TIPP, DUCHY OF LINT, AIR REGION
He had taken on a job with the Duke of Lint, of House Nielosi on the island of Tipp in the Northern Sea to take out a small Hydra branch that had planted its feet in the area. The leader of this Hydra outpost was a distant cousin of the Dux of House Cheinn within the Organization, but being that Tipp was in the Air Region, and subsequently, Black Falcon territory, one was not likely to find another Hydra branch anywhere nearby, in which case the distant cousin was the acting Dux. This was something Duke Pintro anticipated upon hiring the pair, wanting to take out the threat before the Black Falcons saw fit to rear their heads back up in his Duchy after he had finally finished his father's work and cleared them from his lands.
The Hydra boss Forps Cheinn, was a hesitant individual, choosing to work through middle men in his transactions. For the better part of two weeks the Xenator had been trying to lure him out of hiding until finally he was able to orchestrate a meeting under the guise of a very lucrative business deal, the first he'd have since setting up shop on Tipp.
He had designated his acolyte Evina to handle the meeting with the boss. Legs crossed, hair in a bun, she sat across from Boss Forps in the main room of a hotel suite that had been procured for the day's meeting. Positioned around them were a half dozen Hydran, each attempting to look as intimidating as possible to Evina, something that could only amuse her, though her expression remained professional as the well rounded man in front of her moved to speak.
"Where's the money?" he asked. He gestured to the suitcase at her side, "Is that it?"
"Some of it" she said, moving the case closer. "I had to be sure you would come. My people will be bringing along the rest."
Taking notice of her move, Forps laughed, "I'm not going to take the case from you woman."
Evina smiled curtly, "I'm glad we're in agreement on that," she said. "Now what of your end of this trade; am I to believe this is all you have for me?" She gestured to the suitcase held by one of Forps' men.
Forps glanced at his man, and after a moment, returned his gaze to Evina, "It's...also on the way."
Evina smirked, "So we wait."
The night air smelled of the sea as the men stood outside the building in the warehouse district along the docks. The waves crashed forcefully against the rocks under the full moon as the grunt of workers and clank of tools from inside the warehouse added to the noise surrounding the Hydren. The sounds of it all did little to help the men hear as he drew near.
"Change? Can you spare some change?"
The guards did not notice him until he was upon them, a bedraggled and grimy looking old man held out his hand expectantly. Hunched over, his words came from beneath a thick unkempt graying beard, the coat he wore caked with dirt, while his toes could be seen protruding from the tattered remnants of his shoes.
"Get out of here you damn street trash," ordered the nearest guard.
The beggar grinned, "Wrong answer."
The guards exchanged a glance. A flash of steel and the blade of twin swords pierced each of their throats, the blood splattering against the wall as the blades were removed from their necks, each man holding their throats as the last of their life seeped onto the rotting wood dock.
The barridan supervised as his squad of Hydra gints loaded the crates into the back of the cargo hold of the truck. One of the gints lost his hold on the crate, the wooden box crashing to the floor revealing its content to be that of fish.
"Watch what you fools are doing!" he yelled. "We've got to get this shipment on the sea before morning."
"Sir," the gint said, pointing to something behind the barridan.
He turned around to see the homeless man, a grimace upon his face, "You lost old man?"
"If this is the Hydra hideout full of drug peddling scum, then I believe I'm in the right place," the beggar answered.
The barridan drew his gun and raised it to the man, while the rest of his squad followed suit, aiming an array of submachine and automatic weapons.
"You're dead," he said.
"My thoughts exactly."
The beggar stood upright to his full height, throwing off the coat to reveal the dual swords strapped to his back. The men opened fire on him as he took hold of the swords. The ping of bullets against steel resonated throughout the warehouse as his swords slashed through the air. Bullet shells piled at his feet as he cut and deflected round after round until at last, all was quiet. He was still surrounded, but the bodies would move no more. The last of them fell to his knees, his body riddled with bullets as all of his shots had been sent back at him upon ricocheting off of the beggar's blade. Blood seeped from his mouth as his lips parted.
"Who...are you?" he asked weakly.
The beggar brought his hands to his head and gripped his hair with one hand, and his face with the other, pulling it off before the dying man. The shock in the Hydran's eyes at the peeling of the beggar's face to reveal another beneath was only intensified at what was then placed over it. As he looked, the slitlike eyes glared back at him, and on the white mask was the mark that haunted the dreams of many a dead man, the blood red slanted X carved across the right eye.
"Hunter X," the Hydran gasped.
The Xenator, informally known as Hunter X, placed the sword end to the neck of the Hydran, instantly drawing blood. With slow intent, the steel began to disappear into the skin of the gint, blood dripping out onto the blade and wetting the concrete floor. His eyes showed his distress as the blood gurgled in his throat and spewed from the opening.
"That's right."
Footfalls against concrete. The pressure as each step reverberated through the ground, the quickness of the pace, the fading of the sound. Someone was running away from him. Hunter X stepped out from his position amid the circle of bodies to see a lone Hydran running for the exit. A pile of thin steel pipes lay across the way from the Xenator. He took his time walking across, the fleeing man despite his pace, wasn't going anywhere. Hunter X picked up one of the steel pipes, looked down the stretch of the warehouse where the man was mere feet from the door, and with the form of the sphere throwers of old Amron, he launched the pipe forward. It whistled through the air as wind was forced through the small hole and sent through the pipe, a sound that caused the Hydran to stop short of the door to dare a glance back. A fatal decision. The force of the impact took him off his feet and sent him flying back, a reverberating thud as metal struck into brick. A loud spurting sound immediately followed as from the orifice of the pipe, the brain secretions gushed outwards, the force from impact jettisoning it some feet away.
Boss Forps shifted in his chair, the strum of his fingers upon the table being the only sound that had come from the room in the time they've waited. He looked to the watch strapped around his meaty wrist. Across from him, Evina sat patiently in great contrast to the boss, who was growing restless by the minute.
"When will the rest of the money arrive?" he growled.
Evina looked to her own watch, "It won't be long now."
Hunter X knelt down to look at the cargo that had been spilled from the crate. As he examined the fish, he saw that they held an unusual bulge about them. The information they had gathered showed that Forps was running a small drug trafficking business sponsored by his Dux relative in an attempt to establish a market in the area. He reached his hand into the mouth of the fish and grasped the object inside.
"Bingo."
He retracted his hand which now held a small plastic bag containing a white powdered crystalline substance. It was the drug known as Spirit Dust, a powder formed from the burning, crushing, and cleaning, in said order, of Vitri crystals that invoke a euphoric high in the user. Highly addictive and can be dangerous, it will cause the user to experience hallucinations after extended use or if they have used it for some time and attempt to quit, among other number of side effects. Adding to this is the widespread contamination of the product on the black market as the result of improper production of the drug. He placed his hand upon his belt and pressed repeatedly in on the top, a series of flashes of light verified that he had gotten the pictures he needed. As he rose from the kneel, and pocketed the bag, he looked about the warehouse at the blinking red lights. Everything in place, he pressed a button on his watch.
The chirp of Evina's wristwatch broke the silence that had once again come over the room. As all eyes in the room turned to her, she glanced at her watch and proceeded to place the briefcase upon the table. Their attention was quickly diverted as an explosion went off in the distance. Boss Forp came to his feet with a start, while the Hydran closest to the window alerted those in the room of the situation.
"It came from the docks!" he exclaimed.
"You've got problems of your own to worry about."
Forps turned his attention back to Evina, who had donned a gas mask as she sat in front of the now opened briefcase. Before Forps could speak, a hissing sound came out from the case, almost immediately followed by greenish gas as it was released from the case. Forps hastily brought his arm up to cover his nose and mouth from the fumes as he pointed with the other to Evina and called out in a muffled voice.
"Kill her, kill her now!"
Through a fit of heavy coughing, the Hydrans began to draw their pistols on the woman. Evina gave them no time as she leapt from her seat, grabbed the back of the chair, and slammed it into the nearest Hydran before jumping into the air and landing a spin kick to the head of the next. Maneuvering while in the air, she contorted herself, avoiding the icy blade of another Hydran, the frozen water construct lodged into the wall instead. As she came down, she brought her leg downwards, catching arm of the ice sword wielding Hydran before he could release his grasp of the weapon. The resulting scream filled the room as bone was forced through skin, the Hydran left writhing on the floor, unable to scream, his last breath leaving as the effects of the poison began to come about. Indeed, the remaining three Hydrans she had not attended to were slumped over furniture or on the floor, their hands clutching their throats as their eyes bulged, tears streaming from their eyes.
The Hydra suitcase lay beside the dead body of its Hydran keeper. Evina stepped over the body and grabbed the case, as she did, a choking gargle came from her right. She looked over to see the fat boss still struggling for breath. A humored expression came across her face as she placed the case upon the table, and opened it to reveal its contents. Nothing. The humor ended there as she drew her gun and walked briskly to the door, a bullet between the eyes of Boss Forps as she went.
----------
"These back room gatherings are a thing for you guys," the man said.
The night's meeting took place in the storage room of a bar on the south end of the city, a single table between the two men there. The speaker, a wavy haired gentleman of twenty-eight sat relaxed in his chair across from Citepa Lars Vikaeli. A man in his mid-thirties, a likeable face and dull green eyes, Lars held a casual demeanor about him as he smoked away at a cigarette.
"That's why they call 'em back room deals," Lars replied, his exhale clouding the room with smoke.
The young man raised a thick eyebrow, "Oh is it a deal that's brought me here?" he asked. "You're looking to make a deal with me?"
"No not anything like that," Lars answered. "You don't frequent this district, but the man who runs this place is a friend of the Syndicate. Much of his business comes from Aduri due to our...understanding."
"As in understanding to look the other way on the off chance a gun goes off and one person comes out of a room where two went in?"
Lars grinned, "Yes," he said. "And off chance? Take a look behind you."
"I saw," the man replied without turning around.
The wall behind him was riddled with bullet holes; a dark red stain coated the rock surface.
"Plus your position as Alderman makes strolling through the streets of Alter City..." Lars shrugged, concluding the statement.
"I'm not Alderman yet."
Vikaeli put out the cigarette. "What news on the old man?" he asked, as he began to light another.
"He's not dead yet."
Lars took a drag of the cigarette. His eyes remained on the young man as he glared at him critically.
"Yet..." he said as he exhaled, leaving it in the air.
The would-be alderman returned his unblinking gaze, "No, not yet."
A long pause followed before Lars slapped his hands on the table and leaned back in his chair with a sigh, "Well, on to the matter at hand," he said. "That purple shadow you've got hovering around you half the time is an unnecessary risk."
"What would it have looked like for me to turn them down following what was almost a successful assassination?" he asked. "Not to mention the Aduri there were little to useless."
Lars shook his head, "No, I agree with you," he said. "But you are still an Aduri, and for you to be seen in the company of that Veldt reflects badly on my family to the other Houses."
"I was under the impression that you weren't a man of the House."
"You're partly right," Lars said, his focus on the cigarette as the last ebbed away. "My family was dirt poor living on the far reaches of the Eastern Isles with nothing to us but our name, while the rest of the members of our House lived the life of lords. We had been forgotten. After the Despot Wars I returned home to find that my father had been kidnapped and held for ransom by Hydra. No one paid. Hell," he gave a dry chuckle, "no one even knew who he was. So they killed him. Then they went back to my house and killed the rest of them. My mother...my sister...my brothers. The House found out some time later of our family's legitimacy and had my closest kin come gather me up. I don't know what my father or my family did that made us so estranged from the rest of our House, but I vowed that no one would forget my name, no one would question who I was. So answer your question I'm not a man of the House, and I don't want to be."
His eyes fixed on those of the man across from him, a deliberate gaze upon his face.
"I want to be the man of the House."
----------
TIPP, DUCHY OF LINT, AIR REGION
Keeping from the public eye while undertaking their mission, the Xenator and Evina used a cave near the sea as their base of operations, it's opening large enough for the plane to maneuver into. Hunter made his way onto the craft and got into the pilot's seat of the cockpit. He flipped a switch and connected with local communication.
"Report," he said.
Evina's voice came back through the radio, "Boss Forps and his men are all dead, and as you predicted, the drugs weren't there, he had planned to turn on me once he believed I had brought the rest of the money."
"He was as much a fool as we suspected," Hunter said. "I've gathered evidence enough, just contact the Duke, let him know that the job is done, and once you've got the notes return here."
"Roger that. Evina out."
The entire mission had been a training exercise to evaluate how Evina would work out in the field. She had recently finished her intermediate training under his tutelage and within a few more months, would herself undertake missions in his stead.
He closed the connection and opened communication with Base X, ending the radio silence with home command. Almost immediately, a transmission came in, a blinking red light on the control panel.
"HQ, this is X, over."
The voice on the other end belonged to Control Center Lead, Nova Gregord. "Sir, we've been trying to reach you for days."
"When are you not?" he replied. "I implemented radio silence for Evina's training."
"Sir, we'd been getting mixed reports for the past few days and I up until yesterday we were unsure, but this, this is something you'll want to see."
"I've got a good idea of what you're referring to," Hunter said.
He had been hearing rumors of the Veldt's return for the past week, but awaited confirmation from HQ or more solid evidence. Least that's what he told himself.
"You've got confirmation then?" he asked.
"The entire country has confirmation," she replied.
Upon the return of his acolyte, Hunter fired up the engines and took off into the night sky, early signs of daybreak on the horizon. As they soared through the clouds, Evina came and stood beside him, her hand upon his shoulder.
"I know that look," she said.
He kept his gaze forward, "What are you talking about acolyte, I'm wearing a mask."
"If the rumors are to be believed, we'll be seeing a lot more of them."
To this, Hunter said nothing. He needed some time alone before returning to the Headquarters.
"You did well today," he said at last. "Get some sleep."