Vin sat inside an interrogation room, shackled to the floor. He was clad in a white T-shirt and white sweatpants. The sounds of footsteps echoed around him, the darkness hiding the visual location of the person. The sounds of a gun cocking clicked, and a sadistic chuckle spouted out. The person fired a blast, which was deflected by Vin's chains. A pair of disgustingly sultry, chartreuse eyes stared at him in contempt, but reverted to its original blank state. The sounds of the gun reloading again prompted Vin to unwind his chains, readying for another round.

However, there was a difference from the usual rhythm.

The clatter of a fallen piece of metal hinted this difference, but Vin did not move. He only cocked his ear to the noise, straining them for the sounds of footsteps...

...and footsteps he heard. The sound of the Shocking Edge raised the hairs on the Inquisitor's neck, which caused him to tug back on his chain. He twisted, dodged the lunge, and wrapped the chain around the attacker's arm. The face of his torturer was clearly revealed in the hard light: a thin, ghastly face reminescent of a failed artist's piece. His bloodshot eyes weren't helping either. The expression of this grotesque man was that of a degenerated smile.

"Ah~," the man chuckled, "so that's why you work alone. Kehehe-"

Vin only tugged on the chain, literally tearing at the man's tendons. A spout of hemoglobin squelched out, spattering the floor with crimson. With a satisfying crack, the Inquisitor snapped the man's arm. He pulled off the badge on the attacker's shirt; it was that of an Inquisitor's. The man screamed, and then fainted.

"You want me to kill off your trash?" Vin asked, staring up at the ceiling. He took off his lenses, and tossed them against the wall. His red ires hinted some annoyance, and an expression of something else. The body was kicked away, and Vin picked up the machete-sized taser, readying for the next opponent.

The door opened, revealing a shaft of light. The light was immediately blacked out by an almost unrealistically massive figure, a hulking behemoth of flesh and bone. The silhouettte belonged to that of a Guardian, the paragon of the Order's strength.

"And the Order sends you," the Inquisitor taunted, walking towards the massive figure. He abruptly stopped, apparently by the chain he was bound to.

The Guardian easily drew out a massive broadsword, the signature Leviathan, and readied into a battle stance.

The Inquisitor relaxed, and stepped back a few steps, letting the chain rattle across the cement floor.

"I want to ask you a single question: is playing executioner against the Guardian's code?"

1 hour post-event...

"What do you make of him?"

"I'm not sure. He's go on and takes down two of our higher ranking members, and then goes to sleep? Kinda weird if ya ask me."

"And to think I used to know him..."

Feron and Wegner were standing side by side, peering intently through the tinted glass at a sleeping Vin. In actuality, he did not seem sleeping. Rather, he seemed very close to death. His chest didn't seem to move, and an absolute silence was the only response from their attempts to wake him up.

"So, why does the Order want to keep him alive?" Feron asked. He massaged his left shoulder as he did this, creating a satisfying crackle noise.

"That's beyond your level of authority," responded the shorter man, still staring at the Inquisitor.

The lieutendant sighed, and slapped on his proto helm. With a small, almost nil salute, he left the room for other duties. Wegner was left alone, now scratching his short goatee in thought.

3 hours post-event...

Only lieutendant Barrus was in the room this time, looking over a small stack of files on his dossier. A fat cigar in his mouth, rolled with some of the few tobacco leaves left, was raining a small stream of ash onto the floor.

"And to think 'ya grew out to be like you did, I'm surprised. Surprised that you lasted as long as this."

The rough voice from the lieutendant finished with a hearty cackle, which then put him in lighter moods.

"From what I've seen in your progress, you would've been a very promising Vanguard. What a waste..."

The lieutendant walked out of the room, not before leaving the cigar on the windowsill. "Draw in some when you wake."

16 hours post-event...

The cigar had burned itself out, now only a small pile of hot ash. A figure, different in build than the three men from before, was sleeping in the room. It was Kora, who apparently had nodded off in the middle of whipping up a report about the training of the Cradle-born Knights. She had left her old tablet on, curling up by the door.

A shadow, sleek in its figure, picked up the tablet, and switched it off. It then reached its hand into her pocket, and pulled out a command dossier. After a few minutes of browsing, the silhouette flipped off the device, and activated its storage. The shadow then clothed itself in an Ash Tail Coat, a Magic Hood, and a Cold Iron Vanquisher, modified with a spiked ball at the end of the dangling chain.

Although the cigar was burned out, the silhouette took a draw from the leftover ashes, and strode out, it's glowing cobalt eyes lighting the dark.

24 hours post-event

"Kora, you forgot to lock the door, didn't you?" Wegner sighed in disappointment. Vin was gone, apparently. The glass pane had somehow been removed cleanly, and Vin's storage had been reactivated. On top of that mess, the command's password was changed.

The Knight stared down at the floor in shame, unsure about the consequences for her error. The Chief Geo Knight waved off his hand, and placed a deft hand on her shoulder.

"At least you aren't hurt," he said, smiling the affectionate smile he had towards his friends. Kora smiled back, and pulled off his hand. She motioned towards the camera in the top corner of the room, trying to direct him.

"I know, I know..."

http://vsis.deviantart.com/

The account's AVATAR.

ALL my future stories are to be here too.

The event...

In my vision, I was in my family's cemetery. If I remembered, about thirty years ago, I had visited it when my uncle died.

But why were his and her graves here? It made no sense to me. She wasn't married to me, so neither would've been in the private cemetery. Maybe, as a manner of grieving, had my own family put their ashes here?

It didn't matter; I was back here for a reason.

I slipped off of the grave, to search for my goal in this dream. There was usually something that needed to be done, something with my troubled mind that needed to be fixed. In fact, there were plenty of things to be fixed. Seatus's influence, Vog's, and the Swarm's. Those were big problems, but why had I not encountered them yet?

I walk down a few aisles, observing each grave, each solemn monument, when I notice something...off.

The carvings were starting to fade, the farther down the aisle I walked. Dates were trailing off to years before the existence of Isora, before the existence of us Knights, and past that. No, this was not my family's cemetery. It was holding room for all my dead ancestors. I turned around, and jogged to the other side...

and found the same thing. The future monuments had also lost their engravings, or rather, had not been engraved yet.

Which meant only one thing: the problem lies within my ancestry.

Somewhere, my mind had been fractured.

I calmly walk back to my lover's and child's grave, and inspected the adjacent ones. There were the graves of my uncles, my aunts, and my cousins. These were without flaw. I went over a couple of rows, and found the flaw.

The grave of my father was ground down. The once sharp, crisp edges had been smoothed out by something, and his name was poorly etched into the top, contrary to the other graves, who had their names written on the side. It suited the old man, him being a crude and poor wretch. However, a crack had crossed over from the top-down of the top slab. I grabbed the slab, and tediously shoved the thing over. Inside, my father's body was absent, but only a white mattress lay. Immediately, an extreme sense of danger and grief came over me. It was just like when...

I am alone, in the dark.

Why was I here? I had committed no wrong. Did I commit an offense?

No, not apparently. But still, I am here, to suffer for God knows how long.

And then I see it, the light. Inside my heart, though, I know what that means: pain.

It was not the light of love and peace, but the light of anger and extreme justice. The light that would spell injury for me, the light that would be equivalent to the gallows was coming.

I cower back, attempting to hide, to flee. But to no avail.

It comes bearing down on me, hundred-fold lances of hate, of zealous fury. Not one of the strikes miss me, not one causing more pain than the last strike. In my ears, I can hear the muffled screaming of a boy's voice, the screams of pain. And still, I can hear the repeated sounds of strikes, blows, and roars. It all comes back to me in a flash.

My father was a great man, but he lead a stressful life. His occupation was saving people, helping to fix their lives before they destroyed their own. Every failure to him was the highest drop, making the next task seem like the widest gorge. At first, he avoided letting himself become angry, averting disaster by bottling it up. Of course, this did not work. He knew it was his responsibility to save lives, and every life lost bore down on his mind. He used to beat himself up, assisted by a knife and a wall. He was sent to therapy, and supposedly recovered...

Except that he didn't. No, instead, he began to place his angst onto me. With slow, deliberate cuts, I would be forced to suffer with him the pains that he inflicted upon himself. As a man of medicine is capable, he was able to administer to my wounds when he was done, but the scars built up. At school, many of my peers would show concern over these scars, but I waved it off.

Finally, one of my friends, the one I would come to love later, visited my house mid-session. She called the authorities, while my father sat down, blank.

I was sent to live with my aunt the following year, and life was normal.

And then I graduated.

I was now an electrician, living happily with the friend I loved. She was eight months in season, the bump in her growing quite large. It was then that I had found a drug in my cabinet, the same one my father used. It was used to accelerate the thought process, and had reportedly lifted fatigue. The inflation was still present at this time, so I took it as prescribed.

That's when the spiral started.

I was able to perform better, fixing wires and all. But as day after day of monotonous work hit me, I was building up stress. I started jumping to conclusions, calling my own clients "impatient bastards" and such, until I was finally not called anymore. I had been cut off from my own business. To take out this anger, I had struck inanimate objects, damaged walls, and so forth. However, I avoided hitting her and the child. They had done me no wrong, so it logically made sense not to harm them.

One day, though, she had asked me to stop. The worst decision in my life to say no. And I did just that. I had felt a dependence growing on the drug, but I did not stop. I thought, by going beyond the prescribed intake, I would be able to out-think myself out of my own stress. I had forgotten that stress was something illogical, rage was rash, wrath was to be treated with love, not by the substance from which the rage had grown on.

From there, I attacked her with malice, with such hate I had. I began to strike myself on the head repeatedly, against walls, against anything my head could find. I thought that it was only a phase, only a small section of the long process of healing. To this day, I still don't know how I thought that. My rage amplified, until finally, the child arrived. With that, a sudden calm came over me, and I avoided everything for the first month. At the end of it, the first nightmares came.

The vision of my father's angst, the slow, deliberate pain I felt. I had found myself screaming upon waking, my fear sometimes driving me into hypertension. That was when she tried to leave the apartment, along with the child. I had been without treatment too long, and I went into my first shift.

Half-consciously, I had dragged them in, both of them bawling, and did the unspeakable. The last time I saw their faces was when they were in anguish.

And I had only myself to blame.

When I was put into the prison, I was bunking alone. Occasionally, I'd pace back and forth, slam the walls once or twice. I didn't know how, but word spread of what I did, and the whole prison became a madhouse at night. The guards gave up, stopped trying to keep the calm, and also let their anger out with shouts of disgust. I didn't break; I already was broken. I began to hear something chipping in my walls, and for a time, I had fear. The fear was justified; when seven men broke through the wall just to pay me a visit.

And that was the second time I shifted into half-consciousness. From there, it was all red. Nothing could have stopped me, no pain, no fatigue, nothing. I had only felt anger, rage, and bloodlust. To have the satisfying texture of my own species' flesh in my mouth, to have my fingers deep in someone's spine. It was something comparable to a pure monster. These emotions mixed in with my fear, and the result was a gore-spattered room.

And yet, I could not find how to find closure from this. I had no significant other anymore, mostly just acquaintances and friends. Superiors, admirers, the ones I admired, but no one truly significant.

So how would I be able to fix this without closure? It seemed impossible to me. I frowned, and in a fit, tossed the slab as far as I could throw it.

From this point, I wasn't sure how I could describe the following events, but here was a rough description.

My father, his knife in hand, had stabbed into my back. I turned around, and dodged his swipe, and proceeded to avoid cut after cut. Sometimes he would graze me, sometimes he managed to get a good chunk of me. I dashed into the main aisle, where there would be enough room, but he was gone. I felt my foot get impaled from beneath, and kicked upwards, launching myself into the air. Sure enough, my own father was hanging by the knife in his hand. As I reached the maximum of my jump, he dissipated into thin air, and re-formed with a knife in my back. We hit the floor, hard, but he continued stabbing me, again and again. Then, something clicked in my head. I had also behaved like that when I was in combat, so maybe it was just overcoming the memories.

I rolled to the side, his knife sliding into the floor, and kicked the man away. Then, I walked back slowly, both my arms up. There was only one thing to say.

"I am stronger than you. I can do this."

I had thought about every way I had done better than my father. True, I had failed the ones I had loved, failed his expectations...

But I did not fail for those who I was responsible for.

The phantom figure charged towards me, knife thrusted outwards, and stabbed into me. The pain disappeared, and I felt warmth.

And then I woke, eighteen hours later than I had first fell into subconscious....

Travid was nodding off on an old, raggedy couch. It was the family heirloom, passed down for about a generation now...

And it needed cleaning. The upholstery was covered with stains and tears from Vog knows where, and a somewhat queasy scent arose from it. Nonetheless, the family kept it as it was, unwilling to toss a memorable seat.

Travid's mother, a factory worker, wouldn't be home until midnight. She was working extra hours during weekends and holidays, for her commission rate had suddenly dropped. Thus, she wasn't able to see her children much anymore. Travid's little sister, still too young for enlistment into the Order, would be on the way back from school about this time. She was more like his daughter, with him raising her up since she was a toddler. But he knew that he was trying to fulfill the role of his father.

His father had left to him all the men's work; the old man was in prison.

Travid, eariler in his life, stole to compensate for not finding a job. He became very good at it, but when he was caught, he had to go through the tedious process of retrieving all the stolen items.

That made his street rep crash down like a tortodrone falling to the Core.

Now, Travid was busy trying to care for his sister and mother, while still fulfilling duties of the Order. He wasn't assigned to anything, nor was he eager to do another mission. Today was resting time for him...

"Back home, onii-san," a tired voice said, obviously hinted with some irritation.

"Everything in school's all right?" he asked, still not bothering to shift his position.

"Grades are fluct...fluct....frag it, don't remember the word."

"Fluctuating? Is it between A's and B's?"

"Low A's, high B's. What, are you getting on my case about that?!"

"With just a bi-"

"We're not getting back to that argument, onii."

Travid sighed, and slid off the couch. Giving a small peck on his sister's forehead as he passed by, he opened the fridge...

It was completely disembowled. Nothing left.

He closed the door, thoughtful, and opened the freezer's door...

Military provisions, some sherbert, some ice cream...

"We're eating my food again," sighed Travid, pulling out two of the packages. He was only replied by the sounds of footsteps walking away.

~~~

The brown-haired girl was inside a grave, giggling with another person...

"...and you what?!" exclaimed the mewkat, almost laughing uncontrollably.

"I tripped him, and hauled my butt out of there!" the girl finished, raising another duet of laughter.

"Felicity, you come up with the weirdest stories to tell me," the mewkat chattered.

"And you should try seeing the above surface with me," Felicity replied, pulling the feline spirit closer to herself. She snuggled onto it like a pillow, and slept minutes later.

The mewkat sighed, and floated through the stone, wandering aimlessly around Moorcroft. A loud bang racketed from the Konjuring Circle, which raised all the denizen's attention. The Konjuring Kat came flying out, a bit battered by something.

"Oh dear, oh dear!" it cried out, dashing towards the train station.

Montague, the receptionist, tisked and shoved away all of its papers and quill-pens into a drawer, also taking cue from the Kat.

A loud groan came from inside the circle, something big. But nothing like Felicity couldn't handle.

Felicity awoke, a cheshire grin on her face. She activated her battle armor, a Black Kat Cowl and a Mad Bomber Suit, and crawled out of the grave, Big Angry in hand. The whole manor darkened, and the red eyes of the hood glowed. Margrel wanted playtime.