Alphonse Amarozo was born in the Uppercity on Land Etherna. Not among the elite, but comfortable—a middle-wealth family in the gleaming capital. As an only child, he received everything his parents could provide: attention, affection, opportunities. This abundance, rather than strengthening him, hollowed him out from within.
His parents sacrificed everything to enroll him in a school for the wealthy elite. There, surrounded by children who had more, Alphonse developed an insatiable hunger. To match his peers' extravagance, he began stealing from his parents—small amounts at first, then increasingly larger sums. He fell in with the worst of the rich children, those who treated wealth as a weapon rather than a privilege.
By fifteen, Alphonse had acquired expensive tastes: cigarettes imported from distant colonies, rare liquors that cost more than most Undercity families earned in months, and the company of high-end companions. His academic performance plummeted, causing his parents visible distress. But their concern only irritated him—a distraction from his pursuit of pleasure.
At eighteen, two catastrophes converged: Alphonse failed his final examinations, and his parents' finances collapsed under the weight of his theft and their sacrifices. In the Capital of Land Etherna, money wasn't just wealth—it was permission to exist. Without it, they were exiled to the fringes of Etherna, far from the glittering spires of the Capital.
The outlying regions showed Alphonse a harshness he'd never imagined. Here, there were no luxuries to steal, no indulgences to pursue. For the first time, he experienced true want—and it broke something fundamental inside him.
When he was nineteen, a stranger approached with an offer. The man's eyes were cold as he explained the terms: "Your parents' hearts, and I'll return you to luxury." The proposal didn't shock Alphonse as much as his own reaction to it: a simple calculation of value. His parents versus the life he craved.
That night, as his parents slept, Alphonse made his choice. The knife was from their kitchen—a tool they'd used to prepare his meals for years. When he delivered the still-warm organs to the stranger, he felt neither triumph nor remorse. Only impatience.
The betrayal came swiftly. The stranger had no intention of rewarding filicide—instead, he reported Alphonse to the authorities. At twenty, Alphonse entered prison. At twenty-six, during a mass breakout, he escaped.
For fugitives from the Uppercity, there was only one place to vanish: the Undercity, that lightless realm beneath civilization where the desperate and damned gathered. The other escapees, wiser than Alphonse, abandoned him immediately. Alone again, he discovered a truth that would define his next two decades: in the Undercity, the vulnerable were currency.
The plan formed organically. Find orphaned children, earn their trust, train them to steal and kill, then harvest the profits. His augmented gauntlets—crude compared to Uppercity technology but deadly in the Undercity—ensured his authority.
For twenty years, Alphonse cultivated and culled generations of children. He discarded each group after two years, once they'd served their purpose. But something about the latest group—Jake, Flowers, Junk, and later Michael—gave him pause. They were more skilled, more loyal, more dangerous if betrayed. So he waited four years, biding his time until the perfect score: Eagle's fortune.
Now, having successfully executed his plan, Alphonse returned to the Black Feathers' hideout. Five hundred million alphas—enough to buy his way back to the Uppercity, to purchase the respect and pleasures that had been his birthright.
"Hahaha!" His laughter echoed through the empty base as he uncorked a bottle of cheap Undercity liquor—his last, he promised himself. Soon he would drink only the finest again. "Those fucking children! I used them completely!"
He took a long swallow, relishing the burn. "They thought they had a father!" Another laugh, this one edged with something darker. "But no, I'm just someone who loves having fun—beer, sex, and luxury."
Alphonse turned up the music, an old Uppercity tune he'd managed to salvage years ago. He danced alone, bottle in hand, occasionally stopping to count his money again. The pile of credits represented not just wealth but vindication. He had been right to do everything he'd done.
So consumed was he in his celebration that he didn't notice the subtle shift in the air—the feeling of being watched.
When he finally turned, the bottle slipped from his fingers, smashing on the concrete floor.
Michael stood in the doorway. Not the boy Alphonse had trained, but something else entirely—a figure half-shrouded in shadow, covered in blood both his own and others'. His eyes had changed, holding a new emptiness that Alphonse recognized from his own reflection. In his hand gleamed a katana, its blade a deep crimson that seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat.
"Hey," Michael said, his voice unnaturally calm. "It's been a while. Are you happy now?"
Alphonse's shock gave way to contempt. "You're dead to me," he spat, activating his gauntlets. The familiar mechanical hum filled the room as energy coursed through the weapons. "And the dead should go back to the afterlife where they belong."
He lunged forward, gauntlets aimed at Michael's heart—the same move that had ended Jake's life.
But Michael wasn't there.
In a blur of motion that Alphonse's eyes couldn't track, Michael vanished, reappearing behind him.
"Too slow, Alphonse Amarozo," Michael whispered.
For the first time, he spoke Alphonse's name without the honorific "Sir," stripping away the last vestige of their former relationship.
Alphonse tried to turn, to defend himself, but his body seemed impossibly heavy, unresponsive. He looked down.
The crimson blade had passed through his neck with such speed and precision that for one surreal moment, his head remained perfectly balanced on his shoulders.
Then, slowly, it slid free. The last thing Alphonse saw as his head tumbled to the floor was Michael's face—not triumphant, but hollowed out, as if the kill had carved something vital from him rather than his target.
Michael stood frozen, the Shimobe Blade still extended, as Alphonse's body collapsed with a heavy thud. The crimson of the katana seemed to intensify, drinking in the spilled blood that pooled across the concrete.
Then, as if a dam had broken, Michael doubled over. The sword clattered to the ground as he retched violently, his body rejecting what his hands had done. Nothing came up but bile—he hadn't eaten since before the mission at Eagle's fortress.
When the heaving subsided, pain lanced through his skull—an agony so intense that he clutched his head and screamed. Images flashed behind his eyes: Jake's face as the gauntlet punctured his chest; Flowers' final moments; Moon's gentle smile as life faded from his eyes; and now Alphonse, his head separated from his body.
Michael collapsed to his knees in the spreading pool of blood, his own mixing with Alphonse's.
"I killed him," he whispered, the words catching in his throat. "I took a life."
He had wounded Eagle's men, but never killed. Even in his rage after Flowers' death, he had only incapacitated. This—this deliberate execution—was different. The line he had crossed could never be uncrossed.
Michael's body convulsed with sobs, but no tears came. He had used them all for Moon. This grief was drier, more fundamental—mourning not just for Alphonse, who deserved no mourning, but for the part of himself that had died with that single stroke of the blade.
"Is this what you meant, Moon?" he asked the empty room. "The price of being a hero?"
His eyes fell on Alphonse's severed head, the mouth frozen in a permanent expression of surprise. The man who had shaped him, trained him, betrayed him, was now nothing but cooling meat.
Michael crawled to the katana and lifted it. The blade's crimson glow seemed to respond to his touch, brightening slightly. Moon had said it changed color and element according to its wielder. What did crimson signify? Rage? Vengeance? Blood?
Slowly, mechanically, Michael rose to his feet. His head still throbbed, but the pain had changed, spreading through his body like ice water in his veins.
"This is what I need to become," he whispered, voice ragged. "To change the Undercity, I have to sacrifice my humanity."
He took a shuddering breath, looking around the hideout that had been his home for the past year. The place where he had found a family, only to lose it. The place where he had learned to fight, only to discover that the greatest battles were within.
"It will be my Requiem," he said, the words echoing in the empty space.