The Phoenix - BBS

Chocolate Milk 🥛

He curled into a ball, softly shimmering tears falling onto the surface of his bruised legs. He watched as the dark purple melted and faded to blues, greens, yellows and soon into the pale tan of his normal skin tone.

Brown eyes closed, his mental eye finding his ability core and pulling a thread from it, warming his body with the heat of an internal fire.

BANG BANG BANG

Brown eyes opened. Brock looked at the door and stood unsteadily, taking a deep breath. Time for another activity.

~~~~~~~~~~

Brock whimpered, his body shaking. Today was another strength test, and as usual, he ended up with broken bones. Looking down at his legs, the way one twisted unnaturally and the other laid limp, he leaned his head back against the wall and tried to block out the feeling of the fragments knitting back together.

Brock was one of the few in the world who had a manifested spirit, a being or creature that gave the human abilities. Barely 10% of the worldly population had a manifested spirit, though everyone had a hidden one.

Brock's spirit was a phoenix, the only one in the world as far as these officials could tell. There were many serpents, birds, dogs, cats, horses, etc in the world, but "mythological" beings such as the Phoenix, unicorns, dragons, etc were extremely rare. So rare that they only made up 0.2% of all manifested spirits.

There was two hints of light in Brock's life of darkness though. A manifested in his neighboring cell, where a tiny crack in the wall allowed them to talk sometimes. All Brock knew was his name was Jon and he was a shark, which made him super restless.

And a guard. Brock didn't know much about him, just that he showed up 7 years before and took over the night shift. On nights that Brock's procedures went too far and he spent hours shivering from cold, pain, exhaustion or all three, that one guard always somehow showed up to help.

He knew the guard had gentle blue eyes hiding behind his guard mask, a sense of protection and power around him. Brock never heard him speak, but he found himself daydreaming about how he'd sound if he ever spoke to him.

"Brock? You okay?" Jon's quiet whispers came through the wall and Brock lifted his head. "Strength day," he mumbled back and a soft hiss of sympathy answered.

When Brock said strength day, he meant the people at the facility he was in would test his ability to lift very heavy things. He had tried to explain many times over the years that he didn't have extreme strength, he had the ability to make an object lighter and easier to lift if he had time to focus.

They never listened, and liked to drop extremely heavy bricks, trucks, and other things on him to see if he would catch it. And he never had the chance to focus on the object because he never knew when it would happen.

They then would take the opportunity to watch Brocks healing ability. Not only did he have an inborn ability to heal all his wounds, diseases, and more, he could transfer that ability with a special pocket of tears his body created. He'd given Jon a few of his tears when the shark would return after his procedures, aching and trembling.

"How m-much longer do you think you have left?" Jon asked softly and Brock hummed, looking at his legs. They were mostly straightened out by now, though his left ankle still bent oddly.

"Maybe thirty minutes, possibly an hour. I heard that stutter, did they do an electric test today?" He asked quietly and Jon sighed shakily. "Yeah-h," he admitted and Brock leaned his head back.

"You have your cap?" He asked and a water bottle cap was forced through the crack at the floor, which was just barely wide enough to do so. Brock filled it with water and carefully dropped two of his tears, a soft hint of amber coloring swirling before fading into the liquid.