1 Prologue 1: Sudden Change

Ryan McAlester was living a life of a normal 8-year-old kid. His father Roy McAlester was a loving father, who worked hard for the sustenance of his family. He worked at a software company called Boris International Software's, as a database manager. Annual income he earned was 5,040 dollars by working as a full-time worker for at least 10 hours a day. The pay was relatively low because the company was new in the market and had low funds.

Ryan was mostly looked after by his mother Gwen McAlester. A very loving mother but she was very overprotective of him. He got into a lot of trouble at school, which either involved fights with bullies of his class or accidents such as falling down the stairs at the school for running too fast on them.

It seemed as if bad luck followed him wherever he went, triggering some accidents which would always end up in him getting injured as the norm. His mother would always be tensed whenever he so as so went out of the house. It was due to carelessness of Ryan for most of the time which caused such accidents.

He always kept his mother on edge like a little duckling looked after by his mama duck but even the ducklings were not as careless as Ryan.

The family lived in McAlester's family house which consisted of two floors, a ground floor and the first floor. There was a lawn (approximately 759 sq. meters) in the front of the house surrounded by wooden fencing. The house had no garage, so Roy had to park his Volkswagen Transporter in a paid parking facility nearby.

The layout of the house was very spacious. Living room was connected to the kitchen and the guest room. First floor was connected by stairs located beside the kitchen entrance. Roy and Gwen occupied the Master bedroom on the first floor while Ryan enjoyed his own room. The unoccupied guestroom was located adjacent to the stairs connecting the floors. Sometimes Gwen's brother Wilber would come to stay with them, so he occupies the guest room during his stay.

Roy always took Ryan to park in his free time to play with him and spend some time together. They loved to baseball or catch together. Once, Roy was playing catch with him and suddenly a dog came out of nowhere and jumped towards Ryan, making him fall backwards and crash on the tree behind him. Luckily Ryan only got few bruises here and there.

These kinds of sudden accidents always haunted him but most of them were due to his careless nature, unlike this one.

The Dog's owner came searching for his dog. He shouted at Ryan for being careless and hurting his dog instead of apologizing. His actions made Roy so mad, that he dashed towards the man and made the man look towards him forcibly by using his left hand to drag his right shoulder behind. As soon as they made eye contact Roy punched the man, targeting the area right between his eyebrows and the nose using his free hand. The hard punch made dog's owner fall on the ground and leaving his dog gawking at Roy as he gave him a fierce look.

Roy turned towards the man, who was looking at him with a horrified expression as he held his now bleeding nose. "Try and control your damn dog before abusing my son or else I will make you wish you were never born". The angry father's bark made the man shiver and his dog quiet like a scared pussy.

Roy had a muscular build which made him look like a street gangster whenever he wore a T-shirt. In such rage his angry face turned red with veins bulging out of his neck, which made him look more intimidating. Roy wore a shirt most of the time which did great job of hiding his muscles very well. Ryan giggled at the shivering man, who was about to piss his pants and was very proud that he had a dad such as him.

The cowardly dog owner ran away with his dog following behind him. He lived in the same neighborhood as Ryan. As Ryan was famous in the area for his carelessness causing such accidents, made the man push the blame on him as he also disliked the kid. After the dog owner left, Roy walked towards Ryan and started to wipe the dirt from his trousers. Then he picked the ball beside the tree and gave it to him.

"Let's start again, the score was 2 and 2"

"But dad you failed to catch one ball"

"Puussh! No, I did not… nope…"

"Daddd…"

When Ryan was just 8 and a half years old, Gwen became pregnant. Ryan was very enthusiastic to become a big brother. He always had a fantasy of pranking his little brother or sister by making them get into trouble but not any normal trouble, something major which would result in them getting grounded for a month or so.

One of the most joyous moments of the McAlester family dawned on them after 9 months. Ryan became a 9-year-old, 3 months ago during which he did not even get into trouble once, that alone was honestly surprising as well as shocking for both Roy and Gwen.

Ryan became a big brother of a little cute sister, who was given a name chosen by him himself 'Ruby'. He chose the name because of her bright pinkish fair skin. Roy and Gwen also loved the name, so they approved.

Everyone in the family went through some major changes 2 years after arrival of Ruby. Roy got promoted to the post of branch manager, Gwen started to work as a consultant for the society committee and Ryan had biggest change of them all. He started to study much harder and became an A grade student in the school which showered him with many scholarships. He came much more active in extra curriculum activities. He even became the captain of the football team. Surprisingly he also started to learn martial arts, so that he could show off those moves to his sister.

Ruby was a charming little girl at the age of 3. She even had the attention of the pesky neighbors, who before resented Ryan for his carelessness. They loved the company of Ruby so much that the neighborhood fought to take care of the girl when Ryan or his parents informed that they will not be at home to take care of her.

Ryan always laughed his ass off at that sight, but he felt sad the most as he loved to spend time with his little sister. He wished that he had the ability to make clones so that his real self could spend all his time with his cute little sister. Ruby sometimes had the care of uncle Wilber as he volunteered for the babysitting. As the guestroom was no longer free and living room had no space, uncle Wilber had to spend his night with Ryan. He slept over the sleeping mattress arranged on the floor as he was afraid of getting his nuts busted by relatively docile Ryan sleeping on the bed. Ryan had done this before and made Uncle Wilber visit the good old humble Doctor Steve. Uncle Wilber was pretty sure that Ryan did this purposely.

Ruby loved to play with Lego's. Ryan and Ruby always spent their time together by either playing or building Lego architectures. Once Ryan accidently stepped on a four by four Lego cube which was lying on the ground. He busted into screams of pain and fell on the ground holding the leg which was hurt. This shocked Ruby so much that she jumped over the tower she was making while hitting her ankle on the top of the tower, which made her fall on the ground face first. She immediately got up and ran towards her brother not caring for the bleeding wound on the side of her forehead.

"Brother, brother what happened… Ruby is here"

She said in such cute voice which would melt the heart of any cruel man, while holding Ryan's leg which he was rubbing as he screamed.

Ryan saw his sister's face and noticed her bleeding forehead. He was stunned and immediately forgot the pain he felt. He picked Ruby up in a princess carry pose and ran towards the kitchen where first aid kit was kept in a cabinet.

"Ouch…. ouch"

He bandaged Ruby after applying antiseptic while asking her what happened. While Ryan was keeping the bandages in the box Ruby took the bottle of antiseptic which he had kept on the kitchen floor near her and opened the loose cap to pour the liquid on Ryan's feet which was the target of the evil Lego cube lord.

"Ruby don't do that…."

Ryan quickly grabbed the bottle from Ruby which was half empty from being full and lectured her for spilling it on the ground while he dropped the bandages he was keeping. Ruby looked down, fidgeting with her index fingers and said.

"Bu... But you... your leg"

Ryan kept the bottle on the kitchen counter and hugged his little sister while shedding a happy tear, as he was touched by her care for him. The gesture made Ruby confused as he was just angry a moment ago, but she hugged him back regardless.

Gwen came back from the market with bags of groceries and went towards the kitchen to keep them just to see Ryan hugging Ruby while there was a mess of bandages and cotton lying everywhere on the floor, not to mention the wasted antiseptic. After some inspection and a brief lecture of one hour both Ryan and Ruby were sent to their rooms. Gwen was afraid that Ruby might pick up Ryan's now nonexistent bad luck.

Ryan was around 16 years old and for the first time his parents did not have any more space in the house to store his trophies. They even had to plan for Ruby's seventh birthday which was coming ever so closer. Ryan was the most excited for it. He had brought her birthday gift well in advance and couldn't wait to see her reaction.

On the night before Ruby's birthday began, Ryan and Gwen were waiting for Roy in the living room to come home from work to plan for the auspicious day. Ruby was put to sleep by Ryan who enjoyed reciting stories for his sister. Whenever his mother asked him to put her to sleep, he would make a happy face which felt very creepy to the one looking at him. He made a dimpled smile while his brown eyebrows became flat and his pupils dilated. It was so creepy that sometimes his mother would decide to change her mind and put Ruby to sleep herself. Which then resulted in him throwing tantrums at her.

At late night around midnight, Roy entered the house and hurriedly went towards kitchen without even removing the shoes and keeping the suitcase. Gwen was startled for a moment but then called out to him while following him towards the kitchen "Honey… Honey what happened….".

Gwen was worried because Roy recently had a kerfuffle at work. He was convicted falsely under the offense of leaking company's secret project. Government had contacted Boris International regarding the project and had given some incites about it. Gwen only knew this information and nothing else as Roy said it was confidential information. The matter was solved by the government. They found that the one who leaked the project was insider working with them and not Roy. The accusation was removed and Roy started working again. He did not quit the job because the company supported him wholeheartedly and played a major part in clearing his name. The information leaked was quickly obliterated from the internet as soon as it was leaked. No information was present about it, except for the name "Crusader 1190". Even Roy never knew what the project was about. It was never disclosed what it actually was. So logically Roy was never at fault.

Gwen had helped Roy emotionally a lot during this month. Roy was completely stressed out when he was accused. He was never at fault. He went to work normally during this period as he was backed by his supervisors but was haunted by the gossips of his colleagues. They even dared to blame him for their own faults. Those who worked under Roy were even worse. The only strings holding him from lashing out was Gwen and Ryan.

Ryan was also startled as his dad never behaved like that. There were sometimes when he would come home agitated but today felt somewhat weird to him. Ryan left the matter to mom as he saw her following after Roy. He knew all about matter regarding "Crusader 1190". Ryan had heard his mom and dad talk about it. He helped Roy to cope up with the tension as best as he could.

"Honey… WHAT ARE YOU…AAHHHHHH"

Gwen's scream echoed through the house. Ryan was petrified for a moment, but snapped from the spell as he heard a loud thud. He ran towards the kitchen at a lightning speed. As soon as he reached the entrance, he was rooted to the spot with his eyes wide open. Roy was holding a knife firmly in his right hand, stained with red blood. Gwen was on the floor, lifeless with her face facing the entrance with an expression of horror, her neck oozing loads of blood everywhere with a deep gash from one end to the other. She was holding her neck when she saw Ryan.

"Run...Run"

She was trying to speak but no voice was heard as blood choked her throat.

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