01-20-2011, 10:32 PM
The night lay out before him like a map, spanning into the fog of time. Each and every action of the execution would strum out like ripples into the fate of the revolution. The things that lay in the blackness that came when the Sun slept were delicate, almost as easily destroyed as the dark was vanquished with the flick of a light.
Victoria hit the light switch as she strolled into the room, barefooted and wearing a strange outfit that Sigfried hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t an elegant dress or some girl-scout wanna-be getup, it was a lithe, slim fit suit that he could only assume was for killing people. She loomed in the corner of the room, silent. She still had a strange sense of fragility about her, something not clicking right.
“What are you doing?” Her question was held up by thin strands of her voice, not quite all there enough to be called confident.
The young man looked over at her casually and smiled. It was still hard for him to give the woman the time of day, but she deserved his attentions after all he had put her through. All the things that have yet to happen. “Oh, nothing you should really worry about right now. I’m more worried about your head, to be honest.” He wasn’t much sugar coating things. It was easier to just say what was in your head and let it be known than dance around the issue. “I know that you have a mission with me and everything, but I want you to be at the top of your game and I know that you can’t really do that when you’re still all torn up about Roy.” His eyes dipped down from her face. “I know I can’t expect you to be over this ordeal in the matter of a night, but I think that some decompression will be good for you.” He smiled as warmly as he could muster at the pink haired girl. “Have you been out recently?”
Her hands played with themselves and she shook her head slowly. “I don’t go out, really.”
He turned back to his work and nodded. “Well, maybe it’s time you did, huh?” He scribed down a few more notes before looking back at the young hunter. Her body was twisted in knots, as though her very being resisted the idea. “Listen, it’ll be fun. Hati is good with that stuff. I’ll take care of the work tonight, ok?”
It wasn’t as though she had much a choice. She had been told by whoever was in charge to follow his orders. He didn’t have to use the words, “You have to go,” for it to be implied. She would simply have to live up to the reality of the odd power balance and go along with it. What did she really have left to lose anyways?
Hati chased after Jarka as she closed the refrigerator and headed back towards her room. She had been in and out of her room for the entirety of the day, snatching snacks out of the fridge with the same clothes she had slept in. Nobody had had the gall to intercept her yet.
“Jarka!” He called after he as he leaned in and laid his hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Jarka.” She slowly turned to face him, the same unpleasant disposition dressed over her face. “Hey, it’s me, you know, Hati?” He smiled for a flash of his slightly yellowed teeth before going on. “I was wooondering… If maybe you wanted to join us tonight? Me and Vic are going out on the town.” He shrugged, dipping from side to side anxiously. “You know, maybe relax a little. Get a little bit of it all off of your shoulders, huh?”
She seemed as though she was deciding, but it was clear that she wasn’t particularly happy with the invitation. She would probably have been more content to stay inside and sulk just a bit longer before moving on. She parted her mouth, but Hati cut her off. “It’s all on me of course. I just want to see you in a better mood.” He gave her a sickly sweet smile and squeezed her shoulders affectionately. “Please?”
She had a tiny battle with herself, that urge to be angry scratching at the back of her head. It’s hard to be angry when you know you should be but hard to give it up when you shouldn’t be. She quavered slightly, and Hati smiled when he saw that she was losing the battle inside her mind. “Fine,” she finally uttered.
The young man gave a literal hop of joy and nodded to her. “Fantastic! Go get ready or whatever. We’re gonna take off at like, eight thirty.” He trotted off quickly, giving a short wave to the young woman. “Dude I’m so stoked!”
Rolling her eyes she popped the strawberry into her mouth and drug herself into her room.
Skoll waited, there in the darkness, as he had done so many times before. He knew it was maddening, he knew that what he was, why he did it, made no sense. He didn’t care. It was the hunger for the hunt, the thirst for blood, the lust for violence that compelled him. In the back of his mind he knew it was the desire to be something different. Something more that what mankind could ever be. He wanted to be a monster, and so that is what he would become when the time called for his service.
Slinking through the ichors of the night, he made his way through the jungle of the city. He felt like he was swimming through the blood of the Kais, the euphoria that came with the scent of wet streets and the warm breeze in the alleys. He was almost silent, rolling his dense rubber heels on the wet asphalt as he darted from building to building.
He grinned widely as he crept past the people of Central City, his stealth fooling them into never believing he had existed beside them. It wasn’t far to his destination now, he only had to intercept him in between his escort and the office building. He had watched his prey for a few days and ran many searches for him on the web. He knew that the man would more than likely hit the bathroom before he met his ride, but it didn’t matter terribly. Hopefully he would be able to hold his bladder for once so that they could get out of there before they were noticed.
Clinging to the border of a skyscraper, he peered out on the long black limo and the five armed guards that surrounded it. They wouldn’t be hard to do away with, but he wanted his getaway to be practically unnoticeable. He had thankfully foreseen this predicament and prepared for it.
He pulled a heavy metal sphere from his pocket and tossed it up and down in his hand a moment. There were actually two safeties, a small clip that rested on top of the level and then the pin. He flicked off the tiny clip and then began the task of wrenching the pin out. He thought back to all the movies he had seen where the grizzled army vet pulled it out with his teeth and couldn’t help but chuckle. How funny would it have been if their teeth had just been ripped out of their skulls like they would have been in real life? Golden.
He kept a firm grip of the level and made his way across the street casually. He found another shadow to fade into and hurled the grenade across the street. It was much harder to throw the damn things than anybody would guess. Making something that weighed almost two pounds go any further than twenty feet was a display of ridiculous might. I mean, Skoll only got it like, what? Fifteen feet? But yeah, anyways.
The clack of the metal was followed shortly by the truly deafening blast that ensued. Skoll had diced down behind a thick dumpster and quickly the guards all began to surround the vehicle and scream. Two men were sent after the source of the blast to a goose chase in the alleyway. Two others went after the target to get him to safety.
The one remaining man could not have been blamed for missing a man ducking down and diving into the trunk of the car. He couldn’t be blamed that, as he and the two remaining men raced home through the highly paid man’s personal security and into the confines of his heavily guarded home, he had failed to notice the killer waiting within their very own vehicle.
Or that as he finished locking them within the compound, he was caught unaware by a silent shot that caught his beating heart in a vice and squeezed so hard that it stopped between his ribs. No, a dead man cannot be blamed.
“WOOOO! MUH FUGGIN LIKE, PARTY AND SHIT!” Hati screamed from the top of the bar, swinging around a rather expensive looking leather jacket in the air over his head. The two women sat at the bar below him, staring up with befuddled looks as strobe lights pulsed and loud music pounded in their ears.
He had worn the white leather jacket and a set of acid wash jeans with a studded belt. His hair was, of course, spiked slightly, and a cigarette dangled from his mouth, as there always seemed to be. He had practically begged Victoria to wear the dress he had bought her, a conservative little piece that went below her ankles and rose over her entire body and neck. Jarka had worn a simple skirt and a nice T-shirt, probably the wildest thing she had brought with her from her previous life.
He had ordered them both “chick drinks” and they held the brightly colored plastic cups with an array of straws, umbrellas and other flotsam shooting from the top. Jarka casually sipped at the tropical flavored medley before consulting the tender through the flailing brother’s legs. He nodded understandingly and leaned over the counter to pour a healthy dose of rum into the cup before she dismissed him.
Victoria gaze down into the swirling mass over her cup before setting it on the bar dispassionately. She didn’t seem much to be in the mood for the drink and seemed rather out of place and uncomfortable in the massive, pulsating mobs of people around her.
“Hey, Hati…” She called up to him timidly. “Can I go home?” Her request was earnest, but the young man glared down at her before leaping off of the wooded counter and grabbed her drink.
He thrust the drink back into her hands with an insulted look on his face and said sternly, “No.” He shook his head and cross his arms, staring into her eye. “Man, why you gotta be like that? I know shit has been hard; it has been for all of us. That’s what this is about. It’s about us. It’s about getting back up into the saddle and riding hard after our goal, man. It’s like, it’s like your night off, you get it?”
He was sure the hunter had had nights off before, but he wasn’t entirely sure that she had really been to a club. Sigfried had been wary of the young woman, not knowing entirely why the whole time. He had doted on the way she acted, who she talked to, when she was gone and what excuses she had.
Hati watched her differently. He had studied her as a socialite would: watching her words and the way she folded her arms. She was a virgin, certainly, having barely seen the likes of a man that would treat her right before she had encountered Roy. She didn’t seem to know what she was saying half the time, like she was trying to pretend to be somebody else but wasn’t entirely sure who she was supposed to be. She didn’t know how to hold the drink in her hand properly, as though the very presence of it was alien to her. She probably hadn’t drunk a lot before then, hadn’t smoked and never did drugs. On purpose.
For all realistic purposes it was like he was dealing with that straight edge kid in high school who finally decided to try pot. He never quite knew why it was the pretty ones that fell into that pitfall.
Smiling he snatched a mixed drink off of the counter before the buyer had a chance to notice that it was ready and lead the two women off into the thumping sounds of the crowd. He slammed the drink down his throat and nodded to the other. It wasn’t like Jarka needed any spurning to guzzle down the overpriced grog, but he knew that Victoria didn’t have much a taste for it.
“Come oooon…” he groaned. “Just drink it!” He grabbed one of the superfluous straws on the cup and began to suck the blue fluid down. “Mmmm! Boooze!” He made an exaggerated grin and began to skip and jog into the shoulder to shoulder dance party that raged only a few feet in front of them.
Skoll grinned as he turned back towards the vehicle, the estranged military commander already shuffling from the car. He simply dropped the syringe to the ground and stomped it into a fine powder below his heavy boot. He began to stalk after the husky grey haired man as his hand found its way into his pocket, wrapping around the tiny rectangular box within.
He pushed his thumb down on the selector switch, a small red dot glowing angrily next to two short metal prongs. Thin, black gloved fingers found themselves around the collar of his shirt, tugging him back and down towards him. He jammed the box into the man’s neck and depressed the activator, the bright sparks arcing from the device and into his frail body. He shook and convulsed as he held it into him for several seconds. Soon, his eyes shook shut and he crumpled to the ground.
Pushing the box back into his pocket he then plucked a tiny glass ampoule from his breast pocket and cracked it over a rag, the fluid soaking into it. He held it into the nose of the already unconscious man, assuring that he would not awaken until the time was right.
He wasn’t all that heavy. He had carried heavier men farther in his training as a medic, and more so in the other times that his nefarious past time had been available. He wasn’t quite sure what the layout of the house was but finding a bathroom is usually the easiest thing you can do in a house that size.
“Mmm, nice and spacious.” He was talking to himself, a habit he had picked up from Sigfried. The bathroom had been the size of his old dorm room, a large open space available in the middle of the room. He flung the hefty adult into the center and closed the door behind him. He locked the door quietly and tugged anxiously at his gloves.
He paced back and forth, excited for the task ahead. He didn’t want to dawdle too long, but he liked to savor in moments like this. The calm before the storm, seeing the clouds rolling overhead just waiting to open up and devour all those below. He shook his head free of his sentimentality and loomed over the man darkly.
He began by stripping all of the clothing off of the man and cramming them into the walled in shower in the corner, blasting the hot water over them. Not only did being nude create a feeling of alienation in the subject, but all matter of important or helpful items were now being downed in extremely hot liquid.
The air became thick with fog, blotting out the mirror and making slick every porcelain surface. The sounds of the water splattering on the tiles and bouncing around in the shower box drowned out what would soon be words and whispers from finding ears in the other parts of the house. Just the home owner taking a nice shower before bed.
He pulled out the small earth magnet he kept on him for such occasions and began to wave it over the man’s naked form. Sure enough, a tiny metal sprig tore itself from a roll of fat near his lower back and stuck to the magnet in a tiny gory lump. “Knew it…” Without attempting to remove the object from the powerful magnet he snatched a pair of pliers from his pocket and crushed the locator with a firm squeeze.
Stowing the small black rock back in his pocket he began to look the fellow over once again. He was pretty strong by the looks of it, but not very fit. He’d have to do the tie down right or he’d get out of it, and nobody wanted that. He took the long line of zip chord from within another one of the seemingly bottomless pockets on his jacket. He hefted the old man onto the toilet and began to secure him down.
Victoria gingerly sipped at the fruity concoction, holding it in her mouth a second to appraise the flavor. It had pineapple in it. She took another long drag, watched Hati flail around amidst other drunken buffoons, and smirked. It was hard not to have a good time around him in his element. When he was out in the real world he just didn’t seem to be in place, but this club, this madhouse, was his territory.
He wasn’t that bad at dancing really, not that she had much to say about herself. Seemed into the whole thing, at least. Slamming his head around to the beat of the heavy electronic music, he seemed to just evaporate into the song like a specter of sound. She felt strangely drawn to join them in the sea of pulsing people, but how easily she was intimidated by social intimacy. How could she join them? She wasn’t like them. She didn’t understand what it was like to be like them, and they could never know what it was like to be like her. She was the outlier, the stranger, the freak.
She put down her glass and looked down into the lonely table once again. Why had Sigfried sent her here with him? Did he really dislike her that much? She almost couldn’t bear the feelings of isolation any longer. It was pounding all around her, every beat pushing her further and further down, crushing her body into a smaller and smaller space. It was suffocating, it was miserable she had to get out of the-
“Come and dance Victoria.” Hati grasped her hand and tugged at it, his voice trumpeting over the sounds of the club.
He snatched her drink and forced it into her hands again as he drew her into the elbow bashing, cramped, insane space of the dance floor. At first she stood there amidst them, bobbing her head nervously. What do you even do in the middle of the dance floor? Hati was screaming something surely reassuring, but she couldn’t even begin to hear him. Soon he walked forward and grabbed both of her hands, swinging them back and forth to the beat, a massive grin on his face.
She couldn’t help but smirk at the wild boy. He had that strange charm that nobody could really ever talk about. It wasn’t tangible, describable, it eluded words and understanding. It just drew you into the madness like a child and cradled you in the folds of insanity.
He pulled her in close and shouted into her ear so that she might be able to understand his rantings. “Just move to the beat! You can do whatever the hell you want as long as it’s to the beat!” He then released her and began to pump his fists and thrash his head to the rhythm of the music, screaming some unheard words and howls.
Timidly, at first, she began to kick her feet out a bit and jive her hands back and forth. Hati nodded and pantomimed a drinking from an invisible cup. Victoria smiled and had another sip.
“Wake up.”
Skoll slapped the man once, but is face simply sagged to the side. He rolled his eyes in irritation, fishing around in his jacket once again. A tiny ammonia packet was held underneath the man’s nose before being broken and waved around his face. His nostrils flared and he began to cough, heavy lids blinking a few times as he came to.
The man began to look around himself blearily before startling himself. He thrashed around wildly against his plastic restraints and screamed from behind the silver tape securing his mouth shut. He jerked his hands so hard that a thin trickle of blood began to run from his wrist, though he couldn’t tell but for the warm sensation of it running down his fingers.
“You know, I always feel like I’m wasting good ammonia when I do that.” Skoll shook his head slowly as he paced back and forth in front of the prostrate man. “But I mean, really what else would I be using it for? It’s not like people just faint in the middle of the street or something.” His speaking partner grumbled and cursed under the restraint of the tape, but nothing intelligible came out of it.
“Anyways.” He plucked the cuff of the long black leather gloves and gazed through his glasses at him sternly. “General… General Peters, isn’t it? I think that was it.” He knelt down in front of the man and stared him in the eyes. “Now, I’m going to ask you some questions. I’d like you to answer those questions. At first you’ll think that you can resist me, and that you won’t tell me or that somebody will come in to save the day. Hell, you might think you’re going to break out of those zip ties and save yourself.” He paused for a long time, what must have seemed like minutes to the man on the commode. “Well, I want you to think about it. Stop using your emotions, stop trying to be brave and think about it. We’re in your house. Nobody can hear you. Everyone thinks you’re home safe. I found the little transponder in your skin and I killed all of your other electronics. You’re stuck here with me. You’re not going to escape. Make it easy on yourself and just tell me what I want to know, ok?”
He grabbed a corner of the tape and slowly began to pull it from his lips, the tape clinging to his mustache and tugging strands out painfully. He paused halfway done with the corner of his mouth. “Hey, don’t make a lot of noise, alright? I really don’t want to have to go through the motions.” He was lying. Of course he wanted to go through the motions, or he wouldn’t have volunteered.
The man slowly nodded in submission. Skoll tore the remaining portion of the strip off with a jerk, wadding it up in his hand. “Hel-“ Peters had only managed a half-scream before Skoll’s knuckles found his throat. He began to choke and gag as a fresh strip was reapplied to his face.
The tormentor shook his head slowly. “Should have listened.”
“Dude, dude, dude. Dude. Jarka.” Hati slumped against the bar as he slid towards her. “Dude, have you like, had one of these? Vanilla vodkas mixed with GenCola? It tastes just like a Vanilla GenCola! This is crazy!” He quickly guzzled the remainder of the drink and slammed the glass down.
Jarka looked him over once before gazing into the bottom of her cup of rum. She swirled the tiny straw around in the ice and let out a long sigh. She lifted the cup to her lips and began to choke the whole thing down, tipping it up ever higher. Hati grinned impishly and fished about in his pocket, producing a small plastic bag with a number of tiny brightly colored pills. He pulled one out and flipped it over with his thumb as it rested in the middle of his hand. “Maybe this can help you relax a little huh?”
She looked at it speculatively, her face scrunching up in a peculiar shape. “What is it?” She asked the question, having already known the answer. She saw the tiny little sword on the face of the thing. His quirked his brow and gestured it at her, offering it up. She groaned and picked it up from him. “Seriously, what is it?”
Hati smirked and began to slide backwards across the floor as he fires imaginary bullets from the tips of his fingers. “See you on the dance floooor!” She saw him fold his fingers out and tuck a pink tab under his tongue before he disappeared into the masses.
The young woman played with the pill between her fingers, laying it on the counter next to her empty glass. She raised her finger to the barkeep for one more, which he tended to quickly. She noted how fast the service here seemed to be despite being a massive club in the middle of a thriving city. Even when she was at fast places they didn’t seem to produce drinks as fast as this one man behind the bar.
Maybe he was like her and could predict who would need a drink before they ever needed one. She sipped casually at her drink as she watched him casually clean a glass. He began to pour a drink as a girl a little bit younger than her slapped money in front of him, and he sent her on her way. Such a strange man… Another drink of her rum. She felt the tab beneath her fingers, the smooth surface dancing along with her hand on the slick bar. He deftly mixed all of the ingredients of some kind of fruit-based slurry for another girl. The rum there wasn’t great, but it was decent.
The pill felt oddly dry under her tongue as she waded through the flood of mankind on the way to her party on the other side of the club. The two weren’t hard to miss, Hati’s head bobbing up and down and arms waving around in fluid, cyclic motions. Victoria had taken off her expensive high heels and was padding around on the dingy floor with a huge grin on her face. Jarka’s eyebrow twitched at this, such a strange sight from the girl who had always been bound up in a little ball of nerves and angst. She lifted her tongue and the awful, bitter taste of the pill flooded her mouth. It was like chewing on acetaminophen: just fucking terrible.
Hati suddenly spotted her from across the room. He rushed over and took her by the arm, splitting the people around him like a mage walking through an ocean. He grabbed the drink from her hand and gave it away to a stranger as they passed by. She started to protest, but he silenced her quickly. It was better if she didn’t have any more to drink. The two came to Victoria who’s usually pale cheeks were flush, her perfect hair a bit mussed. She opened her arms wide as the approached her, and Hati hooted as he lifted his bottle of water into the air.
He immediately began to dance beside her and waved his arm in invitation to Jarka. As she shyly joined the group, he let out a reverberating scream. “PARTYYYYY HAAAARD!”
Skoll tore the tape off of the general’s mouth, not bothering to ask if he would keep his mouth shut this time, He knew that he would. He had learned better. Skoll wadded the little ball of tape up again and let it hit the floor. It splashed up a bit, even from the tiny impact of the ball. It splattered up onto his shins in micro-droplets, sticking to the space between the hairs.
The blood flowed like a silken carpet down across the tiles, and now every step Skoll made was accompanied by a soft patter as it clung to his feet. He rolled out a longer strip of toilet paper and wiped down the simple pocket knife thoroughly before slipping it back into his pocket.
“Now. General Peters.” He once again looked down at the man, his body now covered in long, accurate, shallow slices that ran symmetrically down his arms, belly and chest. “I see that we’re a little more cooperative, right?” He leaned in and ran a gloved hand over his sweaty hair, dabbing the drips from his eyes. “I don’t enjoy doing this to you. I’ve never been a fan of torture.” Skoll himself wasn’t entirely sure if he was lying. The man jerked and shivered as the thin leather pushed the matted mess back over his head. “But now we can move on to business, right?”
“Who… Who the fuck are you?” The aged general’s voice was ragged, words pushed between haggard breaths.
Skoll stopped all movement for a moment, pointing into his face. “Who, me?” He chuckled softly and shook his head. “You might recognize me. From the TV? I’m one of Sigfried’s friends. Like Roy.” He had become preoccupied with fiddling over some metallic instrument that couldn’t quite be seen.
“We didn’t kill Roy…” The prisoner was panting now, regaining a bit of his senses.
Skoll glanced over at him for a moment and grinned. “Oh I know. We shot Roy.”
“What?” The poor old thing was confused. He tried to move himself around a moment, attempting at some kind of comfort. He winced and grunted shortly, his moving skin agitating his wounds.
“Well anyways.” Skoll ignored the man’s question. “Well, me and Hati are brothers. Twins. You might have seen him on the TV too? He’s the one that wears the white stuff with the spiky hair? I don’t much like his hair, but there you have it.” He shrugged and laid the toll down on the sink, drawing another one up and polishing it. “Well, we’re each a part of Sigfried.”
He opened the cabinet and grabbed a tall brown bottle of rubbing alcohol, unscrewing it and having a short sniff. “Every man has ambitions, yes?” The question was rhetorical, and so the general didn’t answer. “Well, Sigfried had them too. He just… he never seemed like he was able to really get there.” Skoll shook his head slowly, tapping his temple. “He just had too many distractions. I think more people are like that. Well anyways, that’s where we come in.”
Skoll stood above him and casually began pouring the alcohol over the lacerations that plagued him. Wincing and a gasp of pain were mingled with the sizzle of the fluid interacting with his blood. “Well, you know, to soak up all those memories. To hide from his head all the things that hold him back. He needed two people because one false persona, well, it just wasn’t enough. There were so many things just pulling him in opposite directions.”
He tossed the empty bottle behind him and let it roll around on the wet floor, still staring rather absent mindedly over the carnage. “One of us, well both of us are completely insane. Just for different reasons.” Walking back to the shelf he uncorked the container of cotton balls and took a fist full. “See, one of us is his impulse to just escape. To take the easy road by giving everything up and being free in the night. Party, drugs, women, fuck the consequences. The social side of insanity.”
He drew the cotton balls over each of the wounds slowly, soaking up the pink mixture from the cuts. He tossed each used ball behind him onto the floor with each swipe. “And well, one of us is the side that wants to escape by giving in to the desire to just be a monster. The antisocial side, you know? To hunt. And kill. And devour. To ascend from humanity by becoming inhuman.”
He stood slowly and let out a long sigh. “And well, that’s us. We hold more of Sigfried than he will probably ever know… More than he probably wants to know.”
The befuddled military man just stared up at the black-clad assailant. “What are you talking about?”
Skoll could not help but let out a yelp of laughter. “Oh, never mind. It doesn’t really matter anyways.” He curled his fingers into a fist and plowed him into his jaw. “I’m here to get all of your military access codes.”
“Fuck you!” He spit onto the black boots in front of him.
Skoll smirked, an almost sad expression from him. “Did you not think I’d know about your little family?” What little color in the general’s face drained from it. “They weren’t hard to find. The government doesn’t give nearly as much of a shit about you as you apparently think they do.” He put his face a few inches away from the elder man’s and whispered, “General Peters has taken an indefinite leave from the City with his wife and child due to threats against himself and his personal security forces. An explosive device aimed at his vehicle failed to kill the military leader, but officials have relocated him just in case.” A sneer grew on his lips. “You’ll give orders without ever being seen. Nobody will even know you’re missing.” He laughed loudly, splitting the man’s ear. “Think of the poor children.”
He stood back up and reached for the duct tape once again. “I’ll talk! I’ll talk!” The pleads were spit filled and pathetic.
“Oh, I know you will.” He smeared the tape over the man’s mouth. “Of the two brothers, which do you think I am?”
“I feel like the world is like, a whole bunch of tiny little strings, you know?” Jarka was raving on as Victoria bobbed her head back and forth across from her in the long plush tan leather seat. “Like, like the whole universe is just attached to my skin and when I move my arms,” she paused and gazed over at Hati whose eyes seemed fixed upon her. “There are these ripples that come out.”
“Dude that’s crazy.” Hati spoke almost too quickly to understand, his fingers tracing over the floor of the limo’s carpeted floor. “I just feel like there’s like… I dunno dude. Like a fuckin’, you know, warm sea of gelatin around me. And I’m swimming in it. It feels awesome.”
Victoria’s eyebrow quirked and she looked between the two of them. Her hair flopped forward and back as her head weaved. “I feel like…. Like I’ve got electricity in me.” Her words were slurred and barely controlled. The pink drink sloshed around in her hair and slipped out of the cup when the driver hit a small bump. “See?” She held her finger in the shape of a play gun, aimed it at the ceiling and fired a single screaming bolt of electrical bullet through the roof of the car. Thankfully all that Hati had tried to convince her of imbibing was a few mixed drinks. Shudder to think what else she might have done.
All three burst out laughing uncontrollably, clapping their hands and wiped tears from their eyes. “That was fuckin sweet.” Hati looked over at her and held his hands up casually. “Dude, not to be a perv or anything, but can I touch your hair? It’s pink. It looks like it’s made out of gum.”
She thought for a moment before shaking her head. “No, whatever. Whatever.” She leaned forward, letting it fall down in front of her face. Hati laughed as he ran his fingers through it a few times, stopping himself and slipping back into his seat.
“It totally isn’t bubblegum.” He nodded sagely and took a bit swig of the water before handing it over to Jarka.
“Ok, I know this is like, totally sappy or whatever, but I’m really, really glad that we’re all friends, guys. Seriously. It’s bombin. I haven’t had anybody to go out with other than Sigfried for like, forever, and he doesn’t really like to go out all that often.” He let his head continue to nod as he looked between the two girls. “We’ll have to have him come out on a night like this some time.”
Victoria snored loudly, forcing Hati to look over to her quickly. “Aw man…” He consulted Jarka quickly, “Do we draw a mustache on her?” He shook his head quickly, resending his question. “No, no, it’s her first time. She gets a freebie.”
Sigfried cracked the door to the rest of the apartment, having spent the night in his bedroom accidently working through the night. He scratched his upper leg and shuffled towards the fridge. He cracked it open and took a wine cooler out, dousing his throat with the delicious fluid.
He closed the fridge and began to turn before he noticed the carefully printed and color coded stack of sheets pinned to the door. He removed the several fruit shaped magnets used to hold it up and began flipping through the pages. It was a vast inventory of all of the weapons caches in the general area of Central City with pass codes, ammunition counts and a plethora of other information. Call signs, designators and everything he would ever need to command the armies of the local military forces were all present and aligned perfectly for ease of use.
“Skoll?” He looked around the room in confusion. “Skoll, did you do this?” A sudden groan echoed out from behind him and he slowly turned to look.
There the two girls were curled up on opposite sides of the pull-out couch, sandwiching Hati in the middle. All of them were fully clothed, including shoes (except for Victoria, who seemed oddly out of place missing them), and looked rather a mess. The pink haired girl still grasped the blue plastic novelty cup from the club and was snoring loudly.
Sigfried shook his head slowly and began to wander back towards his room. “Kai help us all…
Victoria hit the light switch as she strolled into the room, barefooted and wearing a strange outfit that Sigfried hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t an elegant dress or some girl-scout wanna-be getup, it was a lithe, slim fit suit that he could only assume was for killing people. She loomed in the corner of the room, silent. She still had a strange sense of fragility about her, something not clicking right.
“What are you doing?” Her question was held up by thin strands of her voice, not quite all there enough to be called confident.
The young man looked over at her casually and smiled. It was still hard for him to give the woman the time of day, but she deserved his attentions after all he had put her through. All the things that have yet to happen. “Oh, nothing you should really worry about right now. I’m more worried about your head, to be honest.” He wasn’t much sugar coating things. It was easier to just say what was in your head and let it be known than dance around the issue. “I know that you have a mission with me and everything, but I want you to be at the top of your game and I know that you can’t really do that when you’re still all torn up about Roy.” His eyes dipped down from her face. “I know I can’t expect you to be over this ordeal in the matter of a night, but I think that some decompression will be good for you.” He smiled as warmly as he could muster at the pink haired girl. “Have you been out recently?”
Her hands played with themselves and she shook her head slowly. “I don’t go out, really.”
He turned back to his work and nodded. “Well, maybe it’s time you did, huh?” He scribed down a few more notes before looking back at the young hunter. Her body was twisted in knots, as though her very being resisted the idea. “Listen, it’ll be fun. Hati is good with that stuff. I’ll take care of the work tonight, ok?”
It wasn’t as though she had much a choice. She had been told by whoever was in charge to follow his orders. He didn’t have to use the words, “You have to go,” for it to be implied. She would simply have to live up to the reality of the odd power balance and go along with it. What did she really have left to lose anyways?
--=~*/| o |\*~=--
Hati chased after Jarka as she closed the refrigerator and headed back towards her room. She had been in and out of her room for the entirety of the day, snatching snacks out of the fridge with the same clothes she had slept in. Nobody had had the gall to intercept her yet.
“Jarka!” He called after he as he leaned in and laid his hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Jarka.” She slowly turned to face him, the same unpleasant disposition dressed over her face. “Hey, it’s me, you know, Hati?” He smiled for a flash of his slightly yellowed teeth before going on. “I was wooondering… If maybe you wanted to join us tonight? Me and Vic are going out on the town.” He shrugged, dipping from side to side anxiously. “You know, maybe relax a little. Get a little bit of it all off of your shoulders, huh?”
She seemed as though she was deciding, but it was clear that she wasn’t particularly happy with the invitation. She would probably have been more content to stay inside and sulk just a bit longer before moving on. She parted her mouth, but Hati cut her off. “It’s all on me of course. I just want to see you in a better mood.” He gave her a sickly sweet smile and squeezed her shoulders affectionately. “Please?”
She had a tiny battle with herself, that urge to be angry scratching at the back of her head. It’s hard to be angry when you know you should be but hard to give it up when you shouldn’t be. She quavered slightly, and Hati smiled when he saw that she was losing the battle inside her mind. “Fine,” she finally uttered.
The young man gave a literal hop of joy and nodded to her. “Fantastic! Go get ready or whatever. We’re gonna take off at like, eight thirty.” He trotted off quickly, giving a short wave to the young woman. “Dude I’m so stoked!”
Rolling her eyes she popped the strawberry into her mouth and drug herself into her room.
--=~*/| o |\*~=--
Skoll waited, there in the darkness, as he had done so many times before. He knew it was maddening, he knew that what he was, why he did it, made no sense. He didn’t care. It was the hunger for the hunt, the thirst for blood, the lust for violence that compelled him. In the back of his mind he knew it was the desire to be something different. Something more that what mankind could ever be. He wanted to be a monster, and so that is what he would become when the time called for his service.
Slinking through the ichors of the night, he made his way through the jungle of the city. He felt like he was swimming through the blood of the Kais, the euphoria that came with the scent of wet streets and the warm breeze in the alleys. He was almost silent, rolling his dense rubber heels on the wet asphalt as he darted from building to building.
He grinned widely as he crept past the people of Central City, his stealth fooling them into never believing he had existed beside them. It wasn’t far to his destination now, he only had to intercept him in between his escort and the office building. He had watched his prey for a few days and ran many searches for him on the web. He knew that the man would more than likely hit the bathroom before he met his ride, but it didn’t matter terribly. Hopefully he would be able to hold his bladder for once so that they could get out of there before they were noticed.
Clinging to the border of a skyscraper, he peered out on the long black limo and the five armed guards that surrounded it. They wouldn’t be hard to do away with, but he wanted his getaway to be practically unnoticeable. He had thankfully foreseen this predicament and prepared for it.
He pulled a heavy metal sphere from his pocket and tossed it up and down in his hand a moment. There were actually two safeties, a small clip that rested on top of the level and then the pin. He flicked off the tiny clip and then began the task of wrenching the pin out. He thought back to all the movies he had seen where the grizzled army vet pulled it out with his teeth and couldn’t help but chuckle. How funny would it have been if their teeth had just been ripped out of their skulls like they would have been in real life? Golden.
He kept a firm grip of the level and made his way across the street casually. He found another shadow to fade into and hurled the grenade across the street. It was much harder to throw the damn things than anybody would guess. Making something that weighed almost two pounds go any further than twenty feet was a display of ridiculous might. I mean, Skoll only got it like, what? Fifteen feet? But yeah, anyways.
The clack of the metal was followed shortly by the truly deafening blast that ensued. Skoll had diced down behind a thick dumpster and quickly the guards all began to surround the vehicle and scream. Two men were sent after the source of the blast to a goose chase in the alleyway. Two others went after the target to get him to safety.
The one remaining man could not have been blamed for missing a man ducking down and diving into the trunk of the car. He couldn’t be blamed that, as he and the two remaining men raced home through the highly paid man’s personal security and into the confines of his heavily guarded home, he had failed to notice the killer waiting within their very own vehicle.
Or that as he finished locking them within the compound, he was caught unaware by a silent shot that caught his beating heart in a vice and squeezed so hard that it stopped between his ribs. No, a dead man cannot be blamed.
--=~*/| o |\*~=--
“WOOOO! MUH FUGGIN LIKE, PARTY AND SHIT!” Hati screamed from the top of the bar, swinging around a rather expensive looking leather jacket in the air over his head. The two women sat at the bar below him, staring up with befuddled looks as strobe lights pulsed and loud music pounded in their ears.
He had worn the white leather jacket and a set of acid wash jeans with a studded belt. His hair was, of course, spiked slightly, and a cigarette dangled from his mouth, as there always seemed to be. He had practically begged Victoria to wear the dress he had bought her, a conservative little piece that went below her ankles and rose over her entire body and neck. Jarka had worn a simple skirt and a nice T-shirt, probably the wildest thing she had brought with her from her previous life.
He had ordered them both “chick drinks” and they held the brightly colored plastic cups with an array of straws, umbrellas and other flotsam shooting from the top. Jarka casually sipped at the tropical flavored medley before consulting the tender through the flailing brother’s legs. He nodded understandingly and leaned over the counter to pour a healthy dose of rum into the cup before she dismissed him.
Victoria gaze down into the swirling mass over her cup before setting it on the bar dispassionately. She didn’t seem much to be in the mood for the drink and seemed rather out of place and uncomfortable in the massive, pulsating mobs of people around her.
“Hey, Hati…” She called up to him timidly. “Can I go home?” Her request was earnest, but the young man glared down at her before leaping off of the wooded counter and grabbed her drink.
He thrust the drink back into her hands with an insulted look on his face and said sternly, “No.” He shook his head and cross his arms, staring into her eye. “Man, why you gotta be like that? I know shit has been hard; it has been for all of us. That’s what this is about. It’s about us. It’s about getting back up into the saddle and riding hard after our goal, man. It’s like, it’s like your night off, you get it?”
He was sure the hunter had had nights off before, but he wasn’t entirely sure that she had really been to a club. Sigfried had been wary of the young woman, not knowing entirely why the whole time. He had doted on the way she acted, who she talked to, when she was gone and what excuses she had.
Hati watched her differently. He had studied her as a socialite would: watching her words and the way she folded her arms. She was a virgin, certainly, having barely seen the likes of a man that would treat her right before she had encountered Roy. She didn’t seem to know what she was saying half the time, like she was trying to pretend to be somebody else but wasn’t entirely sure who she was supposed to be. She didn’t know how to hold the drink in her hand properly, as though the very presence of it was alien to her. She probably hadn’t drunk a lot before then, hadn’t smoked and never did drugs. On purpose.
For all realistic purposes it was like he was dealing with that straight edge kid in high school who finally decided to try pot. He never quite knew why it was the pretty ones that fell into that pitfall.
Smiling he snatched a mixed drink off of the counter before the buyer had a chance to notice that it was ready and lead the two women off into the thumping sounds of the crowd. He slammed the drink down his throat and nodded to the other. It wasn’t like Jarka needed any spurning to guzzle down the overpriced grog, but he knew that Victoria didn’t have much a taste for it.
“Come oooon…” he groaned. “Just drink it!” He grabbed one of the superfluous straws on the cup and began to suck the blue fluid down. “Mmmm! Boooze!” He made an exaggerated grin and began to skip and jog into the shoulder to shoulder dance party that raged only a few feet in front of them.
--=~*/| o |\*~=--
Skoll grinned as he turned back towards the vehicle, the estranged military commander already shuffling from the car. He simply dropped the syringe to the ground and stomped it into a fine powder below his heavy boot. He began to stalk after the husky grey haired man as his hand found its way into his pocket, wrapping around the tiny rectangular box within.
He pushed his thumb down on the selector switch, a small red dot glowing angrily next to two short metal prongs. Thin, black gloved fingers found themselves around the collar of his shirt, tugging him back and down towards him. He jammed the box into the man’s neck and depressed the activator, the bright sparks arcing from the device and into his frail body. He shook and convulsed as he held it into him for several seconds. Soon, his eyes shook shut and he crumpled to the ground.
Pushing the box back into his pocket he then plucked a tiny glass ampoule from his breast pocket and cracked it over a rag, the fluid soaking into it. He held it into the nose of the already unconscious man, assuring that he would not awaken until the time was right.
He wasn’t all that heavy. He had carried heavier men farther in his training as a medic, and more so in the other times that his nefarious past time had been available. He wasn’t quite sure what the layout of the house was but finding a bathroom is usually the easiest thing you can do in a house that size.
“Mmm, nice and spacious.” He was talking to himself, a habit he had picked up from Sigfried. The bathroom had been the size of his old dorm room, a large open space available in the middle of the room. He flung the hefty adult into the center and closed the door behind him. He locked the door quietly and tugged anxiously at his gloves.
He paced back and forth, excited for the task ahead. He didn’t want to dawdle too long, but he liked to savor in moments like this. The calm before the storm, seeing the clouds rolling overhead just waiting to open up and devour all those below. He shook his head free of his sentimentality and loomed over the man darkly.
He began by stripping all of the clothing off of the man and cramming them into the walled in shower in the corner, blasting the hot water over them. Not only did being nude create a feeling of alienation in the subject, but all matter of important or helpful items were now being downed in extremely hot liquid.
The air became thick with fog, blotting out the mirror and making slick every porcelain surface. The sounds of the water splattering on the tiles and bouncing around in the shower box drowned out what would soon be words and whispers from finding ears in the other parts of the house. Just the home owner taking a nice shower before bed.
He pulled out the small earth magnet he kept on him for such occasions and began to wave it over the man’s naked form. Sure enough, a tiny metal sprig tore itself from a roll of fat near his lower back and stuck to the magnet in a tiny gory lump. “Knew it…” Without attempting to remove the object from the powerful magnet he snatched a pair of pliers from his pocket and crushed the locator with a firm squeeze.
Stowing the small black rock back in his pocket he began to look the fellow over once again. He was pretty strong by the looks of it, but not very fit. He’d have to do the tie down right or he’d get out of it, and nobody wanted that. He took the long line of zip chord from within another one of the seemingly bottomless pockets on his jacket. He hefted the old man onto the toilet and began to secure him down.
--=~*/| o |\*~=--
Victoria gingerly sipped at the fruity concoction, holding it in her mouth a second to appraise the flavor. It had pineapple in it. She took another long drag, watched Hati flail around amidst other drunken buffoons, and smirked. It was hard not to have a good time around him in his element. When he was out in the real world he just didn’t seem to be in place, but this club, this madhouse, was his territory.
He wasn’t that bad at dancing really, not that she had much to say about herself. Seemed into the whole thing, at least. Slamming his head around to the beat of the heavy electronic music, he seemed to just evaporate into the song like a specter of sound. She felt strangely drawn to join them in the sea of pulsing people, but how easily she was intimidated by social intimacy. How could she join them? She wasn’t like them. She didn’t understand what it was like to be like them, and they could never know what it was like to be like her. She was the outlier, the stranger, the freak.
She put down her glass and looked down into the lonely table once again. Why had Sigfried sent her here with him? Did he really dislike her that much? She almost couldn’t bear the feelings of isolation any longer. It was pounding all around her, every beat pushing her further and further down, crushing her body into a smaller and smaller space. It was suffocating, it was miserable she had to get out of the-
“Come and dance Victoria.” Hati grasped her hand and tugged at it, his voice trumpeting over the sounds of the club.
He snatched her drink and forced it into her hands again as he drew her into the elbow bashing, cramped, insane space of the dance floor. At first she stood there amidst them, bobbing her head nervously. What do you even do in the middle of the dance floor? Hati was screaming something surely reassuring, but she couldn’t even begin to hear him. Soon he walked forward and grabbed both of her hands, swinging them back and forth to the beat, a massive grin on his face.
She couldn’t help but smirk at the wild boy. He had that strange charm that nobody could really ever talk about. It wasn’t tangible, describable, it eluded words and understanding. It just drew you into the madness like a child and cradled you in the folds of insanity.
He pulled her in close and shouted into her ear so that she might be able to understand his rantings. “Just move to the beat! You can do whatever the hell you want as long as it’s to the beat!” He then released her and began to pump his fists and thrash his head to the rhythm of the music, screaming some unheard words and howls.
Timidly, at first, she began to kick her feet out a bit and jive her hands back and forth. Hati nodded and pantomimed a drinking from an invisible cup. Victoria smiled and had another sip.
--=~*/| o |\*~=--
“Wake up.”
Skoll slapped the man once, but is face simply sagged to the side. He rolled his eyes in irritation, fishing around in his jacket once again. A tiny ammonia packet was held underneath the man’s nose before being broken and waved around his face. His nostrils flared and he began to cough, heavy lids blinking a few times as he came to.
The man began to look around himself blearily before startling himself. He thrashed around wildly against his plastic restraints and screamed from behind the silver tape securing his mouth shut. He jerked his hands so hard that a thin trickle of blood began to run from his wrist, though he couldn’t tell but for the warm sensation of it running down his fingers.
“You know, I always feel like I’m wasting good ammonia when I do that.” Skoll shook his head slowly as he paced back and forth in front of the prostrate man. “But I mean, really what else would I be using it for? It’s not like people just faint in the middle of the street or something.” His speaking partner grumbled and cursed under the restraint of the tape, but nothing intelligible came out of it.
“Anyways.” He plucked the cuff of the long black leather gloves and gazed through his glasses at him sternly. “General… General Peters, isn’t it? I think that was it.” He knelt down in front of the man and stared him in the eyes. “Now, I’m going to ask you some questions. I’d like you to answer those questions. At first you’ll think that you can resist me, and that you won’t tell me or that somebody will come in to save the day. Hell, you might think you’re going to break out of those zip ties and save yourself.” He paused for a long time, what must have seemed like minutes to the man on the commode. “Well, I want you to think about it. Stop using your emotions, stop trying to be brave and think about it. We’re in your house. Nobody can hear you. Everyone thinks you’re home safe. I found the little transponder in your skin and I killed all of your other electronics. You’re stuck here with me. You’re not going to escape. Make it easy on yourself and just tell me what I want to know, ok?”
He grabbed a corner of the tape and slowly began to pull it from his lips, the tape clinging to his mustache and tugging strands out painfully. He paused halfway done with the corner of his mouth. “Hey, don’t make a lot of noise, alright? I really don’t want to have to go through the motions.” He was lying. Of course he wanted to go through the motions, or he wouldn’t have volunteered.
The man slowly nodded in submission. Skoll tore the remaining portion of the strip off with a jerk, wadding it up in his hand. “Hel-“ Peters had only managed a half-scream before Skoll’s knuckles found his throat. He began to choke and gag as a fresh strip was reapplied to his face.
The tormentor shook his head slowly. “Should have listened.”
--=~*/| o |\*~=--
“Dude, dude, dude. Dude. Jarka.” Hati slumped against the bar as he slid towards her. “Dude, have you like, had one of these? Vanilla vodkas mixed with GenCola? It tastes just like a Vanilla GenCola! This is crazy!” He quickly guzzled the remainder of the drink and slammed the glass down.
Jarka looked him over once before gazing into the bottom of her cup of rum. She swirled the tiny straw around in the ice and let out a long sigh. She lifted the cup to her lips and began to choke the whole thing down, tipping it up ever higher. Hati grinned impishly and fished about in his pocket, producing a small plastic bag with a number of tiny brightly colored pills. He pulled one out and flipped it over with his thumb as it rested in the middle of his hand. “Maybe this can help you relax a little huh?”
She looked at it speculatively, her face scrunching up in a peculiar shape. “What is it?” She asked the question, having already known the answer. She saw the tiny little sword on the face of the thing. His quirked his brow and gestured it at her, offering it up. She groaned and picked it up from him. “Seriously, what is it?”
Hati smirked and began to slide backwards across the floor as he fires imaginary bullets from the tips of his fingers. “See you on the dance floooor!” She saw him fold his fingers out and tuck a pink tab under his tongue before he disappeared into the masses.
The young woman played with the pill between her fingers, laying it on the counter next to her empty glass. She raised her finger to the barkeep for one more, which he tended to quickly. She noted how fast the service here seemed to be despite being a massive club in the middle of a thriving city. Even when she was at fast places they didn’t seem to produce drinks as fast as this one man behind the bar.
Maybe he was like her and could predict who would need a drink before they ever needed one. She sipped casually at her drink as she watched him casually clean a glass. He began to pour a drink as a girl a little bit younger than her slapped money in front of him, and he sent her on her way. Such a strange man… Another drink of her rum. She felt the tab beneath her fingers, the smooth surface dancing along with her hand on the slick bar. He deftly mixed all of the ingredients of some kind of fruit-based slurry for another girl. The rum there wasn’t great, but it was decent.
The pill felt oddly dry under her tongue as she waded through the flood of mankind on the way to her party on the other side of the club. The two weren’t hard to miss, Hati’s head bobbing up and down and arms waving around in fluid, cyclic motions. Victoria had taken off her expensive high heels and was padding around on the dingy floor with a huge grin on her face. Jarka’s eyebrow twitched at this, such a strange sight from the girl who had always been bound up in a little ball of nerves and angst. She lifted her tongue and the awful, bitter taste of the pill flooded her mouth. It was like chewing on acetaminophen: just fucking terrible.
Hati suddenly spotted her from across the room. He rushed over and took her by the arm, splitting the people around him like a mage walking through an ocean. He grabbed the drink from her hand and gave it away to a stranger as they passed by. She started to protest, but he silenced her quickly. It was better if she didn’t have any more to drink. The two came to Victoria who’s usually pale cheeks were flush, her perfect hair a bit mussed. She opened her arms wide as the approached her, and Hati hooted as he lifted his bottle of water into the air.
He immediately began to dance beside her and waved his arm in invitation to Jarka. As she shyly joined the group, he let out a reverberating scream. “PARTYYYYY HAAAARD!”
--=~*/| o |\*~=--
Skoll tore the tape off of the general’s mouth, not bothering to ask if he would keep his mouth shut this time, He knew that he would. He had learned better. Skoll wadded the little ball of tape up again and let it hit the floor. It splashed up a bit, even from the tiny impact of the ball. It splattered up onto his shins in micro-droplets, sticking to the space between the hairs.
The blood flowed like a silken carpet down across the tiles, and now every step Skoll made was accompanied by a soft patter as it clung to his feet. He rolled out a longer strip of toilet paper and wiped down the simple pocket knife thoroughly before slipping it back into his pocket.
“Now. General Peters.” He once again looked down at the man, his body now covered in long, accurate, shallow slices that ran symmetrically down his arms, belly and chest. “I see that we’re a little more cooperative, right?” He leaned in and ran a gloved hand over his sweaty hair, dabbing the drips from his eyes. “I don’t enjoy doing this to you. I’ve never been a fan of torture.” Skoll himself wasn’t entirely sure if he was lying. The man jerked and shivered as the thin leather pushed the matted mess back over his head. “But now we can move on to business, right?”
“Who… Who the fuck are you?” The aged general’s voice was ragged, words pushed between haggard breaths.
Skoll stopped all movement for a moment, pointing into his face. “Who, me?” He chuckled softly and shook his head. “You might recognize me. From the TV? I’m one of Sigfried’s friends. Like Roy.” He had become preoccupied with fiddling over some metallic instrument that couldn’t quite be seen.
“We didn’t kill Roy…” The prisoner was panting now, regaining a bit of his senses.
Skoll glanced over at him for a moment and grinned. “Oh I know. We shot Roy.”
“What?” The poor old thing was confused. He tried to move himself around a moment, attempting at some kind of comfort. He winced and grunted shortly, his moving skin agitating his wounds.
“Well anyways.” Skoll ignored the man’s question. “Well, me and Hati are brothers. Twins. You might have seen him on the TV too? He’s the one that wears the white stuff with the spiky hair? I don’t much like his hair, but there you have it.” He shrugged and laid the toll down on the sink, drawing another one up and polishing it. “Well, we’re each a part of Sigfried.”
He opened the cabinet and grabbed a tall brown bottle of rubbing alcohol, unscrewing it and having a short sniff. “Every man has ambitions, yes?” The question was rhetorical, and so the general didn’t answer. “Well, Sigfried had them too. He just… he never seemed like he was able to really get there.” Skoll shook his head slowly, tapping his temple. “He just had too many distractions. I think more people are like that. Well anyways, that’s where we come in.”
Skoll stood above him and casually began pouring the alcohol over the lacerations that plagued him. Wincing and a gasp of pain were mingled with the sizzle of the fluid interacting with his blood. “Well, you know, to soak up all those memories. To hide from his head all the things that hold him back. He needed two people because one false persona, well, it just wasn’t enough. There were so many things just pulling him in opposite directions.”
He tossed the empty bottle behind him and let it roll around on the wet floor, still staring rather absent mindedly over the carnage. “One of us, well both of us are completely insane. Just for different reasons.” Walking back to the shelf he uncorked the container of cotton balls and took a fist full. “See, one of us is his impulse to just escape. To take the easy road by giving everything up and being free in the night. Party, drugs, women, fuck the consequences. The social side of insanity.”
He drew the cotton balls over each of the wounds slowly, soaking up the pink mixture from the cuts. He tossed each used ball behind him onto the floor with each swipe. “And well, one of us is the side that wants to escape by giving in to the desire to just be a monster. The antisocial side, you know? To hunt. And kill. And devour. To ascend from humanity by becoming inhuman.”
He stood slowly and let out a long sigh. “And well, that’s us. We hold more of Sigfried than he will probably ever know… More than he probably wants to know.”
The befuddled military man just stared up at the black-clad assailant. “What are you talking about?”
Skoll could not help but let out a yelp of laughter. “Oh, never mind. It doesn’t really matter anyways.” He curled his fingers into a fist and plowed him into his jaw. “I’m here to get all of your military access codes.”
“Fuck you!” He spit onto the black boots in front of him.
Skoll smirked, an almost sad expression from him. “Did you not think I’d know about your little family?” What little color in the general’s face drained from it. “They weren’t hard to find. The government doesn’t give nearly as much of a shit about you as you apparently think they do.” He put his face a few inches away from the elder man’s and whispered, “General Peters has taken an indefinite leave from the City with his wife and child due to threats against himself and his personal security forces. An explosive device aimed at his vehicle failed to kill the military leader, but officials have relocated him just in case.” A sneer grew on his lips. “You’ll give orders without ever being seen. Nobody will even know you’re missing.” He laughed loudly, splitting the man’s ear. “Think of the poor children.”
He stood back up and reached for the duct tape once again. “I’ll talk! I’ll talk!” The pleads were spit filled and pathetic.
“Oh, I know you will.” He smeared the tape over the man’s mouth. “Of the two brothers, which do you think I am?”
--=~*/| o |\*~=--
“I feel like the world is like, a whole bunch of tiny little strings, you know?” Jarka was raving on as Victoria bobbed her head back and forth across from her in the long plush tan leather seat. “Like, like the whole universe is just attached to my skin and when I move my arms,” she paused and gazed over at Hati whose eyes seemed fixed upon her. “There are these ripples that come out.”
“Dude that’s crazy.” Hati spoke almost too quickly to understand, his fingers tracing over the floor of the limo’s carpeted floor. “I just feel like there’s like… I dunno dude. Like a fuckin’, you know, warm sea of gelatin around me. And I’m swimming in it. It feels awesome.”
Victoria’s eyebrow quirked and she looked between the two of them. Her hair flopped forward and back as her head weaved. “I feel like…. Like I’ve got electricity in me.” Her words were slurred and barely controlled. The pink drink sloshed around in her hair and slipped out of the cup when the driver hit a small bump. “See?” She held her finger in the shape of a play gun, aimed it at the ceiling and fired a single screaming bolt of electrical bullet through the roof of the car. Thankfully all that Hati had tried to convince her of imbibing was a few mixed drinks. Shudder to think what else she might have done.
All three burst out laughing uncontrollably, clapping their hands and wiped tears from their eyes. “That was fuckin sweet.” Hati looked over at her and held his hands up casually. “Dude, not to be a perv or anything, but can I touch your hair? It’s pink. It looks like it’s made out of gum.”
She thought for a moment before shaking her head. “No, whatever. Whatever.” She leaned forward, letting it fall down in front of her face. Hati laughed as he ran his fingers through it a few times, stopping himself and slipping back into his seat.
“It totally isn’t bubblegum.” He nodded sagely and took a bit swig of the water before handing it over to Jarka.
“Ok, I know this is like, totally sappy or whatever, but I’m really, really glad that we’re all friends, guys. Seriously. It’s bombin. I haven’t had anybody to go out with other than Sigfried for like, forever, and he doesn’t really like to go out all that often.” He let his head continue to nod as he looked between the two girls. “We’ll have to have him come out on a night like this some time.”
Victoria snored loudly, forcing Hati to look over to her quickly. “Aw man…” He consulted Jarka quickly, “Do we draw a mustache on her?” He shook his head quickly, resending his question. “No, no, it’s her first time. She gets a freebie.”
--=~*/| o |\*~=--
Sigfried cracked the door to the rest of the apartment, having spent the night in his bedroom accidently working through the night. He scratched his upper leg and shuffled towards the fridge. He cracked it open and took a wine cooler out, dousing his throat with the delicious fluid.
He closed the fridge and began to turn before he noticed the carefully printed and color coded stack of sheets pinned to the door. He removed the several fruit shaped magnets used to hold it up and began flipping through the pages. It was a vast inventory of all of the weapons caches in the general area of Central City with pass codes, ammunition counts and a plethora of other information. Call signs, designators and everything he would ever need to command the armies of the local military forces were all present and aligned perfectly for ease of use.
“Skoll?” He looked around the room in confusion. “Skoll, did you do this?” A sudden groan echoed out from behind him and he slowly turned to look.
There the two girls were curled up on opposite sides of the pull-out couch, sandwiching Hati in the middle. All of them were fully clothed, including shoes (except for Victoria, who seemed oddly out of place missing them), and looked rather a mess. The pink haired girl still grasped the blue plastic novelty cup from the club and was snoring loudly.
Sigfried shook his head slowly and began to wander back towards his room. “Kai help us all…
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]