RP Home Is - The First Thing You Abandoned

[Katpride]

The First Thing You Abandoned​

​

Sweden. 1980s.

The mission is a success. The Prime Minister is dead. The Hellhound leaves no trace of their presence as they vanish into the night, the smoking gun securely holstered against their thigh. It will leave an angry red welt where it burns them through the leather. They will fail to notice until it has long since healed.

They aren’t expecting congratulations when they return to base, and they aren’t given any. They’re disarmed and shuffled back into the waiting cold, deactivated until the next time someone finds a use for them. Their mind is a quietly buzzing blank, their memories all static and void. They close their eyes and fall into the sleep like death.

---

Chaos. Voices, raised in panic and fear. An alarm blaring. They open their eyes, faintly surprised that they remember having closed them. The face in front of them is familiar. (Too familiar. They’ve been here before. He’s been there before. (They remember. Interesting.))

“Hound,” the Handler says, and they stop surveying the room, lock their gaze on him. His shoulders go tense as he just barely manages not to flinch, and (their eyes flash with amusement, the red brightening as) they watch him attentively, expectantly. The lights are strobing, red and dark and red and dark. People are screaming. Shouting. Running around like bees in a kicked hive. The Handler’s voice rises above the noise to give The Hound their orders. Someone is attacking the base. That someone needs to be stopped. This is their mission. End the threat.

(They can taste the shape of the protocol he isn’t following. They feel its absence keenly. (Whatever kept them quiet and distant is burning up fast under the noise and flashing lights. (It feels like waking up.)) They listen, and say nothing.)

They take the weapons they’re given and sort them into holsters, allow themself to be led away by a technician when the Handler hastily dismisses them. They outpace the woman soon enough; they remember these hallways, and even if they didn’t they know how to follow the noise. She lets them, until she looks at them. Then her steps falter, and she stumbles, shoots them a wide-eyed look, turns and runs back towards the lab.

They let her go, breaking into a run of their own in the opposite direction, the serene smile they’d affected shading more vicious with every step.

They have an infiltrator to kill.

 

[HighVoltage]

A gunshot echoed through the cold Swedish air. Mariko relaxed fractionally as the dull, animal part of her brain realized it wasn’t meant for her. She’d already known that, of course, but as hard as she tried there was a tiny part of her brain that insisted on indulging its animalistic instincts. She breathed out a stream of smoke, the cold metal of the balcony railing bleeding through her jacket, much like the now-former Prime Minister.

Of course Mariko had known that Olof Palme was going to be shot. She’d even had a hunch who they’d send to do the job. Apparently his connections to anti-apartheid movements in South Africa had stirred up quite the hornet’s nest, and most people’s first reaction was to throw money at a problem until it stopped. Sometimes that meant throwing money at someone else to make the problem stop.

Could she have called in a tip, thwarted the assassination and saved the Prime Minister’s life? Probably. Perhaps she could have even dragged a rifle out onto the balcony, taking out the killer so as to deprive her enemies of a valuable asset. But that was thinking too small. Mariko finished her cigarette and stubbed it out on the railing, letting the remains fall to the street below. She made her exit, slipping out of a hotel room that’d been booked with a false name and passport. No, interfering directly like that would only have been cutting off a head of the hydra.

Mariko knew that if you wanted results, you had to burn them.

---

Stealth, as always, would be her greatest ally. Others with her abilities may have charged in dick-first, guns blazing until they received a lead injection. Mariko had learned long ago that that was a good way to get your targets to go to ground, to scatter like leaves in the wind, and by the time you came back from the grave there were exponentially more problems to deal with.

She finished a final equipment check, ensuring that everything was ready and in its place. Mariko had decades of experience at this point, but getting comfortable was how she’d lost three years after a job gone wrong in Montreal. Once upon a time she’d worried about running out of ammunition, but at this point unless they were using some proprietary weapons that had never seen the light of day outside the compound, Mariko was certain she could use them as a backup.

Of course the alarm went off at some point. Mariko had long since realized it was not a matter of if, only when. She could be as careful as possible, but one missed camera, one errant noise, and her presence would be figured out. At least she didn’t have to worry about staying silent.

The muzzle flashed, the target fell, Mariko kept going. It didn’t matter whether whoever fell in her sights was armed or not, researcher or guard. If it moved, it died. When it died, she moved on. Over the years she’d gotten particularly good at ignoring the small voice in her head saying that each person she gunned down had a life, had a family outside of this place. She had a life, hell she had several. She had a family, all clad in gunmetal black, spitting fire and lead at her behest.

Mariko squeezed the trigger once more, feeling the recoil and watching the body drop. She pushed deeper into the compound, eyes constantly moving. Once she’d killed everyone inside, she’d burn the place down and salt the ashes for good measure. Then she’d move on to the next one. And the next.

Rinse and repeat.

 

[Katpride]

The room where they finally catch the infiltrator’s trail is shrouded in smoke. It drifts from a metal trash can full of hastily burned (no, correction - still burning) documents and a dozen pistol ends, floating low over the floor and wrapping around the Hellhound’s boots when they step out into the open space. The door they’d stepped through falls gently shut behind them, the latch catching with a metallic click as they pause just beyond the threshold, fold into a crouch to inspect the corpse that had been arrayed inconveniently close to their entry point, the one they’d had to push aside with the door to get through.

The positioning was no accident, they decide, digging through the dead man’s coat until they unearth a carton of cigarettes and a lighter. They don’t have pockets, so they pilfer only a single stick, lighting it with a practiced flick and a metallic hand cupped around the flame before letting the rest of their bounty slip through their fingers, getting back to their feet in one smooth movement. Dispassionate, they kick the corpse aside and wander out into the hallway, marked only by three points of light cutting through the smog.

Their pace is unhurried, now, and they take their time picking a path through the bodies out in the hallway. The shots and the screams have tapered off, the alarm that was blaring in the lower levels reduced down to emergency lighting and silence up here. Maybe the secretaries don’t rank high enough to earn advanced warning. Or maybe it just timed out. Either way, there’s nothing to disguise their bootfalls, and so they don’t bother gentling their steps, letting each one ring out like a beacon in the stillness.

It isn’t a surprise to turn a corner and find themself staring down the barrel of a gun.

The Hellhound doesn’t blink. As soon as they register the threat they twitch out of the way of the bullet, a breath and a step and then they’re on the other side of the corridor, arranged against the wall. More of their cigarette crumbles to ash, trickles down to the floor. They tuck it between their knuckles, hand steady as they lift it away from their mouth, plume of smoke falling out along with their words. “So. You lost, or just stupid?”

Their face is bored, their eyes piercing. (This isn’t how The Handler would want them to carry out the mission. None of it is.) They lift the cigarette to their lips again, take another breath of tarry smoke without breaking eye contact. (They already broke protocol when they took the long way around, circled around the back instead of cutting in from the front, but that was forgivable, plausibly strategic. This will be damning.) Their eyes flick down, then up. Something shutters off behind their gaze, already preparing for disappointment. (In the part of their brain that’s more gears than gray matter, a stopwatch runs, counting up the seconds. They mark another lap and let it run.)

 

[HighVoltage]

The blaring of the alarm had mercifully ground to a halt. Mariko had dozens of operations like this under her belt, but that damn alarm always got under her skin. One would think it would get lost under the sounds of gunfire and death, but somehow it blended with the two to make something worse than the sum of its parts.

Another magazine emptied, and Mariko swapped it out with smooth, practiced ease. She was starting to run low, and she had yet to properly pierce the underground levels. She couldn’t tell if word of her exploits had reached the group already, or if she just had shit luck when it came to security. She’d tried to get answers but corpses rarely talked.

Heavy footsteps rang out through the halls, steadily growing louder. The impact alone was enough to tell her that they were boots, which usually meant security. But they were neither running nor attempting to hide their approach, simply casually walking towards her. To Mariko, that spelt trouble, and a sinking feeling that she’d been enough of a thorn in their side to let loose one of their science projects. She brought her rifle up to her shoulder, looked past the red dot, and waited.

A figure stepped around the corner, and Mariko squeezed the trigger. Her gun barked twice, spitting bits of metal towards her target. Or at least where they were, as the bullets slammed into the wall, spitting bits of concrete. Mariko cursed to herself. Burst, really? An amateur move, especially since she’d just taken into account her lowered reserves.

Her gun swiveled, adjusting to the figure’s new position even as Mariko flicked the switch to semi-auto. They were fast, and she didn’t want to waste more ammunition than was necessary when she missed.

“Well considering I know exactly where I am, and I’m not the one with a gun pointed at me, I’d say you’re oh for two.” The quip came quick, a defensive barb that jabbed back towards the figure in an attempt to either get them to monologue or taunt them into a mistake. But something-

Something about that voice scratched something in Mariko’s brain. Everything about the stranger was giving her a weird case of deja vu, a prickle of unease that crept up her spine and made a buzzing nest at the base of her skull. The shaggy blond hair messily spilling down the back of their neck, the shape of the face, the bored expression disturbingly familiar in its apathy. And that voice. If she pushed away all the years and wear and smoke, she could almost hear a crooked laugh and an even more crooked smirk nestled under sightless eyes that were now unnaturally glowing and seeing far, far too much.

Corpses rarely talked. But rarely didn’t mean never, after all.

“Spork?” Mari asked, a slight tremor running through her voice. Memories of her childhood threatened to overwhelm her, crashing against the dam she’d had to put in place when she’d picked up this work, when her life had gone from robotics and mechanics to recoil and muzzle flash. They were dead, she’d been to the funeral, and yet-. It had been a closed casket, and something in her chest tugged towards the person standing in front of her, clutching a lit cigarette between their fingers in the same way they had when the two of them were hiding from Spork’s overbearing parents.

“Spork, is that you?” Her finger eased off the trigger slightly, her aim shifting slightly as Mari pulled her eye away from the sights. “You’re alive?”

 

[Katpride]

The look they level at her in response to her quip is decidedly unimpressed, the red in their eyes dimming further as they consider her through half-lowered lids. They should really get to the business of killing her soon, but. Well. She’s a twig. They could snap her in three seconds. Two if they were in a hurry. And besides, even if she is military-dull, she’s at least talking instead of trying to shoot them again. It just seems a waste, killing her right away - they’ll finish their smoke first. They have the time. (And then they can get to the real-)

(The Hellhound doesn’t need to blink. Their eyes are robotic, notably lacking in lacrimal fluid. They don’t get dry. They don’t get tired. They don’t need refreshing.) [But there’s a word, like a name, like (nothing at all). It pings off of something buried far too deep for retrieval, and the energy wasted in trying to complete the chain rebounds, sends a pang like a rubberband snapping right between their eyes.] They blink. (A flinch in miniature.)

Don’t let themself reel back like some part of them wants to. Ash the cigarette without lifting their hand from their face, gray spilling over black and silver and crimson as it falls to the floor far below. Breathe. Exhale a cloud of smoke. Let it hide the way their lashes twitch at the repetition.

“Haven’t died yet, ‘s far as I’m aware.” Their voice is rough. They flatten it out after the first word, tick the corner of their mouth up. Suck down nicotine ‘til it fizzles at the filter. Flick the butt away, push off the wall, all languid, animal grace. Dig up a smile for her, too even, too contained, the barest flash of fangs in the red, red lights. Tone bored again but eyes blazing, cherry-apple red in a pit of sucking void. “But I think you’ve got the wr-ong bitch, babygirl.”

Knives out in a flash, distance closing, closing, crossed just as fast, jab for - [no.] - for her side, metal hand the only one that responds the way it should, angle awkward, slash too shallow to do any real damage even if it hits. (Damn.) Push off the ground hard and open the distance back up, confusion replacing determination. Hit the wall ready to dodge again, spare a glance for their mutinous flesh-wrapped appendage. (Not the one they’d expect to glitch, but okay. Has this happened before? ([memories all static and-]) Yeah, yeah. Fine. They’ll work around it.)

 

[HighVoltage]

Some part of her was prepared to be wrong. Some part of Mariko refused to believe that this person was Spork more than three decades removed from their death. Perhaps what she felt as the figure denied knowing that name was vindication, that small part delighting in being right in its suspicion that Spork wouldn't have survived. That if they had, why wouldn’t they have come and found her? Why would they be trying to kill her?

If she could, Mari would have excised that part of herself with a rusty knife if she had to. In a world of happy trigger fingers and people who took up superweapon creation instead of cross-stitching, Mari had learned to rely on her gut instinct more than was probably healthy. And it was telling her that somehow, some impossible way, this was Spork.

Unfortunately, her eyes were busy taking in other parts of them. Their glowing crimson eyes, lit from within like pools of settling magma, and a single mechanical hand that twitched like it wanted to lash out and strangle her. This person wasn’t just Spork. They were the boogeyman, the nightmare used to cow dozens of mercenaries and cause PMCs and terrorist groups alike to toe the line.

This person was the Hellhound. Spork was the Hellhound.

Almost as if to drive that realization home, the thing with hellish eyes wearing her friend’s smirk drew twin blades and lunged. But Mari was quick too, dropping her gun and darting backwards. One knife dragged along her chest, splitting fabric and leaving a long, jagged silver line along the plate she was wearing. Welp, now they knew where she had armor and where she didn’t. Shit.

Mariko drew her sidearm, pointing it at the Hellhound’s chest with hands that she could almost convince herself were steady. Those crimson eyes weren’t on her, but flicked to their hand, the one that had defied its twin and deigned not to bury a knife in her. Small comforts, she supposed.

“Spork, please.” Mari said, her finger slipping from the trigger and instead resting on the guard. “I don’t want to hurt you. We can get out of here, go someplace quiet and talk this out.” She tried to keep the pleading out of her voice, even as it strained against her chest. She had to get through to them, she just had to.

“Come on, it’s me, Mari. We grew up together. I thought you died, I went to your funeral.” Her voice trailed off, arms dropping slightly as her resolve wavered. Could she even shoot them? Sure she’d already fired two shots at them, but that was before she knew who it was. Her grip trembled for a moment before she let out a shaky breath. She wouldn’t kill them. She didn’t think she could even if it was life or death. But if they attacked, she could defend herself at least.

“Please.” Mari begged one last time, searching those cold, scarlet eyes, the color of congealed blood, in a futile attempt to see some recognition, some emotion in them. But those were no longer the flesh-and-blood eyes of her friend, sightless and yet so full of life. They were the Hellhound’s eyes, bright and vivid and dead, and the Hellhound was a machine at heart. But Mari had to try. She owed it to them.

“I don’t want to do this.”

 

[Katpride]

She whips a pistol out, rifle swinging loose on its strap as she whirls around to face their new position, and the Hellhound tenses, the grip of their knife digging new lines into their palm as they press the side of their hand against the wall, ready to use it as a springboard when she starts shooting. But she doesn’t shoot, just stares at them, seconds trickling by with both of them frozen, only her voice filling the air, only her trembling hands cracking the frost. (Why? Why are they listening? Why aren’t they moving? It - [hurts] - it’s a waste of their time, and yet-)

And yet. They stare, too, something like curiosity in the barely perceptible narrowing of their eyes, something like confusion in the tiny crease between their brows. [Muted pain in the set of their jaw, not just from the tiny sliver of skin caught between gritted teeth. Every word like a spike of (nothing) - a jolt of (static) - a - (a buzzing, like a thousand [angry cicadas], like a dozen [voices turned to white noise through whirring fan blades], like-)]

(A distant sound, only barely audible even to their enhanced ears.) (Shit.) Push aside [the fine tremor in her voice]. Ignore [the hooks sinking (nowhere)]. Reaffirm grip. Mutter, “Tough.”

Launch towards her, watch the gun come up. (Too slow. Angle too low. Won’t hit anything vital.) Pivot, slam the wrist aside with [an open palm, blade tucked down]. Growl. Let the blade drop and grab the arm. Yank her forward and slide behind. Knife to the throat, steady in the grip of five metal digits. Slide the - [no.] - take the knife and - [no.] - just (fucking) cut her - [no.]

Hiss. Cast a glance at the stairwell door. (Another bang! as a door slams somewhere beyond. Footsteps thundering on metal steps, sound growing steadily louder.) (Window of opportunity closing. Finish the - [fuck you.] - urgh.) Shake the woman. [you know her name. don’t act like you forg-] Lean in close to her ear, voice low. Watch a single drop of red run over the blade. [Feel (nothing.).] “Quit it. Stop calling me that stupid fucking name. I’m not your friend - I’m your killer. Now shut up.”

They aren’t letting a glitch ruin this. And they aren’t going back. The Hound tries one more time to brute-force their way through the glitch, but when even their metal hand doesn’t so much as twitch they blow a frustrated breath through their nose and start taking measured steps backwards, away from the stairwell, dragging the woman along with an iron grip.

 

[HighVoltage]

For a moment, they stared at each other. Mari’s gun stopped shaking with her last pleading words as she watched Spork’s face, what expressions she could pick up from the slight furrow in their brow, the minute twitch of their lips. Most people’s expressions were most obvious in their eyes, but the Hellhound had drawn those shutters tight.

But Spork stayed pressed against the wall, maybe listening, maybe calculating. For that moment, that eternity, that single blink of an eye, Mari thought that just maybe they were coming back to her, that she’d managed to pierce that veil and reminded them of who they really were.

Then the Hellhound spat out a single word and the illusion shattered.

They lunged at her like an animal. Mariko had time to fire two shots, twin bullets that went wide and carved crimson pathways in the side of the Hellhound’s leg before shattering against the concrete behind them. The first casing rang like a bell when it struck the ground. The Hellhound was on her before the second echoed it.

Her hand was slapped aside before she had a chance to fire a third shot, the Hellhound slipping behind her and pressing their knife to her neck, the chill of their mechanical hand contrasting with the blade’s sharp warmth as its edge bit ever so gently into her neck. The Hellhound growled in Mariko’s ear, a blade in its own right dragging across leather. She could feel the irritation as they pressed against her, as their grip tightened against their knife, as the Hellhound longed to slash their knife across Mariko’s neck and let her body spill to the floor.

So why weren't they? Why were they just holding it there, her there, a hostage with no one to negotiate with?

“You can’t do it, can you?” Mari barked out a laugh, dry and mirthless. She let the pistol fall from her fingers, kicking it away once it clattered to the floor. If she could’ve turned to look the Hellhound in the eye without slitting her own throat, she probably would’ve. As it was she pressed a little harder against the blade, chuckling as it bit a little deeper.

“You can’t kill me.” The grin in her voice was palpable. “Oh you want to, so very, very badly. But something’s staying your hand.” Most people wouldn’t be this cavalier when an infamous murderer had a blade to their throat, but death was little more than a stumbling block for Mari.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Mari chuckled again, wondering idly if the Hellhound shared Spork’s hatred of being identified with the female sex. “You never denied knowing the name, and if you weren’t Spork, you wouldn’t have had nearly as much trouble killing me.” Mari had seen the hesitation in their strikes, the smooth motions of lethality chipped and dulled into something not quite harmless, but certainly not deadly. She noticed they were moving, she was being dragged away, step by step, back the way she'd come in the first place.

“Come on, Spork. You want to leave? Let’s go. I’ve got a safehouse not too far from here.” Mari moved with them, step for step, as Spork moved away from the path that led deeper into the complex. “We can figure out what happens next from there. Deal?”