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...