Hey all, I know it’s not very long but I just wanted to get the basics going for Rivalis. Thank you IncompetentDreamer for the review! Constructive criticism is always welcomed.

Elexies

Part 1— Rivalis

Rivalis Severo didn’t know where he was born, what his childhood was like, who his parents were, or anything of that nature. He didn’t recall his first love in his teenage years, he didn’t know if he’d played football, was in a club of some sort, what job he used to have, what had encouraged him to join the CORPSE, or even what his favorite food and color had been. As far as he was concerned, Rivalis Severo had been born May 23, 2016. He was twenty-one years old and his father was Liridon Cadeyrn and his mother was the CORPSE. His first love was Yoshi Sumiko who was nineteen and died the day after he declared his love for her. There was nothing special about her death, by COPRSE standards at least; she was just impaled by an iron pole. Worse things had happened, and she hadn’t even had her mind raped.

Rivalis happened to be an incredibly vengeful fellow though, as he later discovered, and he disobeyed orders and went after her killer. The only real problem was that, at the time, he didn’t know who killed her, or that the man had died the same day. In lieu of the actual killer, Rivalis sought out Dercius, who had been the man’s officer. The fight had been pathetically quick and it was a miracle Rivalis had lived at all, or better yet that Dercius had let him live at all. Rivalis had dragged himself in some random direction for a few days before wandering into a CORPSE camp. After two months when he was healed and a bit better, he’d been reprimanded and publicly punished. After about another month he was sent to the third floor where he was trained strenuously. The CORPSE was fascinated with those who lived after mind rapes and who didn’t go crazy. Actually, those who didn’t go completely crazy.

Rivalis couldn’t say what his personality was like before his mind was raped, but he did know that now he was really little more than a servant, and honestly he was more or less happy with his position. He grew in strength and when he told to go do something, he did just that. It was a sick system, but one that he’d only known all of his ‘life’ and it’d gotten to the point it didn’t matter. He just wanted to kill PSE bastards. He liked killing them. He took the utmost delight in barraging them with anything he could throw, his powers somewhat more impressive than most. He happened to like showing off on the field and watching the slight terror in PSE member’s eyes before he slaughtered them. He enjoyed his job.

He’d only met a handful of people that had survived mind rapes, and he’d only met three that weren’t completely off their rocker afterwards. Rivalis wasn’t sure if he considered himself lucky. He wasn’t honestly sure if he’d always been such a hateful person, but he knew he was now. He disliked most people he met; he’d even disliked Liridon when he first met the man and still rather did. The trainings he’d been put through were strenuous, the tests most often times painful, and Liridon was always too pleasant throughout the pain, always reassuring him it was for the better of the CORPSE, of the people of America and the world. The words rarely encouraged Rivalis to suck up the pain.

There were only a few people Rivalis liked, in actually, one person he’d ever really found right off he didn’t mind. That would be Miss Bianca Ariana. He remembered surveying her camp and there she’d been, struggling with all of her push-ups and reminding him of his self. Albeit, he didn’t remember Training Level I, but he did remember the push-ups that Liridon put him through, and after a few hundred they got really tough. He didn’t know for certain though. Bianca was very pretty to him, but he’d met pretty girls before, prettier girls even. It was probably just the fact he could relate to her so well. The White Patch had been yelling at her and she’d been struggling for all her worth, thoughts of despair and embarrassment flitting through her mind. He related to her the most out of every person in that room.

Then when she snapped.

He could admit to himself, and maybe most any person that dared to ask, that at that particular moment in Bianca’s life, in their budding relationship, she was the most beautiful he’d ever seen her. Her hair had been loose and curling about her face, blowing behind her with the force of her rage, her eyes had been over taken with a white light and her smalls hands had been digging into the stone beneath her. Her uniform was scratched and torn, her own body covered in tiny red marks from stones flying back. She’d been radiant.

Liridon didn’t take too much interest in her at first though, and it’d taken a lot of encouragement on Rivalis’s part before he could encourage the Blindfold to sign the papers to move her to HQ. Of course, by the time everything was already to be arranged her camp had been attack and she’d been brought in days later, mind raped and sobbing like a child. Rivalis had felt a bitter humor. It was like Yoshi, brought into the medical bay with a huge gash in her stomach, bleeding everywhere, already on the brink of death. He’d allowed Miss Ariana to stay in his room, not entirely because there wasn’t somewhere else to stay, but he had a burning hope inside that maybe she would pull through and be sane.

He didn’t know Miss Ariana. He didn’t really know what she was like before the CORPSE and the mind rape and Dercius. He supposed either way, she’d turned out for the better in the end. She was a skittish creature that struck him as amazingly shy, like a wounded animal that needed a hell of a lot of patience before it’d allow itself to be touched or mended. She was cheerful enough, always laughing at his pathetic jokes and always trying to strike up a meek conversation or two when the silence became too much for her. Rivalis liked her a lot, and it was this approval of her and this intense affection that brought him to a brand new conclusion of himself, something he’d never before known about Rivalis Severo: he was amazingly jealous and possessive.

Seeing Bianca in that man’s embrace at the cafeteria had infuriated him, driven him to an almost homicidal brink of jealousy. He loathed the man and deep down he almost loathed her for smiling up at him so fondly. He’d wanted nothing more than to kill the man that held her, that grinned at her, and that showed off in front of her. He’d never really been jealous of things over Yoshi. Yoshi had been a pretty girl like Bianca, but she’d not had really any friends. She stuck to herself completely, sitting alone except for when he shyly sat down beside her at meals, studying in her compartment, keeping to herself during any training she might have. Yoshi was a solitary creature. Bianca, he knew, meant to be, thought she was, but simply wasn’t. She had too many dear friends, too many people that cared about her on some level, to be solitary. With Yoshi he felt he had all the time in the world, with Bianca he knew this wasn’t so, and was going to take every step he could to make sure she knew exactly where his feelings were and that he expected her at some level to return them.

Of course, feelings weren’t as simple as war tactics.