joseph "joey" prince || district two || fin

There was always more to people than what met the eye.

That was the first lesson drilled into his head when he was but a wee little boy, crying for his mama but left in the hands of the family maid instead. It was his first memory, parented by someone with whom he didn't share a drop of blood, ignored by those who had given him life and thrust him out onto the world with nothing more to show for it. The Princes already had two children, both boys in their upper teens by the time Joey came around as a surprise third addition to the family. The eldest had secured their fortune, the middle had tried their patience. Already in their forties when he had come along, he was pawned off to the servants, left to act not quite as their son, but as their spare.

He joked as he grew older that that was why he acted out so much, why he liked to gather the attention of everyone around him either to impress him or to his own detriment at times. How he's making up for lost time, trying to absorb the attention he never got as a kid into his own being. Of course, that's what most everyone thought they were - just jokes. After all, how could a rich kid who's never wanted for anything in his entire life be miserable?

Well, it's a whole lot easier than one might think. But no one truly admitted it until Julie.

They met in school, the out of town area's equivalent to a snobby rich academy even though everyone save those in the poverty line attended, which was really the best that one could hope for in the middle of nowhere mining town that they grew up with. It actually wasn't friendship at first sight, or anything else really - for the longest time, they were nothing more but blips on the other's radar, fellow inmates in the same gilded cage. Sure, they knew each other - you don't spend a decade in the same class as someone and not get to at least somewhat know who they were - but they never really clicked until recently.

Joey, ever the impulsive one, saw the otherwise popular girl sitting on her own at one of the latter's parties. She was known for throwing them, using the wealth and her own loving parents to her advantage, and to see her not in the mix with some gossiping girl or braindead boy.

A lesser boy may have been scared off. He was not so easily deterred. They found they had a mutual disdain for their situations, privileged they might be. And before he had realized it, hours had passed.

When they next ran into each other in the hallways, they still weren't quite friends. But they were no longer strangers, either.

But that was that. A kindred spirit did not a rehabilitated boy make. His reputation as the boy who would try anything once grew. His apathy towards his parents as they halfheartedly tried to fit him into a mold resembling his brothers festered. But things never approached anything above simmering, no matter the circumstances.

Until Frank happened.

Frank was an out of town boy, an orphan subject to the foster system who had found a new foster dad in a local deadbeat drunk. Frank was also the most interesting person that Joey had met, aside from Julie and her shy pink-haired friend. There was something refreshing in the easygoing manner he carried himself, a quiet confidence surrounding the borderline ethical boundaries that he would later find the other was adept at testing. Not that that ended up being something that turned him off, really - in fact, he found it rather...

Liberating.

When life is bland, one must sprinkle it with a little spice. Frank was that spice, something new and exciting from a land he and only heard stories of. Other kids might be turned off by his poor upbringing, his tendencies for delinquency and mayhem, but not Joey. Within weeks, they were friends; after months, they were nearly as inseparable as the bond the out of town boy had forged with Julie as well.

They were invincible. Eternal. Reigning in the occasional act of lawbreaking and mischief. Who cared that their reputation suffered? Who cared that their grades went down and their time in detention doubled? He was having more fun than he had ever had in his entire life.

One day, they got some off-duty Peacekeeper dude to make an art piece of the four of them. Frank, Joey, Julie, Susie. The Legion, they began calling themselves. It was a masterpiece, a symbol of their friendship forged in the fires of mayhem. For the first time, Joey felt like he truly belonged.

For the first time, he felt untouchable.

***

It is a fine line that one walks when they go from the safety of excess to the thrill-seeking of rule-breaking. A familiar target that had yet to gain significance, a job gone wrong doing something once thought unthinkable, and everything would change forever.

Oh, some things remained the same. He was still ride or die with the Legion no matter what happened. It would become a pact forged in blood, after all.

Someone else's blood, to be fair. But if anything, the iron forged from that blood would only solidify the bonds even further.