Work Text:
"Be careful you don't die falling over, Quinn!"
A boy called mockingly, his voice echoing through the hall and summoning a chorus of low chuckles.
Ignoring him, Quinn carried on walking down the school corridor, his school bag over his shoulder. Harassment had become a daily, even sub-daily occurrence, as it did for many others like him.
But that didn't mean it didn't bother him just as much every day, and it was getting pretty hard to not do something stupid every time one of those pricks picked on him.
The nose of his glasses slipped down his face and Quinn stopped to push them back up. With the sides covered in tape, and the fact that they didn't even fit straight on his face, you could tell he needed a new pair just from looking at them.
Taking a breath, Quinn pivoted and gave the boy a rather vulgar gesture.
"I bet you don't even know how many fingers I'm holding up!" Quinn called out.
The boy made a face as the call turned a few heads of the students in the hall, his hands balling into fists.
Getting an insult called back to someone by Quinn always seemed to be a pretty offensive thing, as he dropped his school back and started running at Quinn.
"You level one piece of crap! When are you going to learn your place in this world?"
In front of him, the boy's hands came together to form a green, pulsing ball of light between his palms.
He was only a few meters away from Quinn before he threw his hands forward, shooting the green light out from his hands in a somewhat practiced motion.
In the confines of the hallway, Quinn had nowhere to go, and nowhere to hide. As the green beam shot towards him, all he could do was grit his teeth and brace himself for the pain.
Thwack
The ball of light socked him in the chest, heavier and denser than any normal human punch.
From pure impact, he was sent off of his feet, and backwards into the hard corridor wall.
Bang
At the impact of his back against the wall, bits and dust flew and crumbled. His head bouncing solidly an instant later, his glasses flying off of their loose resting spot.
The impact of pain more than the ball of light shot through his spine, and then his head, as he slumped to the floor against the bricks.
Ouch. Even if getting hit was an every-other-day occurrence, it definitely wasn't getting any easier.
"What's going on?" A student further down the hall said. "Are they seriously fighting on the last day of school?"
A crowd of students quickly formed in the halls, interested in what all the commotion could be about on the final day of class.
A female student broke away from the crowd and ran over to the broken part of the wall to check on the safety of whoever was flung into the wall - only for the dust to settle and Quinn's slightly curly black hair to come into view.
When the girl saw who it was she was rushing to help, she quickly backed off and went back to her friends as if nothing happened.
Quinn slowly lifted his head, only to see her group of friends were laughing.
"I can't believe you tried to help him."
"I didn't see who it was!" The girl retorted, her cheeks flushed.
Taking a slow, deep breath, Quinn slowly got one knee up, and then pushed himself up onto the other.
His bag had slid down his arm, luckily not beneath him, but had still struck the wall.
Quinn sighed to himself, fairly certain but still hoping its contents were intact as he sling it back around his shoulder.
The crowd of students had already dispersed around them - just another kid beating up Quinn, nothing to get excited about.
Nothing like a real, fair fight between two students.
Carefully, Quinn stepped over and picked up his glasses. Once again, to his dismay, one of the sides had fallen off.
"Damnit, not again." Quinn signed to himself.
It was the last day of school, and Quinn had been hoping that just once, no one wouldn't try anything with him.
He was sick and tired of it, but he wasn't the type to tolerate it. Quinn had seen others, not just students, who had chosen to keep their heads down and let the harassment get far worse than what he got.
Quinn didn't bother to stick around the school like so many of the other students. Walking through the halls, he saw others talking to each other like the human beings they were supposed to be.
Some were laughing, some had tears in their eyes while thinking it was the last time they would ever see each other again in this vast universe, but Quinn wasn't a part of any of that and he didn't want to be.
When he got home, Quinn got to work right away.
Inside his single bedroom apartment, was just enough space to fit a single bed and desk, plus a TV built into the wall that Quinn didn't really watch and would just use it for background noise.
In his bedroom was a single suit case that had all his belongings already neatly packed at top his bed.
Quinn had been here for four years already, in this small apartment provided to him by the government since he had no living relatives and was only sixteen - and he was just as ready to get the hell out of here.
But first, Quinn went to the drawer of his desk, and set his bag down on the small bit of floor beside it.
Rolling open the drawer revealed the large book inside of it as it's only contents.
Setting his broken glasses to the side of the desk for later, Quinn pulled it out of the drawer with both hands and set it on the desk.
At about half a kilo, it was a thick, black book with a ring of lines going off from the center of the cover in all directions.
"Let's try again today." Quinn said to himself, his empty apartment, and whatever sort of deity could have been listening, as he placed the book on his desk.
Reaching down to his bag, he pulled out a little test tube containing a clear liquid inside.
Holding it up to his face, he inspected the vile. It didn't seem to be damaged.
"Test 112, Hydrochloric acid. Let's see how this goes." With a pause for breath, Quinn uncorked the test tube.
Holding it safely away from him to not inhale the pungent smell, Quinn carefully poured the acid onto the cover of the book.
Nothing. The clear acid was just water on the ring of lines decorating it's front - despite what Quinn knew would have been it's reaction if he'd gotten any on himself.
"So far, no reaction." Quinn said, unhopeful as he poured the rest of the test tube onto the book.
Carefully, Quinn bent down beside the desk and examined the book to see if there was any damage done. Of course, the book looked the same as always.
"Another failure." He breathed. "Why won't you open? Why would mum and dad even have this thing?"
One hundred and twelve times. That was the number of ways Quinn had tried to open, or even do something to this damn book.
Not only would the book not open, but it seemed like it wasn't able to be damaged in nearly any form.
Quinn had tried burning, cutting, melting. Nothing had worked.
Going to lie down on his bed, Quinn left the Hydrochloric acid there. Who knew, maybe it would eventually do...something? A shallow hope, but he'd clean up the acid later.
Grabbing the remote, Quinn turned on the TV. He never really paid attention to whatever was on, right now being the news station, but the sounds of other voices made him feel less lonely.
"The peace treaty with the Dalki race has lasted for five years now, but officials are saying that tensions are rising once again, and there is a high possibility that we need to prepare for war…"
The mentions of war have always been showing on TV almost nonstop since that supposed day, thirty years ago, when the human race received a visit from these so-called 'Dalki' - a humanoid race with shockingly close resemblances, besides scale-like skin and tails.
They had immediately demanded that the Human race hand over their resources, and wanted to use them as slaves. Of course, the humans hadn't gone down without a fight, but it didn't take long to realize modern technology was near useless against them.
Bullets couldn't even penetrate their skin, and for tanks and missiles and anything else humans could muster, they had their deadly Dalki airships.
Every man and woman was told to fight for their planet, and Quinn's parents were no exception.
The war had gone on for years - nearly two and a half decades - and like many other children, he'd grown up without them. Only, he hadn't even known what his parents looked like.
Only when humans were on the brink of defeat, had a select few come forward.
These people had special abilities of all kinds, of fire and lighting, air and mind and even controlling wild beasts.
They began sharing their knowledge of how they obtained such power, in hopes of turning the tide of war. And it worked.
Even so, the Dalki were still strong, and a seemingly endless stalemate eventually led to the peace treaty being signed five years ago.
Of course, human greed for the better of humanity. Instead of sharing these vast, incredible powers with everyone, the higher ranking government officials decided to keep them for themselves.
Only those with money or power were able to learn the more coveted abilities, while everyone else was left with the scraps of these unlimited possibilities.
Quinn? He was given nothing when his parents died. As part of a fund started not long after the war itself, the government agreed to pay for his living accommodations while he was still in school, but that was it.
When Quinn's parents had died at the age of ten, an agent had appeared at his doorway and handed him this single book.
He was told this was the only thing his parents possessed, the only thing passed down to their child when they died.
"Why is the world so unfair?"
Zoning out the TV, Quinn got out of bed and walked over to his desk.
He picked up his broken glasses. Even one of the lenses was out of place, and he breathed a sigh, knowing he needed to fix them.
With a burst of frustration, he fit his thumb into the slight curve of the lenses and tried to punch it back into the frame.
"Come on, just get in!" He shouted at nothing in particular, pushing down too hard.
Crack
The lenses smashed to pieces under the pressure, glass shards cutting gashes into his thumb.
"Why does the world hate me?"
Quinn said aloud more than asked. He quickly started to clean up the little pieces of glass.
Some of the pieces had shattered onto the cover of the book, and as Quinn carefully removed a piece of glass, a drop of blood that welled on his thumb dripped down onto the center of the cover.
The ring of lines around the center suddenly started to glow, a soft golden more pure than the yellow of his room's lights.
"What the hell-!?"
Quinn backed away from the desk as the thick book began lifting itself into the air, casting the warm glow across his desk, towards him.
Above the desk, the book started to shine brighter and brighter, casting a golden ray of light that Quinn had to squint at as it began to shake.
More and more uncontrollably, like a shudder, those lines seeming to writhe on the cover.
And when it's cover finally burst open, as if freeing something, page after page of blurring characters turning past as if the wind itself whipped through the book.
Quinn couldn't have taken his eyes off of the shining book even if he wanted to.
The words written in the book weren't like any other language he'd seen before, but for some reason, some part of understanding blossomed in his chest.
Soon, the book's pages ran thin, the flipping slowing to the steady grace of someone grazing a book for information.
And when the last page flipped over to reveal the blank white that was the inside of the back cover, containing only a single, intricately entwining signature in that mysterious language, the book began to fizzle and fade as if turning into dust.
At the same time, blank blank began encircling the edges of Quinn's vision.
Weakness came over his body, and his eyes slowly drooped heavy and low.
But as his body closed down, there was a single, mumbling message that spoke aloud to him.
Wait!
He pulled against the unconsciousness that tried to drag him down, trying to hear the message.
Something was happening with that damn book, something finally noteworthy happening to him , unnoteworthy, level one Quinn, and he was just going to fall asleep!
But, unable to hold a grip of his consciousness, to focus and hear those final, surely important words, Quinn paused out.