The Custodes

Chapter 1 - Neo

Once inside he made his way to the large open area of the warehouse, which had a somewhat see-through ceiling that let faint trickles of light inside, and stood facing one of the walls. Neo constantly found himself having too much time on his hands, but luck for him he'd found a way to deal with it. 

Everyone had their hobbies, but his felt - at least to him - like a pretty special one. 

He stood with his hand outstretched in front of him, focusing directly at the permanently singed part of the wall in front of him. Suddenly a beam of pure darkness shot clean from his palm, darting through the air before colliding with the wall and causing a loud rattling sound to echo through the warehouse. 

That was what set Neo aside from the rest of society - his powers. 

Well, that and his weird-looking eyes, but he was sure those weren't as big a deal. 

Without wasting any more time, he began shooting more and more beams at the wall, as well as numerous other attacks like arcs of darkness, balls of darkness, blades of darkness and so on.

Darkness tended to be the central theme, and it was the only thing Neo was able to do. He'd experimented around a lot ever since he discovered his powers, at a far younger age, but never seemed to be able to do anything that wasn't dark-related. He wasn't complaining though, since he could do pretty much anything that fell under that category, from conjuring dark boulders to making dark butterflies fly. 

Unfortunately, he'd only ever really needed the powers in any sort of situation once in his life. Other than that, he practically never used them except for fun, so he felt like there was no point in going around flaunting them for all to see. 

There was only one other person Neo knew for sure had powers like him but there was a lot of history and bad blood between the two of them, so he doubted they'd come into contact with the man any time soon, or ever again. 

After spending most of the day practicing his moves at the warehouse, Neo decided to head back into town and get some food. He'd brought just enough money with him to get something decent to eat, so he planned on stopping off at some sort of fast-food restaurant. 

The boy soon returned to the busy streets of the city centre and was making his way towards the food stores when he spotted some commotion in the middle of the street. A few people had stopped and were watching a man who had placed himself in the centre of the road, his arms open slightly in a strange almost God-like pose. 

He looked to be roughly in his twenties, with dark black locks that had been styled sideways on his head and chiselled features on his face, given him a sort of intimidating yet admirable aura. He wore a simple white shirt and some business-like trousers, and everything about him actually seemed normal except from the way he was acting. 

Neo had stopped walking, watching the man with a curious expression as cars beeped at him and a few passerbyers shouted for him to move. He didn't listen to any of them however, his eyes closed as he stayed perfectly still where he was. 

The angry shouts continued, until suddenly they were all simultaneously cut off by the man screaming "SILENCE!" His voice boomed like thunder, taking so many of those around him by surprise that hardly anyone spoke for a solid ten seconds. 

The man's eyes opened, and that's when Neo noticed that they were unnaturally red - which immediately started ringing alarm bells in his mind. A few pedestrians were starting to back away, clearly unnerved by the man, while some took out their phones and began videoing what was going on. 

"This city is mine now, and all of its inhabitants will bow down to me or perish. Understood?" 

The man still spoke loudly, but it was much less intense than before.