Mako's Message: This will be the last thing I write before I get Chapter 61 of Precocious Crush up. It's one of my earlier ideas, and I was really hoping to get something... LONG out of this, but, eh, I did what I could. I hope you enjoy it. I'm gonna get back to writing PC now.
The house, usually so bright and full of activity, was dark and silent.
The front door opened and a young girl entered the house alone. She turned and nodded once, a moment later the sound of care driving reluctantly away could heard. She closed the door and walked through the halls without turning on a light or saying a word.
She stripped off the long black dress she wore as she walked, letting it fall to the floor behind her. Shoes, socks and underwear followed, leaving a trail into the bathroom.
The water was turned on and she stepped into the shower, not caring about the temperature. She stood and let the water pour over her. She didn't move, didn't wash, simply relaxed into the soothing water as it massaged her skin.
When she emerged, she didn't bother with a towel, simply wrapping herself in a soft and fluffy robe.
She walked into her sisters room, running her hand across the keys of her keyboard. There was a handwritten sheet of music sitting nearby. She made an attempt to play the piece, though she hadn't had a lesson in years. She wondered what it would have sounded like if she'd gotten to hear her sister play it.
She moved to her father's study and sat at his desk. She leafed through the various notes laying about; scribbled sentences she didn't understand about people that didn't exist. She woke the computer up and read his most recent work, which would forever remain unfinished, and made up her own ending.
Still clad in only her robe, and her hair still dripping, she left the house and crossed the backyard to her mother's workspace. Inside were several sculptures(some of clay, some of scrap metal, others of chicken wire and plaster) and numerous paintings and sketches. She'd never really understood her mother's art, but walking around and looking at them with a fresh perspective, she thought she might understand them a bit now.
Finally, she headed to the basement.
The basement was full of boxes of odds and ends and chests of old clothes. It seemed rather small though, for a house that was so large. However, at the other end, not really hidden, but not immediately visible either, was a steel door with a heavy bar lock, and a keypad.
Without pausing, the girl entered the code to unlock the door and opened it.
The room she entered was brightly lit and stark white. If it wasn't for the weapons, armor, and other assorted equipment lining the walls, it might resemble an operating room. She walked around the room, her fingers ghosting across the guns, the body armor, the grappling hooks, ropes, cables, handcuffs maps, charts, and then...
The costumes. She stopped and sat on one of the stools at the work bench, looking at the costumes.
Specifically, she was looking the two oldest costumes. The first one's her parents wore. She starred at them, looking into the eyes of the empty masks, imagining her parents as they were then, wondering what was going through their heads that first night they had worked together. Wondering if it was the same thing that was going through her mind tonight.
She'd never had her own costume. She hadn't wanted to take part in the violence that her parents and sister had surrounded themselves with. They'd trained her, of course. What parent didn't pass on everything they knew that could help their child survive? And she'd enjoyed the training, honestly.
However, going out at night, in costume? Getting into fights, getting shot at, hurting, killing, other people? That hadn't appealed to her. Not at all.
Now she couldn't help but wonder if things would have been different if she'd joined them.
None of these would do for her, of course. Not as they were at least. She'd need something that was her own.
After a moment's thought, she stood and walked out of the basement room, up to her room, and quickly dressed. She took the keys from the kitchen, got into the car and drove to the store. There, she quickly purchased a few cans of spray paint and some make-up then headed back. She didn't have time to make her own costume, but a quick color change would do in a pinch.
At home, the jumpsuit, cape, and wig of her mother's old costume received a coat of black paint, while the gloves, boots, and belt got white. She took the baton harness from her father's costume and adjusted it to her size before moving on to load a bag with guns, knives, ropes, and the entirety of their, comparatively small, collection of explosives.
She looked over the maps and floor plans pinned to the wall relating to her Mom and Dad's last big project. Hidden behind some of the others was the floor plan, with additional notes on security, of the man's Jersey beach house. She found the location on the larger map full of push-pins denoting his properties and areas of operations, and planned her route.
Well, she tried to.
Her parents always made it look so easy, tracing routes from point-a to point-b in seconds. But then, they'd had years to learn the roads; which were one way, which were busy and which were clear, and always kept track of new construction, detours, roadblocks, and police check-points. She however was going to be forced to use the GPS.
She checked her mother's modified costume and gave it another coat of paint before sitting down, pulling her hair back, and painting her face. Everything from her shoulders up became a stark, bone, white. Then she covered her eyes with black. Then, on a whim, she put several thin black vertical lines across her lips.
And then it was finally time to put it on.
Her mother's costume didn't fit perfectly, it was was a little short in the arms and legs, and a little baggy around the shoulders and hips, but it would do.
She took a moment to look at herself in the mirror before grabbing her bag and heading out. She was amazed not at just how different she looked (if she didn't know it was her...she wouldn't have known it was her), but at how different she felt. Like the last piece of a puzzle, it made her complete. She was ready now, body, mind, and soul.
She couldn't risk drawing attention from the police so, as much as it pained her, she was careful to drive at exactly the speed limit.
The GPS directed her to the front gate of course, and that just wouldn't do. She spent another half hour driving around, trying to find a back alley, a service road, something, anything, that would allow her to approach from an unexpected direction.
Finally she found a road down to the beach. It wasn't close to the house, but it wouldn't be hard for her to cover the distance.
The house was set a ways back from the beach, allowing for large yard with a large and elaborate rock garden. The house was lit up on both floors, and she could see several people through the glass patio doors; there was a party going on, just as she'd heard there would be. She didn't care. There were no innocents in that house. She crept into throwing distance, taking up a position behind a large rock in the garden, and reached in her bag. She paused for a second, when it occurred to her that the glass might be bulletproof, but then decided it didn't matter. She pulled a grenade from the bag and threw.
The glass door shattered and all conversation stopped. A man swore and a woman shrieked. The Grenade exploded, shrapnel and screams filling the air.
She threw another through one window, then another, and lobbed two more into upstairs windows, saving one for later.
Three men, covered in debris and one limping, came out of the house, guns raised and searching.
She pulled her gun and aimed over the rock, putting two bullets into the chests of the first two, but narrowly missing the third who dove behind a pillar.
She quickly ran from behind the rock, seconds before the man opened fire on her previous position, and two more stepped out onto the patio.
The men hadn't seen her, and were caught completely off guard when she opened fire from the side. She only hit one, the other two were quicker and ducked back into the house, shouting for backup.
She ran and slid across the patio, passed the opening she'd blown in the house, opening fire on whoever she could, before taking cover again behind a pillar on the other side.
She reloaded her gun as bullets chipped away at her cover.
She spun out to the left, fired two shots, then pulled back, spun into a crouch and fired from the right.
The sound of running footsteps rapidly grew louder. She only had a few seconds before she'd be surrounded.
She holstered the guns and reached for her Father's batons. She didn't bother with the batons themselves, and went straight for the hidden blades within.
She leapt out and onto the closest man, driving both of the short swords into his shoulders. He fell backwards, blood spraying out his mouth, with her still on top of him. He hit the ground and and she rolled forward, pulling the blades out of him. She came to her feet and drove them both into the next man's gut before ripping them through his side as she ran around him.
The bullets had stopped, the men not wanting to hit each other, but the girl hadn't.
Ten seconds of steel meeting flesh left four men dieing in pools of their own blood on the patio.
A fifth man had retreated back into the building once the blood had started spilling, and once the last of the four had been carved open he opened fire again. The girl dove behind cover as he retreated further into the house, yelling for the other assholes in the house to get the fuck down there and help, the bunch of pussies.
She came around the edge of the hole in the wall, a gun in each fist, and sprayed the room with bullets.
The one, armed, man in the room ducked around a wall as she ducked behind a couch. A woman was already there, looking terrified. The girl smashed her in between the eyes with the butt of her gun, dropping her like an empty clip.
Someone in the house must have been thinking, because the next group of men that came in were carrying automatic weapons.
Fluff and splinters exploded into the air as she ran for a hallway. She'd never learned any of the advanced stuff, like her mothers trick reloads, so it wasn't until she was safely in another room that she was able to reload and return fire. It also provided a bottleneck.
Bullets streamed through the hallway, leaving her only able to fire blindly around the corner.
Two men came in through another hall. She turned her guns on them only to hear the click of an empty chamber. The men seemed rather pleased by that.
She didn't bother holstering the guns. As they fell to the floor she drew two knives and cast them into the chests of the men in one fluid motion.
The lull in her fire allowed the other men to come running down the hall, almost catching her off guard. She spun and delivered a leaping uppercut into the first one down the hall's jaw, knocking him backwards into the others. The last one in line manged to get two shots off before she decided to use the mob-pile to pull back and regroup.
She ran into another room and found another man, gun raised and watching the opposite direction. She drew her father's blades and ended his watch.
Back in the first room, what must have started as a light smolder had met a pool of spilled liquor and was now a small blaze that was rapidly growing. It cut her off from the supplies she'd left in the back garden.
The men with the automatics had followed her around and now entered the room. The flames momentarily distracted them, allowing her the seconds she needed. Every last one of her knives flew through the air, most finding flesh, a few sinking into walls. The men that could still stand retreated back down the hall as the fire continued to spread.
Not knowing where the remaining men would come at her from next, she headed up the stairs, looking for her real target.
At the top of the stairs and down the hall a bit were two men guarding a door. They were watching the steps and they saw the girl at the same time she saw them.
There was no time for anything fancy. It was a quick-draw contest and she didn't have a gun. As their guns came up, she ran forward. She was hasty, and maybe with her inexperience it could be forgiven that she swung too early. The men flinched back, even though it would have missed. It saved her life, and cost them theirs.
Two shots punctuated the fight. One wild, one well aimed but easily dodged, both futile.
She took their guns and turned as she heard running steps. Two men came up the steps and she put a bullet in each of their heads as they became visible.
She allowed herself a brief pause. The fire was beginning to make it unbearably hot and she wiped at the sweat on her face. Her make-up smeared and mixed with the blood on her gloves.
Gun in hand, she readied herself and then kicked the door once, twice, and with the third the door broke into a shower of splinters. She faced a man who wore an expression of mixed rage and fear and pointed a gun right back at her. She fired first, putting a bullet, unintentionally, into his hands. He cried out and dropped his gun, cradling his mangled fingers.
"Who the fuck are you!"he screamed.
"Who am I?" she screamed back, "You come to my parents', my sister's, funeral!" She shot him in the shoulder, "You brag about killing them, TO MY FACE!" she shot him in the other shoulder, "Like I didn't know who THEY were!" She shot him his knee, "Like I didn't know who YOU were!" she shot him in the other knee, "And you don't know who I AM?" she pressed the gun into his face, "I'm finishing the mission."
She quickly looked around the room. There was a bottle of vodka sitting on a table next to them. She grabbed it with her free hand and broke the neck off, then took her last grenade, pulled the pin, and dropped it in, "And you're going to burn."
She threw him to the ground and walked out of the room.
Seconds later the room exploded, flaming debris filling the hall as she descended the stairs. The fire had consumed most of the back end of the house, but the hall was still clear. She walked down the hall and out the front door, circling back to where she'd left her bag.
Walking back to the car was considerably easier than walking to the house had been, despite the feeling of exhaustion that swept over her. Once she reached the car she tossed the bag inside and then climbed into the drivers seat.
She put her hands on the wheel, and a deep, weary sigh escaped her. Despite what she'd said, the mission wasn't over. It would never be over. But someone was going to have to do it.