Prologue
Murky shadows began to manifest at the beginning of a new day. Naturally, the incandescent rays of the sun shone on the province of Purlieus, its bias remaining. Within the Wed Estates, glittering photons frolicked about the fresh metal artifices and granite gems. In the hours to come, one will be able to spot the aristocratic elitists catching bronzes with their craned necks and boisterous tails. The working-class endeavor to nurse their status by working those ten-hour days, while their familiars bask in its rewards with mimosas at noon.
Juxtaposing this fruitful nature, are the residents of Dingior. There was a lasting smell that wafted off its people and possessions. The metal pertaining to Dingior was oxidized to no end, with edifices built from splinters and houses of cards. There, mimosas were supplanted with stale beer and sour whiskeys. Every night the citizens left their naked ears bare, guesstimating whether the brash clamors were triggered by gunshot or firecracker. Once a week they count the death of another tenant, its certainty was almost equivalent to that of the upcoming sunrise.
As far as anyone knows, the great divide of Purlieus was conceived as far as time itself. The polarizing politics and resentment of each district was almost inherent in nature. One could recognize an estaté by the luscious tan of milky chocolate, and glistening earings that fell to the shoulders. One could recognize a Dingiorian by the sickly pale skin and sunken cheekbones. The erections of the Wed Estates left the clouds scared, conserving very little light for the hollow streets of Dingior. Charcoal blotted peel lingered on the skin, triggered by the laborious hours spent excavating precious metals.
This excavation, whose operation's upheld the vocational requirements of the grand majority of Dingiorians, was mounted atop a burial site of old. Irate at the prospect of spading one of their ancestors, the native Dingiorians had remonstrated in times long past. The authoritative administration took these blighters cries so ill, it had led to court, where lashing's and other chastisements proceeded. Had energy and hope been plentiful, a revolution would have manifested eons prior. This was not the case.
Shoto Todoroki was birthed into this chronicle, with the coin of fate flipped on tails. He lived alone in a shack of aluminum and bark. A shoebox and a bathroom were where he subsisted, a palace of compost. Every week he suckled off the checks of the Robinson Foundation, permitting the inflation of his lungs and the entrance of gruel within his stomach. He slept on hay, he used utensils forged from wood, and he was draped with salvaged cloths of forgotten fashion.
Todoroki was orphaned at the ripe age of ten. The forbidding reigns of destiny steered its path to a mother lost in childbirth. The consequent was a father of torment, Todoroki's greatest opposition. He too, passed away on Todoroki's tenth centenary, hauled by talons of regret and sour booze. Though, not before maiming his hide with shellacking his hide with a dreadful scar, further miring his odds of a normal life. No authorities were affirmed, no child services were summoned. For seven years now, Todoroki lived in a purgatory of tranquility and discomfort.
To the naked eye, this existence paled in comparison to the cards that could have been dealt with. To Todoroki this was his conventional reality, comfortable in his isolation. From flame and crackle, his psyche was forged, as he became anguish retardant. What kept his vigor strong, and his strength from fleeting were the books he held so preciously on shelves of maple. With a world as heavy as Purlieus, novels and tales of better men were what kept him buoyant.
It was his scholarly aptitude and linguistic dominance over the average sheep, that mounted the bridge to a different life. He was the one, chosen of the litter of several hundred clawing mongrels, to received the Descartes fund. This fund permitted him to attend The Sabor Center for Higher Education, a prestigious school located in the Wed estates, bordering Randell Avenue. There he would be treated like a leper, scolded and ridiculed for his birthing on the east. He was frightened, laced with dancing nerves. Though, with this trepidation came opportunity. His keen mind, refined with parchment whetstone would shuttle him to new lands, and proper living.
In twelve hours, he would find himself there on the cusp of prospect and amendment. Until then, he drank with his fellows Steinbeck and Kafka, catching some of the pride and laden knowledge coming off their persona that day. The time was to come when riotous blood would stain the polished marble of the west, and stain the dented cobblestone of the east, though this would come much later. His course would trail ablaze bigger than himself, grander than any of us.