Leon finally woke up and shot up out of his... bed? He took in his surroundings, 3 cold stone walls surrounded him, and a small lantern illuminated the otherwise dark room. Well, a room wouldn't be the correct term as the 4th wall was made up of some sort of metallic bars, either way, Leon soon came to realize that he wasn't in a room but a cell.

'Where the fuck am I? The last thing I remember wa-' Leon thought before suddenly realizing what happened.

'Why the fuck am I not crippled?'

Leon was dumbfounded, he didn't know how long he had been unconscious for but he didn't think it was long enough to the point where his shattered bones and torn muscles could have fully healed. He ran his hands over his head and face, the hair that had previously been torn out had now returned to what it was before, his nose that had been broken beyond repair seemed perfectly fine. Further inspecting his body he realized that his arms, legs, and chest had all seemed to have perfectly healed. The only different thing was on the underside of his right wrist the number seventy-two seemed to have been branded onto it.

'What!? How!?' is all Leon could think, to be healed to such an extent was impossible, even if all the doctors in Pavos had cared to him, the scars and marks from what had happened at the square would be plastered all across his body, yet there were no marks at all, it was as if yesterday had never happened at all.

However, Leon knew better, he knew no matter how well his body was healed in his recollection of every second of the previous day was burned into his memory, every bone broken, each and every hit he remembered.

He seethed for a moment, his expression turning into one of pure hate but a sudden clang from across his cell snapped him out of his bloodlust.

Leon walked over to the bars of the cell, feeling the cold metal between his hands, and peered into the dim cell opposite his.

Leon's eyes widened in shock after realizing what was in the cell.

A boy wearing nothing but thin rags who couldn't be much older than Leon himself was balled up on the floor rocking back and forth muttering to himself and across from him on the floor was the lantern that was normally resting on the wall smashed into pieces from evidently being thrown across the cell.

'What the fuck is going on here?' Leon thought this didn't look like a place where Leon was going to gain the power and revenge he was promised. He decided to try to talk to the boy in the cell.

"H-Hello?" said Leon, "Who are you?"

The boy suddenly stopped rocking back and forth and sat up staring straight back at Leon. His eyes looked... dead. Leon didn't even think he was truly looking at him... or anything for that matter.

"Who is us?" asked the boy, "We haven't known who we are in a long time. A long long time."

Leon's face morphed into a look of concern, 'What's wrong with this boy'.

"What is this place?" Leon tried to ask again, "Why are you dressed like that?"

"This place?" asked the boy in genuine confusion, "This room safe place, very very safe, outside... is not very fun."

The boy's voice darkened in those last couple of words, the boy was genuinely starting to give Leon the creeps.

"What do you mean... fun?" Leon tried one last time, "Why are you here?"

The boy looked at Leon blankly for a few seconds before his mouth morphed into a creepy inhuman smile and he started giggling.

"Boy must be new!" the boy laughed hysterically, "We haven't seen new in long time, very very long time! This is exciting! This means we get to leave soon!"

The crazed boy then crawled over to the corner of the cell before scratching something on the wall with his bare fingers, he seemed to be muttering something to himself as his fingers started bleeding from grinding his fingers against the wall for too long.

'There's something seriously wrong going on here' Leon thought as he backed away from the bars to the back of his cell.

Leon looked around his cell, it seemed to be the same as the other one, a wooden bucket in the corner presumably for doing... god knows what, and a large flat concrete block that acted as some sort of bed or bench. Furthermore, as Leon calmed down he began to notice more things about his surroundings.

Firstly, the stench. The smell, wherever he was staying, was truly horrendous, despite living in a backwater town for all his life and seeing poverty at its worse every day, he had never smelt something so rancid, Leon even gagged a couple of times trying to get used to the smell.

Secondly, there were absolutely no windows in the whole corridor, at least no natural light was shining through into what seemed to be a corridor of cells which alluded to the fact they were most likely underground.

Leon had a lot of questions that he had no answers to, but taking a second glance at the boy who had now started balling his eyes out and returned to rocking back and forth in his cell, he thought he might get some soon.

'What the fuck have I gotten myself into'

---

Time seemed to trickle by at a snail's pace in the cell, he had no idea what the time was and the lack of natural light made it extremely hard to tell how long he had been awake for, Leon reckoned it had at least been a couple of painstaking hours as he had to listen to the ramblings of the crazy boy in the cell across. Suddenly a different sound could be heard throughout the corridor, Leon heard hefty steps reverberating off the stone walls of his cell.

Leon first sighed in relief as he thought at least now he could clear this up and get the answers he was looking for, however, looking the boy in the other cell who after hearing the steps had gone to cower in the corner of his cell trembling, Leon began to rethink this notion.

Finally, the source of the footsteps came into view from his cell. The man, or at least he presumed to be a man, stood around 6 feet tall and boasted a stocky frame covered in what seemed to be a heavy black coat. More interestingly, his face was covered in a pure white mask with no eye-slits or anything at all, just a blank white covering.

'Doesn't really help with the whole creepy vibe going on' thought Leon.

The masked man first turned to the boy in the cell opposite Leon.

"Thirty-eight, it would seem your time with us must end today," said the man with a weirdly distorted voice.

'Is the mask affecting his voice?' thought Leon.

The boy continued to cower in the corner and the man audibly sighed before reaching out for the metal bars and gripping two of them with his hands. The man then proceeded to pull the bars apart creating an opening in the cell large enough for him to fit through before stepping into the cell and grabbing the boy by the arm and dragging him out into the corridor, during this the boy didn't seem to react much, still muttering under his breath as he was dragged out whilst his entire body was trembling. Leon even thought he saw liquid running down the boy's leg onto the floor of the cell.

'What the fucked happened to that boy for him to end up like that?" Leon thought.

With the boy in one hand, the masked man then turned to Leon.

"Seventy-two your induction is now, come with me." said the masked man.

The man proceeded to bend the bars to Leon's cell creating a gap large enough for him to get through and he followed the man down the corridor.

Surprisingly, all the other cells seemed to be empty, which Leon thought was extremely odd.

'Why would they only have two people here?' thought Leon, confused once again.

They were both brought into another corridor but the man abruptly stopped next to a wooden door and gestured Leon to go inside. He didn't question it moved towards the door taking one last glance at the masked man and the boy before pushing the door open and entering the room.

That was also the last time Leon ever saw the boy known as thirty-eight.

---

To Leon's surprise when he entered the room all he saw was a room full of young boys and girls similar to him looking just as confused as he was. He walked through the small crowd before sitting himself down in a little open space. He looked around at the worried faces of all the people around him before his eyes locked with another a few yards away from him. After catching the gaze of the dark-skinned boy, the boy turned to a younger girl sitting next to him and nudged her on the shoulder before both of them got up and walked straight towards Leon.

They both sat down next to Leon and neither party said anything for a few seconds before the boy opened his mouth.

"My name is Ajax and this is Aria, we both just met today, it's nice to meet you too," said Ajax with the best smile he could muster up.

Leon could see it in his eyes, but like him, he was sure he'd seen some pretty fucked up shit too.

"Leon."

Ajax nodded and Aria stayed quiet hiding slightly behind Ajax. Leon took a second to examine both of them. Ajax, the dark-skinned boy, looked slightly older than Leon himself and had deep brown eyes like Leon himself but sported tightly braided hair that was tied into a ponytail behind his head. As for Aria, she had shoulder-length slightly wavy blond hair and emerald green eyes, like the Volcan's.

'Pretty' Leon thought, but not thinking too much more of her.

"So, how did you end up here?" asked Ajax, "or wherever the fuck here is for that matter."

Leon opened his mouth to speak, but as he recalled the memories that he had pushed to one side his expression visibly darkened.

"Sorry, I don't really want to talk about it," said Leon.

"It's fine no worries," Ajax replied, dismissing the slightly awkward atmosphere that Leon's reply had created, "I ended up here after my families merchant convoy was attacked by a group of bandits, it was a complete bloodbath and every one part of the convoy died, including my parents."

Ajax's face contorted in anger and pain, before taking a deep breath and continuing on.

"Next thing I know I get hit in the head by one of the bandits and blacked out and once I wake up, bang, I'm here."

"I'm sorry for your loss" Leon replied in a slightly too deadpan of a tone.

It wasn't that Leon didn't care what Ajax had gone through, it was just that the concept of familial love was something he had never experienced and thus was unable to relate to Ajax at all. Regardless, if this had offended Ajax or not, the boy wasn't showing it.

Leon and Ajax both turned their heads to the girl named Aria, wondering if she was in a sharing mood.

"I was kidnapped," she said, answering the quizzical looks of the two boys.

Judging by the expression on her face, she didn't want to say much more so neither of the boys pushed further and quickly changed the topic.

"So why do you think they gathered us all here?" Ajax asked Aria and Leon.

"Hopefully to give us some answers" Leon replied, followed by a nod from Aria indicating she was also holding the same hope.

"They better do, did either of you have any erm... interesting neighbors in your cells," asked Ajax nervously.

"I had a boy called thirty-eight in the cell opposite, I didn't speak to him much, mainly because I realized about ten seconds into the conversation that he was batshit crazy."

Aria and Ajax both nodded in agreement, clearly having a similar experience to Leon.

"I wonder what made them like that," Ajax said rhetorically.

Before anyone else could say anything, the door to the room swung open once again and a man, walked into the room, unlike the guards he didn't wear a mask, and Leon immediately recognized the man as Herman Dest, Lord of Pavos.

'What the fuck are you up to Herman' Leon thought.

Herman stood infront of the crowd of children and a creepy smile formed on his face.

"You must all be wondering why you're all here today," said Herman, "Well you've all been... 'acquired' to partake in my research and experiments!"

Herman looked at the crowd of children as if expecting a round of applause or cheers, but the children just sat there even more confused than they were before.

"Well let me explain a little more..." Herman sighed, "You see, as many of you I'm sure have already been made aware, Lutia is an unfair and disgusting country in which the strong sit atop their ivory towers whilst we the hard-working citizens are made to slave our lives away to appease them and for what!? Getting treated like slightly more valuable trash to be disposed of whenever we become redundant."

Herman started getting more and more heated, the way he was speaking made him seem like a fanatic, completely obsessed with what he was saying as if the words he was saying were his law.

"Well, I say no more!" Herman shouted, "I will burn this fucking country down to its core until nothing remains, and you. You will all help me achieve this goal."

Leon and the other stared at the man in complete disbelief.

'He's completely fucking stark raving mad' Leon thought, a thought that was echoed by many in the room.

Noticing the looks he was getting Herman began to get angry.

"I've seen that look before, the look of doubt, you think this country is invincible, completely untouchable by the likes of me and you. But you're all wrong."

Herman calmed down and gathered himself for the next bit of his speech.

"You see, the nobles of Lutia have all lied to you, praising ability users above all as valiant heroes sent by God to protect us all, and the chosen few, the fucking high-tiers" Herman spat out with disgust, "are the strongest beings of our planet that we should confide in."

Leon and the other were confused, of course, they believed in the high-tiers, they were truly the strongest people on the planet regardless of what nation you came from.

"You see high-tier ability users aren't the strongest beings possible. No no no," Herman continued, "these people have hidden the truth from us for years in order to cement their position at the top of the food chain and reign over us for eternity."

Herman once again spat on the floor in disgust.

"You see the true strongest beings have been struck from the history books and all evidence of their existence covered up by our O so great nation," said Herman sarcastically, "The true overlord of our world were the beings known as the Altered."

'The Altered?' Leon thought, he had never heard of such beings anywhere before.

"You see these Altered not only possessed a physical prowess rivaling or even beyond that of physical ability users but also could control the elements to a much higher degree of mastery than any Elemental could ever dream of."

To the children, talk about such beings seemed like a fairy tale, completely non-sensical that someone could be that powerful and not exist in today's society, after all, if these so-called 'Altered' were so unmatched why were they stricken from the records of time?

"You must all be wondering why such entities don't roam among us today?" said Herman, bringing up the question they had all been thinking of, "Well the Altered were always small in number, and the circumstances they had to go through to become such beings were... complicated in the first place and so the spineless leaders of our nation let the perfect race peter out from existence, then covered all trace of their existence to prevent anyone from trying to bring back the Altered."

'Complicated? What did Herman mean? Surely the reasons behind letting such a race, if they did exist, fizzle out must have been pretty fucking solid' Leon thought.

"And that brings me back to my research and experiments," said Herman, beginning to wrap up his speech, "You see, from the little information I've had to work with, and my previous... attempts, I've found out that every Altered that had existed in the past had one thing in common, a moment of trauma typically at a young age so bad that it forced their very body to evolve or die."

Finally, the pieces all started to fall into place for Leon, the promise of power and revenge, the crazy boy, and Herman's aims were.

The reason why the child known as thirty-eight had ended up the way he was.

As Leon was realizing what was truly going on in this place, others started to also put together the pieces and their eyes widened at the thought of what would happen next. Ajax and Aria had also seemed to realize the truth and Leon could even see both of them start to tremble in raw fear.

Seeing the expression on the children's faces, Herman's lips curled into an expression of pure delight.

"Well, let's get started shall we?" Herman said.

At this point, all the children started to tremble and subconsciously cower away from Herman, they had all realized what was going to happen to them.

Leon sat there in a daze, completely stumped, he didn't even want to think about what awaited him in the coming... years?

A single thought came to the forefront of his dazed mind.

'Maybe it would have been better to die that day.'