The crowd outside of Ruina Academy was overwhelming; onlookers and gawkers flocked from the far corners of town in a rash sense of morbid curiosity. People of all shapes and backgrounds congregated together, craning necks and screaming questions to a very short-staffed dreary-eyed detective force and an equally frazzled headmistress. The lights of the city guard's vehicles and the absurd number of news vans parked at the entrance only heighten the strobing chaos.

To an average person, the madness of the crowd would seem like the last place someone who had committed a very high-profile crime would choose to hide. For Davion Elmdew, however, it served as an ideal vantage point as he watched the old and rusted gears of detective-work turn.

Davion held his face low, a large baseball cap pulled down, helping to hide his more prominent features. When it came to stealth and espionage, he had drawn the short straw on genetics; his large ears, green eyes and pointed nose all choired together to distinguish him. So when he needed to hide from guards, reporters, and detectives, he wore the hat.

From his position in the crowd, Davion could watch the comings and goings of the school; he watched as they carried Seabright's massive body on a stretcher, the miniature sheet they had placed over him only partially covering his blood-covered corpse. The detective, a short, stocky woman wearing a very unflattering golden chest plate, stepped out with the body, huffing and not looking the least bit happy.

Davion smiled, knowing her reaction meant they were also clueless about where the watch was. But then again, he also wasn't the least bit closer to finding this stupid watch either.

He was frustrated; after all his efforts, the bodies he had to pile and the blood he had spilled, to be so close to his prize and purpose. And to have it all ripped away with no explanation was agonising; for the hundredth time that night, the memory of losing it looped in his mind, driving him crazy with rage.

He remembered Seabright falling to the ground and seeing the watch grasped tightly in his chubby green fingers. He remembered the blissful, beautiful happiness that flooded his heart like a boy seeing a puppy for the first time.

Then to watch it just vanish.

Poof.

Into smoke and air, like a boy seeing his puppy disappear in front of him.

It was nothing short of a cruel and relentless joke played on him by the universe. Why was this happening to him? Why couldn't he have this one thing? This one favour from the universe would have granted him such a colossal amount of happiness. The universe obviously doesn't reward good people anymore.

Well, objectively, Davion couldn't say he was a good person; He had killed so many people; not to mention the torture, robbery, general mayhem, destruction, and, he supposed, the occasional bout of littering. So yeah, ok, maybe he wasn't a good person by the universe's standards; but who was the universe to judge?

Davion's pity party was interrupted when the academy's entrance flew open. He watched in sicking horror as a ravenous group of reporters flocked to the guardsmen as they left the building. Some of the guards looked injured; limbs were missing, and faces were bleeding; Davion was reasonably sure one guard would just straight up cark it right on the academy stairs. But out of everyone that walked out, the most shocking was a short, sharply dressed man in a blood-stained brown tweed suit.

His uncle looked injured, but not critically – one eye was swollen shut, and his lip looked like an overinflated balloon. He shuffled with a slight limp and was escorted by two more guards, each keeping a tight grasp on his shoulders.

Jesus, old man, what have you been up to?