"I do believe in God, I just hate the mother fucker." - Riddick (Pitch Black) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Prologue - Opened Philadelphia, Pa United States 2009 July 6th (5:14 P.M.) Titus woke up from the jerk of the bus and the jingle of his chains. He then remembered where he was. It wasn't his mother's house in his dream; Titus was on a prison transfer bus on the way to his last stop before he was put down. He was sentenced to death for the murder of over 70 some men. Of course Titus had his reasons, but no matter what most people believed he still had no right to do what he did. Even the ones who backed him up were edgy about it. Titus was one of those people who lost everything he loved and felt only right to punish the evil just like a vigilante you would see in a comic. Except there was no happy ending, no heroics, and Titus was most definitely human. He had plenty of scars from his exploits. A slight dizziness passed over Titus. He figured it was probably the same thing that had put him in a coma for a week last month. Since then he's had double vision as guards and other inmates walked by his cell. What was weird about it though was he would always see the blurred version a second before the actual person came by. It made no sense but it didn't matter anymore. He was a dead man in 2 weeks. Titus decided to just look up and watch the road for a while. It was soothing for a while until he saw a semi drive across the median and crash right into the bus. Titus closed his eyes in fear but nothing happened; the bus still hummed down the highway. Two seconds after he closed his eyes he opened them and this time a semi really did ram into the bus. As the bus turned and tumbled Titus watched in horror as a glowing green rod shot through his stomach. He jerked around in the tumbling bus as the rod disappeared leaving him unharmed. Because of his tossing he fell to the floor and watched as a rod pierced the seat above him where he would have been. The rod was the exact same as the green one, except it wasn't green or glowing AND IT WAS REAL! The bus finally stopped moving. As the smoke started to clear Titus saw his escape. ******** Tokyo, Japan July 6th (3:16 A.M.) Karen shot straight up stiff as a board and grasped her pounding heart. She could fell it pounding on her hand, trying to escape her terrified body. As her heart slowed down her body loosened up and she fell back down on her bed. Karen gulped in air as her lungs started to work again. Her body was covered in cold sweat to the point that the bed sheets were soaked. All of a sudden she realized it wasn't all sweat that was making her bed wet. She was looking at her left hand and it was covered in blood. When Karen brought up her right hand to wipe away the blood it too was covered in blood. She quickly ran to the bathroom and turned on the water, spreading her blood all over the sink. The clear liquid washed away the red and revealed the wounds. Karen started to cry hysterically and within seconds her mother was in there with her. "What's the matter honey, why are yo... Good God, where'd all the blood come from?" Karen raised her hands to show her mother that her hands had reopened, that the stigmata had returned. This was the last thing Karen wanted to deal with. The first time it happened she was under constant questioning from press, priests, skeptics, and her friends. It was her father's fault really. He was the one who went to everyone telling them about it. For up to two years after it happened people would go as far as stop in the street bow and kiss her hand and asked to be blessed, or anyone who believed she did it to herself for fame would yell profanity at her and flip her off. What was worse was the fact the dream she had seemed too real and vivid. Something told her life was never ever going to be simple from now on. Chapter 1 (Karen) The Bleeding Girl Karen saw Kumi waving to her as she neared Tomeishuu High. She quickly swung her hands behind her back and looked away. Kumi was Karen's best friend but she still was embarrassed about the stigmata. "Hey. What's got you so down?" Kumi asked as she raced up to Karen. "Was vacation really that bad with your family." "No, nothing like that." "Then what's eating you? I bet its a romantic problem, like you love someone but they don't love you back." Kumi teased. Karen took Kumi by the hand quickly and looked into her eyes. They stood frozen for a few seconds before Kumi pulled her hand away. "Don't tell me..." Kumi stuttered. "You've been secretly in love with me all these years?" "YOU'RE TOO DAMN MELO DRAMATIC KUMI! I wanted you to look at my hand nit-wit." Karen raised her hand to Kumi palm forward. "I can't believe you thought I was in love with you. Besides you know I can't keep any secretes from you. If I was like that you'd know." "Karen... Your Stigmata reopened." "No, I did a hand stand on a picket fence. Of course it reopened." "Did you have a dream like last time it happened?" Kumi asked as they started walking again. "Yeah but it was really different this time." "Remind me what the first one was about again." Karen sighed out of frustration. It seemed like every year she had to remind Kumi. She wasn't so angry about it though because no one had asked her about it for awhile now, but that would probably change now. "It was when we were seven, do you remember that?" "Yeah, ten years ago." "Anyway, the first time it happened was during the day at a restaurant." "I know that Karen, just tell me about the dream." "Ok, ok. I was older, maybe in my twenties. I'm in a park during twilight and there's this demonic figure standing about 30 meters in front of me. The creature then throws a evil looking knife or blade and I jump in front of it. The knife goes in my gut and I collapse on the ground. I'm looking up at the sky as I see a woman with blue hair lean over me and grabs hold of me around the shoulders. She then says 'Don't die on me please! I love you too much for this to happen. I'm sorry...' then the next thing I know I'm in a hospital. End of dream. Why do you always ask me?" "Karen you know me. I analyze every thing. I guess I'm trying to figure out what it means and how it is related to your stigmata. Was your new dream similar?" "How do you mean similar? If your talking about hauntingly realistic, yes. What happened in it seemed to have no relevance with the last one." Before they knew it Karen and Kumi were already in their classroom. Kumi asked Karen to wait till lunch to tell her anymore. Her grades were slipping and she needed to get them back up if she was going to be aloud to go to America on the foreign exchange program. The morning went by pretty quickly for Karen. She thought it was going to be horrible with a ton of questions about her hands. The only ones she did get were if they hurt or not. No one asked her why she had gauze on hands, knowing full well why. Finally came lunch time. Karen and Kumi sat under the same tree they do every day. The first thing Kumi said was "Hey, your hand is bleeding." Karen looked down at her left hand and noticed that the blood had soaked through the top of bandage. She searched through her bag and pulled out another gauze wrap and held it to Kumi. "Whaf?" Kumi asked as she took a bite out of her rice ball. "Would you please wrap my hand?" "Can't you do it?" "My right hand has a hole in it the size of a large spike." Karen responded sarcastically. "It hurts to the point breathing hurts it. Please just do it." Kumi put down her food and started to unwrap the old bandage. "So what was the new dream about?" Karen breathed in and went right to it. "I wasn't me in this one. I was this guy on some bus. It was full of bars and the man was chained. I think it was a prison bus, I can't be sure. Anyway the bus got ran into and the bus started to roll on its side. As a result this bar was dislodged and was supposed to go through the guys body, but he saw it happen before it really happened and narrowly avoided it. After the smoke cleared he got up and escaped off of the bus. That's it." "Maybe it's you in a past life." Kumi suggested as she finished wrapping Karen's hand. "I don't think so. It was different, like I knew everything that was happening. The time, the day, I even knew the guy's name and his thoughts." Kumi picked up her rice ball and finished it off. "Sho whaf wath the day and whaft wath hisf knam?" (So what was the day and what was his name?" "Well it happened yesterday evening and his name was Titus D. Hope." Kumi dropped her sandwich right in the dirt. She knew the name Karen said too well. Karen looked over at Kumi who was staring blankly down at the ground. "Oh get over it. You can have my food, I'm not really hungry today." "Are you lying to me Karen!" Kumi said as she grabbed her friend by the shoulders. "No! Have you lost your mind?" "You mean to tell me you never have heard that name before you had that dream?" "Yes." Karen responded confused as hell. "Why, do you know something about this guy?" "Yeah, only everything." Kumi said as she let go of Karen and fell back up against the tree. She understood how Karen could be confused. Kumi herself would have never even heard about Hope if she weren't going to go to America. "Well spill it." "I researched the guy when I was learning current events in America, to get myself ready for the trip. He's a convict, a killer, and a saint. He was a author and made a ton a money on a trilogy and two other stand alone novels. He made a killing on movie rights as well. Hope then invested on realastate increasing his earnings even more. Next he started his own video and music stores, but not before becoming a record producer. He had a quick rising empire and more money than he knew what to do with. So he started to donate to charity big time. Not just money to organizations, but he actually set up his own programs. Hope himself went to other countries and personally helped build houses, shelters, and give out food and medicine. He practically owns some of the poorest countries in the world, except they are not poor anymore thanks to him. "One day he gets a letter stating that the pope himself would like to meet Titus in person. So he flies his family and himself out to the Vatican. While Hope was visiting with the Pope his daughter and wife went to visit one of the churches. It turns out while praying a bolt on a giant cross in the church they were in, was defaulty and snapped. The cross swung down and literally liquefied his family across the stain glass windows." Karen held her hands up to her mouth in shock. Kumi saw this but decided to continue. "You probably already know with most incidents like this, the person can either find acceptance, or become bitter." Karen did know what she meant. Karen had become very bitter after the first time she got the stigmata. Unfortunately she has yet to seen the acceptance side of someone after a tragedy. "Hope became very bitter and denounced God. He declared in his final book that he decided that it would be easier to get rid of evil in the world by killing all the ones who caused it. Hope said he would sacrifice his soul, God or no God because he wouldn't want to be near anything that vile. Hope then proceeded to act out as a vigilante and killed any one who killed others, raped others, beat or harassed others in a horrible way, and anyone who cheated on their significant other. Of course incase your wondering that book I talked about a minute ago was published after the police figured out who it was and arrested him. "That was a very stupid thing of him to do, because he was going to get off. They didn't have enough evidence to win a trial, only enough to get him into one. The book condemned him and he was given the death penalty." Karen was stunned. For some reason she got the feeling that she lived this out. The dream seemed to come back to her again and she saw flashes of Titus's past memories. Luckily it stopped as quickly as it started. "Maybe I should tell someone this time after all." Karen whispered. "In the meantime I need to cheer you up." Kumi exclaimed as she stood up. "Come on, our next class is ancient history. You always love it, so lets go." Kumi grabbed Karen by the forearm and helped her up. As they headed back into the school Karen realized that neither her nor Kumi really got to eat. Karen always did feel bad about wasting food and she couldn't save it for later. It would be unsafe to eat it once school was over so she was forced to throw it out. The class went as usual, but today was different. They started their section on ancient Egyptian mythology. Both Karen and Kumi loved learning all they could about ancient Egypt. Kumi raised her hand when Mrs. Ijaiko asked which Egyptian God was the highest deity, but was to slow as Karen actually stood up to answer. "Some ones excited?" Mrs. Ijaiko said with a smirk. "Ok miss Kim give us the answer. Uh, miss Kim... Are you ok?" Karen made no reply and just stared at the ceiling as her eyes started to dilate. She then started to seizure and collapsed to the floor. This shocked the entire classroom. "Karen!" Kumi yelled as she rushed over to her friend. Kumi turned her over and there was blood all across her head. Kumi knew she probably hit her head pretty hard when she fell, but it would have only hurt the one side. Karen had cuts all across her head. Karen couldn't see anything while this happened but she could still hear everyone. The last thing she heard before she blacked out completely was "Call for help!" ******** Karen opened her eyes and found her self-looking up at the open blue sky. She quickly sat up and looked around. Flat and endless grassland surrounded her. There was nothing in sight except for grass. Karen stood up and turned around. She nearly fell back down. A very tall man in a gray suit was standing behind her. All of a sudden wings spread out from behind him and he said, "You may be wondering what is going on. You have been chosen to complete a mission for God." "Whaa... What? God... Why?" "It is simple my dear girl. You are a Scion." End Chapter 001 Next Chapter, Enter Rumiko, a young woman who has inherited the family martial arts style of Shadow Tsukane. She has devoted her life to finding a way of getting vengeance on the one she blames for her missing leg. "Chapter 002 (Rumiko) The Legend"
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