On a warm November day, Richard walked down the sidewalk in his hometown. He walked with a purpose, that being to beat the incoming rain. He would have normally prepared for this situation, but he had to rush to get to class this morning. One of his roommates thought that it would be funny to change his alarm clock in his dorm.
That wasn't the only thing, though. They also thought that it would be even funnier to dump his clothes in water. Richard tried to dry them out before class, but the chills that ran through his body when a breeze blew by told him that he didn't try hard enough. They never knew where to stop.
Richard already knew that he would always be the focus of others when it came down to mistreatment. He could never remember it being any other way. Throughout high school, he was picked on by everyone. The athletes physically abused him. The girls ridiculed him. The geeks and nerds talked about him behind his back. Even the teachers were rumored to talk about him during their lunch period.
There wasn't really a reason for the mistreatment. He wasn't weird, skinny, emo, or anything else that young people looked down upon. He was 5'11" and 185 lbs of pure muscle. He had the face of a youth, but you would be a fool to think he didn't look like a man. He had black hair and brown skin that appeared to be the softest and smoothest one could have. Overall, he was fairly normal from an outward appearance. "Well, I look normal with a shirt on, at least", Richard thought as memories from high school began to surface. "Don't think about it; it's all behind you. That will never happen again."
As if sent to distract his mind, rain began to fall. Though he began to curse the rain for falling at a time like this, it actually pushed the painful thoughts away to the back of his mind.
Richard broke off into a sprint, trying to rush back to shelter in his dorm. Though it felt like forever, it wasn't long before he saw his dorm building. He continued to run as the rain picked up. As he came to his dorm entrance, he was bumped by a stranger that he didn't even register as being there. "Excuse me, I'm sorry", Richard said, stopping to apologize to them.
The cloaked person continued to walk as though they couldn't see or hear him. "Well, I guess they don't even wanna acknowledge me", Richard thought. Just as he was turning around to begin running again, he caught sight of a shining object on the ground. Looking down, he realized that it was a ring. "Hey, I think you dropped your ring", Richard shouted to the stranger, only to be ignored.
Richard watched them continue to walk away, seeming to not care about the ring. So, he bent down to pick it up and inspect it. Just as his fingers grazed it, he felt a jolt of electricity shoot through him. "What the hell", he thought as he picked it up and looked at it. It was made of metal so black that it seemed to absorb any light that reached it. However, bright stars that seemed to move laid upon the metal, giving it the appearance of a universal display.
After becoming lost in the beauty of the ring, he finally realized that he was standing in the rain. Feeling careless and embarrassed, he rushed to his dorm building and walked in. He began to walk to the stairs that would take him to his room, but luck was not on his side. "What the hell are you doing bringing those wet clothes through the building? You'll soak the floor", the dorm manager yelled at him. "Hurry up to your room or you'll be mopping the floors up."
Richard mumbled his acknowledgement and walked up until he made it to his room on the third floor. He pulled out his ID card, allowing the door scanner to read it. Once the LED turned green, he opened the door and walked in.
His roommates' shoes weren't in the hallway, so he figured that they were still out going about their day. He took his shoes off and placed them on the rack before going to the bathroom to strip out of his soaked clothes. Throwing them in his laundry bin, he walked into his room and turned his the heater up. He was shivering from the rain and the air felt as though it was penetrating him to his bones. He had never been as cold as he was at the moment. It wasn't even cold in his room. There wasn't a breeze in his room, let alone circulating air. So, he didn't understand why he was so cold.
Richard walked over to his bed and just fell onto it, throwing the ring to the nightstand. As soon as his head hit his pillow, he felt extremely weak and fatigued. He couldn't explain what was happening to him. Even if it was from standing around in the rain, he was beginning to feel sicker by the minute; he realized that it was happening too quick for it to be normal.
Just as he began to climb under his cover, he began to burn on the inside. The strange thing was that he still felt like he was freezing on the outside. He began to develop a migraine which intensified whenever he shivered. Closing his eyes, his stomach began to bubble. As everything he was feeling began to worsen, he quickly leaned over the side of his bed, vomited, and passed out.