ToRA (Kekkai Sensen Fanfic)

Prologue

I could describe, in extreme detail, the changes I had gone through to end up this way. I could do it very well, given the time, but the mere memories were difficult in and of themselves.

I grew up in a rural Chinese village, and I had many memories of working in the fields with my father, elder brothers and grandfather. I attended school a few towns away during the winter months, and earned myself a place at a much better school miles away. I was urged to take the opportunity, and so I left home with the promise that I would return once my schooling was complete.

I was a good student, and my efforts guaranteed me a spot at a college in Beijing. The city was a lot for me, a boy of insignificant background, but I found myself able to adapt with the ideal that I would return home soon.

My last year, I received news that my family had all died in a massive wildfire that had decimated the tiny village I called home. The survivors had stayed, but there was little more for me there. The farm was gone, and my family with it. I was encouraged by my teachers to finish out my education. In an effort to push through my grief, I secured a job at an import company based out of New York. The day after I graduated, I flew to America to begin what I had hoped would be a fresh start.

Perhaps I had gotten what I had wished for, though in the cruel fashion the world seems to love.

I worked for two years at the company. When the collapse occurred, the company vanished and never returned. In the chaos, my absence went unnoticed, as there was none to file a missing persons report for me. It would have done nothing either way, due to the amount the police must have gotten. Even now, four years later, thousands are still unaccounted for.

I can't really say where I was during the first month following the collapse. A very strange version of the Chinatown I lived in, with no particularly recognizable traits. When the blocks of shops I knew by heart began to return to the normal world, I was taken aback by the sights that greeted me. Hundreds, no, hundreds of thousands of strange creatures somehow coexisting alongside humans in the world I had once known. They frightened me, and I returned home to my tiny apartment to hide.

I realized where I had been for the past month. It had taken its toll on me, and over the next week, I became very ill. When I was finally coherent enough to drag myself into my bathroom and peer through the grime on the mirror to see myself... I was no longer human. At first glance, perhaps I looked that way. But the ears upon my head and the tail that flicked were not normal. I also found that I could not hold an adult body for longer than a few hours, and would shrink to a child's body around the age of 14. This child body was familiar, looking exactly like I had when I was that age.

I was always particularly small.

However, my adult body did not look like my own. It felt like my own, but it was... elven? It reminded me very much of how some immortal being would look. Flawless pale skin, high cheekbones, a strong jaw, slanted cat-like eyes, long silky black hair, a feminine build despite being very toned and strong.

I avoided it. I avoided being in that body, and even looking at it made me feel ill. Over the next year I settled into my new appearance, and discovered other oddities, other abilities that it had come with. And the price I paid for this gift I had not asked for nor wanted.

Human flesh.

Normal food was still necessary and as enjoyable as always, but I would regularly crave blood. Humans, especially bleeding ones, smelled appetizing to me. My first hunt, which was not entirely of my own accord, had been the sealing point for me. Human organs were not only necessary for my continued health, but they began... delicious. A pleasure to eat.

By the end of the year, I abandoned what I had always known, and became the being my new body demanded. Though I still feel human emotions, most moralities are vague at best. They had to be, considering I would regularly lure a human to a dark alley and proceed to not only kill them but also consume their flesh.

I became known as the man-eating tiger, though none knew my name nor face. When I was not hunting in my adult form, I spent the rest of my time delivering and selling newspapers and magazines for a shop in Chinatown. A place I had once frequented to get my own news, but the owner could no longer recognize me. I even switched apartments, living directly in the cultured area I felt most at home in.

The only thing I kept of my old life, besides memories, was my name. It was given to me by my family, after all, and I could not bear to part with it.

I was a monster. A selfish beast preying on its former kind.

Although...

I still wonder...

If deep down I'm still just Kuja, the insignificant man from a tiny village in China.