Ravenmask

3

The commander had practically bombarded him with test after test, physical and intellectual and watched with a most detached expression as Neon aced all of the exams seamlessly not even winded in anyway by the ordeal."Impressive, very impressive" He mused not sounding fazed at all."Your talents will have a great place in our division, I will be taking you away from this orphanage to begin your training Neon but be warned, if you let me down the consequences won't be pleasant". Neon gulped and the Commander left to sign the papers.

(End of flashback)
Neon never truly desired to become a killer, he knew that much however nobody cared obviously and as a result, Neon Riding had been honed into an unstoppable warrior who was more lethal than anything the world had ever seen and now he was about to become something more than just a pawn to the division.Tomorrow, he would worry about it tomorrow but for now he ought to get as much sleep as possible to rest his brain for the complications that would be thrown his way in just a few hours from now.So Neon drifted off into his dreams about his initiation as the commander of this whole organisation and the dark future that surely accompanied it.

3:00 Am hit far sooner than he had hoped but that was fine,Neon was all to familiar with  sleep deprivation and he knew that any later would have resulted in half the division barging in his room and virtually dragging him out off bed and start dolling him up for the Initiation.Neon was more than capable of taking care of himself and had absolutely no intention of being tossed around like a baby and using that as motivation to thoroughly shower himself, dress in the most expensive suit he owned along with a cloak that made him look like a prince, he even had a little crown that was taken from a secret palace located in an uncharted kingdom they had waged a war against a few years ago and of course emerged victorious mostly due to Neon and his hyper-competence.Neon had personally assassinated the prince and his reward was his crown  which he donned like a trophy.The commander had told him that it accentuated his status as crown prince to this militaristic empire of malice just swimmingly.

After the distraction of dressing up for his ceremony had become useless in warding off the deep pain that Neon had tried so desperately to shut out, he was forced to finally face it but he wouldn't do it here in this rutting, festering hell hole of unethical human experiments and intricate battle strategising so he stepped into one of the teleporters and transported himself into the city, he wasn't really a social person but nothing else spoke to him and he only had until tonight to pull himself together

First, Neon decided to grab some breakfast so he walked into the nicest food joint and ordered some syrup coated pancakes.While the boy awaited his food, his eyes wandered across the cafe and landed on a rather large family bundled up together at a nearby booth."Alright kiddos so what do you little sunshines want for breakfast? The father asked his giggling children who were just arguing about who the best superhero was."Hashbroowwwwwns" a little girl chirped cutely and everyone burst into laughter at her eagerness for food.

"Oh oh, I want the French toast, it looks so yummmmyyyyy" a boy no older than the other girl yelped excitedly causing the chuckling to intensify.Seeing this joyous family laughing together without a care in the world allowed Neon to feel that mortifying envy creep into his black heart.Of course being an orphan, he never experienced this or at least he had no memory of it.All his memories were filled with war, violence and untold horrors he had beheld in his short life and tonight,tonight he would be the one to take on the darkest of the dark and command the chaos that his corporation would doubtlessly be wreaking.

Neon sighed and tried to rid this deep, locked away jealousy by looking back towards all his feats, he was PHD level in science, maths and English, he was the deadliest killer the world had ever seen, trained to kill superhumans and his physical level of fitness and his intelligence  was at peak human level.He had dodged bullets at the age of six.When he was eight, he assissinated a commander of an organisation that bred supersoldiers, when he was ten years old, he was ambushed by thirteen notorious assassins,armed with knives and he had swiftly killed all of them with his bare hands without making a sound or sustaining even a minor wound.At the age of thirteen, he had punched his way though a team of fifteen elite soldiers who surrounded him and fired from every angle and failed to even graze a hair on his head.Since the age of five, he had been sent to war after war and became a force of nature, the perfect killer.

Yet deep down, he knew that all meant absolutely nothing to him, at no point to he relish in the minuscule glamour that was generated out of this traumatic existence because...well he didn't know.He didn't know why he wasn't content with all this after a lifetime of being subjected to it.He didn't know who he wanted to be even if he hated to admit it.

After wolfing down his pancakes, he just wandered around the city for hours on end and everywhere he went, it was the same fucking thing over and over again, at the parks, children were beaming at each other as they had fun playing the games that they had crafted with their own wild imaginations, when he went to skate at the ice rinks, couples were engaging in the most romantic episodes of their lives,when he dared to take a chance with the theme parks, there were families just screaming their heads off in utter joy.He couldn't take it.

It was night now and Neon knew at any moment now he would be called back to base to begin the ceremony and promote him to commander and he was dreading every moment of the wait.Whats more it had also started to rain,just fucking fantastic.Neon kept his hand on the crown he had tucked into his pocket, a much to strange thing to adorn himself with in public.As he stalked through the quiet streets, he gazed into a house at yet another family with their kids,mother, father, uncles, aunts and grandparents, celebrating sort of family reunion and tucking in to their oversized dinner and cracking jokes all around, expressing affections that had never been extended to him, not once.

Neon sighed  miserably and just stood against a nearby wall, pulled out his phone,pushed in his AirPods and listened to his nightcore playlist, allowing the to lyrics take him to someplace other than this as he closed his eyes and let himself forget reality just for a moment.

Just for a moment.