The Birth of V

*V was surprised by the stand's appearance, having not been paying attention to it until it was too late- the sword was slammed out of his hands, leaving most of his fingers bloodied and broken. The blade itself cracked and dissipated into raw energy once more. The Demon Lord stood there, stunned, as time drew itself back to a normal flow. It was a wonder... it truly was- how far someone would go for what they believed in. How could he break the dead man's hope? How could he fill him with despair so that he would be unable to look the Speedwagons in the eyes and say that he still believed in their flawed, selfish goals?

He pondered over 'it' for the next few seconds, the surprised glint in his eye degrading into a somber expression of pity. What he was about to do would hurt. Uryu would suffer. Such a suffering would be bourne from the blonde haired male reaching out and penetrating the very skill of the man- right through his forehead- and carving a thick, upside down V there, the symbol glowing a horrid crimson hue as the demonic energies transfered into the saiyan's body quarreled with the ripple and proceeded to tear the man's very soul apart. It was a whirlwind of two opposing forces- the combination of essences of those that basked in the glory of the sun and the dredged up, spite-filled curses of those that screamed in the depths of eternal night.

[http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=4fRaWZji_Co]

Uryu would experience a series of memories as this V was very slowly and carefully forced upon him. It began simply. An adolescent boy, blonde hair and fair skin and a carefree smile, sitting in a classroom. A bald man in his late forties was lecturing about Freud and the depths of the unconscious mind. It was quaint. And then an alarm went off- the one that signaled that there were armed individuals within the school. The teacher rushed for the door. Just as he reached it, it was opened. A shot rang out. He kneeled over. There were three of them. Two of them holding small arms strolled in and began to senselessly murder people. The third hung in the doorway with a shotgun like an angel of death. There was nothing to be done for the boy. All he could do was sit there, frozen with fear as friends and aquaintances alike fell onto their desks or to the floor.

And then everything went dark for some time. A flicker. A blink. Suddenly, he found himself lying down in the middle of nowhere, staring up at... orange clouds... it was strange to him. He looked around, finding himself to be completely alone. Was this a dream? It had to be. He noticed the stone tablets on the walls. He ascended the steps, and found himself staring at a handful of strangers. An assortment of men with insane hairstyles and cologne coupled with women that were semi-modestly dressed but had definitely been to a boob surgeon a couple hundred times. He was very confused. He couldn't remember why he was here or how he got here. What had he been doing before he had been here? Driving to school... hanging around with people that made him feel miserable... pushing through math-

"Hey. I bet you won't send that one to Hell for a peek," mused one of the females, poking at a certain african american- infact the only black man in the room- as others coo'd: "Yeeeees do iiiiit, Sephira isn't around and she wouldn't care anywaaaaay...!!!" The boy couldn't do anything. He was frozen by shock and an inability to process the scenes presented to him. As he was dragged towards Snakeway, someone yelled out, "Give him his body so that he really feels it!" Feels what, the boy wondered. Before he knew it, he was amidst the orange clouds. Tumbling down, down, down, and yelling the whole way. And then it was hot and dark. And he was still falling- and when he hit the ground and didn't die? There were no words. Just suffering. Everything inside of him was broken.

He laid there, unable to move amidst the thick miasma with his damaged body, for what seemed like an eternity. It was only an hour. Something approached. The boy turned his head towards them. It was a little girl. She greeted him. He weakly responded. She asked questions to try and spur up his memory, but he was still groggy and clueless to what was going on. Suddenly, she asked, "What's your mommy's name? I can go find her for you!" And so he gave her the name. She snapped her fingers at something behind her. She explained what the Afterlife was all about as she repaired his body, gradually pulling the boy out of the mental shell he had begun to construct for himself to shield his sanity. He was still very afraid and confused, but atleast he had a friend that he could rely on-

And then his mother was there. He was happy. So very happy. He tried to get up to walk toward her. He stopped and turned. There was a very short, black chained wrapped around his ankle tightly that kept him pinned to the ground. He tugged at it. He questioned the girl about it. She told him that he should be more worried about his mother. He turned. She was already in the process of being ripped apart, one of her arms in a large canine's maw and her breasts being torn into by a bird-like creature while the skin of her leg was carefully stripped off by a grey midget. All the while he yelled. He screamed. He begged. To no avail. None of them turned towards him. At this point, a very large group of these monsters had surrounded them, two or three more moving in to feast as well while the others merely observed.

The girl was behind him now. She had kicked him to the ground, and then his head became numb with intense pain as she gripped his halo- something he had just learned that he had, and clawed into it with her fingers. She serenaded him all the while, singing lightly under her breath- barely audible through the roars and screams but enough that the boy could hear it. She was telling him that he was the most powerful soul that she had seen in millenia. She was very proud of him. She was going to have him bring about change so that suffering like this didn't have to happen anymore. He didn't understand. Not yet. He was still yelling, reaching for what was left of his mother.

Suddenly, his twisted up halo was shoved back into his body, and he was gasping for air amidst Hell's heat and vigorously dry air. His vision began to fade. He lost feeling in his limbs- And then the girl shoved her fingers into his left eye socket, taking her time in ripping out the organ before tossing it to one of the beasts. He could suddenly feel everything that had been done to his body. He was screaming at the top of his lungs. It was blood curdling. It was so loud and distorted that it could not be distinguished from the other sounds of Hell. As if he was now one of them. He tried to reach up to his face, but more chains pinned him, and suddenly he was having his tongue ripped out and throw to the sidelines. Blood gushed forth from his mouth. The girl said she would fix it, and proceeded to sew closed his mouth with black twine.

She then sat atop the boy, now completely tied to the surface of Hell, as she plunged both hands into his living form and proceeded to carve into his very soul the letter 'V'. As she did this, she told him about what he was meant to do. He was going to be one of the people that would lead the masses against those that kept reality imbalanced and messed up, and that he would do so without ever having another friend. At this point, she was no little girl, but something else- something he couldn't see because his face was in the ground, but it had multiple arms. He felt more than two hands inside of him, and only she was there. And there was black ooze everywhere. And he was suffocating. And he was screaming at nothing and everything. He was utterly consumed with horror.

"Must the King stand alone, King of Hearts?" rang out through the torture. It went on for a long time.

...

She was gone. He wandered the underworld. He tried to speak to people. He'd say something, and they would stand there waiting for a response, as if he hadn't spoken. They'd go, "Speak up, mute." He'd tried to look into their eyes to express emotion. Everyone scoffed, "Why won't he look at us? Why is he staring at nothing?" He'd reach out to hug people. To try to hold their hand. To make them see that there was an actual person there and not a walking corpse. But all they did was ignore him or try to devour him to take his power. He tried to stop himself. He tried to resist the urges in his body. To not raise his hands, form fists, and slam them into the skulls of those who rushed at him. To not force his fingers into their limbs and chests to suck out crimson life. To not stare into their faces as he literally ripped their souls apart.

He couldn't stop.

Death upon death. Decades flew past. Centuries rolled through. And now the boy was a young man, on his knees amidst of field of dead hollows and other creatures, very much so saturated with their blood. Then, footsteps. He didn't bother moving. He had nothing to move for. The footsteps stopped infront of him. He eventually looked up. It was a brown haired woman with a crown upon her head. She asked him if he knew who she was. He didn't respond. He had learned long ago that speaking was pointless. She sighed before introducing herself. She told him that she knew who he was and what he was going through. That all they had to do to be free from their sentences was to destroy the universes and start anew to bring about a true, fair world into existance. That she had already begun the process but needed help. She asked him to come with her to bask in the same light that the bigots who carelessly judged and condemned others basked in.

It seemed so simple. Too simple. He looked down and to the left. She held out her hand, silently offering something that he had never hoped to find again. Companionship. He looked at the hand. Slowly, he reached up and grasped it with one of his own, rising to his feet as blood cascaded downwards from the cieling, covering all the corpses in a sea of filth-

That essence overpowered the purification that had been performed on Uryu five years ago and, now uninhibited, filled him and his stand up with the truth. The raw, blameless truth of reality. There was no Heaven or Hell. There were only those with power and special abilities... and then everyone else, pawns of something greater than themselves, drowning in the depths of the Gods' blindness towards the specks of sand called planets. Freewill had a cost. The cost was simple. If one can make decisions with their mind being the only filter, then one could decide to take that ability away from someone else. It is a neverending paradox. Something that cannot be broken without having destroyed the pillars that supported such a system. Pillars that souls like Uryu ignorantly defended.

Pillars that would not stand forever.

With that, the upside-down V would be completely engraved into Uryu's forehead, more complete and beautiful than any other V that the 'Demon Lord' had ever given someone before.

And all he could do was remain there with those broken fingers of his and stare straight ahead at absolutely nothing at all.*