World's Best Assassin
XI – Melody's World
By Pat Square
Melody Anne Stoppable hated her world. She watched her mother cry as Grandma Possible tried to comfort her mother.
Her family was being torn apart by something and no one told Melody why it happened.
Melody did not want to believe what she overheard her mother confessed to her grandmother. It was hard for a twelve year old to find out that she was a mistake and that her mother was going to kill her before she was even born. The only reason that she was even alive was that her father prevented her mother from having an abortion.
Melody Anne wanted her father home. He was her protector. He was the one who taught her to face down her fears and the bullies of life. He always knew how to lift anyone from the dark moods. She wanted to be in his arms and tell him about all the things that he missed.
Her daddy was her hero. Melody had mommy's super high IQ, but otherwise she truly considered herself one hundred percent her daddy's little girl down to the soft chocolate brown eyes and freckles.
The one-eyed stinky hag sent watchers.Melody overheard them talking about how Global Justice were going to hunt down and kill her daddy.
No one hunts down daddy if Melody Anne had something to say about it.
Melody saw the television programs – the ones that called her daddy Vasilii Boiarskii, the psychopathic merchant of death. Can't they see that daddy had to do these things to save the world? Daddy is not some James Bond who kills and then gives some witty pick up line. Melody knew about daddy's nightmares a long time ago.
Melody was old enough to see beyond the labels of black and white. She knew that the world could not be saved without people like her daddy who crawled in the mud pit and slugged it out with evil. She knew that daddy suffered every night. He gave up everything to save the world and the world spat back in his face.
The gated community of Pine Crest Park, Colorado was a fiefdom of Global Justice.
Everyone either worked for Global Justice or was retired from Global Justice. The few outsiders who brought in the necessary town services and established the local stores were carefully screened and drawn from the ranks of former military or law enforcement types who knew the importance of keeping one's mouth shut.
However in the small town, secrets have a way of getting out.
Suddenly, the other kids would have nothing to do with Melody and her siblings.
The word in the playground was that Melody Anne's father is a traitor and that Global Justice will kill him. The kids felt it was their duty to turn their hated and discontent upon the Stoppable kids.
For defending herself and her siblings, the school put her on disciplinary suspension for the rest of the year, because she broke Bobby Hackett's jaw with her drum sticks. Now her brothers and sisters were returning home with black eyes, cuts, and bruises. The sixth graders were beating up her family and there was nothing that Melody could do to prevent it.
With mommy sick, Melody had to tend to all the injuries the bullies inflicited on her siblings.
Melody once wanted to grow up and join Global Justice as her parents did.
Now she wanted to grow up and join her daddy and kill everyone that spat on her father's name.
In her diary, Melody started keeping a list of names of those who insulted her daddy. Every reporter and commentator, every Global Justice agent, every snickering kid who beat up one of her brothers or sisters – She vowed to kill them all, slowly.
Melody Anne went to the piano in the den. She remembered her father teaching the basics and the special song that he played for his little Melody Anne. She started playing their special song. She didn't care what anyone else thought. Her daddy would always be her hero.