I was born a princess;
what was needed was a knight.
So I found myself a sword,
and I taught myself to fight.
I made myself into a queen
- a warrior with a throne -
Won through all the battles
that I had to fight alone.
I have no need for princes,
nor want for noble kings,
As I have slain the dragon,
and other monstrous things.
Don’t seek a damsel here;
there isn’t one to be found,
So take your shining armor
and turn yourself around.
Go find another castle
with another maiden fair.
Go find some fragile girl
with flowers in her hair.
The next war I’ll fight,
and although I may not win,
Come hell or high water,
know that I will rise again.
I’ll spit out my blood
and I’ll pick up my blade.
No, I don’t need a hero;
I don’t need to be saved.
Each step seemed as though it were somehow heavier than one that had come before it and the white flakes that fell from the sky did nothing to help. In such wee hours of the morning the world seemed void of life in a way that was peaceful... in the same sense a mausoleum after the last internment was. It was grim, weighted and suffocating. It rested on his shoulders which slumped under it and mirrored in downcast, hollowed eyes.
Tired. He was tired, right down to his very core. The exhaustion of it all had sank into his bones just like the cold had. He wasn't even sure which was the more numb; his heart or his crimson-decorated fingers. The latter of the two he could at least see turning purple. Not that he cared. No. He didn't have it left in him to care. He could lose his fingers and be entirely unbothered by it right then. It wasn't as though they were doing much to hold together the fraying edges of his life as it was ripped apart at the seams. Right then they were only a partially frozen reminder of the grip he didn't have on things, like the grip he had trouble keeping on his keys. Who the hell even locked the door? Someone probably smarter than him.
He plopped down upon the landing of the stairs just inside the front door... and just sat. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was trying to will himself to take off his boots, hang up his coat and move, but the rest of him was slow to cooperate. He stared at his boots wet with melting snow and slush, at his calloused hands that weren't quite obeying his commands. A heavy sigh finally left his parted lips before he set about stripping off all his winter gear. It was slow going, and his speed did not change when a shadow came over him.
"You okay, Nol?"
He could detect the concern in the voice of his cousin.
"Yeah," he found himself answering while his mind screamed otherwise, while his heart, shriveled as it was, cried out it was a lie, "It's been a long day."
Lies. Lies! It had been a long week. But it was also true. He hadn't been a night without nightmares in weeks. Anxiety haunted every moment, gave him no rest, gnawed at every shadow his mind had in existence.
A rough hand scrubbed over his face, briefly resting thoughtfully over his mouth as if to keep in the truth. Then he simply nodded, letting it fall. "Just tired."
"Try gettin' some sleep."
Another numb nod.
"Yeah, nah, I'll try," his voice was so hollow he almost wondered how no one else heard it, how no one else seemed able to see through him. Tired. He was tired, but not in the way that sleep could fix. He was tired of not being good enough. He was tired of trying so hard and coming up short. He was tired of fighting every day. He was tired of the nightmares, of the anxiety, of being helpless. He was tired of things going wrong. He was tired of feeling so alone, tired of lying to the world, tired of clutching to threads and straws. He was tired of existing.
The shower washed the dirt and blood off of him, but it didn't wash the exhaustion away. It didn't wash the ache away. Cold that had settled in his bones outside remained even after the steaming water had carried away the traces of what he'd made it through.
Just breathe.
He repeated it to himself as a mantra as it felt like the universe itself was clawing up his throat and trying to strangle him. In the mirror, he saw every flaw in a face that felt like a mask, a face he didn't want to wear. He saw eyes that had something missing in them. But what?
He slumped to the floor in his room, back against the wall, to bury his face in his hands.
Just breathe.
It was weaving through his rib cage. It was tightening around his lungs, constricting like a boa around him. There was no escape. His hands fell. His breath caught. His eyes clenched shut, tight. He fought. And it didn't matter.
The first one slipped free and rolled lazily down his face leaving behind a salty trail. The second one followed not to long after. He shuddered, hand flying to clamp down over his mouth as it all finally caught up with him. The tears fell freely, even as he tried to blink them away, tried to make them stop. He couldn't even do that.
Broken, he sat on the floor and cried.
And a weight came to slide down beside him, shoulder to shoulder. For a moment, there was silence as his twin sat with his hands in his pockets. Nothing needed said.
"It's been a long day," his twin spoke, and the broken man felt the grip of a hug wrap around his shoulders... and he found himself leaning into it. "But it'll get better."
Because every person's life is a story, and everything always works out by the end of the story. All this pain meant was that he still had a great many chapters before his story was done. There was still so much more left to write and to read.
Alias: The Eagle Subject Zero
Full Name: Quick, Nolan Matthew
Country of Origin: New Zealand
Status: ACTIVE DECEASED
The war had been going on long before the remains of the two worlds engaged with it crashed into Earth. Those races of dark magic from Heldes had been at odds with those of light magic from Annywn for as long as the oldest amongst them could remember. The remains of their worlds had embedded themselves into that of humans leaving scars and jagged lines where natural Earth suddenly stopped and the alien suddenly started. The initial near apocalyptic event was followed by stretches of tense 'peace' marked by war. The last open conflict had been more than a century before the Quick twins were born.
Lack of open conflict didn't mean there was peace though. There wasn't. The world the twins were born into was always at war, it was just more covert. The open wars following the event which had the Annywn and Heldes landing on Earth had wiped out most of their populations. Those 'pure' blood creatures, or their mixed race children of 'worthy' enough power, retreated to the remains of their worlds, their kingdoms, maintaining diplomatic relations with humans while keeping their walls. It was too late. Their magic seeped into the world. Those that came from the light side of it formed the Solian Council. They had their schools teaching their brand of magic, training healers, light casters, elementalists, and lesser fair folk. They claimed they were there to protect those without magic. They were there to do 'good'. On the other side were those that had been created from the black mists of the Heldes. They made their own Shadow Empire, came to control nearly all of the criminal element around the globe from the drug trade to theft to assassination and sex work.
Both factions wanted power. The Shadow Empire was more honest in their methods. They wanted it by any means necessary and did little to hide their corruption. They were 'bad', everyone knew it including themselves, but they were looking out for all those the Solian Council would persecute. Those that used magic considered dark. They offered protection for vampires and shifters and the like. The Solian Council was less honest in their methods. They hid their greed, their corruption and just how much they were willing to do to keep their place in the world and try to improve it. Or that was what Nolan had been raised to think since he'd joined the ranks of the Shadows at the age of ten.
He hadn't had any choice in the matter. A school yard brawl had sealed his fate as well as that of his twin. That the twins had the talent of Deception was outed when the younger of the two, Landon, went invisible while the bigger bully held him down to hit him. The younger twin flickered in and out of visibility between blows and his identical... Nolan vanished on the opposite side of the play ground only to reappear as he tackled the bully off of his brother.
What happened following that Nolan had never been able to forgive his parents for. He remembered sitting at the top of the stairs with his brothers, listening to his parents fighting downstairs over what they would do now. Father was proud. His boys had won a fight. That was what he'd taught them to do. Quicks didn't back down, Quicks didn't lose. Mother was frightened. Children shouldn't vanish. What more could they do? Could they hurt the rest of them? Would they hurt their younger sister?
"This is no laughing matter, Martin!"
Nolan would remember his mother's voice yelling at his father for years. It was her who sent them away about a year later. At eleven years old, the twins were turned in to the Shadows by their own mother to be trained to use their talents for 'the best'. It was a nice way of saying they would be trained to be assassins for The Shadows, a nice way of saying they'd be taught martial arts and how to hunt more than deer. It wouldn't have been that bad... if he hadn't been frequently pitted against his own twin and beaten. That left a bitter taste in his mouth.
One he washed down by knocking back half a beer in one go. He was eighteen then. Had just graduated mandatory schooling with honors and had already been allowed to run more than a dozen of his own hits. Not too many high school kids in the world could brag about that. Killing people on Friday nights then getting that six page paper done for English. He could. It was that skill that had led to him being introduced to a recruiter for a Shadow program called 'Red Sky'. Oh the things they had promised him.
"You're a very talented young man, Mr. Quick, but we could make you better. Faster. Stronger. You could be better than your twin could ever dream of being, you could be the best the world has seen."
They had known to stroke his ego, to feed him promises of greatness in something. Nolan Quick had an ego and he had ambition. He wanted to be better, he wanted to be the best. He was tired of his goddamn twin besting him and laughing about it, always happy, always upbeat and never thinking more than two seconds ahead. It wasn't fair, but he'd fix it. He'd be the better one, the stronger one. His mother had been afraid of what he could do. He'd give her reason to fear.
Alias: The Crow
Country of Origin: United States of America
Birth Name: [redacted]
Status: Active [RETIRED]
“If The Crow is in play, things are only going to get worse. This man is on record as having a photographic memory and has held his own against the number one creation from Red Sky. His body count is guessed at being in the triple digits. While he didn’t clear the top five in ranking of the underworld’s best weapons, he made the top ten and is still one very, very bad man.”
“Aw, I’m flattered.” The voice broke through the otherwise silent briefing room. The room that should have been secure. It made blood run cold in the veins of the mercenaries crowded in as all eyes turned towards the source. He stood in the back, head down, bill of his ball cap hiding his face. He was not impressive of build, and he leaned comfortably in a blue work shirt like a mechanic. “And he wouldn’t be in play... if some bitch hadn’t threatened his daughter.”
Behind thick framed glasses, hazel eyes gleamed once the man raised his head, jaw tense under his covering of short scruff, the black flecked with silver. He was getting too old for this shit... and he was only in his mid-thirties. Fingers thick from fighting and work rolled up the sleeves of his shirt as he spoke, as he kicked off the wall to stand proudly. It revealed the flock of black crows like ink winding up the flesh of his left forearm. He raised that arm, that hand, fingers poised to snap as the tattoos began to move. To flock and grow, turning his arm more and more black.
“I’m done being hunted.”
Snap.
Black burst forth from his arm, drowning out the light. Not even the muzzle flash of guns going off was visible in the darkness. In a matter of minutes, it all went quiet. Another snap and the black was sucked back into the Crow’s arm, settling as still tattoos once again as he stood upon the table in the room surrounded by gore. This was his doing. This was what he had been made to do, what he would do. A certain smugness settled upon his face before he looked down at himself, his clothes bloodstained, to heave a heavy sigh.
“I am never going to get all these stains out,” he muttered to himself. Then something caught his attention. His brows furrowed and he plucked his shirt out to look down at the name tag on it. “Oh shit. This is NOT my shirt. Matt’s going to be pissed...”
The Red Sky program was founded by the criminal leader of a dark magic council. It was founded to turn men into monsters, into weapons. Only one in three recruits that entered the program would even survive training. The average life expectancy for those that made it to active service was only two years.
Which meant a one-man-army that had survived more than a decade in Red Sky was someone who should have been more than feared. He should not have been underestimated. Red Sky called him ‘Ururoa’ or ‘The Shark’ - and he had more than earned it. The most lethal weapon in their arsenal... and he’d just lost all reason to stay on his leash.
Every step was mechanical though it seemed to him as if lead had settled into his bones, weighing on him. His face was a blank mask void of any expression, though fire and rage burned in whatever soul he may have had left behind it. His eyes were hollow and dead, empty, though his mind was alive in thought so busy it was near ready to burst. Outside, he was calm; inside he was on edge, like a hungry wolf in a cage. Nearly eleven years he’d been a weapon for them, a dog on a leash, and it had all been for a lie. They didn’t know it at that moment, but their great Shark had finally learned the truth - and they were going to pay for it. They were going to pay.
The Red Sky Program was commissioned by a Shadow King and founded by a few very bad men belonging to his council. It was created for the sole purpose of turning people into monsters; monsters they called ‘one-man-armies’ capable of ripping through both squads of the magical White Council’s elite soldiers and the human’s mundane spec ops soldiers like tissue paper. The creations of Red Sky were made with the intention of being able to kill on command without hesitation or remorse with whatever level of brutality and destruction was commanded to them. They were made with the intention of being predators unlike any other seen in any of the joined worlds; great weapons made of flesh and bone, strengthened with magic and empowered by technology.
Red Sky’s ‘one-man-armies’ were nightmares that had been shaped by as much. It is not in the nature of civilized men to willingly and without question rend flesh from bone, to live bathed in blood, to kill for the sake of killing, for orders. To create what Red Sky wanted, they had to make their ‘soldiers’ something other than human, than man. The whole process from start to finish was illegal at best. It violated more human rights than an ill-tempered, paranoid, third-world-dictator. Recruits of the right type were hard to come by, and most were taken with little choice in the matter, or manipulated into ‘volunteering’. Very few volunteered of their own, full, free-will. Then the recruits had to survive ‘boot camp’ and ‘deployment training’ to get to ‘Active Status’ - and only one out of three recruits did.
Boot camp was designed to weed out the weak and break the strong. It was engineered to strip everything good and whole-some from a person, to leave nothing but those dark things that lurk in the back of a person’s mind, those things that no one ever wants to acknowledge. By the time the psychological and physical torture that was boot camp ended, all that was left of who a recruit had once been was whatever they hadn’t given up just to survive. The change was always noticeable in the eyes. It was like the light that had been was replaced with something dark, burning... feral.
Deployment training took what came out of Boot Camp and re-built it into a usable weapon. Recruits were trained in combat, weapons, and any subject their handlers deemed necessary. It was an exercise in survival of the fittest - weak recruits would be killed by the stronger, more adaptable ones. Deployment training was where feral animals were honed into machines.Those that survived, went on to an Active Roster... and most only survived that two years. If a weapon wasn’t killed in action first, it could be killed or sold off for failure to maintain what Red Sky considered an operating standard.
Which meant a one-man-army that had survived more than a decade in Red Sky was someone who should have been more than feared. He should not have been underestimated. Red Sky called him ‘Ururoa’ or ‘The Shark’ - and he had more than earned it. The most lethal weapon in their arsenal... and he’d just lost all reason to stay on his leash.
Every step was mechanical though it seemed to him as if lead had settled into his bones, weighing on him. His face was a blank mask void of any expression, though fire and rage burned in whatever soul he may have had left behind it. His eyes were hollow and dead, empty, though his mind was alive in thought so busy it was near ready to burst. Outside, he was calm; inside he was on edge, like a hungry wolf in a cage. Nearly eleven years he’d been a weapon for them, a dog on a leash, and it had all been for a lie. They didn’t know it at that moment, but their great Shark had finally learned the truth - and they were going to pay for it. They were going to pay.
Every foot fall brought him closer to the man that had played a key role in everything, in the creation of Red Sky and the recruitment of that young man eleven years ago who would become their greatest asset. He hadn’t been as high ranking then, back when he sat in that room at the prison to meet the prisoner who was destined to become The Shark. That meeting had brought them both to the point they were approaching. It had been The Shark’s work that had brought the man to rise from a nobody goon to the Shadow King of Wellington, and from there to the Shadow King of New Zealand, then of Oceania. The man kept rising in power, all thanks to his weapons, to his pet Shark. He was becoming a lead Lord over crime and dark magic. It just made the Shark all the more wrathful.
The bastard was going to pay.
It almost seemed like time was repeating itself. He was once again walking down a hall in chains with a set of guards, only he was more than a decade older and not in the dull uniform and slippers of an inmate, put away for another drunken brawl. The chains still hung from his wrists, rattling with every movement. All those years ago, they’d been enough to hold him, but that had been before what Red Sky had done. Before the torture, the training, being forced to live a lie. After all that, putting him in handcuffs was like trying to tie up a tiger with shoe string, or hoping tin foil would somehow stop a raging bull. After all they’d done, they thought they could trust him with just handcuffs to keep him in check. They trusted him like he had once trusted them. It would be a fatal mistake for at least one of them.
Their first meeting had occurred in a room with a one way glass, steel table, steel chairs and white walls. It had been the room Landon Michael Quick had entered as one half of a set of identical twins, and left as Nolan Matthew Quick, the only surviving twin of a set. It was in that room all those years ago the man who had become Grand Shadow King first lied to the man that would become The Shark. He’d told the inmate that his twin was dead, killed, by the White Council, the leading authority over all ‘light’ magic. It was there that the future King had promised the devastated young man revenge, promised him the chance to finish what his twin had started. All Landon had to do was agree, was give up who he was and start wearing his dead brother’s name. Switch places. For revenge, out of pain, he had agreed. Landon had became Nolan, left the prison a free man while his twin was sent to the morgue as Landon, killed in a prison fight.
The room that ‘Nolan’ set foot into more than a decade later was an office. A wooden desk with a great, ornate chair behind it. There was no one way glass through which he was being observed or might be. The guards even trusted him enough to wait outside. Thought he had been so broken he was unable of independent thought or so loyal that he still believed every lie he had been fed, was harmless to his ‘master’.
