Sunburn
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"Let's roll, then."
"I want that one!"
   "Can we get our pictures?~"

He held his head lightly, eyes squinting from the noise. His aggravation at the woman had irritated his senses. Now every noise and motion was shocking his body like a million bright and loud needles. He tried to shake his head, brush off the painful sensation, but all that brought was more of a dizzying blur in what was going on around him.
  
  "Mommy, mommy, over here!"
"I just love your hair in this one!"
    "Ooo, they have cherry soda!"
"Lookit this one!"
  "STEP RIGHT UP, GET IT ALL HERE!"

  A snarl, small and nearly silent built in his throat. All the voices were blending around him, and the ground had no hold on his feet. He stumbled closer to the tent, not even remembering it as he spoke politely to a man, a transaction leading him to hold tightly in his hand a small material square, a number sewn into it. A fighter's ID.
   He turned away from the booth, the next man stepping up as he stumbled wearily to the side. Why was it so sudden? Had he forgotten his medication? Oh NO.
   The thoughts burst in his head like a bomb. He coughed, nearly falling into someone as he moved, shoving himself forward. Nothing had any weight, the ground couldn't hold him. The loss of balance left him in utter delirium as he ran.

  Ever since he could remember his mother and father had had problems. His mother, the queen of all of Heaven, mother to all angels and his father, King to Hell, father to all demons. He had been born of the two with an elder brother, and younger sister. Later they had one more child together, a little boy.
    Then it all shattered. His mother kept them all. His mother hated them all, and had given them all to a doctor. A man named Irishida.
From there everything was pained.
      His own mother had given him over to the doctor with the instructions of making him, the little seven year old boy, heaven's perfect weapon for war. After being handed over he'd seen his father once.
  The man had come up to heaven, taking his two brothers. They were good enough to be saved.... No one was there to talk to, no one was there to hold him when he was cold, to comfort him when he cried. No one to tell him the voices would go away, no one to say I love you.


   He screamed, but choked to keep it down. The sweat ran off his skin slickly as he collapsed into the cold grass under the metal bleachers of the fighting stadium.
    'Why can't I be average? Why does everything hurt?!' he thought tiredly as his skinny body writhed in a twisting ball of pain. The sun was low in the sky, not yet sunset, and the casted shadows hid him from any eyes that would be around. He'd run to the nearest place without many people. That incentive had lead him to the opposite side of the large fighting area, where only parking and bleachers rested in the shadows of the tall metal seatings.
  He gasped, lungs folding in and pushing against his skin in a jagged, broken rhythm. Calm...calm.... He tried to focus on the word, but only his chaotic breathing and tears down pale skin met him in answer.
    Dear Fate, it hurt. He curled in again, now on his knees, upper body curling in on itself as his face shoved itself down, into the cool grass and moist soil. Coughing again he saw blood.
  He heard a laugh and turned sharply to glare out from the dark shadows. Who was laughing at him?! WHO would find this torment so hilarious as to laugh in another man's breaking?!
   He stood furiously and coughed again.
There was a breaking in the laughing, but it continued hysterically. He spun all round, the fast movement setting his dizzied feet off balance. He fell, hearing a loud metallic cracking. It was ringing, like an iron song from his hit. His head suddenly hurt with physical pain. Pain from something real, something touching him. He coughed again, more blood, and the laughing cracked before going on.

He was laughing.
  The tears were streaming faster as the crazy laughter died, and reincarnated back as weeps.
Sweet fate, he needed his medicine.

That doctor, so long ago had made him perfect. That man, a symbol of Heaven's corruption, had rebuilt him. He never said "i was born" now. He always, when speaking to the man, to the doctor, always said "when I was built". His organs were gone now. Someone else's parts were inside him. Or perhaps they weren't someone else's, perhaps they were grown. It wouldn't be out of that doctor's reach at all. Not with Heaven's technology and that man's skill.
Larger lungs, no real stomach except a small organ tucked in under ribs. He didn't require eating now. His food was pills. Vitamins, supplements, chemicals.
   Without those pills this always, always happened.

The bottle was in his bag...bloody hell, where was his duffel bag?!
  
Someone was touching him...who was it? No, that was his own hand.... He pulled back, examining the dirt on his hand. There was dirt caked under his nails, fresh. He looked down, and bedstone was exposed inside heavy scars in the ground. it was like someone had taken five severely precise shovels and dug until they hit rock.
  How long had he been clawing at the ground?

PILLS!! He screeched to himself, throat closing up to keep it soft, quiet, muffled. The cacophony of other noises around him and far away were more than enough to make his soft whimpering quiet. His body flailed, jerking up so fast his head smacked, again, into the metal framing of the bleachers. He coughed, tears streaming slightly less now. He looked around, dirt upturned and scattered all around him, His jeans were muddy and torn in some places. When had he scratched at them? He snapped again, now falling over.
  Seizures would start taking over soon if he didn't hurry... Pills, PILLS DAMMIT!
Crawling on his stomach he saw it, his bag. Had it always been right beside him? He yanked it open, but nothing was inside.... What? Throwing it aside he turned. It was on his other side. Knocking it away in disgust he looked around. Several duffel bags were all around him, laying open with nothing inside. He wanted to scream without muffling it. But he held it in.
  Hallucinations, calm...calm..calm... But the word meant nothing.
He gasped in  another ragged breath and shuddered. Curling in on himself again he buried his ace in his arms, eyes wide and burning from the air biting at them.
   A sharp pain in his arm made him look up.
Thank the heavens. Everything was normal. His bag was on it's side, where he had apparently hit it earlier. He opened his jaw, releasing the arm he had just bitten.
Blood ran down from the deep mark, pouring out onto the ground. He used his other hand to unzip it.

"NEXT FIGHT - 1A70A7XZ1 VS. 1A71A6XZ2"

The announcement over the intercom rocked through the metal around him, making him flinch. The bag was open to show clothes neatly packed in. Tearing through them without mercy he found it. Tucked in the very bottom was a large blue bottle or tiny red pills.
He poured them into his hand. The bottle read in elegant script "Take two five times a day."
Turning back to his hand he counted roughly twelve. Had he taken any today? He tipped his head back, pouring them all in.
  The bitter taste lasted until his dry mouth forced every one down.

Gasping, he leaned back against the metal beam where he had twice hit himself. His hands were shaking, but the cold sweat over his skin was dying down. Soon, it was all over. The sweat was completely gone, his head was rebalanced and calm, and his hands were dead still in their positions. He closed the bottle and sighed, shaking his head slowly at the occurrence. If only it was the first time...but it wasn't. This happened frequently to him, and besides taking his pills more often, or asking the doctor to make him more, there wasn't a damn thing he could do to stop it.

I love you. "Yeah, I know..." he sighed, the soft voice soothing to his headache.
It'll be ok. "Uh-huh...." he said casually, repacking the pills and clothes after knocking clumps of drying soil off of them. Once everything was back in, he zipped it up and stood.
  He patted most of what he could get off his clothes and bag. He patted through his hair, some ripped out grass and dirt shaking from the blonde fluff. His eyes squinted as he inspected his hands. They had some blood under the nails... He rubbed harshly at them, getting the mud and blood out before using his grey tank top to rub away the large mass of dried blood on his arm. He wanted to see a mirror, to know what else he had done to himself in the moments of his breaking.
But there was no time.

"FINAL CALL! NEXT FIGHT, GABRIEL TAKATA:  1A70A7XZ1 VERSUS YUROSAWA TAKATA: 1A71A6XZ2 IN TWO MINUTES!"

  He sighed again. What a pain, they had time limits to reach the battle field... Taking off in an easy run, he held the bag over his shoulder, and to him, he seemed fine outside.

In the dirt he left behind were a few tiny red pills, and dirt thrown everywhere. In his rush off he had not notced, three gaping wide slash marks within the metal, looking like a rabid beast had slashed at the bleacher's supports.