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He is called Reito. He's not really the Reito, of course. He doesn't really know who he is anymore, so he is who he wants to be, which is far more and far less than any Reito.
The man taps his thumb on the leather steering wheel in the Buick he took from a nameless parking lot this morning. The radio is on. He dislikes the song's lyrics, but the beat fills him with energy.
Pain is in the game,
and the game is in the name.
The singer has no idea what pain is. If Reito had enough time, he might find the singer's home and rearrange his view of pain.
The name is Slayer
If you really want to know
He hunts in the dark and kills in the light
Any man who can sing such words without knowing their meaning deserves to be hunted down. Still, the beat is good and Reito hums with the guitars, unbothered by his butchering of the tune.
He's not Reito. He's Robert De Niro. He's Hannibal Lecter. He's whoever he wants to be...
The one called Reito cracked his neck and cleared his mind. His drive to tell the story perfectly dogged him like those irritating hornets. And by perfectly he meant in a way that kept them forever in the dark where they belonged.
The story had to be more personal. First person. He started again.
I am called Reito. I'm not the Reito, of course. I don't know who I am, so I am who I want to be, which is far more and far less than any Reito. A Reito has a history; I do not. A Reito is weak; I am not.
I smile like Robert De Niro. I laugh like Hannibal Lecter.
He'd touched the hand of the gas station attendant fifteen minutes earlier when he'd stopped to fill his tank. Did the girl have any idea whose hand she was touching? No.
Did she know how many throats he'd cut? No.
Did she even suspect that he hated women? No.
Did she want to kiss him? Yes.
Did she realize how much he liked corn nuts? No.
Would he return and kill her for wanting to kiss him? He didn't know. Probably not - he wouldn't have much idle time in the next few days.
Reito paused. He understood the plan, but he'd never liked it much. Yes, he embraced the idea in the very beginning, but that was before he understood that he had the power to find a better plan. Like telling a better story.
Playing the part of Reito had grown stale and tired. The killings had become boring. How many ways could you kill a person anyway?
There would come a time when he would walk into Ishigami's hospital and take off his head with a machete. Better yet, shave him bald and fry him in that electric chair of his.
Kruger had picked up some skills, but she was still weak. The showdown ahead made Reito's skin crawl with anticipation.
He would kill the doctor as Ishigami had ordered, and then, with any luck at all, the true game - the one he'd waited so patiently for - would begin.
He'd been watching Kruger's progress since she and the woman, whom he hated only slightly less than Kruger, set foot in New York. They'd gone off the reservation last night, leaving the hotel room spotless. Even so, Reito knew their ultimate destination and in fact had anticipated that Kruger would would do what she was know doing.
Reito knew not only where they were heading but how they would get there, based on the last few tracking signals emitted by the implant before it had stopped transmitting.
He exited the freeway, backtracked a mile on the frontage road, cut west for half a smile, and pulled into a long gravel driveway. Horses grazed in a fenced green pasture on his right. He'd killed a horse once. The experience had left him cold. They were dumb animals. Household pets offered only slightly more fascination.
Dr. Henry Humphries was a veterinarian. Reito had never needed his veterinary services, but the good doctor had once sewn part of Ishigami's fingers back on.
"I am not Reito today," he said, parking by the large barn.
"Today I am simply..." He considered several choices. "Unman. I'm Unman."
He pucked the Buick in park, interlaced his fingers, and cracked hs knuckles loudly. This was a cliche, of course. But he loved cliche because it had become so vogue to hate cliche. In truth, those who cringed at the use of cliche were their own cliche.
He stepped from the car and scanned the barn. His favorite movie was Kill Bill. Despite his general hatred of woman, he liked Black Mamba because she fought like a man. And she wore yellow leather, which appealed to him for no reason that he could understand, no matter how much he thought about it.
Unman. Unman walked up to the door and wiped his black canvas shoes on a mat that read "All animals Welcome."
He tried the door, turned the knob, and walked in without announcing himself.
Fireweed Mexican tile floor. White walls in need of fresh coat. Clean at first glance but dirty under the skin, like most people. The place smelled of manure.
Manure and Kruger.
A man in a brown tweed jacket stood to the right of a workbench that held a large metal tub, something you might wash an animal in. Behind him, a dozen stalls housed a couple of horses, some pigs, and a lamb of all things. A fluffy white lamb.
The lamb bleated.
"May I help you?"
Unman took his eyes off the sheep and faced the man. White, fat, and old. Not fat-fat, but a good fifty pounds of blubber on his gut. Unman imagined the man without a shirt because he had both the time and the imagination to do so. Evidently sewing up animals didn't burn the calories as much as, say, kickboxing or jumping on a trampoline, either one of which would do the doctor good.
The man wore gray polyester pants and an untucked yellow shirt. He held a syringe in his right hand. If he was expecting any female company, he wasn't concerned with impressing them. Maybe Unman liked this doctor.
"What's your name?" Unman asked.
"I'm sorry, was I expecting you?" The man showed only slight fear. He filled the syringe from a vial and laid both on the table.
"I'm Unman. I'm looking for a women who stopped here last night. Good-looking girl, about so tall, and a hot woman who tends to boss her around. The girl had a small device buried in her skull that evidently didn't go off as it was designed to. We think someone here took it out, thereby sealing his own fate. So I guess I'm not really looking for the girl who's all that, or the woman who bosses her around, but the doctor who helped them escape. Need to clean things up, if you know what I mean."
Suprisingly, the man still showed minimal fear. Interesting. Maybe Unman should drop the clever-meant-to-terrifying cliche and be more sinister. But that failed to interest him, so he continued.
"If you are that doctor, I'll need the implant. Then I'll have to kill you so that you don't tell anyone else about it. If you're not the doctor I'm looking for, then I'll have to kill you for knowing that I'm looking for a doctor to kill. So who are you, the doctor who needs killing, or the innocent bystander who needs killing?"
Now more fear showed on the man's face. Cliches and all.
"They were here," the doctor said.
"And the implant?"
The man produced a small box from under the bench in front of him and held it out.
Unman walked forward. He knew what would happen now. Any man who showedd only a little fear when presented with the prospect of his own death had a plan. The doctor obviously thought he could survive this meeting.
The cliches weren't working as well as Unman had hoped. He wanted to get this over with and make the call.
He stopped twenty feet from the man. "Throw it here," he said.
The doctor made as if to throw the device with his left hand, but Unman didn't care about the implant. Syringe man was right-handed, and his right hand was under the bench top, holding something - probably a gun - that filled the doctor with confidence.
Unman could have waited for the man's hopeless attempt to distract him by throwing the implant.
He could have waited for the man's gun to clear the counter.
He could have even waited for the gun to go off. All of these would have been consistent with a tough villain defying death with elegance. Cliche.
But the time for cliche was gone, so Unman pulled a gun from his right hip and shot the doctor through his nose.
The man dropped like an elevator car, smacked the bottom of his jaw on the bench, bounced back with a few shattered teeth to go with his broken nose, and fell heavily to the ground.
In all likelihood, the doctor hadn't even seen Unman draw.
He walked to the window and pulled out his cell phone. Dialed the number. Two of the horses were looking at the barn, alerted by the gunshot. He wondered who would take care of the doctor's horses now.
"Yes?"
"The doctor is dead. I have the implant."
He could hear Ishigami's breathing in the silence.
"Kill Natsuki first," Ishigami said. "Then complete the contract."
"Thank you." Unman closed the phone.
Reito hated Ishigami, but he hated Kruger more. In fact, he'd been born to hate Kruger. Ishigami didn't know this, Youko didn't know, but Reito knew. And now he was finally in a position to do something about that hate.
"Game on, Kruger," he said. Was that cliche?
AN:
Hooray for me and my 30 minute brakes.
HOORAY!
I'm so lazy.
Anyways,
Sorry for no shiznat in this, the next chapter will definately have some. So look forward to it.
Also thanks to all those who review, i really wish i could answer them, but i'll just end up saying something stupid, so i wont, lest i be mauled by reviewers.
But,
I would like to share a quote i found:
"Yet each man kills the thing he loves. By each let this be heard. Some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword!"
Is it just me or does that not make you think about natsuki and the hime girls...but mainly natsuki o.O