Love Hina Fan Fiction ❯ Guardian Devil ❯ Prologue ( Prologue )

Disclaimer: I do not own “Love Hina” or any of the Marvel Characters that are in this story. I wrote this story for your conveniences. This story is based from both the Movie and the Novel of Daredevil. Both of those had been used as reference, adding more to the story.

 

Author's Note: This story will take place during Volume 14 of Love Hina, but way, way before the Wedding. What I mean is it takes place after Episode 118 “The Promise Girl”.

 

Read and Enjoy.

 

Love Hina: Guardian Devil

 

Prologue

Forget what you think you know about superheroes. Because this is the real world, and in the real world there is no such thing as “mutant healing”, “spider-sense”, or having “immortal ability” to keep a man alive. In the real world, there's just a man in a mask.

 

And he's bleeding to death…

 

But the important thing that matters the most is trying to keep the woman that he cares for, who is in worst shape than he is, alive…

 

A drop of blood landed in the greasy puddle at the priest's feet. Father William “Bill” Everett looked up in surprise, his startled gaze climbing the soot stained limestone façade of the Gothic Cathedral looming before him. The church—his church—rose from the blighted urban landscape surrounding it like a fortress in Tokyo. Twenty years ago, when Father Everett worked as one of the Missionaries, they had traveled to Japan to spread and share their religious believes to those who chose the way of Christian religion of their own free will. With granted permission from the Japanese Government, Father Everett and others who he had worked with were able to build this church in the middle of Tokyo City. When it was finally constructed, the named it “The Church of the Holy Innocents” After the place was opened, a few people started to come. Then year after year, more and more people: husbands, wives, children, and even teenagers started coming to the church; listening to the priest's ministering and talking about God and stories of the bible. Father Everett had a knack for learning different languages including Japanese, but reading and writing the words in kanji was very difficult to master. Through the years of tireless efforts for Father Everett and his predecessors, the Church of the Holy Innocents had always provided a refuge for those that seek help from crime, poverty, and bloodshed that had long characterized in the worst streets of Tokyo.

 

At least, until tonight.

 

“What the devil?” he murmured, stepping back from the blood stained puddle and crossing himself.

 

It was well after midnight, but the corner streetlights partially illuminated the western face of the cathedral. Stained-glass windows depicting various saints and apostles looked out from beneath pointed Gothic arches, while ornate stone tracery, sadly corroded by smog and acid rain, adorned the rising turrets and central spire. Father Everett's worried eyes searched the familiar planes and angles of the old church; anxious to discover the source of the blood, yet he was fearful of what he might find.

 

Please, he prayed silently, let it not be human. Although he had witnessed much evil and heartbreak during his years in New York's Hell's Kitchen, which is the only reason why he had rather stay in Japan, but already knew that things will not be so different from America. His heart had, for better or for worse, never hardened against human suffering. Let it be some poor bird or beast.

 

Steam rose from a nearby sewer grate, and a solitary rat, no doubt attracted by the scent of blood, crept up to the edge of the puddle, only to scurry away as another crimson droplet fell from somewhere above, breaking the surface of the puddle and causing lurid red circles to ripple outward. Father Everett glanced down just in time to see the husky black rat depart, before resuming his fretful quest for the blood's point of origin.

 

Then, as if to assist him in his investigation, a police helicopter came flying low over the neighborhood. The cold white beam of the copter's searchlight probed the nearby rooftops before turning its incandescent gaze on the church. Something serious is happening, the priest realized. But what—or whom—could the copter be hunting for?

 

Father Everett peered upward. At first, he spotted nothing unusual, just high church walls somewhat in need of a good scrubbing; but then, his head back as far as it could go, he lifted his gaze all the way up to the large marble crucifix rising proudly at the very peak of the cathedral's tall stone spire. His jaw dropped, and a frisson of superstitious fear coursed through his soul at the startling sight atop the cathedral, where the Devil himself could be seen draped over the outstretched arms of the cross, carrying something that looks sort of like a body around its waist.

Speak of the Devil and he will appear, Father Everett thought nervously, recalling a hoary maxim drummed into him at his mother's knee. He blinked his eyes in amazement and crossed himself for the second time in as many minutes. For an endless heartbeat or two, he thought himself genuinely in the presence of the Adversary, until his innate good sense and reason, well honed by decades of ministering to the city, reasserted itself. He knew from hard experience when he once lived in Hell's Kitchen, the Devil's works were almost always performed by human hands.

 

Looking again through more skeptical eyes, the middle-aged priest saw that the figure clinging to the spire with one hand while struggling to hold something as large as he is, exposed by the police copter's incandescent beam, was just a man wearing a devil's costume, dark crimson in color. A mask covered the upper half of his face, and a pair of matching horns sprouting from his brow was silhouetted against the full moon shining above and behind the church steeple. Some sort of prank? Father Everett wondered hopefully, more relieved than annoyed. But it's the middle of summer—Halloween is over two months away!

 

The disguised man staggered against the elevated cross, and another blood-red droplet splashed in to the puddle on the sidewalk outside the Church of the Holy Innocents. The stranger started to descend from the spire while struggling to keep hold of something from falling. Is that…a woman? Father Everett thought as he can well see that it is a Japanese woman that the figure is carrying; holding around her waist to keep a firm grip. The woman appeared to be wearing a red and white gi or hakama if he could remember correctly. But the top, white part of her gi is also stained with blood and she looked like she is in worst condition than the mask-wearing individual. She appears to be unconscious as well.

 

Father Everett knew this was no joke; the man and the woman up there were obviously hurt, perhaps seriously.

 

The worried priest held his breath, afraid that at any moment the unknown stranger would lose his grip on the cross and fall to his death, killing both him and the woman with him. The spire rose over two hundred feet above the pavement; both wounded individuals would need a miracle to survive.

 

Slowly, painfully, the stranger lowered himself onto the roof of the cathedral, holding the poor woman to dear-life. Eventually disappearing from Father Everett's sight by dipping below the ornamented turrets of the church. Did the bleeding man mean to enter the Church of the Holy innocents from the roof? Father Everett couldn't figure out where else they could go.

 

The priest stared at the locked front entrance of the church, torn between Christian charity and streetwise caution. Who knew what the intruder wanted or why the police were searching for him? What if he was armed and dangerous? And the woman; was she harmed by that man or was she with him?

 

Father Everett took a few halting steps toward the church entrance, and then hesitated once more. Despite the muggy August heat, a shiver ran through his body and the sweat on his back felt as cold as ice. He trembled in the cathedral's shadow, afraid to draw nearer. Aside from the fact that they are both hurt, he asked himself cautiously, what else do I know about them? He tugged nervously at his starched white collar only to remember solemn vows taken years ago and never regretted. He let out a fatalistic sigh and took another step closer to the door. What else do I need to know?

 

Committed now, if no less apprehensive, the priest climbed the steps to the closed double doors barring his way. His shaky hands fumbled with the padlock; as ever, he hated the fact that he had to lock the doors of the cathedral while away after dark, but it became a natural habit while living in Hell's Kitchen and he always locked the doors even if it were a three-minute walk to pick up mail.

 

The doors swung open, and he made his way through the vestibule to the nave, where a shocking tableau awaited him.

 

Moonlight entered the vast cathedral through stained-glass windows mounted high above the marble floor, throwing an eerie spotlight on the figure above the center aisle, in front of the altar at the far end of the vaulted chamber. The man in the devil's garb gripped the end of the gilded altar in an effort to keep both him and the woman he is holding around her waist from falling completely onto the scuffed marble tiles beneath his knees. The red costumed individual used some sort of cable or rope as a grappling hook; the stranger first lowered the young woman gently onto the floor. After making sure that the woman was safe from falling, the masked man started lowering himself, but a simple snap from his rope-like cable of his and he fell and collapse onto the marble tiles next to the motionless woman. With his demonic horns still protruding from his brow, he resembled a fallen angel newly cast out of Heaven.

 

Father Everett suddenly recalled a rumor he'd heard, about a costumed vigilante supposedly prowling the neighborhood, putting the fear of God, or at least the Devil, into the local hoods and drug dealers. What did the papers call him again? The priest scoured his memory, trying to remember a tabloid headline he hadn't paid much attention to before. Devil Man? The Daring Devil?

 

No. The name came to him at last. Daredevil.

 

A pain-racked groan escaped the injured man, interrupting Father Everett's moment of revelation. “Hello?” he called out, grateful that his voice shook only a little. The muffled susurrus of the helicopter's propellers barely penetrated the cathedral's high stone walls. He flicked a switch, causing two rows of lantern-shaped chandeliers to light up above the varnished wooden pews. The lamps emitted a soft golden glow that dispelled many of the shadows cast by the stained glass-tinted moonlight. Drawing strength from the added illumination, the priest hurried down the aisle toward the other man. “Can I help you?”

 

Daredevil, if that was who the stranger was, merely grunted in reply. Gritting his teeth, he tried to climb to his feet, only to falter and, gasping, drop back onto the floor. Blood dripped from what looked like a vicious stab wound in his right shoulder. The unconscious woman lying next to Daredevil looked a lot worst, Father Everett took a long look at her face; both her cheeks were bruised and cut, like she was punched to the face repeatedly and scratched by a sharp object. My God he thought as he hesitated which person to aid first, what had happened to both of them. Daredevil, who was still conscious, made another attempt to get right back up.

 

“Careful, my son,” Father Everett counseled as he helped the injured intruder onto the sanctuary floor, cradling the masked man's head. “Do not exert yourself.”

 

“Please…” he cried out weakly through shear pain from his shoulder as he pointed to the woman next to him, “…help…her.”

 

Father Everett nodded in reply, understanding that the young woman needed more immediate care than Daredevil. “Sister Maggie!” he shouted making the empty church echo from his voice, “Sister Maggie, are you still here?”

 

He waited a few seconds before a door from the other side of the room swung open as the person that he called for step through it. Entering the vestibule, a woman, who looked like she is in her late thirties, made her way to the sanctuary floor where she sees Father Everett tending to the wounded man in some sort of devil's costume. She gasped in shock as she saw that the costume individual was bleeding on his shoulder. Sister Maggie made a face that looked like she seen her own child coming home all beaten and bruised up.

 

“Sister Maggie”, Father Everett spoke her name once again, interrupting her sight from the bleeding individual and looked at Father Everett after regaining her posture, waiting for his instructions. Once he had Sister Maggie's attention, he continued, “Help that woman over there.” Father Everett pointed to the woman behind him, “Take her to my chambers and make sure she gets immediate medical care.”

 

“Understood”, Sister Maggie reply as she walked towards the motionless woman. True enough; the young woman was in dire need of medical attention as she can see the top part of her white gi is stained with blood. Years of medical experience as a nurse, she examined the wound on her left side of her ribs. If Sister Maggie does not hurry and patch up the wound immediately, the woman might bleed to death.

 

Sister Maggie hurriedly went to the young woman's side and carefully hoisted her up, putting the motionless woman's arm around Sister Maggie's shoulder to have better leverage. She trudged slowly along with the unconscious woman with her to the door where she came from.

 

When she had left to the chambers that Father Everett had suggested, he looked down on the individual who is still in great deal of pain. Upon closer inspection, he saw now that Daredevil's bizarre garb was made of sleek red leather, along with matching gloves and boots. A crimson holster strapped to his right thigh held a painted wooden shaft, about two feet long. A weapon? Father Everett guessed, briefly wondering who on earth had dared to attack such an ominous-looking individual.

 

The horned cowl concealed all but the bottom half of Daredevil's face. A white man either Japanese or American, Father Everett noted, whose strong chin and chiseled features might have appeared handsome had they not borne the ugly evidence of some recent brawl. Swollen lips, bruised and bleeding, testified that their owner had endured other blows besides the stab to his shoulder. His breath came in ragged pants, and he appeared to be struggling to remain conscious. Father Everett tried to look into the other man's eyes, only to discover a pair of opaque red lenses looking back at him. How in Heaven does he see through those? he considered.

 

Concerned that his new charge might be suffering from shock or a concussion, the priest gently undid the leather collar around Daredevil's throat and tried to peel back the mask hiding the vigilante's eyes. “No…” Daredevil murmured weakly, raising a hand to stop Father Everett, but his strength deserted him and he surrendered to the older man's kindly intervention.

 

“Sssh,” Father Everett whispered soothingly. “It's all right. I just want to see how badly you're hurt.” Confronted with the irrefutable reality of the injured man's weakness, the priest felt away as well, revealing the battered face of a young man, no older than eighteen on nineteen years. Light reddish-brown hair, slick with perspiration, was plastered to his skull, and dark purple bruises marred his clean-shaven features. Lifeless blue eyes stared past Father Everett at the vaulted ceiling and circular window rose high above them.

 

The old priest gasped in astonishment. He knew this face—indeed, he known it for years. It was a face of a boy that he had seen and known ever since the tragedy that had happened to him when he was twelve years old in Tokyo. “Matthew?” he whispered uncertainly, striving to come to grips with this unexpected revelation. “Matthew Murdock?”

 

A single red candle, never extinguished, resided in the sanctuary, symbolizing the eternal presence of the Holy Spirit. Taking care not to drop Daredevil's—Matthew's—head, Father Everett reached out and took hold of the candle by its polished silver holder. Without thinking, he brought the lighted candle closer to Matt's eyes, which remained fixed and immobile, not dilating at all.

 

Of course not, the priest realized, shaking his head. How could he have forgotten Matthew's disability? He looked down into the younger man's unseeing eyes, unsure how he would tell if life passed out of them. Dark venous blood leaked from Matthew's violated shoulder, dripping onto the marble tiles; his breath came roughly and with obvious strain. Is he bleeding internally? Father Everett worried, putting down the candle to apply pressure to the untended wound. He had already administered last rites to one of his flock this evening, an eighty-year-old man succumbing to chronic emphysema; he feared he might have to do the same to young Matthew Murdock.

 

They say your whole life flashes before you when you die, Father Everett reflected, while Daredevil's lifeblood pooled beneath him. He shifted the injured man's weight, hoping to ease his discomfort some small degree. Matthew's blue eyes gazed into nothingness.

 

Is that true even for a blind boy such as this one?