Asclepias curassavica

Digitalis purpurea

The old politician quaked with fear. Kiddo, blue glove secure on her hand, picked up a pair of pliers and a blowtorch. The politicians' eyes bugged out of his head, fearful of what the menacing blonde assassin planned on doing to him. 

She asked him of the meeting, the fearful man bestowing a torrent of useful information on her. She thought gravely over the information she'd just received; they were there to discuss how the children were to be used to benefit the government. They'd come up with many ways, including blatant slavery and use as soldiers. 

The business man was there as an notary, to make their vicious plans legal, and forever a torpid law. Kiddo, though slightly inclined to believe the notary, asked him more questions with a skeptical eyebrow raised throughout her questioning. The man paled, and said that he couldn't inform her of anymore of their plans. 

She sighed softly, and burned the man. She pulled on his sizzling skin with the pliers.

Meanwhile, the audience the man had left behind was becoming restless. One man quietly spoke to another, whom pressed a button, and outside the room a man in a nice, tasteful suit pulled out a gun. His pager was beeping; he was a guard for hire and he was deemed excellent at his job.

He kept his Sauer at his side as he inspected dark, mouldy doorways. Kiddo heard his footsteps come closer, and estimated she had about 3 minutes before the guard would find her. She carefully took the message she had prepared out of her satchel that she had at her side.

She placed the message, written in a cut-letter style, on to the notary's tortured body, then slipped away into the night through a high up window, above a black lacquered oak desk that she'd stolen her own version of evidence from.

The door opened just as she slipped away. She didn't risk another look behind. She ran, but not before she heard the softest breath of an alarm chastising her; she smiled and made haste the continuum of her long, perilous journey that laid itself out like the Yellow Brick Road in front of her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Veritas growled. The assassin that killed Normandy had definitely known what it was doing. He fretted over whether he would keep his job as a guard. He was forty years old. Before the old world was shot to shit, as men and women alike whom where old enough to know what the world was like before would say, he had been a very talented detective. He got all the big cases, he was especially used by the American FBI.

The politicians paled at the sight of the mutilated notary. Without him, all their plans were ruined. They could talk the talk, but it was him,  the dead man, that could make all of their dreams come true. It was he whom gained the trust of all the foreign dictators. It was he whom had the funds to bribe those who would not comply into submission. It was he whom was the brains behind the plan to make the children their slaves.

The man lying there, burned and dead in a simple office chair, was the only man whose silver tongue could corrupt the mind of the ever-fickle Lizabetta Griscoe.

The people left on the dismal, broken earth steadily lost their minds. Those who appointed themselves in charge did so to gain a glimmer of the ruined past. At first, the politicians and nation-leaders of the old world thought that their enemy countries sent an assassin after them. In retaliation, they bombed each other, until it became apparent that they were sorely mistaken. Each ruined the other for naught.

The meeting was adjourned, armed guards following the old men home. Veritas stayed behind. As the old men left, he began inspecting the room where Normandy had died. On Normandy's body, he found the message that Kiddo had left behind.

I know your plans. By the time I'm done with all of you, you'll know the REAL meaning of sorrow.