Knife in the Dark

Prolouge

Run.

That's what I was told to do. Run.

But when you are being shot at almost 24 hours per day you learn other evasive maneuvers as well.

And being one of the world's most wanted doesn't help. The only reason we are still alive is because we don't exist.

We are called The Storm, the most elite group of killers the world has ever seen, all of us were given a certain weapon which we have mastered and perfected. No one was able to stop us in our prime. But then the authorities started to fear we would turn on them, they tried to kill us in an ambush, but we are too clever for that.

There are nine of us, but one of us, Voulge, left us. She somehow escaped capture and now lives like anyone else. She was a powerful and formidable person, who had absolutely no sense of mercy, but was always empathetic to the needs of the rest of the group. She held herself with regal beauty and always was way further ahead of our pursuers.

Now Rapier keeps us all in check, he and Voulge were sort of together, if you can be in our circumstances, so her departure hit him pretty deep. He is the sort of person that no one talks back to, he has a compelling and strong voice which can either make or break a character. Rapier has become closed from the rest of the world, either spending his time working in his room, or attacking the stuffed dummy which we have made.

His two second in commands are Bec de Corbin, or Raven for short, and Glaive. Two of the most fearsome people I know, and trust me, I know some fearsome people. Raven is the sort of person that if you say one wrong thing to her, she would never talk to you ever again and would find any way possible to take revenge. Glaive is the only one out of all of us who is able to calm her down. They make a team that is impossible to beat and even harder to befriend.

Katana and Sling are our ears and eyes, they have mastered an ability to pass unnoticed by everyone if they choose, and are probably at the top of the most wanted. Katana spends most of his spare time, if you are able to have spare time while on the run, talking to Sling, passing messages on how well or badly they performed in their last mission. Sling, being who she is, always has a joke to play with Katana, most of the time it ends up with them up the top of a tree or building hiding from the rest of us.

Lochaber axe, or Loch, and Guisarme are the backup, they form the decisive win over any enemy and are as ruthless as you can get. Loch is a quiet one who prefers to spend time with the group, but not actually talk or offer advice, rather, just to be there to make a presence and make sure he knows all he can on the topic of what we are doing. Guisarme is similar, but she talks to the rest of us if there is an issue with our ideas, which is quite common, she thinks in a way that remind us all of Voulge, apart from Guisarme's lack of empathy for anyone

And then there is me, Knife. Boring name but they get my job done well and fast so I'm happy. I'm the boring one out of all of us. I am just there as emotional support for the rest of the group. The only reason I was even chosen to be part of The Storm was the fact that my parents paid the government to take me in. I'm the person that was only there because the others looked after me and made sure that I wasn't ever taken away, even so, I had barely any field work until we ran away.

We would all be called different gun names if it wasn't for the fact that the authorities thought that if we only had ancient style weapons they could neutralize us easily, how wrong they were. They thought that just because the weapons that we wielded were older in design to that of modern guns, they could kill us if we ever became a problem. They just never really worked out that if we were able to kill one of our attackers, then we would have access to their modern artillery, so they changed their tactics to come after us with just as old weapons. The problem with that is the fact that we all have spent our entire lives perfecting our weapons, so we are able to deal with them as they come at us.

None of us remember our real names, we were practically born killing, so we didn't need to know our names. Our lives have been made up around us about attacking dummies and people with our weapons, it hasn't been about gossiping and hanging out at the mall. Every one of us may be the master of their own destiny, but our lives were already previously sculpted for us.

We live in a run down house, staying low, hoping to not have to kill anyone. Even so, we all sleep with our weapons in our hands, and never properly unpack our bags. The police and lower army can't track us, because they don't realize we exist, which is the only good luck we have, we all just hope each day we don't have to wake up to a smelly dead body lying next to us.

We need to be together again, without Voulge, we have lost. Most of us have given up hope, but I believe that if we find her, she will rejoin us and we will therefore be able to thrive, rather than just survive. Together, we are the oncoming storm.