Vincent McKane

Vincent McKane is the Kendo champion of Saotome high
school, the best Japanese school in New York City. As a
matter of fact he is excellent in any sport he takes, but
his favorite is Kendo. Since he was a kid he was
particularly intelligent and gifted and had the capacity of
excelling in any thing that he barely approached.
The fact that he is now considered at his age of eighteen
nothing but a spoiled, rich, and inconsiderate boy is the
proof that his main characteristics are not concentration
or commitment.
He is indeed superficial even if gifted; he doesn’t seem to
care much about anything. At school he provides the minimum
effort, which anyway is enough to pass through exams and
tests. But his teachers hate his couldn’t-care-less
attitude.
He easily succeeds in Kendo with no effort. He’s strong and
has a natural ability in the fight. But he’s extremely
violent. When in the combat some sort of obscure energy
seems to posses him. He looks in some kind of trance: it is
the only time when Mr. Hishikawa, his Kendo Master, can see
him concentrated. He always tries to keep the skilled boy
under the guide of the Bushido code, although with pitiful
results. Not even the wise teaching of Mr. Hishikawa can
make him behave. The old master can perceive some good in
the depths of the rebel Vincent anyway.
He doesn’t get along with the other guys in school. As a
matter of fact he conducts a life no one can afford at his
age. He comes from the ludicrously rich McKane family. His
father Walter is the heir of the traditionally noble
Scottish clan of the McKanes.
While the other students ride bicycles or eventually a
scooter, he gets to school with his flamboyant Chevrolet
Corvette Stingray. Of course any girl who gets to know him
adores him. He is handsome, he is rich, but at the same
time he is so distant.
He doesn’t date any girl in school. You could eventually
see him in company of incredible women in some exclusive
party and then running away in his sportive car with the
new starlet from the movie or music star system.
Sometimes he exaggerates like that time the police found
his car crashed and stuck up on a monumental fountain while
he and two girls were having a bath naked ad drunk in the
same fountain...
A furious energy drives him to self-destruction, to the
total exploitation of himself.
In the end he is alone and likes it this way. Fuck anyone!
Fuck anyone but... Aura, a seventeen years old girl who has
been his friend since they were kids, the only person that
he ever managed to stand and even, somehow, to care for.
Not even his mother Lucretia is that fortunate.
Only beside her Vincent can feel that hatred he carries
inside to vanish. Hatred so deep that he can hardly explain
it sometimes. It is not only a fury against that bastard of
his father. He never cared for him; he always was too busy
with his business - whatever that was! – and with cheating
on his Valium-addicted mother. So he learned not to care
for him.
No, it is something deeper, some dark shit he feels inside
his guts... Something that gives him pleasure in the hit of
the moment and then a silent remorse when he wakes up the
day after.
It hasn’t always been like this. Aura and Lucretia often
remember in their chats when Vincent was a kind and joyful
kid full of friends... Lucretia believed that the birthmark
in shape of a star on his chest was a good sign for the
destiny of the boy and never gave up on him, even now that
he acts so weird. His attitude actually changed almost one
day to another. It all began when Vincent at the age of ten
became hill of a mysterious disease. Lucretia was scared to
death cause no doctor could get a clue on it. Walter as
usual was away since weeks on a business trip. Lucretia
finally managed to reach him on the phone and his only
answer was: very well. Few days later Walter was back and
got home in company of a strange person, some sort of monk
whose face was incredibly pale, blood less. The man
responding the name of Malpheus, sentenced that the boy
could be saved with a particular sacred surgery. Lucretia
was skeptical but Walter immediately accepted the offer of
the monk to operate his son.
Vincent, unconscious, was taken into a mysterious crypt
where other people were gathered, their faces covered with
masks or hoods. No one’s face was recognizable, only
Vincent and the monk. Even Walter had disappeared behind a
mask, invisible among the invisibles.
During what appeared to be a demoniac ritual after having
invoked the name of Astareioth the monk Malpheus drove with
his bared fingers a mysterious bone splinter through the
mark on his chest straight into his heart.
As the monk stuck the splinter in his body Vincent
immediately opened his eyes and shouted so loud that no one
in the room, with the exception of Malpheus, could stand
it.
When few days after Lucretia could welcome his son back,
nothing was told to her. Not even Vincent has ever carried
a memory of that strange event. Since then in any case his
character progressively changed and became obscure, cloudy.
Lucretia knows that the way Aura cares for Vincent is not
just as a friend. Aura keeps her love hidden in the depths
of her heart for it is too clear for her that Vincent is
not able to fully reach for it. She keeps being the closest
person to him, with unconditioned love. Maybe one day she
will find the courage to tell him how does she feels, how
he cracks her heart apart any given time he walks away with
another girl...