Everything ended so suddenly.
For the young girl, it was as though all this time, the world was playing house with her. Like a wandering child who broke the theatre stage tearing down the curtain to discover the play's mechanics; everything she knew of the world changed at that moment.
"Chamomile? What are you doing here?!"
Chamomile's small hands gripped the curtain's fabric; wide-eyed at her discovery.
Her mother was holding a knife. Her father held a gun. Weapons she had only seen in those moving pictures from the Northern Realms. Every nerve of her body trembled at the revelation, realising her parents were everything but normal.
Her mouth quivered. "I… I-"
Her golden eyes fell to the walls of the room, pegged with complicated gadgets and guns of all sorts. Her pupils became pin-pricks as she saw the ammunitions on display; ranging from Northerner weapons to star-stone cartridges she's only seen in picture books. Beneath her ribcage, she felt her heart thrumming as her skin grew cold.
Her father set aside his gun; her mother sheathed her knife and walked towards her. He crouched down to her level, keeping his distance; "Are you scared?"
Scared?
Was that what she felt? Is that what fear feels like?
Chamomile shook her head.
"You don't have to pretend to be strong, Cham," her father reached for her head with a gentle stroke.
"I- I'm not… scared," she uttered.
"Poor thing, she's shaking, Teda," her mother reached for Chamomile's hand and began to warm them with her own. "Maybe we should do this later-"
"Is Mom and Dad police guards?"
Her parents fell silent.
"Does that mean you catch the villains? Are they weapons for you to defeat bad guys?"
Chamomile's small mouth raised into an eager smile.
Like cracking open odd boulders that revealed geodes of orange stones; the world around her opened into a new realm of secrets. The thrill of discovering her parents' secrets changed her whole world. It became her obsession.
No sooner did her parents try to erase the little girl's discover from her mind; but that only fuelled her fascination. She began the game of curiosity; see how far she could find before the person in question could find out. Chamomile would drag her brother into this game, have him find out the worst things imaginable about a person. The thrill of discovery elated her; each new experience brought her further to obsession.
"My sister's a freak," Thomas lamented once to his friends. Chamomile cared so little that shame hardly breaks her trail of turning over every stone.
Then, on eighth her birthday, her brother gave her a puzzle box for her to solve. Though she paid no attention to it at first, she then let her curiosity get the better of her. The puzzle box itself was a work of art; a finely decorated piece that involved hidden keys and locks she could only access after a combination of buttons. It took her half the month to solve; and inside lay a rare purple spirit stone that had long lost its lustre.
One of her brother's greatest regrets was the realisation that he had invertedly trained his sister to become a walking master-key. Every puzzle he gave her expanded her arsenal of skills to be able to open locked doors and even crack open safes.
It didn't take long for her entire family to discover this girl has a penchant for uncovering secrets. A prodigy in the art of reconnaissance and spy-work. That was enough for their parents to finally admit their position as agents of the SGI; told her everything there was to know about their line of work. And in that revelation, she later discovers the significance of her bloodline as a Mystic Starcatcher. And that Starcatchers are in fact aliens from another world and are part of the reason why the SGI was made.
Once more, Chamomile's curiosity rewarded her with a greater bargain of secrets. By thirteen years of age, her first mission involved infiltrating a sketchy academy. By now, the line between quirks and endowments have already started to blur. The academy in question was under the SGI's radar for harbouring powerful quirk users, only to later find that the academy in question had been embroiled with seeding their city into becoming the dean's playground.
Who knew the end of that mission had let to the recruitment of new members of the team. Reina and William, particularly.
But that is a tale for another time. Because what mattered to Chamomile the most, was unbury all the secrets that this brave new world has to offer.
