inspired by Devil May Cry
Published by kiakills
02-25-08
blood wave prologue
Prologue: present
I feel as if I’m trapped in a game of some sort. I can’t concentrate on anything. This new life: I can’t understand it. Who am I? I don’t know anymore. I’m merely a puppet. A puppet with free will. I just don’t know how to use it. I’m scared. Being an assassin, you’d think I’d be fearless, but I cower in fear of my own father. Why is that? He had saved me from near death: I owe him my life. So why does everything he commands me to do seem so wrong? Am I so cold? The buildings surrounding me: are they closing in? I feel like I’m being watched. What is this? An enemy’s idea of a game? I’ll be honest: I don’t like it. It’s annoying when they feel the need to stalk you through shadows and such. It gets so old. But, this enemy brings me fear. Why? I am undefeated by all, so why do I fear something that feels the need to cover itself in darkness? Perhaps a great challenge awaits me… things could get interesting. I stop, moving only my eyes to my right. I see nothing suspicious: trash cans lining the alley walls, papers and litter carelessly floating about the street, and the endless lines of bricks cornering me in the thin trail. There’s more, though. I can’t believe I’d looked passed such an obvious thing. A dark figure, first passed off as a mere gargoyle, towered just above me at the top of the nearest building. How foolish I was: there where no gargoyles in the alleys of London. Not anymore. The entire country had been destroyed and rebuilt by the Gourden. I stand, silent and still, awaiting the creatures first move. I have my self prepared with every muscle in my body ready for my reaction: my hand extended to my boot, prepared to reach for my dagger, my other hand hovering shakily above my pistol, my foot ready to meet with its face. All my preparations have been made, and yet the creature will not move, and so an eerie silence fills the alley. After a moment, boredom gets the better of me, and I call to it. “I know you’re out there. Show yourself.” My usually flat voice seems shaky and a bit irritated: perhaps I am just a bit too worked up over what will prove to be an easy battle. I hear familiar laughter in the distance, but the face of such a voice won’t come to me. The shape leaps from the building’s roof, cape flapping from the air below. The second its feet hit the ground, my gun is aimed at its head and my finger is ready at the trigger. But I don’t shoot, though maybe I should have. For staring back at me is an older man with keen, black eyes and the darkest of auras. “F—father!” my body is frozen, the gun still to his head. The demon-like man smiles at me, sending chills through my body. “now, now. Where you planning on shooting me?” “Forgive me, father. I didn’t know.” “Didn’t know? And what had I told you about such things?” “If I am unsure of an enemy, fire at will.” “Unless it is me, you idiot!” he took a moment to compose himself. “Besides, I didn’t hear you fire any rounds: that’s very bad, to not listen to my words.” He pulled a small, remote-like item from his pocket: one with few buttons and a single dial. “No! Please, it was a mistake! Don’t do it father. Please, I beg of y—“ But my body falls to the ground, violently shaking from the shock coursing through my body. My nails dig into the concrete, something no normal human could do. I can feel nothing and everything all at once. My thoughts scramble, and I fight to keep my consciousness. Everything hurts, but I am still somehow numb. When he is through with his device, I cannot move. I can still feel the shocks running through my veins. I feel like I might die, but I fight to keep awake. “Oh, dear. It seems I’ve turned it up a bit. That’s two thousand volts. Enough to kill any normal human, my son. But, you are no normal human, so such things have a lesser effect on you. How unfortunate; here I am, waiting for you to bleed from the eyes, and you wont even pass out. I really despise that about you. How you often seem almost immortal. Tell me, have you completed the mission?” I struggle to speak. “N—no—sir. I—haven’t—had enough time. F—forgive—forgive me.” “Oh, well, how unfortunate. Perhaps I’ll have better luck in watching you die at an even higher voltage…” His finger hovered above the single yellow button which caused me so much suffering. “No! I—if you—kill me, who will—take on these missions for you? I am—your only—ally. Please, don’t k—kill me.” His finger drops, and my vision goes black.
I remember that night so clearly. All those people wandering the streets carelessly. All helpless. All oblivious to what would happen that night. And yet, though only seven, I wasn’t. I don’t how to explain the things that have happened to me, but I always know when danger is near. I have heard of others like me, some form of superhuman that appeared from Russian descent after the bombings there so many years ago. I was one of those who had survived the terrorist attacks of 2118, though I was only two, and so my recollection of the incident has deteriorated completely. Some say these superhuman manifestations where the result of a certain newly formed chemical the Germans used in the blast. Most of us call our unique skill a sixth sense and a superior advantage, but most others know it as a curse. As the power of sin. Honestly, I didn’t know what they where. I just knew how to use them. And not very well, if I may be so bold. At the time, I wasn’t even aware of the other strengths I had. I just knew my intelligence far surpassed that of most and that I could sense danger without a sign. But, on that day, when the murder took place, I knew something horrid would happen. I knew there was something wrong within the town. I knew, in the back of my mind, that whatever happened would directly affect me. My eyes where always wide open that day. I couldn’t bear that feeling I had, and I wanted to expose the threat as soon as possible, so I’d have the time to prepare. However, the danger felt somewhat distant, and I ignored it as if it where nothing. I see no threat in distant dangers. I never have. So I went along on my errands, buying fresh foods for our table. searching for that Christmas gift my baby brother so desired, and after much irritation, I stumble upon the electronic creature: I new, advanced form of robot created just years ago which clearly responds to human emotions, and acts as a true pet would, though they true animals are hard to come by as of late. T his world has been in what could possibly be the biggest international depression on record. Perhaps it is the only. I suppose I wouldn’t know though. Most of such records where destroyed or stolen and disposed of during the wars. Little of our world’s history remains. But alas, I have lost myself in such drabble. To continue… The sun faded behind the ruins, as this was in the time when Germany, my home at that day in age, was being restored after their own bloody battle, and the sky grew dark with for the ghastly night. I held tightly to my purchases, for our town wasn’t a safe one, and robbers and thieves stalked the alleys and corners. I often questioned my parents’ sanity at sending their youth to do such deadly chores so late in the day. Regardless, I made it home, but stopped in the doorway with wide eyes frozen with a fear so unreal I could not keep myself from falling to the floor and grabbing the back of my head, trying to force away the thoughts: the danger was growing stronger. From what I had gathered, the fact that the danger felt so distant was not that it would not affect me greatly. Rather, it was physically distant, weakening my senses. My father, on his way to the second floor, stumbled upon me in the futile position, and immediately recognized it as a sign of my senses. He grabbed my shoulders and shook my tense body wildly. “What happened?! What’s going on?!” I look up at him, my eyes flooding from the pressure of the situation. It was the last time I’d shed a tear. He stopped shaking me, but his obsessive eyes never left me. “I—I don’t know. But something bad will happen. Soon.” my arms wrapped around his neck, holding so tightly I may have crushed his bones had I been stronger. “I have a bad feeling. What if someone gets hurt?” “Calm down. I’m sure it’s nothing.” He assured me, but there was an edge in his voice. He was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop the tears. I must say, it was the most horrifying time in my life. It remains so to this day. Can you imagine it, though? Knowing deep in your heart you’d bear witness to such dangers. The pain I felt. The suffering. My father pushed me back and held his head high, regardless of the circumstances which faced us. He was forcing himself to be strong. For me. “We’ll be fine.” He promised. Despite his assurance, I was restless the whole night. Throughout the house, every noise I had once ignored as the simple rattling of a home that hadn’t yet been restored became a threat, and my eyes where sharpened so much so that I would have seen a roach crawl across the floor in the deepest of blacks had they not become extinct. Even in bed, I notice everything surrounding me. Every whisper. My elder sister, whom which dated one twelve years her senior, sneaking away for a dangerous night with such a lover. The sound of a nighttime brawl just outside my window. Things that, had it been another night, would be left unnoticed. Something did, however, strike me as a bit off. The front door, which I heard creak open each night at that time. In its place, a loud scream echoed off the walls. I rush outside my room. Whatever had happened, she hadn’t gotten far before it had gotten to her. I open my door quickly, but with caution. Had she been standing there, she was no longer. Beneath my own feet, I see the crimson footprints of excessively large boots. Before I can follow them completely to her room, a man clad in black with a face fully covered by a dark hood, to hide him from arrest. In his hand is the dripping head of my dear elder sister. I scream; a loud, shrill sound by which I hadn’t a clue I could make. He turned sharply so that his fully clothed face pierced me, and from behind I heard the doors open and felt the hand of my mother at my neck. The youngest is beside me as well, only he is clasped to my side with all his might, his eyes closed, as though that itself would erase what he’d seen. My sisters eyes had been gorged from her skull, and her cheeks carved away to expose the pink, bloodied tissue beneath. Her jaw hung open weakly. Gruesomely. And from her throat, a deep red liquid poured from the chasm of her mouth. I was frozen in fear as he walked past me, and I could feel his masked eyes on me. Instead of even laying a hand on my body, however, his large fingers wrap tightly around my mothers slender neck, giving it a hard jerk and allowing her body to fall limply to the floor. I stare at the body, with loose skin being the only thing holding her head to the corpse. I instinctively reached down to hold my brother close, but he was not after him or me. His next target was my father, for which he drew a knife from his pocket, too large to be called a dagger, but far shorter than a sword. My dearest brother cried in terror, clinging tighter to my loosely fitted metallic jacket. My father screamed and squirmed beneath the killers iron grip, and I felt another shrill call rising to my throat. I swallowed hard, forcing it back as the man held the knife to my father’s throat, and whispered some harsh threat in my father’s ear, using words I had never heard and was not allowed to say. My father pushed him back, but his strength was too much, and he wound up pinned against the wall once more. I could hear the smile within his voice. “Trying to escape so easily? But, didn’t I tell you to pay your debt? I warned you of the consequences, but you chose to disregard me. You deserve this, you know?” My Father seethed at him, and I felt a strange aura penetrating form him that had never been there. My father wasn’t saddened by his wife and daughter’s deaths. He felt no distaste for their slaughter. That hadn’t affected him. He was trembling: cowering in fear of this man too cowardly to show his face to those he killed. At that moment, I realized how truly selfish the man I admired so truly was. He didn’t care what the man did to our family. All he cared for was his survival. He tried to push the man away again and escape to the master room, but to no avail. The man was strong, and showed no signs of struggle from my father. I knew, however, my father was fighting him with all his strength by the strained expression wearing away at his face. I wanted to run from the man, but also to save the man who’d raised me, even if I only saw him as a coward as of now. So I stepped forward, but before I could ever speak, the knife fell upon his face withy two bold strikes, leaving a gruesome “X” over his features, and allowing his blood to spill over the hard wooden flooring, permanently staining the old-fashioned style. With two more harsh blows, my father’s arms fell to the floor beside him, and I felt the youth’s head buried in my jacket. With one more, his chest was severed; falling farther down than necessary. And at that point, I knew him dead and lift my brother to rush away. I heard the heavy footsteps behind me; violent. Deadly. My feet worked harder to move, but I felt I’d never escape him. Alas, I slammed the door on him, buying enough time to drop the access weight and drag it quickly behind me. He ran weakly, tears streaming from his eyes and hollow screams escaping him. I wanted to slap him and scream “shut up”, but I knew it’d only make more noise and prove our presence far easier. Instead, I keep the quick, steady rhythm of my knee-hi boots over the leaves of the only wooded area within ten miles. Most other lands where now developed. My head turned constantly, but I never lost my supernatural speed as I strived to save myself and my brother alike. My brother’s feet barely managed to touch the ground before I was taking my next step. The man is far behind us; enough to be out of sight. Yet I can feel him gaining upon us, and I push myself further. Alas, I tripped, and sent my brother falling far ahead of me as the danger gained on us. I try to rush after him, but my foot is trapped beneath the root of the tree which tripped me. Only when the man has found us and pinned my brother’s throat between his fingers do I find myself free. I tried to save him, but he’d torn the child’s heart from his chest before I could reach him. He dropped the organ to the floor and stepped on it, sending the blood to cover the forest floor in sheets. He dropped the body to the ground before me and held a knife to my chest. He pushed it through my skin, piercing my heart beneath its blade. I couldn’t get my body to move. I felt my pulse slowing. He removed the dagger from my heart and glared at me angrily. A violent slash to my throat sent a red flash to my eyes. I struggled to breathe as blood flooded my throat, choking me. i refused to let myself die though, he wore a frightened expression as he held a finger to my delicate wrist and realized there was still a pulse. My vision went blurry until, finally, I lost consciousness.
I woke to find an elderly man hovering over me. My wounds where wrapped and, though they hurt very badly, they no longer left me lifeless. “Oh, good. Your awake.” He stated as if I hadn’t come to discover such a thing already. “You’d slept for nearly a week. I was afraid I’d have to dispose of your body soon. You’ve taken quite a lot of abuse, haven’t you? You must be a very strong individual. You’ve nearly healed enough to stand already. In another week, you’ll probably be strong enough to defend yourself, wont you?” The man had a kind face and a gentle smile, but unlike most seven year olds, I could see through his mask. I didn’t know what it was about him, but I didn’t trust him. Anyone who’d take in a child, and a Russian boy at that, with the power I have was sure to be nothing less that trouble. But, in the end, I found myself in a situation I could not escape. Even if he asked me for some form of physical pleasure, it wasn’t as terrible as the death that was sure to follow had I tried to live on my own at such an age. He eyed me carefully, taking in my thin, scrawny figure, my grey hair which surely made me seem diseased or something of that sort, and my large, grey eyes. “I may be able to use you.” That’s when I’d realized my pleasure theory may be correct, and I began second guessing myself. “I’ll let you live here, boy, under my roof. I’ll feed you well. I’ll clothe you finely. All you have to do is be my sort of body guard.” I looked up at him in shock. “Body guard?” “Why yes, of course. After all, who’d suspect a young child like you hold such power? And once you grow older… why, just imagine the sort of strength you’ll gain. Well, boy, how’s that sound to you?” I didn’t like the way he looked at me. His face was eager, and I knew his words had hidden meaning. But what choice did I have? My family had just been murdered before my eyes. I had no one to run to. “Alright. I will stay here in exchange for my services to you. What do I call you, sir?” His face fell a moment, but that infuriating smile returned to his lips quickly. “my dear boy, what makes you think I’ll give you such a thing as my name. if you are to live beneath my roof, you’ll be calling me ‘father’, as any good son would.”
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