Prologue

We surround you.

Freaks, monsters, mutants, demons, ghosts. We’re part of your world and we affect the course of events in it, whether you’re aware of that or not. There are millions of reasons that you may not know of, or believe in, our existence. I am one of those reasons.

My name is Percy Straight and I’m good at what I do. My career, or calling as I’d rather refer to it, involves among other things, assassination. Not so much the assassination of people, which I’ll do if it needs to be done, but the death of memories. That’s part of the reason very few human beings genuinely believe in the existence of the supernatural. If a human being witnesses something strange and fails to remember it, the gossip never spreads. At this point in Earth’s history we pay premium prices to preserve our secrecy. We can no longer afford the luxury of fucking up.

You see, thousands of years ago when the planet’s population of homo sapiens remained manageable we could interact with them freely. Sometimes even form mutually beneficial relationships between our civilizations. Now, you may be expecting me to spin some moralistic tale of an epic struggle between benevolent Primordials and evil human scum or maybe vice versa, but it ain’t that simple. At least for me it’s not. Have you ever looked up at the sky on a clear night and seen all those shimmering stars? Doesn’t look like our universe is quite so cut and dried.  I’ve found that simple truths are rarely whole truths and that goes for our history, too. I’m relating only what I know of it and I’m sure it’s not the entire story.

According to my culture, thousands of years ago, long before Babylon or Egypt rose to prominence we made a huge mistake. Our kind, Zoakin, served as ambassadors to humanity. Each of our ancestors came into this world as the offspring of the Zoa: gods of the animals on Earth. The gods failed at successfully interacting with the humans without scaring the shit out of them, so they created offspring, the Zoakin, to help bridge the gap and ensure harmonious relationships between man and so-called beasts. These Zoakin closely resembled humans, yet they had different traits and abilities due to their heritage. Essentially we were shape shifters and perceived with awe by other humans. This seems like a nice set-up, but as I said, nothing is quite so cut and dried when it comes to this world we’re living in.

Now, if all Primordials got along things might’ve run smoothly. Hell, if the Zoa all got along well or at least tolerated each other, that might’ve put our kind at the top of the heap. That’s not how it works, though. The Primordials of this world refuse to be one big happy family. There’s politics, infighting and back-stabbing galore. Early vampires fought Zoakin, early Zoakin fought each other and then the humans entered the fray. The world broiled with war before the arrival of mankind and so far as I know war remains its constant state. You might have a nation and inside that nation several different factions. Within those factions there will be cliques and within those cliques there will be individuals. People all bring different perspectives to the table, playing to win whether they’re Primordial or not.

Let’s get back on track, though. Where did Primordials go wrong? How did we end up in a world apparently dominated by human beings who appear bent on destroying their own home? As I see it, we got lazy. Originally, our objective meant working with the humans to keep our ecosystems balanced. We underestimated this species of clawless, fangless and relatively poorly-armored creatures’ ability to band together to share learning. We blew our time fighting each other for control over the world. We wanted to be dominant, too, so instead of focusing on protecting ourselves and our home, we struggled for power amongst each other. We tricked the humans, abused them and used them to our advantage. They grew distrustful. Their fear of us mushroomed over time. In response, they began to stick together, coming to see themselves as the persecuted species of the world. They came to view the world around them as hostile and bent on the destruction of their kind.

While we were busy jockeying for position as their gods, disrespecting our own heritage, they created their own gods in their own image. They might’ve had those gods before, too, I don’t know either way. The bottom line is that once they began to view things in that ‘us against the world’ light, they started struggling to bring the world, our world, under their control. Anything they were fearful of they killed. Anything that stood to challenge them, they tore down. Their religions began to reflect this. At first we were merely demons. Then, over time, they lauded our very existence as childish imagination, the domain of fools and lunatics. They had their own kinds of supernatural knowledge which they used against us. Witches, sorcerers, shamans and all manner of powerful human mystics. Of course, they didn’t end up joining hands in unity either, so we did dodge total extinction. Their mystical elite still seek our demise, but we’ve been fighting back. We’ll continue to do so. Hopefully we can keep an apocalypse at bay, even if we’re not able to bring the world into our perfect vision of it.

Now, history is all good and fine, but it’s not got a lot to do with me personally in anything other than a very abstract way. I’m not a scholar so my perspective on the Primordial situation as it stands these days remains limited. I’m merely a Starborn Selachi doing his damnedest to stay true to his colors on the streets and keep his ass alive. Selachi are a breed of Zoakin connected to sharks. You can think of me as part human, part shark. That’d be fairly accurate though I feel a stronger affinity for my aquatic ancestors. In the same way they’ve swam the seas since the beginning of time helping keep balance, so I roam these streets to keep what balance I can. Since I’m Starborn I’m believed to have a special destiny. Starborn simply means that I came into this world at a specific date and time in a location that received extra energy from the cosmos. In Selachi culture, we believe in a version of astrology that differs from other versions. We map our constellations out differently and our system is more complex than what you might be familiar with. In fact, we have special telescopes to observe the sky with that show us things unseen by purely human technology.

My destiny demands I hunt the world for individuals and groups who seek to destroy my kind and Primordials as a whole. I work to shield us all from public exposure and the hysterical annihilation that would surely follow. I also work to establish Selachi as a viable faction within the ZSR – short for Zoakin Spirit Rebellion, our international movement. I serve in the Kingfin Street Militia, part of the Beast Folk Nation alliance. I consider all Kingfins to be blood and all Beast Folk Nation to be family. I’ve killed for them and they’d kill for me. While my position’s technically not considered royalty, I maintain status and respect within both organizations or ‘gangs’ if you want to be crude about it. Since I was born in Seattle I joined the Kingfins because my crew, the Cedar River set, was Kingfin affiliated. It’s complicated shit, but if you know anything about how the Crips, Bloods or Latin Kings work then you’ve got an idea of what I’m talking about. If not, you’ll learn as we go. I did.

The Kingfin Street Militia by no means controls Seattle. This city sprawls all over the place, adding new suburbs at a crazy pace. Whenever you add a new suburb, you got new gangs cropping up. Kingfins run nationwide, mainly in metropolitan areas along both coasts, but we’re steadily expanding. One of my more mundane jobs in our esteemed organization is setting up new chapters for the KSM. We increase our piece of the turf this way. A veteran like me, an OG, or Original Gangsta, settles into a promising neighborhood and starts recruiting. We hit up the parks, the clubs or anywhere people hang out. My newest chapter happens to be the Doyle Heights set. My homeboy MadBlack and I set up shop a few months back. So far we’ve sent both the Doyle Heights Blues and the 82^nd Avenue Shakers back about 20 blocks in all four directions. Soon we’ll have this section of town on lockdown.

Kingfins don’t fuck around.

Author’s note: I am publishing this Prologue now so that the story of Swimming the Streets finally goes live before I get ‘busy’ once again and procrastinate. Next part comes on November 7th, 2009

© Copyright 2006 – 2009 Wolfgang Nibori

Tags: kingfins, magic, primordials, Prologue, supernatural, vampires, zoakin