Hollow Genesis

Chapter 1: The Slums

Chapter 1:  The Slums

The Slums, the whole place is one giant colony, one giant country.  A place of eternal darkness, night, and agony.  The people live on a thin thread of survival, even those who are wealthy enough have difficulty living.  Here, it's the same story; born as an esper, live as an esper; and living as an esper is not fun, we were all cast out into the darkness because we were different.  We look like humans, but our powers are what makes us so different compared to the humans. For the few of us that know the small bits of history about the Slums, the majority of the few have learned and hold a hatred towards humans, calling them humos is an insult.  Our powers are majestic even if it is our ultimate demise.  The ability to control a single element that is part of the world, that is our power.  These powers come in different types:  fire, water, lightning, wind, darkness, light, earth, poison, metal, ice, and wood.  Fire and wind are the rarest attributes, to the point when someone is born with these powers, they will wind up missing on most occasions, if not dead.

The Slums is where we fight for our lives, each day is a struggle.  Every living moment, a person could die or be attacked so we have to fight in order to live.  Houses are broken because of the many burglaries, apartments are your safest bet if you want to have a comfortable place to live because you would normally share with those you could trust.  There's limited light and electricity, unless you're fortunate enough to befriend or know someone who has the element of lightning, fire, or light otherwise you will have to rely on the street lights that flicker on and off for the couple of hours that light will be available.  The eternal darkness is when we're awake, it's when we sleep.  Darkness is all we see, darkness is what we are.

Light flickering, meat sizzling.  "Shit, this is our last bit of food," a tall male with dark brown hair wearing blue shorts and a white shirt let out with a displeased voice.  He was near the dirty stove, hovering over a frying pan that had light pink meat sizzling over it.  The smoke from the meat disappeared in light wisps.

"I'll get more later, I was planning on getting some more vegetables anyway," a female with long blond hair wearing long blue pants and a white shirt said as she scanned through a paper.  "When is Jun coming back again?"  Her eyes squinted to make out the blurry letters on the papers.

"I don't know, why?"  The male questioned, "Something important?"  She held out the paper to him, he took it and read.  "Former husband murdered my two children.  I want him dead now, I will give whoever kills him twenty dollars, but they have to bring me back the golden locket and ring he has as proof," he looked at her, "wow, intense."

"Yeah," she paused, "but the twenty dollars is good since we need food and also the rent is due tomorrow."

"You think Jun can get it done by tomorrow?"  He asked sitting down across from the female with a small cup of water in hand.

She nodded, replying, "He is the only person in the whole apartment and the Slums, overall, that can get a job done within less than a day.  He's pretty much famous for it, even if people don't know it's him."

"The Light of the Shadows," the male scoffed, "can't believe people gave him a nickname like that."

"Well, it's good since I don't think Jun wants everyone to know who he is.  Plus, it's better other people gave him some sort of nickname, rather than him giving himself one," she said, scanning through some other papers.

The closing of a door alerted the two.  They walked to the source of the sound, seeing a tall male with black hair wearing black clothing covered by a jacket.  A black handkerchief covered his nose and mouth, slight stains of blood created designs on the handkerchief.  His eyes were dark and had the look of loneliness in them.  He set a dead animal that had two long ears and a long tail onto the wooden table with five fishes hooked to it by thin wire.