Arc 1:
Part 1: Pilot
Falling was an interesting thing.
Especially when falling from a distance that can kill you. Only for a moment, peace and fear feel the same.
As I passed through the blue and listened to the whipping winds beat in my ears, the lack of air in my lungs, and the drying of my eyes as I descended, I couldn't help but wonder how I ended up here… why I was here. Why it felt so familiar. And why, by the Keeper, was I so goddamn tired.
Every now and then, the sky would take on the shape of someone looking at me. The color—her eyes. The clouds—her eyelashes. I could almost see the rest of her features, but not quite…
Find me… she said. But who was she?
"Yoo-hoo, Captain, we goin' in?" said a cheerful female voice that managed to interject, waving a hand and bringing me back from wherever I had been.
Daydreaming again, it seemed.
When I came to, I found myself staring upward and the tip of my black boots were just barely over the ledge of this massive skyscraper we were atop. Though only a town, this little place called LeHarla was fairly advanced. Pipes and brass, metal and steam could tell one that we were living in some steampunk era, but the digitized billboards and occasional airship also told us that we were somewhere in between. The place looked like a power plant by day, and a factory by night. And I could tell its residents never slept.
Below I trailed the plethora of windows going all the way down. We had made it up here to scout for something, and it seemed we had found the right spot.
There were three of us: myself, this girl, and a guy crouching a few feet above us, looking down and balancing on some railings higher up.
We wore matching uniforms—jackets. The rest of our clothes only matched in color which were dark and each worn differently, complementing our own unique styles: Charcoal dark jackets with black fur trim on the hoods. A wolf logo on the back of each. Casual white shirts. And the occasional chipped black painted nails—if one would consider these proper mage attire…
I loosed out a sigh and replied, "Yeah… also, I told you to stop calling me that." Putting my hands in my pockets nonchalantly.
"Then what are we waiting for? This is sooo boring, Greedy." She called me as the soft breeze graced her black bangs gently off her attractive face. She had short black hair but also had a longer, loose blonde rat tail in the back. The breeze revealed a black eyepatch on her right eye and the other which gleamed a dark purple hue. Her smile was anything but bored as she studied me mischievously.
"See why you didn't have to tag along?" I replied as my black bangs also rustled when I turned slightly to face her; they rested back on my face to obscure my right eye, and the silver crosses that dangled from both my lobes chimed from the wind. "That's why I only asked Havoc to come with."
The other male—younger—held a calm and tired look upon his face. Still crouched down atop some railings behind and above from where this girl and I stood, you could feel his eagerness to be there with the way he looked alone…
Energy drink in one hand and the other just hanging off his knee, it seemed no matter how much he drank, it couldn't disperse his tiredness. Tired and fast—that's all it made him. And even if he didn't want to look that way, the nasty scar on the left side of his face wouldn't let him take on any other expression. His hair was dirty blond with a braided rat tail from the back, draping down to the right side of his head. In the center of his scar was a blind eye and his right eye was the complete opposite—untouched as a dark green color radiated from it.
"Actually, I think I'll sit this one out too, Cap," Havoc's young, raspy voice chimed in.
"Really? Come on…" I responded. My reaction to something different unbeknownst to him.
"It's a Grade 4 down there, not a Grade 3 like the mission implied. You really don't need us."
"Not that," I said. "Since when did you guys start calling me that? Since when did you guys start calling me Captain? It's been a whole ass year and not once did any of you—"
"Keeper, Cap... if you keep talkin' the Grade 4's gonna get away..." He sang a lazy tone at the end, rotating his head back and to the side to stare blankly into the distance.
I normally hated being interrupted, but only with people I didn't personally know. These two were unfortunately an exception. Perhaps my standard on that was just so low that it made me not care. Or perhaps it was the result of my bad leadership.
"Keeper, you guys… Having me do all the work. And here I am as your supposed 'captain'. You two should be going down there while I watch from way up here, arms crossed, looking like a badass."
I didn't see them, but their silence told me they merely held smirks across their faces.
I took a look at the sky once more and loosed out another big sigh. A tattoo of half of a wolf's face was plastered down the center of my neck—in-your-face type of visible. Purposely unfinished. Holding within it, lore of its own for another time…
"Ophelia and I will wait at the rendezvous while you handle this one," Havoc said, completely ignoring what I had just said.
My tired eyes kept looking upward, waiting for it to turn into those eyes once again. But they didn't.
"Do what you want," I said, maybe too passively.
Man… Why had I gotten chosen for this? For this Acting Captain role… I don't even have any magic. This had to be another one of Asura's lame jokes. Regardless, Havoc was right. This is an easy job. Even for me.
I finally made up my mind as I raised a foot and spun to face them at last. "Alright, well… see ya!" I said, hopping backwards off and waving with the other hand still in my pocket. The cheerful expression on my face was the last thing they saw before I had begun to plunge down this towering construct.
"Bye-bye, Greedy!" was the last thing I heard Ophelia say.
***
On the ground, a huge swing from an abnormally large arm shattered a wall and window of a random store. People screamed and ran away from the creature that swung it. Its arms were muscular and had three large talons for fingers. Its legs were small, so it had to carry itself upright with its arms—like a gorilla-mixed-creature. The monstrous head had three slits for its mouth and opened, baring endless teeth within them, and it had stiff red fur with tentacles behind it like four tails. The creature let out a menacing growl that startled the people around it, sending them scattering for dear life.
A woman who had just turned the corner from an intersecting street saw the creature after hearing its deathly cries from around the block. She couldn't tell where its shrieks were coming from and had thought she was running away from it. But instead, she found herself in the midst of the ruckus, with the creature there only a short distance away from her.
It was looking elsewhere until it felt her presence, turning toward her, and faced her entirely, causing her to stop in her tracks.
She trembled as fear paralyzed her and the creature stalked slowly until it ramped up with vehement speed.
It felt like time slowed through her eyes and all she could do was wait... wait to be killed in a matter of seconds.
***
I fell with eyes closed and with a peaceful expression all the while. I must have been some kind of psychopath with the way I loved falling from staggering heights.
I had chosen this skyscraper for a reason… so I could use the fall to contemplate.
Contemplate my life so far. How I had gotten to this point, the people I had met along the way—friends now family, and so on. But for some reason I could never remember past the point when I had first woken up in this world. Weak. Starving. And confused. That's when Asura found me, and that's where my journey began.
But who had I been before all that? Did I have a mother—a father? Siblings? Were they alive? Had I somehow transmigrated to another world in a world of magic where I had none?
No, that would be ridiculous. Havoc's webtoon addiction seemed to be rubbing off on me…
Regardless, I knew there was something missing. Even after all this time, I still wondered who exactly I was.
All I knew was that I had a sin for a name.
I adjusted my body to let my head lead—speed accelerating after each story I flew past. When I got increasingly closer to the ground, I repositioned myself as if surfing on the air, fist ready for impact.
For an instant, my right arm and fist were coated with black. The air pressure condensed and I continued to gain incredible speed. The windows shattered one after the other on the way down and, for a moment, I felt like a goddamn meteor.
***
Closer and dreadfully closer, the creature raged, closing the distance in seconds while the world was slowly coming to a halt all around the woman standing there through her dilated eyes.
I'm gonna die… I'm gonna die… she thought as she blinked for but a second and heard a loud impact.
A mix of debris, shards of flesh, and a wave of purple liquid blasted in all directions from where the creature was a few feet away.
She opened her eyes, only to be slapped with its insides all at once—slopping repulsively over her.
And it was then; she saw a male standing in the middle of where the creature had once been. There seemed to be a crater beneath him that he caused. He even seemed dry after the impact…
Little did she realize, as more chunks of the creature began to fall, the drops of purple blood showered over him while he faced upward, letting it fall like rain.
Once it stopped, he looked at her, dreary-eyed, with both of them disgustingly purple. And then asked, "You okay, miss?"
Then and only then, with her emotions rising and clarity of thought catching up to her all at once, she gazed upon him and screamed hysterically.
Greed
Age: 26
Height: 6'
Hair: Black
Eyes: Black
Guild: Black Wolves
Title: Acting Captain