Just Call us Squad Expendable

So much to say… huh. That was weird. Déjà Vu.

… Moving right along though, I should start from the beginning.
So as Fracture had already explained, Picasso broke into our house by way of car. To be perfectly honest I was proud of her. She got really good at this while we were apart. She could still use some work but she’s come a long way from the crying girl who refused to kill.

Moving right along, again, she took a stray shot from Fracture and booked it firing off a few shots and I grabbed the effects I figured I would need and went through the window after her. I chased her for a good few hours in the shadows until she was sure she had lost me. She stopped for a breather right in the middle of the alleyway. Now was my chance to strike while she was tired and distracted. I crept down the fire escape above her as silently as I could and got up on the railing ready above her ready to pounce and drew out Fracture’s shovel.

I figure if she’s going to act like me then I could probably calm her tits the same way Fracture managed to calm mine, with blunt force trauma and screaming. It was difficult though. I hovered over for what felt like hours fighting off the fog. I knew if the fog won and I blacked out I would wake up to find her dead. One hand held the shovel; the other one held a knife and was frantically cutting into me in an effort to make sure I stayed in control for this. She deserved that much. I could suffer that much for her. The problem came when a few drops of blood found their way onto her. I knew I had to strike then.

I dropped down on her and clubbed her hard in the back of the head with the shovel before she had time to act. She screamed and went down limp on the floor. The fog was so thick, but fire shines bright in the darkness. I’ll spare you the gory details but I don’t think there was a single part of my skin that I didn’t piece at one point or another before the fog finally cleared and I knew Picasso was safe.

I worked fast after that to bind and gag her.  And then I sat down. I needed to give my skin time to recover. The wounds may close but it takes a good few hours before they stop ripping open at the slightest tug and as severely as I had laid into myself, the slightest movement had become enough to ripped them open again. After a hour I found I could move again.

I had stolen Fracture’s phone when I left. I used it to check the blog and found out where he had moved to. I pulled Picasso onto my shoulder, which hurt like fuck, and took off before it got any brighter out. I found my way to the hotel to find Fracture sitting on his car out front holding a sign that read ‘Picasso’.

“Took you long enough to get back with her,” he said opening his trunk. “Put her in and I’ll take her to her sentencing.”

“How did you know?” I said dumping her in. After reading what he said I was surprised to find him expecting. He even had all the medical tools he needed for a concussion on hand to treat her.

“I knew if I told everyone you were going to kill her you wouldn’t. You would find a way to prove me wrong because that’s who you are. You’re a fighter. In regards for being ready for a concussion, you left with the shovel. Wasn’t hard to figure out,” he said sewing up her scalp and putting ice on her head.

“Why didn’t you just say I took the shovel if you knew?” I asked.

“Because I’m a sucker for theatrics and this made for a far more interesting reveal,” he grinned… that nasty, knowing grin. “So have you figured out this ‘non-lethal’ thing yet?”

“Yeah, it’s still a process but I think it’ll only get easier from here. Are there more trials ahead after this? Are there more endless torments based on my own short comings to face?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“I’m being completely serious Duckie. There is a storm brewing and the bureaucracy needs its collectors now more than ever.”

“What happened?”

“Redlight happened. People are panicking, work isn’t getting done, and the quota still stands. In times of crisis, the collectors have to pick up the slack but most of them are dead and no one is stepping up to take up their mantles. Steps are being taken to train new ones but we need results now. You’re going to be leading a troop of temporary collectors and square the numbers we need away.”

“I hope these people are expendable. I have a bad track record with teammates.”

“All of them, excluding myself, will be people you hand trained over the course of your career.”

“… I haven’t trained anyone.”

And then he grinned that fucking grin and left with Picasso. I cracked the back window of his car with a fucking rock.

Now that I think about it, this is another fucking trial. The high death rate of my teammates is a fucking short coming. You can’t trick me you assholes. Crisis or no crisis, I know this is just another step in your stupid little game with me.

Fuck you all,
Swan out.

A Little Something Special

“There is no such thing as a normal proxy. He picked each and every one of us for a reason.”

            - Mentor Turner

This is what one of my trainers told us after showing us something special. Something I’ve yet to see repeated in all my years in service. We were to understand that some of would be special and some of us were talented. But for whatever reason, even if it was just to die, we were picked and because of it we were special.

For a long time, I was just talented. I would hope so at least. I mean I haven’t died or… oh yeah.

Hmm… rambling.
Anyways, I’ve developed an anomaly of my own and to my great misfortune Fracture found out about it.

See, we were driving down the street and Fracture was being extra bitchy. He insisted he couldn’t take driving any longer and I was going to have to take a shift. After much protesting, and after slugging him several times, I finally gave in. Now it’s not that I’m a bad driver or anything but apparently I was going too fast to make a turn and we skid right off the road and hit a tree. My left window shattered and the shrapnel of glass cut me up pretty bad. I got out of the wreck to find Fracture literally unscathed standing at the top of the hill. He apparently dove out of car. From there we were towed in by ‘friends’.

When we got to our motel room, Fracture set to work on removing the glass from my skin. That’s when he noticed something was off. Half of my cuts had closed and the skin around the extruding pieces had sealed around the glass. It didn’t take him long to figure out what was up. God, that glare of his is absolutely piercing. He was very insistent, against my own protests, that I report this in so here it is. I have a regenerative epidermis.

But it’s literally just the epidermis. Everything else has to heal naturally but my epidermis seals right up after a good minute. That may sound cool but its applications are few. I won’t bleed for very long, I don’t have to worry about infections, and much to my own miss fortune I won’t scar anymore. This ‘gift’, as Fracture calls it, is apparently why I my face isn’t fucked up anymore and is likely the cause of all my scars going away.

Fracture spent all day today testing out its limits. Cutting, frying me, burning me, and I think he stuck my finger in acid at the end. That was where I had to draw the line. I tried to keep myself mannered for his stupid little tests but he got punched in the face for that one, a few times. I didn’t bother to count how many it took me to finally stop.

I have no illusions about this. This is not a gift. This is another punishment. I mean really think about this. My anomaly grants me the unique opportunity to be cut over and over again in the same spot. And it’s not like it stops hurting after the first cut. That shit hurts each and every time it gets sliced. That I won’t bleed out on the floor only serves to prolong the length at which some asshole can sit there and flay me until I finally bleed out internally.

But I suppose I’m not being punished if I keep this in the dark so whatever.
Bring it assholes.