Theoretically , it begins long before the epidemic of Chronic Query Fever or even the avalanche. They had always been there; that thought had always been in their minds. Their eyes had always been darkened with hunger and their souls corrupted with power.
Theoretically.
The group, however, only started in the 1950s. It began as a cruel slur in a bar, said by a close-minded fellow, towards a young woman stirring her drink using telekinetic abilities: Dang magic freaks.
It was overheard by two men, late forties, sitting in a booth in the far corner. They contacted the intolerable drunk after he excited the bar, and that was all that was needed to start something.
Start something terrible.
They met in secrecy for a while, their numbers growing. The original three did not find people; people found them. Their numbers, their ideas, and their intolerance grew rapidly, becoming more and more of a threat every day. They continued to grow until finally it became an organization, and every organization has something in common.
A name.
Their group was entirely built on hypocrisy, a lust for power, and an insane concept of perfection. They wanted to rid the world of people with magic, abilities, powers, whatever you wanted to call it. They hated the angels, the demons, the pixies, the shape-shifters, element controllers, and anyone with any sort of power, despite the fact the majority of the members had powers themselves.
So they had a simple alternative. You joined, or you died. Their concept of perfection would be a world where everyone that had powers would be in their organization, and those that did not join their group would become nothing but lowlife peasants. Everyone would be controlled by them. Though certain parts of the world still upheld a monarchy, most had moved on. They wanted to change that.
They were the almighty. The all powerful.
The Divine.
You might have been confused when it was mentioned that all people with abilities would be in the Divine. There were those that entered without abilities, most definitely. But you might like to remember the original two that first made contact with the man outside the bar.
One of the two was extraordinarily special.
One of the two had the ability to give others power.
At first the Divine had no leader. The second man, the one without that certain ability, suggested keeping the power even, so that no one person became too greedy.
That man had an accident involving a stalled car and a train some time later, but that is an entirely new story.
After that, the first man became the leader, the man that had the ultimate gift. He had always been an anti-social man, and not that many had seen him in person. Only four or five other people had seen the man in person; all of them met an untimely and 'random' death, not unlike the first man.
The man drifted into the background, controlling the Divine from a distance. He claimed his existence was for one purpose and one purpose alone: destroy the Fairies.
{Can't you hear the twinkle in that name, that happy little shimmer?}
The Fairies were the main reason the Divine was even started. The Fairies were the polar opposites of the Divine; a group built on purity and the wish to keep peace.
The Divine wanted nothing more than to destroy the group.
They were also made up of magic characters except of a more specific breed. There had only been two originally, two creatures that vaguely resembled a man and a woman. They were nothing but wisps of air and light, able to take the shape of humans when absolutely needed. They felt threatened and became afraid that they would be killed before they could reproduce, so they had children. 4 daughters. 6 members of this group, and yet they would always be more powerful than the Divine.
There was a certain aspect of the girls that the Divine hated the most. The Divine hated the extraordinary ones that would not join them, and the girls were far from ordinary.
The daughters were bodiless souls.
While that infuriated the Divine, it also made it very easy for them to take them out. The girls needed hosts. Unlike their parents, they could not take on a human form on their own. They were wisps and light without a host. They needed bodies to live in; they couldn't live on their own as just spirits. They would have to find a body to share; a normal body. And in return for sharing the body the girls would teach their host their power. A normal person could be easily crushed. All they would have to do was wait for the girls to take hosts, and then track them down.
But they wouldn't find hosts. Apparently, they didn't need them just quite yet.
Nothing could coax them into taking hosts. The leader of the Divine tried everything he could think of: threats, ransoms, bargaining. He killed the only male in the group and took his name for spite and mocking
{Father. What a ridiculous name. What a ridiculous promise of security}
as the female leader was named Mother
{The kiddies hate it when Mommy and Daddy fight}
but still it seemed there was no way to win. No way to succeed. No way to get what he wanted.
He had originally hoped to send a few of his more assassin-based members after them, but he discovered a problem with some people that were in the group the longest. He noticed that eventually they just became Shadows of their former selves, probably a side affect of being given their power from Father.
It seemed hopeless until a few years later. He met a new man, a timid man that would be easy to manipulate.
His name was Niatsu.
He was the conductor for the Orchestra Delora, 36 years of age. His skin was off-white and his hair was the color of sunshine in the right light. His eyes were a beautiful brown color, although they were almost always hidden under his short, light eyelashes. The man had a slight stutter, and his lips were constantly chapped from his obsessive habit of running his tongue over them when he became nervous. He was sweet and always nervous, and could constantly be seen fluttering his large white wings. The only time he ever seemed to be at peace was during a concert, and during those brilliant hours his features were nothing short of tranquil. He was as close to an angel as you could become , and he was in love. And a man in love could be convinced to do anything.
He was the perfect candidate. He was physically fit, had no set opinions, would try hard to reach his goals, and was terribly skittish. He was a mouse in a man, and as easy to use as a puppet on a string.
She was the head violinist, a pretty woman named Feliern. She had bright green eyes the color of seafoam, and long, mousy hair that reached her shoulders in a layered style. She was a little crass and very opinionated; never the one to be defeated. She carried herself with a certain swagger that Niatsu adored and yearned for. He adored her; loved her to a giddy extreme. They dated for a short amount of time before getting married. Their relationship was simplistic and happy; they discussed having children and maybe retiring early.
It all ended when Feliern became abruptly ill one day.
Niatsu was desperate for her survival.
It was only 1962 and medicine wasn't what it is today, but he refused to give up. He went to every doctor in his city, and then in neighboring cities, and then in the cities neighboring the neighboring cities. Eventually he found a doctor that diagnosed her with Q Fever , or 'Query Fever' to be exact. He gave what he could, but by then Feliern had a stream of antibiotics running through her system, and the Tetracycline given to her didn't mix well with the other medicines. She slowly got worse, wasting away in the hospital, and remained that way until flyers appeared in the hospital.
Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Endless papers, taped and tacked up on every square inch of every single wall. All of them, every sheet, every poster, had the same words printed on them.
:"Do you want to save her?":
It baffled everyone working at the hospital, from the doctors to the candy stripers. No one could explain how they got there, and it seemed like every time some were taken down more just appeared. All of them blaring that single phrase, all of them haunting Niatsu's subconscious.
He wasn't positive they were talking to them. How could he be? There were tons of female patients in this hospital, some of them also dying, and most of them wanted the women to live.
He felt claustrophobic every time he walked down a hallway as the papers watched him, ruffling sometimes when air would leak through the windows. Every single day they watched him as he walked to his wife's room, and he would cringe when one of them fluttered.
:"I w-would do anything," he mumbled to himself as he made his way across the linoleum. "I wou- I would do anything to save my Feliern.":
:"Anything?":
Niatsu whipped around, his shoes screeching on the polished floor. Behind him stood what he thought was a candy striper. He was a dark-skinned man wearing the traditional stripes, holding a wooden clipboard in one hand. The man was tall, around 6 feet, with very broad shoulders.
:"Excuse m-me?" Niatsu stuttered, feeling his hands already begin to shake.
:"Will you do aaaaannnyyytthhiinggggggggg to save her?" the man asked again, reaching out his arms in a wide gesture, grinning a toothy grin. Some of the flyers on Niatsu's left fluttered, and he flinched away from them.
:"Y-yes?" Niatsu told him, his voice quivering and betraying his terror.
The man shook his head. "You have to give a reaaal answer. Not a question.":
:"Niatsu," a small voice called. The light-skinned male turned around again, gazing towards the room the words had floated from. "Niatsu, my love. Where are you? What is going on out there?":
He turned back to the candy striper, his light skin greening slightly.
:"Ye-ye-" he cut off to swallow and lick his lips nervously. "Yes. I will do anything to save her.":
:"Would you sell your heeaarrttt?":
As if knowing it was being spoken of, his heart began thundering in his ears. Sell your heart? Was that possible? What would happen? Would he die?
:"Would I die?" he asked quietly, wringing his hands together.
:"No.":
Niatsu nodded shakily. "Do you have a na-name?" he asked.
The man just smiled. "We do not need names. We are all Father's sons and daughters.":
Niatsu nodded again, then fled. He ran towards his wife's room, his shoes thundering against the floor. When he arrived she was lying in bed with her eyes closed, still as ill as always. It killed him -- no, pained, it was a word he wasn't afraid of using -- to see his darling wife this way.
She opened her eyes as he stood next to her bed, and he noticed that her eyes were a faded color. She smiled faintly. "Niatsu.":
He swallowed back his sorrow and nodded, kneeling by her bed and taking her hand in his. "I'm right here," he assured her. "I love you.":
Feliern nodded, closing her eyes again. "I love you too, Niatsu. I love you and I will always love you.":
He nodded, blinking back the tears he felt coming. He gave her hands a little squeeze, having received the answer he needed.
Niatsu stood again and left the room, rubbing his eye. The candy striper was still there, still grinning, and Niatsu stopped many yards away from him.
:"I will sell my heart.":
The man nodded, and then walked forward. Niatsu stumbled backwards, but the man was quicker. He dashed behind him and tied a cloth around his mouth, despite Niatsu's squirming and wild eyes. He cried out, though the sound was all but silenced by the cloth. The candy striper smiled broadly as he grabbed hold of the bottom feathers of Niatsu's right wing, ripping them from the membrane. The sound of them being ripped from their home echoed around the halls, off the flyers, and Niatsu shrieked in pain. Though he could not speak his eyes asked the question.
:"What are you doing?!":
:"Only angels may fly.:

A caricature Of intimacy

He was changed after that, Niatsu. He did not die, and neither did Feliern, but the man was changed mentally and physically. The most noticeable things about his physical form that had been changed was his skin: it had now turned a sickly lavender color, a painful mockery of Feliern's skin tone. His ears had receded and vanished, now only holes in the side of his head. His hair had darkened and become greasy and ragged, and they had destroyed his wings, tearing off his left one and mutilating his right. The membrane was now reddish-black with pale red feathers, and there was something cold in his eyes, though they were now nearly invisible under his thick, wild bangs. He was prone to wild grinning and had developed an in-your-face, raunchy attitude. Feliern hated his new self, but she stayed in hopes she could change him back.
Father had high hopes for the success of Niatsu, so he gifted him with some of the best abilities he could manage. The first ability given to Niatsu was the ability to control other's physical forms through baton movements, which Father thought was very clever. He also gave him faster reflexes, which everyone in the Divine was given. Then Father splurged and decided to give this new recruit his favorite power, the power to kill everything he touched with his bare skin. He also stopped aging, but that wasn't a gift, that was a side affect of losing his heart.
Niatsu's wardrobe changed along with everything else. He wore long sleeved shirts and long pants every single day, along with gloves and a signature black top hat with a red rim. He did this so that he may still touch Feliern, because he could touch her if there was cloth in between his skin and hers.
Somewhere in his now criss-crossed mind, Niatsu still loved Feliern. He still adored her and worshiped the ground she walked on, but now that his brain was wired so incorrectly he could not tell one emotion from another. He still pressed her for children, something she absolutely did not want to have anymore -- not now, not when they could be like the new him.
Niatsu could not force a child from her, as he could not touch her, which made him all the more furious. She considered running away now, but with no where else to go she was trapped. And who said if she ran he wouldn't just track her down? She was cornered now and had no choice but to live out her life with him.
She was dead three months later.

It's a Dark dizzy Merry-go-Round

It was over in a mere six minutes. Feliern took a walk to clear her mind through the dense block of trees near their home. Niatsu noticed her absence almost immediately and followed her, moving like lightning through the forest. At one point he stumbled and reached out his right hand to steady himself. His gloved palm scraped against the rough bark of a tree. He took no notice and continued on, which would later to prove to be his second biggest mistake of his existence. It was one of his better days; you could also see his real side peaking through. He caught up to his wife quickly, much to her misery. He walked with her silently, his mouth a steely line as the cogs in his brain clicked furiously. Feliern kept her eyes glued to the ground, only occasionally peaking back up at the man she once loved. She kept opening and closing her mouth but never speaking. After the change it seemed they had changed personality; Niatsu was abrasive while Feliern was passive . She stayed silent until, finally, she had the courage to say what she truly felt. Feliern looked up at him and opened her mouth. "I don't-":
Her foot became caught on an upraised tree root. She faltered, then her body moved forward as it aimed to crash to the ground. Niatsu noticed immediately and reached out to grab her, to save her from the fall. His right hand brushed her arm.
She was dead before she reached the ground.
He stood there by her lifeless body for hours, unmoving. Traumatized. His mind shut off and rearranged things, sending him down a horrible spiral of denial that he would never recover from. He stood silently as the stomach acids built in his stomach and tore apart his insides. Feliern was dead; his wife was dead. The one thing he ever loved in life was gone, gone now because of him, gone now because of his attempt to save her. Both his attempts to save her. He had cursed them both from the beginning all because of his selfish need for her.
Niatsu stood by her cooling corpse, barely breathing, silently wishing to cease existing, until Father himself arrived. It's like he had known it was going to happen; it was as if he had had everything planned out from the beginning.
:"She was nothing," Father told him in a monotone, unloving voice. "She was scum and she was holding you back. Come to your real family. We are all family. You will be my son.":
Niatsu looked over at the monstrosity when he uttered that last sentence. Son. The other man had said something like that, something about being the son of someone. He knew that Father was lying to him; he knew that Father didn't care about him.
But he also knew that he had no life and no purpose anymore, so he agreed, weeping for the final time in his existence.
So Niatsu joined the Divine, and his mind never recovered from that day. Sometimes when he closed his eyes he saw her, that stunned look on her face when she realized he was trying to help her, and the color draining from her eyes as she crumpled to the ground. He eventually went into complete denial and would see her sometimes, as other women. He would approach them and call them by her name, and those foolish enough to go back home with him would have their bodies discarded the next day. He became convinced she was still out there; his Feliern; his wife; and that they could still be together and have children. He climbed the ranks over the decades, excusing his own actions as his body count raised. Eventually he reached a position that was comfortable for him: he became the guard for the prisoners. He didn't actually 'guard' them, and instead either convinced them to join, got the information needed, or silence them if needed. He became a creature beyond human compassion and logic, and did not make friends with any of the other men.
The only person he 'befriended' (if you could call their loveless relationship lacking any sort of affection or attention friendship) was a rude, obnoxious, miniature pixie named Kerja. She was one of the Divine's little toys; shrunken and changed at the mere whim of Father for his entertainment. She was rarely in the actual vicinity of the Divine, but when she was there people left her alone due to the general perception that she was useless. She hung around Niatsu simply because she knew they were both similar; ripped from their natural lives to be molded into this little puppet ideal for the Divine. Niatsu varied from thinking of her as his constantly-ignored conscience to believing she was some sort of spirit messenger that would lead him to Feliern, and constantly asked her vague, unanswerable questions about her whereabouts.
Time passed, though he was not aware of it. He still thought it was 1963. He was oblivious to the outside world and the fads it went through, oblivious to all reality, until Fate herself decided to smack him in the face. She began it with an 8-year-old prisoner and her understanding eyes, then a 14-year-old, broken and defeated and still braver than he will ever be, but then Fate brought it home with a single person.
A little boy, only 5-years-old when they first meet.

And I am strung along like a toy heart