Korudo paces back and forth in her dimly lit lab.
Every few minutes she anxiously checks her silver watch.

There's a knock on her door.

"Number Four...stop leaving your room without permission." She growls.

Four opens the door and in a military fashion she says
"My apologies ma'am, I noticed it is ten thirty and Number One is still not back."

Korudo nods.
"Yes, that's right."

"What if she's dead?" Asks Four, not in a concerned tone, it's not the girl she's worried about.

Korudo doesn't respond. One isn't dead.

"Mistress, send me! I'll find her and I'll kill X! It would be my honor!" Four bows deeply, she looks to her lower leg which hasn't fully reanimated from the last time she melted away the skin and muscle.

"You're not a bloodhound, you're not unkillable. Get out." Korudo commands.

Four looks offended but she'd never talk back to her mistress, so she leaves the room promptly but minutes later Korudo hears old hospital machines being ripped out the wall in the room next door.

"Number Four!" She snaps and the destruction ceases.

Sometimes she wishes she had made Four a bloodhound. That undying loyalty, her raw, unassisted strength, her ambition, she seems like someone who could do dirty work nobody else wanted to do. Unfortunately her self control was nonexistent and that was Four's only folly.

Instead, Four had gained the ability to melt away her skin and muscle without dying, essentially turning herself into a living skeleton. It seems more impressive than it is as the only things it's good for is defence and fear, it serves no aid for someone so adamant on fighting.

Korudo thinks Four is a waste of this advancement as she clearly doesn't care for it too much. All she wants is to track and kill.

Sometimes Korudo wishes she could trade Four's life for Three's. Three died a long time ago, during Korudo's first tests of human advancements.

But she had liked Three, she had liked Two as well. Two's death was what led Korudo to try her hand at making advanced humans, so that they could fight back and protect themselves.

But as science often goes too far Korudo found herself taking more than her fair share of subjects. A total of twelve in fact. And she hardly cares for them like she had in the beginning. She wanted to know her limits, she wanted to make a superhuman.

She glances at her watch again.
The closest she had ever gotten was Number One, her bloodhound. She's the one that dealt with those who knew too much, and she always returned quickly. Not today.

"One..." she tapped her foot against the floor. Of all her children, all her mutants, One was her favourite. She wasted no time on tears like the other pathetic patients.
She was perfect.

Just an hour late...but still One was never late.
Just like...Hitomi.

Hitomi was always on time to their dates, and he always made sure their daughter went to bed on time...
Gosh, she missed him.

Korudo could still hear the judge standing in front of her, his voice booming through the courtroom as he asked
"Do you plead guilty to the murder of Hitomi Korudo?"

Her blood boiled.
"I didn't kill him, and I have a daughter to go home to- you know what?
She doesn't have a dad. You're putting all these crazy ideas in my baby girl's head that I'm the reason Hitomi's gone!"

The judge spoke calmly.
"Miss Korudo, your mental history-"

"Don't call me miss! I'm married!"

Money really can solve problems, and she paid a third of her husband's will and plead innocent time after time until eventually the case was put on a temporary hold.

Korudo took this chance to leave Tokyo with her young daughter. They moved out into the Kantō countryside surrounded by neighbouring families with no idea who she was. Korudo liked this, she wasn't happy but she was happier than she had been in a long time.

Eventually she noticed that the neighbouring couple fought everyday, right in front of their daughter Midori.
She would see the girl come rushing out of the house crying because her parents were fighting again.

Korudo gave Midori jobs babysitting her own daughter Kagami, she made sure she let the girl come over as often as she could.
Midori became like her second child, the second child she always wanted.

And one day when Midori came over she was sobbing like never before because this time her parents were fighting about her. She threw herself onto Korudo and begged her to let her stay with her. She didn't say how long, she said it all depended what happened with her parents.

But as Korudo stroked the child's hair she said
"It's okay, dear, I'll be your new mom, I'll be your unofficial mom- how's that sound?"

Midori dried her tears on her sleeve.
"O-okay..."

And Korudo was a great mother to Midori for a while, raising the girl as if her own, and Midori's family didn't seem to mind having Midori out of the crossfire as long as she spent a few days at home.

Lonely and bored of her new little sister Midori begged for another sister and a brother.
Korudo found parenting to be more fun when she didn't have to raise them from birth, so she went to an orphanage one day and brought home two new kids, the more the merrier! The more to fill the place of Hitomi...

It was only a few years later that Two died. It was seemingly unpreventable. Hit by a car.

But this...this pushed Korudo over the edge. For two weeks she locked herself in her room trying to come up with a way to protect her newfound family once and for all.

Unable to craft a solution she went to clean out Two's old things. His name had been Noriko and he had always been obsessed with comic books.

It was late at night when Korudo went through his things, she flipped through dozens of superhero comics until one made her stop. There was a hero, marked with a red X on his suit, and he stood with his arms extended, they were against a car, he had used some sort of power to stop himself from getting hit.

Korudo dropped the book as if it were cursed.

Still, she found herself coming back to it. She eventually tore out the page, grabbed a pen and started jotting down simple, jot-note ideas.
人間の進歩 - 超大国 - 安全

Korudo has been a geneticist before her husband died. He was a doctor.
She wondered how far she could go...how she could modify a person to make them better, faster, stronger.

And that was the birth of Korudo Labratories. She tested on every child but her true daughter. Midori was the only one that made it out alive, she lost Three to the tests.

And she wished she could erase Midori's pain, make her forget all this grief...because all this loss must have engrained into the child's mind, she would surely grow to be unstable.

The Japanese Government found out about the unreported deaths of Two and Three and tried to take Korudo to court once more.

This time she abruptly fled the country and restarted her lab in North America, in an old abandoned hospital.

Limits were passed. Children were taken. Many died.

It was a lifestyle, training mutants, testing on them, pitting them against each other in 'koroshiamu'. It was amazing, insane and frankly, it was messed up. But Korudo didn't care. She loved it.

Korudo was saving this poor little kids, she was giving them a mother, she was making them special. And she was protecting them from the world.

She finds herself recalling One's most recent mission. To locate and kill X and his runaway lackey. She loathed X with every bone in her body.

Korudo remembers her first encounter with the so called 'Society X' it was evening, and two boys came into the hospital with flashlights.

The younger boy walked slowly behind the elder, as if afraid.
"We shouldn't be here...what if it really is haunted?" He quietly asked.

"You not gonna be a boxer cuz you might get hurt?"
The older boy asked with a chuckle, as he cracked his knuckles.

"Yeah, that's the plan. You fight the bad guys and I interrogate them from a safe distance!"

They had no idea Korudo was watching from a stairwell. She tapped her cold fingers against the railing.
"Bad guys, huh?"
She raised her voice so they could hear her.
"Not to interrupt, but what is your definition of a bad guy?"

The young boy clung to the other and shrieked.
"Ghosts- oh crap- I can't- let's go- I-"

"A bad guy isn't necessarily a ghost! Just someone- who's alive- and...well in our case they're government workers who separate families-"

"But sometimes..." Korudo made her way to the children.
"Kids serve more purpose in isolation."

She lifted the dog whistle from around her neck and blew it. Reinforcements necessary for any boxer who 'fights bad guys' she heard a few distant groans, apparently the whistle wasn't a fan favourite.

"You're no ghost, heh, so we'll just be going-" the older boy joked as he turned to leave.

Korudo would have let them leave, they didn't see anything.
But if her patient got here in time that would be just what happened. Two little boys would be great real world practice.

And sure enough Four arrived.
She scampered into the foyer. She had medium brown skin and short whitish-blonde hair, her mouth was full of fangs and her nails were sharp as claws.

"Mistress...orders?" She said with a slight slur. That slur proved to Korudo that the young Four hadn't yet fully recovered from their last tests but she answered strictly anyway.

"Kill them."

The young girl lifted herself off the floor on shaky, skeleton legs and ran her calloused hands across the selection of knives in her belt.

She took one in each hand and dove at the boys with extreme precision. As they tripped and scrambled to get back out the door and away the older one came upon the grim realization the door had somehow locked from the outside. He grabbed the hand of his companion and tore down the hospital hallways, tailed by Four.

Unfortunately the two went into opposite doors in the mayhem and while the younger boy was now in a broom closet the older one stood across from a patient on a plain white hospital bed.

Korudo has seen this scene play out on a large monitor. She doesn't like it. It makes her sick and it fills her with hatred for her precious One.

The girl in the bed looked sickly, pale skin and tired green eyes. But she looked surprised when she saw the boy.

"Please hide me." He begged in a whisper.

Slowly, the girl got off of the bed and grabbed his arm. Without a word she pushed him into he closet in the room's corner.
And gave a nod.

He nodded back and mouthed 'thank you'. He stayed there for a long time, maybe ten minutes, until his breath began to slow as he started to shiver. There were no lights and no heaters and he feared he may freeze to death in the cold closet.

The girl outside the door must have noticed this because she opened the door as quietly as possible and leaned against him until his breathing stabilized. She handed him a blanket from a shelf in the closet and he wrapped himself up with that.

The boy was terrified and on the brink of tears but somewhere inside he was completely flustered by this sweet girl. She was also warm. That's good.

The girl pointed to herself.
"Ichi." She said.

"Uhh...Can you speak English?"

The girl thought for a second before holding up her pointer finger.
"One! Legal government birth name: Midori Emiko. Birthdate: October 26
Birthplace: St. Luke's International Hospital, Tokyo, Kantō, Japan-"

The boy -Mordecai Princeton- was taken back that what little English she knew was so...uniform.

"Okay, okay, I get it. Are you trapped, Midori?"

"Trapped?" she queried, tilting her head to the side.

"It means when you are somewhere you don't want to be."

She repeated his earlier words, stumbling on their pronunciation
"Okay, okay, I get it...sometimes I do not want to be here."

"Then I'll get you out. Society...is nice."

There was a sudden bang on the door. After initially struggling with the knob Four let herself in.

"What do we have here?" She drawled looking at One and the intruder sitting together.

She grabbed Mordecai harshly by the arm and pulled him into the hallway, tossing him against the floor as he yelped in pain.

"Shine!" She hissed, standing threateningly above him.

Mordecai stuttered
"S-shiny?"

"It means-" the girl was younger than him but seemed so, so strong as she grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and shoved him into the broom closet.
"Die!"

Mordecai was glad as she slammed the door closed that at least she was planning to kill them of malnutrition and not knife wounds. But where was his little brother..?

Mordecai felt a wet surface next to him and heard a squeak.
"Oww..." came his little brother Amabilis' pained voice.

Mordecai threw himself onto his brother.
"I thought you were dead!"

"Please...please step back...my scar..."

"Your...scar?"

Somehow, Amabilis still held his flashlight, and with shaking hands he flicked it on.

Mordecai brought his hands up to his mouth as he took in the sight of Amabilis' new scar. It was bloody, and just below his eye. It was compromised of two knife slashes that intersected and made an X.

After a while there came distant shouting. Korudo yelled about Four's incompetence in Japanese so there was no hope for either brother to understand.

There was rustling outside the door until the girl from earlier -Midori- opened it.
"Leave or be trapped." She said in a serious tone.

She pointed to a door down the hallway.
"Hayaku!"

Mordecai looked at her for a moment before he grabbed his brother by the hand and rushed out faster than he had ever run before.

He didn't stop until they were back home in a big, cold, empty mansion where he began tending to the younger boy's scar.
"It's not going to go away, Amabilis.
But it's not the worst scar to have. It's an X! That's cool huh?" He tried to hype up his brother who remained with his head down.

"What's so great about an X?"
He mumbled, still shaking with fear.

"Uhh...X marks treasure! And...well...treasure's the best one."

"Are you seriously okay after that?" Amabilis snapped, his reddish hair streaked with sweat.

"Nope, but I'm trying to get my brain to block it out and erase it so-"

Amabilis touched his scar tenderly.
"Lucky you! I have this stupid scar on me forever and ever!"

He started to cry.
"And we ain't got nobody to protect us...they're going to come for us and- and-"

"I have to go back." Mordecai interrupted.
"That girl back there, I promised to get her out."

Amabilis grabbed a nearby vase and shattered it on the floor as he rebuked his brother's words, tears streamed into his scar, irritating it.
"No! You idiot! You're gonna die for some freaking...freak?! You're not going back!! You're never going back! Let's move away! Let's take all our money and leave!"

Mordecai opened up a drawer in a desk.
He pulled out an old revolver pistol.
"We have guns. You know what they say about knives and gun fights."

Surprisingly, instead of taking it he handed the weapon to Amabilis.
"To make you feel safe, kid."

Mordecai ran off.

Later that night, After Amabilis' praying and crying and anxious breakdowns slowed hopelessly Mordecai finally came home unscathed.
"No luck tonight but...Ah, just go to bed, kid. I...I've got an idea brewing..."

"What's your idea?"
Amabilis asked, hoping his brother would answer before forcing him to sleep.

"We call the friggin' police. Goodnight."

"What are the police going to do?"

Mordecai rabbed leftovers from the fridge and placed them down as he nonchalantly re-enacted the most likely scenario.
"Put your hands in the air or we'll shoot! - they put their hands in the air- the cops haul the creepy lady and knife kiddo off to jail."

Amabilis frowned.
"What if knife girl kills the police?" He asked quietly.

"Hmm...well then you'll stay out of their business. They weren't trying to take over the world before, our presence won't change that." Mordecai walked Amabilis up the stairs to his room.

"I'll stay out of their business? What about you?" Amabilis asked.

Mordecai gently closed the door.
"A promise is a promise, I'm a boxer, dude. I can handle a few reclusive weirdos, plus, I'll come equipped next time."

Amabilis growled.
"She's gonna turn on you. You don't find happy ever afters in abandoned hospitals."

"I will be the judge of that, thank you."

Miles away from Korudo, in front of a full grown Amabilis 'Axel' Princeton bright green eyes shoot open and a young woman growls.

"Shine..." She hisses as she spits on Amabilis leather boot.

The young man looks disgusted as he tries to shake it off.
"Eww, that's gross...your spit toxic, huh?"

With a cold glare in place of a response he reaches into his pocket and hands Stellaluna and Crystal informational pamphlets.
"I told you I would answer your questions later. And frankly...we don't have time sooooooo- everyone loves pamphlets!"

"On the contrary Eliza Hamilt-" Stellaluna starts before being interrupted by Amabilis.

"Read the pamphlet on the drive home, see ya later." He ushers the girls out as Midori mutters darkly under her breath.
"We're about to get down to really important business."

"We don't have a ride..." Crystal admits and Amabilis groans.
"Come on, what are you, first time thieves? Always have a getaway driver."

"Spare me five minutes, get comfy Midori!"
He sighs and grabs Stellaluna by the arm, leading her into the hallway.
"Take my car, but give me your address and I'll pick it up tomorrow."

"Really, Axel?" Stellaluna asks.

"You can call me Amabilis."

Stellaluna chuckles and elbows him.
"What about anytime?"

To her surprise Amabilis brings his arm up to her hand, though it's only to point at the pamphlet.
"Well, you can call me anytime you have a monster emergency."

Crystal pops up beside him.
"What exactly constitutes a monster emergency? What if Stellaluna here wanted to go to dinner with you?"
Stellaluna would punch her if she was in punching range.

Amabilis takes the question seriously and looks from Stellaluna to Crystal.
"I assure you I am very busy, and can confirm I cook perfectly fine."

"What if..." Stellaluna starts, pointing to the pamphlets heading.
"I became a part of your 'lil cult! I want a group jacket!"

Amabilis takes off his leather jacket and shoves it into Stellaluna's arms.
"Take the jacket. It's not a cult. Read the pamphlet. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

He jingles a keyring in front of Stellaluna's face. She doesn't like how much taller than her she is. He has to practically lean down to talk to her.
"Here's the keys."

Stellaluna takes them into her hands and begins separating the shiny metallic keys.
"Umm..which keys? There's a lot..."

"They're labelled."

Stellaluna presses a random key's unlock button and is pleased to see the lights turn on on a sleek looking sports car.
"Oh, wow. Thanks so much, see you tomorrow!"

Stellaluna has to take a long, awkward pause because she makes the mistake of nearly calling Amabilis 'babe' but it's not her fault- it's just the way the conversation's going it seemed only natural.
After the uncomfortable pause she grabs Crystal and gets into the car.
They inhale in unison and Stellaluna exclaims
"Heh, still got that new car smell!"

As soon as she gets back to the apartment Peggy starts scolding her.
"What the heck was with that loud sports car in the parking lot? I know it's you because nobody's up that late and nobody who is up that late sounds like they're standing on the gas pedal!"

"The cute guy from earlier lent it to Stella!" Crystal says.

"Crap!" Stellaluna Mumbles to Crystal.
"If we got there earlier we coulda used his car in the race! Just like the plan!"

Peggy puts a hand to her head, exhausted.
"Stranger danger!"
She exclaims but Stellaluna and Crystal just give her blank stares.
"Don't get in sketchy guy's cars!"

Crystal protests
"He's not a stranger, Stellaluna knows him! And trust me Pegs, he's hardly even sketchy, you'll get to meet him tomorrow -he promised to come over."

Peggy sighs in defeat and heads back to her room, mumbling all the while.
"You disappear for like four hours and come back in some Bugatti...ugh, you're turning me into a concerned mother at twenty!"

Stellaluna and Crystal go into their shared room as soon as Peggy's out of sight and Stella reads aloud the pamphlet.

"So...they're monster hunters?"
Crystal asks when she's done.

"Seem to be. And if that ain't the coolest thing ever I don't know what is!" Stellaluna exclaims.
"I'd never pass up a chance to be with Axel! I finally have that chance!"

After she notices Crystal's smirk she immediately corrects herself.
"As in a team! Not- not anything else-"

Crystal laughs obnoxiously.
"You loooove him! You're gonna get married and have kids and die together of old age! Can I be your maid of honor?"

Stellaluna scoffs.
"Never gonna happen, kid. I have no interest in mister moneybags. I mean- He's pretty, he's cool, overall: total stud. But I'm not going to queue in line for a heartbreaker like him."

Stellaluna twirls her brown hair around her finger absently.
She wonders if Amabilis' hair is dyed, she's always wanted to dye hers, maybe blue..?

She falls asleep faster than usual, only to wake up the next morning to hear Amabilis, Crystal and Peggy conversing in the kitchen.