Chapter One: Insomnia
It illuminated the room, like ice had covered the floors and the walls. That one planet that no one could live on; But man had touched it at one point in time. Though it produced something, it gave nothing, except beauty. Every month it would disappear into darkness. He would watch it.
Watching with his dark, tired eyes. Eyes that were angry, filled with sorrow, and just wanted to sleep. Eyes that had watched his own father die, fall into oblivion. And when Lance had reached out for his father, hoping for him to come back, he never did.
A father broke a promise to his son, a binding promise. The only promise that had kept his son alive and filled with hope. Now, the only time he saw his father was when his eyes were closed and he fell into sleep.
Sleep, though, was rare for the burdened Corporal.
If anyone knew him for a week,they would blame it on the sleeping princess in the room down the hallway. It was more than that, though. He knew that, his conscience knew that. No one else knew that though. No one else would.
Sleep meant losing time. Losing life. Losing even more sanity than what he had already lost. He couldn't lose more, for fear if he did, the world he built around himself would crumble.
It was already crumbling...
Turning his head, his onyx eyes glared angrily at the digital clock on his night stand. The red numbers seemed to glare back just as angrily. Two-fifteen in the morning. He had been awake now for fifteen minutes. Before two, he had been asleep for three hours.
That was all he needed. Now wide awake he stepped onto the cold floor. Shivers were sent up his spine, through his well trained muscles. On the balls of his feet he slipped through the house like a shadow. Just like he had slipped through life after the fight with Baron...
After cleaning the school he had so mindlessly damaged and destroyed. He had decided to slip into the shadows, slip behind the backs of others and become better than the others without them knowing.
Never forgetting though, the rush he felt when breaking rules. Breaking rules, letting his world crumble, allowing himself to let his mind be free. It was ecstasy. The last time he had felt it was that night racing The White Dragon...
Chan.
The bastard tried to give him. A human though, had given him a challenge.
Silently a smirk ran over the Corporals features, he paused in the kitchen. Human-beings were such a primitive race...they had no worries. They could break rules...they could let their world crumble and still be forgiven...
He wanted it.
Looking out now, through the large bay windows in the living room at the moon he smiled now. Something rare for Lance Lunis. A challenge, better than what he had been presented before had shown itself.
He was to downgrade to a human-being.