Somewhere downtown, evening,
A cold wind whistled through a maze of back alley corridors, graffiti-stained passageways, and chain link fence gates and halls. The buildings here were low to the emptied streets, slate gray and bald. A few windows were broken and boarded up, and at least one heavy iron door was welded shut where caution tape had failed to ward off transient trespassers. This particular night, the ether fog had visited the urban wasteland as well.
A nimble pale green figure darted down the dark back streets, springing between the walls and vaulting from metal pole fixtures and vestigial fire escape catwalks. Its body was lean and sinewy, its face gaunt with sunken black eyes and a pig-like snout. Stringy hair trailed from its scabby head, and grew in tufts from the insides of it's pointy batlike ears. Behind the goblin, aerial searchlights signaled that a chopper was in pursuit, and gaining.
The creature, dressed only in a leather loincloth and bracers on its shins and forearms, dumped the sack of shiny coins that was weighing it down, and hoped that the sacrificial treasure offering would be enough to stave off its pursuers.
It hoped in vain.
Clammy sweat had broken out on the goblin's sickly skin, and it could hear its tiny heart beating madly in its chest like the beating of a hummingbird's wings. If the goblin were a human man, his heart would have burst by now from the extraordinary blood pressure. As things stood, he was liable to suffer a heart attack from the sheer terror of looming capture and death. Did they mean to eat him?
Dead leaves that had been blown into the back alleys crunched under the little monster's earth feet as he neared a looming construction site beyond a great mesh wall topped with vicious razor wire that gleamed in the moonlight. A concrete channel was cut between two adjourned buildings, with a rusty vent-style grate sealing it off. The goblin unclipped a curved, kris-like long knife from its belt, and plunged the blade tip into the space between the cover and the wall. Crowbarring for dear life, he pried the grate away with a noisy clatter, and scrambled into the cold stone burrow.
The goblin shuffled around on his stomach, laying flat, and watched and listened as the searchlights waved on, and the hurricane of the chopper blades grew louder and louder, deafening in the little man's highly-attuned ears. He clamped them shut over the sides of his gaunt face, gritting his short, filthy spike-like teeth. The craft which the goblin took for a great metallic bird of prey with glowing eyes passed by, over the fence of the construction yard, and over the hills beyond.
The goblin waited several minutes afterward before coming out, his knobby knees growing sore on the hard ground, slick with recent rains. His heartbeat had calmed down a little, but he could still hear his own blood pounding in his eardrums. Slowly, cautiously, he unfurled himself from the channel and looked out over the strange dreamscape beyond the bladed fence. Great iron carriages with alien geometric attachments to them stood like looming giants across the grounds - a bulldozer here, a steamroller there - what awesome titans they must be! Beyond, a crumbling castle ruin of strange red beams pierced the sky. The girders, bricks, and sandbags that the goblin's foreign eyes took all for sorcerous implements lay untouched and abandoned in the naked housing project that the Institute had shut down not long ago.
The goblin's keen ears funneled the sound of footsteps - in dress shoes, from the tone of it - at his back, coming out of the alley behind. He turned around and looked into the ominous reflective sunglasses of Director Mason.
"How are so many of you freaks outrunning the tracers, huh? You're making me look bad." Mason smirked.
The goblin growled, standing its ground and flipping its wavy blade into an icepick grip.
"This is as far as you go." Mason trained a wide-barreled gun of some kind on the goblin. The muzzle had no actual mouth, and instead only featured a neon blue ring around the rim. The goblin barely sprung an inch before an unbearable burning pain bored through its stomach, inducing crippling waves of nausea that brought him to his knees. Thick, ropey strands of saliva fell from the creature's slobbery lips as he clutched at his lurching stomach, which now seemed racked with alternating heat pangs and chills.
"A microwave pistol. Bit different from your conventional capture-purpose weaponry. At the lowest setting, it might give you a painful burn, and cranked up full-blast, it's enough to cook you from the inside-out. It's essentially a cordless taser. But you have no idea what I'm even talking about, do you? You pea-brained waste of flesh." Mason growled.
The goblin gave a shaky roar and forced his body to move, throwing his knife at Mason's chest. The blade punched through the pocket protector of Mason's suit, and was then stopped altogether. Faint arcs of light, like suspended electric sparks, danced around the point of impact. Mason calmly took the knife by its grip and plucked it from his untouched body. Squeezing his fist, Mason crushed the handle of the knife, sending the snapped-off blade spinning into a wall.
"You should have aimed for the head. Did you think I was stupid enough to give pursuit on foot without any way to defend myself?" Mason sneered, pushing up his slipping sunglasses.
The goblin ineffectually kicked Mason in his shin, only managing to nearly break his own toes. The darkly-dressed human had some kind of concealed armor or strength enhancer, and a wand thingy that shot ouch rays.
The goblin turned and ran for the border of the great construction yard, throwing his body against the chain link fence and desperately climbing for the top with a desperate wail of fear. If it tore its flesh to ribbons getting over the loops of razor wire at the top, so be it.
However, he never got the chance. Another invisible microwave round, this one much stronger, punched through his body under the shoulder. The flesh of his chest turned red and steaming in the shape of a circle roughly the size of a tennis ball. The radiant heat of the microwave burn against the chain link made a smell of hot metal. Steam poured out of the goblin's mouth and nostrils as his body went slack, and he fell off the fence, back to the cold hard ground.
Even as Mason reached to subdue the microwave-blasted monster, it summoned the strength to whirl on him and plunge his fangs into his shoulder. The last ditch effort hysterical strength of the doomed goblin was enough to just barely pierce through the strange protective fabric beneath the man's suit. Mason twitched an eyebrow as he felt a few teeth break skin. More sparks kicked off.
"Mongrel." Mason bared teeth at the desperate goblin, then coldly and calmly pistol-whipped him upside the jaw.
The little green beast fell to the ground, writhing in pain and foaming at the mouth. Mason stomped on his already cracked jaw, breaking the mandible altogether and definitively pinning the creature.
"To think a weak monster like you could actually breach the Power Suit… I suppose that's what I get for putting too much stock in an early prototype." Mason adjusted his collar.
The wounded goblin squealed under his unyielding foot.
"You're surprisingly resilient. I think you'll make a passable subject. There are some questions I'd like to ask you." Mason said.
The words came down to the goblin's ears like a decree from a god of death on high.
-
He woke in a confined darkness, seemingly floating, static, in some kind of suspension. His enclosure was cylindrical, the transparent material reminiscent of plexiglass. The goblin opened his wearied eyes, working his fractured jaw. It ached terribly with a sharp stab of pain, and he reflexively tried to cup a hand to his jawline to cradle the injured mandible. His body felt numb and ataxic though, and his skinny arms remained at his sides. Angry bright circular rashes had appeared on his body where he had been cooked by the microwave pistol shots. On a normal human, they would resemble pinkish-red sunburns. On the goblin's green skin, they seemed a mottled purple, almost like big bruises. As his eyes came into focus, he saw through the wall of his container into an alien prison.
Mason looked back at the goblin through the large test tube it was sealed within, bookended by rims of metal at top and bottom. The chamber spanned the length from floor to ceiling, like a high-tech see-through support column. Between the tube and Mason was a metallic podium that featured a sloped control panel. This was one of the Institute's labs. The room was darkened, lit only by the electronic lights of computers, dashboards, monitors, and strange machines lining the walls. The twin 'secretaries' were there too, on either side of Mason and slightly at his back, as stoic and inscrutable beneath their goggles as always. The short-haired woman on Mason's left studiously held a clipboard, hitting down some classified information as needed.
There was a microphone on the podium desk. Mason took it in hand and spoke into it. A speaker somewhere in the tube transmitted his voice - an ominous, distorted echo - to the prisoner.
"You're awake. Good. Now we can talk." Mason said.
"Where am I?" the goblin found his nasally voice, made quieter and hoarse from his injuries and fatigue.
"The Institute's facility. Though I suppose from your perspective, you could call it your dungeon cage. My name is Mason, Director of this noble program. My job is to make sure trash like you don't tarnish Station Bay. Make things easy on yourself and tell me everything I want to know." Mason said.
The goblin glared through its pain and fear, irritated by this pretentious human scum standing there in his nice clothes, flapping and posing like hot shit. The goblin could still see the slit in the Director's suit where the knife had been stopped by the protective layer beneath, and the bite marks punched through the man's shoulder as well.
"I have nothing to say to you, dumbass. Lick my taint." the goblin spat.
The Director chuckled. "At least wait for me to ask a question. Honestly." he pressed a button on the control panel.
Many volts of electricity coursed through the goblin's body, shocking and burning his muscles and nerves with excruciating surgical precision. Despite the feeling of choking suffocation through a momentarily paralyzed respiratory system, the goblin did not expire. The shocking seemed to go on forever, and when it finally cut off, the goblin's body went limp, still twitching sporadically. His heart still beat, and his lungs were forced by some outside intervention to expand and contract again. The goblin gasped. It felt like there was a cheese grater working on the inside of his chest.
"Extremely high voltage, but with practically no amperage. I can shock you as many times as I like. You can't die without my express permission. So, how long before you break?" Mason asked.
The goblin panted for a while in a cold sweat before he felt able to speak again. "What do you want?"
"Good." Mason nodded. "You're not quite as dumb as you look. First thing's first, why have you come to this city?"
"Power." the goblin grunted.
"Elaborate." Mason said, finger circling the shock button.
"The Elixir of Life flows somewhere in this city. All of us seek it." the goblin said.
"What is this elixir?" Mason asked.
"I don't know." the goblin said.
"Why are you chasing a thing whose nature you don't comprehend?" Mason asked.
"Instinct." the goblin answered.
Bobcut took down some more notes.
"Interesting." Mason said. "What is your connection to the other Foreign Bodies?"
"The what?" the goblin asked.
"Monsters. Invaders from other worlds, like yourself. Threats to our society." Mason explained.
"None." the goblin said.
Mason mulled this answer over, then punched the shock button again. The goblin weighed in agony, body twisting side to side from the electricity.
"I advise you not to lie to me." Mason said.
"It's the truth! I was just looking for the Elixir myself!" the goblin shrieked.
"And the others?" Mason asked.
"It's everyone for themselves, I'm not working with anyone else!" the goblin stood by his claim, gasping for breath again.
"The other Ferals are after this Elixir too, then?" Mason asked.
"Most likely." the goblin tried to nod.
"Where do you come from? How did you get here through the fog?" Mason asked.
"I don't know." the goblin said.
Mason's finger hovered over the shock button.
"I don't!" the goblin exclaimed. "All I remember is a red glow, and the scent of the Elixir! I can't remember home or how I got here." the goblin asked.
"Try, unless you need help jogging your memory." Mason growled.
"There are only bits and pieces. Castle ruins, fields, a sky full of arrows." the goblin strained himself for the fragments of memory. His head was starting to hurt. "Then…"
His eyes went wide. Even through the glass, Mason could smell the sour reek of the little creature pissing itself.
"The enemy…" the goblin shuddered.
"Enemy? You mean us? Humans?" Mason asked, leaning forward.
"No." the goblin said.
"Who is this enemy, then?" Mason asked.
"I… I don't know…" the goblin said in a desiccated voice.
Whatever had come to mind was already gone again. Blank.
Bobcat finished taking down the new information.
"So you invaders are all, what, in competition for this Elixir of Life?" Mason asked.
"Survival of the fittest." the goblin acknowledged grimly.
"Where can this Elixir be found?" Mason asked.
"If I knew that," the goblin growled, "I wouldn't be here now… and you would be dead." he glared murderously at Mason.
"Last question, then. Answer honestly, and you're free to go." Mason said.
"You lie." the goblin accused him.
"I do not. Keeping you captive here indefinitely serves no purpose, seeing your limited scope of information to give us. You will be released after you answer my last question." Mason leaned forward again, and lowered his sunglasses enough for the goblin to look into his cold, scrutinizing gaze. "Do you know who or what wiped out the police station?"
"You aren't the only one with a stake in this. Some relish the chaos. That is all I know." the goblin sighed.
They finished recording their session. Mason replaced his sunglasses over his eyes.
"Thank you for your cooperation." he said, then typed in a code and pushed another button.
A stationary Tracer began encircling its fiery red rings around the goblin. The burning heat, like hellfire, made it screech and spasm.
"You said you'd set me free!" the goblin screamed.
"I did. But according to you, I can't send you back home, wherever that is, and I can't very well in good conscience let you walk out of this facility. So, I'll release you from this life altogether." Mason nodded.
The wreaths of flame conjoined around the goblin as a sealed glowing red cocoon.
The Tracer system has holes in it, too many Ferals are escaping into our world undetected. Outside of this stasis chamber, the constructs can't catch Ferals who have already breached. Developing the technology to digitally bind the makeup of whatever we toss inside didn't come cheap. The old men will whine, but if we truly want to be effective sweepers, we need to upgrade the Tracers so that they can eliminate fully-emerged Ferals. I'll make it happen. I'll make it happen if I have to squeeze this city for every drop. Mason thought, silently determined.
The shrieks of the burning goblin hit a fever pitch as his flesh and muscle began to crumble to ash in rough patches all over his body.
"Don't kill me, please! I don't want to die!" he screamed in agony and terror.
"You're free to go." Mason said.
The goblin was disintegrated.
Mason gave the orders to clean out any remaining particles lingering inside the tank, then moved to retire to his office. The long-haired woman had bit her tongue during the interrogation process the whole time, knowing from the beginning the captured Feral would be executed, but that didn't make it any easier to watch a sentient creature that was begging for its life be annihilated at the molecular level while fully conscious.
She hesitantly followed at Mason's back, a hand outstretched. "Sir, are you sure this course of action-"
"Remember what we are, Chelsea." Mason said, stopping his walk but not turning around. "Bureaucratic red tape aside, we're a task force concerned with human survival and security, above all else. Empathy for the enemy is the job of diplomats, not us. We are soldiers. We don't question our task at hand. We act. We are Station Bay's sword and shield. Don't forget that."
"Y-Yes, sir…" Chelsea bowed her head. "I beg your pardon."
"It's fine." Mason turned to her, just slightly. "If your doubts become too much, I won't hold you back from resigning. I can give you a full letter of recommendation. You've been a great asset to this organization."
"No, sir. My place is here." Chelsea said.
Mason eventually nodded. "Very well. You know where to find me." he waved as he walked out of the laboratory.
"Giving you the cold shoulder?" Bobcut asked.
Chelsea looked after the door frame Mason walked through with a conflicted, forlorn expression. "He just seems so distant lately. I think work is getting to him."
Bobcut shrugged. "Even if you tell him that, he'll just brush you off and say he'll sleep when he's dead. I'm clocking out early tonight. Espresso?"
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
"No thank you, Mary. I'm going to stay here and pick up a little bit." Chelsea said.
"Suit yourself." Mary vacated the lab, leaving her partner standing alone in the dark, feeling lost.
Hours later, shortly before dawn, Chelsea would find the Director in his study, collapsed face down at his computer desk from exhaustion. The mental energies he was expending were insane, requiring far more dedication than the average man had to spare in all of a decade’s worth of focus. He slept as little as four hours a day more and more often, it seemed. Chelsea wasn’t fooled - she knew that the real reason he had taken to wearing his sunglasses so often, even at night, wasn’t a stylistic choice. Mason was far too conservative in his energy to waste much thought on self-expression. Every decision he made was calculated, weighed against a borderline autistic savant-leveled internal cost-benefit chart. No, the real reason he took to wearing the sunglasses every day now was to conceal the dark circles pooling under his eyes. He had to cultivate an air of unflappable resolve and strength, or at least felt he had to. Not many saw the man under the mask anymore.
When Chelsea found him, his room was still dark, all the blinds drawn, with only the blue background glow of his computer’s screensaver illuminating a small circle of the room. The last ice cubes of a long-empty tumbler of scotch were almost completely melted on a foam coaster beside Mason’s head, and a mostly-drained bottle of the spirit stood at the floor beside his swivel chair with several emptied and crumpled beer cans. Chelsea noticed a full ashtray balanced precariously on the desk ledge, Mason likely having moved it with his elbow or something in his sleep. She set down the tray of lemonade she had come to bring her Director, then took the ashtray to empty it. She cleared out the empty cans, stacks of discarded scratch paper, and other miscellaneous clutter while she was at it. She was good at practical office tasks, so it only took her a few minutes.
After all was right and proper, Chelsea gently nudged Mason awake, lightly tapping his shoulder. A low, oddly gentle snore was broken, and Mason roused.
"Oh, Chelsea." Mason stretched his back out, then realized his glasses had slipped off onto the desk. He quickly snatched them up and returned them over his eyes. "I crashed again, it looks like. Sorry to look so unpresentable, I guess you've caught me at a bad time."
He tented his fingers.
“It’s no problem, Director, even you have to sleep sometime. I thought you could use a refreshment.” she offered him a cold glass of lemonade.
Mason took it with an approving grunt, and drained half the glass in one swig. He held his temple with his other hand, lip curled back as he felt an unpleasant pulse. “Just what the doctor ordered. Guess I needed some hydration.”
He cracked his back out, then turned back to his computer work.
“It’ll be daylight soon, don’t you think you should go home and get some rest in an actual bed?” Chelsea prodded.
Mason sighed. “It’s this damn code. I’d be able to rest a lot easier knowing we had a way to perfect the Tracer system, that’s all. I don’t like not knowing how many monsters are flying under our radar. What good is a secret task force that can’t even keep a wrap on things the public doesn’t want to know?”
Chelsea gripped his shoulders and tried to massage them loose.
“You’re too hard on yourself, and you’re as tense as a spring coil. The city isn’t going to go up in flames overnight if you take a day off.” she urged.
Mason gently, but firmly, removed her hands. One of them had brushed his bite mark wounds inadvertently, and he was too slow on the draw to stop her from coming away with blood drops on her fingers.
“Director, your shoulder, the suit -” Chelsea began.
“It’s nothing.” Mason said.
“Shouldn’t you at least disinfect -” she continued.
Mason put a hushing finger to her lips. He smiled, fatigued. “Thank you, Chelsea. I appreciate the concern. But I’ll sleep when I’m dead. I still have miles to go before then.”
Chelsea frowned. “Someone had a feeling you’d say that.”
“Mary, I’m guessing?” Mason asked.
“Maybe.” Chelsea turned away, her poker face paper-thin without her goggles to hide her guilty eyes.
“You two know me too well. I’ll close up shop in a little bit, I promise. I just want to work out a few of these kinks first, that’s all.” Mason said.
Chelsea still disapproved, but said nothing.
Mason tasted the silence a few moments, then ventured to speak the unspoken conversation they’d both been putting off.
“This isn’t ethical workplace interaction, you know. Between us, I mean.” Mason said.
Chelsea looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
Mason tutted. “You should keep your eyes on the screen during work hours with Mary, not me. A young thing like you is wasted on a grizzled old veteran like me. Why don’t you get out more, find yourself a younger man, someone closer to your age?”
Chelsea blushed and averted her eyes again. “You’re not that old, Director. You’re hardly into your thirties. B-Besides, it’s not like that…”
“A secret police agent really ought to be able to lie better. To this day I don’t know how you got past that part of the exams.” Mason chuckled.
He drained the rest of his lemonade. “I’m ok, really. Just starting to feel too much like those old relics on the board for my liking. Gotta stay sharp, gotta stay focused. Have to evolve with the times. I will get Station Bay’s defenses up and running, that’s my priority. It should be yours too, Chelsea. Go on, go take your own advice and get some rest. Consider it an official order.”
Chelsea looked disappointed. “If you say so, Director.”
“Chels?” Mason said as she lingered at the door.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Thank you. I mean it. I appreciate the concern.” he smiled.
-
Chelsea was hardly across the parking lot when she got a call. It wasn’t work-related this time.
“Kelly?” she answered. “It’s 5:30 AM, what are you still - slow down, I don’t speak fluent slur. Seriously?” she sighed. “Fine, I’ll pick your drunk ass up, just wait on the corner for me, ok? Don’t go wandering off before I get there again.”
Kelly listened to the indefinite beep of having gotten hung up on, then pocketed her phone. Her hair had come undone, and was falling in her eyes, and she was having a hard time standing up straight. She took her heels in her hand and stumbled her way out of the glow of the bar’s neon light display, looking for a cool bench to collapse into before she passed out. She knew she’d regret the shots contest with her girlfriends in the morning, but the determination to give them all an earful later for stranding her here in her time of need gave her the strength to face that inevitable headache and vomiting with grace.
“Fair weather hic bitches.” she groaned.
The bench at the intersection curb felt miles away. When she finally did get there, it was already taken by a stray dog, sound asleep. Kelly grimaced, but left her wool cardigan behind to cover up the mutt - it was a cold night. She looked up at the green street signs, squinting through her blurry vision to reacquaint herself with where she was. Bemoaning the fact that she had already blown through all of her would-be cabfare, she resolved that it was only a few blocks to one of the parks where she could rest at a picnic table. She could make that walk. Once she had a perch, she’d give Chelsea a call. It might have been more efficient to call ahead of time so they could meet there, but the screen on her phone seemed blurry too, and it had taken tremendous concentration to find Chelsea’s number the first time. A nice brisk walk in the cool, crisp air would clear her head and sober her up a little, she figured. As she walked, the intermittent gusts made her hug her shoulders, acutely aware of her cardigan’s absence. She would be very relieved when she could pass out in her nice warm bed.
She had only made it another block or two till she came upon a flickering streetlight marking the beginning of a stretch of dark sidewalk whose following streetlights had shorted out altogether. Narrow alleyways opened up here and there in the buildings at her immediate side, and she felt herself regress for a moment into a scared little girl again, a child who ran out of rooms at night whenever she had to turn the lightswitch off, and who feared getting dragged into the darkness by the hard grip of some unseen monster. She hesitated, feeling a preternatural urge to take a different route to the park. A momentary urge to puke her guts out overtook it though, and that one won out.
Kelly lost her lunch in the gutter, being glad for a moment that she wasn’t a mother so her surely-ashamed child wouldn’t be burdened with holding back her long hair. As it was, the ends hadn’t escaped the line of fire unscathed. She had to admit - she’d looked better.
A crunch of gravel at her back instantly dispelled the queasiness in her stomach, displaced it with a different kind of discomfort - the beginnings of cold animal panic. She turned toward the mouth of the dark alley, hearing something scraping along a wall and crash into a stray garbage can. The sound of the lid tumbling to the ground was thunderously loud to her intoxicated ears. She expected to see the monster - wearing the face of a bugged-out crackhead mugger, or scraggly would-be rapist - come gliding out of the shadows to snatch her up and take her to its lair. Her eyes were wide with brief, but potent, fear.
A second later though, that fear melted away, and she dropped her shoulders with an easing sense of relief. The face that materialized out of the darkness was no thug - it was just a young man. A boy, really, blond, from the look of him. Kind of cute, actually. No - really cute.
The kid - a fresh twenty or so, if she were to guess - had a veil of angelic blond hair that looked soft as clouds, and gorgeous deep blue eyes. But he had an odd gait, like he was limping, and whatever his clothes were was hard to make out - they were in tatters. As the boy came better into view, faintly framed by the flickering glow of the nearest light on the other side of the street, Kelly saw that his odd costume - had he come from some kind of masquerade party? - was shredded, and he was bleeding from the forehead. He had the remnants of a black and white checkered shirt with what had once been long sleeves striped in that same color scheme. The fabric of his right shoulder was torn open altogether, so that that side of his shirt exposed his peck, abdomen, and hip. Upon closer inspection, he was perfectly chiseled, but the eye candy was marred by dark, splotchy bruises, and various deep cuts and abrasions that still trickled dark crimson blood. The wooden circles of some kind of fancy shoes still hung about his legs like anklets, but the rest of them had been blown to splinters, leaving his feet bare and bleeding.
Kelly recoiled, shocked and afraid for this boy’s well-being. His face was dusted with black ash, and he had a lost, wounded look in his eyes.
“Are y- hic - you ok?” she asked. “You - hic - look - hic - like you’re hurt. Do you need -”
The words died in her throat. She had her eyes locked with his now, and she could see with clarity what the expression in his blue gaze had been - cold fury. Fury and general hatred and disgust. She hadn’t noticed it right away, because the rest of his face, disheveled, wounded imperfections aside, had seemed so calm and normal. She was suddenly stone-cold sober again, almost stammering, but her quivering lips gave no sounds. The glare of the light caught something metallic on the man’s hands now, something that had been obscured by the floppy remnants of his ruffled sleeves.
Kelly froze in her tracks, petrified with sheer, unadulterated terror. The man walked past her side, glared vaguely at her in passing, and then went on his way, out of view. Kelly couldn’t move again until she had heard him shuffle down the street, away from her block entirely. Then, she could exhale freely again, realizing she had held her breath that whole time.
The man had the murderous gaze of a wild animal. It was the look of the monster in the darkness after all.
Kelly took a few deep breaths, struggling to steady herself and find the strength to keep walking. Gone was her recollection of the night’s events, her lingering anger toward her friends for jipping her out of a ride back home after getting her way too liquored up, and even the physiological consequences of that binge. She was wide awake and in the moment now.
They were much more gratifying to kill when they were fully awake and cognizant, anyway.
The unmasked jester grabbed Kelly roughly by the back of her head, at the base of her skull. He had an iron grip, like a human-sized mechanical spider grabbing its prey. She didn’t have time to scream, only getting a shocked syllable out before the jester crushed her head face-first into the brick wall, planting her partially inside it. She suffered instant, extensive facial fractures, a broken nose, and a crushed jaw, and the force of the impact actually embedded and broke off several of her teeth inside the cracked brickwork. Before the blood even fell from her smashed face, the jester already had his retracted gauntlet under the back of her skull. His claws exploded out instantly. They stabbed through the bottom, out through the top of her skull, the inner two blades piercing through her eye sockets, and impaling the wall along with Kelly’s head. For a few seconds, he stood there, his claws pinning the woman’s face into the bricks. She convulsed violently, twitching and spasming like a decapitated chicken as her body took a few seconds longer to get the memo from her scrambled brain that they were both dead.
The jester looked on at the blood running down his claws from the back of his victim’s head like hot, sticky red syrup, pooling in the crux of his gauntlet. He clucked. He hardly got any satisfaction out of that kill. It wasn’t nearly enough to make him feel better about getting blown up by a couple of brats. He retracted his claws with a frustrated growl, and watched the woman’s fresh corpse come unattached from the wall, peeling off of the surface with a grotesque unzipping sound. The body still twitched a little bit at the jester’s feet, and he allowed himself a moment to take creature comfort from the warmth of her spreading blood moving between his toes. It felt kind of like taking a nice hot shower.
He licked the blood off of his claws, cleaning them thoroughly, then retracted them again, and continued walking to wherever. The Backyards, he supposed, but he felt like taking the scenic route tonight, to maybe blow off some more steam with whoever else was unlucky enough to make eye contact with him on the way.
He didn't have to wait long.
The jester stopped as he felt a sudden chill in the air. His breath was a visible misty vapor, and he shivered a little bit. The fresh blood between his toes froze into red frost. A woman's voice floated down to him from a rooftop across the street.
"Well that was uncalled for." she tutted.
The jester looked up in the direction of the voice, and saw the blue-haired Japanese woman, perched on a stone ledge and framed against the glowing moonlight. The backlit profile of her form gave her skin an ethereal, ghostly look, filtered through the ambient cold air she was exuding with her mere presence. Her black katana was laying in her lap like a stuffed animal or security blanket. One arm was outstretched, holding an ornate silver pipe, a foot long. The metal of the bowl glimmered like a reflective pane of glass in the moonlight as well, and the billowing stream of smoke rising from it looked like more Arctic fog, thickened and filled out with freezing energy. The effect shrouded her in a veil of smoke that floated like drifting storm clouds across her form, and the building roofs beneath the night sky. One cold, striking blue eye shown behind the smokescreen, looking like a glowing hawk's eye piercing through the gloom. The black moon of her t-shirt was crescent, but the visual effects surrounding the woman continued to give the impression of her shirt being a nearly full moon instead - the white backdrop of fabric seemed to overtake that black crescent, creating the illusion of a mirror image to the lunar display behind her.
"I'm in a rather bad mood tonight," the jester growled. "I suggest you get to the point. There's a penalty for wasting my time."
"Why in such a rush? Off to lick your wounds like a dog with your tail between your legs?" the woman asked.
The jester glared, eyes as cold as the woman's aura. "Did the big scary assassin just come here to mock me? Last I checked there wasn't a payout for taking my head."
The woman didn't answer immediately. She took her time mulling over his words, as if carefully calculating a response. The tense silence was prolonged as she took a deep draw from her pipe. The glow looked like a giant firefly, seemingly the only point of warmth within the icy woman's vicinity. The jester impatiently tapped his fingers on his legs, measuring the distance between them and whether now would be a good time to strike. The woman finally exhaled, and narrowed her eyes on the jester.
"There isn't. You ought to be more careful about what tone you take with me while all torn up like that though. I may not be the nicest chick, but I'm practically a saint next to you. It would be much better for the world if someone took you out before you had the chance to recover." one hand pet the grip of her katana. A sudden heavy wind trailed her dark blue hair out, and flecks of frost and sleet dislodged from the strands and trailed away, glinting.
The jester ground his teeth in tranquil fury, and raised his arms. He unfurled his claws with an audible schwing. The instant he did, the woman grabbed her katana grip with both hands, letting her long pipe dangle from clamped wolf-like teeth.
While the jester was too entrenched in the moment to sense periphery presences, the woman had calculated every action and purposefully goaded the jester in order to confirm something. Because she was focused and detached from her emotion in this instant, she was the first to pick up on the fact that they were being seen.
Chelsea was nearly catatonic in the empty road a few yards away from them, still reeling in silent shock from the sight of Kelly's brutalized body. She couldn't make her mouth form the syllables to speak, and her throat seemed to be closing up. She was in a quagmire, both in her stance and with her tongue, like one trapped in a nightmare that slows their movements to flee or their voice to scream for help. She felt like a deer in the headlights. The corpse of one of her best friends just yards behind her was the farthest thing from her mind the moment she stepped into the radius around the two killers. She knew they were killers without having to see them lift a finger. Every shadow she had every jumped at, every cold chill that had ever gone down her spine - nothing compared to the paralyzing terror that gripped her like an invisible web spun together by the jester and the blue-haired woman.
What is this? she trembled. Why can't I work up the nerve to even move?
She'd heard of something like this before. This was one of those unexplained moments when some amorphous or vestigial instinct of mankind's ancient past as prey animals hiding in caves screamed in every cell of their body that they were in extreme danger. For a brief moment, she could almost physically see proof of this. Some of the smoke from the blue-haired woman's pipe had drifted down to the street, sinking from the weight of the cold instead of rising as hot air should. Halfway across the road to the jester, the smoke stopped, as if pushing up against an opposing wall. Chelsea watched the wavy ridge of the two murderer's colliding auras push back and forth, each presence trying to overtake the other.
Neither 'wall' gave, so neither participant in the death glare staring contest succumbed to intimidation.
The blue-haired woman turned her gaze to Chelsea out of the side of her eye, and gave a knowing smirk. Then the woman slid the few inches of curved Damascus steel she had exposed from its lacquered sheath back in, and closed her eyes. She gave the jester a nonchalant shrug.
Instantly, Chelsea's paralysis broke, and she felt like the shadow of a coming tsunami towering over her had receded. She fell to her knees for a few precious seconds, still shivering.
"I'm not here to pass judgment on you. We're both mass murderers." the woman said to the jester.
The latter looked toward Chelsea, widened his eyes, then looked back at the ice woman. "You tricked me into baring my fangs near a bystander to measure my lethality from a safe distance, is that it?" he asked, mulling over the woman's strategy with a grudging sense of being impressed by her situational awareness.
"Partially. Everything can be a weapon." the woman said, calmly smoking her pipe.
Chelsea found the strength to stand and run. The jester was at her back immediately, a claw extended to impale her with four blades from behind. An iceberg exploded out of the street to block his stab, and he buried his claw halfway to the base of his gauntlet in the glacial barricade. He looked back up at the ice woman as Chelsea's footsteps echoed off.
"Why did you stop me? It doesn't benefit you to leave a witness alive." the jester said.
"Far be it from me to get in your way." the woman said. "I'll be out of your hair as soon as you answer a question for me." she said.
She emptied her pipe, tapping it against the ledge. The clump of ash that was dislodged became a haze of drifting gray snowflakes before it touched the ground. She tucked her pipe away in the deep v neck of her t-shirt, and dropped down into the street, walking unflinchingly to the jester. She stopped, an inch out of reach of the serial killer's other set of claws if he decided to whirl on her.
"That's blackmail. How cheeky." the jester gave a dark smile. "Ask your question. I don't like uncertain odds of flaying your pretty face off after taking point blank explosives. Just so you know though, I have every intention of hunting you down later."
"Good, we'll call it a date." the woman chuckled. Her face darkened, eyes suddenly grim. "Where is the Faceless Man?" she demanded.
The jester giggled after a few moments, making his lithe body jitter in an unsettling way. "I couldn't tell you. He doesn't exactly tell the likes of myself where he's going."
The woman locked eyes with the jester, and could tell he was telling the truth.
"Then when was the last time you saw him?" she asked.
The man in tattered festival rags lifted his free arm and extended his claws. Something clicked inside his gauntlet, and their uniform alignment broke as steel rings deployed and encircled the jester's fingers. Each sword now dangled freely from his hand, connected to the interior of his gauntlet by dark cords supporting their framework on the back of his hand. With his claw now in its flexible form - the one he had used to menace Richie's junk with - he moved a lock of his hair from his eyes, and scratched an itch down his back before speaking again.
"I'd say at least a couple of weeks. You know how easy it is to lose track of time when moving through the Backyards, I'm sure." he said.
"All too well." the woman nodded. "So - what does he want?"
"How should I know? I agreed to answer one question, not twenty. Now, would you kindly-" the jester began.
The woman clenched her fist, and another iceberg swallowed the jester's remaining arm. He screamed as the cold bit deep down into his bones. He continued to twist and scream as more ice continued to work its way up his body, encasing every inch of it till only his face remained uncovered. All the color had drained out of it, and his trembling lips were turning blue.
"A bit too trusting for a sociopath, aren't you?" the woman asked. "I can't exactly let someone as batshit crazy as you run around while I'm at work. Consider the ice sculpture I leave for the Faceless Man my request to have an audience with him. Give the message to him, won't you?" she said, stuffing another cut of tobacco into her pipe as the jester hissed and chattered his teeth in the conjoined icebergs.
"I'll eat you alive for this." he managed after he found the strength to halt his shivering.
"I think the kid with the tattoos has your first dance spoken for." the woman mused, lighting her pipe. "Later." - she blew a cloud of smoke in the jester's face, and it froze there, sealing him the rest of the way inside the cocoon of ice.
Satisfied with her glistening work of art, she took to the rooftops again, and followed Chelsea's trail. She found her a minute later, backed into a dark alley with her back against the wall.
"Please!" she begged as the blue-haired woman advanced on her, open palm releasing streamers of icy vapor.
But the woman's eyes weren't on Chelsea - they were above her.
A pudgy goblin with a balding head leapt down from the top of the wall, a sickle-sword in either hand. "For my brother!" he cried out to Chelsea as he dropped toward her, full of vengeful spite for the Institute scum.
Chelsea hardly had time to gasp as the goblin's shadow fell over her, and slammed her eyes shut. As she cowered there, she realized nothing had touched her. She opened her eyes and looked up to see the goblin pinned through the chest to the wall by a harpoon of ice. As it growled and gurgled there, fruitlessly scrapping its blades against the glacial construct, the ice began to spread and freeze his body from the harpoon's impact point.
"Just one hit? That's a little disappointing." the woman clicked.
The goblin's screams were choked off as he was frozen completely solid. The blue-haired woman rest her pipe at her lips. "Regardless, your soul is mine."
She took a puff, and as she did, the smoke enveloped the frozen goblin and extracted his form into its cloudy mass. The creature diffused into the cloud as it was sucked back up into the pipe, leaving an empty shell of ice behind. The woman inhaled the vanquished enemy, and felt a small surge of energy as his strength and abilities were absorbed into her own.
The empty ice husk fell away from the wall and broke apart into snowflakes before it could land on Chelsea.
The bewildered Institute agent tilted her head at the blue-haired assassin.
"W-what just…" she stammered, completely lost as to where to even begin asking questions.
They both heard the distant echo of more ice shattering - and the eager scraping of claws. The woman blinked a few times, looking over her shoulder briefly. "That twink's tougher than he looks." She turned back to Chelsea. "I think that's your cue to run."
Chelsea nodded. "Yeah, ok." - and did just that.