The young lad was a faceless lad. We have all seen him before. He may not have had the same name, or the same family, or the same voice. He may not have even been a "he." He is like Forte, for he exists everywhere. He is the one that lurks in that shadowy seat behind you. He is the one that you are sure you wouldn't like, despite the fact you have never spoken to him. He is OTHER. He is not of US. And he knows this.

He knows that as he sits in his room, staring at his poster-laden walls, that you would not understand why he does so. He knows that you mock him for his difference-- his OTHER. He knows that you hate him for the very fact that he stares at the walls in contemplation rather than in mindless abandon. He knows that you hate him for his thoughts. You hate that which makes him the "he" we all fear, loath, and scorn.

He continues to stare at his walls. They mask the blankness that is his soul with images of bravery. He is like us all in that he admires the heroes of the FPL, and fears the villains that also dwell therein. He desires justice, like we all do. You didn't know this, though, for you, like me, found him of the OTHER. You didn't know that his heart cries out for that which every sane man and woman desires.

Like every man and woman, he craves love. You saw him heartless, but you never saw him stare at his walls. They are adorend with the objects of his affections. The idol of idols, his figure of pure justice and love, she sits atop the space above his bed. The lady Bleeding Iris. She serves truth, and consumes those that dare dring about injustice to the world. He strokes the poster lightly with his fingertips, gliding them across the paper that represents her body. To love one like her, that was his dream.

Not anymore.

You and I, we have shattered his dream. We refused to acknowledge his sameness with our being. We refused to extend our hand in friendship. We refused to adjust our view, rather than try to adjust his. We are the cruel and unjust fools of this world. We are the ones that he feels his heroine-- his love-- would devour in the name of the Nexus of All Realities.

We are scum. We are nothing.

His fingers end their caress of the paper idol, and move over to the backpack that lies dormant on his bed. With one last look at the walls of his adoration, he strode out of his room, justice in one hand, love in the other.

When the first shot rang out, all that was heard was the silence of shock.

When the second shot rang out, all that was heard was the silence of death.

When the third shot rang out, hell rose from the earth, and chaos fettered herself among the unrighteous masses flooding the hallways.

To most, the fallen were simple students, innocent to the death that prevaled the city of Khazan. But HE knew otherwise. HE and his bretheren knew better. Their innocence was just a masquerade. They hid behind a prommenade of youthful bliss and child-like ignorance. They knew full well the sins they commited. They were simply given reprieve by a world that found their precocious antics to be simple teenaged behavior, and not the travisty that it was truly.

HE knew better. He would deliver justice for himself, and OTHERS like him.

One, two, three, four. They all fell to the drumbeat of righteousness. Five, six, seven, eight. Criminals one and all, dying in the name of his true love.

Nine, ten, eleven..... countless lives and minutes later, he rested amiss the stagnant blood and lost dreams, basking in his artistry of justice. The other sinners-- the other bastards that wrong him-- they fled like the cowards they were.

An explosion.

He knew that sound all too well. The proper snapping of the bricks and the caving-in of the wall. The sound of Ultimate Truth. They had come-- The Maniacal Heroes-- She had come-- Bleeding Iris. Had they heard his cry for the punishment of this pathetic souls that tormented his kind so much over the span of time? Had his love come to unite with him to hunt down those that scattered amiss the deliverance of justice? He waited with open arms, one welcoming the justice of his heroes, and the other welcoming the love of his heroine.

The footsteps came. He closed his eyes, awaiting their arrival. He dropped his gun. He knew they would provide for him. He fell to his knees. He knew his destiny was realized.

He opened his eyes. His love stood before him. He smiled. Outstreching his hands in bliss. Love. Fear. Justice. Doom.

His heroine-- Bleeding Iris-- swooped down to embrace him. Her maw outstreched like a vicious beast. She consumed the boy as his eyes shifted from righteous satisfaction to utter horror. She consumed him with the same abandon that he used to annihilate his bitter foes.

Few thoughts ran through his mind as he accepted the embrace of his true love-- that final embrace-- that bitter embrace. None of those thoughts brought him any solice in his final moments. Only...

Why?