She stood at the top of a colossal
tower, peering over the ledge. Staring down at the massive breathtakingly
beautiful city that lay at the foot of the skyscraper hundreds of miles below,
she felt a tear breaking away from the threshold of her long eyelashes. With
her lengthy silky black hair held back in a bun and wrapped with chains that
fell down her backside, she could see the whole city without turning her head and
watched as the tear reached the corner of her mouth. She caught it with her
tongue and brought it back inside. It would be such a waste to allow the last
drop of her humanity to escape her and fall to the depths of this cursed city
of monsters.
Her attire, a unique blood red
leather-made suit enshrouded her slender well fit body like a thick glossy
liquid had been poured onto her flesh. She wore a black glove on her right hand
that extended to her elbow, and bared a mark on the fore side of her other. A
five-pointed star with three six’s was left branded on her left hand.
Her eyes, a striking pale green;
burning with envy, hate, and desire. She glared down at the city with utter
disgust as if sickened by its very essence.
“I
once lived in a time that has not yet come... I once flourished in the light of
what once was a beautiful young girl... A young girl who wanted nothing more
than to learn who she was... I once was forced to discover who that person
was... I once became...”
Her face was painted white with
blood red lipstick, and black lines forming a design that appeared as a shroud
of cracks.
“Shattered
Soul!”
That woman was I.
Midnight, Tokyo Japan, Rising Star
capital of the world.
An American man in his early
thirties, found himself wandering down a dark alleyway alone. The alley led to
an old rusty steel door in the red brick building at the end. He cautiously
approached and carefully scanned his surroundings before he knocked three times
and said, “Ehyeh asher ehyeh...”
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the locks were disengaged, and someone from the inside pulled the steel
door open, allowing the stranger to enter. As soon as he stepped in, the
mysterious doorman quickly slammed it shut, and locked it at once.
Hidden by the shadows of the
darkened alleyway, I watched from an old fire escape that ran alongside the
building to the right.
"Freedom
fighters!" I thought to myself. "Perhaps the most meaningful of The Resistance. They live amongst the
enemy, and congregate only once a month at random locations. They are the most
organized and dangerous threat The Empire has ever seen, mainly for the fact
that they cannot be seen." I thought as I began my descent down the
rusty old ladder of the fire escape.
For years they have conspired
against the most hated dictator in all of the world. Destroying labs,
assassinating high-ranking officers, corrupting the greatest power from within.
These Freedom Fighters have proven themselves, a lethal weapon of The
Resistance... My mission...
I stood a few yards before the door
clasping a device in the palm of my right hand.
“To disarm it.”
I then slammed my thumb down on the
trigger of the detonator, and the building before me ignited into flames. The
power of the explosion inside, sent the door flying off of it’s hinges, where
it came shooting at me at lightning fast speed. I ducked down just in time to
watch it zip over my head an inch and a half away from my scalp. When the door
crashed into the side of the dumpster behind me, I stood back up facing the
inferno as I withdrew my weapons; a pair of nun-chucks from their holster on my
back. In their solid form, they looked like two forearm length titanium sticks
with carvings etched into them of a dragon and a tiger. The one with the dragon
I always held in my right, and I called it Quangda. The other with the tiger carving
was called Yingzhan. When I pressed on the jeweled eyes of the carvings, the
sticks transformed into a pair of nun-chucks, that were each held together by a
bolt of blue electricity forming the chain. Then an arm length blade extended
out from the ends of both nun-chucks, making them twice as lethal.
As predicted, flaming survivors
came scrambling out of the building, screaming in excruciating pain. The three
figures came storming toward me, flaring with bright yellow flame scorching
every inch of their bodies. With the blades of my nun-chucks drawn, I did the
most humane thing I could think of. I spun my weapons around in
my hands, until
I had severed each of their heads from their burning bodies. Then I returned my
sticks to their holster, and left the doomed building to burn to the ground.
Yes, I am the guardian of this
wretched empire... but I am no hero. I am a killer charged with the burden of
destroying the enemies of my master. The ruler of the new world; the king
hailed as Lord Drakenson. I am his slave... I am one of the bad guys.
It was morning when I returned home
to my quarters on the one hundred and ninety eighth floor of The Rising Star
Tower. And as I did after every assignment, I stripped myself naked, and
endured my much-deserved punishment of steaming hot water from the shower pouring
down on me. At first contact, I shrieked in pain as the burning temperature of
the water took my breath away. Then slowly I eased myself under the fountain of
spraying water until it consumed me.
There was once a time, long ago...
when I was innocent. Long ago when I was born, at age seventeen...”
