Thursday, May 5, 2011

Chapter 4 -Complete Redo

(I was not satisfied with the way I originally wrote my first couple of posts at all. I feel like I had hastened the story a bit and tried to over explain things in a short amount of time. I completely rewrote and rebooted the whole thing and I am much more pleased with the way things turned out.)

    Lucas walked down the city streets with his team loosely following him. Just like their targets they were in charge of pursuing, they had to remain undedected and blend in with the crowd. Alexandria was a bustling place with a variety of people. He passed all kinds of faces as he led his team closer and closer to the Catacombs, but none of them were granted even a second look.
    Approaching closer from the North put the front of the Catacombs into view. Lucas glanced down at his watch. One-thirty. They should have made it there by now. Lucas was a patient man, but was steadily getting more ambitious as the time was drawing closer.
    “Aqua. Go to the Northeast, you’ll find a small patch of trees. I want you to go to it and scope out the targets. We will meet you there.”
    “Yessss…”, she hissed and darted off. Aqua ran and dodged or otherwise leapt over any and all obstacles on her way off. She weaved between civilians who gave her no other thought other than an apparent rude look and she ran through traffic before disappearing.
    “Alright team. Here we go, the time is approaching. Let’s quicken our pace.”, they all stepped a bit faster,  surely nothing out of the ordinary.
    All their rushing was a bit unnecessary as they stopped at a crosswalk. Lucas was starting to feel his patience slip away. He could wait on other people easily, but hated being late more than anything. Punctuality was something he needed to have at all time.
    “C’mon, let’s just go already”, Adva walked out into the street.
    “What are you doing?! Get back over here now!”, Lucas spit through his teeth. The other thing he hated; insubordination and acting out of line.
    “Let’s just go. There’s not even any cars. Let’s just be neutral good and go”, Lucas felt his teeth grind against each other, but Adva did have a point and everyone followed suit.
    “Hello? Sir?”, Aqua’s voice rang into Luca’s earpiece.
    “Yes. Have you acquired the targets?”
    “Yes sir! They’re in my sights now!”, Aqua sounded giddier than usual.
    “Alright, stand down until we arrive.”
    “But Lucas, they’re in my sights! All I’d have to do is just pull this trigger and BAM! Done and we could pack it up and get home before anyone would even know what would happen and we’d be happy and schmooze and be merry and-”
    “No! I told you your orders, now stand down. Just keep them in your sights until then”, Lucas heard her about to protest, but he clicked off his receiver.
    Aqua sighed. Her finger was twitching above the trigger and she longed to rip the trigger back and feel the wonderful recoil slam back into her shoulder. She wanted to see their heads explode. Their body’s fall into a crumpled mess. It made her sweat just from thinking about it.
    Aqua bit deep into her scarred lips and sucked on the blood that came out. It helped soothe her anticipation a bit, but she still longed to fire off at least one round. All of them were each a morsel of temptation in their own right, but there was one that attracted her eye the most.
    The blonde, quiet bombshell. Aqua was sure she was the one she had heard of, the Explosive Soul Skylar. She exuded a quiet exterior, but to Aqua’s precise eye, she could feel the intensity rippling beneath. As quiet and impassive as Skylar looked, she knew there was a fiery passion that lied deep beneath her creamy skin. Aqua longed to exterminate that fire and it made her heart pound just thinking about it. One way or another, she would be hers.
    Aqua heard a rustling around in the brush around her and she pulled her side arm from her with light speed reflexes.
    “Don’t worry girly. It’s only us”, Adva emerged from the brush along with the rest.
    Aqua sighed with disappointment. She was hoping to fire off a couple of shots into someone as a quick warm-up, but even she knew that it was bad to kill a comrade.
    “So they’re just out there?”, Lucas asked.
    “Yessss sir. You can just seem them standing there. They’re talking about something, but I can’t make out the words.”
    Lucas looked through a pair of binoculars and recognized them all except one. The Passion, Damian. The Explosive Soul, Skylar. The Fire Breather, Anya. The Voice, Xephyr. The last one, the boy, was one that he didn’t recognize off the bat, but he didn’t seem to be too much of a threat. Regardless, he could not underestimate him. Countless life and death encounters reminded Lucas of what happened when you did something as foolish as that.
    Adva sat back against a tree and observed the rest of his team. They all seemed so jumpy and serious. He hated how much of a drag they were to be around. He lounged back and closed his eyes, ears perked for anything they said.
    “Ey, yo, Max, wake me when we’re movin’ on out. I think I’m gonna take a nap. I’m already bored to death of this mission.”
    Max let out a breath akin to that of a sigh in response, but neither thought anything of it. It was nothing new. He instead started to do the opposite and stay active. Max stretched his body, trying to keep limber with various calf, quad, shoulder and hamstring stretches. The last thing he wanted to do was pull something during a mission.
    “What about you Cylvia? You sleepin’ over there? You’re awfully quiet”, Max teased his female teammate.
    She raised an eyebrow and just rolled her eyes. Max returned with a playful smile, but Cylvia just remained indifferent. She just wanted to get the mission over with and as far away from Aqua as she could whenever she got the chance.
    Cylvia never took her eyes off of Aqua. She was dangerous like a nuclear armament. She was liable to go off should you handle her wrong and Cylvia refused to be on the other side of any weapon Aqua handled.
    Her bloody lips disgusted her. They were scars all along the top and bottom lips from countless times when she would chew on them; the blood thirsty monster. Cylvia gripped the hilt of her sword ready for any kind of counter attack. Aqua had a limited sanity, and knew that at any moment she could snap. She would be ready.
    Max could easily see the look in Cylvia’s eyes and didn’t like it. She always got like that around Aqua. Yin and Yang they were, and it was constantly unsettling.
    “Don’t be like that Cylvia. She’s up in her tree keeping her eye on the Rogues. Just try and relax. You may be the youngest out of us all, but I swear you’re the most high strung”, Max threw his arm around her and gave her a slight squeeze.
    “Yosh, I quite agree”, Hanabi said positively.
    While she did concur with Max, Hanabi was still just as wary about Aqua as Cylvia was. She leaned back against another tree and made sure to keep everyone in her sight, observing all of them, but always keeping a particular eye on Aqua and Adva.
    To her, they were the two unknown variables of the group. Lucas was a constant leader. Although sometimes he did things she did not agree with, he did have her respect. Max was a great friend to just about everyone, there was not a sense of unease anywhere with him. Cylvia was completely serious, however, she was completely committed to doing what she had to do. She was loyal to duty.
    If anything, Aqua was more predictable than Adva, at least in her eyes. Her first priority would be to get a kill at some point or another. There were even noted times of her killing ‘suspicious’ civilians. Nobody could prove it, but everyone knew the truth.
    Adva on the other hand was unreadable. He lacked any kind of negative emotion. He was always claimed to be ‘dying’ of boredom, but other than fighting, he never really displayed any notion of ever having any other fun. He was a slacker and had untapped potential, she had no idea where his limits were.
    Aqua felt her body start to quake a bit. They tremors were coming. She knew that once she got to a certain point, her body would start to face ‘withdraws’. It only happened however when tempted with the fact that she had a target in her sights but could not fire off the trigger. She was getting very impatient, but still tried to maintain her steadiness so she could properly aim.
    “C’mon Sir. I want to shoot them. Please? Pretty please? Just a couple rounds! This isn’t fair! Just think of the bloody mess! Can we just say that it was an accident? You’re killin’ me here!”, Aqua whined.
    “No. In fact…”, Lucas kept a steady observation over the Rogues and saw them start to walk towards the Catacombs, “I’m having you stay here. You’re going to keep an eye on the entrance. Should they somehow get wise to us and try to flee, you’re going to pick them off.”
    “Whaaaaaaaaat? But Lucaaaaaaaaaaas”, as murderous as she was, her whining was just like a little girls cry and it annoyed him to no end.
    “No, and that is final. As for the rest of you. It’s time to move out.”
    Adva got up first and almost leapt up, but sluggishly walked forward after that. Hanabi walked forward with confidence. Max followed suit along the other two. Cylvia however stopped.
    “I know the kindsss of looks you give me, brat.”, Aqua spat at Cylvia with Malice.
    “So judgmental on what I do when all I’m doing is enjoying my job. You’d do best to at least smile once in awhile…”, Aqua was toying with her now. She was a cute girl, but her seriousness and those looks really got on her nerves. Aqua wished she could somehow break her.
    “You know…You’re not so different than me”, Cylvia sharpened her eyes in response, “you kill with such…elegance. It truly is a shame you don’t like this more.”
    Aqua sauntered over. The look in Cylvia’s eyes annoyed her to no end. She wished to make those lifeless. Or at least make her passionate towards death, blood, and most of all, herself. She put an arm around Cylvia and in the next instant had a sword at her throat.
    Cylvia could not stand the very touch of her greasy hands. Her clammy, sweaty palms. Her very aura was disgusting and filled with death. Cylvia wanted to purge her.
    “You’re quite hostile arncha? Do it. Kill me. You’d be no better than me.”, Aqua egged her on, hoping she’d do it. Breaking Cylvia would bring such joy and happiness to her that death would be a sweet treat.
    Instead, Cylvia just shook her head, sheathed her sword back into her cloak, and walked towards the rest of the group.
    A destructive smile spread wide over Aqua’s face. Her body started shaking in such a pleasurable way. Aqua knew, that by the end of the day, she’d be bathing in blood. And that made her heart pound.

2 comments:

  1. Hmm not bad. Its a bit hard to read though, maybe add a bit more space?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have a crush on Aqua....just sayin'

    ReplyDelete