Let me just say right here that I don't know comic backgrounds, and as this isn't the comics section for Teen Titans, I would
Let me just say right here that I don't know comic backgrounds, and as this isn't the comics section for Teen Titans, I would really appreciate not getting any reviews telling me that I'm wrong. (This hasn't happened yet, but it's a precaution for this chapter). Oh, and for the record, I don't support the use of drugs, but I think they are one of the aspects to life (because they affect everyone-using or not) so in they go.
Warnings: Lots of death in this one, drug references, alcohol references, and some angst.
The first kill was always the hardest.
Angel's first was on her second heist. It was after she escaped. She was hiding in an alley waiting for the cops to go by when a man grabbed her wrist and held a gun to the back of her head. She had been terrified; for once all of the feminine confidence left her completely. He mocked her quietly, in a hoarse voice, and told her to get down. Get down now. He had picked the wrong girl, obviously, and with a swift fighting move that she had learned at the Hive, she disarmed him and broke his neck.
It had been so easy. His awful hand let go of her wrist in death and he slumped to the ground. He was disgusting. His cheeks were covered with stubby hair that he hadn't bothered to shave. His eyes were small, but opened wide with residual surprise. He was greasy and messy and stone dead. She wondered who his mother was, if she was waiting up late for her baby to call, because he hadn't yet that day. Angel wondered if his mother would cry when they found the body. She left the alley.
Later, when she was teaching her kids, she told them of her first kill. She wanted to play it off as a joke, as some of the other students did, because that would make it more bearable. If she didn't feel the guilt, maybe it would go away. But she wouldn't let herself. She hinted to them at how much it had hurt her, even though he was the instigator. She told them of the sorrow each of them would feel after their first, because they were her kids dammit, and they had to know. However she never told anyone that she sometimes woke up at night with his last words ringing in her ears.
The first kill was always the hardest.
Bailey had always privately entertained the thought that Angel's first kill was a mercy. Because Angel killed some bastard that had really deserved it. Angel's kill could be written off as self-defense. Angel had been held at gun point in an alley, to Bailey, that was a hella good excuse to kill. He hadn't been so lucky.
His first kill had been on an assignment. The Hive did assassinations, and students were required to make their first kill at as young of an age as possible. Bailey had been ten when he joined the Hive; he was about eleven when he had been put on an assassination mission. It wasn't an easy mission. Before he went on it, he had been proud that the school thought him good enough to go on a mission as tough as the one he was assigned. He was to kill a top official from the freaking mafia, if that wasn't tough, he didn't know what was.
It had been hard, so damn hard. The infiltration was easy enough, especially with the technology that Hive gave him. But the mafia member was a top official for a reason. Even after Bailey had disabled his nine body guards the Hive child still had a huge fight ahead of him. And the mafia member fought dirty. But then, so did Bailey. After what seemed like hundreds of attacks and counter-attacks they finally came into a dead-lock of strength. Somehow, Bailey won. The other man was overpowered and Bailey thrust a knife through his neck.
It took him ages to die. Bailey didn't even realize what had happened until he made it back to the school. He was so high on adrenaline and fear, honest to god fear, that he was able to think of little else but making it back to where he was safe. The intensity of his act dawned on him just as he entered his room. He had killed a man. The worst thing was that the poor bastard hadn't even done anything to Bailey personally. The man didn't even know the name of his killer.
Bailey spent the night throwing up, trying to rid himself of his own self-loathing.
Bailey didn't talk about his first kill much, but when he did he was blasé and frank. He told the kids the facts of what happened and said that the first would be the worst kill of their life. But Bailey went on living and did all that was possible to forget. And when he died, Bailey knew that there would be a man in the afterlife that would finally have his revenge. If there even was an afterlife, he didn't really care at that point.
The first kill was always the hardest.
Baron had killed before coming to the Hive. He would like to say that his first kill was the worst type of kill, but he knew that everyone's first kill was terrible to them. His first was an accident, a terrible accident that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
He had been in kindergarten, and it was before he outwardly displayed the absolute signs of a meta-human. Granted, he was larger than the other children, a bit hairier, and stronger. But he did what he could to hide his strength and he had some tentative, slightly frightened, friends. And really, he was as normal as he could be under the given circumstances.
It had been during free time when it happened. His teacher had taken away his play dough and given it to another child. The other little boy had told the teacher that he wasn't sharing. No one had asked him to share and Baron had felt unbelievably angry at this unfair turn of events. With his vision turning red in child-like fury his swung a punch at the teacher.
Unfortunately, with his strange strength that was just beginning to develop, he sent the teacher flying into the wall. The woman's skull had cracked and there had been nothing any doctor alive could have done. Baron had been understandably horrified and did everything but shut down. All potential he had for being a star student was lost as he struggled to cope with his first.
Baron never talked about his first kill at the Hive, although he had long since grown past being ashamed of it. He was a child, and children did stupid things when they were angry and not thinking straight. Even though he never was able to devote as much thought to school as he might have been, he learned to move past his shame at losing control and taking a life.
But sometimes late at night, he grieved for the women who killed without the intention, and wondered if she would have been happier having been killed for a reason. Not that he'd ever find out.
The first kill was always the hardest.
Hank said that he was proud of his first kill, and he kind of was, in a weird sort of way. He had been assigned the most awesome mission ever for the military. He got to kill a freaking king. Like a real life crown wearing king who sat on a real life thrown and had a real life harem of wives. That had to be the coolest thing ever, seriously.
His planet was awesome enough that he didn't need and stupid hand-to-and combat to off the guy, not like on earth. He just planted a bomb in the king's bed. It was kinda funny that the guy didn't think to have it checked before he went to sleep, but he didn't, and he totally blew up. Hank was no where near the castle when it happened. After the death of the late ruler, Hank's planet was able to take over the planet, no sweat.
It wasn't until Hank was commended for his assassination the next day by his commander that it hit him. The dude in the long pompous cape with the giant staff was kaput, and it was all Hank's doing. A person who had been alive just the day before was no longer among them because of Hank. For some reason, that freaked him out a lot more than it should have.
The first kill was always the hardest.
Jinx didn't believe in the afterlife, she thought it was a pansy ideal. She knew that the real truth, the cold hard truth, was that people stopped living and that was it. There was no happy place in the sky, no fiery inferno, no reincarnation, no ghosts, nothing. Everything just stopped in death.
Her first kill had been when she was a child and, like Baron, she had lost control. The story of her life. She had accidentally killed a little boy in India, a couple of years younger than her, when she was seven. He had been parroting his parents, saying cruel things about her skin, her hair, and her eyes. She had freaked and the bad luck just came.
He was hit by a car almost instantly, and Jinx knew that it had been her fault. She had been sad, of course, but mostly she had felt ashamed. So ashamed it felt as if she would never love herself again, not that she loved herself much in the first place. Thankfully, coming to the Hive toughened her up, and she slowly began to lose any hatred in herself besides the hate of her powers. Although, hating her powers was almost like hating herself.
Jinx didn't believe in an afterlife, because she hated the thought of that little boy being stuck young forever, never being able to grow up. She'd rather that people just stop when they died.
The first kill was always the hardest.
Seymour had killed first for the Hive. But it wasn't that he hadn't been exposed to other opportunities to kill; he had grown up in the big city. And not the good part of the neighborhood either. The bad-ass greasy grimy graffiti-covered alley ways. And he loved it. He loved the gang fights and he loved the constant flash of police cars and the thrill he felt trying to get away from the scene because he didn't want to be a witness or suspected or anything like that.
Seymour lived for the constant drama and the fast-paced thrill ride that was his life.
But he knew that sooner or later something was going to happen and he would be in a kill-or-be-killed situation. He didn't dread that day exactly, it was actually a little bit exciting. And Seymour liked excitement.
His first mission coming to the Hive had been simple. Steal some jewels from a museum because the Hive was getting low on finances. The Hive usually didn't stoop to such easy stuff, but it was good training material for the kiddies and easy cash. Seymour had been excited despite his older classmate's statements that it was an easy sort of mission. Seymour didn't care. It was new and it was going to be so much fun.
The guard there took his job pretty damn seriously. Seymour had managed to progress through much of the building without running into trouble. He could see where trouble was. But he was still a child, and excitable child, so he was distracted for an instant. The guard jumped him. They had fought for a minute, maybe two, before the man's eyes had widened and he got a look at the kid he was fighting. The kid he was fighting.
That was all of the distraction that Seymour needed. He fired a laser with his eye. It had gone straight through the man's head. He died almost instantly. Seymour sat there after it was done before standing up and slowly moving towards the jewel, his body in auto-pilot.
That hadn't been exciting at all.
The first kill was always the hardest.
Elliot was different; he knew that without having to be told. He didn't react to things in the same ways as his friends did. What made them laugh sometimes made him sad. What made them horrified sometimes made him giggle nonstop. He could drink like a fish, take countless drugs, and not come out any worse for wear. This acute difference wasn't obvious all of the time, but it was there enough to assure Elliot that he was far from ordinary.
He didn't like that, nor did he dislike it, it was one of those facts of life.
The biggest difference between his friends and him was that he didn't see the problem with killing. He wasn't insensitive. Actually, in many situations, he was one of the most sensitive members of the Hive. But still, killing someone he wasn't friendly with didn't really bother him. That's why when he was assigned his first assassination; he brushed off the older student's advice. He wasn't worried, he wasn't scared, and it would be over soon anyway.
It had been an easy kill. He just placed his fingers on the right part of the head and used his powers. The politician died without pain even before he slumped to the ground and Elliot teleported away. Easy.
He didn't understand why he cried himself to sleep that night. He didn't understand where the weight he suddenly carried had come from. Elliot wasn't used to guilt and it hurt. A lot. He didn't understand, it should have been easy.
Maybe he was more like his friends than he thought.
The first kill was always the hardest.
Billy didn't think about his first kill and Billy didn't talk about his first kill. It had been on a mission, but most kills were, it wasn't like he went out ion the street killing every damn person he saw. He might have been a criminal, but he wasn't a psychopath.
The person he was killed, Billy didn't remember exactly who it was, or even what they looked like, but that person had fought back. Billy vaguely remembered getting stabbed, but he didn't dwell on the memory. Pain didn't really affect Billy, and it hadn't then. Billy had stabbed back.
He had won, obviously, or he wouldn't have been living where he was. He didn't remember the person, he didn't remember the face, but he remembered the kill. He remembered the stab. He couldn't decide what bothered him the most, the fact that he killed a person or the fact that he was more than the petty criminal that he had always aspired to be.
Billy hadn't wanted to be a murderer.
The first kill was always the hardest.
Mikron's first kill had been quick and painful, for the other person at least. He had used one of the guns that he created and blasted a hole in the other man's stomach. He died from blood loss among other malfunctions of his body. Mikron hadn't let himself look at the body, because his nightmares were bad enough already.
He had gone back to the Hive and spent the night inventing. And the next night. And the next night. The fourth night he slept and had the worst nightmare he had ever had in his life. He pulled another all-nighter the following night, to escape the nightmares.
And really, he was much more efficient when he wasn't sleeping. He hadn't slept much in favor of inventing even before the kill.
All-nighters every night, he wasn't stupid enough to think that he could live that way for long. Mikron didn't make a habit out of creating delusions for himself. It would be just one more night, and then he would face the guilt. Just one more night.
The first kill was always the hardest.
All of the members of the Hive had killed before, but they weren't killers. It was pointless to try to convince anyone of that however, so no one tried. It was enough that they knew it themselves.
Well, sometimes it was enough.