Prelude to a Requiem

It was a great day.

Carmine was walking through Steel Canyon, having used the Yellow line train from Galaxy City, where he worked with the Freedom Corps, helping in various stages of the New Hero Orientation. He was 24, married to a wonderful woman, had an excellent career in a well-know group in Paragon City as well as helping tutor students in voice, and celebrating his 3rd anniversary of working at Freedom Corps.

He had not only received a raise, but a very generous gift of dinner at the Three Sisters' Restaurant, one of the more expensive and longstanding five-star restaurants of Paragon. He was going to home to change, and pick up his wife to go to dinner. She said she would wear the red dress, the same one he first saw her in that first day he started work, as she was going to pick up her younger brother who had once again tried to "run away from home" to be a hero.

He was whistling as he walked, remembering his hopes as a child, hoping for the little bit of magic he was sensed to have to bloom, but never had anything happen. Come to think of it, "little" James was almost sixteen - just the age to gain a hero's ID. He was gunning for the name Janan, a variation of Janus, for his ability to both heal and harm with his inner flame...

Impatient, Carmine was running up the stairs, since the elevator was old, and slow. As he opened the door, shouting "Rhaps, you in the red..." he stopped, cold. She was indeed wearing the red, the red of her lifeblood, splattered also on the wall behind hind her, the furniture around her. And on one of the young men, with a maniacal grin, as he finished cutting the finger bearing her wedding ring from her fist clutched in a rictus grip.

Deep inside, something shattered, and a howl of despair came out of his' singer's throat. A howl so horrendous that it didn't merely kill his wife's murderer, but literally caused his now-fluid brain matter to flow out of his ears and nose.

By the time Carmine awoke, the bodies were gone, taken to the morgue. The others who were with the killer escaped, gone while he was unconscious.

The prelude was over, the Requiem begun.