Leone and Katrina (Intro)

Once upon a time, they had been completely normal kids; once upon a time, they had been the girl and boy next door; once upon a time they would sit by their windows and listen either to the silence of the night or their parents’ problems—be it yelling from one house or crying from the other from threats from the bigots at the bank.  More often than not, they were all being antagonized by them.  More often than not, they did not have the money needed to stay in these two houses, but more often than not, by some miracle, they found it and were able to stay.1

By chance, one began to change while one remained the same, or so it seemed.  By chance, his parents had known what he was and exploited it for money.  By chance, she was able to steal the money that her parents needed.  Perhaps it was not a miracle either way, but then, could it have been?2

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He had finally had too much by the time he left, moving like a cat through the shadows, using mankind’s ignorance of the obvious to hide himself.  Like his parents had at one point, they looked right through him—the hulking beast he was becoming—and continued on their way like he never existed.4

There were only those few that noticed him anymore, as Leone, at least.  He was now the monster, the silver-furred demon-spawn.  Either that or his parents’ cash cow.  The last he heard, they were rolling in the money that he had brought in.  It was because of him—not any of their so-called efforts—that they were even still alive.  It was his patience that kept them going.5

He paused and placed himself in an alley, away from anyone, anything he could hurt and settled for punching a brick wall; he watch some give, crumble a few inches in before drawing his clawed hand back and staring at it.  He shook away the bright red dust before sinking to the ground and shutting his eyes tightly.  It was pointless, all of it…confusing, if nothing else.6

“Well, would you look at that?” he heard someone say—someone with a rather annoying, high-pitched voice, a mocking voice as it had gone quite a bit lower after a little while; “Another mutant outcast, scum of the earth.”7

Leone tried ignoring the voice, but it continued on.  Either it was speaking to him, trying to egg him on, or speaking to someone who was with him.  The voice dropped to a mere whisper before its owner suddenly appeared in front of him after an extremely quick leap from the roof of one of the buildings Leone was hidden between.  A pair of wild, almost golden eyes met his more mellow gray ones.8

“Who are you supposed to be?” Leone piped up, still fairly quiet about it, but that was how he dealt with annoyance.9

“Foxe,” was the simple response from this rather creepy person whose hair insisted on blinding him for the moment, “Just a friend.”10

“Friend, sure,” Leone snorted before climbing to his feet, but he suddenly felt rather dizzy, almost weighed down, so he allowed himself to sink back to the ground.11

There had been someone else there after all, though she looked even less normal than her little friend on the ground.  She perched on the edge of the building like a bird, a very large bird, and it just so happened that she was covered in feathers, from her head to just above her knees.  She looked almost like a gryphon without all the extra parts—say, a lion’s top-side—but at the same time, she was still strangely human and staring down at Leone with those eerie eyes of hers, like black pits in her skull.12

“Meet Hawke,” Foxe chuckled, obviously highly amused now; “We plan on helping you with this mutation of yours.”13

Leone so wanted to strangle Foxe, but he found that he could hardly hold his head up, let alone lift his arms to hurt him.  Hawke was doing something to him, something that plunged him into darkness before long, where he no longer felt pain, or fear, or anger.  He simply drifted in the nothingness.14

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Where she should have been asleep, a friend of Leone’s who had not seen him in ages was rather busy typing away on her old PC.  Luckily she was known for leaving the tower on and turning off only the monitor, so she could sneak back and forth between the bed and the computer whenever she heard one of her parents roaming about.  What she had been doing now, just like she had for the past couple of years, was sapping some money from other’s accounts and placing it into her parents’.  They, nor anyone other than her, knew this.  The one account that had as little money in it as theirs before she did this had always been Leone’s family’s—always.  It was one of the only things that kept them safe.16

She targeted both the wallets and accounts of those who made quite a bit more money—city doctors, business owners, and the lot—the ones that could afford to loose some.  She did not know, however, that someone miles away was watching her—a professional when it came to hacking and transferring—watching her until the moment she signed off and cleared her tracks, or so she called herself doing, almost weekly, before she ventured off to bed.17

Often times she would simply stare at the ceiling for hours on end before sleep finally took her.  It was either excitement or guilt that kept her up like that, but she never bothered to figure out which.  All she knew, every morning, was that her father woke her up at some ungodly hours and received a startled yelp every time—since she was fifteen, it had been like that.  What he did not know—what he was not shown—is that it was because she would find herself near sticking to the ceiling like a frightened cat most of the time.  How she had gotten up there and how the claws that stuck her where she was got there was beyond her.  She thought about it though, and determined that her parents could never know.18

Katrina could never show, nor tell them for fear that she would wind up like Leone—exploited and eventually so stressed that she would sooner walk out than forgive them.  Sometimes she figured that she missed the boy.  Perhaps it had just been the random talks on the way to school that they had had ages ago, before he began to change—maybe it was just that klutzy way he acted around her…she would likely never know.19