Vae Victus

Disclaimer: Same as before.

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For yet another night, Martin Bilby couldn't sleep. He had been having trouble sleeping since the Titan mission. He would be lucky if he averaged four to six hours of sleep a night, maximum. Sleep tended to bring back dreams of the past, painful memories and faces of those he knew were no longer living. Also he could see the countless Heartless he had killed, the last sight picture before they realized they were going to die in his sight. He could feel that sour feeling he always got after combat missions. No matter how many Heartless he would kill it never erased the pain of the lost loved ones killed during the Heartless attack on his home in Sapphire Bay when he was fourteen.

The house still burned brightly as the dark storm continued its path across Australia. Only half an hour ago the Heartless had killed Mom and Dad. Michael and David followed, killed trying to run, their bodies grew stiff in the back yard. That much the boy knew, hiding under his bed, carrying a diving knife in his hands. A Heartless shadow came inside the room and the boy, who had spent half an hour crying, ashamed of his tears, he was near manhood yet he was crying like a child. He saw the creature and charged, screaming half from fear and half from a primal rage.

He knocked the Heartless to the ground with the sheer surprise of his assault. He started stabbing the creature again and again with the knife; he didn't know where to begin. The creature fought back with its hands, leaving cuts and welts in the boy's flesh, but the child was beyond caring. Rage filled his being and he kept stabbing at the creature until it's attempts to fight back became more sporadic, born more of reflexive and random firings of nerve impulses rather than any concerted attempt to fight back against its attacker.

That didn't matter to the boy, his face was slick with blood, sweat and tears as he kept stabbing the creature, even as black blood gushed from its wounds and a gurgling could be heard from the creature's throat as it feebly tried to shove the boy's knife hand from its midsection. The young Bilby hacked at the creature's midsection again and again until pale blue coils of intestine spilled onto the tan carpet of his room, joining the splatters of black blood on the floor. The boy continued hacking at the corpse even long after the Heartless was dead. It was only the running footsteps of the other Heartless drones in the house that drew him into hiding yet again.

As he crawled through the ventilation ducts, he could see his father lying killed in the middle of the living room floor, his mother's body not too far away. All the boy cared for now was revenge, nothing more and nothing less. He went to the Army recruitment station the next day, lying about his age, saying he was sixteen years old. The lie went undetected and he was sent to Basic training two days after Sapphire Bay burned brightly in the night sky. ~ ~ ~ ~

The world was a faint shade of green through the night vision goggles as Martin Bilby crept through the darkened city. This was his first mission as a Gamma operator and he drew his knife silently from his scabbard as he snuck behind a Heartless sentry. He grabbed the creature's antennae, pulled back and slashed deeply and quickly across the thing's throat.

The creature thrashed and bucked, it's body was dying as its black blood sprayed into the concrete floor. The creature turned right side up again, its eyes glowing cinnabar red and it screamed a gurgling, "RRRARRGGHHH!" before it expired.

Martin Bilby woke up, bathed in a cold sweat. He pulled on his trousers and his sand brown t-shirt. He grabbed a roll of athletic tape and wrapped it around his wrists and knuckles and walked down into the basement where the training room was. He started throwing punches at the bag, ducking, throwing a mean left handed hook. He had to vent all that angst inside him. The Heartless had taken everything away from him, everything that truly mattered. The house could be replaced, his family's material possessions could be replaced as well, but the friends, neighbors and family that were killed could not. Then there was Akima, one of the few people in his entire life that had taken time to know the gentle personality under the tough guy façade he always cultivated. Aside from his few friends in the squadron, his fellow soldiers viewed him with a mixture of fear and disdain. The feeling was mutual, he felt betrayed in turn. The military not only offered him revenge against the Heartless, but also a fresh start from the kid that everyone kicked around in high school.

He slipped sideways and threw another right handed hook. He had quickly become his company boxing champion as an outlet vent his frustration and rage. When he realized no matter where he went he would be the social outcast, the last person anyone in the unit wanted to go out in town with or hang around, he focused solely on becoming the perfect warrior.

Another few punches on the bag. It didn't matter anymore who he conjured in front of him when he did this. It could be the bullies that taunted him throughout his childhood, his cliquish and often ignorant fellow soldiers in the 25th Infantry Division who viewed him as a childish wannabe even after he had proven himself, or it could be those idiots in his own 2 Troop who viewed him as a psychopath after the Titan mission. All he knew is that it felt good to vent his fury.

"Someone is burning the midnight oil." Said a voice.

He turned to see Cover Girl standing behind him, "Anyone I know?"

"Yeah, the green headed jackass himself who tried to get me to take off my field cap." Bilby shouted angrily. It was a weak reason, and he knew it, but he didn't want to involve Cover Girl or anyone else in his own angst ridden ritual.

"Beach Head's a jerk about anything that doesn't follow the regulations but you shouldn't take it personally." Cover Girl replied, "Besides that cap is nothing to be angry about."

"It was a last gift from my father before the Heartless killed him. It was given to me on my fourteenth birthday." Bilby replied, "If Beach Head tries to touch it again, he will feel my full wrath."

"It's not easy to lose people you love is it?" Cover Girl asked.

Bilby jabbed the bag twice with his left then struck it with his right then slipped left and hooked the side of the bag. "You don't know the half of it." Bilby replied.

"The Heartless must've done something really bad to you to make you hate them so much." Cover Girl replied.

"They killed everyone I loved and cared about, so I joined a profession where I could kill a lot of them." Bilby replied coldly.

"Do you realize that the law of an eye for an eye just means there are two one eyed men walking around?" Cover Girl said, "I've seen the way you fight, the chances you take. The complete lack of mercy you show wounded enemies."

"Those who side themselves with the Heartless become Heartless themselves." Bilby replied, "That viper I shot during the raid could easily have become a Heartless given the time. I was following my standard operating procedure; invariably villains in other dimensions turn into Heartless themselves when they try to bargain with that race."

Cover Girl was talking about the last raid where Bilby had discovered a wounded young COBRA soldier whose body was halfway mutated into the shadow form of a Heartless. Bilby simply pulled out his pistol and shot the boy between the eyes. She could see the hardness in Bilby's expression, as if he had done this before. There was no lie in Bilby's statement, it was the SOP to kill any life form encountered that appeared to be transforming into a Heartless.

"What happened on the Titan mission?" Cover Girl asked.

Bilby froze and said, "I don't know what you're talking about?"

"The kids said different. When you were out cold when we found you, we heard you muttering something about the Titan mission." Cover Girl said.

Bilby was about to reply with something snappy when he realized he couldn't lose anything by talking about it. He told Cover Girl all about the Titan mission, about how he risked his neck for his furtive relationship with Akima. He told her about how he lost her as well as the rest of his team and was transferred to a different squadron and troop because it was procedure that lone survivors would be moved to different units to theoretically ease them of the pain and survivor guilt. But in Bilby's opinion it was just pushing the problems of the soldier in question on a completely new unit.

"No wonder you couldn't talk about what really was hurting you." Cover Girl said, "There's someone on this base that you should talk to about this. I'll set an appointment with Psyche Out for you."

"Psyche Out?" Bilby asked.

"He's our resident shrink." Cover Girl replied, "About half the soldiers on this base, not to mention the Misfits started out like you. They all needed help, some still do, and it sounds like you do as well."

Cover Girl left the room, leaving Bilby alone with his thoughts. As soon as she was out, he leaned against the punching bag. He repeated words that he had spoken as the Black Hawk helicopter landed to pick him up after the failed Titan mission.

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Bilby felt the Black Hawk take off, flying into the air, flying its circuit around the area where the other members had fallen. He could see two other helicopters with the rescue unit to recover the seven bodies of the dead Gamma unit members. He took up his sniper rifle to provide sniper cover for the extract.

"Vae Victus. Suffering to the Conquered. Ironic now that I was the one suffering. Not from anything as pedestrian as physical pain. Rather from the cruel jab of impotent anger, a desire to avenge those slain by the Heartless." Bilby replied, his speech reminiscent of the opening speech from Blood Omen, Legacy of Kain, his favorite video game.

A year later, when he volunteered for the mission called Kilo Two Zero. He could almost hear the voice of the character, the necromancer Moritanius that turned Kain into a vampire in the game, saying, "You will have the blood you hunger for."

"I must be going crazy." Bilby replied, when his mind returned to the present, "First I'm quoting a favorite video game, and now I'm hearing one of the characters in it. And what blood do I hunger for."

In the back of his mind, Bilby could hear Moritanius yet again, "You know the blood for which you hunger..."

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Up next, what happens when Bilby meets Psyche Out, the psychotic shrink? The answer, coming up in the next chapter. Also in the next chapter, the men of Kilo Two Zero meet the X-men. Can they survive the crossfire between the Misfits and the X-men?