10:00 - July 25 — 1099
(El Huervo — Daisuke)
The light of the sun enveloped the rest room on the giant moving platform. The rays illuminated the room, which looked like a typical living room, with a large sofa in the center and a television on the wall. A corner was taken up by a bar with some kind of soft drink, and in other corners there were cardboard boxes. They stood out from the general appearance of the room, but the operatives who used it did not care. It was not an uncommon sight to see grown men and women sitting in boxes just like cats or dogs. But given the fact that these people were truly part animal, everything fell into place.
Along with their love of boxes, the humans here inherited their love of the sun from the animals. On clear days, all but the Sarcaz operatives, who had no fuzzy tails or ears, occupied the platform's upper deck. And on other days and in other places, people tried to catch any ray of sunshine. And in accordance with this endeavor, the sunniest places were the most popular with the inhabitants of the platform. This rest room was especially popular, because the huge glass window perfectly let in light and heat.
In spite of that, the room was now empty. Except for one dark-haired girl with wolf ears and a tail, lying on the couch, everyone was busy minding their own business. What about her? She, too, was busy, and no less important than the others. She was thinking. Her thoughts were about life. About the past, or rather about one cold, dark winter in the past. The girl had scrolled through them many times before, and still she found no answer. One incident in those days had turned her life upside down.
The fact is that, like all people with wolf traits from the Lupo race, she was associated with the mafia. But one day she had bad luck and escaped to another country. At first she had to endure the scorn of the locals, the loneliness, and cope with the fear of being exposed, but eventually she coped, settled in. If it hadn't been for that unfortunate winter, she would still be living in Siracusa. Perhaps she would have become the Mother of their family. She would have had prestige, handsome men, and lots of money. And then she would have fallen under the table, drinking strange-colored wine, and stayed there. Or maybe she would have fallen off in a back alley, fighting with other brats on a normal day of the year. At any rate, the girl did not complain about her current situation.
She lay there, thinking, while the sun warmed her. The black tail with red flecks wagged gently, blowing in the breeze. Her skin was warmed by the sun's rays. For a moment she thought, "It's nice to lie there, warm, doing nothing! To imagine for a moment that there is no past, no future, there is only this couch, the sun, and a whole day ahead." The sun was kind to everyone, so the wolf-girl was not the only one who had such thoughts. For her, the two best interlocutors were light and warmth. She succumbed to laziness and briefly interrupted her thoughts just to warm herself…
"Yo, Texas."
Her rest was interrupted by a greeting from behind. Texas didn't even have to turn around to see who had said it. Her friend, a red-haired girl with a halo over her head and a white synthetic jacket, sat down beside her on the couch. Her eyes lit up with a mischievous light. The brunette knew that such a light did not bode well. At least not in the long run.
"What are you thinking about?"
"I've told you a hundred times."
"Say for the hundred and first time."
"About my past."
That tone didn't embarrass the redhead. For Texas, it was normal to be reluctant to let anyone near her. Three years of friendship can take some getting used to.
"Come on, come on. How can you be a boogeyman on the first clear day of the week?"
The only answer was an exasperated sigh from the she-wolf and a plea for her to leave.
"Pfft, you can't take me like that, I've told you a hundred times. Tell me: you know what image-boards are?"
"Yeah, yeah, gatherings of fuckheads with funny and not-so-funny pictures. You only like them if you're crazy yourself."
"No," the angel said jokingly. "That's not true. You can find a lot of interesting things there! Ever heard about Masked Murderers?"
Texas frowned again. "Nope. I'm not stupid enough to be interested in that stuff."
Suddenly she heard the word "Siracusa". "Wait, what? What do you mean Siracusian? Is it related to the Mafia?" If it weren't for that word, she wouldn't have given a damn about her friend's next bizarre ideas and antics. Except that anything related to her homeland is always more than just another unfunny picture. It will be useful to know.
"Hmm... Okay, let's say I'm interested. And what does it say about this grim carnival?"
"Look for yourself." Angel took out an old notebook computer.
She plugged it in, and then started it up. A memory came flooding back to Texas: she had once visited a section of some imageboard called "nonsense". Well, it lived up to its name: for a long time she kept seeing the unfortunate post about "comforting" with a hamster and the phrase "Sup, 3ch". She even found a picture of herself once... After that, Texas forbade herself from joining any image boards.
The thread greeted them with a picture of a man dressed in a bag with slits for eyes. Apparently, he portrayed a typical inhabitant of these places. Texas thought that the people here actually looked like that. Angel flipped through the page and tried to find the right link.
"Man, what's wrong with the Internet? It was working fine!"
"The Doctor is downloading something important, that's why it's sluggish, I saw it myself."
Texas wasn't lying: she and her friend worked in the logistics department, and therefore all resources, including Internet traffic, were her responsibility. Sometimes it was interesting to read what her coworkers were interested in. Or rather, to watch the angel's reaction to it.
Finally the right board was found. It immediately impressed the girls: the visitors to the page were greeted by a drawing of three unusual-looking people. One wore a jacket and pants, one wore sportswear, and the third wore an azure dress. They were distinguished from ordinary people by the rubber masks of an owl, a rooster, and a horse, representing the irrational hypostases of these animals, worn on these people.
"Is that them?" The she-wolf squinted skeptically. "They look creepy, but appearances can be deceiving."
"You just haven't seen them in action. You know, a beastie walks into mafia brothel, and take them out like in a video game. Often from the front door, without preparation, sometimes without even a weapon in his hands. Oh, there's a video." She pointed to the video below the photo. "The whole thread has been waiting for it."
"Wait, you sit here?"
Texas knew that if she let her friend loose, she'd be all over the Internet, but this... "Yeah, I've kind of distanced myself from Exusiai," she thought. "And how much did I miss?"
"Pfft, this thread is a hundred years old! Friend, you're kind of retarded."
"The less you know, the better you sleep. I know from experience."
A cloud hid the sun, and the room went dark. It got colder. Exusiai went away to make some tea. The she-wolf looked around, and began leafing through the page. As she expected, people weren't too judgmental about the killer. The bulk of the comments were along the lines of "The people's avenger, man, is not afraid!"
The more the girl read the comments, the more she frowned. Another anonymous person wrote, "The language of pain. That's the only way to deal with these bloodsuckers. I wish every bastard a rooster's visit!" Her cup of patience overflowed, but luckily at that moment an angel approached.
"I wonder if the Doctor knows?"
"Yes, I do."
Exusiai nearly knocked over her mugs in surprise, and Texas jumped away from the laptop. Her tail twitched, standing up in a trumpet. The man in the tight dark blue jacket and hooded face appeared pleased with the effect produced, and so sat down quietly on the couch.
"Boss? What are you doing here?" Asked the angel.
"Going around my domain."
Gray tail lowered, and his mistress moved to the table with the tea and a laptop.
"You've heard," she pointed to the screen. "About those killers?"
"Yes, I've heard. I hear a lot of things in my line of work. Exusiai, do you have any tea for me?"
"I made three cups. Oh…"
She didn't even realize that she had done more than was necessary. As she always did, she thought about it and didn't notice. Finally everyone was ready to watch. In the most comfortable place - that is, in the center - sat the Doctor, and the girls were on each side of him. He slowly hovered his cursor over the video. Texas was in the expectation, her heart fluttering with anticipation. The noise, a perpetual companion of the platform, fell silent. With a click, the video launched.
(crt_head - Neo Sage)
A winter night, a glowing like a star club, and gray boxes of houses greeted the viewers. Texas was the only one she had ever seen in person, and had even lived among such buildings as a child. That part of her life remained somewhere in the back of her mind, but the video awakened forgotten memories. In fact, the recording had a whiff of the past: the date of the shooting was eight years ago, ripples ran across the screen. Through it the viewers could see a guard-sanctuary in a red jacket standing at the entrance.
A red jacket, huh? It's a famous Siracusa Mafia closet item.
"Did you wear one?"
"No. Women in the gang wear red shirts. I showed you mine."
"Yeah? Hmm, I don't remember."
For the first five seconds, nothing happened in the video. During that time, the cold of a winter night seeped into the room, so impressed were the viewers, especially Texas. Given the muffled music coming from inside the building, it was as if the girl herself was freezing under the walls of the club. Of course, she realized that her absent-minded friend had simply forgotten to turn off the air conditioning, but she didn't care. Because then HE showed up.
"Rooster."
From behind the edge of the screen came a man in a familiar mask. Given his spectacular appearance out of the darkness toward the acid light of the club, it seemed to everyone that it wasn't the man who was now approaching the security guard. It was death itself had come to punish those arrogant people who had forgotten the mortality of life. And he was going to remind them of that.
Eyes were aching from the bright light. The club glowed like a disco ball. The red jacket looked like a blur against it.
"Hey, clown! Why are you dressed like that? This is a normal party, not a masquerade!"
A lightning-fast sweep and the guard fell to the snow. The maniac grabbed his head and smashed the back of his it into the corner of the building. Red mush came out from under his fingers.
"Holy shit... Should we put the snacks away?"
"No, no, that's all right, let's go on."
Jacket, as he was dubbed by some anonymous people, ran up to the entrance. Interesting, how an angel got in here. Anyway, it started, so it didn't matter.
The maniac set to work. He shot the first guard in front of the door with an air gun borrowed from a corpse. Another also received a lead bolt of vigor. The music rumbled so loudly that the shots just disappeared into the beats. Tough, hard, he'd even say geeky. Two more men ran out of the corridor, only to get lead in the head.
"Note: he shoots in the head, and so far not a single miss! The aiming is almost instantaneous." In the realm of firearms, Exusiai felt like a fish in water.
The view from the camera changed: now it showed the dark corridors of the club. The music intensified, resonating with what was happening. A typical Mafia den: expensive carpets, stucco, ornate paintings. The blood of the mafiosi who enjoyed this squalor looked beautiful on them.
The masked maniac tore and rend. Four more bodies were sprawled on the floor, and a fifth fell with his throat open. He walked out to the main hall with the disco ball, shrouded in a haze. In the fog of the nicotine, he could make out the silhouettes of the bandits. Some were sniffing something off the tables, others were chattering away with guns at the ready. Maniac opened fire.
The mafiosi floundered and began thrashing about. That didn't help them. Some lupa saw the shooter and ran toward him, trying to yell at his comrades. The blond man under the mask smiled and threw his unloaded pistol at her.
"What kind of sacrilege is that? Throwing guns like that." Angel glanced at the timecode: only a minute and a half had passed.
Dropping the knife, the girl collapsed on the table. The dropped weapon went into her throat. The same knife flew into the next, stabbing him in the temple. Jacket picked up a crossbow from one of the corpses and walked into the darkness of the corridors. It was fucking hot under the mask, and the cool gust of wind felt like a compass needle.
The shooter went up to the second floor. He was greeted by the same pretentiousness and crowds of thugs. The main differences were the more groomed appearance of the rooms, the inaccessible to ordinary visitors, and the statues in the large halls. The vulgar art was joined by bloody: the man facing the stairs caught an arrow between his eyes. An empty crossbow flew at the second adversary. The throw was fatal: It struck the unfortunate man in the neck with its buttstock, breaking it instantly.
When Jacket stopped, he noticed the horns on one of the dead man's heads. Sarcazian. How far the wearer of those horns had gotten. He lifted the weighty cleaver from the dead man, whose blade gleaming in the multicolored spotlight.
Up to the showroom it went like clockwork: the red jackets and shirts tore under blows and gunshots, and their owners died in agony. The killer was merciless: there was no pity for these scum. A swing of the bat - the back of the bandit's head turned to mush. Stab of the knife - the girl yanked her tail, holding the knife in her throat. In the acid club light what was happening seemed unreal, but only a mafia could have such glitches. The maniac, on the other hand, was clean and serene.
The halls and corridors changed one by one, but the enemies never ended. A pumped-up muzzleloader with bullhorns raised his fist over the fallen guy, only to be kicked in the knee and then hit in the eye with a shard of glass. The bull cackled in agony, then fell silent under the impact of the dropped bowie knife. Jeket noticed that the bandits favored either silent weapons or impressive ones, like bats, the latter being more common. Perhaps that's why most of the gangsters were lying with broken limbs and faces.
Through the noise of the music, gunshots could be heard. The mafiosi finally sobered up and began to fight back in earnest. The maniac ducked behind a fallen table. Air bullets whizzed over his head, one even snagged his mask, ripping off a piece of rubber. He waited quietly for a lull and dashed toward the gunmen with a broken table leg in his sights.
"He doesn't give a fuck what to fight with," Exusiai said. "Give him an air balloon and he'll kill you with it, too."
The brunette glanced around the room; three minutes of video had passed, but it felt like half an hour. The coldness of the streets was long gone. It had been replaced by the sweet smell of bongs, creating a sense of dampness. Why did Texas have such a good sense of the club atmosphere? Because she had spent her youth in such places, and that fact did not make her happy at all.
"Why don't we turn off the air conditioner?"
"Was it on? I didn't notice." The Doctor answered absent-mindedly.
The she-wolf shook off her memories and went back to watching. The record, meanwhile, was a living hell: acid rays illuminated the bloody corpses. Every floor was littered with bodies, and tables, chairs, bottles, and glasses turned to shards. One statue had been accidentally knocked off its pedestal by a maniac. It happened while he was exchanging gunfire with the second-floor security guards. Texas, in her mind, missed the moment, but saw the aftermath: the fallen statue crushed several people. The killer was smashing the club with unconcealed fury.
On the third floor Jacket was met by a tattooed she-wolf with white hair (or fur?), dressed in a tank top and sweatpants. Apparently she was an elite bodyguard. She fiddled with her throwing knife, and growled:
"What, bitch, was it so hard to die?! Get ready to kick back, herbivore!"
With the insult the knife flew at the maniac. What was the girl's surprise when the rooster simply dodged the flying blade. He didn't give her time to recover and, jumping up, gave her an uppercut with a swing. The she-wolf slammed into the wall and lost consciousness. The last thing she saw was a rooster-headed silhouette walking slowly toward her. Then a strong grip tightened on her throat.
Oddly enough, the opponents began to come to an end. Neither the horned, nor the tailed, nor even the feathered mafiosi had shown their faces to Jackett for half a minute. Was he finished? The last hall gave a negative answer. He was greeted by as many as two white-haired lupas, and with them a drugged fox man. From the adjoining rooms came the usual brats.
The maniac unloaded the entire clip of his rifle into the crowd and overturned the table with a clap. Timely, for the next second the hall exploded with gunshots. Jeket occasionally responded with his own: he managed to get a look around the corpse and a spare magazine off it. Soon the firing stopped. He looked out from behind the table.
A couple of men must have been taking cover, the big man was lying beveled by a burst of gunfire, and there were five blazers lying with him. But the white-haired men were nowhere to be seen. A foot peeked out carelessly from behind the wall. The guy shot at it, knocking the careless foe to the floor to finish it off with the next shot. The other tried to stick his head out, but he too was rattled by a bullet.
"White in ambush," the viewers realized. The maniac must have realized this, too, because he quickly reacted when a girl with a pair of knives jumped out at him. He hurriedly shot: to death. Then he stepped away from the table, glancing around for a weapon. And as luck would have it, just at that moment a second guard rushed at him.
They rolled across the floor, ending up with the girl on top. In her eyes Jeket saw the primal rage of a predator preparing to tear its prey. A struggle ensued: the guy tried to throw the lupa off him and find a weapon, while she tried to get at his throat with her teeth.
"You shouldn't have come here, fuck-e-eh!" The maniac smacked her in the nose, and she lost the initiative.
The guy rolled over, and already he was in an advantageous position. Now he was strangling the she-wolf, and she was resisting, weaker and weaker. At last she finally fell silent, with her eyes bulging and her face turning blue. "The last furry scum," Jeket might have thought.
Yes, the last one. The club was almost completely extinct, only the incessant music indicating that people were here. There was one last door left. By its expensiveness Jeket knew that that was where his target was. He didn't hesitate and kicked it open.
As he expected, the main bastard was here. A well-known authority figure named Malyshev, a forty-year-old man with brown bear ears and a purple jacket, was now engaged in a line of coke. Jeket had seen such a sight more than once, and so he simply began cocking the crossbow's trigger. The damn machine suddenly jammed, and while the killer was fiddling with it, Malyshev sniffed out the whole track. He looked up: his pupils occupied almost the entire space of his eyes, his gaze striving somewhere in space.
"Ro-oster..."
Arrogance and cocaine had changed him: from a smart and formidable boss, Malyshev had turned into a junkie who blinked death under his nose. "What a shameful end," thought the rooster, trying to cope with the bolt mechanism.
"You... who?" In a faint voice the boss asked. The maniac's answer was a shot from a crossbow.
Before he died, Makar sobered up after all. He didn't think so, by the way, and regretted nothing, for he met the end with a high, as he had always wanted. "Pity the boys, they died for nothing," was his last thought, before the Blizzard Club died out for good.
The horrifying recording was cut short with the trigger pull. The screen became jittery, and then the message "Number of victims: 100" popped up.
(El Huervo — Daisuke)
Texas jumped up from the couch and started kneading her tail.
"Ugh." she spat loudly. "Exusiai, you scared me. I thought he was going to turn to the camera at the end and say, 'You're next'."
"What's so surprising about that? Lappland can do better than that."
At the mention of another white-haired lupo, the subdued brunette flinched. She could see Lappland's face in the panting guard's, and though she'd annoyed Texas sometimes, she certainly didn't want her dead. And then there was this.
"Yeah, but Lappy was a trained fighter, and here was some kid in a clown mask," noticed Texas.
Instead of answering, Exusiai gathered up her mugs and went into the kitchen, but never returned. Slowly she was becoming more responsible, and that couldn't help but feel good. The doctor only grinned and quietly began leafing through the thread. Texas, on the other hand, was still stretching and trying to digest what she had seen. After a couple of minutes, she joined the Doctor.
People were joking in the comments, "Rank: S", "Combo: x100", "Achievement gained: Thunder of the Dope". The more lupo read, the more she puffed up, and on the thirtieth comment she couldn't stand it, and blurted out:
"Bloodthirsty jerks! Laughing on the Internet and then shooting people in public places! They're human beings, they're in pain too! What's so funny?!" The usually terse and calm girl was now almost furious at the commentators. The doctor recoiled. Though the cursing wasn't loud: it was quite unlike her. He decided to deal with it later, but for now it was better to calm down the operator.
The first thing he did was turn off the computer, then get her a glass of water. By this time lupo was just sitting there, frowning, wagging her tail.
"It happens," the glass clattered on the table, "there's nothing you can do about it. I guess they just don't see the big picture."
"I guess so," Texas agreed, pondering what she'd seen.
Now she decided to check on Lappland in the hospital, who had been admitted as a result of an injury. Every day there was a wistful "Sta-a-at! Where are you, Sta-a-at? I'm sad without you." The other patients grumbled, but the doctors only smiled and called for the black-haired lupo. She herself didn't appreciate those moments, but now that she was once again convinced of the fragility of human life, she didn't want to be angry at Lappy.
"All right, I'll be going." With these words the man went off on his own business. This business was a visit to the botanical garden. He wanted to relieve the stress after a long shift and an unpleasant video.
From behind the clouds, the sun peeked out again. As bright and warm as ever, it drove the bleak thoughts away from the girl, played with the rays in the hairs of her fur. An ear with earrings twitched, its wearer adjusted her shirt.
"I'll go, too."
Texas left the room. She thought about what she'd better get her arch-friend, and with thoughts like that it made her feel better. But for a long time afterward, the January chill, the sweetness of the bong, and the jamming beat lingered in her mind. Going to bed at the end of the day, she gave herself a vow to find out about this Jacket. The vow was optional, but desirable. Eventually the bad thoughts melted away, just as Texas relaxed in Exusiai's soft embrace.