Ascension: The Rise of Leviathan
Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowed the characters a bit.
Authors Note: This story seems to just stop at the very end, the fact is, the rest of Levi's story can be read in Genesis: The Birth of Lussuria. I wasn't going to type the same thing twice.
This story is dedicated to , partly because I told her I would, partly because it'll make her blush, but mostly because she is both my sounding board, my encyclopedia, and helps me keep the characters in characters for these stories.
For Viktor Gulin envy was just a way of life. He was the youngest of seven sons, and, as such, his parents deemed it prudent to just reuse the clothes that they already had…which means second hand clothes for Viktor.
Never mind that they've already been used six other times…no, all that matters, in his parents mind, is that they don't have to spend any more money than they have too. Seven children aren't easy to care for, after all.
He understood why, of course. His father was a farmer; he'd have to be a fool to expect a large amount of money with that particular job. He understood, but he didn't like it.
Mind, his mother used to be, when she was younger, a star ballerina, however, she had been forced to retire when she got "too old", and fell in love with a low class farmer. And, with seven children, the young couple used all of the money that she had saved before Viktor was even born.
Viktor understood why his parents didn't have any money, and he never held it against them.
However, he did resent the kids that he went to school with. Those other kids were well dressed, with clothes that fit them, and were clean and never had to be patched…and they held it over his head. Yes. Viktor hated them for it.
He resented them enough, in fact, that on his first day of school, after listening to one of his more well off classmates mock him for the better part of an hour, and he attacked him with a pair of scissors. Viktor managed to ruin all of the other boy's clothes, but never actually harmed him. He was suspended for the act, and lost any chance at friendship.
As he got older, even by just as year, he noticed something else. All of his older brothers, all 6 of them, would get all sorts of positive attention from other people, while he was either ignored…or looked down on for his temper.
It was then that he noticed (was told) that his brothers had been blessed with their mother's looks. While Viktor, had gotten stuck with his father's more rugged, less classically handsome, looks; something that most people didn't find attractive in the least.
He was six years old, and it was the first time that he resented his brothers…but it wasn't the last time. They were closest to him, after all, and he was able to see them on a daily basis.
The following year, his oldest brother married a model and moved to France. The tantrum that Viktor threw once his brother and his new wife were gone saw him grounded for a month, and stuck on early morning farm duty with his father, for two months.
After that, Viktor learned that throwing a tantrum wasn't the way to go. After all, it got him punished, didn't it? He decided that he needed to find a better way.
And, he was thankful that his parents and brothers thought that the tantrum was because his brother was leaving and not because said older brother now had something that he, Viktor, didn't (namely money and a nice house in Paris) they would have tanned his hide and he wouldn't have been able to sit for days.
Several months later, his second oldest brother got married to his high school sweetheart, and moved into the guest house behind the farm. As this brother was going to get the farm after their father died, he was forced to live on the property.
In a fit of jealous rage, Viktor snuck out of the house early in the morning, before his father and mother woke, and broke all of the windows on the first floor of the guest house, managed to avoid being seen by his brother, and returned to his bedroom.
No one ever figured out that it was him, either. So Viktor spent the rest of the year making his brother and his sister-in-law miserable, knowing that his brother couldn't leave without losing the farm and the land that goes with it.
The following year saw his third oldest brother killed in a car accident. And, while he publically mourned his brother, internally and privately, he was pleased with the event. After all, that was one person he didn't have to worry about having something that he didn't.
By this point in time the twins, and the brother that was closest to him in age, had noticed that there was something wrong with the youngest member of the family, something mentally wrong with him, but they were ignored and brushed off, so they decided that they were going to watch over him, for as long as possible.
Under the watchful scrutiny of his three remaining brothers, Viktor was forced to toe the line, lest he was shown to be less than what his parents and siblings wanted.
However, when he turned nine, the twins, who were the force behind the unrelenting scrutiny of Viktor, left Russia and went to America to get a good job. And the last brother just didn't care enough to watch Viktor any more.
Perhaps, if he had, Viktor's story would have turned out much differently.
Viktor went to school that morning, like he did on every normal day, wearing newer clothes, which was admittedly odd, when one of the wealthier kids came over to him and started to pick a fight.
Viktor tried to control his temper, he really did. But it was never his temper that got him into trouble.
When this wealthy kid pointed out to him that he was poor, and his parents were poor, and that his parents weren't even trying to better themselves…and that they were failures compared to his much more successful and wealthy brothers…well, Viktor snapped.
He picked up a stick off of the ground and attacked. He hit him over and over and over, and it took three full grown men to pull him off of the boy. However, it was too late…the boy was dead.
The trial, if you could call it that, was short. Viktor never denied what he did, in fact, he was rather proud of it. And it was that one fact that saw him receive 3 years, rather than the 13 that he should have gotten. It was decided that Viktor truly had no idea what he did was wrong…and therefore shouldn't serve a long period of time.
His horrified parents and siblings disowned him, and informed him that he wasn't going to have a home when he got out.
So Viktor went off to Juvenile Hall, where he wasn't the youngest child there…nor was he the oldest…but he was one of the only murderers.
The first year passed with him getting stronger, and learning how to fight correctly. After all, it wasn't safe in these sorts of places, and he had to be able to defend himself from the various people who were attacking him, at least that's what he claimed.
The second year there saw him handed off to a professional fighter. This man went out of his way to make sure that Viktor was the kind of person that they wanted. And, when Viktor turned on his cell mate, for the sole reason that his cell mate got a visit from his parents and Viktor didn't, he knew that he had the perfect person.
Under his influence, and with a lot of money, Viktor was released a year early, and put through an intense training camp.
On his twelfth birthday his sponsor (not father, never father) renamed him Leviathan, and entered him into the underground, life or death tournaments, that Viktor used to swear was nothing more than a myth that parents told their kids to make them behave.
Viktor won his first fight through sheer dumb luck…and he worked his ass off so that something like that would never happen again. After that, he won every fight, until he was known as a world champion…and he had enough blood on his hands to coat a descent sized room.
But he never wanted for anything. And there was nothing that anyone had that he was unable to get. He was Leviathan, after all.
Life was good…not great, but it was good.
And then he went to a tournament in Italy, and his world was flipped upside down.