Chapter Text
Everything is dark. Probably due to his eyes being closed. He can hear a lot of sounds he doesn't think he recognizes. Some kind of faint shuffling underneath him, what sounds like the biggest sink of water ever being stirred around, but more imprtantly… he's very hungry. And thirsty for that matter. After a second of processing all that, with monumental effort, he opens his eyes.
He then immediately has to close them because it is bright as hell. After taking more time to let his eyes adjust, he manages to push himself into an upright position… he's on some kind of grainy, vaguely skin colored stuff that falls between the fingers of his gloves as he tries to pick it up. Wait, why does he have gloves on?… He can only sort of remember one thing about them. They're important.
He doesn't bother to try taking them off as he looks up just to be met with endless blue. Not the sky, but something in front of him which reflects it. He manages to properly stand up as he stumbles his way closer, ragged and oversized clothes on his small body blowing in the wind as he reaches the edge. The edge laps against his bare feet and he nearly jumps back because of how cold it is. It's water. A lot of water. Which he can see himself in.
He's dainty and thin looking. White hair with dark ends, various shades of black and grey. He's wearing a pair of chunky brown gloves which he can just barely curve the fingers of due to how large they are on him. There's also some symbol on the back of them, a triangle with a circle in the middle and three more smaller circles along the length of it. It gives him a headache the longer he looks at it. Then there are his eyes, which are red. Nearly entirely, save for the black ring around both his pupils… his eyes also just feel a little too large for his head.
He stops his session of literal self reflection as he starts taking careful, tenative steps around in the tan stuff around his feet. By the end of his little exercise he can actually manage to walk in a mostly straight line without struggle. Minus his dry mouth and grumbling stomach… he looks back over to the ocean. He is thirsty after all, he thinks to himself as he meanders over to the giant body of water. He nearly immediately goes to reach down before flinching back and staring at his gloves. If he's going to scoop some to drink he needs to be careful. He slowly builds up some courage; he isn't entirely sure why he needs to do so in the first place, but nontheless, he takes them off.
Searing pain. If he has felt pain before, it couldn't have ever been this bad. He's left on his back, hands in the air to keep them from touching anything, which does nothing to lessen the cold and stinging pain. You may wonder why he's in so much pain. It's simple, he took his gloves off, carefully set them aside on a nearby rock, ignored the odd light stinging sensation the wind made against his skin, and plunged his hands into the water. He didn't stop to think about the bandages or strange markings on his arms- he didn't have anyone else to compare them too after all. Whatever outcome he expected it wasn't this. It feels like his skin is being shredded by shards of metal as the water seeps into his bandages.
He eventually rolls over and plunges his hands into the sand below him to try and steady himself only to be met with an even worse stinging sensation, as it feels like his hand is being grated against a bunch of small, coarse rocks. He eventually manages to crawl back to the rock where he laid his gloves, desperately clawing at the rock- which also hurts, it feels like his bones are being rattled around from the impact- and manages to grab and slide his gloves back on.
Tears and spit roll down his face and out of his mouth as the pain finally dulls and ceases. He hadn't even realized he was crying, much less how badly he was doing so. He's out of breath. He simply lays there for a while, hands curled into his chest as the temperature slowly drops and the sun starts going down. He soon manages to muster up the strength to push himself up and start wandering away from the water and sand and towards the dirt, grass, and trees. The odd shifting and grating against his feet eventually turns into the solid, packed dirt, and only one thought echoes through his mind as he pads his way into the trees.
That's why the gloves were important.
Unbeknownst to him, Rudo Surebrec has been dropped into another world onto an island known as Ohara, with nothing but his body, his gloves, and his pain. The first intense thing he experienced in this world was pain. Yet he is not alone in that fact, as a small girl somewhere on this island has also been met with nearly nothing but pain in this world. In due time, these two will meet. That is when their worlds will change. That is when the pain will be more bearable.