...But the Disciples of Vita aren't bad people right?
Being a disciple doesn't inherently mean something bad, right??
Well, that depends on what angle you look at it from.
Take a step back, and look at the entire picture again.
At the ecosystem of the place known as Hatchett's city.
The slum is its 'yang'. An integral part of the city required and that's with a capital 'R'... 'Required' for life in the city above to thrive.
What that means is that poverty must exist for riches to grow.
...and depravity for the sake of bliss...
So while being a disciple isn't all that bad, it's what it means to become one that represents something sinister.
A disciple is but the starting point.
No flack on Noah though, his dedication and determination within the disciples was admirable.
The only problem was what it all entailed.
Starting out as a devout, if overly dedicated follower, old Noah was viewed by most as just a worried father. A man who was struggling with freakish circumstances in which the time he had to spend a childhood with his daughter was more than halved.
To Noah, his daughter was passing him by, growing faster as a child than he was as a father.
So feeling like time was no longer on his side, Noah decided quite selfishly that the life he shared with his family was no longer enough.
That the smiles, and memories they all had shared together... they were not enough.
And never would be, so long as they remained in the slum.
He had reason, he had cause, and he had found the right job to appease both feelings of insignificance.
Like the cult it is, the disciples soon preyed on old Noah. Not directly of course, but through links.
Through word of mouth. Through conversations he had with his friends who were devout followers and through the random passer-by's preachings of the merciful demon-god's teachings.
He admired their tenacity, their drive... and slowly without knowing, he begun to follow their ways, take on jobs, and even pray to the demon-god.
"For a better life." He prayed, "For a future where they can all play on verdant courtyards and bask in the rays of the sun that always seemed to fall short of the tunnels."
To Noah, it was all harmless... all justified and harmless reaching for something more than himself.
For something more than what they all already collectively shared.
He reached for that ending, he reached for that satisfaction every waking minute of everyday when he saw the smiles that Renee and his daughter exchanged.
This was how he would get out.
The demon-god of the Slum and realm was his way out of their current predicament and his answer to a life much more favourable and deserving of his beautiful family.
...They no longer had need for the slum, they could have left, his daughter was now old enough for travel after all. But what represented the ideal life for Noah was no longer a stay in some boonie on the border of the demon realm, but prestige.
One like which he and his sister had grown on, but his daughter had not.
Maybe their luck had finally run out, or the Pendleton eye for high value items had waned... but it seemed like as Noah's desire for change grew, so did the scarcity of high value jobs and tasks to accompany it.
The Pendleton's for the first time in a while were starting to have their funds stretched thin. And a defeated Noah, whose prayers were was all so ignored by the demon realms kindest God was starting to break apart once more.
But he had warned himself against this, he wasn't to put his sister through all this again, to put Renee through another one of his episodes.
"There's no time."
"I'm running out of time."
Regardless of what Noah thought though, there was no escaping the thoughts that plagued his mind day in and day out.
It was complete. The vicious cycle that claims many a life in the Vita slums had just sunken its claws into a new victim. And it was ready to drag out whatever life he had in him as time wore on.
The dejected and broken Noah's jobs soon stopped resembling that of disciples. Increasingly becoming more and more riskier as the jobs wore on, the danger of each job and legality being called into question each time.
His family worried, but who can stop a man who decides that this is the way wholeheartedly... who can stop a man who forsakes himself for the goal of another.
....as time wore on, somehow, when it came to the Pendleton's, jobs always seemed to thin out right before they reached. Which almost always prompted the eldest Pendleton to swing in charge and take on the type of jobs his father was plagued with at his end.
But unlike his father, Noah had his daughter. And his sister.
Surely this wouldn't happen again.
Surely, they, he, had learned from their past, right??
Well, history has a funny way of repeating itself.
Dusk settled on one fateful day.
The streets had been riddled with a convenient famine for a couple of weeks now, and the Pendleton family had gone a couple days with missed meals when a deal way to good to turn down suddenly surfaced.
{Volunteers Wanted}
-In need of people to test out a new anti-aging cream
{Reward}
-Tickets to the imperial dome for the family of the volunteer.
That's absurd. Surely there's a catch.
It can't be as simple as that.
All but it was. And believe it or not, despite how dense the older Pendleton sibling is, even he knew that taking this job might mean he never returned.
I mean it was clear in the fine print, 'tickets to the family', it said nothing about the volunteer.
But if this was how Noah was going to give his family everything.
If this was how he would make the memories and moments he so coveted, then he would do it. In a heartbeat and tens times over if ever given the chance again.
It wasn't an easy sell. The quarrels were as aloud as his dedication to the cause.
But Renee couldn't knock any sense into him after he announced his intentions. And the household was thrown for a loop.
It mattered not though, for old Noah had already steeled his resolve. And on that day...
Along with another twenty three people...
Noah took part in an experiment that would in the end, all but sully the memories he had with his family.
An experiment, that involved the dangerous ore, Detereoxite.
"..."
"..."
-To Be Continued-