The Great Belligerency [Round 4: Static]

Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.

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It was nearly midnight. A cloaked figure stood atop a roof. The night is your friend. He paused and looked at a lit window on the third floor of the tavern in front of him, only a few feet below. The darkness deludes those who fear it. A single silhouette moved lazily about behind it for a few minutes. The shadows are your shield. The man waited patiently until the light clicked off, and then waited several more minutes, just to make sure. The silence is your--oh, fuck this. The man stepped back, gathered himself, then took a running leap at the window, putting his arms in front him to shield his head as he crashed through the glass. He rolled to absorb the impact and sprung back up to his feet, a blade in each hand. The man in the bed sat bolt upright and cried out, but before he could say anything coherent the assassin was already poised next to him, with a knife to his throat.

"Who sent you?" the man choked out, eyes wide in the darkness.

The bounty hunter chuckled. "Why, you did, eight years ago. Do you remember what happened then?"

The man swallowed, feeling the knife against his throat. "I didn't do nothin'! You got no proof!"

"Oh, but you did. You did plenty," replied the agent, and his tone left no doubt about the twisted grin residing on his face. "Would you like me to refresh your memory? About that village you destroyed? The lives you ended? The family you hunted down and slaughtered?"

"Oh my god. You...you're the..." The man stiffened. "I'm sorry! Don't kill me! I'm sorry!"

The avenger could hear steps on the stairs, the doors opening in confusion all down the hall. He had so little time, and yet he was unable to resist toying with the man he now held in his grip, savoring the moment he'd been working eight years for. "Yes, it's me. I've been looking for you for a very long time now. I took out your friends, one by one, saving you for last." He drew the knife up to the man's face, drawing a thin line of red across his cheek. "I didn't know your names when I first became...acquainted with your band, so I named you after things I remembered from the life you stole from me." The footsteps had reached the top of the stairs, yet the lunatic felt a strange sense of calm descend over him. He began pulling the man towards the window he had entered through. "Do you remember your right-hand man? He was the firewood. I did so enjoy cutting him." They were banging on the door. Not much time left. "But you, you were the apple pies my mother used to bake. Oh, they tasted so good. But now that I only have my memories, I've been able to spend plenty of time perusing them, deciding what I liked best."

The banging stopped. "Open up in there or we'll bust the door down!" someone from beyond the door shouted. The poet merely laughed. More of a cackle, to be honest, but he hardly cared whether or not there was a difference. A dull thud sounded as someone began slamming themselves into the bolted door. The tactician noted this bit of good luck and returned to his victim.

"Now, where was I...ah yes, the apple pies. Before you deprived me of them, I had thought that my favorite memories were of the taste. It was only afterwards that I realized that what I had enjoyed the most was what came just before the serving." The butcher paused, relishing the slow realization radiating from his target. "The part where I got to cut them."

The dead man spluttered out one final question. "Who the hell are you!?"

"I am simply a man with nothing to lose forced into a situation he did not consent to," replied the man. "And that makes me the most dangerous thing in the world."

The killer screamed.

The bolt had taken too much abuse and cracked apart, allowing the door to burst open as the mob outside surged into the room, only to find, to their utter dismay, the body of the former raider who had been lodging in it, his stomach split open down the middle, still bleeding and twitching before their very eyes.

In the alleyway below, the man was already moving away from the scene. Several minutes of frenzied dashing later, he hunched down below a lamp hanging on the wall of some unknown building for some unknown reason. Why it was there wasn't important; only the fact that it was there made it special. He pulled a worn, folded photograph from his pocket and gently unfolded it, holding it up to his face. The lamplight illuminated the photograph well; there was his mother (who had taught him to read), his father (whose looks he'd supposedly inherited), his two sisters (who he had hated and loved in equal amounts), and a young man, eighteen years old. All the faces but his were crisp and clear, easy to make out despite the toll time had taken on the photograph. But there was a burn mark of some sort over the boy's face which blotted out the features. The man could no longer remember what he had been doing when the photograph had been taken. Had he been smiling? Frowning? Laughing? Crying, sneezing, blinking? It no longer mattered. That boy was dead, had been killed when the raiders had murdered the rest of his family. And in his place, a cold-blooded killer had been born, with a single purpose, a purpose that was now fulfilled. He heard the sound of laughter from somewhere. Not the demonized laughing sound the raiders in his dreams made; it was the innocent laugh of a child, soon joined by the laughter of her parents. And from somewhere he couldn't trace came the faint smell of freshly-baked apple pie.

The killer put his head in his hands, but he did not cry. There were no more tears left. When the boy had died, he had taken the tears with him. But he slowly began to realize that it was alright, because that night, when he'd finally completed his self-appointed task, when he'd fulfilled his vendetta, he'd come to understand something. The man lifted his head up from his hands, and there was a smile on his face. He calmly took the photograph and held it in front of his face, studying the people he knew so well, committing them to memory one last time.

Then he slowly and deliberately tore it to pieces, as many as he could, and threw them up in the air, watching them drift away lazily in the mild nighttime breeze. So what if the boy was dead?

Phil no longer needed tears.

A female voice broke him out of his reverie. "Sir?"

Phil was momentarily stymied. "Huh?"

"I said, our special today is fresh-baked apple pie," the waitress repeated. "Would you like to order some?"

Phil licked his lips behind his helmet and looked around, quickly refreshing himself on the layout of the fancy diner. "Ah...I'll pass, thank you. I don't like apple pie." He picked the menu back up and pretended to scan it for something that looked interesting. "You know what, I'm not feeling all that fancy tonight. I'll take some medium-rare steak."

The waitress nodded and jotted the order down on an electronic notepad. She then turned to Julia. "And what would you like?" Julia rattled off the name of some food in French, and the waitress wrote that down as well, then tapped a button on the notepad. "Your meals will be with you shortly," she said before continuing on to the next table.

Phil reached for his helmet. "Julia, I wanted to show you something."

Julia leaned closer. "La, is it really a good idea to be taking that off in here? You might scare someone!"

"But that's the thing, Julia, it--" Phil's sentence was interrupted by a violent tremor. Food on nearby tables was knocked to the floor, and most of the waiters and waitresses tripped and fell, joining a few of the customers who had been standing on the floor.

"Was that an earthquake?" Julia gasped, clutching the table.

Phil looked around at the chaos and carefully stood up. "We're in a floating city in the air. There's no such thing as earthquakes up here." He glanced around again. "At least, there shouldn't be." He grabbed Julia's arm and pulled her towards the exit. "C'mon. I'm going to get to the bottom of this, and you need to get somewhere safe."