Recommend listening to the Spirit of Fire song while reading.
Just a suggestion.
I hope you enjoy.
Chapter Five
Republic City, United Republic of Nations
September 7th, 170 AG
What is the duty of every Spartan?
Cyrus mouthed the words even as he butchered his way through the surviving Agni Kai, just as he had done many times before. He felt his anger resonate with every syllable spoken, and no matter how many times he tried to expel this rage, it came back with a fury.
"To protect humanity." The Spartan drove his Magnum into the gut of a raging fire bender, firing off a single round that blew a hole through the small of his back. "By whatever means necessary."
But that duty was lost amongst a fog of his boiling resentment for this planet.
When Cyrus stormed into the Red Dragon, he no longer represented the intended functions of a Spartan.
In the grand scheme of things, Jaozi was little more than a petty gangster. His death would not bring peace, nor would it significantly improve the livelihood of normal people in Republic City.
The Agni Kai's influence ran too deep to be destroyed in a single night, and they'll still be a sizeable gang in a city filled with them.
A Spartan is a tool of war meant to prosecute retribution upon those who would destroy them.
Humanity did not sacrifice blood and lives for him to act as a hitman for some god-forsaken spirit in a reality where humanity manipulated the elements of their own free will.
He cursed Raava for subjecting him to this cruel task when his service could be used to fight a war that would decide the future of his humanity.
And yet here he was, wasting the talent honed by three decades worth of war for a purpose that could only be described as selfish.
Tonight he did not act as a Spartan.
Tonight Cyrus represented nothing more than a grieving son whose resentment for everything around him was aimed at avenging a woman who only resembled his mother.
But he didn't care in the slightest.
He craved retribution
An eye for an eye.
A life for a life.
For every planet lost, a Sangheili Field Marshall was assassinated in the comforts of his flagship.
For every population massacred, a Brute Chieftain was torn into tiny pieces to never be found or identified.
The expenses in material and manpower incurred by the Covenant never matched the scale of their crimes, but in the end, Cyrus ensured that they always faced retribution.
And he saw no reason why Jaozi couldn't pay the same price.
A life for a life.
Cyrus would not be denied.
No matter how much Raava pleaded.
"Cyrus, stop!"
*BANG!*
Her incessant cries for mercy only served as a backdrop to his vengeful undertaking. The Agni Kai bouncers in charge of security threw torrents of hot flames into the Spartan, only to be utterly massacred by a man.
Civilians ran for cover, dodging bolts of fire and bullets as they crisscrossed one another with deadly fury.
Cyrus snapped his arm to the right, squeezing off a single round from his Magnum that hurled toward a foolish gangster trying to take his blind spot. The projectile sliced through a firestorm and slammed into the ganger's upper chest cavity, blasting through his spine and cutting him in half.
It was a swift and brutal conclusion to a life dedicated to deviancy.
Cyrus ensured that the gangster would not face his maker alone, gunning down a dozen Agni Kai so they might join their brethren in answering their sins.
He had no remorse for these people.
But unfortunately, this was not an opinion shared by the parasite who infected his mind with her constant griping.
"I said stop!"
*BANG!*
Raava watched her chosen champion poignantly ignore her demands for cessation.
The Spartan was a beacon of rage and animosity that drew Vaatu's interest like a moth to a flame. Her rival watched his rampage across this human establishment with an amused glimmer in his bewitching eyes.
"You don't have any idea as to what you have unleashed."
Vaatu's mockery went ignored as she tried to reign in Cyrus before he became lost in his own grief. The emotional scars he carried ran far deeper than Raava first anticipated, and now she scrambled to keep him out of her rival's clutches.
But how could she?
A combat knife driven in and upwards by augmented muscle smoothly pierced a firebenders lung. The wheeze of protest escaping the bender's breath went ignored as the blade was propelled further until it punctured the second lung.
Without pause, the knife continued on its bloody journey toward the firebender's foul heart. The Agni Kai was one of the most dangerous syndicates in Republic City, possessing a violent reputation that was only matched by their unquenched thirst for profit.
They have roamed this city as if they were the grim Reaper, dealing death to whoever they saw fit.
No longer.
Cyrus withdrew his blade and let the firebender topple forward; blood fell from the gaping hole in his stomach, leaving him in a pool of red that mixed with other dead Agni Kai.
Even as the firebender's body struck the carpeted floor, the Spartan's rampage did not rest nor falter.
Cyrus's opening attack on the penthouse flushed the Agni Kai leader deeper into the hotel, and now all that stood between him and Jaozi were twelve Agni Kai gangsters.
Soon to be twelve corpses, if he had anything to say about it.
The firebenders unleashed waves of blistering red flames toward the Spartans, but their assault fell flat against his shields.
His bullet sailed through the air, slicing through flame and slamming into the forehead of a second Agni Kai.
"Kill him, damnit!" Their desperation was palpable, but their efforts were futile.
Cyrus pressed onward. The blade in his left hand didn't flash as it shot forward, cutting through the belly of an Agni Kai before finding a new home in the firebender's skull.
"Thirty-Five," Cyrus whispered as he stared at the firebender, still pawing weakly at his knife, which protruded from between their wide eyes.
The Spartan jerked the knife free and crashed his fist into the Agni Kai's face. Bone shattered, brain matter dispersed in all directions, and blood coated his arm in a disturbing red hue.
Raava couldn't bear to watch.
"Cyrus." She begged the Spartan with more emotion than anything he'd ever heard before. "Please…..Stop this madness."
"Am eye for an eye." He slapped aside the burning hands reaching for his helm and booted its wielder in the chest, knocking the Agni Kai backward into its fellows. "A life for a life."
More flames rushed toward his armor before bouncing off his shields and scattering across the carpeted floor. The room began to burn at the Agni Kai's reckless distribution of fire, and smoke began to fill the air, slowly sapping the oxygen from their lungs.
And yet they persisted in this doom task of stopping a Spartan cold. Cyrus would have found their bravery respectable if he wasn't consumed by the mere thought that their gallantry was delaying the inevitable.
He spat a silent growl of discontent and lashed out at the closest firebender, who was scrambling to put distance between himself and the irate Spartan. The Agni Kai pulled his arms into a circular motion, and sparks of lightning began to crawl along his forearms.
Cyrus had but a moment to blink before a tendril of forked lightning rushed toward him. Time slowed to a crawl allowing him to analyze the bender's defined movements and the raw power coursing along his frame.
He had heard of firebenders being capable of producing a lethal amount of electricity at will, but he'd never seen it carried out until now. The motions were deliberate and slow to the naked eye, a tell that Cyrus was confident could be exploited with either a bullet to the brain or his augmented speed.
He chose the latter option to deal with the Agni Kai.
The Spartan raced towards the gangster, sidestepping the forked lightning and burying his knife into the bender's left eye socket. Then his Magnum boomed once again, and a bullet fragmented the knee of a second Agni Kai before a follow-up shot silenced her cries and blasted a fist-sized hole through her skull.
"How many?" Raava's voice consumed his hearing, but his rampage continued unabated. "How many must die before you are satisfied?"
Cyrus vanished again. His blade once again sang with blood, taking off the leg of a firebender intent on burning everything around him in a mad attempt to halt the inevitable. The gangster toppled over screaming, and Cyrus silenced him with a boot through the skull. He twisted his foot as it slammed against meat and bone, crushing was left in a disturbing paste of red and bone.
"Help me!" The last Agni Kai beat her hands against the purified double-stacked doors designed to keep metal benders out. "Open the spirits-damned door!"
Jaozi refused her frantic requests, leaving his subordinate to a grisly death.
"Cyrus." Raava feared for the girl and begged the Spartan for mercy. She screamed with despair as Cyrus reared his arm back and curled his hand into a fist. "Wait!"
The strike slammed mere inches above the firebenders head, blasting a hole through the first set of metal doors and revealing the final barrier to his reprisal. The firebender cried with terror, but he pushed her aside with a voice that suppressed her pathetic squealing.
"Run." His whisper sent a shock of terror down the gangster's spine, but she took the lifeline given to her and ran with it.
Raava exhaled with relief and watched Cyrus pull a blocky green contraption from his belt. She watched him fix the device in place and manipulate a series of buttons until a solid red light illuminated.
"The answer to your previous question…." Cyrus took a few steps back, ejecting the spent magazine from his Magnum and inserting a fresh clip. The explosive charge beeped a series of high-pitched tones before unleashing its payload and breaking down the final barrier.
*BOOM!*
"…As many as it takes."
"Wake up."
A voice as cold as the northern blizzards rustled Jaozi from his comatose slumber.
The infamous Dragon of Republic City was used to waking up with a splitting headache after a healthy binge inside his private quarters.
Vodka and a splash of love were a particular favorite for the crime lord on his usual days, but it never gave him a head-splitting migraine from hell. He couldn't even remember what had happened to him in the first place, and the darkness combined with his blurry vision didn't help.
A curled fist slammed into his gut, discharging the oxygen from his lungs and causing spittle to eject from his throat.
"Wake up."
The voice demanded his attention, and he willingly gave it as groggy eyes blinked away the dazing headache.
Jaozi's heart fell, and his throat tightly constricted into a choking vice as he gazed at the abyss-like helm staring back at him. A terrified scream ripped through his throat, pushing his arms outward in a desperate attempt to roast his captor alive.
"Burn, fucker! Burn!" Flames poured out of his fingers and engulfed the black helm in a cocoon of fire. Impossibly a pair of black gauntlets broke through the inferno and seized his extended arms in a vice-like grip. "Let go of me! Let-"
*SNAP!*
Jaozi's mouth opened in silent anguish. His nerves fired on all cylinders launching electrical impulses straight into his brain as he stared at his snapped arm in disbelief.
It wasn't supposed to bend that way.
"Don't do that again."
"F-fucker!" Jaozi swore while biting back the pain blossoming along his right arm. "Your fucking dead, you hear me?!"
A right hook to the face snapped the crime lord from his misplaced defiance, bruising his cheek and breaking his nose.
"That isn't the right question."
Jaozi's entire mood shifted as he fought to stem the blood flowing from his broken snout.
Threats and promises of retribution weren't going to get him anywhere with this guy, and he wasn't blinded by his over-inflated pride. He was still alive for a reason, and he had to guess it involved exchanging information or currency.
And he needed to calm down if he was going to get out of this alive.
"What do you want?" The crime lord ventured out a question as a bright light was shined upon his face, blinding him from visually taking in his surroundings.
"Better." The light ebbed away from his eyes, and the picture of a stunning raven-haired woman was shoved into his face. "Do you recognize this woman?"
How could he not?
One didn't forget their first kill.
"Yasuko Sato." Jaozi bit out with a minuscule smirk on his bloodied face. "I haven't seen her in years. Not since one of my boys roasted her alive during one of our scores. Such a tragedy."
That was a lie, but it was one told again and again by the fall guy who took responsibility for Yasuko's murder. Jaozi would have gotten the full charge were it not for calling in a debt owed by one of his followers.
It was a worthy sacrifice, and one Jaozi used to climb the Agni Kai ranks.
"So you deny killing her?"
"You know what? I can't quite remember."A wicked grin etched itself into the crime lord's visage. "Ten years is such a long time. My old brain has been through so much trauma recently, and your treatment hasn't helped."
"Maybe this will jog your memory."
A metallic clang echoed through the chamber, and Jaozi was momentarily blinded by dancing lights from below. He looked up and realized that both feet were tied to an anchor hanging him precariously over a sight that sent his heartbeat pulsing at an alarming rate.
Below him was the Red Dragon Hotel's unique spire that reached high into the sky for all to see.
Jaozi blinked once, then twice.
Before finally, his voice found itself once again.
"Holy Fuck! HOLY FUCK! What the fuck!" He could feel his perspiration leaking down his cheeks before cascading down on the city below. The crime lord had no idea how the fuck he was almost two kilometers in the air, and he sure as hell wasn't inside a Republic City airship.
"Still can't remember?" The whimsical response drew a furious glare from the upside-down Jaozi, who finally took in the untarnished view of his captor. The crime lord was stuck between rage and terror, but the former took precedence even as he came to terms with his captor's identity.
Who else could this be but the Reaper of Republic City?
"You motherfucker! You think you can fuck with me and get away with it! You're a dead man! Dead! Do you have any idea who you're fucking with?!"
"You're a disease." A blade coated in human blood was pulled from the giant's waist and ominously flashed over Jaozi's face."A cancer that I will happily cut out if you keep dodging my questions."
Fear overtook defiance.
"If I tell you." The criminal gulped with terror as the knife traveled down his sternum and hovered dangerously above his eye. "Will you let me go?"
"It couldn't hurt your chances."
The lie Jaozi used to climb to the top of the Agni Kai was now employed to decide his fate. A piece of him should have hesitated to spill his guts out, but fear had a way of altering someone's mindset.
And the Dragon of Republic City was the definition of terrified.
So he did the one thing he swore he would never do.
Speak the truth.
It was almost too easy.
Jaozi confessed his crimes, admitting to burning his mother alive and vividly describing every brutalizing detail imaginable in the blind hope it would save his life.
It didn't.
Jaozi's eyes bugged out in horror as Cyrus reached for the knot keeping him tied to the Condor's cargo anchor.
"W-Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait!" The criminal begged for his wretched life, heedless of his broken limb slamming against the LRT's lowered ramp as he pawed at the Spartan's knee. "You said you'd let me go! You promised! Show me mercy, please!"
Mercy.
Cyrus rarely used such an abstract term since becoming a Spartan.
Growing up on the streets of Ferax taught him that mercy was everything, and exemplifying it within the company of those you found wicked or dishonest was far more crucial.
"Mercy is a powerful tool. One you have benefited from today, dear child." The voice of his former chieftain filtered into his mind when he was caught stealing from his fellow outcasts. "It frees us from our suffering and fuels our compassion for our fellow man when they have sinned against us. Sins such as stealing from those who have little to offer."
Cyrus remembered his face curling under Tara's scrutiny, but like always, she found a way to raise his spirits while simultaneously grafting an important lesson into his mind.
"However." Her hand cupped his chin and wiped away the tears streaking down his face. "There are some crimes that one must not forget and never forgive."
"How will I know?" He asked in a small voice. "How will I know when someone doesn't deserve mercy?"
"It is my hope that such an event does not come to pass." Tara brought him into a tight embrace. "But the answer will be obvious to your eyes, and I pray that you will make the righteous decision when it happens."
Mercy.
The word tasted like ash.
What mercy was there on Actium, Arcadia, Harvest, and a thousand other worlds when the Covenant glassed their continents and butchered the human population until the rivers ran red with blood?
What mercy did Jaozi give his mother when he broke into her home and burned her alive?
None.
There was no mercy for people like Jaozi, and Cyrus would be damned to oblivion before he showed an inch of it to someone so depraved.
"I said it couldn't hurt your chances." The Spartan gripped the anchor and unhooked the straps attached to the crime lord's feet.
Now the only thing keeping Jaozi from plummeting to his death was a single augmented arm dangling him helplessly over the veritable edge of the world.
Jaozi's visage again turned on a dime, and he lashed out torrents of flames to save his own skin. He switched from begging to cursing as Cyrus continued to stare at him, completely unphased by his attacks.
There was nothing the venerable Dragon could do to harm the Spartan, but he tried again and again in vain.
"Come on, man." Jaozi switched to begging, and it did nothing but infuriate Cyrus. "You don't need to do this. I'll give you money, drugs, girls! Please, I'll take a boat and leave Republic City! I'll do anything you want! Anything!"
Silence was all that greeted Jaozi, and with a vicious snarl, he glowered at the Spartan with a single damning question that sealed his fate.
"Who the fuck was she to you anyway!"
Who was she?
She represented the one person across all realities destined to nurture, educate, and care for him without hesitation or doubt.
She was supposed to cherish him unconditionally from his childhood all the way to the very end of her life.
And maybe, just maybe, Cyrus would have experienced that unconditional love on this blasted planet were it not for the actions of a single bloodthirsty man who enjoyed her scream as she burned alive.
Who was she to him?
The answer could be echoed by every son with a mother who loved him above all.
"Everything."
Fingers loosened, and a blood-curdling scream echoed across the surface of Republic City as Jaozi the Dragon plummeted toward the earth.
"AIIIIIEEEEHHHHHHHHH!"
Cyrus watched Jaozi's upper frame slam into the chassis of an RCPD satomobile, pulverizing the hood and scattering blood across the crowded streets below. His bottom half bent in on itself and completely separated from the rest of his body in a paste of blood and bone.
People screamed, officers scrambled to control the crowds, and paramedics gathered around the destroyed body with stunned expressions.
A life debt was incurred a decade ago.
All debts have been settled.
But Cyrus didn't feel triumphant or happy.
He felt…lost.
Vengeance never tasted so bitter.
Was going to make it longer, but I felt like this was too good a point to stop. Not sure if you'll agree, but here it is regardless.
I hope you enjoyed it.