We are Shadows [Rambo]

The day after a young man's 18th birthday is often an unremarkable one. There's talks about graduation, and college, and setting up one's career path for the future. Oblivious to his nature... oblivious to the dark world kept secret from him that he was intimately connected to, much of this clouded Ezra's mind. On this bright weekend morning he dawdled, taking his time through his morning routine; work out, shower, dress, breakfast. Ezras was chowing down on a bowl of steaming oatmeal with fresh berries, and a fresh cup of coffee when his father mentioned "the talk". The topic had been rarely broached over the past year or so, if only to inform him that it would happen after his 18th birthday. It was a moment he yearned for and dreaded in equal measure. Absentmindedly swirling his coffee he sat quietly, watching the proud, powerful man he admired struggle with his thoughts, clearly trying to find the best words to share what he had to share.

And when he did... it almost didn't stick. The brief flash of cognitive dissonance waving off his revelation as nonsense. It made no sense, to say that he wasn't human. It almost felt insulting... and in that quiet space Ezra felt that brief flutter of anger in his stomach, daring him to lash out and interrogate his father. But he didn't, he'd been raised better than that. Andrew had done a wonderful job teaching him to think critically in moments like these. To reign in your emotions and seek out the information you need to draw truthful conclusions to your questions. He took a moment to breathe quietly, and set his coffee down as he stewed over another spoonful of oatmeal. Before meeting his father's gaze with that titular inquisition in his piercing eyes. "What do you mean by that?" There was no malice behind his words, no pointed anger... just a cool curiosity, and an undeniable forcefulness of someone who was determined to get the answers he needed.

You see... Ezra wasn't a clueless kid. He was smart, with a mind that Andrew could be proud of. Even though he didn't have all the answers, he was more than capable of piecing together dots when he had the information to do so, and he'd met plenty enough clues over his life so far. Little logical paths that could be linked to one another, separated by some mysterious, critical lynchpin that he'd yet to uncover... and as far as he'd surmised, it all pointed to this moment. Before Andrew had a chance to respond Ezra piped up again, a soft chuckle before he spoke. "I guess that does explain a few things. Like how I'm the only person I've ever met in my entire life who has yellow eyes." A sore spot for a number of years, especially when he was little. A trait as unique as that was a gold mine for school bullies. "Do you remember a few years ago, we went hiking together over summer break when I was fourteen? I slipped on that mountain trail, part of the path shifted under my foot and I ended up tumbling down a fifty foot embankment. A fall like that should've killed me... but I walked away with bumps and scrapes at worst. I just considered myself lucky back then... but now that I look back on it, that was definitely not normal." resting his chin on his hands, his gaze squared once again onto his father. "You can't just drop a bombshell like that on me without more answers dad. You say I'm not human... so what am I? Some kind of... comic book superhero in the making?"

Ezra could barely believe the words coming out of his father's mouth. A vampire?... impossible. In that moment of disbelief he sat in stunned silence as he listened to his father's confession, what details he could share about Ezra's origin and true nature. The moment a dossier was place in front of him Ezra snatched it up, still cautious as all hell, side-eyeing his father with a dubious stare; all while skimming through the files contained within. It was almost too much information to take in at once, even for his keen mind; the debriefing report on the Wunderkinder nursery, information about this... Project Eden, and plans to train and weaponize the Wunderkinder against a shadowy underworld of vampires that threatened humanity. Even a detailed printout of himself, listing all manner of downright supernatural abilities. Enhanced strength, speed and reflexes, a superhuman sense of smell and hearing, night vision, enhanced durability, damage resistance and regenerative potential. And an immunity to something called the "Mythology Virus".

"I don't understand, what's this got to do with-." His questioning was cut short when his gaze returned to his father, and met the barrel of a gun... his father's service pistol, the first handgun Ezra had ever learned to shoot with. Days worth of bonding time had gone into his training with that gun in his hands, and now his father was pointing it at his head. The chilling fear in his gut barely had time to show on his face as he stuttered "D-dad?", before a flash and a bang lit up his vision, and the world suddenly went black.
____________________________

There was no way of knowing how long he was out, limbo had a funny way of playing with you like that. The sound of a haunting voice singing in his head, a creepy machination of Happy Birthday echoing in his mind was the first sense he could perceive as he came to... followed by a thunderous headache, worse than any he'd ever had as a kid. Groggy, and muddled in his senses he shook himself awake in pitch blackness, feeling out his immediate surroundings by touch alone. The cold steel surrounding his body sent a panicked chill to his gut as he began to realize how trapped he was.

Confused and helpless, fear began to grip him. He pushed with all his might on the steel plate above him, wrestling in every which direction, banging his knees against the steel in an attempt to signal for someone... anyone. "HEEEELP!!!!" Panic pushed him into an instinctive rush, adrenaline pounding into his veins as he fought fruitlessly against his confines. "Someone!... ANYONE!!!" Working himself into a frenzy he lashed out with his forehead, slamming it upwards into the steel above with a strength he didn't know he had, leaving behind a small dent in the steel he couldn't see. It hurt, he felt like he almost split his head open. But the adrenaline washing through him numbed the throbbing sting. He wedged his hands and knees against the steel above him and pushed with an ungodly roar, trying with all his might to gain any sort of purchase and free himself, silently hoping that someone outside this box would hear his struggles and free him.

Wholly subsumed by his panicked state, Ezra was caught off guard by the inertia of the gurney he laid upon suddenly sliding underneath him. His frantic struggles sent him toppling off the side, leaving him prone and disoriented by the sudden, blinding flourescent lights above him. He could hear the blathering of a woman standing over him, though he could barely focus on what she was saying as he shook his senses back into focus, scrawled on the floor as he struggled into a seated position.

As confused as one could be, after waking from the dead on a gurney in a morgue chamber, Ezra blinked away the haze in his eyes, holding the throbbing, self inflicted lump on his head as he stared lost up at the girl before him. She was around his age, maybe slightly younger. He didn't recognize her outfit, though at first guess he could tell she didn't belong in a morgue like this. "Wh-... where am I?" The dull ringing in his ears paired horrendously with the harshness of the lights, and flickers of memories of the last things he'd seen before this moment. "How did I get here?..." Absentmindedly his hands wandered to the rest of his body. His clothes were gone, replaced by a hospital gown, and nothing else. It took a few seconds for her words to stick, replacing his visible confusion with a cloud of frustration and anger as he grabbed at the gurney above him and struggled to his feet. Before he even began to speak the first tears started falling, angry tears, the only thing manifesting from the flood of emotions that were clouding his usually diligent mind. The grief on his father's face jarring austentatiously with the calmness in his gun armed hand the only image floating in his mind as he stood to his full height, a good head and a half over the comparatively small girl in front of him. He couldn't decide what to do next; to wail and grieve over what had happened god knows how recently... to flee from this place in any way he could and try to get home, to get answers from the man he loved, that'd just put a bullet in his head... a part of him even wanted to deck this smarmy girl in the jaw, the way she spoke so flippantly about the man that had raised him. How she spoke about him directly to his face. She'd called him a monster, something capable of killing mercilessly. But... something spoke out to him, the first hint of a clue that tugged at the rational part of his mind. She'd called him a Wunderkinder, he recognized that, from the brief seconds examining the documents before his dad had tried to murder him.

"What the fuck is a Wunderkinder? Why the hell did I just wake up in a morgue? Why... the fuck... did my dad just put a goddamn bullet in my head!" There were days worth of questions he needed answers to, these were just the first. As he stepped out past the gurney towards her, a focused hunger clearing up those lost and confused eyes. For someone who'd just woken up from a double tap to the dome, he seemed to be regaining his vigor alarmingly quickly.

Ezra's confusion swelled a little in the face of June's more pointed introduction... though he didn't get a chance to speak before she reacted, and pulled out a second gurney from the wall beside them. What Ezra saw sent a cold shock through him, and all the color instantly drained from his already pale skin. Before him, cold as ice on a steel morgue gurney was... him? It seemed impossible... it had to be impossible. How the hell could he be looking at his own corpse? He shuddered, taking a revulsed step back, then another, and fell back against the tiled wall in a stumble, barely able to comprehend what he was looking at. As the gurney was haphazardly slammed back into the morgue wall the only thing she got from Ezra was a look of pure, disheveled confusion and terror, all the fury from moments ago drained from him in an instant. "W-what the fuck is going on here?"

It all made sense, in a twisted way. This was a nightmare... some terrible dream he was trapped in. He was probably, ironically, dead asleep in his bed back home, sleeping off the drunken stupor of his 18th birthday the night before. It... couldn't be a dream though, the stinging pain in his forehead was too real to be a dream. A trembling hand slipped to his forehead and smeared through the cut he'd made in his thrashing. The sight of blood on his fingers heightened his panic further. The pure, dissociating horror of seeing his own bullet riddled corpse seemed to break him down further, he could barely speak to put words together to respond to her question, muddied by the panic attack that was quickly overwhelming him.

He could see a door off to the side, obviously it had to lead out to whatever building this morgue sat under, maybe a hospital of some kind, or a police station or something. Someone had to be out there that could help. Ezra could barely even think, overwhelmed by his own fight or flight syndrome... like a panicked rabbit he bolted. With speed and strength he didn't know he could muster, more than any mortal human could muster, he threw himself at the door, damn near busting it clean off it's hinges as he threw himself through it and stumbled blindly into the hall beyond. The only thing in his mind that seemed to hold any sense of focus was the training that his father had drilled into him. He was injured, that much he knew. A contusion on his forehead, with bleeding that needed to be cleaned up. He could be concussed too, it would explain the confusion, in some weird was in his mind. A bathroom would help, he could find a first aid kit there, to bandage his wound. In his haze he stumbled down the first hall he could find, searching frantically for a wall sign pointing towards a bathroom, barely keeping track of whoever happened to be in his path.

June's words barely reached Ezra's panicked mind, shut out by the thunderous drumming of his heartbeat in his ears, and the soothing hypnosis of his father's regimental training in his mind. "Survival and safety were paramount, don't fight them, you're too strong for them Ezra. Get away, look after yourself and get home safe." Bursting through the mens room door his flustered gaze pinged about the room in a methodical fashion, homing in one a white cabinet with a red cross in the corner, near a sink... just what he needed. When he tried to yank it open, in his panicked state he wrenched the cabinet door clean off, with so much force that it was flung across the room and chipped the tiles on the opposite wall. He barely noticed it, too focused on his goal.

With his vision blurred by bewildered tears he rummaged messily through the cabinets neatly arranged contents, dragging out a gauze patch and some antiseptic cream, which he slammed down onto the counter beside the sink as he turned on the water and began scrubbing blood from his face, the rough texture of swollen, torn flesh painfully, eerily crisp and clear under his touch. He barely brought his face up as he worked by touch, washing his bloody face clean and smearing a daub of antiseptic over the cut, before finally... fearfully raising his gaze to the mirror before him; half anxious, half anticipating what he would find.

His reflection was a comfort in a small way. He was still him. That sharp jawline. Those soft, high cheekbones. That smooth skin and soft lips that the girls at school loved to whisper about when they thought he couldn't hear them. The bright, unnaturally yellow eyes that stared right back at him. The messy, rusty red hair that dripped with bloody water. His forehead, swollen and split with a large cut...

His gaze froze, laser focused on his forehead as his fingers slowly traced the split. "Where... where is it?..." There was no bullet wound. No scar tissue, no stitches... nothing. He'd been shot. He'd watched his dad pull a gun on him and shoot. Why was there no bullet wound? The reality of the situation was further cemented, and that reality shook his fragile mind to the core even further. No human could wwake up from getting shot in the head... no human could heal from a wound as graphic as a gunshot with such speed, and without leaving any sort of marking whatsoever. He... wasn't human. Wunderkinder... the word echoed through his head again, garbled in the mess of questions and emotions that rocked and tumbled like gravel in his shattered mind. He stepped back from the mirror in a stumble, a hollow sob in his throat as he fell against a locker in the corner and sank into a ball, trembling, curling up on himself. Now... he wished this were all a dream. "D-dad *gulp*... what's happening..."

Expecting more tormenting jests and ridicule, Ezra had braced himself for the worst, clenched in this trembling ball of panicked muscle, a shell to shield himself from this nightmare around him. The last thing he expected was to hear June's calmer, soothing voice pierce the racket clamming up his mind. It was oddly soothing, to hear her be a little compassionate, instead of the obstinate jeering and verbal mauling from moments ago... a soft sanctuary within which his hyperventilating could still, and his trembling could cease.

He never unraveled from his protective shell as she filled him in on where she stood in his life, the reason why she was the one to wake him up from his metal coffin in this weird, unfamiliar place. But he was listening, and lucid enough to respond. When she told him to follow when ready he nodded. It wasn't much, but it was enough of a message to speak volumes of his resilience. "A-alright..." His response was... actually quite pleasing when he wasn't freaking out like a caged animal. A smooth, slightly English accent... with the slightest hint of a South Korean twang. Lord only knows where that came from.

He didn't move much as she left him to his thoughts. Now that he was calmer and more collected he could actually take a second to really process what had happened. With what he had managed to peace together; gleaned from June's unorthodox exposition, and the few minutes of investigation he'd garnered from his father's dossier he was something called a Wunderkinder... a unique vampire hybrid, one of several dozen retrieved from a nursery in some vampire nest nearly twenty years ago. What that meant was anyone's guess at this point. It did explain why Andrew was clear on the fact that he was adopted, even at the young age he first learned that fact.

His thoughts slowed to a crawl when his father came to mind. The man had raised Ezra from infancy... his entire life Andrew had been a mentor, a friend and a father to him. He'd felt so close to him, an inseparable bond wrought by what Ezra had assumed had been unshakeable paternal love. And the man had shot him without a shred of hesitation. No second words, no goodbye. From the sounds of things there was no chance he would ever get true closure... and in a way, that's what hurt him the most. From deep within his chest an unrelenting, furious grief bubbled up, ripping forth as a deep, uncontrolled sobbing... loud enough for June to hear down the hall. A grieving wail, the kind you only ever hear when someone's watched a loved one perish in their arms for the first time... a truly traumatized cry. This carried on for nearly an hour as Ezra vented his raw emotions to himself, in that cold, soulless, ransacked bathroom. Alone for the first time in his life.

Once he'd gathered himself into an emotionally presentable state Ezra hauled himself to his feet, and finally examined his surroundings with clear eyes. He'd made a bloody mess of the place... literally. The bathroom door hung slightly off its hinges where he'd crashed through it "Fuck... did I do that?". The first aid cabinet door lay in a crumpled fold in the far corner, and medical supplies were strewn across the floor. The sink was splattered with blood and water, and the gauze patch he'd grabbed earlier hung on the rim, ready to be used. He took a minute to examine himself properly in the mirror; his puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks, and the swollen cut on his forehead still smeared with a mess of antiseptic cream. Well... he didn't have his nicer clothes. But he could at least make himself look a little more presentable. He scrubbed his face clean and washed the puffiness from his eyes, before properly tending to the cut on his forehead, neatly cleaning and bandaging the wound. "You know... for... for a vampire I don't actually look that bad~." He couldn't go back out there in only a hospital gown... as tight and toned as his ass was it would be embarrassing to wander around with it exposed, especially in front of June, as traumatically experienced as he assumed she was.

For a brief moment after Ezra's errant wailing ceased, and the sound of washing up had stilled, June would be able to hear the methodical sound of a series of locker doors being violently wrenched open. Followed by Ezra wandering back out looking calmer and more collected, with a clearly stolen overcoat covering his mess splattered hospital gown. "Well... I don't know about you. But I feel thoroughly embarrassed by that ordeal. Nice to meet you finally, name's John Doe~." Without the veil of trauma and adrenaline fueled panic masking him... he was actually a playful sort once you got to know him~.

Well... this was probably the most comprehensive witness protection program Ezra had ever seen in his life. He took the dossier offered to him and wandered back into the morgue, finding himself a seat a the mortician's desk so he could have a proper read through everything. A full blank slate with matching crisp identity documents sounded about as enticing as creating a new character in an RPG... right after deleting an old save file ironically enough. After nibbling on the top of a pen for a few minutes, before stacking them back into the folder. "Feels a bit weird having to pick out a new first name... I'll fill these out in a bit once I've had a chance to properly uhh... 'visualize' a new identity for myself."

Leaving the dossier on the desk he kicked off, spinning the rolling office chair to face June, whereupon he laced his fingers behind his head and hit her with a curious stare, and a half cocked smile. "So... Miss Mayweather. Tell me more about these Saints, and what they do. Dad never told me about what he actually did, beyond saying that he used to work for a private security force before he retired and adopted me. And... you know... *click click* pbhhbt~" He mimed shooting himself in the head, a twisted, nonchalant representation of the life changing trauma he'd faced. "Also, can we work on getting me some actual clothes? I've never liked how... revealing hospital gowns are. And I should probably return this coat to whichever poor sod I just stole it from."