Michael Slater was at church again, for the third time that week.
Father Alvarez was always there, always happy to help. He opened the chapel doors, in the dead of night, and let Michael and all his friends stream inside. All the burly men and women with scowls and scars came inside, toting their guns and carrying the wounded.
Father Alvarez smiled, flashing his pearly white fangs, trying not to show any panic, as the people around him already were under enough stress as it was. It was very hard, with the sounds of shelling and screams outside.
The last person to come inside was Santos, and he was the most filthy of them all. His hands and mouth were covered in blood, and again he was only wearing pants, the amount of blood on them obscuring their original color.
Father Alvarez was perplexed as to how he got it on his back and feet. There were dirt and bits of cement in his curly hair, and Santos never bothered to get it out. Whenever he tried, he just got more blood in his hair. Father Alvarez was always amazed at how a man could get so dirty in such a short amount of time.
No one turned to look at the curly-headed man walking in with a head, holding it by its long hair.
It was a woman with red hair, and her brown eyes glazed over. Her blood poured all over the ground, and Father Alvarez prayed silently, happy that he ate just yesterday, and wouldn’t start attacking the people he gave safe refuge.
"I got the bitch’s head," Santos shouted.
Finally, everyone turned to look.
Cheers came out in the church, and Father Alvarez worried that maybe he was not doing the right thing, allowing all these criminals into his church. He told himself it was better inside than outside, where everyone was being shot out of the sky, or set ablaze on the ground.
Santos showed off his prize, the head of General Laxiz, one of the strongest generals the Empire had. She was a tall woman, like all the other Ionadians, and Santos had to pull her down by her armor, then her hair to tear her head off.
Santos wasn’t taking any chances with making sure dead things stayed dead.
Michael got up from one of the pews and stared at the head of the woman that had killed so many people. So many of his friends. She had ordered the town of Pioure burned to the ground when they refused to hand over any more people to be used as slaves.
General Laxiz burned down the home he stayed in, with his foster parents, and killed hundreds of people in the town one night when he was a small child. If not for Santos he would have died outside in the cold winter air, when he ran for miles to the nearby town of Spring.
Michael had never taken such great pleasure in knowing that someone else was dead until today.
Santos knew how much it would mean to Michael if he killed her. It was the best present he had ever given Michael, and he knew it, from the look of adoration on his face.
"Thank you," Michael whispered.
"I’d do it again, fuck, I think I liked it more than what we did last week."
Last week they blew up an Empire military base with several bombs. The entire time, they watched from afar, and Michael scowled as Santos made several sex jokes about blasting on someone’s face next.
"What should we do with it," Santos asked.
He lifted her head up, and let the blood pour into his mouth, smacking his lips. He liked the taste of Ionadians. They had a little spice in their blood, and he wasn’t sure how to describe it.
It had that je ne se quois.
No one paid him any mind. Half of them were already turned, and the other half would sometimes drink the blood of their enemies when almost out of iron, so they could keep fighting, their abilities needing it to function.
Michael made a face in disgust and told him he shouldn’t eat garbage.
"You’ve always been a picky eater," Santos grinned.
"No, I just don’t put shit in my body," Michael replied.
"Fine. What do you wanna do with it?"
"We can do what she did to us."
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In the morning, once the shelling had died down, Michael went outside with a plastic bag containing Laxiz's head, and Santos dragged behind him a long wooden pike. It was already used, with bits of dried blood on it, as it wasn’t the first time they had decided to give a warning message to their enemies.
They would only do it once for every transgression, believing that repeating your threats to your foes made you soft.
With the same vacant look in his green eyes the head was giving, Michael stuck her head on the pike in the middle of the street. Santos picked up the pike and smashed it into the ground with ease, stronger from last night, eating and killing as he pleased.
With a soft smile on his face, Michael looked up at the woman who took everything from him and uttered a single word.
"Burn."
Her head lit up, in the middle of the street. People watched from nearby businesses and homes, as her head fried to a crisp. They said nothing, and no one stopped him. They didn’t know who she was, but they knew who Michael was, and that was good enough for them.
Michael was a registered terrorist.
He did not look like one, with his blonde hair and baby face, but always stern, always focused, and never there, thinking about something else, because nothing was ever enough. He had killed many people in all branches of government, working his way meticulously through those that had wronged the people he knew, their public policies and hard choices, starving the people they colonized while lining their own pockets.
This woman was his personal vendetta, harder to get to because she was higher ranked, and unlike the other officers placed in their positions due to nepotism, she had an ability.
The ability of fire.
Michael grinned, at the irony of it all, the woman who could control fire was having her remains burnt to a crisp. As she burned brightly, the sun rising over the horizon, Michael’s thoughts did not rest.
He thought of who was next to assassinate. It had to be big. They had killed a major player, and the Empire would hit back and hit hard. He couldn’t fully enjoy the moment thinking of who next to destroy for their crimes against his people.
"Every day another one of these idolaters dies. After I kill their false gods and false prophets, it brings me joy," Michael said.
"What makes you think their gods aren’t more real than yours," Santos asked.
"I never said they weren't real. Their own just doesn’t belong here, in the seventh realm. They need to leave."
The last of Laxiz's head burnt, and soon the fire made its way down the wooden pike.
"You should have chosen the metal one this time," Michael complained.
"Sorry," Santos said. "Got a little excited."
" Fizzle ."
The fire burnt out, and he sighed, his moment of glory not long-lasting. He and Santos returned back to Father Alvarez’s small church, and walked into the main foyer, the blue carpet stained with blood and vomit.
Everyone was eating breakfast, and last night was a good night, as only three people had died from injuries. Michael smiled, back at home, surrounded by his friends. He pulled at his plain white shirt, making sure it was clean and rustled around in his camouflage cargo pants for his three-in-one utensil. It was a metal spoon, fork, and knife stuck together like a swiss army knife.
He would never eat from other’s utensils, always one to make sure everything was clean. His palette was small in range, believing most foods was not pure enough. Michael ate eggs with plain bread, while everyone else tried to get the best meat they could, wanting to spend every day like their last. With the civil war going on, it might as well be.
Michael spent the rest of the day, using the podium at the front of the church to announce their future plans for the rest of the week, to go over which parts of the town they would defend, and which parts were perfect to attack.
By the end of the week, the Empire would be driven out of town, after a month-long siege. On the day after the Empire had left the town of Spring, everyone came outside, unsure if it was a trick.
After a few days, they were all sure that it was safe to come out.
There were other towns to fight in, ones with more valuable resources that the Empire could use. A single freshwater lake, called Lake Sarai, wasn’t worth the trouble. Michael made sure they would leave, placing more pikes at the entrance of the city, heads of Ionadians all on it.
He would purposefully throw their rotting corpses at enemy combatants, letting their festering bodies explode all over them. His enemies cried once they recognized the faces of their comrades, their bodies covered in their remains.
Silent threats had more power than his own spoken words.
After the battle of Spring, Michael was placed higher on the registered terrorist list as an ‘ imminent threat, shoot on sight, do not capture alive.’
In the city of Spring, which is now called New Springfield, a statue of him was erected, which is now in front of Slater Academy, the campus right next to Lake Sarai.
One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.