4.

Subconsciously, Amphion Saint-Benedict Oswald always managed to feel uprooted. He hadn't been born in the United States but in Whitby, Britain. His mother Brooke was a Greek scholar and his father Lewis a catholic priest -- she had given him his first name, and he, his second. There had always been a bit of friction between the two, one favouring the beauty of arts and the other religious candour, but at the end of it they managed to achieve some unity of purpose in raising their son.
    As a result, he grew up in a quiet home and was from an early age filled to the brim with books of all kinds. Among the ruins of Whitby he'd wander, projecting upon them the characters of the stories he'd read -- knights, monsters, and kings of yore. In his mind, he was lord of his own domain; a great judge-king of righteousness, loved and adored by the stones, shadows and toys he made his subjects.
    Much to the delight of his parents, the young Amphion soaked up their rigorous moral instruction with eagerness. Neither seemed to perceive that in school this kept him apart from the other children; he had some fantastic ideas concerning the simplest of vices which, through his perspective, were magnified into the trappings of a more grotesque phenomenon. The schoolboy who drew a nasty doodle of the teacher was automatically a thief and a brute -- he avoided such flawed characters with terror in his heart.
    By high school, he was instilled with a deluded sense of moral and philosophical supremacy. In all his classes he was nothing short of fervid and outspoken; eventually he became captain of the school’s debate team. All the teachers concurred he was by far the most agreeable boy they’d ever taken under their guard. His father believed he had all the makings of a priest while his mother, a more ambitious soul by any standard, secretly regarded her son as the incarnation of a philosopher king.
    When he’d been fifteen years of age, the Oswald family had moved to Wisconsin in the United States, and the ruins of Whitby had become but memories. In the end, it was Amphion’s mother who encouraged him to chase the phantoms of Whitby he’d experienced in his youth -- she herself paid for his tuition at the University of Seattle, to which he eagerly departed in pursuit of a degree in the English arts.
    For two years, he submersed himself in reading and writing. For a time, he toyed with the possibilities of the arts as a means of ratifying the world’s greatest troubles. With all his energy he believed the writing of the day could reach out and gently instruct the masses, culminating in a world fervid for moral uprightness. This passion both spurned and was spurned by his growing relationship with a high school girl by the name of Rachel Clowe; the very genteelness of her character gave him all the reason to believe in the higher art of love for all mankind.
    When he was on his way to a date with Rachel one night, a man named Dustin Hobbins stopped and asked him for the time. As he went to glance at his watch, Hobbins pulled out a knife. He stabbed Amphion in the stomach, shoved him to the ground, and robbed him of all his belongings.
    On the pavement, he was left to bleed. With the cold, rough cement beneath his cheek he watched peoples’ sneakers, dress shoes, and high-heels alike pass his face without so much as faltering in their stride -- so much  for the spirit of humanity! It was more than an hour before anyone bothered to call an ambulance. As the blood poured from his body, he made a promise to himself that, should he survive, he would spend the rest of his life doing something practical that could actually make an impact on the state of justice in the world.  
    Two months later, he dropped out of University and started training to become a police officer.