Chapter Text
The sphere was created for one reason, to separate the people. In other universes, it was the rich from the poor, the talented from the talentless, or here.. the magical world from the humans.
Years ago before the world was covered in the filth of humans, magic was free, untouched, and unmanipulated. Creatures of legend roamed alongside humans, and both worlds were intertwined.
Until the humans turned from the other world, ignoring stories and legends to build machines of blood and waste.
As the years passed, the world became polluted, the rich were gone, and the common people were dying. Out of sheer necessity, the wild world had survived by intertwining with the humans. Blending in among the filth until they could be free once again.
And that time did come..
As the world fell apart the fae found a way to divide it all, to separate the worlds for good. And thus came the sphere, a land of the descendants, daughters of the fairies, sons of the merfolk, all hidden among humans who polluted their world.
So long ago..
But even the wild world isn’t all perfection and lawfulness..
Over time outcasts were made, creatures were shunned, and slums were created.
The city of pearl and polish.
And the slums of the tricksters.
Rudo looked over the large area he was scouting. Watching the trucks of trash drive past as he made his way down the tunnels.
He never understood the necessity of “trash”, Most creatures had magic that could easily fix things or repurpose material but they never did.
He slowly came to a break in the tunnel, spotting the familiar ventilation pipes along the wall.
Regto had read him books about the humans, how their obsession with filth drove them to extinction. That was the exact reason he didn’t know why everyone up here did it to.
He remembered all of Regto’s ramblings about how “with every generation we move farther from the true wild”, whatever that meant.
Rudo made his way through the vents until he spotted a room that was filled with things that caught his eye. Sliding down slowly before dropping into the pile, immediately digging to find what caught his eye.
The old history books told them how the wild started, the ancestors of the fae.
The last “true” wild.
Over the years, in what little history books they had, the wild had to adapt to the human overtake of the world they now called “the pit” intermixing with humans and blending in between to survive.
By the time the sphere left the pit, there were very little pure wild left, only halflings and human families blessed by the fae.
And with every new generation the human disease grips stronger to the wild.
Rudo heard the clicking down the hall before he was finished, huffing to himself as he shoved the rest of what he found into his bag in preparation to run before they could even sense him.
But the shine of something out of the corner of his eye ruined that plan.
Rudo spotted a larger metal piece a few bags over, a perfect size for something he was dying to fix up..
Rudo dived for it, grabbing right as he heard the door open behind him.
“HOLD IT RIGHT THERE.”
Rudo glared around his hood as he slid the metal into his bag, bracing himself to jump and run when he heard the apostle break the alarm system next to the door.
He heard more footsteps clearing the hallway as he spun, kicking off the ground hard and flinging a bag of food waste out the door.
He heard a girly-ish scream as he spun and sprung himself up the ventilation system again.
He made a mad dash through the system before he was able to leap down to the closing doors.
He took a hard break right before slamming into them as they shut the rest of the way in front of his nose.
He heard the shouting behind him again as he turned to find another way out, the noise of both gunshots and magic fizzing through the air jumped him into speed to dodge as he went.
The kid took a hard right as he felt a bullet graze his upper arm, biting down on his cheek to not scream as he kept running, losing the apostles in the chase.
Rudo took a hard stop around a corner as he heard the round of guards run by, not a single one spotting him before he slipped out and ran for the now-empty exit.
—
Climbing out of the underground again Rudo ran through the slums just to be safe before making his way back home.
Rudo clambered into the small shack he and Regto shared, steadying his breath before he turned to see his father watching him with a very unimpressed look.
“Do I even need to ask where you were?” Regto closed his book slowly as he set it on his lap.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about old man.” Rudo spat immediately, dropping his bag beside the door and falling face-first into the small futon couch they had.
Regto huffed from beside him and ruffled the kid's hair. “If I find out you got caught you’re getting an earful.”
Rudo froze slightly at the mention of being caught, unluckily for him his dad could read him like a book.
“Did you get caught?!”
“No! I mean yes but I’m fine they didn’t know it was me and I got out- “ Rudo sputtered with a scowl while somehow also looking incredibly nervous now.
Regto brought his hand up to his eyes as he took a breath in, Rudo not daring to look up to see the disappointment.
“Did you get hurt?” Was what Regto said next, causing Rudo to finally squirm to sit up normally on the couch.
“I mean it’s just a scratch,” Rudo mumbled as Regto got a look at his arm now.
“Did you get shot?” Regto slammed his book down immediately as Rudo looked at him like he was about to take it all back and leave.
Regto watched his sons expression for a moment, he always wore an anger in his eyes but Regto saw past it, guilt and a bit of shame in the kids face causing the man to take another slow breath as he stood up to get the first aid kit they kept around.
“Let me patch you up, arms to. Gloves off.”
Rudo winced at the mention of his gloves, watching the cracked and worn leather fold as he bent his mangled fingers.
That was the worst part. Even with a whole sphere worth of magic some things were just untouchable with healing magic.
Including scars from black magic.
He didn’t remember how he got them clearly but from what he was told they were from his biological father, done before the man went on to kill hundreds of fae, getting himself sentenced to the pit in exchange.
The scars were unearthly, wrapping wounds and ties of skin, the whole lower area faded a charcoal black.
And the pain, the fae were known for healing magic and blessings. And although those being gifted to the tribes folk were rare even those weren’t strong enough. A dark seal was welded over his hands, not something you could just heal around.
Rudo took his gloves off slowly and let Regto take his hands to do the rest.
Rudo watched his dad work with concentration on his face as he looked him over.
His dad was a changeling fae, a trickster spirit by the townsfolk and thus chained down here. He didn’t do much with his magic other than pulling funny faces with his eyes in different spots to make Rudo feel better or appear in random areas with absolutely no warning to scare the shit out of him.
Rudo let his eyes fall to his lap where his hands lay as Regto worked on his arm.
Rudo himself was a Jackrabbit
The Trickster of Trickster spirits.
And to top it off he was the last one.
Rudo watched his foot tap the floor, over the years creatures of fae started to develop less and less like their wild counterpart. And Rudo was no exception to that, but he did have more traits than most peers of his generation.
While other kids had only one or two physical things that called them to one creature's blood or another, Rudo had almost half a body's worth of proof.
Regto always said it was strong genetics but never elaborated further than that.
His entire bottom half was hare. The fact that he could stand as tall as he was is a miracle, and he really wasn’t that tall.. like at all.. Most pants didn’t fit him yes so he stuck to the same large white pants he could hide his legs in.
Unsurprisingly when people don’t like you and you have anything different then they hate you for it, so his legs stay hidden.
Regto waved a hand in front of Rudo’s face and almost got his fingers bitten as Rudo snapped back to reality.
“Were’d you go there, bud?” Regto was joking but still looked a little concerned.
Rudo just glared back, blinking a few times and stretching to feel the new bandages on his arm and hands.
Regto packed up the first aid kit and put it back where it belonged, returning to sit across from Rudo as the kid was now rolling his shoulder.
“Just stop raiding the dump sites please- I don’t think Chiwa really likes criminals..”
“SINCE WHEN WERE WE TALKING ABOUT CHIWA?!” Rudo shouted back immediately, obviously back to reality now after spacing out a bit.
Regto cackled at the response as Rudo kept yelling for him to explain himself.
Rudo stopped yelling after a few minutes and just stood there as Regto chuckled at his outburst.
“You’re such an ass,” Rudo said after Regto got a grip on his laughter.
“An ass who is worried for your safety,” Regto’s easy smile dropped a bit for more concern “Please Rudo, we can find trash somewhere else. Stop raiding the dump sites.”
Rudo huffed as he sank into his area of the couch “..Fine Dad.”
Regto’s smile returned as he stood again and ruffled Rudo’s hair, getting a swat before heading to their makeshift kitchen.
“Alright then, what are we thinking for dinner?”
—
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.. it wasn’t.
He was fine.. Regto was okay.. he had left for just an hour or so and then he was..
Gone.
The man in the mask, human-looking but.. wrong. Somehow.
He killed him..
And now no one would believe him..
They were going to drop him, into that filth.
The same filth they all tried so hard to run away from.
The same that they contributed to. They were perfect, they weren’t better than the humans. Their souls were just as polluted.
And now they killed Regto.
Regto..
He told him something..
To “fix it” to “fix this shit heap of a world”
There was no fixing this.
He’s sorry dad but this all needs to go.
It’s because of them he was gone.
They all deserved to die.
He felt the ropes snap, his body falling for only a moment as the rest blurred into a distant memory.
—
Enjin was sat atop an old building near the edge of no man’s land, binoculars sitting on the bridge of his nose as he lazily ran his eyes over the trash-filled horizon.
There hadn’t really been anything interesting in the past few hours but Enjin was just killing time at this point before reporting back to HQ
He was about 3 minutes from packing up and going home when he saw the figure in the distance, a small mop of dusty white hair hopping around at incredible speeds.
Enjin's eyes locked on the small creature immediately, highly doubting that this thing could be human with how quickly it changed directions and speed.
It was headed towards him already, trash beasts on its tail, literally.
He could see the creature, or was it a kid? stumbling around, clearly out of energy or about to pass out as he swung what looked like a metal pipe at the larger beasts.
Enjin was about to step in when the kid rolled down a trash hill hard. Enjin hissed as it definitely looked like to hurt but took the opportunity to drop down above him.
The kid looked like a mix between terrified and confused as Enjin picked him up by his jacket hood and kicked him square in the back.
Rudo hit the ground hard and coughed up what felt like a lung as he struggled to breathe the air down here.
“What the hell?! That hurt-“ Rudo gagged on the air again as he was picked back up and had a gas mask shoved on his face.
He was dropped after that and left to breathe the now fresher air.
Rudo coughed a few more times before looking up to see the stranger ahead of him now, putting a finger up to where the man’s mouth should have been behind a white mask.
“Hello?! Who even are you?” Rudo ignored the sign immediately and started shouting, “Do you live around here?! Where is here?”
The stranger put his hand up again in a zipping motion over his mouth.
“NO! YOU'RE GOING TO ANSWER ME! WHERE AM I, ARE WE EVEN ABOVE GROUND?!” Rudo’s volume got louder.
“SHUT THE HELL UP” the stranger finally started to bark back as Rudo flinched away from the sudden noise.
“FOR THE RECORD WE’RE ABOVE GROUND IDIOT!” The stranger started, “WE’RE IN ONE OF THE DUMP SITES YOU SPHERITES CREATED! WHICH I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU IF YOU’D HAVE SHUT YA DAMN LIPS”
The stranger leaned back with a loud sigh “Damn that felt good to yell out, but now we've got some other problems.” He looked over his shoulder to spot another trash beast forming a while away.
Rudo finally looked up from the scary guy in front of him and spotted the much larger trash beast.
Rudo tried to back up as fast as he could but the man turned back to him “Stay here for a sec, cool?” Before leaping into the air and raising his umbrella.
The whole thing lit up in yellow light before coming down right through the trash beast's skull. Rudo felt his mind start to buzz as the adrenaline wore off watching the big one fizzle into nothing.
The stranger walking over once again, Rudo only heard the muffled “hey kid, blink twice if you’re dead” before he hit the ground.