Proditor Pro Falsi Parti

By Sakki

None of the characters, plot devices, ideas, theories, lines of poetry or song lyrics are mine.

~~~

            When Erol walked into the briefing room in the Krimzon Guard headquarters, he was greeted with a round of sarcastic applause.

            "He didn't kick you out? Hell, you're one lucky bastard."

            "This is, what, seven, eight times now?"

            "I didn't think Torn had that much tolerance."

            Erol felt a muscle on his forehead pulse.

            "I've got one more chance to redeem myself," he said, glaring at the room's occupants. "I hope you have ideas as to what this will be."

            "Huh? What do you – oh, right. Assignments." An elite guard, sitting in the corner near a radio, pulled a few papers out of his pocket. "The Baron's got word of a group of Underground bastards that are planning to blow up the old ammo dump. He wants us to take care of it."

            "When's it planned?"

            "I don't know." The elite held the papers out to Erol, who snatched them with enough force to tear one. "Hey, watch it."

            He wasn't listening. His eyes were fixated on the letters scrawled across the papers.

            Underground Insurgents

            Ammo Dump

            Planned Attack

            20:30

            New Moon

            Erol looked up at the clock on the wall. It read 16:47. He clutched the papers tightly in his hand and headed for the stairs which led to the barracks.

            "Hey, where're you going?"

            "I'll be back."

            Underground Insurgents

            Ammo Dump

            Planned Attack

            20:30

            New Moon

            Squadron Assigned: Alpha 7

            Mission: Stop Attack

            He shoved the papers into his pocket.

            …119, 120, 121, 122…

            His feet stumbled slightly over nothing; he cursed them and continued walking.

            …133, 134, 135, 136…

            There was his door, another dull, blank rectangle of black in the iron-gray walls. Erol rammed his keycard through the lock and shoved open the door.

            His calendar, his calendar…where was it…

            Erol's room was not like the other soldier's rooms. Most of them had magazines and ammo cartridges strewn across every flat surface; the younger ones had posters of seductively dressed women on their walls. Ones who had been in the ranks for longer often had papers tacked up that listed their kills and awards.

            But if you walked into Erol's room, you'd wonder what went wrong. The walls were covered with gouges and bullet holes. There was a standard bed, desk, and dresser, but these all looked as if they had been attacked by a very toothy animal. The floor was littered with papers, books, magazines, newspapers, and empty ammo cartridges. If one shifted some of these aside, they would see that the floor was as mangled as the walls, with bloodstains added to make it look like the room was alive – or had been, once.

            His calendar had to be around here somewhere…

            A few articles from newspapers and magazines were ruthlessly attached to the wall above the bed. Erol ripped a few of them down in his frantic search only to find nothing.

            "Where is it?!" he snarled, smashing his fist into the headboard of his bed. A chip of wood flew off and hit him in the forehead.

            In that instant, he closed his eyes and remembered a race that he had lost once, a long time ago, when he was new to racing, when there were people better than him, more agile, more quick, more alive than he had ever been, but soon they would be more dead than he was because he learned very quickly that he did not like to lose.

            Erol took a deep breath. He cleared his mind of old thoughts and opened his eyes. He turned around and looked at his desk, which was covered with papers he had written on.

            Slowly, carefully, Erol walked over to his desk and shifted aside a pile of sketches for a new zoomer.

            There was his calendar, with the monthly picture of an old Race Champion brutally slashed through.

            A tiny smile pulled at the corner of his lips as he lifted up the dog-eared calendar.

            "Let me see," he mused, putting a finger on the first of the month. "A recent discovery, so it must be this month…the last new moon was…" He flipped to the previous month and spotted his tiny, indiscernible notes of the new moon. "So…that means it must be…"

            The smile on his face grew. 

            The other guards were a little surprised when Erol returned to the headquarters with his armor on and his gun in his hand.

            "What's up?" one of them asked.

            "There's going to be a party tonight," he said, loading his gun with a fresh cartridge of Vulcan Fury bullets. "Down at the ammo dump."

            The elite sitting in the corner narrowed his eyes at Erol. "And you're going to go there alone?"

            "No. You're all coming with me."

            There was dark muttering among the other men. A few of them glared at Erol, not wanting to take orders from him. The elite stood up and approached Erol, glowering down at him.

            "And what're we going to do when we get there?"

            Erol rammed the cartridge forcefully into place.

            "Crash it."

~~~

            The streets of Haven City were eerily empty when Erol arrived in front of the ammo dump. He glared up at its infinitely tall depths, wondering briefly why anybody would build something this obscenely tall.

            A voice crackled in over his transmitter, informing him that the others were in position and ready for the attack.

            "Good. I'm out in front. I'll follow them in and give you the signal."

            He slid the tiny transmitter behind his ear and crept into a ditch in the road. One of the rickety bridges provided him with more than enough cover, so he crawled under it to wait.

            Erol strained to listen for any sound of an approaching person. His ears twitched and shook, trying to hear everything in the city.

            There was the sound of Krimzon Guards on their regular patrols around the city…there were zoomers being ridden, most in a dire need of muffling…there was the sound of a roaring crowd and custom racing zoomers tearing around a track…

            A slow hiss escaped Erol's lips. He'd forgotten about the race tonight. Class 3, pre-semifinals, his only chance at the title for the next three months. Anger boiled in his veins, streaming through him and giving him the energy he needed to beat the Underground bastards.

            Speaking of the Underground…

            Footsteps echoed through the streets and bounced off the buildings. Erol's ears froze. He sunk down lower into the shadows of the bridge, waiting for his prey to get close enough targets to enter the building.

            They were looking around, obviously nervous about getting caught. They never once looked down; they never once thought that maybe, just maybe, there was a Krimzon Guard right under their feet.

            When they entered the ammo dump, Erol slid out of the pit and slunk after them.

            Never once did they hear him, or see him, or even know he was there. To them, he was just another shadow on the wall; his lightly armored figure was able to hide in places normal Krimzon Guards couldn't fit into.

            They approached the main ammo holding sector and looked around. One of them whistled.

            "That's a lot of explosives."

            Erol tapped his transmitter.

            "Now."

            A group of Krimzon Guards, all heavily armed, appeared out from behind tanks of eco and explosives.

            "Freeze!"

            The Underground fighters stood in place as if they'd grown roots. This was not what they had expected.

            But, like all rebels, they decided to go down fighting.

            They pulled out their guns and charged, firing as they went. Erol saw the immediate bloodshed and not the immediate danger and dove right in. He tackled the one fumbling with their gun instead of shooting them; right now, a quick and painless death was not what he was in the mood for.

            He slammed into the figure and pinned them to the floor. There was a mask drawn up around the figure's face, covering their nose and mouth. For a moment, Erol hesitated to attack. He wanted to know what was under that mask, but before he could find out, the fighter threw a punch in his direction.

            He didn't have time to think; he rolled out of the way to avoid it, and suddenly he was engaged in a fistfight. The other guards and Underground fighters were engaged in their own battles. Nobody noticed Erol and the single inept fighter trying to kill each other without the use of weapons.

            Nobody cared.

            The fighter charged at him, but Erol dodged the attack easily. In return he seized the fighter's ponytail as they went past him and hauled them back.

            He saw, for a frozen instant, the pain and the shock, the fear, the anger in the fighter's eyes as he raised his fist to start a barrage of punches.

            And it excited him.

            The first punch sent the fighter into the floor; those that followed broke bones and blood veins. Any attempt to try and prevent the attacks only brought on more. Blood splattered from various wounds on the fighter's face and arms onto Erol.

            Again and again he slammed his fists into the fighter's unprotected body. Again and again he heard the sickening crack of bone and muscle shattering. Again and again he felt the broken bones splinter, the blood spray across his face, the fear and pain radiate from his victim, his prey, his only outlet of rage that would allow him to let out everything he hated, all the Metal Heads that had killed his 'friends', his family, all the times he'd felt such a burning rage against Torn or the Baron or the world in general, all the times when Death had taken hold of his body or visited him in his dreams and told him that he was just a puppet, that he would never go anywhere, that only Fate kept him alive, all the times he'd wanted to kill but couldn't and the fear in those wide brown eyes made him laugh, the pain made him want to laugh even more, he wanted to make this child suffer like nobody had ever made him suffer before –

            "Erol!"

            Hands grabbed his arms and pulled him back, away from his target. He struggled for a moment, desperate to get back to his prey, to make him suffer, to feed, to kill, to…to…

            Erol blinked and stopped fighting.

            The Underground fighters were all dead except for the one he had attacked. This one remaining fighter was covered in blood and bruises, but still alive and conscious. As Erol stood up and shook of the other guards, he noticed that the mask covering the fighter's face had been ripped off during the fight.

            The fighter was a teenage boy.

            "They've resorted to using kids to do their work," snorted one guard, picking up the bloody fighter by one arm. "Well, at least one of them is still alive."

            Another guard came over and aided the first in carrying the fighter away. Erol watched them leave. The few remaining guards looked at him in a slightly suspicious manner (although it was hard to tell through the masks).

            "What was that?"

            "What was what?" he snapped, wiping blood off his face.

            "You didn't shoot him."

            "Your point?"

            "Why not?"

            Erol paused, looking down at the floor, at the bloodstains.

            "Because…I felt like it."

           None of the other guards said anything. One at a time, they walked away and left Erol alone in the silent ammo dump.

            After a moment of standing in the silence, Erol reached down and lifted the fighter's bloodstained cloth mask off the floor where it had fallen.

            A tribute to Danger, he thought, and to Death.

            He crumpled it up in one hand, wishing it was alive so he could hear it scream and feel it die.

            So he could kill it.

            So he could kill it.