Reign of Sins

Sector VII's New Teacher

The darkness in the Void offers me a thousand ways to die and only one way to live: to become one of them. And so I did become one of them – one way or another.

Now, I am on a mission as I trudge my way to answer the call of my superior. I trot my way to the death – or so what miscreants call her.

Getting a special summon by the Queen of the Void herself is something I am not looking forward to. It has not been long since I arrive at Sector VI, the place in the Void where the King and Queen had asked me to watch over.

Sector VI. This is where I keep track of drug syndicates, fighting pits, and human trading. Under my jurisdiction, citizens from the Void cannot get involved with these transactions. The safety of the children, women, and elderly must be ensured at all costs. We may be marked by the Void, but we always take care of one of our own.

People recoil at the sight of criminals. They call them monsters. But they don’t know what is lurking below them. The Void consumes all and protects the monsters that regular people view as bugs beneath their soles.

The Void will fight tooth and nail for its citizens. Like a mantle of freedom, the Void is the place for the misfits of society. Outsiders can enter of their volition. But those who do, wish they hadn’t.

It is screwed up, I know. No one can justify these activities, but we’re no angels. We’re the monsters of society. This is how we live – through the darkness. The light can never shine without us. They need us to keep their righteousness. The citizens of the Void are an unholy copy of life – a mockery of what society is preaching for.

I stop in my tracks when the green light seizes. On cue, wheels screeched to race with death. It has always been like this in the Void, a city of glamour and sin, where the boundary of life and death is separated with one measly stumble.

There are children in this Void, innocent smiles painted on their faces. But beyond the facade of innocence hides the yoke of twisted truth. Raise in an environment of dog-eat-dog, one giggling child in the morning might be a top-breed assassin in the evening. Nothing is certain in the void, for one could not bear his cards even in the face of one's family.

The stoplight blinks back to green.

And so, I continue my strides, adjusting the coat and my beaten scarf as a group of women walked past me. Grocery bags hung in their arms as they giggled at a joke that they could only understand.

“Good afternoon,” said one of the ladies followed by a wink.

On instinct, I lift my hat for a fraction of a second or two. The corners of my eyes wrinkle as I give her my smile. This action of mine elicits a series of giggles once more.

 I did not miss the swell beneath their sweatpants, an indication of loaded guns tied to their ankles.

Everything around this city is not what it looks like.

The moment I enter the lavish gates of a humungous estate at the apex of the Void, I immediately show myself around. After all, the Queen of the Void hates wasting her time. And I don’t have the slightest intention of becoming the receiving end of her wrath – never.

And so I knock. Every beat of my knuckles against the ebony door resonates with my pounding heart. It never changes, this reaction whenever I am about to face the Queen of the Void.

“Fuckin’ come in! I swear I will tear that damn door.” A husky voice answers my call. It is both cold and feisty, a clash of contradictions.

I find the Queen of the Void behind a desk, reading. Clad in her black suit that sticks to her voluptuous body like a second skin, Luciana Shiranui Loong looks smoking hot like the first time I met her when she scouted me to be part of her team. Piles and piles of documents litter her desk, burying her almost from my line of vision. I sit in the visitor’s chair without asking. Propriety is a funny concept in the Void, after all.

“Good that ye’re here,” she says. “I began to think that ye’re ditching my summon to ye.”

A groan escapes from my lips. “How I wish I could ditch your summon.”

Rolling her albino red eyes, she places her chin atop her palm as she cocks her head. Gaze transfixed to me. “Ass. Anyway, you are here for a secret mission. This is a task I give you as Phoenix leader, not as the Queen of the fuckin’ Void.”

Gone are the wrinkles at the corners of my eyes, ears alert for my superior’s next words.

“Sector VII has shown me their report that they have tracked crimes done by the Dark Arms. Everyone knows in the Void that these types of equipment are made by the old dynasty of the Dark Family. Now, culprits are using the Dark Arms without my permission!”

Dark Arms. There are a total of fifty pieces of Dark Arms. They were made for the White Family and Dark Family civil war before. Then, Fallen Angel also known by many as the Queen of the Void, closed this forbidden research when she started her reign. But it was too late to save the forsaken and the lost, a lot of innocent children had perished. All for the sake of military advancement.

Though Dark Arms are considered taboo in the Void, it will not change the irrefutable fact that Dark Arms have unique characteristics. These weapons can choose the user who will wield them. The more destructive the chosen users are, the more powerful the Dark Arms become. When the laboratory closed, King Kiel Nakahara Loong and his queen assigned a unit to provide care for the children who survived the experiments.

“I called for ye here because the leader of Sector VII passed away from a retrieval operation. I want ye to handle the Sector VII Offensive Unit, also known as the Seven Sins.” The Queen of the Void’s words snaps me from reverie.

I doubletake. My eyes widen upon seeing that she is not joking around as she stares at me – daring me to talk shit. Swallowing the clog in my throat, I probe. “What? Aren’t they a bunch of rebellious high school students from Trinity High?”

Her face hardens from what I said. “Underestimating anyone will be the start of yer downfall, Chase Rennon. And besides, those high school students are Dark Arms users.”

“You know I’m not good at babysitting.” I slump onto my seat. My voice starts to shrink upon imagining the future of this mission.

“And I’m not asking ye to. Ye need to be their adviser; hence ye’ll be a part-time teacher at Trinity High. Those kids already know about ye. Ye’ll be the one receiving orders from me before ye relay it to them. Ye’ll be planning with them, and ye’ll be retrieving Dark Arms for them.”

“Aren’t those Seven Sins assassins themselves?”

Instead of answering my question, she hands me seven different folders. Each one of them has two-by-two pictures of the members of the Seven Sins. The knot between my brows deepens upon seeing the biggest red flag from their pictures that are supposed to help me familiarize them.

“I can’t see what they look like behind their traditional Japanese masks.” I deadpanned as my brow twitches. “They still bother to give me their two-by-two pictures, huh?”

The Queen of the Void shrugged. “They’ve been the sword of Sector VII for a long time, yet no one has ever seen their faces. I don’t know why either, and I never tried asking. That’s none of my fuckin’ business.”

Because of what she said, my curiosity has been piqued by these kids. “I’ll get going then, Leader.”

“I’ll send ye the past records of Sector VII. Go to yer students first and meet them personally tomorrow.”

Do I even have a choice? The devious grin plastered on the Queen of the Void’s face is not helping my heavy heart right now.

I reach for the doorknob when she spoke again. “And, Chase? Good luck! I know that ye’ll be an amazing teacher. Teach them how to be human. Who knows? You might be able to save them from misery.”

I dare not answer her. I salute with my back against her before I trudge away.

“I still need to go to Trinity High.”