Fallen Star

Chapter 1

Aah! Aah! Waaah!

Hot, so hot, so uncomfortable... Why? Why?

Waaaaaah!

Something was splashing onto my cheeks. I reached out to it, but only felt the soft confines of a blanket haven. I was being jostled around and I didn't like it. I cried out louder; surely someone would hear me!

I felt myself being set down and I reached out even further. Something warm embraced my cheek and I laughed. It felt good, so soft and comforting...

Then heat and pain and discomfort seared throughout my body and I began to wail. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt...

"I'm so sorry," said a familiar voice. A voice I'd never forget. A voice I'd committed to heart. Even more of that something splashed onto my face and I wrinkled my nose. "I'm so sorry, my baby, my love. I'm sorry." I felt myself being moved again.

"This is our only chance," a solemn voice said. I felt as though I knew this one too. "He will save us all."

I felt myself being dropped.

"I love you," that familiar voice sobbed again, "my son, my Hiro."

I bleakly opened my eyes.

That same damn dream again... This was the twelfth night in a row. This was getting ridiculous, and I was starting to wonder if I was actually going insane or if my subconscious was having a seizure of some sort. Either way, I saw two solutions to my predicament: Stop sleeping on a pile of rubbish or quit sleeping altogether. God knows which one I was gonna go with. I rolled onto my stomach, instantly getting poked by a wrinkled but sharp piece of old candy wrapper and sighed.

Welcome to my life.

I finally decided to just get on with my morning and rose up from the trash heap I called a bed. The giant mountain of debris acted as a good guard wall so long as I stuck near its foot and made sure not to roll onto the side with lots of pointy bits. My bedroom was a junkyard and it was all worn candy wrappers and rusted building infrastructure. I picked bits of scrap metal out of my hair as I yawned and started trotting towards the rising sun.

To my slight surprise, there was an order waiting for me in my usual place, the cracked concrete wall next to the exploded truck graveyard. The order came in the form of a small oil-stained manilla envelope jammed into the crumbling rock. It was half-hidden by moon dust but labeled with my name in big, sloppy red letters. Hiro. Typical, typical. There was some more writing under my name but it had been scratched out with thick black lines. Well, whatever. I popped open the seal and took a look at the single sheet of paper inside. Paper? No, wait, this was just several layers of cellophane stamped together to make it stiff and durable enough to write on. The writing wasn't even that good; it was crooked, smeared, and hastily scrawled. Typical, typical. I started reading.

Alpha. Red hair, necklace. Two lackeys. Outer Circle, Sector Three.

It was sparse info, but it was all I needed to know what this employer wanted me to do and what was required of me to get some sweet, sweet cash. They were willing to pay quite a handsome price, too; this was nearly triple of what I was used to. Numbers this high were usually reserved for better Hunters in the business but hell, who was I to look into it? Anything to keep my stomach from caving in on itself. Besides, whoever this employer was, they'd already enclosed half of the promised cash so this was a job I was going to take.

Sector Three of the Outer Circle of Omega was where I was going today, huh? Better deal with the problem sooner than later since I had a heck of a walk ahead of me. Even though it was sunrise now, getting from where I was in the Middle Circle to Sector Three of the Outer Circle would take me up until just before noon. If I successfully managed to hitchhike, I could get there sooner. Either way, I didn't have time to dawdle, and I started on my way through the ruinous, trashy landscape that was Omega.