(Memento Mori. Aces Wild. Stygian Parasites.)
At one point the Nightcrawler might have called himself a merb, but not anymore. His parents named him "Than", though, and he liked that name so he called himself Than, when he felt like calling himself anything at all. Since Than wasn't a true Nightcrawler yet and probably never would be, he rarely bothered with titles or names since so much meaning is lost in language.
(A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose Is A)
(It's spelled like a preposition and a conjunction (what a fun word) but it's pronounced like that thing you get when you sit in the sun too long, right?)
He limped, gimped through the house, hood thrown back to reveal a face so darkly green it was almost black- but in the night with a knife shining in your hand, reflecting the cold insensitive light of the moon showing her trickster face no one is going to argue shades with you. He could almost taste the blood in the air, settling over him like a thick fog, and the only thing he wanted then was to take a bath. He knew the house inside and out (most Nightcrawlers can walk once through a room and go back and do their job in zero viz) and that helped him navigate because as fate would so have it this particular creature that once had a real name was blind.
Not just near-sighted.
Not just had-an-accident-and-his-vision-isn't-what-it-used to be.
He was blind, his sockets were empty, and those gaping, bleeding holes gazed endlessly at the floor as he hop-skipped through the dead house to find the bathroom and get all this blood off of his uniform. They were lidless and empty and usually dry, but an accident earlier today left them bleeding.
(But, he had been blind most of his life so this really wasn't the problem he was presented with as he stumbled into the gleaming white bathroom (not that he could see the spotless maintenance or anything but hey I gotta tell a story and a story's gotta have a setting or you just have people doing things in a place where nothing exists).)
Grabbing bottles and unscrewing the lids, he sniffed and licked and tested the various creams and powders on his skin until he found the soap and then he achingly lowered himself into the tub, discarding his black uniform on the floor where it stiffened as the blood dried and the couple in the next room started to bloat. Only then did he consider radioing for help.
(All my best friends are murderers.)
Long black fingers snapped against each other. The sound was dry and loud in the silence, and his two-way radio flicked on. "It's me," he said, low voice echoing against the tiles. Again, he did not believe in using names.
"What's wrong?" his partner, likewise, did not waste time on needless language. When on missions, anyway.
"Are you done with the thing?"
He heard a wet noise from the radio, and a strangled cry. "I am now. What's wrong?" Than maintained his silence for a few nanoseconds longer than his partner liked and so she spoke again, sharper this time. "What's. Wrong?" She ground out, and he could imagine her heartbeat pounding stronger in her anger.
Than sighed, turned his face to the side and said, "I broke my eyes."
A very loud swear word. "Are you vulnerable?"
Considering the fact that he was buck naked in a tub sloshing with bubble-filled water, he'd say yes, yes he was, but right then he didn't care if the girl (Hot Shot, they called her. Hot Shot was her code name, all the targets (he did not think of them as victims) had code names) came back and finished his end-goal for him (once he was finished with this job he was going to strap a bomb to his chest and fuck himself and anyone unlucky enough to be with him when he decided to quit his job). He wanted to be clean. He wanted to get that couple's blood off of him. He wanted that taste to go away. The red fog that filled everything like the steel of his knife against his tongue.
"Are you vulnerable, Than?"
(She should be used to him by now but she's not; to get an answer to every question is like pulling teeth with her fellow assassin.)
"I need help," Than finally said. "Do the rescue thing."
"Where?"
"Hot Shot's house."
She wanted to say "You got struck down by Hot Shot? By a fifteen year old girl?" but she didn't waste time with words, and he liked it that way. It didn't help that the fact he did just get his ass served to him by a fifteen year old girl was grinding on his nerves and he didn't want his partner to rub it in.
(All my best friends are murderers/ And in their names/ I will pour salt all across the entirety of this little mudball of a planet)
Pari-Skua used to be a Pan, and Pans are weird-looking enough as it is so the fact that her eyes (which used to be golden amber) were now as luminescent and as red as dead Rudolph's nose did not make her any less intimidating. Quite the opposite. Which was of course the point.
Her skyride roared as she pulled up to the front door. Disentangling herself from the frame of the wheels and wings, she left the Semiglider where it had parked and strode inside, ducking so that her ewe horns wouldn't bump against the top of the doorframe. The first things to greet her were the dying embers of a fireplace and the desiccated body of a middle-aged man. Red eyes sweeping along the floor found three-toed footsteps in the mess, leading to a world of knives and cutting boards fit for a butcher. She made her way to the kitchen. Her nose wrinkled at the smell, but otherwise she didn't seem too disturbed by the woman lying in a quiet red puddle a few yards away from her shredded husband in the living room. Skua's long goat ears twitched as she heard Than splashing around in the bathtub and made her way to his location, the clomp of her combat boots signaling her arrival (he had the sound of her footsteps and walking patterns memorized).
"What are you doing?" is met with the obvious "Taking a bath." "You've left yourself wide open to attack." And silence.
Skua's long lips turned downwards in a concerned frown. "How are your eyes?"
If he had actual eyes he would have been glaring at her sullenly. As it was he had to turn his empty sockets to where he thought she was and growl, "I already told you they were broken."
"I meant the eye-holes on your face, Than. They're bleeding. What happened?"
(Than lost his eyes many year ago, and so with the help of a Cyclonian scientist named Rodana he built a pair of fake eyes. They seemed like giant, clunky goggles, goggles no normal person could wear without poking out their eyes. A thousand fiber-thin needles projected out from the lenses, stimulating the nerve ends in his hollow sockets, giving him a blurry, colorless, but effective view of the world.)
(And Lynn… Hot Shot… she…)
OoOoOo
A Few Hours Earlier.
Lynn's House on Terra Rillo.
He went into the house and pulled out his knife to let them know exactly what he was there to do. The husband got it together first, reaching for an energy rifle by the fireplace (which is just about the dumbest place you can keep it, but he wasn't there to judge them, just kill them). Than threw the knife at him and he was sent back a few steps from the force of it, but he was a persistent little fucker and kept moving. Which was not a good idea, but he wasn't there to judge them he was just there to kill them.
If the man had just lain down at died Than wouldn't have gotten angry and actually used his crystal-powered weapons rather than the beautiful simplicity of a naked blade. (Like the way he prefers silence to the grunts and wheezes of everyday language.) Alien, buggy eyes whirred with the shifting of lenses to X-ray, seeing the steady jogging beat of his target's heart, and the cancer growing in his stomach.
The man reached the gun and clicked off the safety, aiming and taking fire. Than tensed, then leapt up into the air to cling to the ceiling with his sticky merbian toes, lifting one arm and firing three crossbow bolts into the man's chest. Dropping to the floor again, he bounded around the room as the man fired wildly in all directions, bleeding as he went down to his knees. When there was a lull in the attack (the husband stared at the floor, breathing heavily as death began to cloud his eyes) Than bowled into him, metal hooks and small energy blades erupting from the knuckles of his black gloves and he tore the man apart.
(The whirling, snapping sound of the lenses switching back to the black-and-white fuzz of his life.)
He stalked through the doorway and ducked low as the wife, who had been waiting just by the spot where he would come through, swung a frying pan at where his head had been. He ducked low and then he sprang back up, tackling her to the ground. His arms kept her on the floor while one foot reached into the pouch attached to his belt and pulled out a small square object. Pressing the red button on the side he used his foot to draw a searing hot line around her wrists and ankles; when it dried and cooled down, it solidified and she was bound hand and foot.
Then he pulled her up and waited for Hot Shot to arrive.
Let her see him kill the mother. A message. "This is what's going to happen to you, and as for why… well, you know why, don't you?"
([fuck you and your so-called creeds])
("You belong to Cyclonia now." "Fine by me.")
("There's a risk to this operation, Than. We've never done anything like this before. You're…" "A guinea pig." "Well, yes." "Tell me something I don't know or get this the fuck over with." Angry muttering, "The conditioning obviously wasn't strong enough on this one…")
("Nightcrawlers. We'll call them Nightcrawlers. Except for Than, of course." "Why not Than? With the goggles, his vision is almost-" "Almost. Almost isn't good enough for me, not to mention his conditioning to obey me is-" "Master Cyclonis, considering we've never worked on a merb before-" "Then work on humans again." "They all died." "Then make sure they don't die." "Master…")
("How about half-breeds?" "Than? How long have you-" "Half…? Half… Why, exactly?" "Master Cyclonis, he really shouldn't-""Silence. Let the merb speak. Go on, Than." "Well, the humans die on the conditioning and the merbs- excluding myself- tend to not respond so well to the enhancement programs." "We'll… keep that into consideration.")
("…Interesting…heh, he's actually being useful for once." "Don't speak about me like I'm not here." "M-Master, I apologize for-" "Is he always this rude?" "I'm afraid so." "Then why don't you terminate him like all the others?" "The others died as a result of the experiments; he has not. I need him for research. He's also my lab assistant- quite handy with machines." "Rodana." "What?" "…You're lucky I need you." )
("Do me a favor and cross out Pans for future subjects. Only one survived the enhancements but the conditioning left her useless unless ordered about- we can't have a Nightcrawler unable to think for herself. Her name is Pari-Skua.")
No sooner had the blade left the mother's heart than Hot Shot was on top of him, spear raised behind her head. His heart skipped a few beats faster than normal as he lifted one hand to catch the haft of the spear, arm shaking from exertion to keep the glowing crystal tip from plunging into his face. Lynn's feet are set, square, as if she'd taken root there. And then she ripped her roots free and took a step forward, eyes bulging, veins on her neck popping out in the strain. The noise that came from deep inside her throat was constant, raw, and low. A single note of the same tune, steadily growing louder until she was screaming in his face, and Than realized too late that she must have already undergoing some of the enhancement experiments to become a Nightcrawler when she had revolted.
No one had informed him of this.
And apparently, the method of modifying full humans was still imperfect.
The steel shaft of spear snapped under the pressure of Lynn bearing down on him, him barely keeping it away from him, her moving forward and forcing him back, him unable to stop against this animal force. The breakage signified a sudden berserk change in the fight- no longer was it a tense standstill, a showdown of strength. Now they were just two animals wildly beating at each other with anything handy. Supple and quick, Than danced out of the way of her wild charge only to have her pull an impossible movement almost in midair to catch him. His x-ray functions saw the muscles tear in her abdomen yet she didn't seem hampered by it, driving a fist into his ribs so hard they almost cracked.
He swept backwards into the living room, somersaulting over a couch and landing in a three point stance before bouncing to the wall and then the ceiling, readying his crossbow again. (They never expect an attack from above, never.)
Lynn, however, kept track of his every movements and knew what he was trying to do.
So, lunging forward, she picked up the couch and threw it at him.
The furniture smashed into the merb and gravity worked. They both fell to the floor in splintered heaps, but the merb wasn't finished yet. He flexed his arm, tried to shoot the advancing figure of the girl, but his crossbow had broken. His other arm, with its enhanced crystal laser-cutters, were generally used to break free from restraints but Than had found that it worked just as well on limbs, was pinned to the floor by the remains of the couch. He had just enough time to realize this when Lynn was on him again, fingers crunching deep into the machinery of his goggles before ripping them free from his face with a bloody howl.
OoOoOo
Right Now.
"Help me up."
She kneeled next to the tub, putting one callused hand on his upper arm. He flailed his hands to try and grab her shoulders but miscalculated and grabbed her by her straight horns instead. He gripped tightly onto those, pressed himself close to her, and the height and the strength of the Pan was such that all she needed to do was stand up straight and tilt her head back slightly to pull him completely from the water, and then and only then did she see the full damage that Lynn had inflicted on her partner since rebirth into this world without sunlight.
He hung by her horns, naked and dripping water onto the floor, and his empty sockets gazed into her full ones, black, bleeding, rotting craters in a world without sunlight.
"I," he said to her in a low hiss, the warmth of the bathwater seeping through the chest of her uniform, "I am going to kill her."
(His right leg was missing, smoothly cauterized scar tissue covering the stub that ended just below his knee.)
([words never meant anything to anyone, anyway.])
End of Flight Complex: Chapter Two.
"XXI."
