Massacre 2.1
Everything was ready.
Her saw cleaver hung heavy in a leather loop hooked to one side of her belt.
Her pistol rested comfortably on the other, extra quicksilver bullets fastened to the leather.
In an easily accessible shoulder holster, her quick injector and a supply of blood vials were ready in case she needed them.
Arrayed on the workbench in front of her were several lengths of tubing, needles, and collection bags.
Taylor took a steadying breath and reviewed her objectives for her evening hunt.
She needed to find worthy targets. Beasts in human skin who preyed upon the innocent. People who deserved her brutal brand of heroism.
She needed as much of their blood as she could reasonably gather. Whether or not they needed to be alive for that to happen was… up for debate.
Her fingers caressed the wood and leather handle of her cleaver. It wasn't a weapon that lent itself to non-lethal engagements.
Part of her was worried about how little that bothered her. Was she already so far gone that thoughts of murder barely phased her?
It would have horrified her, before. But that was before she died, before everyone just walked past her coffin like she didn't matter, like they couldn't hear her begging for help.
She died, and she didn't deserve it. Why should she cry about the death of the evil and the monstrous?
Taylor shook off the momentary hesitation. Her power wasn't designed to be safe, and she wasn't going to shy away from what was necessary. She wouldn't hurt innocent people, and hopefully that would be enough to keep the weight of her sins from drowning her soul.
She would find monsters who deserved it.
A Hunter must hunt.
The Empire. Actual fucking Nazis. A blight upon both her city and the world in general.
The ABB. Formerly the Yakuza, and the Triads. Human traffickers and sex slavers.
It wasn't like she was going to start hacking up shoplifters. These were murderers and rapists who enabled widespread atrocities on an unacceptable scale.
And if they just happened to be filled with sweet, sweet blood, that was just a serendipitous coincidence. Their donation would probably do more good than they had done in the rest of their miserable lives.
At least, that's what she told herself.
And finally, she needed to avoid having too much information trickle back to the PRT or the gang's heavy hitters. She didn't need Armsmaster, Lung, or Kaiser breathing down her neck. Not before she had fully established her workshop, at least.
Taylor pulled on her long coat and tied her hair back, winding her scarf tightly around her neck and tugging it up to cover her face.
She grabbed her hat to complete the costume.
Was it even a costume, really? Taylor Hebert was dead. Her only identity was the Hunter, now.
She grabbed the tubes and blood bags off the table and began tucking them into the various pockets of her coat.
How would she even find her targets, though? Just wander the streets until she saw some suspicious activity? How did actual heroes patrol?
Her fingers brushed against something in one of her coat pockets.
What was in her pocket?
She hadn't thought to check those inside pockets at any point since her father bought the coat.
Taylor put down the blood bags and pulled out an annoyingly familiar folded piece of heavy, expensive paper.
"117 N Oakland Ave."
What.
She turned the paper over, holding it up to the light as if that would reveal some detail that she'd missed.
"Do not fear the Old Blood."
What the actual fuck.
Weird notes in hats left by her grave were one thing, but this was different.
She hadn't even been with her father when he had gone to pick out this coat. Whoever was leaving these notes had either known which coat the store attendant would recommend, or they were following her.
Taylor didn't know which was worse.
Someone was trying to pull her strings.
And the most irritating part was that it was going to work. The only path she had to finding her answers was to go to the damn address. Even if part of her wanted to just ignore it and avoid that address out of spite, she knew that she wasn't going to.
It didn't mean she had to like it.
Taylor ground her teeth as she shoved the note and the blood bags into her pockets.
She had beasts to hunt.
…
It was cloudy, tonight.
Taylor missed feeling the moonlight on her face, but it was good for moving through the city undetected.
Running across the rooftops was as satisfying as ever, although she was careful to stick close to walls or alleyways whenever possible. With the number of flying capes in the city, just being on a rooftop was no guarantee of anonymity.
The address from her mysterious hat provider was on the edge of downtown, in Empire territory. Hopefully, it would be worth the trip.
After all the drama, she would be pretty irritated if the cryptic note led to a 7-11 or something.
Maybe she should have googled it before heading out?
Probably not. She had been trying to stay off the web as much as possible. Tinkers could track web traffic much more easily than regular traffic, and something like a VPN wouldn't stand a chance against someone like Dragon.
Not that she expected to have someone like Dragon looking for her, but still. Better safe than sorry.
Taylor dropped down into an alley and skulked forward to check the nearest street sign.
Oakland Avenue.
She was close.
A few leaps later and she was back on the rooftops, finally approaching her destination.
It was a warehouse complex and storage facility, with several stacks of shipping containers in the wide concrete yard out back.
There was also a fair amount of activity, for this late at night.
Maybe her stalker was on to something.
Taylor worked her way slowly around the edge of the building next door, trying to make out more details in the dark.
Pallets of something, being unloaded off of trucks by a generic crew of workmen. Despite what the movies would have you think, most gang members don't publicly announce their affiliation while they're working.
She needed to get closer. There must have been a reason that this address was on the paper.
Sticking to the shadows as much as possible, Taylor crept across the roof of the warehouse itself and peaked into the skylight.
That's a lot of guns. And drugs. Lovely.
She was definitely in the right place, then.
Several crates near the middle of the warehouse floor were open while a group of men inspected and catalogued their contents. Taylor didn't know enough about specific firearms to identify the model, but they looked dangerous and very much illegal, especially in that quantity.
All that remained was to identify the organization responsible to ensure that they were viable targets.
Raised voices filtered out through the open bay doors, and Taylor risked another peak into the skylight.
A lean, muscular man wearing a red and black uniform and a mask was striding purposefully across the concrete.
Victor.
Well… shit.
At least that answered her question. This was definitely an Empire stash house and processing center.
It was also an opportunity. If Victor was the only Empire cape here, and she could catch him alone…
Her pulse quickened at the prospect of harvesting his blood.
She couldn't get ahead of herself, though. This needed to be quick, and quiet.
Taylor moved over to the other side of the warehouse as silently as she could, slipping down the side of the building until she found an unlocked window that led to the office section of the complex.
The first two windows that she tried were locked, but the third opened with just a small creak of protest.
She didn't have much time. Who knew how long Victor would actually stay here, if he was just checking the progress of the shipment.
Taylor eased herself into the dark conference room.
The slim window in the door showed a light on in the hallway outside, casting a thin beam of light onto the wall.
She pressed herself against the wall and listened carefully.
Muffled voices filtered down the corridor. Taylor drew her cleaver in her right hand and her pistol in her left. Things would never be the same, after this. Her soul would be quenched in violence and forged anew in the moonlight.
Let the hunt begin.
She flung the door open and raced down the hall.
The pair of guards walking towards her didn't even have time to scream.
Taylor dashed forward and raised her cleaver across her body, slashing downwards with a brutal twist that caught the guard on the left in the collarbone. The teeth of the sawblade shredded his skin, muscle, and bone as it cut a bloody fissure through the base of his neck and down into his chest.
Crimson rain showered the hallway as she ripped the saw free from his corpse.
The remaining Empire enforcer's face was slack at the sudden violence, his comrade's lifeblood painting his uniform and the wall behind him.
Taylor used her momentum to spin in a tight circle, ducking under the falling body and letting the saw unfold to take advantage of the centripetal force as she swung it across her body again.
It smashed into the side of her enemy's head with a sickening squelch, and he dropped bonelessly to the floor.
She took a moment to absorb the results of her work.
There was no going back, now. She was a Hunter, and she would take what she needed from those who deserved her fury. She would not be powerless. Not anymore.
Taylor dropped to one knee next to the guard with the ruined head. He had lost the least blood.
She tied a quick cuff around his upper arm and slid one of her needles into a vein.
Blood didn't fill the tube.
Right. No heartbeat.
She dragged his body into the nearest conference room and propped him up in a chair, arm falling slack down the side.
Blood started to slowly trickle into the bag, now that gravity could assist. Hopefully enough would be collected by the time she was done. In the event that she didn't manage to get ahold of Victor's blood, at least she would have a consolation prize.
After a moment's consideration, she dragged the other corpse into the conference room too. The bloodstains were an obvious giveaway, but this might slow down the alarm if her gristly work was discovered.
She was running out of time, though.
Forward.
…
Taylor entered the main warehouse on the balcony that overlooked the open floor.
There was no easy way to conceal her approach. Two guards with long rifles stood at either end of the balcony, which ran the entire length of the wall. The warehouse floor itself was filled with stacks of crates and containers of varying sizes, but she would be seen by the gunmen on the balcony before she made it halfway to the group congregated around Victor in the middle of the floor.
So she took the less risky of the two options, and entered on the balcony to deal with them first. Doing so would probably alert Victor to her presence, but the odds of getting the drop on him were slim to none anyway. This way, she wouldn't be trying to dodge bullets from above while she fought between the crates.
Her steps were quick and quiet as she raced down the balcony towards the first of the two guards, reaching him just as he realized that he suddenly wasn't alone.
He died quickly, her sawblade running red in a beautiful river.
Unfortunately, the gunman at the other end of the balcony heard the strangled death knell and spun to face her, rifle at the ready.
Her pistol was already raised. She could feel the line in her mind's eye, connecting her weapon to his forehead. She was a living weapon, and the bullets were part of her, molded from her blood.
A Hunter must hunt.
The thunderous boom of the gunshot crashed into her ears and the Nazi's head exploded like an overfilled water balloon. The recoil would have thrown her shoulder out of its socket if she had been a normal human. Luckily, she wasn't.
Victor definitely knew she was here now.
Panicked shouts and exclamations echoed across the open warehouse. Taylor leapt from the balcony and landed lightly on the balls of her feet behind a crate below.
Her heartbeat pounded an exhilarating staccato in her ears. She could feel the strength singing in her bones. Even through the heavy clouds, the silver island called to her.
This was what she had been craving. No more cowering in the shadows. Just her, and her prey.
She rocketed forward between the boxes, keeping low to avoid any stray gunfire.
Sliding around a corner, she swung her saw low and wide to tear into a lone Empire thug's knee. She flipped her sawblade closed while he toppled and finished him off with a casual blow to the head as she raced past.
More.
Taylor leapt up and over a tall row of crates, landing in the midst of four men on the other side.
The first two fell before they even registered her existence, agonized screams echoing in the open warehouse as the saw opened ragged wounds across their spines.
The third fired his automatic weapon blind, accidentally ripping apart the fourth man in his hurry.
Taylor ducked under the row of bullets and sent him tumbling to the ground with another low swing to the back of the knee.
Give me more!
She ended his screams and took a moment to reload her pistol.
This almost felt too easy.
Something deep within her mind twisted.
Acting on pure instinct, Taylor threw herself sideways with all the force and dexterity that her superhuman muscles could muster. Even so, she didn't quite manage to avoid the sniper round that would have pierced her heart. The high caliber bullet tore through the right side of her chest, barely missing her spine as it tunneled through a couple ribs and her right lung, exploding out of her back.
Victor wasn't playing around.
She wouldn't have it any other way, but fuck that hurt.
Taylor tumbled to the floor behind the nearest crate in a rapidly growing pool of crimson deep, gasping to draw breath into her single functioning lung. She coughed and a thick splatter of red coated the crate in front of her.
Huh. I don't remember drinking that much blood.
She was also a bit delirious.
More bullets ripped through the crates around her, wooden splinters flying like angry bees.
Her fingers fumbled slightly as she grabbed for her quick injection syringe, but she managed to get a grip and pull it free from its holster.
At least she had pre-loaded it with a blood vial. Good job, past-Taylor.
She slammed the injector into the intact side of her chest and groaned as the euphoria overtook her.
Or maybe that was just the absence of pain. Getting shot in the chest really fucking hurt.
She would try to avoid that in the future. Hopefully. At least she had a decent benchmark for the blood vials. Her chest felt pretty damn good despite the extensive damage, so she was reasonably sure that anything that didn't kill her could be repaired.
She would try not to lose any limbs, though. That could get messy.
Taylor assessed her situation. She couldn't easily move because of the constant barrage, but she obviously couldn't stay here.
Fortune favors the bold.
She took a deep breath into her newly repaired lungs, gathering her strength in her lanky legs like a tightly coiled spring. With an explosion of jarring movement, Taylor launched herself straight upwards and flipped high over the row of boxes, sighting her targets midair.
Victor was lying flat on top of a stack of crates more than fifty yards away.
Two more Empire goons flanked him, automatic assault rifles trained on her position.
Taylor saw Victor take aim at her flying form. She didn't doubt that he had the skill necessary to pick her out of the air.
But this time, she could see him coming. He wouldn't get lucky twice.
Victor's sniper rifle kicked.
Taylor twisted midair and fired her pistol.
Victor's sniper round missed by a hair, ripping a hole in her coat.
The consecrated quicksilver bullet took his left arm off at the shoulder in an explosion of shattered bone.
Taylor cursed as she landed between the crates and sprinted down the row. She had been aiming for his head, but the pistol really wasn't designed for that range.
I need to get closer.
She reloaded her pistol while she ran.
Victor's voice echoed off the metal roof, ordering the remaining guards to cover his retreat while he yelled into a cell phone.
She didn't have much more time, then. The rest of the Empire would be on their way shortly.
Taylor rocketed forward and slid low under the incoming gunfire. She unfolded her cleaver to catch one of the two remaining guards in the gut and ripped his body apart.
She was close, too close, to the final Empire enforcer. Her saw was still extended and lodged inside the guard to her right. The man on her left was turning, gun raised and ready to fire point blank into her center mass.
Taylor didn't hesitate. With a roar, she let go of the cleaver and shoved her hand into his chest just below the sternum, sliding through his flesh with worrying ease.
Her fingers closed around his spine.
His gun went off even as she ripped him apart, but at least the sudden motion of his vertebra exiting through the front of his chest sent his aim off and to her left. The bullets only tore into her shoulder rather than her heart.
Nothing another blood vial wouldn't fix.
The ruined corpse fell away from her, and she tossed his spine aside as she turned.
A door labeled Exit in bloody red light slammed.
Running away, Victor?
He had no trouble hunting those he considered inferior, but ran when he became the prey?
Pathetic.
Taylor wrenched her cleaver free and followed him into the night. It was all too easy to track the trail of crimson despite his attempts to staunch the bleeding.
He raced down the alleyway ahead of her, moving erratically in a vain attempt to throw off her shot.
Too slow.
The sound of thunder boomed again, and her enemy collapsed as his knee ruptured beneath him.
Still, he managed to turn his fall into a surprisingly graceful roll and kept moving, pulling himself forward with one leg and one hand.
Taylor reloaded her pistol and shot his other leg off.
Stupid. Wasting all his blood.
She strode forward quickly.
"You'll never get-"
Whatever he was about to say cut off sharply as she buried her cleaver in his skull.
Silence fell, for the first time since her hunt began.
Taylor took stock of her situation.
She had Victor and his precious blood, leaking onto the pavement in pieces.
There was a veritable smorgasbord of offerings back in the warehouse, including Victor's arm and the blood bag she had set up back in the office.
However, she was running short on time, and Victor's blood was the priority.
This hunt had been… messy. Sloppy. She would do better next time.
Taylor looked around the alleyway.
Surely, Victor's body would fit in a trash bag…
Right?
…
Taylor stopped for a moment and crouched behind an air conditioning unit several blocks away from the bloodbath.
She had decided not to risk going back for the one blood bag. Victor would provide enough for her to work with for a while, and she didn't want to risk being forced to leave his body behind while she fled from the Empire. It had taken longer than she expected to wrap his body in trash bags and gather his wayward limbs.
It would be counterproductive to leave a blood trail, for multiple reasons.
In the very corner of her vision, a shadow moved against the cloudy sky.
Taylor dropped the heavy package and turned, drawing her pistol and aiming it between the eyes of the dark figure that suddenly joined her on the rooftop.
A heavy black cloak and hood shrouded her features, but the crossbow pointed directly at Taylor's face gave away her identity.
Shadow Stalker.
They both stood frozen for a long moment, pistol and crossbow less than a foot apart. Each waiting for the other to make the first move.
"Who the fuck are you?" Shadow Stalker said.
Something about her voice was familiar, but it was too muffled by her mask for Taylor to put her finger on it.
"Hunter," Taylor said.
"Sure you are," the Ward scoffed derisively. "What are you up to, Hunter?"
Huh. Maybe she didn't know about the… incident, a few blocks over.
Still, Taylor couldn't quite bring herself to care enough to lie. It wasn't like her activities weren't obvious. Her shirt was shredded and soaked with blood, her own and her enemies'. Her coat was peppered with bullet holes. Everything from her hat to her scarf to her slacks was splattered liberally with the evidence of her revelry.
"Killing Nazis," Taylor said.
"No shit," Shadow Stalker snorted despite herself. "What'cha got in the bag?"
"Victor's dismembered corpse."
There was a long moment of silence. Neither of them lowered their weapons.
"You're fucking with me," Shadow Stalker said.
"Nope," Taylor said, shrugging as best she could without moving her gun. "Are we going to have a problem?"
She didn't necessarily want to kill a Ward, but Shadow Stalker didn't seem like she was messing around. That crossbow looked lethal.
The quiet was tense, and charged.
"No…" Shadow Stalker said eventually. "No, I don't think we will."
She didn't lower her crossbow, though.
"Good," Taylor said slowly. "In that case, would you mind fucking off? Victor and I have business to discuss."
"Sure you do," Shadow Stalker sounded like she was grinning behind the mask.
The cloaked cape slowly walked towards the edge of the roof, her crossbow never wavering.
Taylor tracked her with her eyes and her pistol at every step.
"See you around, Hunter," Shadow Stalker said.
A memory made Taylor smile.
"I hope not," Taylor said.
Shadow Stalker snorted again and dropped off the edge of the roof.
Taylor waited for a few more long seconds, just in case.
She wasn't actually sure whether Shadow Stalker would report her to the PRT or not. Something about the whole interaction seemed off, and the Ward made no mention of her superiors or legal repercussions. Hell, she left after Taylor admitted to murder, even if her victims were Nazis.
Only time would tell.
Taylor holstered her pistol, grabbed Victor's body, and resumed her trek home.
…