At first there was nothing but darkness.

Darkness to his left, darkness to his right, darkness up, and darkness down.

Everywhere he looked there would be the same empty blackness that was ever-so-present in his vision. In fact, when he looked to himself, he’d see nothing. It was as though he was in pitch darkness, unable to even see himself.

At first he thought that this might be purgatory, a sort of limbo betwixt Heaven and Hell. However, as his thoughts wandered he came to other conclusions.

These conclusions being that this could be the fabled Hell that awaited him. He, at least, knew what he had done before he died. So, he took comfort in that madness. But something grew in him, something that he wasn’t able to admit himself.

This tumor in his thoughts grew to the point where he was forced to admit it.

“I failed.. The sins of my past.. The blood I had shed.. The lies I had spread.. Dammit all! Why does it have to be this way!! WHY DID IT END WITH ME!? WHY DID IT END WITH SUCH A PITIFUL EXCUSE OF A DEATH!? TO BE SNUFFED OUT LIKE A CANDLE IN THE EYES OF GOD!?”

They say God works in mysterious ways, but did He really intend for Tillerson to die in such a gruesome manner? Was there a reason? A reason that was too enigmatic for him to comprehend? These questions, as well as other postmortem existential questions, permeated his mind as he stood, or at least what he assumed to be standing, in this darkness.

For what seemed like minutes, if not hours (if not days, months, or years), he thought about these things; slowly being edged towards the throes of madness. But before the throes of madness took hold of his deathly consciousness, a brilliant light shown itself to him; having brightened up him and the area around him.

He finally noticed that he was stark naked, and stood on, what seemed like, smooth grey marble.

Though as he saw this, the feeling of standing of marble came to him in which case caused his body to shiver as the feeling of cold marble registered in his body.

“W–What is this light? I–I can barely see anything!”

He began to move, as if by instinct, towards the light.

The light looked comforting, even inviting to an inhuman degree.

The light beckoned him, but said or did nothing of the sort.

It beckoned, and so he went; going forth into the mass of intangible light.

Before he knew where this light led, he found himself engulfed by said light.

He screamed as there was a burning sensation all over his body.

But the next thing he knew he was brought into further light, but this light was different; tangible even.

He could see, through squinted eyes, that the tangible light was that of a hospital light of an operating room. “What’s this...an operating room…?”

With his thoughts dejected from his consciousness, he could only piece together that he was in an operating room, but when he was turned to a woman he immediately knew what this was. He had been the one to be birthed by a woman, and not just any woman, a Japanese woman; his mother.

His mother, a new mother, looked down at him with eyes that he had not appreciated, until now. These eyes, eyes he had only seen in a previous life that had now become a vague memory, were something to behold. So much so that his only ability to express his praise for these eyes were to cry out. And so he did.

The mother responded with gentle shushing.

And this seemed to suffice the situation as he could do no more. He was a newborn after all.

He could not perceive not hear what was going on around him. He assumed that they were thinking of what to name him, but his newborn ears cared not to listen to the conversation. So, all he did was just lay there in his mother’s arms and sleep peacefully.

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What he would have come to hear is the mother speaking to the father with a tired, but healthy, voice. “What are we to name our son?”

The father, taking a moment to process the question, came to her bedside and settled a hand on her shoulder, “Kuma. Fukumoto Kuma.”

The mother, a bit surprised by the name choice, spoke softly as she nestled the newborn, “A bear of blessed origins.”

The father laughed softly as he slowly swayed his eyes from his wife to his son.

✵ ✵ ✵

Time would pass, approximately three months, and little Kuma (Tillerson) found himself having wandered the room with his eyes. What he noticed was that the room he was in was specifically made for him. Although it was heavily representative of late Showa architecture there were also instances of technological prowess that he had never seen before.

For example, there was a strange food dispensing apparatus that would give his parents or caretaker an infant-specific food item that was not only nutritious but strangely delectable. Another example would be a clear kinetic-based weapon that, based on Kuma’s own assumptions, accelerated the incoming swing to create greater momentum in a fatal strike.

Such futuristic items such as these made Kuma come to the conclusion that he was reborn, but he wasn’t just reborn Japanese, he was reborn Japanese in the future. How far into the future? That was uncertain.

However such thinking caused great strain on the little boy, and thus Kuma resorted to having taken a nap in a crib that seemed to look like a miniaturized cryopod.

✵ ✵ ✵

A little while, perhaps a few hours, later, little Kuma awoke to instinctual sound of himself. He noticed that he still could not speak a single word, and instead found himself crying out in displeasure.

This crying, from what he saw, brought forth a caretaker, perhaps a maid, who came stepping into the room seconds after.

The maid took the little boy from the pod and into her arms where she consoled him with a nutritious bottle of formula. It was here that Kuma gained a little more prospect of his surroundings. His eyes strayed from the bottle, to the maid, and then to a window to his left.

Out the window he noticed that there were leaves upon a tree. “Looks like i’m somewhere rural.. Or perhaps it's a suburbia? Where else could I possibly be?”

✵ ✵ ✵

Further time would past with little else happening.

But what seemed important to Kuma, at the time, was the fact that he had barely seen his father or his mother in the three months that he’s been brought to this world. This, to him, was strange considering how he, faintly, remembered them being there for his birth. “I wonder if they do something that keeps them out of the house for long periods of time..”

Little Kuma, who had finally been allowed to see the rest of the household, could see that he was right in his assumptions about the architecture of said household. He saw that the building was made to be that of a boxy “U”. Although he couldn’t see much of the property, what he did see was that the garden towards the middle of the house was, easily, the most well kept garden he had ever laid eyes on. Something about the vast array of unnatural colors kept his eyes trained.

A maid, who had been watching him this entire time, took notice to the child’s fascination with the colors. As such, she did exude effort to point out some of the more beautifully surreal flowers that populated the garden.

She lifted her a index finger and points to a flower that displayed the following characteristics: a rainbow-esque display of purples and greens along its petals, red leaves, a rather long stem that has (what could only be perceived as blue) veins running through, and various places around the flower where its roots penetrated the surface of the soil.

She explained, in a rather simplified manner, that the flowers Kuma took privy to were known as Purple Dragons (パープルドラゴンズ).

"And the reason behind such a long and mouthy name," she says, "Is because when settlers came to this world around two hundred to three hundred years ago, the first thing they noticed were these flowers which resembled the colors of their flag, but not only did they have a dragon on it but also had the colors of purple and green. Thus, the flowers became somewhat of a planetary symbol for the people here."

However what Kum absorbed from that was that he seemed to have been placed in the future, far future it seems. And, to add, he was no longer on Earth but some world far from it.

So, having pieced a few more things together, he reasonably assumed that the culture here on this world is only a few hundred years old. However that still doesn’t explain the Japanese flare to everything. Even considering how he was able to pick up on the language despite speaking very little Japanese on his time on Earth in the past.

But the maid, who had kept the little boy on her lap as she sat outside in the little “hallway” that was overshadowed by elongated eaves, continued to go on about the near-alien flora that, again, populated the garden, despite Kuma having never really paid much attention to it.

✵ ✵ ✵

Three more months would pass with little fanfare in the way of development for Kuma.

One might call it a blur.

However, what was present in these three months was his parents.

It seems, according to Kuma’s own assumptions, that the father was involved, in some capacity, in a planetary military while his mother was a doctor to some medical facility. 

Although this was to be the case, Kuma paid close attention to his father who had clothing that was conservative in form. The outerwear was adorned with various medals while his shoulder-patches were made to resemble a stylized version of his rank, which Kuma could barely make out as some level of General. His entire wear were an intense black with white.