The room laid a comfortable blanket of white. The paint color seemed to suit the mood for the room. It was rather small, only about 20 feet by 20 feet. The small size of the room was at fault for the room being suited for one person to live in. Warm steam still oozed up from the nostrils of a tea cup, left over onto the stove, still warm and fresh, due to the material of the insulation that kept the drink warm. The resulting steam caused the entire room to smell the smell of the pleasant tea leaf. All seemed quiet. The only lights in the room came from the dim holographic clock on the small little white nightstand next to his bed, slowly ticking away, second by second. Another very dim red light, or, lights, were occasionally making a timely beep upon the sleeping head of a young boy. It was like a certain kind of small cotton swab sized patches that attached to certain areas of his face, not out of necessity, but out of technological reason to keep him asleep. His mind worked at a faster pace then an average creature's, so in order for his brain to slow down, he decided to wear those accessories to numb down the activity in his brain. He, as of now, snuggled in the warm blankets of his bed, was suddenly awakened.

  His eyes lit up like the bright end of a Christmas tree. His body seemingly on fire, his warm, pink blood circulating through his body at a higher speed then normal, his heart beating at a hundred miles per hour. It was a sudden gesture, and it caused his body to heat up rapidly. He gasped in through his thin, sensitive lips, a high windy sound chirping from his mouth as he inhaled his breath of precious air. The red lights moved in sync with his head as he slowly lifted it up in the darkness of his room. He slowly rose a hand up to his face, touching the skin pores and slowly brushing his moist fingertips over the top sides of his cheeks. He let out the first audible breath, his heart not calmer, but his mind beginning to.

   Until he was suddenly startled again by the lights turning on suddenly, the patches on his face making him not focus on going back to sleep again, an automated system, in a soft voice (he believed to mock him) called for him to wake up. His smooth, light white skin reflected off of the lights above him as his veins within his arms tensed up, in annoyance and anger at the unfortunate morning. He unfolded his hands and slowly reached up to the sleeping aids, popping them off by pulling on the cords, even though the cords had a warning tag on them not to pull them off that way. They each individually came off with a little pop, in between occasionally pulling out one of his shiny green hairs, which hurt him as much as annoyed him. He slowly let go of the wires and let them fall to the ground.

   His nightmares were becoming more frequent. At first he merely wrote it off like a scientist, basing his facts on unconscious urges spanned by his cerebral cortex as a result of his stressful school life. But as they began to happen more often, he was now unsure if he could even write something like that off as just a no biggie.

   It made his heart hurt. He had always felt things more often then other people. He slowly shook a bit from nervousness, his body heating up into a small nervous sweat as he slowly closed his smooth, glistening right hand, bringing it up to his heart and sighing to himself in one quick sigh.

   He slowly rose himself up, his body sliding out of the bed from the covers and sheets, causing the snooze alarm to deactivate. He walked up behind the bar counter in his room, and then beyond it, reaching the kitchen, might as well being cooking breakfast before he decided to take a shower first.

  He pushed the button to the side of the bathroom door, and the hatch quickly opened upwards, in less then a split second the door was open to him. He immediately realized that the place was not clean, as he had still had left his clothes from yesterday scattered about the floor. He knew he knew better; that he was too elegant, gaunt, and smart of a kid to continue being on a lazy streak, but he had felt different the past few days, and he attributed it to a minor change in his living habits.


   For being great at logic and science, he could not for the life of him make up any kind of formula or hypothesis about his inner self. He looked at himself in the mirror, everything but his bare ass staring back at him in the manner of a looking glass. At least this part wasn't holo, he could touch the glass, if he wished, although everyone in his current day of age prefer not being able to...

  He stared at himself for a while. He observed how his body was starting to grow and develop as a young adult being. His shoulders were becoming the slightly wider, his chest, smoother as with his muscles finding their permanent resting places in his body. He slowly moved the mass of messy green hair from certain areas near his deep purple eyes. He blinked once. He looked so old for someone so young already.

   “Faize...” He mentioned to himself, as he sometimes did in his private moments, having the urge to mutter the name he was given when he was born.

 [ I'm not really of the Earth... I'm not some human boy... I'm an Eldarian, proud dying heir to a dying planet. My planet. Eldar. Fifth planet of the system of the same name. We are a fair folk, and of a highly scientific folk. We focus much on preserving our species. We are desperate to find another planet called home. For you see, in my time, Eldar is not holding up... our once beautiful star has turned itself into a gas giant... it's planning to supernova within the next century or so..so my generation is responsible for finding a new world... pheh, right..

  I have no parents... I was never born that way... Eldarian children are now born through DNA processing... they complete an unique genome... and then we are born in a laboratory, heavily controlled by the government of our people... I can only hope that the necessary lifestyles that have forced me into... I really hope it pays off in the end.

   It's not like I don't like my life. I do... but things are just very complicated these days... almost too complicated for a 14 year old... ]

    When he was born into the arms of a lab technician, or a scientist, or a physicist, or someone who went out and just created him. For some reason, Faize was able to remember the smile the man gave to him.


  [ “I sense a very fulfilling future for you, dear child of Eldar... “]

   If he meant fufilling, as in, working his butt off in school and passing the design schools with relative ease with no absolute idea of where his future would lie, yes, he could assume he was 'fufilling' his 'destiny'.

   He opened a silver case on the sink top that looked somewhat like a thermo cup, pulling out a black tipped, smooth comb, that he slowly stroked through his messy green hair, careful not to pull the hair right out of his scalp. He gently closed his eyes as he carefully pulled on his air, perfecting and evening it out, pulling himself closer to the mirror as he did so.

   It wasn't long before he set the tool down. He somewhat long, pointy ears tensing up when he saw the hair brilliantly reflect off the bathroom light. His exotic purple eyes blinked and peered at himself curiously, as he took a small step back, slowly bending the elbow of his left arm over and over, staring at his muscles like all boys did, checking their masculinity and judging themselves, as if others didn't do it enough already.

  He touched his backhand upon his chest, and let it sat for a while, until his hand became warm from the beatings of his heart that he viewed as his most difficult asset to understand. He opened up a clear diamond box that he has cherished, that his creator had given to him.

   Ear accessories... even Eldarian had a pair. Faize could dare being radical enough to admit that if they walked naked, the beauty of their accessories would be just as important as the sizes of their groins. Of course Faize didn't even know if his generation was even fertile. He was not born through the womb, and he would definatly dare not even think about such things! He closed his eyes briefly, and reopened them, tilting his head a bit to the side to expose his vulnerable looking ears. Eldarians only showed their bare ears to anyone if they were comfortable with them in private. He took the two ear accessories, made out of a brilliant purple onyx, with a pure silver lining with Eldarian runic lessons of life carved into them, as well as his mind, and gently lifted them up, firmly snapping them into place on his ears. He had worn them for so long, so many times, that just his ears alone was beginning to feel weird to him. He slowly flicked the black onyx earrings, shaped like diamonds, dangling by a few inches with silver string attached to the accessories, lifting up his chin again to try to look refined, smiling to himself gently. He always loved the earrings.


   When he had gathered the courage, he slowly turned the hot water valve on his faucet on, crisp, clean underground reaped fresh water expelling from the nozzle, painted black to easily distinguish from the white paint.

The white paint was fundamentally designed to keep one's nerves calm...


   Faize had nerves. He didn't know why. He seemed to be the only one, at least around others. Perhaps they did their expressions, like he did, waiting for someone to crack. Perhaps the test tube births were for natural selection, elite breeding in intellect and combat. Perhaps that was the reason for such a side effect to occur in his body. Or maybe it was just...

  “Ughn...” Faize sighed in disappointment. Of all the words he could use to describe himself, he hated the words 'teenage hormones'. It seemed such a ridiculous, preposterous idea to believe that because he was a certain age he was... starting to feel things he wasn't feeling before.

   It made him uncomfortable and it made him feel nervous. All the time. He had a painful gut feeling in his body, as if something was always watching him from behind, as if the sick feeling of dread was visible on the horizon.

  His soft voice commanded in voice tone to play him music. The music played throughout the small speakers implanted into the room. The Eldarian dormitories always were known for their personal accommodations. Faize had grown tired of being excited of rooming with others that... didn't fit his ticket.


   He splashed the hot water upon his skin, the water dripping onto his chest, and following down his ab muscles, down the center split of his body, finally ending in a spot where most water droplets would end, of course. He turned the water off, and peered over the pile of used clothes he had thrown into the bathroom, and the still wet shower, since he didn't go to sleep not too long ago, and he didn't get much sleep the day before anyway, so he was feeling pretty miserable.

   His mouth, as embarrassing as it was for him, slowly began to move to the singing along of the lyrics of the song playing in his little home. He took the whole pile of used clothes and threw it beside his bed, slowly sitting upon the bed and dressing himself, snapping many different pieces together after gently pulling on his undergarments.  He didn't say a word. He wasn't much for words these days. He had recently had just been further and further hiding himself away from the others. He did not have a lot of things in common with them.

   He was a different boy, of course. Most noticeably, the older Eldarians around him noticed a certain radiance around him that wasn't around the others.  It was a certain radiance of... well, as accurately as he could see it, it was the power of standing up...  they saw a leader in him.

   And Faize viewed himself the opposite.

   What is a leader without companions. What is a follower without faith.

   [Of course I had friends. Many close friends. But I never have the confidence in myself to call myself what the fathers call me. It's not me. It's just the me I somehow present myself while in the proximity of their seniority, their leadership. It's not me...]

   He finally opened the door to his dormitory, and saw the others in the rather large, white hallway, slowly walk amongst themselves, just as lazily as he was. He brushed his luscious green hair that most people were jealous of, and stepped himself out into the hallway, but before he left, he grabbed a certain item he had near the door, and then slammed the damn thing shut.

   Basiclly, in my small, small world, there are and always are two kinds of advanced Eldarians. The ones who call themselves the future, the smart ones, the ones specifically genetically engineered to be smarter then they would ever be naturally.

   He observed a group of them now, casually walking beside him, talking in their nonsense the others said, but Faize understood.

   Of course there are the others... the ones that are supposed to fight for the future. The ones with their bodies geared to the extreme physical limit.

   He then turned to the left, and observed a few of them, dressed in few, if little clothing, to show off their bodies, always joking around and play punching others of their own kind. At least they didn't make fun of his.

   [I was built for intelligence, I guess... I'm not even sure if I was 'advanced' or not like these people were... but why am I here, well... they said I had natural potential... but I'm not a genius I told them... I told them … there's just so many things I don't know... and then they just said..to me... that was why...


  I looked at my beautiful item that I carried with me. It was sheathed of course, but...I can still remember myself forging it... a rapier... a sword meant for slashing and stabbing very precisely at sensitive areas of the body... I kept on saying, Faize, look... your crazy... w-why carry such a thing around... and then I realize, these people around me.... well...

I try to be a little bit of both.]

   He slowly attached his Eldarian rapier to the magnetized holster of his pants, letting it dangle from his body as his steel boots echoed the steps of a young boy, with seemingly nothing ahead of him but a dull, boring future of consecutive field research and formula inventing.

He placed the back of his right hand, against a small window, his hair hiding his sad, grieving eyes, briefly eyeing the red desert that was his only home he knew, unable to avoid the hateful glare their dying sun was giving back to him. Faize knew, that if he ever hoped for something different, for something to change. He would have to, he must had to, try to get out of there.

   His beeper activated. With that, he had to proceed to his government hourly aged paid 'community service.' And with that, the essence of his pretense was gone from that hallway once again. And no one knew how important those steps would take in the future... and how any steps he made on his home world... never last forever.

~This was written as a passage from younger days as a measure of respect to Star Ocean. It is the most beautiful story I have ever experienced. There's no way I, as an author, can portray the feelings and masterpiece that is exposed to me through that tale of the epic space fantasy involving young men and women who forever have their lives changed and learn the true value of friendship and peace. Words just don't cut it at all.