Squad Member 3 - Firecrackers in the... Fog?

It’s so foggy… I don’t understand… am I killing someone right now?
I should be covered in blood if I was…
Why am I…?

…

Firecracker… I’m supposed to be talking about Firecracker.

La, la la… FOCUS.

… la la, la la, la la la, la, lala, la la.

She’s my new squad mate. She is not new though… although she stopped… trying to kill me. She’s still so angry though. Her furious grimace when she looks at me… is piercing.

Blah, blah, blah. Fucking spit it out already. It’s Picasso. Fracture showed up with her earlier at… some point? She said she forgives me… I was afraid she had lost her fire.  I said… something, and she punched me so I’m pretty sure she still has it. To keep tradition with Fracture, I renamed her Firecracker after… that cold angry bitch. Fitting…

I should explain why she glued pieces of her mask to her face when she was hunting me…
It’s a practice the Maskless had instead of wearing masks… there was all kinds of symbolism and rules and other stupid shit to it. They could tell… if you were really one of them based on how the pieces were attached… Even told them your job and purpose and shit…. So she did that to try to piss me off. Guess that’s my fault for telling her about them before the incident with her brother…Fucking words… ruining faces…

It looks good on her I guess… scary… kind of… maybe…?

She punched me again this morning…

“YoU LooK like sHit,” she said.
“Fuck you too.”

And then she punched me. I don’t know that I deserved that one…? Maybe I said it wrong?

Never got along with the last Firecracker either…
I can remember us fighting. I was so much shorter then… right?

...

“Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked. Her tone was different. I thought she had something serious to talk about.

“Uh,… sure I guess?” I said from behind my mask. I was still ugly then. My face… so torn. I had to wear my mask at all times. Felt cold without it… I followed her out into the hallway.

She thought for a few seconds and rubbed her arms. It looked like something was wrong. “I was just thinking… could we go out? I’ll even let you do that thing you do with marking masks if you promise not to ruin it.”

I had to study her for a minute… she was so pretty… but I knew better. People are ugly. “You're fucking with me, aren't you?”

She stopped for a minute… that piercing scowl… “Of course I am. Who could ever like your fugly ass Mr. Ugly fuck.”

That was really my fault for thinking… she had something important to say to me…

And it was really her own fault she fell down the stairs. I mean, who is stupid enough to pull that kind of shit in front of a stairway…? Just took one quick push…

She wasn't nearly as pretty with that gash on her face… although it left a pretty scar later… cold bitch…

...

WHY THE FUCK IS IT SO FOGGY!!

I need to lie down… sleep it out. Fog is a disadvantage… can’t see them coming…

Mr. Fugly Fuck out… or something…

Hurt and Betrayal

So this was interesting.

After much time spent waiting around, reading, and commenting I was finally approached by my would-be executioner. I figured they would try to cheat me out of the kind of death I would have wanted but for some reason I didn’t think they would go this far. They sent something they knew very well I would not personally kill. I would not be sharing this now were more of you following me so here’s a special treat for you seven remaining readers. They sent a child.
And I do mean a child. The poor thing couldn’t have been older than eight. The mask they gave him didn’t quite fit right. He must have adjusted it four times in the minute I sat there staring at him. The knife they gave him must have been too heavy for him because he was holding it in both hands. Perhaps the most disappointing thing was how he was shaking like a scared cat. I figure I must have been intended to be his first kill.

I suppose there could have been some beauty in that death. I must have looked like he did then when I made my first kill. It certainly had a full circle kind of feel to it and while I wasn’t really satisfied with it, who is when they die? At least that’s what I told myself to reassure myself of my desire to see out my sentencing. So I stood up ready to let the kid have at me. I might have even instructed him on how to do it properly if it had came up but we were interrupted.
When I stood the kid panicked. He must have thought I was going to try to hurt him. He stumbled back into a second masked figure as it came through the door. This one was a man. He grabbed the kid and in one swift calculated motion slit the poor things throat. The poor little shit made a bunch of desperate gargled noises and crumpled to the ground. When he hit the ground his mask finally came off. He had this haunting look of pain and betrayal in his eyes. A part of me wanted to try to catch the kid and cradle him off into the darkness… and the rest of me had stiffened in an effort not to vomit.

 I stared at this second person for a few seconds trying to understand.
Was he actually to be my executioner?
Was this an effort to fire me up for the death I had requested in a way I would not have wanted?
And then I recognized that soulless stare in his eyes. I knew this man. This was yet another person I could not kill. This one was not a secret though. I actually liked this man. At one point in time, he was my handler.
He’s a cold man who nearly never speaks but that’s what made him so appealing. I never had to talk to him, argue with him, or deal with his shit. There was only ever silence. There was only ever silence and the mission.

“So what is this?” I asked him. “Come to see me off?”
He just stared at me. So I stared back. We did this for a good little while before he pulled out a knife and a mask. They looked like my old ones. They had all the same curves and markings. The mask even had the same crack in it. And then I understood. Or so I thought I did. I thought he was disobeying orders to try to help me.

“But the-” I started. I started but was made to stop. He put a finger up in a shushing gesture. Then he pointed to my waist. I looked down and saw two long stretched arms around me, the 'arms' of the master. I turned as fast as I could but in the moment he was out of my sight he disappeared on me. Not that it mattered really. His brief appearance made handlers point. He was here on behalf of the master, not for me. But that suited me just fine.
I turned back to handler. I still had questions. I had so many things I wanted to know about these last few days.
“Why am I still alive?” I asked.
“Why was I not allowed to kill that runner?” I demanded.
 “During what cold day in hell did the master start forgiving anyone for anything?”  I yelled getting more and more desperate with each question I asked.
And then I remembered who I was trying to talk to, a fucking mute.

And I fell silent again. There were no answers or explanations… only silence. For the first time in a long time, that just wasn’t enough.
He must have grown impatient with me while I was muddling around in my thoughts because he forced the knife and the mask in my hands. And then he spoke. He spoke and for that moment that’s all there was. The world went black and his one word drowned my mind putting all my concerns to rest. When I finally came back to earth I knew his word and it was the only answer I needed.
He said, “Proxy.”
I am a proxy and that’s all I need to know. I serve the master and there is only the mission.
Then he nodded at me and I nodded back to assure him that I understood. And then he left.

My mind was racing. Flying at 100 miles an hour at all the terrible things I was going to do for the master. I started for the door. I was too eager to wait and wanted to start practicing on the people outside.
I tripped and all my thoughts came crashing back to earth. I had tripped over the kid and I was reminded of the gravity of those terrible things. His haunting eyes… they reminded me of what it really meant to be a proxy. He reminded me that proxies are monsters only capable of hurt and betrayal. He reminded me that people in general were monsters like that. He reminded me that I was a monster like that.

He reminded me of so many things that would have been better off forgotten. That cowardly little shit took away my peace and left me with my confusion and my rage.
… But the more I thought about it the more I realized that was something I needed to thank him for. Things just would have been so much easier the other way.




So I buried him out in the woods. I made his mask his tombstone and I came back and wrote this. I wrote this in his memory as a thank you. It feels wordy but there really aren’t enough words you can put to an honest thank you so these will just have to be enough.
Here’s a little summary for those struggling with the underlying message: Thanks you little shit head.
I’ll keep in touch but I have a life of hurt and betrayal to readjust to.
Not that most of you seven care.