"You know Mallorn. Your father was a really good guy. One of the best people that I had met in my life.. can you tell me how you ended up becoming something like.. this?"

"Huh?" His eyes grew confused as he looked at me for a few moments before he asked,"what are you getting at?"

"Trevis was a nice guy-"

-BOOOM!!!

He attacked me at full speed, but a shield appeared between us as it easily absorbed the impact before pushing that guy away from me.

[Time Shield (Common) (Level 1)]

[Stops the time of an area of 3x3 meters anywhere you desire and blocks any and all attacks. Note that attacks beyond 10 times the user's power will shatter the shield.

Cost: 1000TP/seconds + 50 Cronas/seconds

Skill Points required to upgrade the Skill: 5]

"Nobody.. takes my father's name.. so casually," he spoke as he slowly got back up on his feet and looked at me with enraged eyes.

"But I was-"

-Whoosh!

Once again, he jumped at me with full speed

[Temporal Deceleration (Level: Max)

Effects: Allows the user to slow down time as much as the user wants [Max 90%]

Cost: 25TP/sec]

[Temporal Deceleration(Copy)!]

Stopping the time by 100 times, I simply dodged him before speaking,

"But I was given permission to do that from your father himself." Not ready to listen, the poor kid let his emotions take control of his actions as he threw himself at me. He tried his best, but his moves were amateur at best, thus dodging and parrying him was a piece of cake.

"What do you know?" he spoke as his eyes traced me before continuing,"My father is my hero. To take his name so casually, who do you think you are?"

"I am Michael Aroa," I said as I looked at him, making him glare at me a little more than I continued,"though I am more familiar with the world as.. Code White."

His movements stopped whatever they were doing and his eyes looked at me with a strange gaze as he made a slightly odd expression before speaking with his eyes dead set on me,

"Code White is dead. Are you making fun of me?"

"Why would I be dead?" I spoke with a smile, and it still didn't seem like he believed me. His eyes were tracing me up and down as he asked,"do you have any proof?"

"I made sure I didn't leave behind any. The terrorist's brother is still out there. I don't want to involve my family into this anymore," I spoke as I looked at him and hearing my words, his eyes widened as he shouted,

"Vertigo!"

I nodded as I spoke,"yeah. Many times I had found evidence that he was trying to trace me and the others who escaped from the Valentine's day event-"

"Wait! Wait! Wait! What do you mean by escaping?" His eyes brightened for a few moments and a slight heart ache occurred deep in my heart as I spoke,"Not all of us. Your father.. let's say he chose to stay to let the rest of us escape." "Tell me everything," He spoke as he looked at me with those deep piercing eyes and I nodded before explaining to him all the things that had transpired on Valentine's day.

historical

It took about 3 hours or so, but I explained the whole story to him in brief, while, detailing the parts where Trevis was involved. He looked at me with a keen expression as he listened to everything from the start to the very end.

Sometimes he made expressions of grief, other times like a child he smiled when I told him his father's jokes. He was angry when Trevis was beaten and proud when his father stood among the other survivors. And in the end.. a sad but satisfied expression appeared on his face as he looked at me.

"Thank you, Michael.. or more like.. Sir Michael," he said as he looked at me before speaking,"I don't think you know this, but I have an ability that allows me to see the authenticity of any information provided to me. It does cost a bit of my life force, so I don't usually use it at all. But I guess it was fine to use on this occasion."

When he said that, I immediately checked for his skills and found the skill that he was using till now,

[Reverberation Echo!]

[Produces an echo within your ear and differentiate the power of words that are being presented to you. Can tell the difference between real and fake information.

Cost: For each second, the ability is used, it costs 100 Permanent Cessation Energy]

A sigh escaped my mouths as I looked at that guy as I asked,

"What transformed you into this? Your father.. he wouldn't be proud to see you like this, you know?"

And my words made him emotional a little as he sighed deeply,"you know Sir Michael.. when my father died.. I was heartbroken, shattered into pieces. I cried for so many days. But that wasn't enough to break me... You know what broke me?"

He turned at me and spoke something that made my heart skip a beat.

"It was Vertigo. He found my family.. killed our entire family, relatives and everyone else.. I survived, let's say because.. He was a psychopath. After killing everyone, he let me live because he wanted me to suffer, and that was the start of my misery.."

Mallorn then told me everything Vertigo did to him, from his middle school to highschool life and how everyone around him basically spoke ill of him. His mother, a social worker, became infamous as a prostitute who died while.. Well, things changed a lot for Mallorn and everything and everyone was giving him another reason to kill.

And on the fateful day, he wanted to kill himself, the Zombie Apocalypse occurred, giving him another chance. Mallorn didn't want to kill himself anymore.. he had no desire for that.. He thought of ways to build an empire and strike Vertigo because most of the powers of Vertigo must have taken a hit because of this apocalypse.

"I confess I have discriminated between the Gifted and the non-gifted, but that was only because those people are the same ones who spoke ill of my family and my parents and my sisters. It's hard to control your anger, you know? It was tiring to hear that, so I began killing everyone who spoke ill of my family, soon shutting everyone," He spoke as he laid on his back.

"What of Irene's father?" I asked with a keen expression. Surely he wasn't one of them, was he?

"He was someone whose friend I killed in front of him. Same reason, of course, he bad-mouthed my father without any restrictions. Irked me out so much that I lost control. This, in turn, angered Irene's father, and a fight broke out. The fight could have been resolved, but Irene's father kept on fighting till the very end without stopping," he said as I read his description completely.

Earlier I only read the start but now I read everything that he was speaking about and what I found was..

He was lying.