TW: Grooming?
[Rehabilitation Document]
Subject name: Starglaze
Subject ID: J-S-M-001-C
Age: Unknown
Height: 1′5 feet.
Weight: 6 kg (Expected)
Recovery progress: Well
Description:
J-S-M-001-C is a tiny-based Joyling with the size merely of a human and resembles a five-edged star. He was a complementary entity designed for J-P-F-001 and the closest known entity to have communicated with J-P-F-001. The subject was found together with J-P-F-001 in the vault during extraction.
J-S-M-001-C is capable of manipulating the gravity of his surroundings to increase or decrease his altitude at will. Upon doing this, J-S-M-001-C excretes a fluorescent cloud of yellow dust from his body that vanishes rapidly after contact with objects, except for glass. The speed at which J-S-M-001-C can enter is recorded around approximately 100 kilometres per hour at the highest.
However, a few analyses suggest that J-S-M-001-C ability is still on the surface of research.
Notes:
Unlike many subjects, J-S-M-001-C shows no mental impairment or emotional shift to recover. This makes J-S-M-001-C therapy unnecessary for the Institute. However, J-S-M-001-C indifference towards the environment has shown to be an unwanted obstacle for most research.
J-S-M-001-C is shown to be deviant against personnel and prefers to indulge in self-interest or J-P-F-001 interest, refusing authority or command unless requested directly from J-P-F-001. This led J-S-M-001-C to wander against protocol and execute several mishaps in the Institute.
While this may appear innocuous to the Institute or subjects, a precautionary force would be necessary in case J-S-M-001-C trigger an unwanted event. Caretaker Carolina Beth is requested to have J-S-M-001-C on monitored subduction.
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*Shrug* *Shrug* *Shrug*
"What?" She glances.
What she saw was clearly not an illusion—Something is lurking through the vents above her head. Could it be rats? Pearl clearly didn't like the touch of such animals slipping through this beautifully set vault.
The air duct opened before her eyes, with nuts and bolts falling as something fierce broke it open. It wasn't long until something emerged through the hole, searching for a way out of the darkness and a smell of peach fragrance inside.
"Aah! Finally!" It yelled.
A creature shaped like a star exits the suitcase with relief, trapped for a long without air and is now free to fly. He floats happily before realising he may not be too happy around the unfamiliar place. The star was unhappy, and his face turned scowling.
"Starglaze!" Pearl yelled with joy.
The creature looks around, "Hey, this isn't Funtakers Institute. Where are the Joylings? Where are the scientists? Where's the fun?"
His tone echoes the confidence and pride. There was no doubt he was a valiant Joyling. Perhaps that's why Starglaze was a comfort figure for Pearl. The shimmering star floats with a cloud of glowing dust, giving a smile to her heart after the worrying thought of losing him.
But now that the missing friend has returned to Pearl, relief showers through her skin and washes her doubt away. No one could separate the two anymore.
"Starglaze, where have you been? Didn't you know I've been looking for you?" Pearl grasps his two edges tightly.
"What? You didn't wait for me like I told you? I told you I was feeding on the cafeteria yesterday because I don't want to waste time."
"You didn't tell me anything."
"I did! Well, I was about to. Then I searched for you when I heard you're leaving! Ugh, you wouldn't leave your friend here, aren't you?"
"*Sigh* You've worried me a lot today. Don't do that again, Starglaze..." Pearl grasps him by his edges.
"Today was an important day for us. Our family is waiting for us, and who knows what would they see forward. Maybe they'll love us, or maybe they not..."
She sat on her chair nervously, wrapping herself up as she tapped her hands with a pearl-like echo.
"I have a bad feeling they go for the second..."
As chatter slips through the time, the lounge becomes more silent than it has ever been. She can hear the buzz of the ceiling lamp loudly, but not as loud as Starglaze grunts. He was a careless man in a big world that sees himself highly as he floats.
"What's the matter with you, Pearl? Sounds like you didn't enjoy this reunion. Won't it be good to have someone finally covering your back like Ms Carolina?"
"W-what? Of course I am! I am so happy, you can see me in jovial! Look at my smile!"
She tries her best to keep the room bright, but Starglaze reads through her timidity and stops her where she doesn't want to. Pearl was too nervous about everything. So many things that could've gone wrong while she was here. But Starglaze was always there to make her laugh, even in the darkest spot of her mind. The troubled Joyling had never felt more to forget trouble with him around.
"Quit it, girl. I can read your eyebrows and it says..."
"Oh, I'm Pearl! I'm afraid of this day! Please, don't make me do this!" He quipped.
"Also, I will give Starglaze more Poppers after this!"
"That's not true! Don't make me laugh at this hour..."
"Aha! So you admit you weren't happy right now!" Starglaze taunts.
"What? NO! I...ugh..." She lay on the floor.
Pearl laid her face on the floor, still troubled but less than a grunt. Following the rotating fan on the ceiling, she wraps her arms around her chest as she shivers in the shame of her name. But even Starglaze still like to toil in that time.
Her doubts were not to let loose in Starglaze's sight. As the starry creature sees it, Pearl is not in the mood for a joke like she used to be before. So he hovered above her head to cover that blinding white lamp from her eyes with his more comforting and eye-friendly skin.
"Mind telling me what's the deal? Surely questioning a human right now won't be appropriate..." Starglaze hover right above her face.
"You sure you won't judge me?"
"When did I ever judge you? I'm your friend, not your caretaker."
"Uhm, I beg to differ..." Pearl stares dismissively.
From the vault she was in, it was no doubt that someone had made it special for her. The stars on the wall shimmer bright, along with sets of clouds to cheer her mind up. Just like how it was in the poster, it also feels like she was above the clouds.
"There's a note here..." Pearl snatches from the wall.
[A rushed note] Make the vault as comfy as you wish. Will be back with business.
It makes Pearl want to stand up and dance just for one last time—A dance above the clouds where she is as shining as a moon. After all, it was empty, and Starglaze was but a friend of hers. So, she stands up and is ready to reach for the moon again.
"What are you doing?" Starglaze raises an eyebrow.
"Going for the moon, of course. What else...?" Pearl teases.
"Why?"
"Because that's what I can do. We could all reach for the moon, as well..."
She raises her arms tight, imagining the lamp as the moon afar. The floor below her foot might be made of wood, but she could dream bigger for an ocean. Her gloves rose in the sky, grasping the air like a ripe fruit.
Even here, Pearl still has the memory of those ballet practices dampened in her limbs. The tips of her feet still remember how she stood on tiptoe on one foot while the other was bent above her knee. Her hands still remember how to stretch for the spotlight.
"You remembered that day when the two of us were just innocent little Joylings in the land filled with clouds and stars?"
"That little piece of our name has never ceased in my head, Pearl." Starglaze chuckled.
"That was how I expected the world was given to me. A place where I can put my shoes on a puffy cloud while munching on a biscuit down the waxed moon..."
"Or at the sea, above my precious clam, where I dance for the waves below the stones."
Violins and drums play on the stage. Pearl was a shimmering view above the clouds, reflecting the moonlight with her glossy skin. Pearl was a great ballet dancer, and Starglaze was a good swinger by her side. Together, they made the room flutter with stardust.
"Can you see how wonderful that world is? It's all serene and colourful."
"It's beautiful, filled with imagination and whispers of the children. And it's all I wanted more in life."
"A place where I can still feel as comfortable as I was in the studio—bearing the taste of stardust in my mouth..."
"Eh, I know what you mean. But maybe those cheap stardust they make are bad for your health, Pearl." Starglaze swings by.
In that place, one spotlight shimmers above her head. Everything is as dark as she thought, and there's clearly nothing on the other side of the light. She stands tiptoeing on the ground, with her arms below her waist, as she elegantly introduces herself to the audience.
"I was a lost girl without a thought. A naked Joyling without a skin."
"I am nameless, roleless, and mostly nobody in the darkness."
"I thought my life would end there. Thought I would be like those Frowlings..."
"But it ends when Chrome finds me. It ends when I am not lying in the old room again..."
"He gave me a name. Pristine Pearl—he calls me."
"He gave me a skirt—to cover up the 'nobody' in me."
"And he told me I could reach the moon anytime I hoped for the high."
"Isn't that amazing, Starglaze? He moulds us into a beauty. His hands, clawing the darkness off of me..."
"We were beautiful! We are what the world wants," She shed a tear.
"I think so. Mr. Chrome didn't give me much like you—but he gave you as my friend, so...I'm fine with that." Starglaze rolls his eyes back.
Yet, every performance must come to an end. As the drums weaken and the violin plays its last tune on the string, reality returns to its place. Pearl opens her eyes and sees the world dim and lonely, yet happy because it was all for her. But now, she frowns at the thought that such a thing was now impossible.
"But then, the curtain was off. And it was nothing of his words..." She stops practices.
"The spotlight was off and my audience was not as I hoped they were. The world is not so bright, Starglaze. Not for people like us..."
"How am I not surprised? They never had the lights as I do. And who knows if they wished to be me? If they wished to tear my skin, too?"
Her knees touch the ground, her eyes leaning at the drop of her tears washing the wood wet. With the light still shining, she sees her fingers twitching rapidly along her wrist. She can feel someone coming for her—someone who definitely wanted her.
Sebastian is shaded in the darkness because the darkness is what is on his skin. He was a man of nobody, yet his hands moulded the children into somebody—Something that wasn't him. How can Pearl not be happy when she sees herself as someone out of the darkness?
"Pearl. How wonderful that we are here...that you are there..." The man said.
"Mr...Mr. Chrome? Is that...you?" She mumbled.
"What an amazing girl you are...I believe you have known that...given your pretty face..."
"Yeah...I am..." She tears out.
"But why...why are you bearing a shame? Why shame for the beauty I gave you...? Have I not given you enough?" His right hand approaches the spotlight, where a black mist exudes from his fingers.
"Yeah, you did! I...wait. No, I can't trust you! You're not...you're not helping me!" She pauses.
"Why are you resisting me?"
"Get off of me! You're not him! He's dead! You're dead!"
"No one will take you but ME!"
Just as it seems she would be drawn into that call again, reality calls back for her name. In her wake, she has been lying on the ground for a long, and Starglaze has been hovering with a maddening smirk across the room.
"Eek!" She yelled.
"Aah! Pearl! Why are you screaming?"
"I...wait, I thought I was..." She looks left and right.
"You fell asleep on the floor and then you wake up screaming at me. You're getting weirder today, friend..."
"Ow, I...must've been tired of preparing this whole adventure to the human world..." She sat on the chair.
"I might have tire myself..."
"Sounds true to me. By the way, can you tell if my hat is crumpled? Don't want to have my new family see the bad side of me. Especially that one..." Starglaze perched on the mirror.
"And that one...that one...and definitely that one too..."
Starglaze is as reckless and insensible as he always was. Now, with his hat on, he focuses on his garment more than Pearl's concern. Surely, Pearl couldn't let him at such a moment. His brag about the hat is seemingly a lead for a fuss.
"Your family? Do you mean MY family? This isn't just about you, Starglaze." Pearl brags.
"*Gasp* Pristine Pearl, watch who you are talking to." Starglaze contends her.
"Don't you know that we're in this together?"
"Oh, so now you're listening to me..." She pokes him.
Pearl has to make a lesson about it. She messes his hat with a poke, and Starglaze clearly doesn't like it. With the top of his hat crumpled, he lost his perfect view, and his pride shredded like paper on a shredder. Now, he has something doubtful to think about.
"Noo! You're ruining my already good hat! Now I can't go out to the family like this!" Starglaze's eyes extend as he angers.
"You're ruining my moment, too! Have some of my anger on that."
"Oh, Pearl!" He latched onto her face.
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[Institute Entrance]
Here it was, a shimmering sun outside of the Institute. Carolina walked by with a paperboard for an analysis she was about to do on the other wing of this building. However, a man seemed to have found her interest first in the middle of the building before she did.
"Ms. Beth. The family's here." The man calls her.
"Oh, who's family? And why do we have a family here?"
"Ugh..." The man slaps his face.
"What? Am I missing something?"
Before Carolina could find out the answer, the promised family arrived at the door without care for the facility's ethics. Such couples were desperate—faces looked frowned upon and pressured. But their looks are not what she had expected from Pearl's family.
"Excuse me. Are you Carolina Beth? We got your call two days ago," the woman said urgently.
"Oh, that family. I mean, Yes, yes...uhm, I anticipate your arrival shortly. I hope you don't mind if the security outside bothers you."
"Ehem..." Her colleague rolls his eyes.