I'm gonna be honest with you. I hate being special. I wish I could've been an ordinary kid with normal parents in some remote part of the galaxy.

But no that's not the kind of story I got. Instead of being ordinary, I crash-landed on a planet in the middle of war inside of a giant robot. I could shoot flames out of my hands and to top it all off I'm an albino. Now all of that is pretty cool since it's all neat stuff I can impress people with. But there's something that always outweighs how much I like being special.

I could talk about how much trouble I get into because of my powers or I could rant all day about my parents and their social status. I could even be melodramatic and lament how it gets my friends hurt or it hurts me. Those things all suck but at least it isn't like this nightmare I've been having. Now I'd have this nightmare pretty periodically, almost to the point where most would consider it to be a problem. I'd watch the scenes in this nightmare play out so much that I couldn't even approach the number of times I've watched it with any of my favorite Earth animated series.

It always starts colder than a planet of ice...

At first, darkness envelops my vision just like It did when I'd gone to sleep. Though now the feeling of cool liquid blankets my body as if I'd just plummeted into a ravine. The distant sounds of explosions and shouting were the only things I could hear and my feet didn't even have solid ground to touch. My nose would be attacked by the stink of iron and the liquid that covered me. As soon as I could perceive any of this I knew my eyes would open.

Before I had been in a stark white room with counters littered with test tubes, beakers, and smaller machines that I hadn't recognized. There were also terminals with symbols that I could barely recognize from my history textbooks. In some futile attempt to see if the dream is any different I always look down. Much to my disappointment, I'd still been a baby floating in some sort of stasis pod. With that last bit of affirmation, I turned my attention to the door where they would come in.

The door opened and two people hurried into the room followed by the sound of gunfire and a couple of shots accidentally coming in behind them. The pair were a man and a woman both distinct in their way.

"You... Should've waited for my signal... you idiot," the woman said as she tried catching her breath.

"Yeah... my bad... I had no idea they'd be around that corner." The woman held out her hand for her partner to grab. When she pulled him up he snapped his fingers and from a corner to the right, a floating chair made its way to him. "We'll have to work fast before my brother reaches this place." Without missing a step the woman scurried to one of the terminals on the other side of the room. The man's chair carried him right in front of my pod where I could plainly see him.

I would've liked it more if the woman came by rather than him. He'd always be looking up and down so quickly that I sometimes wonder if his head would come off accidentally. He'd be typing away on a small tablet he had stashed away in his lab coat. We'd always come face to face in this weirdo nightmare and it would get even freakier. His hair often made him look like he was blanketed under a pile of snow. The very thickness of it nearly obscured his eyes which looked so empty I couldn't tell if he was even alive. Our eyes shouldn't have looked like that. They should be burning red with passion and ready to fight anything that came our way. Although we looked nearly identical there were some things that certainly pissed me off about him. The fact that he was much taller than me was something to start with. How could such a lanky-looking fellow who barely looks like he lifts more than a book get so tall? If I could I'd tell him to trade heights with me.

"Solomon, have you finished making the final preparations?"

"I have but we'll have a slight problem." He turned away from me and showed her something on his tablet. There were some noises like explosions and gunfire coming from it along with the death throes of random people. "My brother is going to be down here any minute. Meaning we don't have much time." The distraught look on the woman's face always meant that the most gruesome part of this nightmare was coming.

The thing that always bothered me about the woman was how much it saddened me to see her this way. My mom once gave me the same look after I'd nearly been injured in a fight once. Though I knew everyone else would be worried it always hurt more to see such a pained expression. A tear even slipped down her cheek as she stared at her companion. Yet like always he would wipe it away while brushing her long blue hair from her face. It always made me feel bad for being so envious of his height.

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The woman's lips would form a smile as she and her companion locked eyes. It was strange but as much as I wanted to think her smile was to reassure him, it was more to reassure herself.

"If this is the future you wanted to protect so badly. Then we might as well do as much as we can to protect it." She reached for something in her pocket. I couldn't see what it was but as she brushed her fingers over the tiny object she muttered something like a silent prayer.

"I wanted to see her grow up so badly. I didn't want to have to lose both of them like this."

"Don't worry," the man or Solomon said. "The great Alara Milos is her mother. I think our future will be just fine." He held out his hands for a hug and she gladly took him up on his offer. It wasn't like a hug between lovers. It was more of two people saying their goodbyes.

When they let go of each other, Solomon returned to his seat. He quickly finished his work but stopped himself before he turned around. This time he was facing me. The passion and hopefulness I wanted earlier finally filled his eyes. Alara stood behind him, her gaze fixed on me as well.

"I know you might not understand any of this. But when you come of age my brother will attempt to find you again. Hopefully, we'll see each other again before that happens." He placed his free hand on the class. On his palm, there'd been a tattoo of sorts, one depicting a singular number.

Zero...

"I don't know what will happen from this point onward. Your life has infinite possibilities and yet you will start from nothing. Just know that no matter what we'll all be proud of you.”

As he finished speaking an orange light flashed to life from the bottom of the door. It would slowly creep upward while generating the worse hissing noise I'd ever heard. On the other side of the door, there were men shouting to hurry up and get in position. The woman or Alara I assumed she was called held out her hands. The air would become visible signifying a drop in temperature. As it swirled around it began to form into something long. The moisture in the air solidifies into a pair of daggers. As she gripped them in her hands more of them began to take form above her head.

Solomon would remain seated yet something about the way he sat was much different than before. His earlier lanky appearance fell apart as he straightened himself in his seat and actually looked somewhat imposing. When the light finally fizzled out the door burst open. Chunks of metal came flying everywhere, yet none of it seemed to hit us. Alara aimed a dagger toward the door and a few of the floating ones shot into it as bullets fired from a gun. In the cloud of smoke that covered the door, a few short cries breached the air followed by the hard thump of bodies hitting the floor. A couple of soldiers managed to break in each with a weapon in hand charging the two with the intent to kill.

Alara moved with the grace of a performer as she slid the blades of each of her daggers across their throats. Blue blood slowly leaked from off her blades she moved to intercept any more of them.

She'd only get two more goons before the loudest two gunshots I would ever hear roared in the room. The first shot struck Alara's shoulder and the next her thigh. She'd go down just as easily as the other soldiers did. As the assailants entered the room, the sounds of heavy clanking from boots drowned out the struggling breaths Alara would take.

"Do not worry Ms. Milos, you will not suffer long." a voice spoke within the smoke cloud. Out of it two men marched into the room. They stepped over the bodies of their fallen comrades and one of them had been holding a long handgun that looked so customized I thought maybe he'd been trying to be known for something. He was like an automaton with the way he towered over us and his comrade and as imposing as he was he never scared me as much as his comrade. No taller than Solomon, the man standing before us now had his hands held behind his back. His wavy golden hair and clear blue eyes almost made me think of a beach on a warm summer day. But the more I looked into his eyes, the more I could see how bottomless his malice truly was. The fact that he'd been smiling made it all the scarier.

From the corner of my eye, I could see Alara trying to prepare another dagger in secret, probably to get the jump on the two men before they could do anything to Solomon. But the tall man caught wind and quickly put an end to her attempts to fight with a bullet. I couldn't tell what was crazier. The fact that Alara, a person whom I haven't even known for longer than ten minutes was just shot dead. Solomon remained composed, even though someone who was so close to him just died. In the beginning, I used to get so angry at his lack of response that I almost set my bed ablaze in my sleep. But now even I've grown numb to it.

"Must you be so cold brother?" said Solomon.

"Well, if it weren't for you two defying the order then I'd have never resorted to such measures." the blond man held out his hand. "Now, please. Hand over the other Markers and come join us. We're family and we shouldn't be fighting."

Solomon held up his hand. In it was a trigger of some sort with a wire running all the way to my pod. I half expected him to give some sort of witty remark or maybe say something badass. But that wasn't the kind of nightmare this was going to be.

With a push of a button, my pod closed sharply and began to move. My eyes felt incredibly heavy and I could only hear one more thing.

"You haven't won Solomon... I'll find the Markers and the Boy. Our Empire will rise again. I hope you made peace with the life you've lived."

There was no more after that. Just silence and darkness...