`BLACKBIRD.

[CLAUDIO RAMIREZ]

BLACKBIRD SINGING IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
TAKE THESE BROKEN WINGS AND LEARN TO FLY

OPEN!

Being a virtue was something Claudio couldn't really grasp or explain. It was obvious to him that he was good, but nothing in life is ever just black and white. Sure Claud had a temper, sure he'd had meaningless sex, sure he didn't always agree with the church or the government. The whole thing was certainly very confusing to Claudio, who often felt guilty. Was he supposed to act a certain way? Maybe he wasn't being virtuous enough. And then there were days like these, where evrything just seemed alright.

The sun was bright and the sky was blue, a pretty typical day in Melilla. But when typical is like this, I guess you'd have to be pretty lucky. That was what Claud was thinking, as he relaxed on a park bench, reading The Prodigal Times. Oh yes, he read the sin-based newspaper. It's always good to keep an eye on the enemy. Enemy, hah. The idea of it made Claud laugh out loud. He couldn't seem to find it in himself to have an enemy. Maybe that's what made him a virtue. Maybe he was a virtue because he could sit there and read the newspaper, written by people who probably wanted to kill him, and laugh at their jokes, or scoff when they scoffed. It wasn't like he was betraying some sort of heavenly law, right? Christ, he needed the news at the very least, right?

And there's that word again, or name: Christ. That was one of Claud's main qualms about Christianity: this Jesus fellow. Humans can't be told that a regular old chap returned from the dead and got to be son of God. It just gave them a little too much wackiness to run with. But hey, Claudio can't tell anyone what to believe, since he's not so sure himself anyway. He knows there's a God; he's working for him, but he's not so sure that this whole religion thing is a good idea anymore. People tend to make it an excuse to perform gruesome acts of criminal intent, or ignorance, or intolerance. If there was one thing Claudio couldn't stand, it was when people didn't practice what they preached. Very annoying. You could be the most detestable scum on the planet, but if you owned up to it, Claudio would have to respect you for it, and probably forgive you; maybe give you some money to help better yourself. That's the thing about kindness: it kind of encompasses all other virtues inside of it. Well, except for maybe abstinence. What was up with that, anyway? Sex shouldn't be so taboo, not in this day and age, at least. But what the hell heck did Claudio know? He was struggling with the crossword.

The answers were slowly filling in, and many of the clues were left skipped or abandoned. There were other things on Claudio's mind, though, so it was quite excusable. He was thinking about the classes he was teaching. The students he had and the lessons he should teach next. His planning was interrupted, however, by something that caught his eye. A wallet, falling swiftly to the ground out of a man's coat pocket, who meemed to be in quite a rush. Without hesitating Claudio stood up and picked it up, walking briskly towards the man to match up to him. "Señor! Sir!" He called to him, holding the wallet in his outstretched hand. When the man finally took notice and turned around, he looked kind of bewildered, and more than a little angry. He snatched the wallet and walked off, without thanking Claudio for his kindness. Claud was used to it by now, smiling pleasantly instead of getting upset.

Unfortunately for Claud, his prime seat on the park bench had been stolen, and he had to find another one. Good luck, on a day like today. He thought, looking around at the very full and bustling park. Shrugging, he just folded up his paper and walked down the path, figuring that a walk would be good for him anyway. And when a seat opened up, he would take it and finish his crossword. But in the meantime... he enjoyed. Which is what being a virtue should be is all about.

[LORENZO VELASCO]

LORENZO
(click!)
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Yes, there definetly was an increase in security. Why? Did Lorenzo really know? Nope. He couldn't just ask his father those types of questions at the dinner table. Not only because it was rude(in his father's eyes) but because his father wasn't usually present anyways. So truth be told, when citizens asked Lorenzo such questions, he simply told them that everything his father did or had done he did them all with good reason. He often found himself defending his father, though it would a bit pointless. Though he was President, the people did not vote for him. Parliament did. And since they liked his father so much, they figured Lorenzo Antonio Velasco II would be just as good a choice. So when his father passed away, he would be his successor.

So much for becoming a musician or photographer.

Lorenzo, today, decided that the best way to simply disappear for a few hours was to go to the park. Overall, the son of the President of Melilla was a good kid. He was on the honor roll, was popular in school, honored his parents, respected basically everyone to the best of his ability. Probably the only thing that brought Lorenzo's reputation down was his questionable girlfriend, the gal his mother had chosen and insisted on Lorenzo marrying shortly after he takes his father's place as President. Raquel.

No. She wasn't some evil person or anything. She was just....opinionated, a bit on the bitchy side, controlling, but Lorenzo deeply cared about her, despite the way she may treat him. People tended to see Ren as a weak man for putting up with her, for treating her right when she smetimes wouldn't even give him the time of day. But they didn't know her and they didn't know Lorenzo. They didn't understand the pressure the young couple were constantly put under. Hey, they hated each other in the begining-with a bloody passion. But as time went on they grew to...care about each other. Lorenzo didn't know if he loved her. He didnt know what love was.

A dog barking not too far away brought Lorenzo back to reality. He had so much on his mind...And he didn't know where to begin. The eighteen year old didn't even know of the battle between the sins and virtues going on right under his nose, though his father and mother had tried to explain it to him countless times. Maybe he just didn't believe in the whole gist of it. To Lorenzo, that was probably just some rumor the Resistance started to get back at the Conservatives. Of course, Lorenzo didn't always agree with the church or his father's decisions, as any human, but he would not do anything about it because he technically had no power to do so. In a sense, Lorenzo was simply humble. Sometimes he could be prideful, but at least the majority of the time humility seemed to take over.

Little did the guy know that he was, indeed, one of those virtues his mother and father constantly told him about. They would tell him about how the day the apocalypse came, they would all be forced out of hiding because the gates of heaven and hell would be opened and the barrier that had kept their wings and horns hidden would be broken. That was when the island would see their true colors. Pfft. To Lorenzo, it was nonesense. He did believe in God and all that lovely stuff, but the virtues and sins thing was pushing it a little too far in his book. And if he was a virtue-he definetly wouldn't be absitnence. He and Raquel were constantly on top of each other...

"Oh!" Lorenzo had slipped back into the retreats of his mind and hadn't realized where he was going and ended up bumping right into a man,"Perdon, senor....No estaba prestando atencion," he apologized for not paying more attention to where he was going.

It was said that virtues and sins knew when they were in the company of each other-otherwise they would not be able to communicate with each other. Well, Lorenzo felt nothing. And he may be the virtue of Humility, but he was completely oblivious to it.