Stoic Vibrancy///Espio the Chameleon's Backstory///My AU///Hybrid!AU

Stoic Vibrancy

Looking at him, you wouldn't exactly expect much.
He's quiet and calm- someone you could enjoy a silent moment with.
With olive skin, vibrant purple hair with a yellow streak, and golden eyes shining like lanterns. He has a curled purple tail, a yellow horn coming from his forehead, and always wears a dark yellow forehead protector and a small clip-on earring.
Scars mark his face and arms in pale lines. One of his eyes is paler than the others. His nose has a slight crook.
He doesn't talk much about his past, but not many ask. The most people know of him is that the hybrids closest to him are a Croc and a Bee.

He was born into a life of danger. He was never really meant to exist.

The son of the Bride of Constant Vigil, his mother tried covering him from the watchful eyes of her enemies.
She wanted to refuse to let him go.
She wanted to be a good mother, buying him gifts - like that forehead protector - and bringing him to beaches and the forests.

She taught him how to fight as best as she could to such a young child, and taught him how to utilize his ability to camouflage. She was proud of her son. But her dangerous fates would force her hand.

Espio the Chameleon was left at an orphanage when he was four. It was small, leaving little private space for the kids—a struggle for the quiet-enjoying Chameleon.

Hybrids didn't have what people called "infantile amnesia," so he still had memories that he hated to recall.

He could remember his mother's face. Olive skin and purple hair like his. She wore gold beads and chains in her hair, and large, gold earrings. He remembered the soft texture of his mother's light green kunoichi. She sat him down on the steps of the small building and hugged him tightly. He felt his mother shake with stifled cries. He clung onto her, not quite understanding why she was filled with such grief.

His mother soon stood up and knocked on the door, waiting for someone to answer. He recalled her muttering in Japanese, though Espio couldn't hear what she was saying.

Curiosity had always consumed him in those memories. He never found out why his mother had left him there. He tried telling himself throughout the years that she must've had a good reason. Someone who hugged him with that much emotional warmth wouldn't just abandon her child for no reason.

Right?

The lack of answers made him feel even more isolated from the seven other kids there. That and how he was the smallest of them and hardly spoke, the horror of being abandoned making words seem futile. The other kids saw him as "weird" or "eerie." Espio was often the subject of taunting and harsh criticism. Still, the Chameleon focused on himself. He fixated on making himself proud.

He and the three adults taking care of the kids. Ribbons the Cat, Sun the Rabbit, and Split the Gecko.

The Chameleon would do anything to make those three proud of what he could do.

Ribbons was typically easy to make proud. It would cheer him on and celebrate small improvements in anything, be it reading, writing, or math. Or the training it gave him in ninjutsu, strengthening his fighting ability his mother had started.

At one point, the Cat promised it would get Espio anything he wanted if he just told it what he wanted.

All he asked for was his mother.

Sun was a bit harsher, never affectionate or comforting.

Then there was Split.

Split saw being small as being weak. So, that was difficult already for Espio. Then, there was how spiteful and bitter he was to almost everyone around him. With the "strongest" kids, he was calmer and much more cautious. He believed they were useful in society.