There are times when I'm known as Wilson Pink. A soldier during the summer time, a student every other time, and slaying monsters across the length and breadth of the world of Remnant, just to keep my bank account a little higher above the black.
Other times, I'm evidently out of my goddamn mind, charging honest folk for something they could do themselves, with a stick. And what I should be doing out of the goodness of my own heart, in any case.
And then, there are times when I am a woman's only hope.
"Lady," I replied to her assertion, "That's because you haven't gotten my bill yet."
"I will give you carte blanche. Help me. Please!"
"You're on. Lead the way."
She moved fast, and that should have been a giveaway. But the pace she set was blistering, even for me, not to mention the scent of piss dancing with twisting brick corners and the rubbish-strewn ground was, at the very least, nauseatingly disorienting. The feeling didn't have the time to make itself comfortable, considering how brief the run was, and the lady and I exited the alley maze soon enough.
We stepped into a bright street, lined on both sides with the kind of shops people paste on postcards. Personal affairs, selling personal goods; flowers, curious, and the like. The paving of the road and the stalls that occupied the road instead of other vehicles served together to create an atmosphere of adventure waiting behind each door or counter. However, like any place promising adventure, there was one shop that was on fucking fire.
"Holy shit! That shop is on fucking fire!"
"Great observational skills! It seems like I've made a great investment!"
"That … was sarcasm. Right?"
"No," the lady said, "Cynicism, I think?"
We jogged closer to the flames, she in a long skirt with a long slit which twirled around her legs. While my padded jacket scrubbed clean the leather strips, and plates, stitched on my back, shoulders, and chest. A broad, empty bandolier held the coat closed around the iron dome that was my torso, a job which the jacket's buckles accomplish uncomfortably. Thus, the bandolier.
"Over there!" She finally said, pointing towards the burning shop front, "Stop them, please!"
That was when I heard the massive fist, playing the cult classic; 'please don't hurt me' on some hapless person's face. It was a band performance, backlit by a stage display of a burning convenience store called 'straightforward arson.' The arsonists milled about the storefront, brandishing sticks at the bystanders, while their leader exercised his musical skills on who I assumed to be the store's owner.
"Ok. Stop the arsonists how?" I asked.
"By any means possible." The lady replied.
Don't have to tell me twice.
I kept my stride even, but brisk, as I approached the arsonist's perimeter. My left hand high and rubbing my bald crown, while the closest of the gang saw me and moved in to intercept. After sharing an elbow nudge, and a quick chuckle with his buddy standing next to him.
"Hey there kid, I recommend you mind your own - !"
I slapped the man. Right-handed over his left ear. The weight of the blow pulled me forward and around the gangster's flank. Lining the back of his head with a right cross that dropped him to his knees.
The rest of the group flinched back, then began inching warily to take my flanks. I stepped closer to the leader and said.
"Bless this, thy reach Lord, that your righteous anger may show the unknowing the light. In thy mercy."
Before shooting the leader in the leg.
Sticks clattered to the pavement, and the smattering of feet in flight receded with the shot's ringing echo. Cradling my weapon close, with the muzzle pointed at the ground. I scanned the street and the shop front for threats while I advanced on my crippled target, who was attempting to crawl away with his injured leg dragging behind him.
I sidled up to the ex- gang's leader and rolled my combat boot over the ankle of his busted leg. Screaming ensued.
"You set a man's shop on fire and were in the process of beating him through the street. Why?"
Through his pain, the gang's leader gasped in reply.
"That animal … and his friends … Raped my sister! Wrecked my home! I - !"
His head exploded across my trousers. The direction is directing my target acquisition before I had to abandon my weapon when the gun exploded in mid-air.
Screams and heads started to blow up, and out of control. Driving the crowd into frenzied confusion as the arsonists' heads popped, twice and thrice at a time. I jerked right and dove for cover, which was when a shot caught me in the side, flung me over my feet, and nailed me into the concrete.
My vision flickered in time with the heartbeat of the pain spreading across the left side of my chest. Rolling onto my back eased nausea that boiled through my gut, and carried the lady's mocking laugh as her feet slapped lightly across the ground.
"If only you had shot the man, all this unpleasantness would have been unnecessary."
I coughed, clenching my right fist as the voice, and my vision, cleared.
"Pity," the woman continued. Cooing in my ear, as if to a particularly troublesome child, and stroking my left cheek. "Killing you would be a waste of a body, even if it is a filthy human's ..."
I snapped my hand around the lady's wrist, and for a brief moment the woman's face was bright before my eyes; too long to be wholly human, yet beautiful in its bestial way. Confusion marred the emerald of her eyes and horrified comprehension blunted the cut of her jaw. Before all the beauty melted into a flash of searing pink.
I sat up and looked around. The discharge from the blast clearing from my eyes in a variegation of colored spots. The agonized sobbing, however, was a more reliable point on which to regain my surroundings.
"What God hath cleansed, call not thou common." I intoned as my sight finally returned.
An anguished wail replied as I slid closer to the feminine form prostrated on the street.
"My face … My face …!"
"You're alive," I said while keeping my distance. "As expected of White Fang's third best assassin."
Despite the smoke, and the scent of burned face. The hatred in the woman's glare was palpable from where I faced her.
"Their third best assassin and authority on kicking techniques; Kiri Tuckson. Your 'Snipe foot' is the stuff of legends."
I glanced at the corpse of an arsonist, pulped from the neck up into a fine red mist. As if by a bullet from a high-powered rifle.
"It was an experience to witness your technique. My compliments."
"I know you too," Kiri rasped, "Radical. Where is your ring? How many innocent lives have you visited your atrocities, in the name of your false God? In pursuit of your twisted justice?"
"Justice is for men. I deal in vengeance, debts of fetid blood and pounds of festering flesh. Coincidentally there are seven headless bodies here with your name on the bill."
I settled my weight and flexed my fingers.
"I'll collect in cash. Cheques tend to bounce, and your credit standing is woefully inexistent."
Kiri giggled, then chuckled. And when what's left of her calm snapped, even I couldn't help but step back.
With a shriek, Kiri leaped, and I shifted to engage; Blading my body so that my center line was out of reach of a kick, the edge of my left hand extended to receive any strike, and my right fist close in support.
From a prostrate position, Kiri leaped up and backward, landing in a feral crouch before scampering into a nearby alleyway. I was of a mind to pursue. But I saw the holes dug into the stone by Kiri's bare toes, and I decided that the night had gone on long enough. Besides, I wasn't on the job; this bill isn't officially my concern.
I was about to leave, but I caught sight of the shopkeeper who had been the cause of this mess, and something began nagging to be cleared up. Reaching down and picking up a dropped stick, I walked over to where the bloodied man was leaning against a dented lamppost. Beneath the artificial light, I noticed a pair of dog's ears poking through tousled black hair, and noted that he was a Faunus. Part man, part animal, and no different from the latter at times, which explained Kiri's and White Fang's involvement in the matter.
Thus it was with a clear conscience, that I rolled my boot over the shopkeeper's ankle. Crushing his Achilles tendon and asking.
"The man who had been beating on you, he told me you raped his sister. Is that right?"
The beast replied, between pained bursts of air escaping from thin, handsome lips.
"That human bitch asked for it."
Well.
"Lord," I began. "Forgive me, for I knew not what I do now."
I really should just walk away, I thought. This mess is none of my business, and I am not on the job.
"And it is what I know not, that brings suffering to your children. What I have overlooked, that is the cause of pain in this world."
A brother dead, a sister raped. This mess isn't simply business any longer; it is a catharsis.
"But Lord you have given me the power to act, and placed me here that I may act in your name."
The shopkeeper growled in pain and struggled to crawl away, eyes widening as I tested the stick's weight in my hands.
"Justice is for the dead, and for the two souls in your peace, I cannot give them justice. Justice is a cold pity. For the living, all they have is cold vengeance."
"Fuck!" the animal barked as I raised the stick. "No!"
"In thy mercy."
And thus, I brought the stick down. Hard.