Robin Locke
Setting: Earth.
Reality.
There were overgrown trees and moss growing up the buildings. Nature was attempting to take back what once belonged to it a long, long time ago, longer than many bothered remembering anymore. History wasn't a thing that people liked to think about, not from what Robin had gathered over the years. They didn't like to think about the mistakes made. To those who returned to Earth from their silly little worlds, this just seemed like another...fake. Those disillusioned with reality were usually too far gone to make rational decisions or form clear thoughts. He'd once seen someone walk right off the edge of a broken bridge because he was convinced he could fly, and Robin didn't make a single move to help him because he specifically remembered telling that guy that those physics didn't work in this world and if he wasn't willing to listen, then there was obviously nothing else he could of done to help him. He wasn't a babysitter for the mentally unstable.
Robin didn't think Earth was very pretty at all. He thought it was ugly and overgrown. He wasn't a huge fan of nature and with all of the overgrowth everywhere, it was just a constant reminder of what could of been that no longer was. It was totally bringing him down. He liked to think he was a good sort of guy with an optimistic outlook, but he really wasn't when he thought about it enough. He was mostly just a realist, bordering pessimism the longer he looked at the sticks and grass at his feet. They really shouldn't be bugging him as much as they were, but he couldn't help himself but get a little fed up with it all. He was tired of walking around like this. He was feeling bored and itchy and, moreover, he was convinced they were wasting time.
They were walking through a city and the bottom of his nice pants were wet because they had to walk through a swamp in order to get somewhere and now they were just walking around at what he assumed was somewhere in the afternoon according to how hot it was in some undesignated area that probably didn't matter anyway. It looked like a place that wished it was a city with the few big buildings it still had, but never quite had the finances to become one, so it was littered with much smaller, typical buildings and neighborhoods too. Wherever it was, it was starting to suck and he was ready to kick the next scrawny little tree he saw growing in a hole in a wall, but he didn't want to mess up his shoes any worse than they already were.
Finally, he decided to ask. "Where are we even going?" Oh, wait, yes, that's right. He knew very well where they were going. They were going to a library that they'd heard was somewhere all the way across the not-city because their luck hated them. "Nevermind, I remembered." He almost forgot who he was even talking to. Well, not exactly. Of course he remembered who he was talking to. It would be stupid forget someone walking alongside of him for a while now, but he was pretty bad when it came to names and he couldn't remember either of them. He thought that might be a little stupid, too, though, because he was sure one of their names was something he of all people should have memorized pretty easily. Obviously, he wasn't just going to ask now.
Okay, maybe he was. "I forgot your stu--" He came to a stop when he thought he saw something. It was hard to see anything in detail when everything came out in ugly blacks, whites, and shades of grey. The colors made his stomach churn in a latent sense of regret that didn't belong to him. One of the colors moved and he saw the dark eyes attached to it and instantly understood what it was. Okay yeah, wow, not going in that direction. Robin nudged the one with the white hair in a different direction, hoping the other would follow their lead. There were a lot of Shadows the other way. "I think they saw us." They would probably have to run the rest of the way to the library from there, if the outside wasn't consumed by the Shadows already. It was the best place to go to get to the book worlds and many people seemed to come in and out of those daily.
This was probably going to suck.