Tyler was small.
Barely four feet tall. Pink-skinned. Barefoot. His childlike body moved with unnatural grace, like he didn't walk but floated from place to place. In the depths of Zaun, no one knew what to make of him.
He looked like a shimmer mutant's fever dream—a living plush toy with sharp eyes and a twisted grin.
And he hadn't eaten in days.
His stomach growled. He didn't. All he made were strange, warbled sounds—giggles, growls, squeals—none of them human. His throat simply didn't work that way anymore.
He crouched in the shadow of a rusted pipe, watching a group of rats bicker over scraps. His antenna twitched. "Buu buu!" he chirped softly, mimicking their squeaks with mock curiosity.
Then he turned away.
Something colder was coming.
---
The gang found him near the collapsed bridge—a wide open space, half-drowned in shimmer fog. Seven of them. Makeshift weapons. Scarred faces. Desperation in their eyes.
Easy meat, they thought.
The leader was a tall woman with one blind eye and a jagged bottle for a knife. "Oi! What's this? Some shimmer-spawn? Heh. Looks squishy."
The others laughed.
Tyler tilted his head and let out a high-pitched, "Buuuu!" It echoed strangely. The gang froze.
"What the hell—?"
The shimmer junkie lunged first, a syringe glowing in his neck. He swung a metal pipe—
—Tyler vanished.
No, not vanished—he stepped wrong. His body moved sideways through the air like gravity forgot its job.
The pipe missed.
Tyler appeared beside the attacker, arm cocked back, grinning.
Then punched.
His small pink fist tore through the man's chest like paper. Blood sprayed. The body hit the ground before anyone screamed.
"WHAT THE—?!"
"Kill it!"
They rushed him.
Tyler laughed—that strange, bubbly, echoing laugh like boiling candy and madness. "Buu! Buhh buu buu!"
He bent space around them.
One slipped on a floor that suddenly sloped backward. Another hit an invisible wall and crumpled like cloth. A third screamed as their knife warped mid-air and turned on them.
Tyler spun, arms out, making chirping, childlike war cries. His form was tiny—but deadly.
---
He didn't feel scared.
He didn't feel joy.
He felt… right.
When the smoke cleared, only one gang member was left—the girl with the blind eye. She'd dropped her weapon. Blood stained her legs.
"Please," she whispered. "We didn't know. We thought you were just a shimmer kid. Please…"
Tyler stared. Silent.
Then gave a little snort—"Buuh." He turned his back and walked away.
She collapsed, sobbing.
---
Later, he sat alone atop a collapsed tower, blood still drying on his hand. He stared at it.
Not in guilt. Not in fear.
In wonder.
He hadn't hesitated.
He remembered being human once. Hesitating. Flinching.
But not anymore.
Now he was something else.
Something Zaun would remember.