Sorry for the long wait. I've been very exhausted lately, but that's calming down and I'm getting more rest now.

Here it is.

Complete black.

A mechanical heart.

A heartbeat.

Blue mist.

Vincent Venigni

Humming I made my way towards school. The school being of course Winslow High school. Thinking back on last night I smiled. Despite the entire situation going ass end up in flames Romeo achieved the effect I had wanted. The blooding of new empire wannabes went up in metaphorical flames and nazis were given ptsd. The news had a whole story on it.

However Romeo had gotten banged up in the scuffle so I had to repair him. Which was convenient considering I had just managed to make new parts to equip to him. He was now faster, more durable and more dangerous.

I had expected more from his first cape encounter, but upon questioning I learned that Victor left almost as soon as the battle began. And he used immediate lethal force upon Romeo on their first meeting. Although that could be chalked up to how Romeo disemboweled a guy in front of them. I had a few theories on why Victor left so quickly. My most likely theory is that because Romeo is not a human, but rather a puppet and because he is a puppet Victor couldn't steal any skills from him. With that in mind Victor likely saw the skill and lethal ability shown by my puppet and seeing as how he was basically a normal guy against a clearly enhanced mysterious cape, just decided that leaving was the best option for him.

Reaching Winslow my thoughts drifted towards different matters. I had been in this world since I was a baby, so I had a lot of time to plan how I would handle things.

I had lived in Brockton Bay for a few years with my aunt. Just a normal unimportant person in the worm story not even mentioned in the story, but she was nice enough and did a good job raising me.

Ok I got sidetracked. Back to my plan.

I was in the same grade as Taylor Hebert, but decided to do nothing. Sure I could've jumped in all knight in shining armour, but decided against it. I don't want to deal with that mess and certainly don't want to become an outcast a second time. Thinking about it now, the locker incident has happened a few months ago now. She should be going out any time now to be a hero. I'll have Romeo make a good impression on her when she does.

Now that the story events were here I felt accomplished. I was in a great position to take advantage of what was to happen. Help take out Lung, give credit to Romeo. Intervene in the Bank robbery thing. Take out Coil. Because fuck that asshole I literally hid myself as best I could for the longest time because I didn't want to be kidnapped by that fucker. But now that I was prepared and had a proxy in The 'Black Cat' I could start doing what I wanted. And that want was to make a puppet army. That army would have to be hidden until Leviathan fucked the city up, but having an army help stabilize the city would definitely have people less suspicious of a robot army. Of course there is still going to be suspicion, but I can work with that.

Heading into my home room class I sat in the back corner and waited for the class to start. I always was in my own head but kept an eye out just in case I was called upon. That doesn't really happen, but I'd rather not embarrass myself.

I only had one class with Tayler and that was computer class so I didn't really do anything except plan for what I wanted to make.

Unbidden a current project floated into my mind. A puppet who looked human almost just like Romeo. It's features achingly familiar. Romeo's just a prototype, but this would be the real deal.

Soon

A smile came across my face and hope flickered in my heart.

Soon

The door opened and the teacher came into the room.

But for now waiting will have to do

Another short chapter, but I just needed to flesh out Vincent a bit more and I'm happy with this chapter.

Kind of filler I know, I just needed to get back in the writing mood and this helped.

CagedManFaust