Chapter Text
The sky is bright. Too bright.
It’s kinda pretty, with fluffy white clouds that streak across the horizon, as if they were carefully painted on by a benevolent artist.
You shiver as the wind whips past your body, flapping the flimsy fabric of your dress that does little to shield your skin.
It takes a moment for you to register that you’re falling. Your stomach twists at the realization, and when you try to scream, air fills your lungs, immediately drying out your mouth and throat. You're reaching for something that doesn’t exist, hoping to slow or stop your descent.
They dropped me.
A large shadow looms behind you.
When you manage to angle your body to see whatever is behind you, you’re greeted with a giant, upside-down floating mountain: The Sphere. It’s spewing out tiny black blobs of bagged garbage into the unknown below.
They threw me away. After everything I’ve done for them?
Anger floods your veins. Sadness squeezes your heart. But before you can process anything more, you pass through a wall of thick clouds.
Your vision is clouded in white, and your brain shudders at the strange sensation.
The world warps around you.
You manage to catch a fuzzy glimpse of a large humanoid figure, and a symbol flashes in your mind.
Your vision and hearing are abruptly severed.
And everything goes black.
- - -
The distant echo of a voice lures you from your slumber. What exactly it’s saying, you can’t tell. It sounds roughly male, but that’s all you can decipher.
Your mind is spinning, trying to process what’s happening.
You’re lying on a mix of junk. Somewhat soft and smooth plastic gives your body a chance to relax, sharp metal pokes into your leg and side, and roofing tiles rub against your right arm like sandpaper. Your right leg is buzzing and wet.
The atmosphere is thick and moist, further adding to your distaste for the foreign environment.
You groan, and the simple act of breathing causes you to hiss in pain. Your entire body twitches in repugnance. To avoid the tight pinching in your chest, you quickly learn to take short and shallow breaths.
“Holy shit,” the male voice gasps, “You’re actually alive?”
Your eyes peel open; they sting and feel puffy as tears swell at the edges. Dry strands of white hair stick to your sweaty face, slightly obscuring your vision, and you don’t have the strength to move them.
Mountains of trash block the horizon. Everything appears to be covered in a layer of grime and mildew. Your mind reels at the sight, confused and disturbed at the same time.
Shifting your posture, you stretch to test your limb’s mobility.
Your right thigh screams as something hooked through it refuses to give way. Your nerves feel like they’ve been lit on fire, and the searing pain causes you to jerk back into your previous resting position. More trash scrapes against your exposed skin.
“Hey, lady?”
The voice calls out again, and you realize a man is standing below your resting spot on the mountain of garbage.
He’s wearing a long grey and black coat, with matching oversized grey pants and combat boots. The outfit appears to be a uniform, albeit heavily modified. A red shirt hangs loosely against his chest, exposing tattoos that creep up from below and loop around his neck. His face is completely covered in a pale circular mask, with large X’s inked over where his eyes should be. But the most awkward thing about the stranger’s getup was his grey umbrella.
Care to avoid flaring your thigh, you try to move again by forcing your upper body and left leg to stretch, finally finding the strength to prop yourself up.
“—Woah!” The stranger suddenly looks away, covering the X eyes on his mask.
Your brow furrows at his change in demeanour. Even without seeing the man’s facial expression, his surprise and embarrassment are palpable. You’re the one struggling over here. Why does he gotta act like he’s the victim?
Another breath makes you gag, finally tasting the air.
It’s putrid. Not enough to make you want to throw up, but you still wince in discomfort. So you pull up the neckline of your shirt to cover your mouth.
The man’s wired-looking mask—with a tube that presumably attaches to an oxygen tank in a bag that hangs from his belt—makes sense now.
The stranger takes his coat off.
He stumbles up the pile of trash and tosses it at you, all while still keeping his head turned away.
It lands on your legs, and you look down at yourself.
You’re wearing a dress. It’s loose against your body, barely coming down past your knees, and made up entirely of thin, pale light blue fabric. And you suddenly realize that you’re wearing nothing underneath it.
Your face reddens in embarrassment, and you gratefully accept the large coat that’s given to you.
“Th- Thank… you…” Your voice is raw, scratching against your throat as it stubbornly refuses to behave.
He coughs, “Don’t mention it.”
With his coat now covering your body, protecting you from the heavy air and slight wind, you begin to relax. Scanning the landscape, or lack thereof, you quietly ask the stranger, “...where am I?”
“You’re on the Ground,” he answers, tapping his umbrella on his shoulder. “Or more specifically, in No Man’s Land. Which is a pretty dangerous place to be, so we’d better scramble before a trash beast finds us.”
“Trash… beast?” Your brain spins, struggling to decipher his words. The Ground? No Man’s Land? What is he talking about?
“I’ll tell you about them later. Let’s get you somewhere safe first.” He offers to help you maneuver down the hill.
When you finally get yourself to rise—forcing off some of the extra bits of trash that piled on top of you—a searing pain rips through your right thigh as you forcefully pull it from an exposed concrete wire. Blood spurts from the wound, and you cry out in pain. The loud gasp is enough to trigger another sharp stab in your chest.
Losing your balance, you end up tumbling down the small hill of garbage.
“Hey!” The man gasps, catching you from the awkward slide, “You okay?” He leans you down to rest against a large piece of sheet metal that’s propped upright.
You thoughtlessly mumble an apology, only to be cut off with a squeal as he examines your injury.
“Shit,” The man’s in full-blown panic now, “That looks bad.”
You crane your neck to get a better look at the wound on the back of your leg.
“It’s… It’s not that bad,” you lie. “It wasn’t all the way through… shit… I- I should be okay.”
Your laboured breathing directly contradicts your words, but you’d be damned if you’d let yourself be a burden to the man who had already promised to get you out of this wasteland.
He retrieves his coat that had fallen off you and drapes it around your shoulders, then pulls some bandages from his bag. Without the strength to struggle, you’re stuck letting him manhandle you as he poorly wraps the bleeding gash.
Afterwards, he reaches for your face—You reel back as far as you can (which isn’t very far). When he finally moves away, you notice the air no longer tastes like dusty, rotting wood.
Your hands move to feel the gas mask.
The man sheepishly chuckles and mumbles a small apology. He then tries to help you stand up, snaking a tight arm around your waist to help support your weight, as you struggle to gain your footing. Your legs feel simultaneously feel like jelly and lead.
With the man’s help, you take a cautious step forward.
One step turns into two. But you don’t make it very far, as your legs refuse to support your own weight and crumble on the fourth step.
“—Shit,” he frets, trying to adjust his hold on you.
Moments later, he’s carrying your bridal style.
Being carried by a man while wearing his coat—You have to will the rising heat in your cheeks away. As embarrassing as it is, you exhale in relief as the pressure is taken off your leg, dulling some of the pain.
“Name’s Enjin, by the way,” he cooes, as if the last five minutes of his sloppy medical treatment and you almost flashing him hadn’t happened.
“...Enjin,” you repeat his name quietly, before smiling at him and gesturing to the gas mask, “Thank you, Enjin.”
Enjin falters in his step at your thanks, but recovers just as quickly.
Eventually, he asks with an obvious practiced casualness, “And your name is?”
You open your mouth to reply, only to be met with a blank spot in your mind where the answer should be.
What was your name?
You’ve recognized nothing up until now, but have just shrugged it off as the result of waking up in a foreign place. But the emptiness that comes with trying to remember your own name, as well as where you came from before waking up in No Man’s Land, is enough to send you spiralling.
“M- my-” You do your best to steady your breathing and not panic. “—I don’t know.”
“Huh?”
“I can’t remember.” Your voice is barely above a whisper, trying to avoid the pinching in your chest. More tears are swelling in your eyes, now threatening to fall.
“Well…” his tone effortlessly flips from concern to cheery indifference, “Everyone needs a name. How about you pick a new one until you remember your old one?”
The whiplash from his change in demeanour stops your spiral in its tracks.
“Pick a new name?” You contemplate the question, but draw blanks on how you want people to refer to you.
You’re tired.
You’re hurt.
You can’t bring yourself to care.
“I don’t know… You choose one.”
Enjin once again stills at your words.
Continuing his slow walking pace, he silently ponders your absentminded request.
The sounds of his footsteps, your shallow breathing, and the wind pushing bits of trash around are the only things that can be heard as Enjin makes his way through the wasteland. Even though you’ve only known him for an incredibly short period of time, going so long without making a snappy comment feels so out of character.
You hadn’t expected the question to be so difficult for him.
“Skyler,” he abruptly says. “Or Sky, for short.”
You gave him a puzzled look.
“Because you fell from the sky,” Enjin laughs. “I saw you in the distance, but didn’t think you were actually alive. Fitting, don’t ya think?”
“Then why did you…” You pause to take another shallow breath; it’s hard to focus with the unpleasant air invading your lungs, “...Come to check on me?”
“I don’t know; To give you a proper burial?” He shrugs, as if your expected death was the most normal thing in the world. “It’s not every day a Sphereite gets dropped to the Ground, but none ever make it down here alive. Their clothes and body parts fetch a high price on the black market, but I hate the idea of people disrespecting the dead, even if they are from the Sphere.”
Shifting uncomfortably at the possibility of your corpse being mutilated and sold off, you try to change the topic. “What’s the Sphere?”
“So, I take it you’ve forgotten more than just your name,” Enjin jests.
When you don’t reciprocate his laughter, he mumbles another apology.
“Some people call it Heaven, but it’s the place you and your kind live, up in the sky. You guys are referred to as Sphereites, while we’re Groundlings. It’s a bit cheesy, but whatever.”
Your conversation is cut off by the sounds of screaming, roaring, and rustling trash, coming from not too far west of Enjin’s current trajectory.