Bleeding Heart

TW; Partial nudity, briefly implied discriminatory violence and Xenophobia, and swearing.

Note: This is a supplemental prequel story for a longer story I have been writing for over 9 years now called "The Formidable Bishouman", which was initially influenced by a bunch of old animes I used to watch in High School like Kinnikuman, Fist of the North Star, Urusei Yatsura, Ginga Nagareboshi Gin and later Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super, but has far expanded beyond that point as its own original story. This story follows the events of one of the characters that caused the main conflict of the story - an old alien dictator who initiated the war between the two main intergalactic kingdoms and is now suffering with the guilt from it 80 years later. I've never novelized anything in this story since it's actually a comic, so I hope I did okay. Also, Earth is called "Gaia" in this story, but it's virtually unchanged. For the most part.

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(08:01, 6 March, 2013 - Vermelhao City, Vermelhao, Planet Corda Estrela, Andromeda)

"Rise and shine, your majesty." An ethereal voice called from the silver box on his nightstand. But King Marciano didn't stir, buried beneath the plush comforter and duvet like an oversized child in his cramped bed. As a pup, the bed had seemed huge, encompassing the young prince like a tiny ice cube in a giant ocean, but now, at the ripened age of 120, the king had grown to a near gargantuan size, his long, powerful cloven feet and spindly tail poking out from beneath his cover and hanging over the edges of the bed. "Is it morning already...?" King Marciano grumbled groggily, his dark eyes struggling to adjust to the white light spilling from the curtains of his bedroom's grand windows. "Must I get up now, Ninar?" "You may get up when you wish, your majesty." The kind voice from the silver box responded, never demanding, and never expecting. It made Marciano feel like shit, but not more so than usual. He tried to fall back asleep, trying to return to the dark abyss of dreamland, but he just couldn't. He contorted his limber body in various positions, trying to find a comfortable position, trying to find the right ratio of blankets over his body to warm him up and lull him back to sleep, but it was no use. "Never mind, Ninar. I'm awake..." Marciano once again grumbled as this time he rose from the comfort of his mattress, letting his blankets fall from his muscular frame. He saw his reflection in the vanity and couldn't help but snarl at it as he passed it to head to the bathroom. "You look like a sad sack of shit..." What else was new? He stood in the shower for what felt like hours, basking in the warmth of the water running over the fine hairs on his pointed ears and trailing along his mane down his back and tail, down the granite-like microscopic scales that made up his body, turning them from a dull, dusty grey color to a lighter, richer taupe color. He scrubbed the thick skin with a coarse brush he had prepared with a scale cream, sticky black goo lathering to a voluminous foam before melting away into a dark muddy puddle near the drain. He stepped out of the shower and slipped into a cotton robe, shambling back to his room to lay face down in the chaise lounge overlooking the balcony. He felt the plush cushion beneath his claws. Velvet. Particularly silk velvet. Silk from Gaian silkworms. It had been a gift, a long time ago. A gift of gratitude, and good health.

Tears began to well in Marciano's eyes. "I'm sorry..." He whispered, his voice so quiet it was as if the words hadn't even left his mouth. Just another one of his broken, empty apologies that fell on distant, deaf ears. He could still hear them sometimes. The screams of innocent people as they tried to escape the Compass Empire's invasion, some of them turning into terrified sobs and others fading forever. Why did he do it? He didn't remember the exact reason any more. But he knew it was fear. It was always fear that drove him. Fear of something, fear of others, fear of himself. He had been told many times in his life he had nothing to fear - he was a towering monster of a man, broad and powerful like a sentient mountain, with razor sharp senses that could pin point anything and anyone within a 10 mile radius. He could tear battle ships in half, he could outsmart and overpower most of the formidable beasts on his planet, he could crush and kill a mere mortal human in a matter of seconds-"NO, no...no..." Marciano shook the thought from his head, but the reality still terrified him. He was powerful. Too powerful. He could kill easily, and he had. And he had grown scared of that reality. He was a killer. He was a monster. He knew it, and many of the people that inhabited his planet and nearby planets knew it too. It had been this way for 80 years now, always the same; whenever he'd walk out into the streets of the kingdom, they'd fawn, and flatter, and sweet-talk and praise in that sycophantic manner he had grown so accustom to. 'King Marciano, you look well today!' 'King Marciano, I do so envy your magnificent muscles!' 'Oh, King Marciano, I wish someday that I could be as strong as you!' It was always the same. He doesn't remember when they stopped feeling like compliments and started feeling more like daily, obligatory statements, but he'd eventually stopped leaving his castle. He had caused the people of his home more grief than he felt he could truly comprehend himself. Nobody had truly spoken to him in years, not outside of empty accolades or subserviant duties. They hated him, he knew. There was an unspoken emptiness that blanketed the kingdoms he ruled over the few planets still in his command, for while it managed to flourish on its own after many years, the elders of the republic remember as well as he did the era of peace that he had caused the abrupt end of.

"OHHHH KING MARCIAANNNNOOOOO!!!" the loud call had shattered his pity party and brought him back to reality suddenly, the doors to his bedroom nearly swinging off it's hinges as a food trolley was rolled in at a near hurricane speed. "Fucking hell. You can knock sometimes, you know?..." Marciano grumbled, eyeing the two subjects before him. Azule, lanky, lissome with a canine snout covered in cerulean scales, and Laranja, short, stout with feline ears covered in deep copper scales. They were an odd pair, odd especially in the case that they were so intensely passionate in their subservience to the washed up royal. Even now they were practically gleaming up with him, all pearly fanged smiles and wide, devoted eyes. "What do you want?" He grumbled deeply, in a way that the two attendants would describe as an 'alluring murmur'. "We have prepared you breakfast this morning, your highness!" Azule announced, teeming with a palpable pride as she gestured towards the trolley. "Filled with all the yummy things that his highness loves!" Laranja continued on, gracelessly lifting the delicate bottle of a deep purple liquid from the tray, pouring it into a tall glass with the littlest pizzazz he could muster for such a mundane action. The smell of the juice pierced Marciano before he could get a good gander at everything on the plate. It was quite a pleasant scent, one he hadn't smelled in decades now. "Daritmelon?" He mused quietly, solemnly, swirling the glass in his large hand as he stared at his wretched expression. "This is a difficult fruit to cultivate, especially in the humid weather we've been getting lately..." He paused for a moment, looking between the blue mongrel and her orange grimalkin companion. They had expectant looks in their eyes as they waited and watched him take a slow sip of the fresh fruit juice. Tangy and sweet, with pulpy, seed riddled cubes that King Marciano took great pleasure in chewing. It reminded him of a simpler time, a more...peaceful time. A time when all the different parts of the galaxy didn't feel farther away than they actually were. "Thank you." He finally said, voice less gravelly than before, but still as low-spirited as ever. They sat in silence as Marciano ate silently - his favorite meal, folded meat pancakes flavored with vanilla cream, large hard boiled eggs from a Giewak bird topped with a mild spicy syrup and sparkling pink powder, and medley platter of ghost thistles, wither roots and bugweed.

Azule and Laranja's expressions shifted from adoring admiration to spiraling sorrow. "What troubles you, your highness?" Laranja finally asked, leaning on the trolley to look King Marciano deeply in his obsidian eyes as he took a sloppy gulp of his salad. "You're always so miserable, so...sad." "You have no reason to be, you know?" Azule began. "You're King Marciano! You are quite possibly the greatest and most powerful king of any empire in all of Andromeda! In a 100 years, no one has ever challenged you for your throne, or threatened your authority or those within your kingdom! You are widely respected, and greatly so too! And yet you still seem so...unsatisfied." The canine sat cross-legged on the floor, her own eyes large with confusion. "Whatever will it take for you to be happy, your highness?" Marciano looked between the took of his servants and sighed. He knew he shouldn't share his personal thoughts of inadequacy and indignity, especially with two of the lowest ranking members of his court, but he wasn't exactly in his usual state of mind. Besides from his usual despair, he hadn't even realized his hair was uncombed, his scales were still damp from the shower, and that the only thing that covered his nudeness was his cotton robe and the conveniently positioned trolley cart. He hadn't even realized he wasn't in his throne room, and the two were standing before him in his private chambers! So in his weird, incoherent condition, he spilled. "I've been thinking of Gaia..." "Gaia?" Azule and Laranja exchanged looks of perturbance. "What about it, your highness?" "I've been thinking about how things were...80 years ago. Those people...of Gaia, of its allies...I often find myself wondering...how are they now? Have they...recovered? Are they...thriving now, without us? Or have we left them in a state of desolation? I know they won the war, but...I feel we've experienced the better end of the outcomes...I can't begin to imagine life in the Via Lactea galaxy right now..." Azule and Laranja's hearts swelled with so much feeling they felt they might pass out. Their king wasn't hateful or vengeful, he was regretful! He had long suffered to regain the trust of the planets in his empire when they had lost the war he initiated against Gaia's empire all those decades ago, had he also been wondering about the people of their kingdom for as long?

Suddenly, it seemed very obvious to the two what had to be done for their beloved monarch to finally find peace. Azule and Laranja stood up in perfect unison so fast that it nearly startled Marciano out of his morning daze. "Your highness, you won't anguish for much longer!" Azule announced, with Laranja following her as if they had rehearsed this a thousand times. "Your worries will soon be nothing but a distant memory! You stay right here!" And with that, they were gone, like they had never been there at all, the trolley cart being the only proof they even were. "Okay..." the king muttered, leaning back into the comfort of the couch, completely oblivious to the pandemonium he had just allow to be unleashed right underneath his nose...

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(2013/3/10, 10:20 AM - Nara, Japan, Planet Gaia, Via Lactea)

It was a cool, peaceful and quiet day for the people of Nara, which many were extremely grateful for. Things had finally seemed to calm down from the chaos months ago from the ginormous but juvenile beast they had come to know as "Firus", whom was swiftly and efficiently handled by the Hall of Heroes' representatives, with little damage done to the city. Cases like this had become so common but infrequent not just in Japan, but all around the Planet Gaia, that it didn't even seem to effect the people living there anymore. These moments of peace, they knew, were seldom, but always welcomed, as they also knew that very soon it would be spoiled by something. Like today, for example, as a speeding shuttle breached Gaia's atmosphere, an electric surge pulsing within the air as it all but crashed unceremoniously into the park, barely missing the Kasuga Grand Shrine as it did. The only people around to watch as the vessel clumsily repositioned itself was a mother and her son, four tourists, a patrol officer, and several hundred curious deer. They all watched, with increasing apprehension, as the vessel - not recognizable as any Gaia space craft - cracked open like some kind of strange egg, a silvery white entry ramp unspooling from within, almost like a giant snake instead of a staircase. A mother and her son, four tourists, a patrol officer, and several hundred deer were present when the occupants of the ship walked out - A lanky, lissome cerulean canine, and a short, stout copper cat. An odd pair, no doubt, all pearly fanged smiles and wide, passionate eyes. "Hello, people of Gaia!" The canine finally spoke, loud, clear, and indistinguishably human despite what her appearance suggested. "Long time no see."