Like, almost ten feet tall kind of big! He had similar markings to the first green guy (boy? They had to be related and if their height difference was any indication, the smaller one was probably a lot younger), except his were lighter blue to contrast his darker green skin. His tunic was deep violet, though it was a similar cut to the other guy's, and they both had matching wild black hair, as well as matching bright orange eyes.
So if the kids had chased him around, these must be their fathers. He refused to believe that the uncanny resemblance was mere coincidence, they had to be related somehow and "father/child" made the most sense.
Had he interrupted some kind of family outing?
Just what the Hell was going on anyway?
He was still kind of waiting for someone to come in and make sense of the situation, because all he got was weird forest, green men, cat people, and sudden magical powers. And for the life of him, he still had no idea how he had even gotten here and how this all fitted together.
The green men were talking, well arguing it looked like, and meanwhile he barely kept himself from yelping as something that felt like snakes looped and tightened around his forearms. Before he could react he felt the same thing happen again, this time tying his legs together.
And upon looking down he found…vines?! Where the hell did the vines come from! This looked like a coniferous forest, not a rainforest! Where the hell did these rainforest vines come from!?
Before he could voice his confusion, he was propped up against a tree once more before the cat man went to join the other three.
He didn't have to understand them to know what their topic of discussion was, the occasional gestures towards him only solidifying his assumption.
What the Hell were they saying?
Honestly, it could have been anything, from what to do about the strange alien they'd found in their backyard, if he'd make a good pet, to how he might cook the best.
Oh God why did his brain always jump to the morbid assumption.
He naturally didn't waste the distraction to not try and escape, but the vines were wound as tightly as they could without choking him and felt more like steel cables than vines. And he couldn't take advantage of the aforementioned magical powers without blowing his own elbows off with the way they were tied.
He was screwed.
It was official, he was in the world of green men and cat people and he had no way of escaping.
There was no way he was getting out of this in one piece.
He was done.
Game over.
Just as he came to this depressing conclusion, the creatures seemed to have finished their discussion with a final bark from the bigger green man and a sour look from the smaller.
The larger green man left with the two kids, the cat man retrieving Carmine. With a shout of protest, the boy found himself tossed over the cat-like creature's shoulder and carried off like some fresh kill, which did absolutely nothing to keep his mind away from the prospect of being eaten.
Good God, he'd only been trying to take a nap in the library!
How in the Hell did it lead to this?!
~*FH*~
Meanwhile, in a language that would take the captive boy over a year to learn, two children were having a very different conversation that what he would expect.
"What do you think we should call him until we can get Najarin?" The cat girl asked her friend.
"He's not some stray pet, Intress, we can't name him something when he's already got a name!" Her friend snapped shortly.
Maxxor was none too fond of the idea of letting a possible spy run around in his and his father's castle until the old muge could give his final word on the subject.
"One that we have no way of finding out because of a total language barrier." Intress replied before folding her arms. "Calling him 'strange thing' forever is a bit degrading, isn't it?"
"All right, you have a point." Maxxor sighed; even he had to admit calling him that would get real old, real quick. "What would you call him?"
"I'm not the one he's going to be living with for the next foreseeable future. You should give him a name." She responded gesturing to herself before to her conversation partner, who rolled his eyes in exasperation.
"Fine, fine…Okay I think I got one. Why not Crellan?"