• She was falling, floating through the abyss. She reached out to try and grab whatever she could, but found only an ever stretching darkness. It surrounded her and choked her with it's warm grasp. She couldn't breath! She was going to die! No, this couldn't be the end, she had so much left top do. She still had her family, her best friend Alaina, her entire life. She wouldn't give up now. But, the darkness was so complete. So easy to fall into, and drown in it's stifling folds. Maybe she would... just... give... up...

    Maria's eyes jumped open, shocked into wakefulness by her horrible dream. When she finally managed to focus on anything in her room, she saw the stranger. He was around six feet tall and his face was mostly obscured by a dark hood. Then the sleep jumped from her mind, and she realized the danger that she was in. There was a man in her bed room! What had happened to her family? She let forth an ear-rending scream, causing the stranger to jump. He spun to look at her, and she could see pain floating through his eyes. But there was something else there too; some kind of resigned knowledge, of a sad fate unwanted. The man zipped over to her with almost inhuman speed and grabbed her around the waist. Just as he started to lift her up, she heard the footsteps of the midnight watch, startled from the starry revelry by her screams. The man quickly spun over to Maria's closet, wrenched the door open with terrifying force, and threw her in. She partially succeeded in standing up in the cramped closet. She inched her way over to the door, but found that she couldn't open it. She was stuck in a closet while a maniac faced off to the police just outside.

    Vincent shot into the air as the young girl screamed as if she were being boiled alive. God he hated kids. He heard the watchmen across the lawn, and went over to the bed and grabbed the girl. He stepped over to her closet and roughly threw her in. She could be dealt with later, he had bigger problems. He took a chair and shoved it under the doorknob, then whirled around as the child's bedroom door burst open. Looks like this simple job wasn't going to end up being so simple after all.
    As he started to draw his sword, they all raised their F.P. Guns and an inspector stepped forward.
    “Vincent Muriecceli, you are under arrest for 23 separate cases of murder, two accounts of manslaughter, and the murder of Judge Bergond Normstrom. You are to either surrender and be taken into custody or we will shoot you on the spot.”
    What was he talking about? Vincent had never murdered a Judge before. That in itself was worth capitol punishment. The Judge's were the third in command in the empire. The Club never went after anyone that big, they only killed to make money, not anything as radical as that. What the hell was going on? With only a few seconds more thought, Vincent pulled a short sword from it's scabbard on his waist. He launched himself at the inspector, sticking his blade straight out to the side. It caught the man just below the rib cage and ripped him in half. He turned to his left and, with two well placed strokes, sliced another man's head and arms off. He proceeded with his dance of death, twirling like some kind of deadly actor on a stage of slaughter. Within minutes, he had eliminated the entire platoon for the neighborhood. As the last man fell, he saw the words carved into Vincent's sword: La morte e il mio padrone. No one has ever seen those words and lived to tell the tale. Vincent wiped the blood off his blade using the inspector's shirt, then walked over to the closet and opened the door. The girl was sitting inside, sobbing softly. Vincent could still see the magical energy floating off of her, like wisps floating from their corpses. He wasn't sure why he had been proclaimed as the Judge's killer, or who this girl was, but he knew one thing. His old life was over. But he wasn't leaving without answers, he knew that. He stepped towards the girl and grabbed her wrist. The city would forever tell the tale of the man who killed a Judge, long after he had disappeared into the mist with a young girl thrown over his shoulder, and a blood-stained blade at his side.