Sorry it's been a really long update...have been busy with other stories.

I'm overall really satisfied with the production of this chapter. XD

DATE: 26 of June
AGE: 16
STATUS: human

The winter had come and disappeared, but it seemed as though the skies were ever unforgiving. Even in this time of great drought did the sky taunt us with black clouds, already pregnant with rain, but never spared the people of Fireman's Circle a minute drop to offer the land. Some people may have said the gods above were angry with us, angry for something that we, as humans, may have done to disrespect the land as we came. Others may have called it 'karma' and her uncanny ability to return our destitute favors when backhanded by a man's heed. I had heard many excuses for the lack of rain in the past two months, though the majority of it could simply be categorized as bizarre supernatural or religious reasons that I found extremely boring to my senses. When living on the streets, one heard a lot of things from a lot of different people, but one never could truly determine the truth from what had been dug beneath the lies.

I didn't believe it was anything but the weather acting up as if roving on a tantrum for afternoons on end. There wasn't any explanation to it but that, although my colleagues roaming the streets seemed to think there was a superior reason to the famish. To be honest, I despise it when humanity thinks of a reason to explain away some of the most simple of scientific explorations and occurrences; for one to come up with some peculiar and illogical description for the rain to suddenly cease its normal patterns was ridiculous. Once upon a childhood, I had found tales explaining away everyday peculiarities quite entertaining, and fascinating, and enthralling to my curious taste buds. Now, I was incapable of feeling the emotion so deep as to awaken a hunger within me that had no relation to the animalistic hunger I faced every day.

Living on my own had not been a plan to come so soon in my youth. I was still thankful for the ungodly opportunity to escape the clutches of my own father's relentless cruelty by disruptively excusing myself from his property and setting off on my own. I had stepped off his porch that ugly day, far off in my past, with my back turned as his only sign of goodbye as he screamed at me from the doorway. Hatred poured in vocal terms off his lips, spewed fitfully in the dead of the stress, while my mother and brother stared in bewilderment at my sudden choice. With Fang perched on my shoulder, I held my head high enough to show how dedicated I was to making that decision. If I had not, as they say, flipped the switch, however, I never would've made this independent decision to depart on my own at such an adolescent stage in my life. My humanity, before being destroyed by my brother's hand, had been my only peace of mind, what made me the Zane I had been before that. A weak, spineless child who found interest in everything, who never let himself become ruined or tormented by the opinions of others, whether they be expressed in verbal tones or excruciating actions. But Rikku's turn behind a torturous weapon had changed my mind. To be that heartbreakingly small inside of myself, as the old Zane had once been, screamed feebleness, shouted insecurity that I was no longer willing to welcome. Now, without the displeasures of suffering what came with living under my father's dominant command, I could only hope that surviving on my own was teaching those idiots a lesson. There are days when I wake up underneath the awning of an alleyway and wonder if I am being missed by my brother, or mother. But the thought never stays long after its spontaneous birth. I am always disinterested in knowing whether or not the truth is out there. I am not myself, and I have noticed.

I no longer find the small things in life interesting as I once did. Watching a moth as it rests gently on the glowing light bulb outside the back of a pizzeria no longer entertains me. I do not wish to delve deeper into the mysteries of life. I do not laugh anymore, and when I do it is sharp, clipped. I do not smile for pleasure. I do not generously hold open the door for the pregnant woman and her husband behind me, nor do I stop to help elders across the street. I do not skip along the sidewalks and wave happily at whoever happens to cross paths with a creature as carefree as I. I do not compliment people who deserve such a nice deed. I do not find dancing animals amazing anymore. I am not awestruck by a full moon, and I do not pray before I fall asleep anymore.

"Then what do you do?" you ask as a concerned reader, and I emotionlessly will reply that all I am capable of doing now is breathing, living, and hurt without knowing I am hurting someone. Without caring.

I have nothing to have anymore, but that is the true beauty of the Humanity Switch. Without the emotions that contributed to my everyday life, I am able to finally peel of the sheen of fake sparkles that I had painted the world with so I can see what reality really is. To experience what the world actually holds in store for me. I do not see everything underneath that heavy hold of heaven that I used to think really did exist, nor see the good in people even if they happened to be bad. What I see now is real. I see the starving people, the dying people, the abusers and the prostitutes and the drug addicts. I see the bankrupt shop owners and the cheaters and the parents who've lost their child. Before the Switch, I think that not only did I have a part in hiding myself from the real world, but my brother also helped shield me from these gruesome realities that I now face without emotion. I think he intended to safely buffer off the rough edges of the story to settle this false sense of security around me like a second skin. I had never realized Rikku's true intentions before. Not until now.

If I could hate, I would despise the pity.

He has come looking for me many times, you know. Even once he brought my mother. The first time he found me in the city, living on my own with the armor of my clothes and sometimes a place to crash, I had been busy trying to make a living. It was not a peaceful means of living, either, what I was trying to sell myself for. Yet around the Fireman's Circle, Mr. Trader—the bastard—had already told every manager, every employee, every shopkeeper and every janitor that I was good for nothing, that I was not able to fully complete a task without some sort of mishap to set me backwards. The town, big as it is, already had known that poor Zane Montgomery had a mental condition that put him off as an unpredictable worker, but the words of a successful trader were enough to eclipse their better judgment and cut me off from even completing the first line of a resume: my full name. Fireman's Circle is a relatively large city—once then the third largest city in Ninjago, before technology become all the rage—to hold out some sort of job for me, but all employers believed I was not workable material. If this is due to the rumors that floated with my name or the cross words of a ripped off trader, I could never be for sure, but I had to resort to what would keep my belly full and my living shambles partially stable. If I had emotion I would not be proud of my, as you might call it, profession, but it did do as I needed it to. The money paid nicely, even if what I did was against the law.

Rikku was riding Constantine till the heels of her shoes were ran raw galloping all over the city in my wake, following leads to the ring of my name for dead ends, but he finally found me at sunset, deserting in farewell with a small apartment complex and a wad of cash in my hand. I remember that the sky had been, once more, very cloudy. It was the beginning of the awful drought, the day of last rain, the final outpour of God's tears before He stopped crying forever. Sometimes, I liked to think He stopped crying because He knew that I had stopped believing, although some may argue that would make Him cry more. I knew that I would end up in hell either way for my decision to voluntarily abandon my humanity. But maybe God had only ever cried because He had known someone as useless as me was wasting his time on childish, silly things. When I stopped believing in those things, I presumed that He had moved on, too. It seemed logical in a stupendous way.

Rikku had been drenched with water, and I with sweat. As I tucked away my three-hundred dollars into a safe place underneath my clothing, I had caught sight of my estranged brother with a scowl on my face. I was not displeased to see him, for I cannot feel such a deep emotion. I only knew he would make me late to my next appointment, and that would decrease my pay.

My brother had hollered Constantine to a complete stop many feet before me and threw his heavy body over the side, rain drizzling down his nose and into his mouth, painting his brown coat a darker color with the factor of being wet. Rikku's icy blue eyes had not failed to burn through the shadows of the cloud's cover of the sun. I remember they ached when they touched my hollow face. There, in the middle of a street, he'd tried to get me to come home, to forget what had happen to me and safely crawl back into my mother's arms, like the child I was—the child he thought I was better at being. I don't think, at that point, he'd known my humanity was gone. But someone can't just forget being abused by their brother, who obediently followed their father's orders like a little bitch, even if it scarred his little brother in the process. I had, not disrespectfully nor respectfully, declined him. My voice teased from my thin lips like a robot would've spoken. I remember saying it tonelessly. I didn't care. I had tried to move around him, but Rikku had stopped me, trying to make me listen, but I hadn't. Didn't want to. If I was so worthless to the household then, what good would returning—admitting defeat—do me, to land me more scars, more aches and whispers of pain? I couldn't undo what I had done to myself by removing my own humanity. I am an empty shell.

I'd left Rikku in the pour to stare longingly after my figure. Days later, he had returned with my mother to try to coax me home. I lied to you when I said that the last I'd seen my mother was the day I left my father's household. I merely forgot that I had seen her again, but I do not beg you for your forgiveness for that lie. I don't care that I have lied to you. She walked towards me, wearing a shawl to cover herself from the chilly spring, her hair tied away from her face in a slick, glistening bun. Wrinkles painted bags beneath her eyes that Rikku blamed on sleepless nights worrying about me. Her smile was as I had remembered it: warm, loving, everything that I had wanted before the Switch. They found me sitting outside of one of the many bakeries located inside of the Fireman's Circle. To be statistically correct, I believe there are exactly seven different rivaling bakeries inside of the city, but one can never be too sure. I am positive, though, that I have eaten from every one of them at one point or another.

My mother then proceeded to ask me to come home. In my hands, I played with a hundred dollar bill and five tens, wrinkling them and folding them and wearing them down with my own thin, scraped fingers. I sat with my knees up with my elbows resting against them, my arms dangling between my legs, and all the while I could look my mother straight in the eye and tell her I wasn't coming home. If I had not flipped the Switch, that would have been a rather crucial point for me, to look deep into her blue eyes and tell my own mommy I didn't want to come home. If I cared, I would've ran into her open arms the minute they raised and spread, burying my face in her sweet shoulder to cry about how truly awful it was living on the streets, employing myself as a male prostitute just so I could pick up another meal. But I didn't care. I told her I didn't need to return to a place where a good-for-nothing old man could use me as his punching bag. More than once, she tried to convince me that my father "has changed," but I never believed her anyway. My parting statement to them was, climbing to my feet and barely skimming over the brokenhearted eyes of Rikku and my mother, "I'd rather die out here on my own than ever come crawling back to a bunch of sick bastards like you, who will only continuously beat me down and hurt me for your own pleasure." I had walked away afterwards without looking back.

Two weeks later, my mother died. They didn't know why. The reasons for this are as bogus as those concocted for the origin of the drought. I've heard that my father hit her so hard, she fell into shock and died. Some rumored it was a broken heart that her favorite baby boy wouldn't come back to her, to be her saving grace around an unworthy husband. To be honest that is the theory I most believe. I truly believe I broke her heart, and in the future that is what makes my heart crack and break when I think about being the one to cause my mother so much grief it consumed her. If I could ever go back in time and stop myself from refusing her offer to take me home, I would gladly take advantage of that chance to save her. My life would've come with such a different ending, though, and in the end that is not what I regret coming from that devastating choice.

I did not attend my mother's funeral. I remained outside of the funeral home, perched across the street on a bench dedicated to some old man I never knew, my only friend being my cat laid neatly over my shoulders, and watched the darkly painted establishment celebrate the death of an angel. It was the same place that also housed the goodbyes of my old friend, Mr. Walker, whom I had missed every day up until my humanity was gone. That day reminded me a lot of Mr. Walker's amenity. It was the day I met Carolyne and Danielle, the daughters of Mr. Julien, the man who bestowed me with Fang. The whole time I searched the dark windows for life, I couldn't seem to remove the image of two particular hazel eyes from my mind. When the service concluded, people poured from the doors like they had the day Mr. Walker was gone for good, all wearing clothing in some type of differentiating fabrics, but all of the same color consistency. The sea of black bled from the traditional doors of the funeral home, and in the school of bodies did I see my brother, Rikku, with Ming sadly wrapped around his arm. My father was at his side. A thick man, still evil and uncaring for the death of his wife. It would've enraged me.

Staring from across the street, I met my brother's eyes, dead in the crowd. He stared at me for a long, hard second. Then, as if to say something to me I wasn't catching to, he shook his head once, briskly. He didn't make eye contact with me again.

Despite my attitude towards him, Rikku didn't stop trying to come for me until he realized that I was never going to give in. It was a month and a few days after my mother's death when he accepted that I was never coming back, especially not to my father running the house without a wife to complete it. He died before he could remarry, but that's a while more into the story we haven't gotten to yet. Rikku stopped trying to convince me where my true home was, and our brotherly bond was severed completely. It would be until I caught the deadly virus hacking along at the Fireman's Circle before I ever saw him again—and by then, it had been almost too late.

By this point in the time of the story (June 26 if you've forgotten) I had already been on the streets for a long time, and it would be only a couple of days before the official six month anniversary of living by myself. Money was coming easily—I had regulars who I tended to, some once every three days, others three times a week. My profession was not hitting a dead-fast. I had even been able to afford my own one-room apartment, with a small bathroom and a half-kitchen that showed off no echo of my infatuation with cooking whatsoever. The woman who rented the room out to me said that I didn't need everything if it was just within arm's reach; the best part about snatching that apartment, though, was not the rush of independence that came with the closed deal, but the fact that it was on the top floor. I could see for a mile out my window. If I could feel, I would've loved it.

I paid off my rent with the high amounts of money I made from being a prostitute, and it seemed like the ugly events of my past faded away into barely a thought in the back of my head. The years of abuse were discolored, replaced by new memories with the girls I escorted every day, plus the many walks I took with Fang out into the city. My cat was thankfully not the type that ate or required a smelly litter box. She spent her time cooped up inside of my apartment most days with all the charming little toys I bought her, except the times when I opened the top window onto the flowerbox and fire escape so she could venture out and explore, but not stray too far. She brought me back many rather interesting surprises in her usual daytime extravaganzas, things ranging from the corpses of dead rats to the shoe of an old carpenter. Everything she brought, if she didn't return home after I did, was left as a present for me on my pillow. The kind deed was unsanitary to my tastes. Eventually, I began putting a towel over my pillow before I left for work so whatever she left me could be neatly disposed of in a trash cartridge.

When I wasn't working, I spent all my time with Fang. I didn't bother trying to make some kind of friends outside of home. People were too stupid, too fickle to be worth my time, much less the dedication and responsibility it takes for a friendship. Besides, no one would understand how I was completely empty. Void of anything. To say the least, people weren't worth the five cents it would take me to pay for an elevator ride downstairs. (And yes, you have to pay for one, which is why I take the stairs. I don't have change.)

I woke up that morning with Fang wrapped around herself at my side. The twin sized bed we shared was hard—it came with the room—enough to put a crick in my neck, but the cat seemed to lack any indentation in personality from the uncomfortable mattress. Her nose was tucked neatly under her pristine tail. I reached over with an automatic, affectionate petting across her back as I flipped onto my side, propping my head up with a perched elbow. The ball in Fang's throat rolled as she "purred" under my touch. "Good morning, girl," I murmured, bending to kiss her softly on the head. Fang, in return, stood and stretched as I kicked off my covers and did the same myself. The battery-powered clock on the wall informed me that it was twelve P.M, later than I had expected to rest, but great otherwise. My night had been late, long, and unentertaining, but it had also earned me five hundred dollars. That was enough to cover rent and spare me the cash to pay for a few home necessities. I was pleased with extending my work hours just to earn a couple more bucks. Fang whirled around my legs as I brushed my teeth over the sink with a tube of toothpaste just waiting to be thrown away and replaced with a full one. I added that to my mental list of needs to buy from the store today. "MMRRROOWOWWW," Fang hibbled from my ankles. With my toothbrush, foamy and covered with white, still stuffed in my cheek, I looked down at her and petted her smooth back with my foot.

I spat away the excess crap in my mouth and asked, "What?"

Fang was never a talker. When she made noise, I always knew she was either in pain from something happening to her gears that would needed to be fixed or she could sense something serious was about to go down. I frowned to myself and watched her jump onto the toilet seat to sit pristinely and curl her long tail around her feet, blinking at me through half lidded, black eyes. Her whiskers twitched again before releasing another long, drawn out "MRRRRRROOOWWWWWOWWWWWRRRRRROWWW."

"What is it?" I asked, frowning once more. From the small wooden table I'd grabbed off the corner, once posted under a FREE sign, I grabbed my can of shaving cream. I dabbed a wad into my palm and started lathering the fluffy white substance onto my chin. The client last night may have thought chin stubble was sexy, the whole reason I'd let it grow, but I sure as hell did not. The razor cut through the colorless foam with an even, rectangular pattern that I found attractive to my own senses. I rinsed away the residue attached to the razor head underneath the faucet, watching it wash away, gone as if it hadn't existed so quickly it was hard to process its departure. I continued to make the stubble magically disappear while I pondered why my cat had meowing irregularly. Her silence now hopefully meant whatever had bothered her was gone…

"MMRRROWWWWWWWWWWWRRRRROWWWWWRRRRROWWWWWWW!" Fang's howl made me cut my chin with the blade, slicing me deep enough to make me curse into the air and drop the razor into the sink. A warm dabble of blood began to rise in the spot where I had made a slice through a layer of skin, deep enough to need a Band-Aid. I gave her a glare as I ignored the warm pool of blood starting to collect on my face. She never normally acted like this. Something was horribly wrong with her—there had to be. If I found out she was just practicing for the alley cat aristocrat tryouts, I would surely detonate, even if I didn't have emotions. A noise so unnatural didn't come from a cat if not for a particular reason, otherwise something about this earth would be indeed screwed up completely. After completing my shave cleanly without another incident, I washed off my face and applied a bandage to the area she forced me to cut. I tossed a face towel between my fingers, turning to the cat that just stared from the toilet seat, half-lidded and quite observant. I raised an eyebrow. "You have issues," I told her, and turned on my heel.

"Mmrroww," she responded.

I made it into the main room, shuffling towards my bed and beading "Meow," tonelessly in reply, when I heard the soft knock of knuckles against the apartment door. Someone had come to visit me. I turned around to see Fang sitting in the door of the bathroom, looking at me slyly from the corner of her round eyes as if to say, Ha, ha, at me. This must've been what she was meowing about. Even in my gray sweatpants and wrinkled white shirt (still muffled from sleep) and my hair (though properly attended to) still disheveled, I made my way across the wood towards my front door, wondering who would come to see me. I had only two theories closing my hand against the brass handle and twisting: It was either some client, introducing themselves as they usually did, or it was Rikku, making a comeback to make my life a little bit more miserable every time he showed up. I had high expectations throwing open the front door.

But both of my hypotheses were incorrect.

I couldn't help it. My jaw did drop.

"Zane!" bursted the overly-happy Julien Juliens, his brown hair slicked back from his middle-aged face and his glasses slightly askew across his nose. He threw up his arms with hairbrained laughter. "How long has it been?!"

I stumbled for words. I could not produce them fast enough for him.

"Oh, never mind that," Julien laughed, waving his hands. "Pish, posh. It's been a while, my friend! You haven't seemed to be around! It wasn't too hard to find you, you know," he added, dropping his voice a few octaves as if it was classified information. "I just had to ask a couple who-what-nowheres and here you are! My, you look different. Oh, and the cat!" Julien crouched down beside Fang, who'd wriggled past my stupor to purr her way around his ankles now. Meanwhile, I continuously tried to comprehend what was happening—particularly why he was here, at my apartment—to failing premises. "What did you name her again?" He scratched Fang underneath the chin. "Flu? Ferret?"

"Fang," I managed to cough out. I know emotion is no longer in my brain's system, but what I was feeling was strangely virtual to bewilderment.

"Fang! Oh, that's right." Julien kept a smile over his face as he pet my cat, happy as could be. He spoke without reaching my eyes with his own. "You're probably wondering why I'm here," he said.

"A little," I admitted.

Julien seemed more engrossed in petting my cat and lifting her into his arms than answering that statement. Fang happily embraced him with her purrs louder than life, her eyes closed. Her nose explored his shirt like a dog might when wondering where their owner had been for so long. My lips twisted. "I came looking for you because—well, because of—"

"Did you know you have to PAY for that elevator?" said an incredulous voice, coming from further down the hallway. I felt my head turn to the side without quite understanding completely, but I could feel my whole body stop in dread when the words finally sunk in. Dread and shock seemed to be two barely-visible emotions I had pricking at the memory of how they felt, but not completely seeped outwards to whereas I could actually feel that emotion. Just the memory strung me along. From the figure coming down the hall, I recognized the swath of red hair and golden hazel eyes, the freckled cheeks, and the friendly smile all too well. It was the same face I'd been hiding from the day that I destroyed Mr. Trader's expensive stock of sellable items. I wanted to groan in pain like she'd punched me square in the gut with her presence of impending doom to come. This must've been the warning Fang was giving me earlier.

Carolyne and Julien were at my doorstep, obviously here for the unfinished purpose Mr. Julien was about to tell me. My hand involuntarily slapped itself against my own face. This, I found, was not going to end well. But it would be life changing.

Forever.

With that being said, please review and go have an AWESOME day/night!