Chapter Text
Waking up for my 6 am class was always a struggle. I almost never had a restful sleep due to my dorm neighbors late night proclivities. The loud noises and groans always made me extremely uncomfortable. I never informed the RA of the disturbances due to the fact my dorm neighbor was his younger sister. Plus I disliked any form of confrontation.
The previous night had been a particularly active night for her so by the time my alarm clock went off I was still awake with music blaring in through my headphones. I jumped out my bed, slammed my alarm clock, and stared at my bare feet for too long. I studied the small scars on my feet and wondered when was the last time I had trimmed my toe nails.
I wasn’t the type of person to stay up all night and have no issue. My mind was foggy, unable to pull together the energy of finding a decent outfit for the day. I opted to stay in my PJ’s and slip my feet into my favorite purple fluffy socks that had a hole on the left big toe. I walked over to my dorm’s front door and grabbed the sweater that hanged on the wall.
It was my college’s sweater that I had received via winning a raffle. It was two sizes too big, grey, and had our school name in big yellow letters. As if I needed another sweater for UCLA. Somehow it became the only sweater I wore. Maybe it was a latent dislike for my body? One of my older professors once criticized me for not taking care of my body. I believed it was none of his business, but I stayed quiet.
I always stayed quiet. When I was younger I believed I would grow up into a fashionable princess and have some knight sweep me off my feet. Now that I was grown up I knew things like that took effort.
I slipped my feet into my bright yellow crocs that matched the text on my sweater. My pajama bottoms would have to do for the day, I had forgotten to take my clothes to the laundry room. I slung my black backpack over my shoulder, weighed down by the books and supplies I had inside of it.
I trudged out of my room and avoided eye contact with the few other people awake.
If I had known what would happen to me later that day maybe I would have talked to someone, made a real friend, or even called my guardian. Most likely I would not have, I would have probably just turned over in my bed and continued to sleep.
As I walked to class I noticed a strange dark thing in the sky. The stars were out and the sky was dark but somehow it was noticeably darker than everything else. It darted around in the sky in a strange serpentine manner. I looked around trying to see if there was anyone around that could see what I was seeing.
I was surprised to see no one else in my vicinity. I could have sworn there was at least one boy I had avoided eye contact with just a moment before. I looked back up at the sky and screamed when I noticed the strange black thing had somehow blocked off the entire sky, probably because it was coming straight for me.
I waited for it to hit me but I was instead met with a sensation I could only explain as walking through thousands of strands of moist spiderwebs. The feeling coated my body and I frantically tried to pat off the invisible strands. After a few seconds the sensation dissipated and I realized there were no spider webs.
I looked around my surroundings and found nothing familiar. No staircase, no boy, and no UCLA buildings. I was in a completely different location than I had been in previously. Around me was snow and ice, leading me to believe I was on a frozen lake of sorts. I looked in all directions trying to find something and sighed in relief when I saw a small town in the distance.
I trudged over the snow and ice slowly, trying to prevent myself from falling. I tried to make sense of of what had happened, the logical explanation was that I had somehow passed out on my way to class and I was currently in some sort of fever dream. It didn’t exactly explain why I felt so cold but I didn’t want to think about that any more.
Great. Now I wasn’t only lost and tired, I was now cold and wet. My toes squelched in the crocs on my feet, my socks soaked with cold water.
When I arrived at the town I tried entering the building the the dead center of town. The strange metal doors stayed firmly shut when I stepped close. I studied the door way cluelessly trying to find some sort of handle. I fumbled around helplessly. I wanted to scream at the door. It took me a second to think perhaps I should have knocked on the door? I was stuck at my social dilemma, unable to notice the crunching of snow behind me.
It barely registered to me when the door slid open. My gaze shot up and I looked around. The door had opened to reveal a bar full of bizarre looking people. They all turned to look at me as if I had been the bizarre one.
My brain froze at the sight in-front of me. The likes of which I had never seen before. I looked around the room seeing humans, people with tentacles coming out of their faces, and a variety of alien looking people. It looked almost like a scene out of Star Wars.
I jumped when a figure slide in the door from behind me. Their shoulder brushing against me. I wanted to tell them off but I didn’t have the heart to. His appearance scared me more than the tall alien tentacle monster.
I could only see the back of him but I could tell he was dangerous, he wore a long cape and had some sort of gun strapped to his side. The shiny silver metal of his helmet gathered my attention more. It made me shiver thinking about how cold it must have been in this weather. The little metal butterfly pin on my crocs was already too much for me.
While the people in the bar looked at me in confusion they looked at this helmeted man like he was some sort of cop.
He stepped into the bar with all eyes on him. An angry man shouted at him in a language I couldn’t understand. He and a few others, including Mr.Tentacles, were shaking down this poor blue alien. It looked like a group of bullies shaking down a nerd for his pocket change. The only thing I could pick out from the bald angry man’s yelling was Mando. It didn’t sound like a word, it sounded like a name. I could only guess he was referring to the armored man.
I jumped when the doors behind me snapped shut like the shutter on a camera. I didn’t even remember taking any steps forward. I stood awkwardly by the door watching the strange argument go down.
‘Mando’ walked up to the bar completely ignoring the man which only irritated him further. The thug got up in the armored person’s face, repeating himself. The two who were shaking the blue alien down dropped him roughly on the table and went to help their friend out. I could tell nothing good would come from this so I tried to find somewhere to be safe.
All the tables were filled up and I didn’t know where a bathroom could be. I opted to take the long way to the blue alien, I was burning with curiosity. As I walked past tables filled with strange faces a fight had broken out. There was yelling, screaming, and people being thrown around. Before the fight had ended I had found the blue alien. When I got closer I noticed the alien looked vaguely humanoid. He was on the lighter side of obese, with big round cheeks the reminded me of a mall Santa I had once wished for a barbie doll from.
I grabbed his shoulder and helped him to his feet, ducking behind the table with him, “Are you okay?” I asked dumbly. He looked at me confused and spoke in a language I couldn’t understand. It sounded like a mixture of Russian and English, the words sounding like something I should understand but didn’t. Maybe I was having a stroke? One of my professors had told me what having a stroke was like.
I touched my face trying to see if anything else was weird, nothing else was. I guessed he was just speaking another alien language.
Without even having realized it, the fight was over.