Deathslayer: A Return to Damnation

Chapter Five - Your Best Behavior

When does a guilty man cry? Is it when he is caught with the detonator in his hand? When he is rotting in his cell and can't see the daylight? or is it when they put the rope around his neck? or is it when his neck snaps?

Everyone is guilty of something. No one wants to believe it, but it's true. Consider this a wake up call. There is no such thing as a pure human, but there are the worse, and the worst. This was something that Vladmyr understood as he donned his mask and fastened the frame to his hood, keeping it in place. He tightened his boots and sheathed his daggers within his belt.

Celia, on the other hand, was in her living room with her boyfriend, Belfrick. They had been dating despite their age difference for some time. She was in her late thirties meanwhile he had just hit twenty recently. It was something that drove a wedge between her and her father but she never liked him anyways. Besides it was worth it if it was true love, right? She put her feet on the couch and curled up into a little ball as Belfrick walked over to their small watchbox (a primitive version of a television that runs on coal and steam made by Proktek) and flipped it on. Steam began pumping outside of the small apartment she was staying in. A Proktek special came on the television. The pale faced owner of Proktek, Gerald Prok, was showing off some handheld device that emits electric shocks for self defense.

Belfrick sat down next to Celia and put one hand on her. She flinched, his hand felt rough against her skin. She didn't like being touched too much, she wished he felt the same about it. "You alright?" he asked her. She looked at him for a moment, "Yeah, yeah I'm ok," she quickly turned her head back to the watchbox. The special was over and they were airing a television show that Belfrick loved called "The Masked Remorse," some silly show about a vigilante. He watched intently. She pretended to watch and be interested, but in reality she was spacing out while staring into the TV. She was wearing long pants with a small leather shirt that had no sleeves and revealed part of her stomach. It was comfortable, but most importantly it was cheap. Money was everything in Zira. There were three classes, the poor, the not so poor, and the filthy rich. The large wedge was basically enforced by the Nitepriests who knocked down the middle class's doors every five minutes just to be certain that they aren't unholy. They were a worldwide phenomena, one that Celia hated.

A love scene came on. She got slightly uncomfortable. She hated watching any of that silly stuff, Belfrick loved it though. It got him in the mood. He put one hand around her as she squeezed herself tighter. "Y'know, that could be us," Belfrick teased, putting one hand on chin and pointing her head at him. She stared at him blankly, debating what to do. She knew that he wasn't thinking straight be it from the hormones or the alcohol but she also knew that this was not what she wanted. She quickly shot up and without seeing a word put on a pair of brown leather gloves. "Hey! Wait where are you-" Belfrick started but she was out the door before he could finish. She dashed down the halls of the apartment and took the stairs, avoiding the lift so he couldn't follow. Belfrick would always take the lift and never her stairs. She hopped up on the railing and slid down until she was facing the back exit to the building. She quickly opened the door and zipped out of it. She started walking quickly down the street, her purple hair hanging low against her back. She had abnormal purple eyes from an incident in her childhood. Colors were more vibrant for her, she noticed them more easily than most others would've. 

She started walking until she saw a shadowy figure in a cape holding a staff with a cross at the end about half a block down from her. He hadn't noticed her yet, she quickly dashed into an alleyway and pressed her back against the wall. She listened carefully and quietly for any signs of sound or of approaching Nitepriests. She heard nothing, so she breathed a sigh of relief and descended deeper into the alley. She saw posters hung up on the walls of Zira's mascot, a man in a victorian cape and a top hat with a black mesh face saying "Be on your best behavior!" the posters had been mostly desecrated by paint. Some had been torn down and pissed on. One of them was still lying in a puddle of piss. It smelled rancid. She kept walking, wrapping her arms around herself and keeping her head low. Eventually she saw a campfire and then a small wooden scaffolding in the middle of the alley. She had entered the poverty king's domain. She tried to turn around but then an old and decrepit hand with a metal finger grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back.

She quickly spun around and gave a loud grunt as she kicked the face in of a hunched over old man wearing what looked like a blanket and nothing more. "OI! What the hell bitch!" the old man cried. She giggled a little, slightly amused at the situation. "You touched me, you tell me, bitch," she said playfully. The old man stood up straight, a mechanical clicking sound whirring as he did so, and motioned with his hand. Three other old men stepped out from under the scaffolding each with metal limbs and one even with a metal eye. "I only touched ya cause I like ya," the now tallest one said with a crooked smile on his face. "You wouldn't want an old man like me to go lonely for the night, would you?" he asked creepily as he bent over and put one metal finger on her cheek. She quickly grabbed his arm and twisted, making him fall over. She stomped her foot onto his neck as he gagged and then screamed. One of the others, one with a freakishly long metal arm, lunged forward and tried to push her back. She grabbed his arm and spun around, propelling him back towards the scaffolding and causing it to fall on top of him. The last one, the one with the mechanical eye, got too close. He wrapped his arm around her neck and held a knife to her throat. "OI! Fellas! Looks like I'm the lucky son of a bitch tonight eh?" he shouted. More and more men and women with odd robotic enhancements stepped out from the shadows. Then a voice with an accent unlike that of the poverty king's people rung out from behind them.

"The sin of lust you take in, I see," the highly sophisticated voice called out. The old man holding Celia let out a confused grunt before turning around and that's when she saw him. "Back off ol' lad! this one's mine!" The old man called happily, accidentally scarring her cheek with his blade. "Lust, a deadly sin for sure. Shall I show you why?" the stranger said. It was a man in a black mask made of what looked like paper Mache with three red dots painted on it in a triangular form. He wore a black hood and black cape that wrapped around his whole body. He was lit only by the moonlight of the night. She was confused and intrigued, the poverty king's men weren't a force many would reckon with. The old man threw her to the side and charged towards the stranger. He side stepped the charge and raised one black gloved hand holding a scythe made of what looked like bone. He quickly threw the scythe and it landed in the back of the old man's head. He fell to the floor almost instantly, dead. The stranger approached the rest of the crowd that had watched his kill. He held one hand out and the scythe shot from the corpse's head back to his hand. He held the now bloody scythe up to his face as he stared into the crowd. There were no eye holes on his mask but he was glaring at them. It was as though the red dots were just as good as his eyes. "Does anybody else need a reminder?" he called out. The crowd quickly dispersed and left. He then sheathed his scythe back in his belt and let his cape fall back around him. He turned to Celia.

"Are you harmed miss?" He asked. She shook her head no, she was nervous. Was he going to rob her? could she even take him in a fight with the way he handled that other man. "Don't worry, I've no intention to hurt you assuming you don't hurt anyone else, do you understand miss?" he asked. She nodded quickly before he chuckled lightly. "You may go now miss, and it would do us both some good if you don't tell anyone this happened, alright?" he said. She nodded and then he ran off, quickly running up a wall before throwing one of his sickles up it. He then held out his hand and a spectral red rope appeared that dragged him the rest of the way up the wall. She watched as he disappeared in the night, and she wondered who he was. What she did know though was that she would have to get that prototype done sooner than she thought. With the amount of hell that had come to earth already she would need a form of defense quicker than she thought. She rushed back home and slammed the door shut behind her.  She pressed her back to it and slowly slid down, putting her head in her hands and crying. She knew that whatever this was with Belfrick wouldn't last much longer. She wouldn't last much longer if she kept trying to keep this up. She hated being the one to end things, but what choice did she have? After crying she just sat there for a good two hours, staring into the distance. No words to say, nothing to do. Then her gaze shifted to her workbench in the other room. A small curved object was held up on a stand for her to work on it. Soon it would be a powerful weapon that could rip holes straight through armor and flesh at a distance but right now it was useless.

She slowly brought herself up and went over to her workbench. Grabbing her goggles and sliding them on her face before she got to work.