Sky knew the heavy ache of the bag of her eyes like an old friend, as it was always synonymous to the feeling of waking. She was accustomed to the smooth, cool glass resting her cheek; the lukewarm bead of drool trailing slowly from her mouth and the soft whirr of her laptop.

With a grand yawn, stretching her arms and shoulders, Sky rubbed the dark circles under her eyes— a slither of hope the friction would clear them.

Adjusting to the strips of light painting the creme walls, she gave her thanks to the small amount of sleep she achieved, and another one to the fact that it wasn't the night terrors that woke her.

With a few blinks, she eyed the digital clock on her desk— 6:33 was a fine time to wake, just at the crack of dawn.

The sheen veil of sweat on her skin did all to remind her of the heat permeating the air. It was thick, moist and choking, the humidity making her coarse hair more oily than it needed to.

Sky was contemplating a shower, it was good if she could be clean, but the sweat would only serve to make her dirty again.

There was no point.

But she did it anyway.

The warm jets of water did its job, wiping the nights grime and waking her up slightly. But it wasn't enough, although wounds faded, their memories didn't. Sky scrubbed at her skin, scrubbed it raw, scrubbed it until she saw red flush against her dark complexion. It needed to be clean, it needed to go away.

Sky stopped once the water ran cold, reaching a hand onto the thick mist to screw the tap. She let her toes— wrinkled from the water— touch the ice of the tiled floor. Reaching for the towel, Sky made the mistake of looking back, as she saw it.

The scar.

Fear flooded her veins, her heart thundering in her ears, Sky's breath fell short as she looked at the sight before her. The scar. Long, thin and pale, stretched over the dark canvas of her back, it looked like the winding roots of an aged tree or scattering lightning. It was horrific.

Her breathing was erratic, short, choppy and desperate. She gulped. Scrambling for a towel and the resolve to tear her eyes away.

Memories, hurtful, painful memories played like a film in her mind.

"This isn't your best Sky,"

her eyes widened, her chest tightened.

"Why is it so hard to do?"

Her head felt light, her stomach was in knots. Everything seemed too much, it was overwhelming. Her body was trembling, an ambush of strong tremors raking her body.

All enough for daring sparks ignite, to dance upon her skin.

Sky's arm exploded in pain, her body tumbling onto the tile, she clutched the limb as it cried in suffering, Sky crying along with it.

Tears rolled down her cheeks, pooling and splashing on the tile. As choked sobs tore from her throat, it hurt, it hurt so much.

It didn't matter that she was bare, nor that the tiles were freezing, or the humidity and steam. The needle-like, twisting pain was more than enough to occupy her mind.

Sky lay there, greedily heaving in the air, her breaths sharp. Letting tears well and fall. The ache was now only throbbing, painfully, but throbbing nonetheless. As she cradled the limb, cursing her emotions, cursing the pain, cursing the damn 'blessing' that was her quirk.

Minutes passed with Sky being the same, crying until her eyes were dry. By now
time had calmed her, grounding herself as she reached for the fluffy grey towel perched on a rack. Using that same rack to heave her wet body off the chilly floor.

What was once a storm of searing aches, was now a deep, persistent sting, a purple bruise in its wake.

Sky shuddered as she dried herself off, her shaky hands clasping the towel as her breath hiccuped. She gritted her teeth, the prospect of continuing her day now a sour and unpleasant thought.

Chest still heavy, she pulled out her robes, the soft material comforting her as she encased her body in its fluffy, charcoal fibers.

Sky peered into her mirror; tear-stained, grey eyes looked back, round cheeks marred with remnants of the liquid that stood out against her dark skin. The tight curls of her navy hair a bit looser, slicker with the shower.

The faucet whistled as water poured into her hands, Sky didn't mind the arctic chill, splashing it against her face and cleaning it out. Erasing all marks of crying.

Patting her face, Sky pulled the robe a bit tighter against her body as she left the en-suite. Not bothering to dry out her hair.

Sky made a balderdash towards her cupboard, pulling out some bandages, burn cream, healing balm and the various pills that made up her medication for the day.

Taking up residence on her bed, she was generous in applying the burn cream, the salve cool against the abused skin. If it wasn't for the irritation that came with applying the cream, she would have left swaths of the stuff on her arm.

For extra measure, Sky screwed open the metal tin of healing balm. Her nose was overwhelmed with caramel, the scent almost sickly now Sky thought about it. She applied that on top, hoping that the balm would work its magic soon. It was quirk-made, a parting gift from a medicinal quirk scientist on I-Island.

She bandaged up the wound, closing it away, as she reached for her tablets. She decided to bypass the painkillers, she only needed it if her quirk got too out of hand, with a grimace she took her antidepressants.

She pulled a bottle of water from the mini-fridge under her nightstand, flushing the drug with a flood of water.

Next was her quirk suppressors, Sky was beginning to feel skeptical about its effectiveness, despite vowing to never use it again. Her quirk often had little hiccups, moments that were out of her control, and came at the cost of immense pain.

But Sky rationalized it was due to the nature of her quirk, these drugs were designed as 'one size fits all', while sometimes ineffective, it served that purpose. A deterrent for the activation of one's quirk, used for those who's quirks never quite fit their bodies. These were for potent, aggressive quirks. Her quirk was strong to the point of ridiculousness, it was volatile, it was corrosive, it was dangerous. Drugs like these were too weak for quirks like hers.

Sky traced the bumps in the packaging, groaning slightly at the revelation that it was empty.

"Mom!" Her voice echoed, no reply. "Mom!" She called again, and again there was no sound.

With a huff, she vacated her room to patrol around the house, her soft footsteps were among the few things she picked up. Alongside the ticking of clocks and their echoes. The penthouse was spacious, with minimal art decorating the walls and firm oak doors popping up every now and then. Cascading down the stairs, she eyed the kitchen in thought.

It seemed the heat was more vicious here than anywhere else in the house, with the majority of the floor bathed in early morning light. As she approached the kitchen, she made out the small note resting among the fruits of the basket.

Sky picked it up and read.

I and your father are at work, hero matters, and Marshal left some time after midnight for the Philippines, also hero matters, and won't be back for two weeks. The chef is on medical leave, he was injured during the Phoenix incident, so I've tried my best with breakfast. It's in the fridge. Please go to school today, I know things haven't been going well these past years, especially since we pulled you out of homeschool. But you have your first meeting with your new physiatrist today, and although your grades will never slack. It would be best if you went to school.

Take your medication, please be safe and God bless.

Mom

P.S, please check the news, there has been some high villain activity around your school and St. Germaine mall. I've notified Greg about this, and he has been ordered accordingly.

Sky twirled the piece of paper in her hand, mulling over the words. Her psychiatrist appointment had been something she had pushed as far as she could down the back of her mind, unwilling to think about it. But now it was the only thing racing in the fragments of her mind.

What if this time they succeeded, she was treated and then freed? She knew if they did, she would be wheeled off back to the Hollerman estate. Back to the training, back to the suffering.

That thought alone made her shudder, her suffering now was dismal compared to what happens there.

"Please let me go!"

A fleshy, groquesce sound was made as thick, red tendrils. Coiling the body of a girl, as screams and cries erupted from her throat. Slowly and steadily being silenced as the constricting force increased.

"Ahh, He does look like her, Quincy, doesn't she?" A female voice drawled, detached and unaffected by the hopeless screams. "What's her name?"

"Kayla!" The girl screamed. "Kayla Steed!"

"Drop her." She said, her tone was sharp.

Kayla let out a hoarse cry as the pressure increased.

"Drop her!" She commanded.

A hard thud was made as the girl was plopped on the floor without an inch of care.

"Do you have a quirk?"

"N-no-no, I….I-I am quire-quirkless." She stuttered and sobbed.

"Another false alarm, we'll knock her out and move on. She has to be somewhere in this city."

Sky jolted in her seat as the taxi ran over another speed bump, snapping her senses out of the trance that her new e-book seemed to have induced. She let out a sigh, tossing her tablet onto the cool black leather of the vehicle as her eyes darted between the window and the driver.

She had called Greg, her Chauffeur, and bribed him to the point where he wouldn't report her going on her own accord to her mom. She didn't want to go home, just somewhere she could think.

"How was your day?" The question slipped from the driver as she made a turn.

"Good," Sky lied, pushing down thoughts of the recent session. "How was your's?"

"Well," the driver paused as she made another turn. "A fairly normal day for me: sittin' in my car, driving 'round the city, transporting preppy rich people," Sky snorted. "However, it did get annoying when I was delayed by another rush hour villain attack, do those things ever stop?"

"Well, I hope," Sky murmured as she cupped her head onto her hands and peered out of the window. Gazing at the colorful blurs of people and buildings. "Still, it's better here than anywhere else."

Sky had taken a taxi downtown, she knows that she could buy her quirk suppressors at the pharmacy near her house, but the cloud of anxiety gave her the impulse to shop, spend money. To put her mind away from the hurt.

Medication now in hand she swept through the expanse of St. Germaine mall, a large extravagant shopping mall encased under three glass domes. In the masses people milled about, filtering in and out of different shops, all moving to one flow Sky made herself a part of.

Finding the store she wanted wasn't all that hard, as it was probably the biggest of them all. Presented grandly near the malls' entrance.

All Stars was a large chain of stores that sold mainly Hero merchandise and cheap gear for heroes-in-training. Sky was a regular here, she didn't know why. But she knew it wasn't due to pure hero worship.

Sky flipped through some comics and hero manga, letting the words and illustrations fly through her mind like the wind. She picked up another, it was a Limitless comic, it looked good. So she dumped it into her basket.

This routine continued, and she let herself go, the basket piling up without Sky giving a shred of thought about the price. She didn't know why she came here and spent so often, the topic of heroes, no matter how much her life was smothered in it. Was a curse to her, her brother was a hero, her parents were higher up's in the police and the Hero association; the identity of the Hollerman family, her uncles and aunties and cousins, were on heroes. Her life, her identity, her purpose, was on heroes.

She couldn't escape it, whether it be training or pure fanaticism.

She made her way to the cash point, a basket full of hero junk. "How much?" She asked as the final item had been scanned.

"33.35," Sky fished through her coat pocket, hands smoothing over the pale leather of her wallet.

"Wait your that kid right?" Sky had to do a double check to see if the question was directed at her. Gladly it wasn't, it was, however, the question thrown at the kid next to her.

A mane of regal plum was what caught her, bone thin and cascaded down past his shoulders, framing the profile of a sharp face. The boy had a refined look or aura about him.

"I-I don't understand," his English was broken, a French accent slipping through the cracks. "Could you just ask what you need of me, then scan my stuff."

"You're Dubois, right?" In Sky's head, it clicked, the purple locks and sharp features locking together, unlocking a small reminder.

"Do you need to see my ID? Of course, now please could scan my stuff," the boy gestured towards the assortment of items in a basket.

"All right," the Cashier began scanning. "You know? I saw you on the news and I was like, wow, this kid could come out and do all that. When I was younger, all I could do was make more spikes come outta my face," Sky took notice of the spiky growths coming out of the other man's face, pale grey like his skin. "Hope you have a good time here in the states alright."

"Thank you," the not-so-mysterious boy picked the bags, making a swift departure.

"I know, French hero boy is exciting, but pay up already Hollerman," Sky jumped out of her skin at the bluntness, turning towards her own cashier and quickly forking over her money.

She swiped the recite. Taking her items as she made her way through the store.

Sky must have been too caught up in her thoughts, that or the situational awareness that had been ingrained in her since childhood had suddenly vanished. As she bumped into the solid wall of...another person.

The guy only spared her an annoyed glance, it only softening once he stared a bit longer. Before craning his neck back to where he was originally looking at.

"Can you show us anything cool with your quirk?" Sky paused as she heard those words a bit further ahead. "It seems really strong."

Sky tried to use her smaller stature to her advantage, catching a glimpse of what was going on. The boy from the counter, Caesar Dubois, his name was on everyone's lips these past few days. Was currently being crowded around by a small array of people. Some teenagers, a parent and their two kids, the older, Gruffer man she had bumped into. Sky swore one of the teenagers had their phones out.

"Sure thing," he chuckled. "Look at this ball," he pulled a white ball, tennis ball in size. A black plus sign marked on its side. He threw it with his right hand, in an arc which would have made it land on his left, however it just hovered. "Regardes ça?"

The two children 'oohed', as the ball began moving, hovering in small ellipses around his left hand. Slowly picking up the pace as Caesar didn't reach, but let another ball just float into his right hand, a black ball with a minus marking. It too began spinning around his hand.

He flicked his hands up, the white ball flying before succumbing to free fall, it didn't fall to the ground or into his hand. It just hovered, looping around his hands and soon the balls fell into a rapid rhythm. More people came, more phones came out, more people talked.

"Isn't he that French kid?" She heard. "Yeah, I heard he was getting sponsorships from all over. IHA, JET, heck even the Hollerman family have taken interest in him." Sky tried to configure those words, ever since she cut off most of her contact from the rest of the family. She wasn't given privy to these things anymore, she made a mental note to talk to her parents about this.

By now he was working up a small show, making a display of his gift for the crowd to see. There was some cheers, adoring sounds from smaller kids. The balls, now eight, were being thrown around his arms as if he was juggling them with extra limbs.

"Ta-da!" Caesar scrambled for the eight balls, sorting them back into his bag. As the crowd broke into a small round of applause. Soon dispersing.

At this point, Sky felt the proximity of people was just too much. Slipping out of the herd and making her way to All Star's exit. But not after picking up the stray ball that seemed to have rolled away.

"And we found her," a jovial voice began. "She comes here every other day, and shops," the voice sighed. "I hope to one day be in a position where I can easily throw money away."

"Quincy, if you're looking for a buck, we can send you packing to the mafia in Italy. You know exactly why we're here, to gather intel, nothing more, nothing less." The female perched her fingers on the cup. "You think we'll win to that family of hers," her voice was stern.

"Um….yes?"

"You're stupid. Of course, we won't. Although the girl herself probably hasn't seen the light of heroism in ages, the Hollermans are monsters, who will do everything to protect their little princess. Even if it hurts her in the process."

"Ah, so that's why we're doing this,"

"Exactly," she rested her head on her arms. "Can you check to see if they've set the charges."

"Excuse me!"

Sky was currently weaving In and out of the shifting crowds, head peeking out of the canopies of people to track the crown of purple hair. She was clutching the black ball with a protective clasp, afraid if anything were to bump into it.

"Wait up!" A thin parting in the masses of bodies gave Sky the perfect opportunity to walk towards him. "You forgot this."

He shifted his gaze down to her, Sky catching the sudden surprise that washed over him as his hands hovered over the ball.

"Thank you," he took the ball. "Your name? You probably already know mine."

Sky paused, her identity was far from hidden, as the Hollerman family were basically hero royalty. And it wouldn't be too much from her to part her name.

"Sky," she saw something deep in the lavender pools of his eyes, something bright. "Sky Hollerman," she repeated.

"I swear I've seen you before," the quizzical look on his face was now mirrored by Sky. She had seen him on the headlines and front pages, but never in real life unless….

"The national hero gala!" They blurted simultaneously.

At first, Sky felt slightly elated, but eventually, the feeling died down to a soft ache.

Caesar threw the ball in the air. "I'm just gonna call my parents. You want to go somewhere?"

Sky had her many 'wrong place, wrong times' in her relatively short lifetime, this was one of them.

Just as her conversation with the French child had begun to taper off, blinding consuming light, then heat, then shockwaves colliding and rippling her body,

An explosion had rung off, somewhere near the entrance of the mall, near All Stars, her ear was blaring on an eternal repeat, her senses dulled, swiftly sharpening like a thin blade. Her mind was combing through possibilities: villain, terrorist, malfunctioned quirk.

Once she had reached a plane of some sort of normality, her instincts screamed at her.

The half of the mall was already caught in the scalding vice of flame, sweltering heat caking the air in rolls. Screams, blood-curdling screams, all ringing with the hurt in her ear.

She did her best, making her way through the stampede mindlessly running for another exit, gingerly running around the fires and broken items. Heaving a child below a pile of clothes, and running along the gradient of the crowd, desperate to reach safety.

Sky noticed the mass hysteria was coming in from nearly all directions, and fires were blazing all over the mall. It had to have been a pre-planned attack. She followed in the rush the crowd was making, occasionally having to duck from those who decided to use their quirks to fly to safety.

As she turned to the breadth of stairs that was flooded with escaping people when things seemed to get even worse.

As she was making her way down the steps, cautiously but hurried, she felt something grab onto her body. At her first push of resistance, she felt herself being flung over the stairs.

Time dilated, slowed to an almost sill, the crumbles of concrete flying by, the screams just a slow, faint buzz. And thin, red tendrils began forking out, coiling and constricting around her torso. The sudden cut of oxygen seemed to wake her up, and the nightmare seemed to resume.

The cries were now louder, closer; they were her own, growing hoarser by the second as the constricting force grew stronger. Worsening as the same tendrils seem to have wrapped around her neck, her screams were naught by then. She was dying.

She was dying. The edges of her vision frayed into the abyss, the image of rising flame dying out in black.

She was dying. She accepted it almost instantly, not a hint of resistance or fight, she figured if this was a way to escape it. She would embrace it.

Maybe she would meet him again.

Guess who's back from an unofficial 5 month hiatus. I'm alive, just suffering major writers block and self judgement issues with my work. I'm honestly just happy to be writing again after the school year started.

I find myself again in a situation where I don't really grasp my main characters all that well, I seemed to have distanced myself from Caesar especially, that's why I feel his introduction wasn't that strong.

But I hope you're liking it, and if you're new to this fanfiction I hope this would have met your tastes and you'll keep on reading.