Hey people. So sorry for the wait. My computer is lacking the word processor so I could spell check anything. *Sigh* It is rather annoying. Anyway, this was going to be another boring chapter, but I figured that the plot could possibly live without it so, lucky for you, you shall not have to deal with it. (And the crowd goes WILD!) Yes, if you guys like the kind of think I think you like, then you should hopefully be happy with this chappy. Heh, it took me a long time to write.
So, without further adieu, here's the chapter.
Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop, I have never, and will never, claim to.
Title: Fallen Petals of the Rose
Chapter 5: The Wilting Rose
Last time...
**********
"Ok, so let's get going," Spike said, preparing to go back down to the casino.
"Do you have anything else to wear?" James asked.
"Why?"
"One of his men might recognize that outfit on you," James warned.
"You're right, I do have something else, but what would I wear when I am pretending to be Sekart?" Spike asked.
"That is where I come in, my friend," James grinned, "I have more that just female clothing, you know."
"Great," Spike said as he made his way to the bathroom to change.
**********
~~~Now~~~
Wanted all throughout space for rapes and robberies, a con artist who had stolen millions of wulongs and had an entourage of 100 men, he is dangerous and cunning. Sekart was perfect; the perfect con artist, the perfect manipulative raper. A true blue dangerous man. Yes, Sekart was a devious genius. Mastered by the rose.
'Those fools,' he thought with a smirk as he looked around the poker table. 'They have no clue, heh.'
No, not a single person surrounding the table knew quite who he was, oh sure, they all thought they did, but they didn't. The name he had given everyone at the hotel was Nathan King, business tycoon and millionaire. He was a man of one hundred faces. 'Those news writers were clever,' he smirked. 'They were, after all, the ones who came up with that stunning title.'
He flashed a smile as the waitress brought him his drink, he tipped generously, as was the nature of Nathan King, he wasn't a generous man, he just liked to flaunt his cash. Nathan King was one of his favorite types of characters. Sekart was playing the roll of a life time.
His mood and spirit were lifted high, of course, it helped that with his current hand, there was no way he could lose. He had a nameless woman attached to his arm, a confidence booster of sorts. She looked at the rose in his jacket's breast pocket.
"Oh, honey," she said in her maraschino cherry voice, "Your rose is starting to wilt! You're going to need to throw it away soon, before the petals start falling off."
He looked down to see if her words were true. "Yes, it seems so," he said in his perfected 'Bord' voice. But in truth, the wheels of his mind were spinning like mad. Tonight he would kill. Tonight Faye Valentine would die. He was almost giddy, picturing her dead body lying on his bed, the wilted petals from the very rose in his pocket, sprinkled delicately over her cold body. An other sacrifice for the Roses.
He smiled with confidence as he folded his hand and politely excused himself from the game, Nathan King, was, after all, horrible at poker, it would have been out of character for him to win. After he detached the nameless wonder from his arm he made his way to the bar, where he could sit in a dark corner and plan. Plan for tonight's sacrifice. He would delight in killing her. He was happy his roses decided to let her be the one to go. It wilted on the day she stepped back into his life. 'Yes,' he thought, 'And her foolish lover, ah to see the look on his face when he finds she's dead!'
'Rape,' he thought, 'Yes, she will die in a painful way.' A grin grew on his face. 'Drugs would be best, give them to her first.' He ordered a drink as he continued to contemplate. It could be a lot of work, planning a perfect murder, even though he had perfected it over the years. He anticipated telling Ms. Faye Valentine the same line he told all his victims; That their death was not in vain, that with it, they were honoring something bigger.
Not that he ever mentioned what that 'something bigger' was.
She deserved this death. She had left him, nobody left him and got away with it, but she had, for too long now. She found out his secret, there was no Dane Truman, it was all Drake Sekart,
Now, you may have come to the conclusion by now that Sekart is certifyingly insane. Well, you're wrong. You sort of have to exist to be insane. No, the real insane person was the man behind the mask, or rather, the man behind the name...
And who might that be? Well, none other than Robby Shnider; the dork from school.
Everybody has met some sort of version of a Robby Shnider, the nerd in school that everyone picked on, the one boy who just didn't fit in.
Robby Shnider was that, and then some. His entire school life was filled with torture and ridicule from his peers. Robby's family was poor, Mr. Shnider didn't make that much money, he sold real estate for a living. Robby had to wear second hand clothing. His speech was slurred with a horrible lisp throughout much of his public education, this added to the fact that Robby ate items such as glue and chalk up until the 5th grade didn't lead to unsurmountable popularity. On the contrary, it lead to Sekart.
Drake Sekart was Robby's childhood hero, fabricated from Robby's own mind. He would day dream about the cool Mr. Sekart coming and teaching all of his enemies a lesson, whisking him and his mother away from his father. It wasn't until after he got out of high school that a devious plot crept into his mind.
He would become his imaginary idle. He would make Drake Sekart teach them a lesson.
But, like all things, it takes a burst of motivation before anything got started.
To understand Robby a little better, it is important to know that he was incredibly close with his mother, whose favorite thing in the whole world was red roses. There home had always been filled with them, red roses were everywhere you looked. His father had never liked them much, but kept them around all the same. He was an angry man, who hated the fact that his son reflected so poorly upon him. His mother was always the one who stood up for him, which made Robby love her even more. It was safe to say that he loathed his father.
His mother got sick, and everything good in his life seemed to come crashing down. Mrs. Shnider was confined to her bed, and Mr. Shnider tended to take out his grievances on his son, in a violent sort of way. His mother was too weak to do anything about it.
When his mother finally past, his father got rid of all the roses, as to ease his pain, all but one; the one that Robby coveted for himself. It lasted one week before it started to wilt, and thus, his heinous tradition started.
His father was his first victim; the first person Drake Sekart was ever to believed to have killed, with the tell-tale sign of rose petals resting on his stiff body, it was also believed that *Rider Shnider's son, Robby, was also murdered, but his body was never found.
'My father may have been a horrible man in life,' Robby thought as he looked back on his old home for one last time, 'But he died for mother; a noble death for The Rose.'
He waited. He went into hiding, under a new name and waited for his time. He watched as his ex-classmates grew and their lives flourished, well, some of them flourished. The 5 year anniversary of his mother's death was when he first struck. His first, or rather, second, victim was a man by the name of Albert Misco, whom had acquired a lovely wife. Little did he know, she would be his down fall.
Mrs. Misco was quickly growing bord with her life. Mr. Rick Billiard was a welcomed change. He was an artist, poetic, exciting. Their affair was an affair to remember. But one faithful night, while Albert was away on business, Mr. Billiard whisked Mrs. Misco to a lavish hotel, his formal wear included a rose in his breast pocket. He kept the rose, telling her that it would be stupid to throw it away as long as it was still alive. Then it, inevitably, started to wilt, the memory of his mother's last rose flooded Robby's mind. He had to honor his mother, and what's more, fate also seemed to agree with him, seeing as the day was the anniversary of her death.
In the duration of their relationship, Billiard had pulled much useful information from Mrs. Misco, such as bank information, pin numbers, and she practically gave him everything he ever needed, they could, as she pointed out to him many times, afford it, after all. He had it all planned out, he emptied out Albert Misco's account and set to work.
The death, and obvious betrayal of his wife left him all but broken. Albert Misco killed himself a week later. And as for Mr. Billiard? Well, he went away as well. Sekart looked on with content at what he had created. Revenge was sweet. Robby swelled with pride as his hero did what he had always dreamed of, and since his mother wasn't there, Sekart would just have to keep honoring her memory.
Soon, Sekart had acquired more money than he knew what to do with, ruining people turned out to be a very prosperous way to make a living. But he realized that, with out help, his empire would crumble. He needed men to do research for him, so he could learn everything he needed to about his future victims, he also need protection for when the police caught wind of him. And so, his arsenal of one hundred men came to be.
There came a time when he decided to lay low for a while. Just a few months, to gather his bearings and get caught up with the lives of his foes. Dane Truman was a hard working man who was down on his luck. His kind attitude and loving ways won the heart of the lost Faye Valentine, who was looking for a place to call home. Little did she know that Sekart had decide to make Dane a multi-dimensional character, he had an angry side, an abusive side to him. Faye was the main recipient of his harsh blows, both verbal and physical.
He had no intention of killing her, she had no ties to his childhood enemies. He had always taken her as weak, passive and easily controlled. He was really thrown for a loop when she left. She had taken a bit of Dane's money, which was a small fraction of the Sekart billions, and all her belongings, she left only a note, which read:
"I thought I had found a home with you, an escape to the confusion my life left me with,
when I saw your other side, I told myself that you still loved me, you still cared, I thought that
I could get you to stop, but I was wrong, 8 months of being your punching bag was hard enough,
Finding out that Dane Truman didn't even exist was even harder. Too hard, even. I fell for a
fictional character. I don't know much about you, Sekart, but I can tell you this, you have messed
with me for the last time.
Good bye."
It took him a month of digging to figure out how she found out his secret. It lead to the death of 5 of his men, only 2 of which had anything to do with the information leak. The other two were just to show the rest of his men an example of his possible wrath.
Faye knew his secret, and was therefore dangerous. He either had to get rid of her, or stay away. She left without a trace, she didn't use any of his credit cards and the wulongs she did have were untraceable. If he were to go after her and she were to tell, well, there would be a definite problem. He stayed away.
When his name showed up on the "Most Wanted" list, he feared the worst. But his men and his constant moving protected him. He wondered why Faye had waited a year to give out his information. But that didn't matter, he laughed when ever the thought about it. All that worrying for nothing.
He was both thrilled and surprised with his men gave word of a firey woman looking for Sekart. There was only one woman that could possibly be; Faye Valentine.
Oh, yes, he would make her pay. She had almost willingly wandered into the location where most of his men were stationed. She practically walked willingly into her own death. And a sweet death that would be. He would make absolutely sure of that.
'Faye Valentine,' he thought to himself from the dark confines of the bar, 'Tonight, you will be mine, tonight you will die for the rose, for Robby, for Sekart... Tonight you will learn that Dane Truman never loved you, in character he was just using you for a good rut every now and again, something to make him feel better. You were always worthless to him.'
He sneered. He would break her tonight and he could hardly wait. He could almost see the first petal of the rose falling in just a few short hours. Nathan King would be the one to rape her. He could almost hear the gasps from the people of the casino, who would brag and gossip about how they had been so close to the killer, how it could have just as easily had been them to die, rather than that 'poor girl', as he was sure they would call her. Everyone pity's the dead. Yes, that nameless blond who had attached herself to him would fall into a hyperventilating fit.
He loved surprising people, their reactions were so delightful to him. But the reaction he wanted to see most of all was the one that would belong to that man Valentine had been with. Yes, as far as he was concerned, Faye had never stopped being his and that man had no right to take her away.
He would pay for even thinking about caring for Faye. And Faye would pay even more for leaving. Yeah, that man would suffer, he assumed that weak man would break down after finding out about Faye's death. And Sekart and Robby would laugh their heads off at him.
Nathan King's grin grew in the dark.
Yes, it is sad what ridicule can do to a man. Insanity is a killer.
Drake Sekart was so caught up in his thoughts, his sick, twisted, and amusing thoughts, that he didn't notice the pair of piercing two toned eyes watching him. Waiting for the perfect time to make his move.
"Sekart, you'll be as good as dead when I get through with you."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
* Yes, I named his father "Rider Shnider", and while I realize that it is entirely cruel, I cannot help it, it is the name that I saw him being, well, at the time I sort of over looked the fact that his last name was "Shnider"... Not the point... Eh-hem...
I know that this chapter was kind of short, but this chapter was so fun to write! Robby is one screwed up cookie, huh? But in actual fact, I find him kind of interesting, he's got all these dimensions and layers to him. Besides the fact that he's one bad dude, he's kind of cool... In a psycho kind of way. Heh, heh, I actually learned a lot about him... The man just sort of started to write himself...
Creepy... *Twilight Zone Music Plays*
Review please!
~DRC~
So, without further adieu, here's the chapter.
Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop, I have never, and will never, claim to.
Title: Fallen Petals of the Rose
Chapter 5: The Wilting Rose
Last time...
**********
"Ok, so let's get going," Spike said, preparing to go back down to the casino.
"Do you have anything else to wear?" James asked.
"Why?"
"One of his men might recognize that outfit on you," James warned.
"You're right, I do have something else, but what would I wear when I am pretending to be Sekart?" Spike asked.
"That is where I come in, my friend," James grinned, "I have more that just female clothing, you know."
"Great," Spike said as he made his way to the bathroom to change.
**********
~~~Now~~~
Wanted all throughout space for rapes and robberies, a con artist who had stolen millions of wulongs and had an entourage of 100 men, he is dangerous and cunning. Sekart was perfect; the perfect con artist, the perfect manipulative raper. A true blue dangerous man. Yes, Sekart was a devious genius. Mastered by the rose.
'Those fools,' he thought with a smirk as he looked around the poker table. 'They have no clue, heh.'
No, not a single person surrounding the table knew quite who he was, oh sure, they all thought they did, but they didn't. The name he had given everyone at the hotel was Nathan King, business tycoon and millionaire. He was a man of one hundred faces. 'Those news writers were clever,' he smirked. 'They were, after all, the ones who came up with that stunning title.'
He flashed a smile as the waitress brought him his drink, he tipped generously, as was the nature of Nathan King, he wasn't a generous man, he just liked to flaunt his cash. Nathan King was one of his favorite types of characters. Sekart was playing the roll of a life time.
His mood and spirit were lifted high, of course, it helped that with his current hand, there was no way he could lose. He had a nameless woman attached to his arm, a confidence booster of sorts. She looked at the rose in his jacket's breast pocket.
"Oh, honey," she said in her maraschino cherry voice, "Your rose is starting to wilt! You're going to need to throw it away soon, before the petals start falling off."
He looked down to see if her words were true. "Yes, it seems so," he said in his perfected 'Bord' voice. But in truth, the wheels of his mind were spinning like mad. Tonight he would kill. Tonight Faye Valentine would die. He was almost giddy, picturing her dead body lying on his bed, the wilted petals from the very rose in his pocket, sprinkled delicately over her cold body. An other sacrifice for the Roses.
He smiled with confidence as he folded his hand and politely excused himself from the game, Nathan King, was, after all, horrible at poker, it would have been out of character for him to win. After he detached the nameless wonder from his arm he made his way to the bar, where he could sit in a dark corner and plan. Plan for tonight's sacrifice. He would delight in killing her. He was happy his roses decided to let her be the one to go. It wilted on the day she stepped back into his life. 'Yes,' he thought, 'And her foolish lover, ah to see the look on his face when he finds she's dead!'
'Rape,' he thought, 'Yes, she will die in a painful way.' A grin grew on his face. 'Drugs would be best, give them to her first.' He ordered a drink as he continued to contemplate. It could be a lot of work, planning a perfect murder, even though he had perfected it over the years. He anticipated telling Ms. Faye Valentine the same line he told all his victims; That their death was not in vain, that with it, they were honoring something bigger.
Not that he ever mentioned what that 'something bigger' was.
She deserved this death. She had left him, nobody left him and got away with it, but she had, for too long now. She found out his secret, there was no Dane Truman, it was all Drake Sekart,
Now, you may have come to the conclusion by now that Sekart is certifyingly insane. Well, you're wrong. You sort of have to exist to be insane. No, the real insane person was the man behind the mask, or rather, the man behind the name...
And who might that be? Well, none other than Robby Shnider; the dork from school.
Everybody has met some sort of version of a Robby Shnider, the nerd in school that everyone picked on, the one boy who just didn't fit in.
Robby Shnider was that, and then some. His entire school life was filled with torture and ridicule from his peers. Robby's family was poor, Mr. Shnider didn't make that much money, he sold real estate for a living. Robby had to wear second hand clothing. His speech was slurred with a horrible lisp throughout much of his public education, this added to the fact that Robby ate items such as glue and chalk up until the 5th grade didn't lead to unsurmountable popularity. On the contrary, it lead to Sekart.
Drake Sekart was Robby's childhood hero, fabricated from Robby's own mind. He would day dream about the cool Mr. Sekart coming and teaching all of his enemies a lesson, whisking him and his mother away from his father. It wasn't until after he got out of high school that a devious plot crept into his mind.
He would become his imaginary idle. He would make Drake Sekart teach them a lesson.
But, like all things, it takes a burst of motivation before anything got started.
To understand Robby a little better, it is important to know that he was incredibly close with his mother, whose favorite thing in the whole world was red roses. There home had always been filled with them, red roses were everywhere you looked. His father had never liked them much, but kept them around all the same. He was an angry man, who hated the fact that his son reflected so poorly upon him. His mother was always the one who stood up for him, which made Robby love her even more. It was safe to say that he loathed his father.
His mother got sick, and everything good in his life seemed to come crashing down. Mrs. Shnider was confined to her bed, and Mr. Shnider tended to take out his grievances on his son, in a violent sort of way. His mother was too weak to do anything about it.
When his mother finally past, his father got rid of all the roses, as to ease his pain, all but one; the one that Robby coveted for himself. It lasted one week before it started to wilt, and thus, his heinous tradition started.
His father was his first victim; the first person Drake Sekart was ever to believed to have killed, with the tell-tale sign of rose petals resting on his stiff body, it was also believed that *Rider Shnider's son, Robby, was also murdered, but his body was never found.
'My father may have been a horrible man in life,' Robby thought as he looked back on his old home for one last time, 'But he died for mother; a noble death for The Rose.'
He waited. He went into hiding, under a new name and waited for his time. He watched as his ex-classmates grew and their lives flourished, well, some of them flourished. The 5 year anniversary of his mother's death was when he first struck. His first, or rather, second, victim was a man by the name of Albert Misco, whom had acquired a lovely wife. Little did he know, she would be his down fall.
Mrs. Misco was quickly growing bord with her life. Mr. Rick Billiard was a welcomed change. He was an artist, poetic, exciting. Their affair was an affair to remember. But one faithful night, while Albert was away on business, Mr. Billiard whisked Mrs. Misco to a lavish hotel, his formal wear included a rose in his breast pocket. He kept the rose, telling her that it would be stupid to throw it away as long as it was still alive. Then it, inevitably, started to wilt, the memory of his mother's last rose flooded Robby's mind. He had to honor his mother, and what's more, fate also seemed to agree with him, seeing as the day was the anniversary of her death.
In the duration of their relationship, Billiard had pulled much useful information from Mrs. Misco, such as bank information, pin numbers, and she practically gave him everything he ever needed, they could, as she pointed out to him many times, afford it, after all. He had it all planned out, he emptied out Albert Misco's account and set to work.
The death, and obvious betrayal of his wife left him all but broken. Albert Misco killed himself a week later. And as for Mr. Billiard? Well, he went away as well. Sekart looked on with content at what he had created. Revenge was sweet. Robby swelled with pride as his hero did what he had always dreamed of, and since his mother wasn't there, Sekart would just have to keep honoring her memory.
Soon, Sekart had acquired more money than he knew what to do with, ruining people turned out to be a very prosperous way to make a living. But he realized that, with out help, his empire would crumble. He needed men to do research for him, so he could learn everything he needed to about his future victims, he also need protection for when the police caught wind of him. And so, his arsenal of one hundred men came to be.
There came a time when he decided to lay low for a while. Just a few months, to gather his bearings and get caught up with the lives of his foes. Dane Truman was a hard working man who was down on his luck. His kind attitude and loving ways won the heart of the lost Faye Valentine, who was looking for a place to call home. Little did she know that Sekart had decide to make Dane a multi-dimensional character, he had an angry side, an abusive side to him. Faye was the main recipient of his harsh blows, both verbal and physical.
He had no intention of killing her, she had no ties to his childhood enemies. He had always taken her as weak, passive and easily controlled. He was really thrown for a loop when she left. She had taken a bit of Dane's money, which was a small fraction of the Sekart billions, and all her belongings, she left only a note, which read:
"I thought I had found a home with you, an escape to the confusion my life left me with,
when I saw your other side, I told myself that you still loved me, you still cared, I thought that
I could get you to stop, but I was wrong, 8 months of being your punching bag was hard enough,
Finding out that Dane Truman didn't even exist was even harder. Too hard, even. I fell for a
fictional character. I don't know much about you, Sekart, but I can tell you this, you have messed
with me for the last time.
Good bye."
It took him a month of digging to figure out how she found out his secret. It lead to the death of 5 of his men, only 2 of which had anything to do with the information leak. The other two were just to show the rest of his men an example of his possible wrath.
Faye knew his secret, and was therefore dangerous. He either had to get rid of her, or stay away. She left without a trace, she didn't use any of his credit cards and the wulongs she did have were untraceable. If he were to go after her and she were to tell, well, there would be a definite problem. He stayed away.
When his name showed up on the "Most Wanted" list, he feared the worst. But his men and his constant moving protected him. He wondered why Faye had waited a year to give out his information. But that didn't matter, he laughed when ever the thought about it. All that worrying for nothing.
He was both thrilled and surprised with his men gave word of a firey woman looking for Sekart. There was only one woman that could possibly be; Faye Valentine.
Oh, yes, he would make her pay. She had almost willingly wandered into the location where most of his men were stationed. She practically walked willingly into her own death. And a sweet death that would be. He would make absolutely sure of that.
'Faye Valentine,' he thought to himself from the dark confines of the bar, 'Tonight, you will be mine, tonight you will die for the rose, for Robby, for Sekart... Tonight you will learn that Dane Truman never loved you, in character he was just using you for a good rut every now and again, something to make him feel better. You were always worthless to him.'
He sneered. He would break her tonight and he could hardly wait. He could almost see the first petal of the rose falling in just a few short hours. Nathan King would be the one to rape her. He could almost hear the gasps from the people of the casino, who would brag and gossip about how they had been so close to the killer, how it could have just as easily had been them to die, rather than that 'poor girl', as he was sure they would call her. Everyone pity's the dead. Yes, that nameless blond who had attached herself to him would fall into a hyperventilating fit.
He loved surprising people, their reactions were so delightful to him. But the reaction he wanted to see most of all was the one that would belong to that man Valentine had been with. Yes, as far as he was concerned, Faye had never stopped being his and that man had no right to take her away.
He would pay for even thinking about caring for Faye. And Faye would pay even more for leaving. Yeah, that man would suffer, he assumed that weak man would break down after finding out about Faye's death. And Sekart and Robby would laugh their heads off at him.
Nathan King's grin grew in the dark.
Yes, it is sad what ridicule can do to a man. Insanity is a killer.
Drake Sekart was so caught up in his thoughts, his sick, twisted, and amusing thoughts, that he didn't notice the pair of piercing two toned eyes watching him. Waiting for the perfect time to make his move.
"Sekart, you'll be as good as dead when I get through with you."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
* Yes, I named his father "Rider Shnider", and while I realize that it is entirely cruel, I cannot help it, it is the name that I saw him being, well, at the time I sort of over looked the fact that his last name was "Shnider"... Not the point... Eh-hem...
I know that this chapter was kind of short, but this chapter was so fun to write! Robby is one screwed up cookie, huh? But in actual fact, I find him kind of interesting, he's got all these dimensions and layers to him. Besides the fact that he's one bad dude, he's kind of cool... In a psycho kind of way. Heh, heh, I actually learned a lot about him... The man just sort of started to write himself...
Creepy... *Twilight Zone Music Plays*
Review please!
~DRC~