Candy Candy {TomEdd} Distopian Future AU {Discontinued }

Chapter One ~ First Contact

Edd's POV

In kindergarten it was a cute nickname, in primary school it became annoying but funny.

But now it's highschool an it's become another word for fatass.

When I was in kindergarten, I would hand out candy to the class. I always had a couple sweets on me. Sure, I was a bit chubby, but people were less judging in kindergarten.

At least, they wouldn't voice their judgement back then.

Candy Boy. I hated that name. I hated it more than Old Fashioned. I hated it more than Fatty because it reminded me of a time when nobody cared.

I guess I'm one of the few people who still use the archaic terms like highschool. Call me old school, but the old words seemed less harsh than Eduforms (Forms for short).

But we digress. From the very beginning of Form 0, people saw I was different. Teachers told me to stop living in the past. They took away my pencils which my mum had saved up to buy and replaced them with fragile TechWriters, which were twice as expensive but half the quality.

The only person who didn't mock me because my parents where too poor to afford a couple TechWriters was Matt.

But that's enough exposition, our story begins now.

I was playing hide and seek with my now best friend Matt and a kid named Tord.

Tord was... Strange. I'd like to consider him my friend, but I don't think he'd return the sentiment.

Tord was in, but today I was determined to win.

Behind the playground in our school is handball court, and behind there was a conveniently climbable tree.

We weren't allowed to climb the tree, natural trees were rare and supposed to be protected, but nobody gave a shit, even back then. Why care for a tree when you can insta-grow another in a day using SuperFast (jellyfish) Nature greenhouses?

Even so I tried to climb carefully - such a throwback to what I naively thought was a better time should be treated with care.

When I made it up to a nice forked branch with big clusters of leaves to mask my presence, I settled in to wait for Tord to give up on looking for me.

Five minutes had passed before I heard it. Someone crying? I looked around for Tord, before clambering down to look for the source of the noise.

Sure enough, sitting beneath the tree was a boy about my age at the time. He had weird spiky hair, and was wearing a yellow shirt with blue overalls. I couldn't gather much more information as he was hugging his knees to his chest and had his head down.

"Hello?" I called out.

The boy started, and looked around. His eyes were tightly shut.

"You won't be able to see me if your eyes are shut, silly!"

He opened his eyes fleetingly, but he shut them again. In the split second his eyes were open, they seemed to be pitch black.

This didn't unnerve me, back then many accessories or tech enhancements had weird side affects - such as eye discoloration. What I didn't realise was most enhancers aren't given to children.

"Hurts." He whispered.

I walked towards him slowly, and crouch in front of him. I put my hand on his shoulder. He flinched ever so slightly.

"Come on, I'll take you to the sick bay." I tried to grasp his hand and lead him there, but he pulled it away.

"Why won't you come with me? They'll stop your eyes from hurting."

He still refuses to come with me. I don't know what else to do, so fish a small zip lock bag from my pockets and take out a gummy bear.

I pull his hand and press the gummy into his palm. Fun fact, gummy bears are one of the few olden days sweets that are still popular. Gummy Bears and Nerds.

"Stay here, I'm getting a teacher."

He stays silent, so I jog off to the nearest teacher on playground duty.

Luckily, the the teacher on duty was Miss Siddle, my favourite teacher. We're actually meant to call them educators, but this old habit dies the hardest. I brought her over to the boy, and we took him to the sick bay.

I don't remember much else because I stopped paying attention when we were walking, but I do remember his name; Tom.

I never saw Tom again.

Until NOW DUN DUN DUNNNNNN.

Decided this was good enough to be a separate story.

Idk if anyone caught the Tomska reference in the chapter title but eeeeeehhh