The man called Black Hat came from a small country in a remote region of the Earth. A country with a long history of being conquered, occupied, enslaved, subjugated, and perhaps worst of all, forgotten.
It's people had constantly been stolen and sold throughout their history. Their land always taken, their works always credited to the masters, nothing left to call their own. Not even their own bodies. Their language was mangled and rough, shifting and changing each time a new power dominated them. As such it was difficult to learn, even as a first language, and the many dialects and variations did nothing to make it any easier.
The one thing they could possibly hold onto as a nation, and they themselves were barely holding on by their fingernails.
There was never any question of ancestral purity. The inhabitants, the ones not sold off or escaped, had not had any racial purity in hundreds of years. Always being under the foot of another will do that. Everyone had a mixed background, if for no other reason than their grandparents never had the right to say "no".
The individual himself was likely no different.
Although an orphan, he doubted his lineage had been spared the humiliation of being defiled by wicked outsiders who felt it their right to take from a people with no means of fighting back.
He had had parents before, or so he was told. As he heard it, they'd both died when he was roughly two years old. Perhaps even younger. Too young to have any clear memories of either mother or father. He'd had no relatives willing to take him in, so he became a ward of the land and placed in something like a foster home.
He had no keepsakes from his old life. No photos of the family he'd supposedly had, no toys or heirlooms to hold onto, nothing to tie him to the life he might've led had they survived the terrible fire.
It used to upset him, not having anything to connect with.
Used to.
As he matured, it bothered him less and less until he felt next to nothing for his deceased family. There was little more than a dull ache of disembodied longing, and even then that was something he was able to desensitize himself to, in time.
Parents he had no recollection of, and a family that for all intents and purposes did not exist. He had nothing to hold him to them.
Growing as a parentless waif in poverty, he learned basic street survival. Child labor was common in his homeland and he was just another of the hundreds of children, either orphans or poor boys and girls trying to help their family meet ends, working the heavy machinery under the hard gaze of men with whips.
Even that wasn't enough to live on. The ones with parents managed to get multiple jobs, working themselves to death in the process. He, and his fellow borderline homeless peers, took to alternative methods of survival. Stealing, smuggling, robbing, even framing the other children. He was by no means the best, he knew being recognizable was akin to being caught red-handed, so he scraped by on mediocrity as long as he could. Remaining just one of hundreds of impoverished children living off of scraps in the gutter.
As he developed, and reached puberty, that became harder.
The closest translation for what his people called it would be a curse.
There was a legend he remembered, a legend of a man who tried to fight back against whoever it was dominating their land at the time. He made a deal with creatures of darkness to give him the power to fight off the invaders. Which they did...by turning him into a beast, like them. While he was indeed powerful, powerful enough to defeat his enemies, his own countrymen shunned him and chased him away. Calling him a monster unfit to walk among men. The man fell into despair, and spent the rest of his days doing as the creatures of the night did.
It went on to say that his children also felt the effects of his curse, and they passed it to their children, and theirs, and so on and so on until present day. Innocent people punished with the curse of their ancestor because he had been foolish enough to so much as wish to fight.
He supposed the moral was that they should never even try to fight back against the people who conquered them, because it would taint them and their family for eternity.
It was not a moral he agreed with. But it was abundantly clear that his opinions on the matter, didn't matter.
As his body began changing, and not just from a boy into a man, he too was rejected by his peers. None wanted anything to do with him. All avoided him and tried to pretend he didn't exist. It made him recognizable. Being recognized was the same as being caught. His meager way of life was ending, before it could ever truly begin.
So, he hid his changes. He did his best by day to appear no different than any other orphan scraping by on trash. And he was able to claw his way back into the small crevice he'd carved for himself in this world.
By night, he practiced.
He practiced his changing body, seeing what was possible, what could be accomplished with the new form he was taking.
What new doors would be opening up.
By his adolescence, he had a decent enough grasp of his new abilities. Decent enough to step up from petty swindling and stealing from his fellow impoverished men working while on the verge of death by exhaustion.
He stepped up to become something akin to Robin Hood. If Robin Hood took in children off the streets and put them to work peddling stolen goods and breaking into houses.
Totally Robin Hood.
It began with just stealing. From the more well off, naturally, no one down in the lowest of pits with him had anything of value. Steal, sell, buy, gain followers, and repeat because nothing cements loyalty more than providing for your subordinates.
He often worked alone, not wanting any to see exactly how he accomplished as much as he did. He had his followers handle the more stable aspects of his "business", such as distributing and accounting. They pulled their weight, of course. A dozen people breaking and entering get more done than just one man, after all.
Was he stolen from and ripped off? Yes.
Were the perpetrators ever seen again? No.
His first kill had been a trifling thing. He had figured the best way to preserve his way of living was to never be seen or witnessed when committing his crimes.
Then, he was witnessed.
He had to silence the woman, did he not? He couldn't risk being found out. Not as being cursed, not as the boss of what was becoming the largest crime ring of their slum of a district. Couldn't not risk it. Not for anything.
So she died.
He thought he would feel more regret. More humanity. More sadness. Any sort of remorse for the life he had just taken. Or more or anything really. He'd always figured it would come to this eventually. Everyone was driven to it, why would he be any exception?
But...he thought he would feel.
He didn't feel much of anything as he saw his many arms, or the appendages he referred to as his arms, tear into her. Sending her blood flying out of her body and onto the tile floor. A decent amount should have gotten on him. His hands should've been bloody from squeezing her organs.
They weren't. When all was done and she remained little but a pulpy stain on the floor, he looked to himself and found that for the most part, he was clean.
The only residue on his was a bit of blood smeared on his face, around his lips, and a copper taste in his mouth that he didn't want to think about.
His first kill left him with an odd sense of satisfaction, in truth. Like his body was grateful to finally be using the muscles he'd neglected for so long. The burn of a long awaited workout.
Her screams were heard, people came to investigate. Our man had two choices; stay and give his curse the release it so desired, or leave with his work unfinished and his life intact.
Prioritizing his life, he concluded his business and fled the scene.
As he went on, and he began to flex his muscles more regularly, it seemed people began to talk.
Funny thing, when no one who betrays you is ever seen alive again and rumors begin to circulate that you may be one of the poor souls who's been cursed to walk the land as a demon, people tend to try their hardest not to upset you. Which leads to people upsetting you far more often, he found.
This, and the strain of keeping the truth to the rumors a secret, resulted in giving the man a very bad temper.
Maybe it was how he was constantly holding himself back nearly every hour of the day. Maybe it was the pressure to keep his true self hidden, lest he be thrown out of the meager group he'd worked so hard to build up. Imagine, giving all these souls a place to work and earn food, and they turn on you! Ungrateful!
Maybe it was just in his nature. Maybe he was just a naturally easily-angered person.
Whyever it was, he had a temper. A rather explosive temper. And while he made an effort to keep himself and his curse under control publicly, he completely let himself go in private. He held nothing back. Which often resulted in nothing being left of the person in question.
Thankfully, he calmed down rather quickly.
Then, at around age 20, his life turned around.
The absolute dumbest, most asinine, comically stupid, most astronomically astoundingly ridiculous to the point of laughing out loud circumstance befell our incredibly dark skinned man;
His rich uncle died and left him his fortune.
Yes, he too thought he was being scammed. It was the literal oldest trick in the book, not that he read much, and he was determined not to fall for it.
Until he actually looked into things and found that it had some actual legitimacy.
He looked through the records as best he could with his minimal literacy, and it seemed that very recently a man had died. An old man with no living children and a young vulture of a wife. Who it appeared even he knew was only using him, because he expressly wrote in his will that she was not to inherit a single penny of his fortune unless they could find no living blood relatives of the old man.
The old man, through a series of twisting family trees and birth records that our current protagonist could only just follow, was a very distant cousin of man who'd died in an unfortunate house fire man years ago along with his wife. Leaving only a son behind.
Our man.
The very distantly related nephew of the old millionaire.
The same nephew that he refused to take in nearly two decades ago in his infancy and left to survive on barely edible garbage, would be the one to inherit his vast wealth.
Seemed improbable, even to a young man in the trash, that he could be lifted to the heavens so easily by some mistake of family connection.
But, he was able to claim it for himself. The wife fought it tooth and nail, loudly objecting to this gutter rat standing to inherit the fortune she'd been gunning for since the day she walked down the aisle.
One visit in the night, and one missing widow later, it seemed his only obstacle was taken care of.
He didn't know what to do with himself at first. A man who'd lived his life having absolutely nothing suddenly found he could have absolutely anything. What does one do when their life changes so suddenly?
He knew what he would not do, at least. He was not going to waste it.
No sir, not a single franc would be wasted on some frivolous thing. He absolutely refused it. No one could persuade him otherwise.
"C'mon, you have the money for it! It's high time to upgrade this place!"
"You know, we could use some new cars."
"Hey, why don't you toss some of that dough my way, eh?"
"Boss, I think it's time we talked about a raise."
"Sir, all the finest men are wearing this!"
"Hey! You! I will sell you my daughter for 7,000 francs! I promise you, she's the most beautiful thing you will ever lay eyes on! She's a terrific cook, she cleans the house, she will bear you healthy children, I assure you! I also have a younger daughter, if that's more to your liking. But I must ask you give me 10,000 for her. Or, perhaps, we could agree on, say, 15,000 for them both?"
He hated them all.
Upgrade? As if he would be spending anymore time in this place! He would only need one car, for himself! The nerve, to ask for handouts! A raise? As if anyone did anything worth what he was already giving them! As if he cared about fashion or status!
Also, he was not at all interested in taking the daughter of some beggar man for his wife. Certainly not for thousands for francs! What could any woman offer him that would ever be worth thousands?!
It disgusted him, old men trying to sell him their young girls. Some as young as 12. He considered buying them just to get them away from this country, perhaps he would take them with him once he finally left this forsaken land.
Ah, that was it.
That was what he would use his money for.
Escaping this prison he shuddered to call a home.
It was something he had always wanted to do. Now that he found himself with a nearly bottomless pit of financial support, it seemed like he could finally get around to doing to.
He just had to take care of a few little hurdles that kept him from packing up immediately.
One, he had to actually pick a destination. No point in packing up and leaving if he was just going to come crawling back.
Two, he had learn to read and write at an adult level. Skills that had seemed trivial and redundant before, but were clear even to our man at age 20 to be unfathomable necessities.
Three, he would need to learn the language of the land he would be going to. Probably even more than one, he intended to travel around quite a bit.
Four, he would need to ensure his finances never ran out. While he wasn't planning on wasting his finite finances on frivolous things, there was no doubt that he would be spending A LOT of his money just getting around and living comfortably.
He was determined to reinvent himself, and part of that would be new clothes. Another thing to look into, just how much was he willing to spend on a new wardrobe? No way would he allow himself to start his new life looking like he crawled out of some sewer. Also it would be a good idea to find out how much his money was worth in other countries.
Five, he was going to need a more permanent plan.
While leaving, never coming back, and spending the rest of his days exploring the world sounded like a fantastical plan, it was clearly not something meant for long-term.
Our man was going to leave this old life behind for the promise of something new. Something better. While he had no idea how he would accomplish that, he knew he wasn't going to find the answer sitting around his filthy living space as he continued this decrepit waste of an existence.
He figured the best place to start was to get himself an education. Somewhere in a different city, in an entirely different section of the country. His first steps away from his old life.
The offered a course in the English language. Being one of the most common languages spoken around the world, to his understanding, he figured it was his best starting point.
One day he was calmly taking a walk on one of his few free days. It felt a bit like he was being lazy, time spent not improving himself was time wasted after all. But his otherwise peaceful stroll through a quaint neighborhood was interrupted. By a man. A man with lasers coming out of his eyes.
This man called himself The Judge. He said he killed everyone he saw as being unfit to exist in this world.
He gave a long and arduous speech (in the middle of the damn street, mind you) about the state of the world, of this country, of the filth that was humanity and how it was a plague upon this society. How the ones in power used their influence to keep all the wealth and food for themselves and left their fellow men to wallow in garbage and shame and sell off their children for a days worth of bread.
Nothing our man didn't already know.
Said man watched all this with a sort of childlike fascination from a concealed spot he'd found. This Judge character paid him no mind, not even noticing his presence among the terrified populous. He'd never seen another person with a curse. Another person like him. He knew he couldn't be the only one but to see another so clearly.
And to see in him the very same ideas and thoughts that he himself had had, but had never done anything about. It gave way to a rising heat deep in his core.
This guy was clearly an idiot. Why go through all this trouble and then choose some residential area instead of a busy shopping mall or news station? If you wanted attention you got it by going OUT where people were unguarded and suspicious, not to their homes where they thought they were safe.
That was one of the things he'd learned in his life living on the streets. How to avoid attention.
As is the case with many new showboating villains, he was gunned down once law enforcements arrived on scene. Which was fairly quickly, considering traffic at that time of day. Our man only left after the ambulances had all driven off, carting the injured and deceased off to their respective destinations.
Much like with his first kill, he had thought it would affect him more to see such brutality. To see innocent lives lost to a clearly disturbed and misguided individual. He used that term sincerely, anyone making that many mistakes in their debut had obviously not thought it through AT ALL.
Why a peaceful neighborhood? The body count wouldn't be all that big compared to what could be possible at a more populated location such as a shopping center or an office building. Even someplace with more security such as a hospital or school would've been a better choice. People tended to pay much more attention when the weak or young were at risk. Attention was clearly what The Judge was after, going from that overblown speech of his.
Why not hold up a public place, or go straight for a TV station? Make your sentiment heard by all? Now all anyone would have to go on would be word of mouth. From survivors. Of which there were many; another flaw. Large body counts led to large coverage, it was why our man chose to stay in the shadows rather than go straight for the kill. He was rarely noticed and when he was, he left none alive. He wasn't after notoriety.
Not yet, at least.
The story made the news, local only. By the next morning on his way to his English language class (which he was making large strides in, he was proud to say), everyone had heard.
Everyone was talking about it. Everyone had mostly the same thing to say. How that disgusting cursed thing had had the nerve to waltz in a residential neighborhood in this cultured city and dare to lecture them on the evils of society. How he had dared to step out of the trash can he was born in and beg for their attention. Most thought that being shot to death was too good of a death for him. Especially after he had had the absolute gall to go so far as kill normal human citizens such as them!
It filled him with disgust and rage to hear these things. As well as a sick sense of satisfaction knowing that he was only one monster among many. They were all sickening creatures of ego and vanity, filling their hollow elitist lives with extravagance and flamboyance to distract themselves from the terrifying truth:
There was absolutely no difference between them and the lesser beings.
None.
Just as there was no difference between them and he himself.
Not even with all the darkness pouring out of his soul was he any different.
It was around this time that his grand plans took root in his mind. Plans to climb to the very top of this hierarchy that was the world around him. Crush everything in his path till there was nothing left but him, standing atop the ruins of this planet he knew. Ruling it.
Not benevolently, oh no. He'd rule cruelly and viciously. He'd step on the heads of newborn infants if it got him towards his goal. He'd break down the steps leading the top until it was but a half-step away from him. And he'd take that step. Take it and raise himself even higher than any other ruler before him.
It was decided. He would become the villain that would conquer the world.
He would remain in the shadows until he felt he was strong enough to take on the entire planet, by himself if need be. Only stepping into the public eye so his anxious audience could see the face of their new master.
It would be glorious.
Notes:
Well hey there everyone! Fallin here. Nothing much to translate, but I wanted to let you all know where this story is going. There will be a bit of smut in the next chapter (going back to Flug POV), and it will be up before Valentines Day. Expect it up anytime between Feb. 10-13th. The Spring semester is starting soon and I have written a lot of chapters beforehand to keep the update schedule semi-consistent, so don't worry. This story gets updated twice a month at no particular date or time, so check back when you can.