KISMET ─ vento aureo.

INTERLUDE V *. ⊹

★ ⁺ — SEARCH FOR TRUTH

content warning: descriptions of blood and violence

★˚⋆ LEONE ABBACCHIO ONCE JUMPED IN front of a moving vehicle to save his mother. Then again, they had been leaving the school parking lot and no one was driving faster than a crawl, but nonetheless, he threw himself in front of his mother without hesitation, his little arms outstretched.

She ruffled his hair and smiled fondly. "My hero," she said, and Abbacchio felt like a small star, ready to burst into the sky.

It was Abbacchio's duty to protect his mother. His father told him as much every time he left for work.

"Take care of your mother, Leone," Abbacchio's father would say.

Abbacchio's mother would look up from where she was grading assignments."From what? Little elementary kids?"

"You never know," Abbacchio's father would whisper conspiratorially. Abbacchio would strike a jaunty salute, and his father would hide a smile before saluting his son back and stepping into his Levi.

His father was a high-ranking Galactic Authority officer. He wasn't often at home, but when he was, he had no shortage of tales to regale his son with; stories of stalking through abandoned warehouses, elector drawn, leaping out at bad guys, beating them to a pulp and locking them behind bars. They were stories straight from the holoscreen, made all the more exciting because Abbacchio's father had actually been there.

To Abbacchio, his father was his own, real-life superhero. He made the galaxy a better place, bashing away evil and restoring justice. More often than not, the grandiose word flew right over Abbacchio's little head, but he liked the way it sounded. Justice. It sounded right and true. There could be no greater thing than justice.

"What does justice mean?" Abbacchio decided to ask his mother one day.

"It's to be fair and reasonable," she replied. "It's to make sure that people are treated in the way they deserve. And if they behave badly, it's to make sure they face the consequences."

Abbacchio nearly keeled over from amazement. From then on, everything Abbacchio did was for justice. Crossing the street, eating his apple slices, saying goodnight to his stuffed lion. It amused the adults and aggravated his friends. No doubt he crushed the word to pieces, wielding it as often as he did in his little fist, but the word resonated with him. As he grew older, it would continue to resonate. It became Abbacchio's true north, corny as that was, some integral part of him that he measured his heartbeats and breaths by. He always mentally sauted to the blindfolded statue he passed on the way to school everyday. He never told anyone, but he considered the statue of justice outside of the GA office to be his guardian angel. If nothing else, she was the one thing he could trust in.