A Sliver of Crimson

[Guest]

The slide made a simple, cool, and refined click as Ayden pulled it barely an inch past the point where he knew it would. A single caseless round, the first in a magazine of twenty, flicked upwards and slipped into the chamber. Moonlight danced across a shimmering, billowing black coat in the Esparian darkness. Diagonally, rainwater pounded the tarmac beneath his feet, creating miniature, negligible puddles with each impact as the assassin advanced. He hadn't been to Esparia in a few years. He missed the malaria threats, the drug cartels, the oppressive government, the hassle made when you entered Malos alone, and the fact that he'd be burnt at the stake if anyone so much as discovered the real nature of his 'body art'.

Just made things that little bit more interesting, in Ayden's mind.

The building was an old, decrepit apartment complex. His assignment was the most beautiful and most simple he'd received in an age. It was a freelance job calling for anyone who was strong enough to do so, and he'd signed himself right up; he had to clear out the building, and be gone by sunrise. Hell, not even the latter point. He could fight his way out and drive back to Amestris, for all the contractor cared: the building just had to be empty of all life by the time he left, strewn with nothing but flesh, blood, sinew, shattered bone, and spent cartridge cases.

Methods? Methods were up to him. Variety was always good, of course; the small assignment with Ms. Furor a few months ago in Central had been a breath of fresh air... but, no challenge. And, to Ayden, that was really the most depressing fact of all. Ballzini's assassination had been a grand symphony that had spanned hours, and many a kill, leaving behind him to the world nothing but scorched earth and a single corpse in the woods, when he'd left a testament to so much more: sheer chaos. He'd cut down politicians, guards, elite ex-military units, Aerugese kunoichi, helicopters, and the grand old mob boss himself.

So... challenge. These were probably some badly-armed street gang of plebian-level intelligence who'd mixed with the wrong group, or dipped too many fingers in restricted and forbidden pies. Ayden didn't care, and it didn't matter. Tonight... tonight was a breath of fresh air, a day away from Briggs, a day away from normalcy and routine. A day to do what he wanted, to think what he wanted, and a day to deserve that little extra bonus tacked onto the bottom of his paycheck.

He carried Echidna, compacted and folded, in his pocket, and Typhon at his side, but the Harbinger, Perseus, and Andromeda were all unfortunately vacant for the night's festivities. Ah well; he had his audience and attendees, his team, companions, and equipment - and now, the time was right and ripe to meet... his canvas. It was time to paint another glorious masterpiece in the blood of others, to carve a long, crimson swathe across the Esparian night!

It was time to wreak havoc... and savour the sheer feeling that came with it.

Interceptor was his starting point. Nearing the dilapidated old building's western side, Ayden quickly pushed himself down into the smallest of shapes, crouching by a door, listening to the Esparian youths converse; all, from auditory surveillance and analysis, seemed to be more or less under the age of thirty. He heard clicks, bolts, mechanical slams; all were carrying either some rather suspect heavy machinery, or two-handed firearms of some description. From the racket upstairs, he suspected the leader and around thirty of his cohorts lined the building, and a good majority of them were tentatively awaiting some assault, so they'd be trigger-happy, and that little extra bit 'alert'.

A grin crept onto Ayden's face, carving his pale pallor in two with those disgustingly brilliant two pursed, pink lips. Beneath them, his pearly whites shimmered in the night, glistening as the moonlight brushed across and refracted along them, the man's cerulean blue orbs twinkling as did his skin, his garb, his weapon, and his teeth. Oh, tonight was going to be fun, fun indeed...

...just, little did Ayden know that there was a little hiccup lying in wait for him on the other side of the complex...

[Guest]

CRASH! Screw subtlety. Breaking through the window with a single booted foot, a shadow of black and grey forced himself into the building without a single care in the world. He rolled on the ground, getting to his feet with a rustle of the coat on his shoulders. As he stood up straight, the area around became clearer to the man. Naked halogen bulbs flickered on and off, casting an eerie light over the room itself. Within this room were three or four men, all of them suddenly stricken by fear. Raising a hand up to his face, Vito placed the piledriver hanging off of his waist onto the ground. Looking through dark and almost-lifeless eyes, Vito growled at the men with a somewhat demonic intention. They stepped back a couple of steps, slightly worried as to what would occur. Without any warning as to his intentions, he sped up and started to run at them, coat billowing out behind him and revealing the weapons of his trade. Gripping three of the long-swords in each of his hands, he balanced them out for a second before kneeling down and throwing with stunning accuracy. One, two, three. Each of them collided with a singular man, either stabbing through their skull, or somewhere else in their body, knocking them to the ground. The other three were thrown, all of them colliding in their own places upon the body of the final man standing.

Slowly getting to his feet from the standing position, Vito sighed softly and walked over to them, pulling his swords out of each of them, in a ritualistic fashion. Each of the blades slowly slid out of the bodies of their tombs, and Vito raised them up and cleaned them off with a soft chuckle. "Que descanse en paz." Kneeling down, Vito lowered his head for a single second, not forgetting his own duties as a man who would kill. As he bit his bottom lip, he began to recall the reasons he had for taking on this job. Although his position as Vasco's caretaker paid well enough, there were times when he needed that little bit extra to get by. So, when he heard about this freelance job, he took it up quite easily. The contract was simple and effective. Clear the building, get out before sunrise. He could do that on his own quite easily. Of course, there would be a lot of other idiots preparing themselves to try such a thing. He hadn't seen any yet, though the job itself was rather ludicrous. It could be that they had chickened out, decided to stay away. If that were the case, it'd most likely be best for him to prepare himself to destroy as many people as possible. Reaching up to his back, he dropped the coat down, hanging it up with its heavy bounty where he'd know exactly to look. He picked up the heavy steel pile driver, and hooked the entirety of it onto his back with a smirk. Stretching his arms out, he continued on.

His run took the heavily-armed Esparian through rooms of men and the like, all of them preparing themselves for some sort of fight. He entered the first, lunged forwards and knocked the single man in the room backwards, smashing him into a wall with a feral grin sliding across his lips. As the man slid slowly down the wall, Vito stepped forwards and pulled back a fist, slamming it with full strength into his chest, bringing the other one up and smashing it directly into his throat. Blood escaped the man's throat, spraying out in front of Vito, who picked up his now-dropped weapon. An AK-47. A relatively simple Drachman weapon, but effective nonetheless. Checking the magazine, he flicked it up and aimed for a half-second, watching a man cross his path. The trigger was pulled soundlessly, a short barrage of rounds being fired and spraying over the body of the target. He fell to the ground without speaking a word or even seeing his attacker. Sighing softly, Vito walked over him and continued on with a strange thought on the back of his mind. You know, for being Vasco's Janitor... I make a lot more messes than I clean up...

A few more men crossed over his path, Vito dispatching them without any real words coming from his lips. However, this new-found ease of fighting was not to last--as it never does. The next man was the one who Vito would waste the last of his magazine on, tossing the weapon to the side with a soft grimace crossing over his parched lips. A dry silence fell over the room. Vito slowly took one or two steps forwards, his footsteps clattering in the emptiness of this hollow space. The third step was broken by another noise, however; a cacophonous symphony of destruction. Three doors were simultaneously broken down, men filling the space--about seven of them in total. Each of the men aimed their weapons at Vito himself, all with grins on their faces that said quite a simple statement. 'We are going to kill you.' Sighing softly, he would shake his head and rush towards the first man, the immediate reaction of someone who was about to be killed by others. Almost too scared for his life to raise his weapon, Vito took advantage of this and ducked behind him, gripping him tightly and feeling the bullets fired and penetrating the body of the poor sod in front of him. Due to the nature of their weapons, they all surprisingly had to reload at the same time.

Vito made quick work of this; rolling along the ground with the newly-appropriated weapon of the late meat shield, a Walther PPK. Another interesting weapon, that was quickly risen into the air and shot thrice--two head shots, one chest shot. The man grinned, grabbing the body of this one as it fell. He was dead, but that didn't stop him from being used as a shield. The bullets filled this one as well, Vito grabbing the Walther and raising it up, firing thrice more. One, dead. Two, dead. Three... dead. Grabbing the piledriver off of his back now, the trigger was pulled backwards in order to load it up. A hydraulic hissing sound was made, and Vito charged into the first man to get in his path, slamming him against the wall and pointing the Septima Santa Escritura at his chest. A semi-sadistic grin crossed over his lips as he released the trigger, sending the sharpened head of the large pile-driver outwards and forwards. The sounds of bone crunching in a singular instant caused the man to spit out a large amount of blood at once, dropping to the ground and dying quickly. Turning towards the last man, the blood-soaked Septima was dropped to the ground. The look on his face was of obvious fear, and as Vito took one last step forwards, the man fell onto the ground, looking up at him with eyes that screamed pure terror.

"Children like you..." The man was kicked once; his head lulling to the ground as he began to scream. "Should not mess..." Stepping next to him, the somewhat-downtrodden man placed a dark boot onto the side of his face, pushing downwards with a repentant look in his currently-lifeless eyes. "In the affairs of those older than yourself." Pushing down harder, the man beneath him began to slowly scream. It was a quite scream, at first. A scream that not many would understand, but one that slowly started to grow in pitch and noise. He slowly pushed down, the screams growing as the pain in the head continued to get louder. Vito's additional weight was put onto his skull, each second growing heavier and longer than the last. The man beneath his foot would be seeing white now, his vision growing hazier as each second passed. Slowly, but surely, his eyes began to pop out from within their skull, and Vito made one last push. The foot went through weakened flesh and bone, trampled through the skull and landed on solid ground. Stepping away from him, Vito knelt down and closed his eyes--almost praying, for a single second. "Que descanse...

en paz."

[Guest]

Ayden exploded into action, kicking the door at the hinges and grasping the first man. He was tall; beefy, and ever-so-slightly plump. A little old, maybe forty or fifty; his hair was greying, but of course, that varied from person to person - the silver-haired murderer was proof incarnate of that. Fingers curling around Interceptor's trigger, one black-clad arm threw itself across the hooligan's neck, clamping down tight; a human shield. Perfect.

[INITIATE THEME]

Spinning first to take out two men at the bottom of a stairwell, Ayden fired the gun three times. The first round pierced the foremost man's lung, and immediately, he stumbled backwards into the wall, making a bloody splatter against it. "Hm," No body armour. His overall evaluation of the forces had just dropped tremendously. This was sub-par; less than optimal, really.

His finger tightened on the trigger once more as the other man struggled to ready his AKS-74U - a carbine variant of the traditional Drachman rifle - trembling as he did so. Another two suppressed thwunk sounds, and the man had dropped the floor, cold, dead, and bleeding down the stairs. Ayden let the sights fall once more upon the first man, shooting him in the jugular, and watching the absolutely brilliant crimson blood spray spatter the wall, banister, and even his fallen comrade as the man beneath, with his muffled gurgles, strained and kicked, trying to speak despite the hand clamping down ever harder on his throat. "Always, it has to be the hard way..."

Ayden wrapped both hands around the man's temples, and with a look of sheer determination, yanked his head sharply to the left. Snap. Ah, that was always a buzz that got him going. The body, warmth quickly fading from his overweight form, slumped to the floor, as the last of the man with the round in his neck's spasmodic hand-tappings ceased, and the room was silent as quickly as it had been live. No time to hide the bodies. Hell, there wasn't ever time to hide the bodies. Ruined the fun of a sweep - and that was Ayden's best sort of operation.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Distinct automatic rifle fire. An intruder, perhaps? An unexpected visitor? Or were these thugs stupid enough to actually indulge in friendly fire? Either way, the presence was audibly less subtle than he was, and, on the whole, it would make things a little easier. Sure, he wouldn't get as many kills, but with a diversion on his side, Ayden could get... creative.

Stepping over the corpses, Ayden traipsed crimson footprints up the stairs, cackling with a bloody and almost priapic glee in his voice. Unlike the other intruder, there wasn't any intent in his eyes; simply madness. Cold, blue madness, a neverending ocean of it; it came in waves, washing over everyone the assassin encountered. Humming Beethoven's 5th as he leapt over the third and final corpse of his first wave, Ayden then threw himself into the corridor, whereupon he brandished Interceptor once more. Four men were all poised, rifles raised, aiming and trembling down the dilapidated apartment's hallway - aiming the other way.

It was linear, one-way, and any doors or windows that allowed misshapen and near-prismatic rays of light to pierce the otherwise-murky depths of the far-too-traditional gang hideout were either closed or barred. Ayden was a silver-haired devil lurking behind the men, cackling almost-silently, with a pistol raised and bared in his hands, a demon clutching his trident.

"Hello, there~!" The words came, and following immediately after them was the sharpest of whistles. Oh, Ayden was taunting them. This was too easy, really. No challenge. Sixteen rounds still left in the weapon was more than enough; he raised the suppressed pistol, and with another thwunk, sent the contents of the left-most man's cranium spraying down the hallway.

The room was set ablaze with the fire of 7.62x39mm rounds. Rotating bolts were cycling, and in the chaos, and the black dusk, Ayden vanished back around into the stairwell. They were unleashing everything they had, firing the extent of their magazines into an invisible man, emptying their clips into thin air. The fire would draw attention, sure, but things were getting stale, and boring - perhaps with the other diversion, it wouldn't have been as much a hindrance as it normally would've been. Either way; the presence of a second invader was more-or-less now known.

As the last shell casing hit the floor with a light ting, the trio of lugs stood in confusion, the adrenaline apparently catching their tongues as well as their wit. Nothing but silence, and the odd piece of fragmented Esparian chatter; then, in unison, they all shuffled forwards, their weapons poised yet still clicking empty.

Rookie mistake.

Spinning, twirling, a tornado of black leather and gunsmoke, Ayden threw himself back into vision in the door frame. He fired two rounds, catching the first two men at point blank; the first was a headshot, spattering grey matter across the wall opposite, and the second caught the man in the back of the sternum - luckily enough, with the angle it had been fired on Ayden's side, it seemed to have pierced his heart straight-off. The caseless round flew through the man's ribs, and the two now-motionless bodies hit the floor, dead and leaking blood like the badly-coloured run-off from a pierced fuel tank.

Crimson welling up beneath them, Ayden advanced upon the last of the four men. In hysterics, wailing and shrieking for help in Esparian like a banshee, the man aimed at the assassin, and time and again pulled the trigger. Nothing but empty smoke fired forth from the barrel of the carbine as the henchman, presumably with a less-than-adequate IQ for his sort of job, backed up into the wall and let his knees buckle, falling down into a slump, still cradling the rifle.

The assassin batted it away without a second thought, the shoddily-kept gun skidding across cheap plaster and concrete with a rather painful scraping noise. Ayden grinned in glee at his newest test subject, the pearly-white smile carving his face in two as he pressed it almost impossibly close to that of his newest acquaintance.

With an eerie chuckle, the man finally spoke in hushed tones. "Hi there." Thwunk. Thwunk. Two shots left clouds of concrete-laden dust, a sickly sound distinct of shattering bone, and a screaming, trembling wreck, clutching at the two gaping, bloody holes where his kneecaps had once been.

The stench of cordite still hung strong upon the corridor as Ayden set down the pistol on the floor, leaving the man to moan and scream. Sure, his would-be adversary, responsible for that noise just now, would probably make a little more headway, but patience was a virtue - his studies here would benefit him in the long run, of course~!

As the man's last desperate attempts to reach for the gun Ayden himself had set down solicited a laugh from the sadistic imitation of a human being, he sighed, and shook his head. "Not tonight, unfortunately, friend," Muttering as he pulled off both of his gloves, and flung them aside, the azure-eyed massacre artist released another breath, raising his hand to the man's temples.

The skin at the base of each palm was stung red with the evidence of fresh body art - new tattoos. New tattoos meant... new alchemy. Or, in this case, alkahestry. Ayden sighed, and clasped his hands around the man's temples, letting his eyes fall shut. "I'd say 'this won't hurt a bit'," Two black, inked tendrils at the very top of each wrist thrummed with bright blue energy, as the assassin's hands clamped down ever-harder over the man's skull, Ayden growling in determination as his presses became harder and harder. "But it'd be a lie."

The blue alchemical electrical discharge crackled around him, until, finally, everything was brought to a stop. For a moment, everything in the room was still, and everything was silent; all the chaos had fell static, waiting and watching, an audience to just whatever Ayden had inflicted this man with. The suspense had grasped even the world itself, and forced it to fall still for but a split-second.

Raising up, and grasping his pistol, Ayden sighed, leaping to. "Enjoy, compadré," A sigh, and the silver-haired man dusted his hands off once more, jogging eagerly down the corridor. Behind him, flesh began to hiss and sizzle, darkening and greening around the man's eyes. This was Necrosis Alkahestry. Ayden had clamped his hands over the man for maybe thirty seconds, and integrating with his upgraded arrays, he could force a time-delay. The effects were pleasing enough, as Ayden heard blood-curdling screeches that would top a banshee from down the hall as the pain truly became too much, the man's face withering and dying through two years of decomposition, compressed and abridged, executed entirely in around half a minute.

Satisfyingly enough, the assassin heard the man's eyeballs pop like two balloons beneath a bully's heel, and not too long after that, the shrieking stopped. With a shrug, and a look of adequacy on his face, as if to say 'not bad', Ayden continued down the hall, having taken a brief reprieve to witness the effects of the newest branch of death-science he'd both pioneered and refined.

The conclusion? He loved it.

"Requiem in pace," He muttered bitterly, anticipation crackling like the fuse of a stick of dynamite at his fingers. Places to go, people to kill...

[Csilla Angelis]

{BUMP}

[Guest]

From this point onwards, it was obvious. He was far from finished in his clearing of this building. With a soft grin, Vito looked over at the end wall, staring quietly at the dank and dreary wood that sat up in front of him. Why oh why did he think of such things at a time like this? Images of a wooden wall stood in front of him, the man shutting them from the sky that existed as his mind. Biting his bottom lip carefully, Vito planted a hand on his hip and grinned silently to himself. This place was old; he'd discerned a lot of that from his first scouting of the place. So that would mean... running forwards quickly, Vito raised a leg into the air and pushed forwards, kicking through the old wood and watching the wall fall to the ground before him. That was all that it took, and as several kids turned their heads towards him, he was already through and sliding the Claves Negro off of his hips and holding them up at his sides.

[INITIALIZE]

Though he had not a single clue about the musings of the silent Assassin that existed down the other end of the building, Vito was certainly not subtle. In fact, he was trying his hardest to not be subtle, for rather simple and yet complex reasons. If he were subtle, it would tend to make his life easier, yes. He would not have to worry about people finding him, and he certainly wouldn't need to worry about them seeking him out. However, that was the intended effect. If he were to cause a large amount of ruckus, then they would be drawn towards him like moths towards a flame. The effect would be much the same, as well. They would be consumed, by this all-destroying flame.

And as this flame burned, three blades streamed through the air, impaling men without a cause. Vito knelt down and watched them falling for a second, closing his eyes and opening them once more, streaming forwards. The fourth man in the room had already frozen up. A child with a gun. That was all he was. Within a singular second, a fist was thrust forwards into his chest, knocking him through the next wall and backwards. Sprawling across the dirt, Vito quickly drew the blades out of his former targets and threw them once more, with surprising accuracy for the distance that he was trying to aim down. Three were thrown, three would hit. Head. Chest. Stomach. The man died quickly, and Vito would quickly approach him and take the blades out, looking behind him with a somewhat bemused eye. The sounds were becoming slightly more obvious now, especially for someone like Vito.

...there was another party involved.

{Sorry for the short post. x.x I wasn't too sure how to continue it, and my mind got distracted. ^^;}

[Guest]

The silver-haired assassin had long since holstered his suppressed pistol, Interceptor, and opted for a different route. Considering now that he'd already made his presence - alongside the other infiltrator's - known, it was time to disregard any semblance of stealth... to break out the bigger guns, so to speak. More specifically, the fully-automatic machine pistols.

Having not yet had a proper chance to test their abilities out, Ayden drew the Twins, Canis Major in his right hand and Canis Minor in his left. Named after the two bear constellations in that starry sky that hung above them even now, a moonlit blanket of darkness, the Ruger MP9 machine pistols hung now, clutched firmly in the cerulean-eyed slaughterer's grip as he flew through dilapidated and crumbling corridors within the complex itself.

Pausing at the entrance to the next stairwell, having sped from one side of the building to the other in a matter of moments, Ayden's ears pricked as he heard screams and an amplified piercing of flesh not too far away, followed by grunting. It sounded like swords from analysis and cross-referencing within the assassin's deeper mental sanctums, but Ayden couldn't be sure. Whatever it was, it meant that his competition was closing in - and he wouldn't have this kill taken from him.

A snarl, and Ayden threw himself through the door to the stairwell, kicking the door at its hinges and sending it flying open with a crash. For an instant, nothing happened, as the alchemist-assassin analysed his latest quarry; four pairs of hands bolted four Soviet-era FN FAL rifles, and four pairs of combat boots began to storm down the battered stone steps themselves.

As the first bearded thug appeared, curving around the corner, Ayden opened fire and unleashed a veritable firestorm of 9x19mm Parabellum rounds. Riddling the first henchman's body with lead slugs was a simple affair, the assassin feeling the recoil from each and every shot thud back into his arms; by the tenth shot from both of the guns, barely a second into his burst of rounds, Ayden's wrists had raised a significant amount, and his shoulders had begun to ache.

It wasn't that he couldn't deal with recoil like this, simply that he hadn't expected it from such an elegant design. With a grunt, watching the first body, pushed backwards now into a blood-splashed wall, slump to the ground, Ayden threw himself into a small cubbyhole beneath the staircase's body as the three men aligned themselves and opened fire, the thunderclap crashes of those 5.56mm rounds reverberating through the room, the echoes whining in the assassin's ears.

Well, this was certainly a turn-out for the worse. With a grunt, Ayden dove into his pockets, a look of sheer determination having struck his face. He was sure he'd- aha! As gloved fingers brushed against a cold metal cylinder, a wicked grin curved its way across Ayden's face. Pulling the pin from what was actually a grey-toned smoke grenade, the General tossed it into the room, and the instantaneous hiss of the device began to ring out alongside the regular, now-routine, repetitive semi-automatic shots.

When the coughing, the spluttering, and the loud, gruff, Esparian cursing began, Ayden threw his figure behind the smoke; however, he didn't run straight into it, full form visible. That would be... most unwise, and rather risky. First off, they'd hear him, and riddle him with more holes than a wheel of Swiss cheese. And second off... it was so much less stylish.

Humming an odd symphony he'd attuned himself to on the radio on the way up, Ayden slid across the strip of visible flooring he could see, on the side of his jacket. Machine pistols bared, he unleashed a strafing run as he flew past, holding his fingers down onto the triggers of the weapons until the clips time and time again clicked empty. Three sequential slumps. Three sequential clattering sounds of rifles hitting the floor.

The smoke cleared. Ayden holstered the empty machine pistols, and drew Asmodeus from an ankle holster as he hesitantly rose to his full figure, firing three shots in sequence into the fading haze, hearing each hit and spatter blood across the wall, just in case he'd missed. Nothing worked better for an insurance policy than the double tap.

Easing the hammer back inwards with a sigh, Ayden waved the last of the misty smoke away with his hand, coughing as he held the other over his mouth. Gingerly stepping through the mess of blood, torn flesh, and sinews he'd created, Ayden mock-grimaced at the face of one of the men, now indistinct from any real example thanks to the amount of entry wounds it was peppered with. With a smile and a cackle, he hopped up the stairs, his humming symphony reaching its crescendo as the arguably insane assassin ascended through the facility.

[Csilla Angelis]

{BUMP}

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