Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Tsurugi: Tsubasa no Gedatsu ❯ Cruelty of the World ( Chapter 1 )

XxXxXxXx

Tsurugi: Tsubasa no Gedatsu

By: Melissa Norvell

Chapter 1: Cruelty of the World

XxXxXxXx

Waking up, the angel found himself sprawled out on the ground. There were a couple of citizens walking in the street around him, but few stopped to pay him mind. They were too busy trying to hustle and bustle to get their daily activities done and worried about their schedule that they didn't have time to stop and help him. Someone would occasionally glance at him, but that was the extent of their concern.

Looking around him, all he could see were his feathers strewn about and littering the street. His eyes clenched, then opened slowly and focused to see a sky of vast, pale blue. His right side was dark, as if he couldn't see anything but a black abyss before him.

'Where am I?' The angel thought in confusion as he slowly sat up and looked around to see a lot of people now walking around him. 'Who?' He began to think, but a sharp pain soon overcame him, causing him to wince and his vision to blur.

"Ouch my head!" He said in a pained voice as he rested a hand on his forehead, attempting to quell the sharp and cutting pain inside of him. Glancing around him, he could see feathers spilled all over the ground and a few splatters of blood where he'd made impact. 'I'm hurt…' He looked to each wing and found a large red stain on his left wing, where he'd been shot with the rocket and plummeted from the sky.

'I have wings…and my feathers are all over the ground.' Reaching forward slowly, he picked up a single white feather with a golden sheen. It was slightly pink where it had come into contact with blood. He held it to his face and examined it. 'Bloody angel feathers…' Blue eyes looked towards the skies above. 'Did I…Fall from the heaven? Am I an angel? I don't understand any of this. Who am I? Where am I? Apparently, I fell out of the sky. Did I fall from heaven, or was I just flying…No one here has wings.'

With that thought, he wanted to make a final decision and glanced around at all of the populace to make sure that there was no semblance of wings on any of them.

He found none.

The only thing he saw was the occasional person cast him a sympathetic look before turning their face away, almost ripping their gaze from him. Wanting to catch the person before they disappeared, he decided to speak to them. Surely someone would at least talk to him.

"Hello, can you be of assistance to me? You see, I've fallen from the sky and I don't know where I am or what I am and I'd definitely appreciate any-" He began to speak to a young boy, appearing to be about five in age. The child cut him short by taking off running and crying aloud. "…help I can get…" The angel finished his sentence before growing quiet.

He felt bad that he'd scared the young child and looked down in shame.

'I guess I scared him. I must be something foreign and strange to these people. He must have seen my wings and thought I was some sort of horrible thing ready to attack him. What do I do if no one helps me because I'm too strange…I wonder if I even speak the same language as them?' The blonde stared into the crowd. He noticed that the people who walked on the ground didn't dress in robes or even nearly as elaborately as himself. He looked down at his robes of white and gold, with all of his ribbons and sashes and could tell immediately that there was a definite contrast between him and the others. He took a piece of blood-stained fabric between his finger tips and held it out in comparison with the clothes of the others 'I certainly don't dress like any of them. I wonder…are these clothes from a different part of this place?'

"I feel so strange…Like no one can see me…So out of place," he commented. 'Let me see if I can get someone's attention.'

At the end of that thought, someone bumped into his injured wing, causing another sharp pain to be sent through his body.

"Ouch," he clutched his shoulder in agony. 'It hurts…' The pain was so great that it caused him to stop walking. He stood in the masses, still with the anguish he felt from his fall. 'My whole body hurts…I'm surprised that I'm standing and in this much pain. I don't understand why I'm so invisible to everyone…Don't they care that I'm hurt or in pain? Don't they want to know or even care if I'm alright?' He wondered. Was everyone in this place truly that cold?

At that moment, a woman walked by, taking a glance at him she saw a mere human. There was no semblance of wings to be found and he looked as if he were faking injury. On the outside, he looked fine. The only thing that had visible injury was his wing and that was not visible to the woman.

"Excuse me sir?" Tsurugi grabbed a passer-by's arm. The man turned his head quickly at the contact, questioning who grabbed his arm and leveling the angel with a stern look.

"What do you want? Can't you see I'm busy?" He shot hatefully.

"Please help me…My wings are bleeding and I don't think I can fly," the angel begged, but the man saw no wings. He was beginning to question this young man's sanity. He was already going to be late for work and now he had lunatics clinging to him on the streets.

"What are you talking about? You look just fine," he wondered what in the world this kid was blabbering about.

"But, I'm bleeding."

"I don't see any blood on you," the man argued, almost as if the young boy was lying to him.

"My wings."

"You're what?" The man questioned in outrage. He'd never heard of such a strange comment in all of his life. This was ludicrous! He didn't have time for this!

"It's on my wings," the angel sounded grave, trying to seek medical attention as soon as possible.

"What are you spouting off to me?" The man asked in a gruff tone. "You don't have wings. Get off of me!” He then began to shake his arm, freeing himself from the angel's grip.

"My wings!" He begged.

"If you don't stop talking to me and hanging on my arm, I'm going to call the cops."

"What are the cops?" He asked, pausing from his pursuit. At that moment in time, the man decided to walk away as quickly as he could uttering the phrase 'crazy bastard' under his breath as his form soon mingled with others in the crowd and became lost in a massive sea of people.

The solemn being hung his head and stood still in the masses as they walked past him. He seemed nearly a still frame in time. After a few moments had passed, he was suddenly jarred from his silence by a teenage female, looking about seventeen or so shoving him harshly in the back, causing his form to jolt forward.

"Out of my way!" She yelled as his form lunged forward, landing against an older woman's.

The woman turned around with an angry look plastered to her face. "Do you mind?"

"I'm sorry. Could you please tell me where I am?" He asked, but the woman merely turned up her head with a 'hmpf' and kept walking.

Again, the persistent angel decided to attempt getting some help. "Sir," he called out to a common man in the crowd, who turned upon noticing that he was being called out. "Could you please tell me where I can find a hospital? My wings are bleeding and if I can get to a hospital-" He began to explain, but was cut short.

"You damned right you do, you lunatic!" The man turned away from him and walking off.

"I don't get it…" The angel said in dismay. 'Why does everyone think I'm crazy?'

From behind him in the crowd, he could hear distant voice of both male and female teens getting louder and closer to his form. Stopped and looking over his shoulder, he could see a girl clad in a pale yellow and olive green uniform running from a boy dressed in an olive green suit.

"Give it back!" The boy shouted after the girl.

"No way!" The girl yelled back as they closed in on the angel, their forms growing closer and closer to his form. By the time they were nearly on top of him, he had no time to move and was again shoved to the side by the girl, who pushed her flattened palm out to touch the middle of his back. As he looked over his shoulder, he could see the girl's hand go straight through the wings on his back, almost as if they were illusions or holograms.

"Huh?" The angel breathed. His face lit up in surprise. 'Why did her hand go through my wing?' He wondered as he stumbled forward. He was too distracted to notice a small dog attached to a leash in his path and tripped over it. The dog let out a small yelp in surprise and darted to its owner as the angel stumbled in an attempt to try and keep on two feet.

"Hey! Watch it!" The owner yelled.

Then another guy shoved him from behind. "It's not Halloween, loser!" He yelled in a taunting manner, but the angel said nothing, just continued to walk. As he made his way through the crowd, trying to be as polite as he possibly could, he got nothing but foul replies back to his kind apologies and excuses. He continued to walk through the crowd until he reached a small concrete walkway beside of the main path of the crowd.

Tired, from what he'd been through that day, he fell to his knees, ribbons and sashes fluttering down behind him. His injured wing was still losing feathers long after the blood had dried.

He was silent.

After a few moments, he wrapped his long, slender arms around himself in a reassuring hug.

'I obviously don't come from this world…A world where people are so cruel…A world where these creatures don't see my wings or injuries and everyone is always in a hurry. These must be humans…If I have wings then I am an angel of sorts, I think.' He then felt a sharp pain shooting through his head as he clutched it in his hands. "Ugh…I don't know…Hm?" He questioned as something small and pastille blue caught his eye.

It was a small flower that was blooming along the sidewalk. It was in the crack as all around it, feet slammed down on the cold, hard surface, threatening its existence at every possible second. Standing still, it managed to barely avoid the threat of injury or death. It was untouched by everything, as if it were a symbol of hope in this chaotic world. It made the blonde angel beam with happiness.

"Well, what do you know? There is some peace amongst the chaos. Poor thing…You must be miserable here with no other flowers, and yet…Your solitude seems so peaceful, even with the threat of being trampled upon at every second and yet, you stand strong through it all. Quite an admirable little thing, I wish that I could be more like you." He spoke kindly to the blossom, as if it were listening to him. His smile widened with the peaceful tranquility it gave him.

But just then, a large foot came down, cutting the flower's life short and smashing it into the ground, ending the life of the peace.

Its life was ended under the cruel blow of a large, black dress shoe.

The angel's face lit up in surprise. He then winced, as if he could feel the flower's pain as the crumpled bud attempted to spring back to life in a withered form. His face then transformed from shock to sorrow.

"Of course, the strong can't always be strong, can they? It seems that peace cannot exist long without succumbing to death or chaos," the man said as he arose and walked slowly to the flower, which was on its death bed. Slowly bending down, he cupped his hands around it, severing its stem between his hands as he then sat upon his knees.

"We're the same, you and I," he told it, looking upon it with sorrowful eyes. " Generally kind and passive things that are so easily crushed by the cruel hands of humanity, broken and battered not knowing why we've been punished or why the circumstances turned out the way they did to us. It saddens me to see how something can so outwardly suffer without recognition or sympathy from the beings around it. Such a cold and lonely way to go out of the world," he then stood back up, his eyes still transfixed on the small bud in his hands.

"Here…I can be with you throughout dying days. We are both innocent beings thrown haphazardly into a place we're not familiar with…Such a cruel world. All around you, time keeps moving and flowing. People never stop. In such a busy society things that seen miniscule are so easily under looked, they tend to suffer alone and die alone. No one deserves that fate. After all, everyone wants to be remembered because everyone fears the unknown," he made an observation as he began to walk. "No one knows what awaits them after death and what they're living for. I wonder if they mean to come off so cruelly or if they actually intend on it? It's a disturbing thought, that society has become so one track minded that they tend to forget what really matters and lives that are shattered as they grow more and more cold."

He paused, glancing around at the people around him. "It isn't just beings like us who suffer…It may very well be humans themselves. At a time like this…I have no choice but to doubt humanity. I believe that very soon, they will come to be their own undoing. If they don't change their ways, this will be a terrible end to human kind, but it cannot be helped. They only thing we can do would be to hope and pray that humanity can somehow catch themselves before it's too late."

He stopped walking and looked up at the pale blue sky, his own eyes reflecting its beauty. "I pray that these people stop and take the time to realize their actions…and begin to change into kind and compassionate being with a great appreciation for life. That way they too, can find their way toward heaven."

To Be Continued…