Story Stopper

Part IV: Lost but not forgotten

It's always in times when I am most surrounded by people that I get lost in the fray between the two worlds. To people around me, I look as if I'm simply lost in deep thought but my Soul actually becomes disembodied from its host and floats in the great vacuum between the here and the beyond. I feel my great wings stretch the crevace and glide while others can only fall.

Deviel exists here since she chooses not to take corporeal form and often times I have met her here in between the death of wives and children. I meet her here after my body's death and my waiting for a new form to inhabit.

Once she asked me why I didn't just stay there.

"You are immortal, my Grim," she said, "what's the point of experimenting with humanity? It's almost cruel and masochistic to put yourself through that and then tell others that there's a point to letting go."

"You of all creatures under god should understand my choice, oh Promethius of the people: one cannot understand the value of life and what they have to surrender without first becoming a part of what they are."

"You are wise to think so, my eternal," she said, "but you forget that a reapers job is not to die but to live forever in the pursuit of ferrying people to the beyond. How does it make any difference in your thought pattern if you know that you will never go through the specific process in which your essential function is involved?"

In this moment, I happened to be out at a late night blues bar and I ended our conversation with a snap back to reality. She had a point and it drove me crazy to think about it. Was there really no point to corporeal life as a reaper? Was my existence simply to preform my function and not to diversify?

Human life was so filled with meaning and future but time was boring when it was no longer linear. Existence meant days with no sunset. Deviel made her peace with her non-linnear time because she devoted herself to function. Were it not for her messianic qualities, it was a miracle god did not make her the grim.

I believe that it was in the year 1 AD, however, that I understood how this cycle of death and living amongst human beings was critical to my being the grim. I never realized in 10,000 years that god put so much emphasis on the meaning of being human until the Christ child came along. In the days before him, heaven and earth were separate entities. God was loving but he was to be feared first and foremost. What was interesting to me, also, and what I had not realized in my inception was that none of my protégé were able to recorporealize as I could until 1 AD.

As they were, those reapers I had assigned the task were lost and forgotten to the world but my accomplishments in all my incarnations as a human were always there and remembered. A higher angel once told me how blessed I was for being given that gift. Of course, there were exceptions: I could not talk about the beyond to human beings, but I was able to accomplish so much from all the life I lead in multiple forms.

In this way, Deviel was wrong. I may have been lost as a reaper, never to put meaning towards any one of my many human lives but each one of my existences meant something for a future of humanity that I helped to contribute towards. In this way, I became a better Grim and told her of my learning as we both grew together.

Story Stopper

Part III: Pure Soul

In the time of non-acceptance of death, there's a window to recruit a reaper before they turn into a spirit orb that must be ferried to Heaven or hell; in times like this there's the possibility to talk to the individual before acceptance takes effect and they become that orb of light that goes to heaven or hell however the order may come down.

I use these periods as recruitment tools. A lot of souls need reaping and ferrying so it's in these moments that I have to put on my HR hat and hire new reapers.  I may be the grim but there's a lot of work to do and I have to keep the gears in the machine oiled.  That's mid level management for you in a nutshell.  My job is more enjoyable though because being a reaper, one gets to be human and angel simultaneously until the job calls and I must go back and forth.

I remember in 5,000 BCE meeting a human soul with the tenacity to be what I was who also had the love and strength to become more Devin or Deviel was to become a reaper with powers beyond my own. Some might have considered her powers unholy because they did not stem from god but rather from the power of his creation and from a supreme connection with nature. Had I reaped her, she would have gone to the deepest depths of hell along with witches, however, the beauty of her spirit was loved by god and by me and for it, she became the second reaper and the first reaper to fight for the human spirit.

One might say she was the basis for the story of promethius but she fought for a second chance to reach gods light instead of the physical and superficial gift of fire.

Contrary to popular belief, Angels are all male or at least as masculine an entity as feeble human minds can percirve. I only ascended to an angelic class because I was the first of my kind and the Grim. Souls are sexless. They give up that distinction when they become those orbs of spiritual light.

I get to hier my own team, however, and they are neither angel or demon but rather (to put it simply) ambassadors to heaven or hell on the earthly plane. These days, I only work on high profile cases.

The reason I make this distinction is because Deviel and I shared sex and love outside of my angelic duties and her duties as a reaper for milenia. In that time, I sired many children with different wives over the milenia and I know it hurt her to see me loving someone else but I came back to her when all was said and done and the wives and kids, simply died.

Love is part emotion, part practicality and part adoration and although I would tell my wives I loved them in the moment that was 100 years, over milenia, there was only Deviel. That sultry seductress who could show gods light through the light of his creation at her fingertips.

As the light fades and I wait weeks, to months, to years for a client, my reapers work busily and she shines in the eyes of both god and the devil as they fight for her retirement.

Story Stopper

Part II: For love of death

Death, like most things, is poetry.  It's romance.  There's a spell at the beginning where there's distrust, denial and smitten flirting with the idea but there is always the inevitable surrender.  Within these moments, there's such a beautiful swoon.  A loving embrace between a reaper and the client who will not admit his or her own death. Like a child, they can be held with assurance of sweet release as they regail you with all the things in their life that they'll miss or all the things in their life that they'd never get to do were they to admit death or in the actual words they mean to say, "defeat."

The client is the most fragile because what's up ahead for them is unknown to even me but what's behind is what they cling to because it represents a clear world that they can understand. I both pity them, envy them and at times hate them because of how they may feel conflicted at the beginning, but those who go to heaven will know such warmth for eternity.

As an angel and one of His first creations, I get to reap the benefits of knowing gods love but always being at an arms length because of the hierchy of heaven. Just like some sort of nightmare creature, however, I chose this route and would be remiss were I to deny that this power weren't spectacular on its own. The only problem is finding things to do with eternity.

The reaping of a soul is like sex because for a short period of time, a reaper must take the soul within him to carry it to heaven because souls have no wings as we do. Those that are dropped become lost souls and can be very nasty to reclaim so it's easier to simply carry a soul within our own and bring it to wherever it has to go.

Going to heaven is easier than going to hell. A good soul has a warmth to it and is at rest with god even before they go to dwell in his garden but an evil soul going to hell will try very hard to claw its way through you and get out. Honestly, it's worse than bad indigestion.

Being that j am the Grim, j get only large and important clients. This makes it worse on my when I try to ferry them. As I said, those going to heaven are only hard because their warmth is enough to make you weep but those going to hell must be trapped or tricked or worse: dragged.

Do not let the new testament of Jesus Christ fool you, God is still by all standards wrathful, only on a different plane of existence. I have seen good men dragged to hell for not accepting his word and evil men in heaven who played for the right team in heaven. Either way, their humanity is gone once they become a spirit and they dwell in the rapture of a beautiful dream.

Story Stopper

Part I: Dead End Job

It starts back some time ago, in the BCE. One is born, one commits to the idea of miracles, hinting at a higher power, and before we know it, we have a sharp object in our sides and we're being given a choice by, what can only be described as an angel: "you are one of the earliest members of an elite group: true believers. It is due to your faith and love that we offer you a job in the afterlife. A chance to live again and even choose others to aid you in your task: to reap souls and ferry them to the life here after."

So here was the chance to be alive again and walk amongst human beings forever with no pain and no consequences of mortality. With it, however, I may carry the burdens of death and the emotions I have in forever. I said yes.

Reaping like most nine to fives is only a job and one that becomes less and less burdensome with time and help. My department started off as only me. I was given the job by an angel who served as death until he thought up the idea of reapers. I became what they referred to as an angel as one of the perks of the job but just because I had a pair of wings, didn't mean I was at the same power and level as the three headed, thousands of beating wings seraph who gave me the job; I was simply an angel. That is: not Seraphym, Cherubym or Ophanym, not even Arch Angel, just head of a department, plain old Dolphiel or Dolph as I would be known across the milenia.

The last name would change of course: Dolph Gastón, Dolph Siskel, Dolph Waters, Dolph DePaolo, etc. but it was always Dolph. The angels up the food chain have the power to alter reality so it really wasn't much of a thing that every hundred years or so, human beings would perceive that I had died. Death was easy, of course; the putrid stench, the release of a body to inhabit another. My reapers saw me for what I really looked like but to human beings, my visage would change every hundred years or so.

Death was the only downside to living forever but unless I wanted to be incorporeal, it was necessary. I could exist either way but to interact physically with the living, I needed a body. I really didn't need one after the first 5000 years or so, (due to a rapidly expanding department) but I really enjoy the basest of instincts like sex, sports and occasionally drugs and drinking. I could absorb knowledge about humans effortlessly as a perk of my promotion to angel but the physical destructiveness of man was reserved for those in his corporeal prison.

Watching humanity evolve, build itself up and fall down trillions of times was truly awe inspiring at first but eternity is a long time and over this time, we must find ways to occupy our time, but that's what this story is all about. Why else would you want to hear the tale of one who ends the story over and over?

When the drug war almost ended...

Peter pope sat on a park bench smoking a Marlboro Red and mutely awaiting his mark. The birds chirped in the twilight hour and the last leaf fell from a sycamore. From across the pond, he saw the sprawling city of Washington D.C. gripping onto the farce of democracy and gripping the silenced Beretta in his coat, he pulled back the shirt cover as a silhouette approached him through the afternoon fog.

Sitting down next to him, the mark spoke, "nice day for a lager, huh?"

"Es demasiado tranquilo para una fiesta,"he replied.

The mark pulled out a thick file from an attaché case and said, "I'm tired of politics, maybe this will help our countries finally make peace in this senseless war."

Peter turned and said, "a friend greets his friends by the light of mid day."

With this, he pulled out the gun fired two slugs directly into the Security Chief's heart. The silencer made a whisper of the chaos as it put the benefactor into his immortal slumber and the man slumped over onto Pope's shoulder.

Peter took the cigarette from his mouth and put it between the lifeless body's lips as he laid him down on the bench, lifted his legs into a fetal position and put the man's hat over his eyes.

As he made his disappearing act, the cigarette went out and the birds chirped in the muted din of an afternoon fog.

Don't it always seem to go...

The evanescing beauty of dusk is never quite as enamoring as when you know it will be your last. As I sat on a tree stump at the edge of a newly culled field; in the void of the Pennsylvania back woods, I thought of the sterility I had accepted and called to my being.

For weeks, my apathy had been growing and, as some young men do, I had begun to think that nothing in life was worth having. Death seemed to be the plausible response but I had the tenacity to fight the dying of the light because that was what was expected of me in my frame of mind.

I had ploded through the woods countless nights with the apathetic scorn of existence and, as my feet were pricked by the roughness of nature and my eyes met the scampering of mindless little cogs of nature's device, I swooned in thoughts of being bested by some nefarious hooligan bent on the destruction of all in his path or the preservation of his own existence. I felt the warmth in my spine and all around me. I saw visions of my monster swinging a knife at me as I laughed and lunged at him, doing as much damage as I could while narrowly avoiding death. I wanted death to be thrust upon me and I wanted danger in it. I wanted death to meet me face to face like an old nemesis come to tell me we could finally be friends.

In the endless darkness of the clearing beyond a fallen oak and severeal large shrubbery; not to mention half a dozen hydrangia and bushes with various names that began with, "poison," I invoked the angel of death as I shreiked, "come and find me you wretched bitch!"

The forest was silent but it had an answer and just as I sat down on a tree stump, she appeared before me from the limbs above.

"I am by no means death, son, but I believe I can help you."

In my head, my mind went over my recent exploits with accelerated furvor: women who could not excite my phalice, drugs that seemed to induce more boredom than they created beauty, silence immeasurable in tasks innumerable! In that moment my mind felt the anxiety and seemed to throb as if a din shook all thoughts to death.

"I hear your pain, Joshua, and I am here to answer your prayer."

I was speechless and seemed to be unable to speak even if I wanted to as if some preternatural power had grabbed my larynx and refused to let it vibrate.

"I am Anthiel and some might call me a sprite, others call me the accursed but my favorite title is merciful death."

Her features were soft and her skin as pail as a new bride's gown. Her eyes, however; those demonic eyes were the only life in this creature that stood naked before me. Those eyes glowed green as the trees and occasionally flashed red as satin. The strangest quality about her was one that could only be felt in the pit of ones stomach, not really a stomach pain as fear is; that mortification was plastered in the near frozen beads of sweat on my neck, but my stomach felt butterflies. The anticipation one feels right before they jump from a clif into the waves below or the quarry that welcomed them with the rush of existence. She was fecund with the thrill of life while being somehow infrangibly tied to the finality of death.

"You are at a crossroads, child and you have found the den of a god. I can give you the death you seek. I could even let you remain a child until the real death takes you from this earth enfeabled and broken and old.  The third option is you can grow. You can become as strong as I am or even more so, if you can successfully battle the horror of time. The choice is yours..."

As I felt the grip on my speech weaken, I interrupted her, saying, "Yes! Yes. I want your immortality! I want your merciful death! Give me your hatred, VAMPYR!"

"I see you've heard of me and think you know what I am but you have no clue what you will endure in the existence of endless nights and endless dungeons of immortality.  You may even be hunted, you will be tried and tested, you will not feel the exhiliration of a heartbeat anymore and you will not experience excitement the same way. Do you know what you ask?"

"Yes, I..."

"Silence! sub-primal creature. You will have a day after the bite until the poison spreads and you will be the form you are now, permenantly. After that, you will hide from the light of day for that which cleanses will kill you: fire, sunlight and god will be your enemy until you meet them with open arms and open heart. I will tell you what he told me before he cut the wings from my back and cursed me to feed off the blood of mortals forever, he said, 'Anthiel! You deny my divine plan?'
'Father! I beg you not to give free will to likes of man while your angels suffer slavery to him!'
'Your will is my will!'
'My will is to serve a merciful god and man deserves the mercy of servitude over severance.'
'Then you shall see what it means to be man! And you shall be forced to make decisions over life and death and will as I do.'
From there, a heavenly host destroyed my wings and cast me down to earth with a hunger, I had not before felt. When first I drank of man's blood, my species propagated and has grown or killed from 8,000 BCE on."

"I understand the burden."

With my comment she became enraged. She floated into the air and her hair blew back as she shook the earth and moved the wind with divine fury.

"Oh do you now? Is your tie to god gone? Does he not hear your mortal prayer? Be as I am and suffer! Suffer the pain of immortality without light!"

With that she bit down into my neck like a poisonous serpent, coiling her evil around me like some dark shroud. The pain was so immeasurable I passed out and when I awoke, I sat on the same tree stump, at the edge of a culled field in Pennsylvania. The evanescing beauty of dusk is never quite as enamoring as when you know it will be your last.

Pain Case

Part XVI

There's no place to run; no place to hide. At this point, I am pretty sure I am not under his or her control but rather, the cycle has finally come full circle. Here I am and into pain I was born and so into pain I shall end this. It's funny. In all this world destruction, not once has anybody looking in wondered, well where are all the nukes?

It's been 18 months of darkness and the world is all but a shell. I got on that plane to Moscow and it was one bumpy fucking ride. So here I sit; in Moscow on top of the ruins of Ostankino Tower, which is half its height but I'll bet you've never been 270 meters in the air without shitting your pants. I have with me a lit папироса, and a half a bottle of Grey Goose. Hey! Only the best for the end of all mankind, right?

чертовски человека don't deserve to live anyway. I passed through my home town to receive my father the other day and you know what they told me? He was in hospital that burned to the ground with him in it. It really has come full circle but my family is now all dead and my enemy is everywhere. The ground that I walked was my enemy so I climbed this tower to dangle my feet off and show this revolving сука that I am no longer attached to her scorched демонический skin...

Oh sure! she no longer needs me because it didn't even take all that much convincing to get my countrymen to start looting and killing each other for petty squabbles but at least I hear that Russia wasn't the only one. As I begin to laugh to the demons that wait in anticipation to make this place новые Ад, I think to myself how quickly Jerusalem fell when the horde of the United States crushed itself, Europe Crushed itself and the rest of the world crumbled. I wonder if there were any diplomats who escaped? In any case, none of it matters because Israel, is finally under the control of the Muslims who so desired it and most of them are dead and the rest will be dead soon. The whole damn world is dead and this is some чертовски хорошая водка!

In my rage, it has only amplified the murder and slaughter and destruction. It's amplified it worldwide. I heard there were 600 American survivors. haha! Not anymore. The world will not heal itself in her special vision of her own rebirth.

All of a sudden, in my head, I begin to see soft things, like children happily playing and fruitful countryside and my mama.

"None of it will work on me you crazy сука!" I scream to the dwindling fires of my homeland.

I think of the raw destruction I am about to cause and she knows it and tries to stop me wit everything she can. At last, she gets armed guards to storm the rotted and beaten precipice I so enjoyed but I don't care one tiny little bit.

I jump! The ground moves quickly toward me and for the first time, I feel her trying to manipulate me but where am I to go? I am in midair so that she can move my body to no avail because I am free falling until the brutal and painful ground rises to meet me.

"That hurt a lot, you rotten Свинья шлюха!"

I felt her grip on my mind, body and soul dispersing. I felt my strength increased. The Asian was right. Death is empty but my resolve was not. I could not feel good or bad about what I was doing because in all senses of the word, I should be dead. What I could feel was her feelings trapped within me trying to manipulate me when it was too late.

If the American had been here, he would have so enjoyed watching me seek out the world's nuclear weapon potential and launch every one simultaneously. I knew our world leaders would be too куриного дерьма to actually accomplish the task so it was clear I had to do it myself.

Mitsurugi the pawn may have stopped a few of them but it really didn't matter. He was not the only dead one now and his power of death held persuasion and amplification through earthly forces but he could not control the electronic signals of that many nuclear warheads post launch. The key was the nervousness of the earth and as she shifted, she left herself vulnerable and caused such a wild spin in her pursuit of me that she shook herself free of her bonds. The nukes fell and it was glorious as the surface of the earth began to break apart and the fire consumed what was left. It quickly went out but by then, it was too late. With my last few moments of life before the vast abyss of space shut me down and sent me to the blackness of death, I watched as my planet drifted out of existence and into the peaceful sleep she so desired for the "инвазия" of man.

"Goodnight, sweet..."

Pain Case

Part XV

It always happens

one does not appreciate

until it's all gone

I feel her within me.  The ancient people might call her Gaea but she is like the answer to my prayers.  In my ecstasy I can even feel the sensations that can only be described in books with names like Revelations.  God is an idea that I never met but she fills me with such resolve that all the death on my blades seems like moments of sheer bliss.

Before I sent them to foreign corners of the world and continued my march all the way until I reached the shores of Japan, I heard the American and the Russian talk of nothing except the darkness of the world but she would only let me see white.  To me, I saw nothing but the world as it would be when the disease of the flesh was gone.

There were others that saw the light as well.  Several Oculars from the Middle East and even he from Israel saw it.  The harmony was beautiful that the Israeli and the Arab joined hands to slaughter the disease of humanity.  We were no longer Israeli, Arab and Japanese, we were Oculars who became the Elementals in charge of protecting the entire planet from mankind's destruction.  They could not be trusted to do the right thing and they had obtained far too many free passes.  Now, Lady vengeance came with mercy for her destroyers to kill before being killed.

Not one who died by my hand died slowly.  I heard in Europe and the Middle East, there was a spike of violent deaths but we the Oculai killed swiftly and with justice as executioners for the crimes of humanity.  All were guilty.  There was no savior for mankind that vindicated them of what they'd done.  They did not sin against god, they sinned against their own home.  They sinned against Gaea.

In the midst of this insanity, I had lost touch with the Russian and this did not bother me as I had accepted his manor of cleansing.  He was of the darkness and of the pain.  He was the pain case that fought against the light.  He was the devil and he had come to punish, as I had come to show mercy to those he would strike down brutally by offering a quick death.

It all was so beautiful, at the end.  The world had all been cleansed and it got very quiet.  I remember as I heard the last few souls dwindling to their graves and the fires beginning to get sucked into her womb to give birth to 高天原 on earth, that stupid Russian had to do something stupid.

The sky went red and the sun became black and I felt her pain and panic.  I saw the ground start to shake and she began to move her arms too quickly for us to survive on her back.  Mountains moved and the sky opened up as I watched the moon break orbit and hurl meteors at our mother.  The seas boiled and 144,000 scattered across the globe ran violently like a biblical herd of swine.  Those of us who became hurt or even killed rose up again and again too quickly as the nanites in them were too weak to handle such rapid changes.  I felt the Oculai die and my heart sank for each one.  I saw the nuclear warheads but I could not stop them.  Her pain and panic in me as well as Sergei's pain was too much for me to bear.

I saw us part as the we were snatched from her bosom and she split apart as we were hurled into the depth of space and heard from no more.  In my last moments, I write:

To bid life farewell
one greets death as a stranger
Always has he watched

Pain Case

Part XIV

[I am the will of mother earth.  I will do to her what must be done.]

What am I saying?  I've had moments like this for weeks where I go into a tangent in my head about...

[All human civilization must be destroyed so that nature can reclaim that which has been destroyed.]

There it goes again.  I know my mind is weak but at the very least my heart should be enough to stop the visions in my head.  My emotions get the best of me, though.  I hear a pain in my head that's much stronger than any mere mortal scream.  It's the moan of the earth as her surface has been polluted, raped and destroyed.  She calls through my mind and says she feels the cold of space creeping towards her soft loamy skin.  At the very least I no longer here the crazy Asian's voice in my head but I think I'd prefer it to this painful sorrow.  I can't...

[The weakest of minds is the most easy to manipulate.  An American mind is hedonistic and thinks only about its own will to survive.  This is why I am so easily able to have him purge me of the termites that eat away at me and give the bare minimum in return.  This is why even before my conduit awakened, governments were able to get away with murder because they did the bare minimum to satiate the masses.

"You have a job, a roof over your head and food.  You should be happy."

This is the way that millions are manipulated into allowing evil to flourish.

"It may not be the best way but do you have a alternative solution?"

No, they do not; so they allow themselves to be taken advantage of.  I am not so easy and I have been waiting for this moment for a long time.  My conduit Mitsurugi; My transmitter Sgt. Ronald Moore of the US military; and lastly, my juggernaut, my executioner, my martyr, willing to die for his cause, the Pain Case, Sergei Ivanovich.  Without these men, none of this annihilation would be possible but with these three at the head of my army, I am unstoppable.]

"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"  I scream out loud in a darkened house, the blood of at least 100 souls on my hands and clothes.  I feel such pain that can not  be quenched and because of it I fly into these rages as the messages like the one that just was run in my head like an infinite loop.  The only way to stop it would be a reboot but in our case, that would only bring us closer to the mother.  This is her pain, her vengeance, her retribution and as my country burns to the ground, I watch good men and women die in front of my eyes and some by my hands because I am no longer in control of my own self.

It's as if I'm being broadcast through and as I frantically search for some form of civilization, I can only watch the nothing through my own eyes; like a captain of a ship that is commanded by winds that blows it into enemy harbors, I can not retract my sails and am at the whim of the earth its self.

I've seen a couple of TV's that still worked but news stations from around the country and the world are all gone.  In 600 channels, that she gave me control long enough to look through, I found nothing but static on every one.  Even the South American networks are gone.  China, Japan, The Philippines, Europe, Africa, South and North America, Australia and the Middle East.

I saw an article two days ago of Jerusalem demolished.  I pray to God for my release from this prison but my mother will not surrender to my control except to search for hope in raw destruction.  That's it!  Hope.

She immediately knows my plan but I press through to search the TV channels of a local TV repair shop in San Francisco.  In my head, she shows me visions from around the world.  Even the most obscure places are destroyed.

Well, you got what you wanted, you evil bitch.  Humanity is all but gone in numbers and all that remains are the structures and civilization we left behind.  For a moment, I surrender; mind body and soul as she turns me from the shop and back to the work of slaughtering the left over human beings but I turn and throw myself into the window of the repair shop when her guard is down.

[His head separates from his body and his nanites and blood spill to the ground.  He lies in the rubble of what was once a street.  He passes into the nether as his body serves only to stop me from communicating with the 600 humans that are left who still walk the soil of the former United States of America.  This is the way you can escape me, children.  This is the way you can be free but which of the two of you wishes death?  Which of the two of you loves the world enough to sacrifice yourself to protect your newly earned pile of ashes?]

Pain Case

Part XIII

The days have gone by in a march that simply has no time or reason.  Mitzu-sama is now Mitsurugi the god!  With my supreme control, he is impossible to hack into and with his power of life after death, I wouldn't be able to hack him anyway.  We've been marching for 3 days straight, without sleep and those who die from exhaustion, he simply drops as his massive horde grows and he takes control of more people as we march and destroy all in our path.

I have a feeling that they've tried sending missiles our way, being that anyone who gets close to us gets enraptured, but missiles run on electronic guidance chips and Mitsurugi commands those too.  It is worse than the Gulag in the USSR.

The sky is always black like a dust storm that simply surrounds our march of destruction.  The only light is the fires that lap at the houses and skin of people who can't scream until they're already dead.  Mitsurugi gets greater power with each bit of destruction like he feeds off the chaos and violence.  Each pretty white picket fence that burns to the ground.  Each chaotic berserker that starts destroying their own house from the inside out, until the ones who aren't trapped in the wreckage, mangled and torn, join the march and start destroying other buildings from the outside in.

I have not seen the American since New York.  We have come to somewhere in Pennsylvania, I think, and I grow weary of watching Mitsurugi with no recourse.  At the very least, I am a bishop to their pawn.  Mitsurugi uses my speed and power to slaughter those who some how manage to resist.  The other day, I put my fist through a man, causing his heart to come leaping through his spine.  The American's tie with me is gone, his whimsical glee ripped from my soul like the jaws of life might remove a rib.  In all this, one might think I would have gotten my taste for torture back but what I saw in front of me now, disgusted me.  It was all me on this one.  This wasn't just torture, this was genocide of the human race.  In this moment, however, I realize what freedom is.

In Russia, I had freedom because I was a government built monster but that wasn't freedom.  Here, I had freedom because I made enough to keep my apartment and I had no boss.  That was freedom.  How many of these poor суки had a complete prison of a routine before they became the puppet of Mitsurugi?  How many of them missed the chance to live freely as I did before trading one prison for another?  The chances were missiles had been sent to Mitsurugi's location because I had glimmers in my head like waking nightmares of other places on earth burning.  In other places on earth I even saw those free men, women and children running through the streets bloodied, bruised, burning and dead.

In front of me, I learned pointless facts of life like how many pounds of pressure one needed to rip off a mans arm and beat him to death with it.

I look around me at the blackness and see people walking away as if they're free.  All of a sudden, I realize the numbers don't add up.  It's as if Mitsurugi's been letting people go but it's much more sinister than that.  In my head I do the math and watch a mental video that has been locked away until this moment.

[Hello Mr. Sergei,  My name is Hayao Mitsurugi and I am in command of your body and soul.  I thank you for your talents and abilities and thank your friend and the many others on earth for theirs.  Yes, there are others.  The first death gave me access to the full range of abilities that our mutual device controls but the second death... Well this gave me access to everything.  You can not imagine the way it feels to know each molecule and its genesis as they go on around you. you can not imagine the power to not only feel the heart beat of the world but the ability and desire to woo her as a lover.  Look at the blue house on the corner]

I looked towards the corner of the street and saw a blue house that looked almost purple in the orange fire of its mail box. As if I was watching lightening form inside of a cloud, I saw tiny blue sparks begin to form in the air and in an instant, a raw pillar of fire came billowing out of the earth like a tectonic plate had just, instantaneously, exploded out of the earth.  I felt the heat from where I was and fell to my knees in awe of his power.  He had managed to learn to communicate with nature its self and harness it's horrors.  From the looks of it.  Nature was невероятно сердит.

[I will destroy this world for her.  much of the globe burns already and through the ashes, she will rebuild.]

He ended his transmission but all of a sudden, I found myself marching towards a local airport to board a plane to Russia.

Now, I heard his voice in real time as if he spoke to me,
[I go with you everywhere.  I can find you anywhere on the planet for she and I are one.  We are all one.  Do not regret, when this is over, our kind will be all that remains and the scourge of humanity will cease to exist.  Go and cleanse your sins.  Kill those who did this to you and convert those who you will to the implant.  I will be with you always.  Good luck, my son.]

Pain Case

Part XII

The new sun rises

another day to ponder

the swift angel nears

Those who come to kill me are often boring to me because I can't be killed.  I can see assassins coming and I know my own kind like I have learned this new found respect for the word undead. In movies, a zombie was grotesque and not cognoscente of what he was or his world but I still recognize my world, I simply feel nothing for it.  I wish I could understand what feeling bored was but I feel no emotion at all.  I see tasks and I complete them.  I get very little joy out of anything save the slaughter of my enemies and even then, it's more of a remembered emotion than a granted one.

I am exhausted with this lifelessness and wish that all those years ago, I had accepted a partner to cut my head from my body so as to see my permanent death.  Death is all I want now and I await the person who can give it to me but nobody is powerful enough.  I had a German Oculous (The name I am now giving to our kind so as to know what to call them) shipped in for my final defeat but he was slain at the tip of my sword by having his head cut off.  An Indian Oculous had learned how to regenerate her head but somehow fell short when I cut her in half...

Some might call me evil but I am the culmination of pain.  Pain caused me to flee my country to build this army and as the soullessness withing me started to settle, everything began dwindling and disappearing forever.  Now, not even anger remains, only perfect resolve and the ability to see all electronic signals and people while calculating and listening to the heartbeat of mother earth.

I heard them from across town now as they boarded the train. They were rushing towards me with the intent to kill me and this time, I would let them.  It was my fate to end this way as it was my own hand that did it the first time, and now another with a Bowie knife intended to cut my through the heart and kill me the same way I had tried to do. Thank god for this angelic creature that would take me away from this life.

I had come full circle.  A man dies; he is reborn; soullessness takes its toll; his ruthlessness brings success; his ruthlessness brings empty success; soullessness takes its toll; he is reborn into emptiness; he awaits his death.  In my own way, I am what a recent letter called "a pain case."  It was from the two who come to see me now.  An American who must have thought he was quite cleaver thinking that it was great pain that caused me to be who I am.  If only they knew it was death and weariness.

They were close now, practically outside of my building and climbing the steps.  In my last moments, I knelt and with no passion, for I was dead, I said prayers to the Shinto deities that I might be granted a place by my ancestors once the living part of my soul was diseased.

The door burst open and a fire fight ensued.  My guards were not Oculai so they had no chance.  It was magnificent.  So much so that even though I did not change positions, I watched from an omnipotent stance as the two men ran up walls and dove from the ceiling, crushing and massacring my guards.  It was truly spectacular.  What a sight to see the progeny of the eye destroy like such vicious killers.

In fact, something stirred in me and I, all of a sudden began to feel great joy and delight at the deaths of my vicious body guards.  I felt it so strongly that before I knew it, I was bounding off the walls and slaughtering my own men and anyone I could find on my way down to meet my would-be assassins.  I hadn't felt this great since... I'd never felt this great.  I suppose I might have questioned it were I still afraid of death but I felt nothing other than this drive to go and meet them.

People were cut in half in front of me and my walls smeared with the blood of my mercenaries.  my swords took off like butterflies hacking people into bits as an arm flew towards a window and crashed right through it.  Like a late Goya painting, there were so many strokes of red and black and it all was simply 美しい!

Someone must have notified the police because I heard sirens below.  What fanfare!

As I neared the bottom floor,  I saw them with my own real eyes and I should have felt terror but I felt excitement and anticipation and all of a sudden I realized I was feeling what I expected them to feel: an anticipation of meeting me.  Before I knew it, however, the American was close to me and he stabbed for my gut.  Ha! What an 素人.  His aim was to stun me, to put me to sleep.  He wanted to capture me but I had feeling once more, if only for this moment and I grabbed his hand and shoved his knife into my heart.

As I lay bleeding incurably, I heard the two men speaking.

"Вы идиот! Даже мы не можем рисковать прямого ранения в сердце."

"I'm sorry! But I didn't do it, he moved so fast I could not help it."

The American hit me in the face and yelled, "What's the secret to unlocking our true potential?"

"Скажите нам информацию, прежде чем умереть!" said the Russian.

As I lay dying, I felt remorse for those I had killed and I felt fear for these boys knowing the truth.  They knew that I was an Oculous because of my weakened state but they could not even read my mind.  I would not curse them to what I had lived.

"私はあなたの魂、私の子供たちを救うために死ぬ。" I said as the blackness overtook me.

For a good while, there was nothing.  No time, no feeling, no dreams in this long, black sleep but they must have removed the knife because, like before, the nanites brought me back.

As I awoke, something had changed.  I was still without remorse as I had been before but as I stood, all those around me stood as well.  Like puppets, they seemed to mimic any emotion I had.

Emotion?  Could it be?  I had emotion again but they were my own.  My sense of keen training was back and I felt better than my days in Japan.  I saw the American and the Russian in front of me and could sense everything they felt and read their every thought.

I began to laugh in a loud maniacal roar and spoke, ""馬鹿！あなたは私にあなたの個人の能力を与えているように見えるが、私はまだ、これらよりもはるかに多くのです!"

I began to walk towards the door where the crowds and police awaited me.

"さあ！私の哀れ弱虫" I said.

[We obey.]

This was knew.  They spoke in my head.  Perhaps I could speak in theirs...

[We escape this country tonight and head to the far east]

[We obey]

As I looked out on the crowd, they all stood lifeless like they were in awe of a god.  I walked down into them and grabbed a megaphone as they all turned towards me and kept staring even as I climbed the stairs of my building to address them all.

With my head down and thinking of what I would tell the crowd, I finally thought of it and I looked up and out into them.

"従う!"

We go to the West

unto invasions Far East

my Japan is doomed.

Pain Case

Part XI

What have I gotten myself into.  This crazy Russian psychopath import has taken me into a new level of terrified.  I have dead hooker blood all over me and I have a sick feeling in my gut that I just killed an innocent human being.  It's not like I don't feel better than them because I am.  I can't die, I can't be wounded, I can't be feel the remorse the same way I did when I was human; the implant has changed me, that enough I know but this?  This was just nuts.

I can understand that his intentions were good but god if I'm not glad that his dumb ass is asleep on the floor in a puddle of blood right now.  He's like a little kid burning bugs under a magnifying glass.  These human beings are beneath us and we were created as their weapons but that doesn't meant that we need to forget the bottom line of who we are.

I think of her, who was not 30 minutes ago a beautiful, naked and perfect creature and he sits alone with thoughts of vengeance, torture and so much anger.  I dig into his head which is easier with the neural link we have, plus the fact that he's sleeping and see such horrible things.  I don't think he knows that if one of us is awake, he can see the sleeping one's dreams.  Hell, I didn't know it until a few nights ago.  Sergei had nightmares unlike anyone I had known.  In my head, all I could think in words was, "you poor, broken bastard..."  The guy had seem some seriously twisted stuff.

There were pimps, raping their whores and then sending them out bloodied to get raped by a john.  There were people, half dead from starvation dying in front of him.  I saw dead bodies being heaped up on trucks and people walking by as if no one had the time to care for those who'd passed.  The world moved so fast in his head and my heart sank time and time again from these retching images.  I threw up a couple of times but by the end of it, I could almost see him like a dog that's been beaten and frightened into a corner.

Over all?  This made me stronger.  The things that I had been learning about him in his slumber were far more dehumanizing than this failed experiment tonight could have ever been but I had no idea what was happening until it was too late.  He was born brilliant and I was not.  He was right about the nature of my country that it never thinks before it acts or questions what the fallout of the decisions happening around us might be.  Oh sure! There were those rich, spoiled assholes who followed all this hooey but how about the guy from the Midwest who goes to Alaska for BT because he wants to leave his state for the first time ever?  There's millions of us who don't have the time to care about the world around us and I suppose some might see us as naive and stupid but we are trusting, hardworking Americans who believe that loving your fellow man and a decent living is important.

I don't blame my friend for his violent and twisted nature; I blame the fact that he grew up without a single loving and/or nurturing influence in his life.  It's like all he's ever known is pain.  I chuckle just to think of it but I can't really call him a head case because his head hasn't been his own for, it seems like quite some time.  He's a pain case because that's all he knows and understands.  He knows how to hurt and be hurt and expects nothing else of the world and I imagine my pushing empathy onto him scared the living daylights out of the boy.

I've heard his thoughts and I know how he thinks of me though.  It's funny because even though we both think of each other as children, we're both more cognoscente than the other knows.  I think I probably surpassed his abilities about a week ago.  We were training and I deviated from his lessons and started to simply think like me.  Individuality gave me power over my device and that gave me such strength.  I think control gives him power over his but he doesn't realize it yet; or maybe he does.  I don't know, as I said, I get glimmers into his head when he's distracted and perhaps he get glimmers into mine more often than I care to postulate.

In any case, I will wait out the night for him to wake up but at first light, I'm gone.  I know where this Yakuza is and I'm going after him.  The plan is that we'll kidnap him for the answers that we want to know.  I will have no problem torturing him because our kind doesn't deserve to exist.  This much power is too much for a man and both of us, at least in our hearts, will always be men.

Pain Case

Part X

So here I am; I've come full circle.  A man is born; he learns by playing with close comrades; he loses everything; he sees the horrible things the world does to people; he becomes part of it; he leaves it all; he sees the horrible things the world does to a person; he loses everything; he learns by playing with a close comrade and waits to die.

In honesty, I do not wish to die.  With my implant I can live forever and I would like to do that if I can.  In  Russia, we are taught by our mothers to fight against all adversaries.  My mother told me that if any foe ever becomes stronger than me, fight harder and win.  Death is no different

I feel the prospect of death is most frightening to me and others like me however because of the fear of the nothingness.  It's not like a long sleep, it's simply nothing.  I can torture and kill others without batting an eyelash and I think most of the reason why I am so good at what I do is because I control death.  My American friend seems to think nothing of it.  I think his whimsical aloofness has actually softened me and that terrifies me because what if, in my own aloofness,  I can no longer control this cold, dark and empty mistress?  I suppose I am more afraid of losing everything I am and have built in my own character than even death its self.  My mother used to speak with me of heaven.

The streets and even the countryside were harsh and some winter nights, it got so bitterly cold that death was a real nemesis that we saw in the ghettos every day.  A poor man turned blue as he sat there with a bottle of some unknown liquor was more frightening to me than the gang that killed my entire family.  Pathetic human beings in their infinite squabble over whose ego was bigger was but a pitfall trap in the desert.  I did not even worry about a fight or even being shot anymore but the prospect of a way for these nanites to fail; the horror of the black void where I did not breath, did not taste шашлы́к with pleasure anymore; that I might not have the memory of the small farm house outside of town where I played as a kid to hide the memories of the horrors I'd seen and done; this frightened me.

I looked on the human race with contempt.  Torture had become easy for me over the years and when I had first met the American, the prospect of torturing him to test the capacity of our kind's device had even been quite tempting, however, the thought of any of this happening to me had not once crossed my mind.  Human beings were lest than me now.  Being mortal and changing, had actually made them easier to torture because it was like stepping on a bug: we were simply no longer on the same level.

It hadn't occurred to me that I could be less than equal with anyone, even those with a device, until I had run into Mitzu-sama.  The American and myself had been discussing ways to infiltrate his operation without him knowing but had fallen short since we didn't know if he was one of us for sure and if he was, we had no idea as to the limits of his capabilities.

"Он мог быть слушать то, что мы говорим о, даже прямо сейчас ..." The American said.

I laughed at the thought and told him, "Боже упаси, товарищ".

I had been, what's the word... проволочки... to give the American his final exam before he went up against Mitzu-sama.  There was no easy way of testing him against a foe that gave me the complete evil feeling without seeing if he could first, at the very least, separate himself enough to torture another human being.  Not only that but someone innocent because an enemy is easy to justify with reasoning behind it but an innocent?  That puts you on the level of calculated evil that I sincerely believe Mitzu-sama possessed.

The night had come and I had picked out the perfect candidate.  In my early life, I had saved the life of an innocent whore, who more than likely did the job only to take care of her family, as many poor women in my city did, only to kill her seconds later in apathy and the adrenaline rush of torturing the man who killed my entire family.  I have not thought about her in remorse or at all until this day when I pulled another girl, sold into the sex trade, so that my American friend, Sergent Ronald Moore could lose who he was and torture her into a drawn out death.

It had to be done and more than likely , I was doing her a favor as the conditions of her living would not have been as comfortable as death but there was no justification for torture except the reward of death.

There was a knock on the door.
The American went to open it.

"Привет. Я здесь для группы," said the whore.

"Да! Заходи!" said the American.

She came inside and we beckoned her to sit at the only table in the room.  Immediately I sensed her fear and the device told me to enjoy it but for some reason, I felt sorry for her.  Remorse was a new emotion to me and disgust was even newer.  When you grow up seeing the horrors of a Russian Gulag, little phases you anymore but somehow, being near this American boy who had more than likely never known the truest evil that human beings can accomplish, I had begun to soften.  That alone sickened me but this disgust came from somewhere else; something Americans refer to as empathy.

I felt sorry for her and what she must have felt like in a room with two vicious killers.  In a moment of weakness, rage and disgust, if all three things are possible to feel simultaneously, I hit her over the back of the head with my pistol.

"Какого черта ты делаешь?" said the American

[I am showing you what it means to lose your humanity and understand who Mitzu-sama really is]  I said in his head.
[Not like this you aren't.]
[You don't understand the danger he poses to a child-like mind like yours]

I could hear his mind struggling with the decision and feel his pulse rising as he admired her perfect, naked, feminine form.  Interestingly, part of him was aroused by the prospect but his idea of torture was not malevolent but more along the lines of even playful.  There were whips involved; electric shock and rubber gag balls.  His idea of torture was sex play and I needed him to understand what we were really doing here.

We handcuffed her to the chair and I poured a bucket of water over her to wake her up.  The water turned him on.

"Проснись шлюха!" I shouted at her.

"Please don't kill me..." "I have family that depend on me..." "Please let me go..."  These were all things I had heard from prisoners of the KGB back in the hey days of the USSR.  It did not phase me that she was a woman either because many assassins, spies, and enemies of the state had been women and it had not phased me a bit that my duty to the mother land was to torture and kill them but this felt wrong from somewhere I didn't have in my heart.

"What is this you do to me, whore?" I said.

She quietly sobbed.

"What pathetic creatures you humans are.  You sob like an infant and yet I have seen your kind in the streets for 50 years."

She perked up and I almost forgot I still looked to be about 27.

I screamed and picked up a scalpel, and in one swift movement, too fast for the human eye to even perceive, I cut off her nipple.  Now the American sent waves of horror towards me.

"Как вы это делаете, вы американские свиньи?" I screamed in a rage that overtook the room.

[Doing what?  I don't know what you're talking about]
[You lie!  You send your emotion to me so it is almost as if I'm feeling it myself]
[Then get out of my head you commie bastard, I don't need to deal with your apathy]

I moved toward her bleeding body to cut her again and he threw me against the wall drawing his side arm and pumping every round he had in his clip directly into her chest.

"Maybe I just don't do torture," He said in English.  "I can accommodate to pretty much every ability this eye has but the idea of losing who I am and the freedom of choice that my country represents is not in me."

I was shocked; angry and terrified; thoughtless and yet full of things I wanted to say and none of these emotions or thoughts were my own.

"Эврика!" I said.  Realizing the irony, I decided to speak aloud in English

"Perhaps that's your personal skill.  Mitzu-Sama has such control over what he has that I can't even see him but you have composure through your resolve like none I've ever seen.  I still feel remorse for this poor dead hooker in the middle of our room and in my head I know that I personally would not feel anything for her, were this my own emotion."

"Yeah... Well... I think I've learned all I want to know out of you..."

He headed for the door but I stopped him.

[You can't leave.]
[The hell I can't you crazy Ruskie]
[You don't understand.  Mitzu-Sama won't be able to touch you if you can project your feelings.]  He will underestimate you and this will be his break in concentration.  This is our in.]
[Yeah... Well... You think we can contact this girl's family or something?]
[Stop thinking about the hooker!  She's dead and her family gave her up for dead a long time ago.  I've been on the other end of this thing over in Russia and for a poor family, they give her up for dead shortly after she never writes home. Yes! It's horrible but we have greater things to think about now.]
[I think a dead human being is a pretty significant thing]
[You shortsighted American fool!  This is the emotion of your whole country to mourn the individual.  One who isn't and never even wanted to be part of your ideals.]

There was a long silence after that and we sat on the floor and stared at the dead hooker for the rest of the night.  I think at one point, he was praying.  After I fell asleep, he went and buried her in the graveyard outside of town and came back to wait for me to wake up.

[You poor, broken bastard...]    These words rang through my dreams for most of the night until the morning when we started to draw out the plans to go after true evil.

Pain Case

Part IX

All things connected

each cell as part of the whole

Submission: freedom

We are lost when we lose our humanity, I have found.  Even without a soul, when death takes you and machines bring you back, the guise of such things as humanity are imperative to survival.  As I no longer have my soul, I have only the guise.  It is Heisei 25 according to my people but it is 68 years with my abilities and 18 years that I have been soulless.

I do not taste food anymore; I do not feel love or touch.  I am granted the gift of individuality and my control over my machines is absolute.  The price I had to pay for it...

It has been quite the struggle in New York City for power.  The number of people I had to kill just to move up these ranks was disgusting.  The thirst for blood is even greater here state side than in Japan.  I have also learned to use mostly English to conduct all my affairs unless necessary to do otherwise.  The Americans are a despicable people that take comfort over progress.  I find this evidence in almost every decision their country or the people themselves do.  They feel like terrorists are out to get them so they attack everyone with a turban on their heads while corporations and government destroy them like a child in a boxing ring fighting a sumo.

I can hardly complain.

My organization makes a lot of money on drugs.  Yet another way that Americans pacify their minds into a sense of false security.  Not that the Japanese are any different but video games and computer games give them the exodus from reality they feel they deserve and when they don't like it, someone gets shot.  They have even elected a man who smokes like a black man and screws his people like a white banker.  From an apathetic standpoint it's all very boring but to those who might find this journal, they may get a kick out of the times.

I take pleasure in human suffering.  Without a soul, all that is left are memories; memories of feelings I once had and those, which if I go to extremes, I may be able to remember feeling again.  Normally, I don't use guns but I remember shooting an informant dead once, simply to see if it would feel any different than all the years I killed people with a sword.  In short, it did not.  In fact, the blood rushing from somebody due to the immense pain of a cut was far more preferable of a remembered emotion than the simple bang bang he's dead "same shit different day."

I remember once, I had the Russian boy that shares the implant with me, torture a man with 2,000 paper cuts and lemon juice.  The pain he seemed to feel was so intense and real, I almost let the Russian know who I was.

When I was first denied my right of an honorable death, my nanites pumped me full of so much adrenaline, I thought I wanted to kill everyone involved with giving me the gift but now, after coming to America and reading their daunting tales about immortals both in horror fantasy as well as Greek mythology and stories from around the world that adorn their libraries like so many pretty distractions from life, I think I rather enjoy this 人生を通して浮かんでいます attitude.

Oh how care free it is to walk into the office of 強力なヤクザ中尉 and let him rip you full of holes, only to rise off his floor, moments later, and eat his face off while stabbing him over and over with a pen knife.  If only the Russian boy knew about the limitless potential of evil, right?  Living because of our gift to a life of tastelessness and apathy.  If only they all knew!  The implant was the new secret nuclear bomb.  Who needs a bomb, when you have one blood thirsty soldier that can't die?  Countries world wide were developing it and here I was at the center supplying the detail and study under the guise of a Yakuza boss.

I could see the ocular implants from around the globe at any time.  To me, night vision and infrared were like child's play.  I saw in data streams and every money transaction and every implanted human was at my finger tips because I could see and feel everyone's living souls.

As we speak, I can feel, hear, see, smell, ったく、ふざけんな！I can practically taste the American dough boy and the Russian torturer who come for me to ask the ultimate question.

All they really needed to know was something I would tell no one.  The secret to unlocking the full potential of the nanites, our usefulness as truly powerful weapons, and the full potential of what we could do with the implant: 死.

Power comes with cost

What is it worth: すべて?

would you pay with 死?

Pain Case

Part VIII

My trip to New York was less than comfortable. First of all, Nome to JFK Airport is one hell of a long trip. Not to mention that getting in to NYC is like coming from carefree Alaskans to hateful New Yorkers. Yes, it's the greatest city in the world but hell if it ain't because of the people.

I took the train to Brooklyn. Odds were that the man with the eerie, green eye was holed up in the apartment above the jewelry store; it had only been a week since the article and the picture showed him coming out of a door next to the place. In addition to this, I had an uncanny feeling in my gut that he was there. It was that same feeling that you get when the person in front of you, on a crowded platform, is talking about you in a different language. As I got closer, the feeling intensified and it was almost as if my body was preparing itself for a fight.

The train stopped a block away and I felt my heart rate increase. My muscles began to bulge and spasm like an excited virgin on the wedding night. All of a sudden, my mind was racing with fight scenarios and defense strategy but I consciously could care less. My eagerness was simply to meet this man and find out more about what I am now and as I stepped up to his door, I felt that it was this resolve that caused me to control my body and calm it down.

I knocked on the door.
There was no answer.
I knocked again.
No answer.

"Now, see here, mister...."

"Boom!"
A foot came through the door, instantly crushing and breaking my nose. Now, I was mad and the adrenaline surged through me with renewed vigor.

Using the door as a shield, I pushed it into the person behind it. He retorted by using his other foot and pushing off the door to land on the ceiling and pull an FN Five SeveN on me.
Sneaky bastard.

The bullets flew and I pulled my military side arm, a Beretta 9mm, and returned fire. Shreds of paper made it seem as if it were snowing and time its self seemed to slow. I could see the bullets slowly moving around while our bodies continued to move at regular speed. I watched as two bullets collided head on as I moved through mid air to hide behind a wall.

The tiny apartment was shredded and it looked like leopard skin adorned the faded orange walls as the dust began to settle.

[Are you alive?] A voice said in my head.

I didn't know how to answer in my head, so I simply yelled out, "Да! А у меня еще два клипа , мать ублюдок !"

What the fuck? When did I learn Russian?

"Good! You know some Russian," I heard a voice say.
"No! None at all," I said.
"Then why do you continue to speak it?"
"What?" I said.
"You're speaking Russian right now, asshole." He said.

It sounded to me as if I still spoke English but to him, he understood me in Russian.

He must have heard my thoughts because in my head, I heard [you're implant works but you don't. Your self control is impeccable to silence it but how foolish you are to not use it simultaneously to detect danger. Your reflex enhancements are working but... I wonder...]

From behind a corner and then in a flash from the ceiling, he shot me twelve times in the gut.

"It hurts; I know, but your nanites will heal you. You're like a child, doughboy..."
"My name is Ron!"
"Ron, then."

The bullets made their way to the surface of my skin and fell to the floor.

"You dirty sonovabitch..."
"I had to test you, American. Your government gave you 'our' technology and told you nothing? What do you know?"

I stood and stared at him like a lost dog. In all honesty, I was lost. Was I really a glowing green eyed roboman like this guy? I had no idea what was inside me or what "we" were but I'll bet he'd pondered it to no end.

"Actually, I just started thinking about 'us' as a 'we' and please don't refer to me as some sci-fi robot monster."

I forgot the Ruskie could read my mind.

We spent the majority of the night training and discussing the potentials of our device. He told me about the nanites and how they'd fixed me in the armed conflicts I'd been in. He even shot me a couple more times and let me shoot him to see them at work. He told me about torture and a dark essence stirred in me and I have to admit I think I might have liked it. He enjoyed the soldiering tales I had but I think his years of torture taught him enough about human beings that he'd probably have made a better spec. Ops boy than me. I say boy because we both still seemed to look like boys even though we were in our 80's. The nanites kept us young as a side effect of the healing.

To back up for an instant, I found out these nanites were attached to the ocular implant; like a blood, or virtuous humor, that gave it depth when being installed and then reproduced and spread out once inside the body.

In any case, boring and personal information aside, the dossier now set to a man named Hayao Mitzurugi. Apparently, he was the master of "our" device that held the missing links to end the limits on what we knew how to do with it.

So the torturer and the soldier sought the assassin. I may finally have a chance to feel my face again and find the department head that took my humanity and gave me this thing.

"Easy killer. We'll get there."
"Get out of my head, you Ruskie psycho."

Pain Case

Part VII

I could hear his heavy breathing from four kilometers away before he ever graced my disheveled hole in the wall.  I knew he had an ocular implant because I could feel the presence in my heart beat.  The same way a normal person senses someone standing behind them on a crowded platform.  His biological code was American and go figure they'd plop this technology into an average soldier boy.  Americans would have no idea the kind of power our kind could achieve.

Our kind.  It felt eerie to think about let alone believe in.  Who, Для черт возьми, were "we," anyway?  What set "us" apart?  It was a question I had been размышлял since doing some independent work for a powerful Yakuza named Hayao Mitzurugi (or Mitzu-Sama) for short.  He was quite into his honorifics and respect but what really got me on his case was an incident that happened in late 2002.  

The year was 2002, and I remember being drenched in the blood of some грязной итальянской, thinking about how good I felt to be torturing again.  We had taken refuge in an abandoned hospital somewhere in the New York state countryside.  Mitzu-Sama had had some run in with the Жадные Черт and had been insulted in the process.  Also insulted, however, were his group of wealthy Japanese businessmen.  For this, I had cut the man 2000 times with a piece of paper and doused him in a jug of lemon juice.  This was just the beginning as well.  Ребенка игра if you will but it pleased Mitzu-sama so much that he began to laugh uncontrollably and with such frivolity that all his associates began to laugh the same way.  It was in that moment that an overwhelming feeling of Чистое зло all of a sudden made me drop to my knees.  It felt as if someone with immeasurable power were pressing on my shoulders.  Shortly after they all got their composure back, I felt it lifted.  It was as if it never existed and I had simply lost трех или четырех секунд from my life.

The reason I even recall the story is that my apartment is now basically barren.  I have the money to buy things and furnish it, however, I do not need such things as others might and my wall paper wouldn't match anything anyway.  Across the walls, I have followed Mitzu-Sama's life since 1995 when he arrived in this country.  As far as I can surmise, from my studies, he was an assassin before coming to The States.  The unforgiving and almost ambivalent trail of bodies within the Yakuza ranks, that were the reason for his rise to power, were enough to say, and loudly I might add, that he was not afraid of people knowing he was dangerous but to what degree.  Obviously he killed people but he made it look, every time as if he had caught them by surprise and was simply in the right place at the right time.  In the underground world, the cases were solved but the police were clueless.  All of these killings could not be proven but the M.O. was always the same and he was always to benefit.

If Mitzu-Sama had come for me now, I'd have ghosted away but this Тесто мальчика intended me no harm.  After years of torturing, I had learned to recognize the instinct in a human being and the nanites that he had communicated no irrational thought besides the drive of a child to make it to the top of a hill.  It was as if the Americans had implanted this poor soldier with unimaginable technology (most likely stolen from us) and then planted him on an empty playground in order to test it.  It was obvious no one had trained him other than in the state of combat.  I know there's no manual for the potential power we reserve, but the least they could have done is told him what he was given.  It's so sad when a nation knows nothing about the art of war and only the war of it.  I'm sure it had kept him alive through several of those but the невинного ребенка had no idea what he was carrying inside him.

Please understand, the Japanese, and if my assumptions are correct, in specific, Mitzu-Sama are artists in their craft.  In addition to his assassinations, if he is able to control his visibility in "our kind's" eyes then he is indeed a master of this device instead of the other way around. Черт! He probably could see me for what I am while masking his own presence...

The American was down the street now.  I felt him as he neared me. Come, Тесто мальчика, let us see the metal of your American soldiering.

Pain Case

Part VI

The night caresses

the moon rises to meet me

one purpose alone

I hear the wind rustle through the trees and my country's call come at last.  I have killed 245 people world wide since my induction into this sacred order.  It's been 45 years that I have faithfully served my country and my empire with this device and it has been upgraded and enhanced over the years as well as granted me an eternal youth.  I have been most honored by my divine leaders.

They've informed me, however that tonight ends my necessity and with this, the end of my assignment and usefulness.  My last target is my maker who is now 83 years old and has also lived a wonderful life due to his involvement in this program.  It is said that he has been ordered to keep his honor by burying this program with his body, however, he is a coward and refuses to die with dignity.

"不名誉な," I mutter aloud.

In any case, I will give him the honorable death whether he wants it or not.  I think this as I watch him from the branch of his maple outside of his window.  He sleeps soundly with the lights on and using my enhancements, I can even hear him snoring.

I enter his room through the window and make no sound.  I raise my sword to end his life...

ためらい

What holds me back from my duty and honor?  What is this feeling in my soul?  A mix of programming perhaps?  A subroutine written in by him?

"お父さんを目覚めさせる!" I say with impatience.

He wakes up slowly and barely coherent.  I tell him that I want to give him the opportunity to accept a noble death.

"死は恥ずべきである,"  He said to me.

The anger and shame towards him built with in me.  My rage began to burn my soul and my clearheaded became clouded.  With one swift cut, I sliced through his neck.  The cut was so clean he managed to say one last thing before he died.

He said, "私は私の息子、あなたを愛しています。"

My heart might have sank but I was committed to what I did next.  I plunged my 脇差 into my chest.  Without the assistance of a second, I would have to wait to die.  I felt the blood leave me and imagined my marks.  As the light slowly left, I felt at peace in the darkness.

絶望

I awoke to feel what was not living and was not death.  The machines within me had brought me back to life but I no longer felt the pumping of blood.  I no longer felt my heart.  I no longer thought of memories besides the ones I'd had tonight.  I can not remember my mother's face and barely remember what mother or father means.

They took my life.  There is no honor anymore.  I have been programmed to kill and torture.  I did this for my country but I feel no sympathies anymore.  I feel the need to burn down the world.  Damn them for this emptyness.  Damn them for my lost soul.  Damn them to the hell I will send them to when I have made a plan.

I leave for New York City tonight.  It's time to make a plan to destroy their power and hurt them completely. 

In death my soul left

my nightmare awakened me

complete destruction.

Pain Case

Part V

I've been following the news for weeks and hardly slept a full night. Jesus Christ, have I really lost it.

Anything that could explain this odd conversion of mine.  The military discharged me after the mid 70's when they saw that I wasn't aging.  Something about, "We've played god and now it's up to you to right our wrong."  They still won't tell me what that wrong is but I'm going to find the mother fuckers that did this to me and make sure they get theirs.

The mid 80's were a hoot and gave me some time to cool off.  Designer drugs were kind to me as the cocaine era of the 70's only agitated my condition.  Often times I'd find after a coke binge that I had become covered in someone else's blood while the bodies would just vanish.  My wife left me during this era.  She said I wasn't the man she'd fallen in love with any more.  She said I was almost machine like and had some how drastically changed since that fateful blackout in 1965.

Luck was on the horizon though through a man named Shultz.  Shultz was a military shrink and had been with me since '68.  Sometimes I thought he might have been the reason I was covered in blood but he seemed to know how to... well... program me; if that makes any sense.  The horrible things I must have done in that man's name and couldn't remember a damn thing had me up late reading news articles from thousands of sources, some, simultaneously in my head.  I knew I would find something; some one; maybe even another with this bionic eye type device who was having similar reactions to me.  It was the mid 90's before I finally got a hit.

I remember I was scanning photos and then there it was.  In the background of a local jewelry shop opening, there was a man whose left eye seemed to glow a little that was too preternatural to be a glare.  On what little I had, I shredded my military issue debit card and bought a one way to New York City.  I left a note on  old Shultzee's desk telling him that I thought I might have found purpose.

I didn't know it then but he had apparently phoned HQ that night and told them I flew the coop.  I was doomed before I started but not if I could get to them first.  The assault would be much grander with two of us with this purpose.  I was ready to fight.

Pain Case

Part IV:

I imagine that if there are any others in my position, they very likely ask themselves what a new found sadist does with himself after vengeance?  Well, I'll tell you what he does, exactly what his фигня country tells him to do until his фигня country decides to retire him and he becomes a ghost.

I imagine many ex KGB feel the way I felt when they told me my job was over and that I was scheduled for execution due to the danger factor of keeping me alive.

"мудак!" I shouted over and over again to no avail from my cell.

For years, I had done things like calculate the depth of an incision to slowly remove skin from a persons body, in varying sections; I had calculated the exact position of nerve endings so as to cut every one so quickly that a person would experience indescribable pain before telling me and my government everything they needed to know before I disposed of him anyway.  Not many people know what it is to cut out a voice box with frightening speed and accuracy while denying the person the quick, "bleed to death" courtesy.  Better still, not many people know what it's like to have electrical impulses screwing with your moral compass to the point you enjoy said activities.

It was a Wednesday when they came for me.  Hump day.  Oh did I have fun with that one.

The guard was a педик.  I could tell from his intonation and the way he carried himself.  He didn't know that I knew and he made himself that much more macho in order that he might disguise his perversion as he dealt with me and my rather handsome form each day.

"Эй педик! Приходите дать мне минет!" I taunted from my cell.

He now knew that I knew and I counted on that.  In his fit of rage, he came to beat me and called for back up to hold me down.

"Собираетесь ли вы попробовать и ебать меня, педик?" I said.  I taunted more because the more pressure he applied to me, the more pressure I had to break the cuffs I had on and flick the metal at the light in the enclosed cell to do my work.

As the light smashed and went out, I grabbed his night stick and impaled the other guard from the bottom of his chin and out the top of his head.  I made sure I hit as many nerve endings as I could and also to miss the major arteries and veins so he might have knowledge of my act and even a little pain in the few seconds he had as he gargled his last breath.

In that same instant I had rapped Маленькая фея on the head so he had now passed out.

As I watched them both with night vision, the silence and darkness gave me an idea.  I tilted the impaled guard's head back and drove the stake into the wall. With his cuffs, I cuffed the other guard behind his back and pulled down his pants.  With his utility knife I cut off the impaled guard's phallus and ran it through with a pointed, whittled down night stick I grabbed from his utility belt.  I then rammed that into the анус of the passed out guard.

With their blood, I wrote on the walls, "For god and country.  I am your best.  Now I am free, Мать Россия ..."

That night, I would travel to America and let them know of what had been done to me and perhaps gain use and freedom through the defection.

I was wrong. America is no freer to the weaponized killer and ex compatriot that the Russians want for war crimes.  I was like the toy in the common phrase, "Мальчики и их игрушки ..."  

Fuck it.  It wasn't like this old Ruskie didn't know how to hide...

A Devil's Raid

At the top of a hill, we descended from land toward the small bay of the city built into the steppes.  While our warships waited in the harbor for a quick getaway; as catapulted heated rocks with flaming pitch at the poorly built defenses.  There was no military importance to this town.  The whores were none existent but the aristocratic women were more exquisite than any whore and were far more pleasurable as well.  There's no corrupting a whore but an eloquent girl of 15 from a finely adorned enemy's nobility?  Well, there's no joy greater than his pain.

I remember the whites and blues of those walls.  The steps toward the ocean were made of marble and my sword cracked open so many skulls, leaving fragments of bone and blood on the walls.  My men were the immoral lecturers but I on the other hand took greater pleasure, sexual and other wise, from turning a man, woman or whoever happened to cross my path, into a corpse.  War is hell, or so they say, but I could not help but enjoy the empowerment of causing death.  From this raid, we would get much gold and food and in the process, we would kill pagans who had no right to his good graces in the first place.

It sickened me how the blue banners flew from their window sills and how opulent this trade city had become from the ignorance to death and pain.  I remember slitting the throat of a boy no older than twelve to stain a banner adorned with a pagan god for the simple sake of turning it red with blood.  As the angel of death did with the first born of Egypt, so too did I do to these people that day.  Their door frames were painted red with their own blood as lambs to the slaughter.

The thick black fog swirled around in the half circle shape of the town that led to the bay.  It stunk of hell but cleansed like heaven.  God's judgement on these people was swift and absolute and we had no problem with their slaughter.  "Pirates," they called us; "Barbars!" They said.  And each one who uttered such blasphemy was put to the sword one by one and God saved no one.

I felt the heat as we neared the ships and smelled the stink of the pitch burning live bodies who struggled to get it off them.  It is pathetic to see a grown man screaming to have his skin scraped off rather than burned off as it were.  In my mercy, I slaughtered many who the fire licked with arrows and simple cuts from my sword.

The walls were blue and white, now they were red; The town was alive up and down the houses built into a hill that from far off, more than likely represented the stadium seating of a Greek theater. Now it was dead.  With confidence and the wretched love of the slaughter, I breathed in the smell of death and lived a little before the hunger began to lap at me like a ragged mange.

I ran back up into the hill and found survivors until behind a corner, I felt a knife drive deep into my chest.  I turned around and laughed.  I began to laugh heartily at the boy of seventeen who now backed into a corner in sheer terror until he began to grab for his knife as if to stab me again.

"What's your name, boy?" I bellowed.
"iben tal-bniedem," He said.
"Today, you've met the devil and I've brought hell with me."

I removed the knife from my chest and licked the sweet blood.  My head began to shift into that of a dog resembling a doberman.  I ate the boy and chewed on his flesh in that tiny little room, on the island nation.  I used his collar bone to pick my teeth as I descended the steppes and climbed aboard the boat.  I noticed a few new troops aboard my boat and I noticed that many of the men we looking a bit lifeless.

"Captain!" I said, summoning my head of the guard, "Throw some of our oldest soldiers to the waters when we get far enough out.  Only enough to cover the replacements to our horde.

The Death of the lucky rich

At the end of the rainbow, there's a place where the Leprechauns meet to discuss the future of wealth and luck. We've all heard of the pot o' gold and the luck of the Irish but those are both metaphors for the wealth that this council of little green men control. It's from this table at the end of the rainbow that they decide who gets the wealth and the luck and who does not. Recently, I feel that the council has lost sight of the good they used to do. Something had to change.

Leprechaun’s are fae (fairies) and fae are gods: creatures in charge of something just as Hestia was in charge of the hearth and Thor was in charge of thunder. They guide such things and control them through means beyond that which any human can understand. God? One thing that created the universe? It's mythology for the gullible. What people don't understand is that many things made the universe and many things control it. It's not as simple as an umbrella figure but fuck's sake if it were only that easy.

Most of us know about the others or are at least aware that something else could exist, but we differ in our responsibilities and reasons. Some might view me as a god of dogs because I am immortal and all dogs directly descend from the canis lupus or the wolf, but I am not as lucky as all that. God or no God, I have never been as lucky as the movies portray my kind.

The vampires, descended from aristocracy and humpers of their own family, were cursed by the gods for their wretched concentration of power and wealth (not to mention greed beyond comprehension to the point that their blood thinned and it was a fitting and almost biological punishment that they should have to drink to keep their blood strong. However, do to the royal money and greed, they do not suffer the common man's eyes over the centuries like I do. A Were in a movie seems to never worry about money. Somehow they all have it and they're all educated and the immortals have amassed enough wealth that they never speak of working at a corner store for minimum wage. HA! It's right where the Leprechaun’s would want me. It’s bad enough that they can barely control the vampires over the centuries by toppling the monarchical system.

I drone on about my pathetic little world, so I suppose I'll get to the night it happened. The gatherings are always after a full hearted rain when the air is crisp with moisture and a cool breeze blows to clear the clouds. At the end of the broken sunlight trail, in a clearing in the same place as always, there's the rainbow's end and a pot of gold that never runs dry. Within this pot is all the wealth in the world that ever was or ever will be. Each coin represents pieces of a fortune monetary or otherwise that the council will bestow on certain people. They are outside of time and space and therefore they could review everyone in the world at the same time and nobody would be able to tell that meetings take place at lengths of days or weeks or sometimes years. Wolves can't enter their realm unless one of them has been caught and we have the key.

One of them was caught alright; one of them was torn to pieces as I had intended to do with the rest. Mankind had become so formulaic that bestowing wealth was far too easy and the council had to be stopped. I remember running in wolf form, with the key draped from my jaw, towards the edge of a cliff at the edge of the world in the grassy plains of Ireland. The conditions were perfect and the rainbow ran right off the edge. As the dew and mist stung my face like thousands of tiny pine needles, I ran with the speed of the Windigo and leapt from the cliff towards the rocks below.

The next I noticed, I was in the forest next to the pot of gold and I was naked and back to human form. Ahead of me were shrubs that grew as tall as redwoods and made two almost covered paths to the table of gifts. The meeting had already begun and they had gathered the water vapors to the center of the table to peer in on the world of the humans. The Leprechaun’s liked to pretend like life was "two roads diverged in a yellow wood" and thus they designed this dungeon of real power to resemble the idea that what they did was only following the natural course of human free will. The wrong path would take you in circles, while the right one took you to the table of gifts. Ironic that the right path turned out to be literally the right path. It was designed that way to show you that there is definitely a wrong path; self-righteous, arrogant, pricks.

I walked into the meeting with stealth so that I made no sound and announced absolutely no presence but they knew I was there and what I was the moment I entered. This was their realm and they showed no fear. Why would they fear? They weren't warriors; their weapon was fortune. Lucky me that fortune favors the bold. As if to prove my wretched boldness, I moved with speed the human eye could not perceive but with speed that they could almost match. Almost but not quite. As I said, they're business men, not war lords and wolves are hunters, not business savvy purveyors of wealth. The advantage to assassination was on my side.

As I finish wounding them to incapacitate movement, I began my address.

"Thousands of years I've watched you shape the fortune of this world into its oblivion. I have never had your luck on my side and never cared to as I carry my own like all preternatural creatures. However, I have seen the greed of the wealthy grow, in some cases, beyond even your control and as you are no longer needed and your 'balance' is proven to be broken, it has come time that you all be retired."

"Ya dannae what ya do, boy," said a Leprechaun. "We be the last line of defense against the most corrupt of your world."

"I know that's what you say and we both know immortality. Beyond that, I'd say the playground has us both as children grasping at straws. There was a point that they were not but mortals who depended on us but you lost control as did many of the higher realms."

"There's a way for everything to..."

Their cries barely echoed for an instant and in that moment, incapacitated and unable to use the powers they had, even the basic ones like accelerated movement, I feel like they knew what it meant to be powerless to your fate, just as I had seen in the humans of the day. Those who they had doomed because they had given gifts to a CEO who had the course of his life mapped out till he took control from them and began wrecking all those in his way. I had watched it and now they could feel it: helpless and now headless.

There is only one way to kill an immortal. That way is to decapitate him. Anything less is only going to make him mad. There are some out there that even decapitation doesn't work on but everything is cleansed with fire at the end. It's difficult to set a fire with dew all around you but I came prepared and along with burning their table, I burned all of them in the center of it.

It's a beautiful thing, Justice. That's what happened that day and it felt wonderful. It felt vindicating: holding the leprechaun heart in my hands. The bloody limp organ like a diminished ego dripping with gold flakes. Ha! How pathetic and cliché that in our world, a stupid saying like "Riches are in our blood" would be literal. The last sigh of a dying creature comes so much quicker when its gargling its own blood. I'd so hoped it would be more dramatic: this death scene but it was quick and brutal and over in the blink of an eye.

It was fitting. The end of money married to luck was over in an instant but outside, the walls began to fall. countries fought wars and within the states, anarchy ran rampant. The wealth staggered and everyone became nervous. That nervousness lead to civil war and the war led to the end of capitalism as we know it but that's a story for another day.