Chapter 1
Paul Lipp, eldest son of Günther Lipp, one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful businessmen in Mega City, bowed deeply to his opponent who did likewise. Paul supposed that he was a strange sight in this mixed martial arts tournament. But whether his slender and slight frame looked like it belonged or was amiss amongst the other bulky brutes participating in the event mattered little to him, mostly because he was now in the final round, but also because Paul had the sense to know that appearances were nearly always deceiving. No, the only opinion he was concerned about right now was his own and that of his parents- who sat in a private viewing box over-looking the arena where he had been fighting for the better part of the day.
Paul was, without a doubt, a perfectionist. So was his father, but there was a considerably distinctive difference between their respective perfectionist tendencies. Günther, Paul's evidently successful father, was obsessed with making the perfect business transaction, being the best at the art of making the deal, maximizing his profits and minimizing his losses. To Paul, that was a boring waste of energy. To Paul, perfection was being able to dominate any opponent under any set of circumstances with any weapon. To Paul, any person whose mind and body moved in perfect martial synergy possessed a power far beyond anything his father's money could ever buy.
But his father did not see things that way. Nor did his mother. They both saw Paul as a disappointment- a poor heir to the Lipp empire. And that was why Paul had invited his parents to come and watch this demonstration of his martial mastery. He would prove himself worthy. He would prove that he was a man every bit as deserving of respect as his father. And, most of all, he would prove to everyone witnessing this final match of the tournament that he was the greatest martial artist in the world, let alone Mega City.
Chapter 2
In the earlier elimination rounds of the tournament, Paul Lipp had defeated two opponents, equally simple to defeat: a young and somewhat attractive woman with a passing knowledge of kickboxing, and a hot-headed fool whose rendition of Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do was offensive.
The woman had stood little chance. She was but a student and was still learning many principles of martial arts that Paul considered to be basic. And, besides that fact, in his opinion kickboxing was a hardly a martial art. A simple cardio-vascular workout for lazy people, nothing more. But Paul had also believed he had smelt alcohol on her breath when he had drawn in close to avoid her long-legged kicks. He had mused to himself that perhaps she had joined the tournament as part of a drunken deal made in a bar nearby. As a result, he had been merciful to her and allowed a few chances to find her range and attempt a few of her cumbersome kicks. The match, in the end, was a flawless victory.
The man who thought he was Bruce Lee reborn, however, received little mercy or compassion. The fool had horrible technique- his attacks fuelled with a confidence born of arrogance rather than mastery and experience. Paul had dodged one of the fellow's flying side kicks and ended the match early with a full-force closed-fist punch to the groin as the Bruce Lee wannabe sailed through the air past him. Paul had, at first, felt remorse for dealing such a damaging blow, but then he had thought, "He was overly fond of kicks. Now with that groin injury, he'll have to focus on training in hand strikes more. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind." He could barely control his laughter then.
Following these initially disappointing fights, Paul had been advanced to the Quarter Finals. His opponent, a Judoka, had fought admirably. The towering man had tried his best to get a hold of Paul and throw him to the mat. But Paul's favoured martial art, Ba Gua, empowered him with a great deal of knowledge in escaping the moves that Judo specialized in. Unable to adapt to an opponent whose expertise was in constantly changing and adapting with the situation, the Judoka was eventually tired out and defeated.
In the Semi-Finals, Paul had faced a foe who was a bit more to his caliber: a woman well-taught in Aikido. She had fought with a speed and grace that almost impressed even Paul. Almost. She, like all those before her, like those Paul had fought in formal tournaments like this as well as the fight clubs his parents and the media could never know about, could not land a decisive blow against him. She was able to brush his shoulder with her out-stretched punch as he dodged and weaved and blocked, but nothing more. She submitted when he finally countered another one of her beautiful punches and twisted her wrist at a weird angle.
So now here he was, standing before his final opponent. The only thing that stood between Paul and the gold, with all it's attendant benefits, was the muscled and massive man clad in a karate gi that stood before him.
The referee ordered for Paul and his rival for the prize to enter their fighting stances and prepare for the combat that was about to ensue. The karateka eased gently into a modern fighting stance, left leg forward with the knee slightly bent and his arms relaxed and mirroring the position of his legs. Paul, meanwhile, went for something a bit less... predictable. He dropped down into what was known as a 'Bokuho' stance in Ba Gua. It used the same principles that a mother hawk used when defending her nest. Just like how a hawk would pretend to be wounded in order to trick the attacker into dropping their guard and draw them into a benefitial position for acounter-attack, Paul was putting himself into a seemingly undefensible and flashy stance to lure his foolish opponent in for the kill. Paul was in such a deep stance, it almost appeared that he was about to do the splits, his left-leg forward and out-stretched, his right-leg back and bent so that he was crouching. His left-arm extended out along the length of his leg and his right arm was hooked behind his head. He must have looked like a target buffet. But then, to Paul's skilled eye, so did his oppnent.
The fool standing a few feet away from him smiled. Paul smiled back. The referee gave the command to begin. Paul would win.
Chapter 3
The karateka took the bait. The temptation to strike someone who seemed so clearly unguarded was too much for the other man. He swooped in, clearing the space between them in less than the blink of an eye and thrust his rear leg out at Paul's face in a textbook Karate 'stamp kick'. As the ball of the man's foot neared his face, and Paul could see the other fellow grinning down at his supposedly defenseless prey, Paul pivoted on his right foot and rose to his full, unintimidating, height.
Paul watched with amusement as the karateka's foot passed through air just where Paul's face had been moments before. Now Paul was standing in the karateka's 'closed side'. A person's closed side was the side of them which exposed their back- and which was the most difficult side to defend from. Paul reached out with his left hand and grasped hold of the ankle of the karateka's kick, locking the foot in place, then slid his right leg under the other man, hooking his foot behind the only foot which now supported the big barbarian. With a sweep of his right foot, Paul completed one of Ba Gua's basic techniques, called "Yao Fei Li T'ien" or "Hawk Soars up to Heaven", and sent his opponent crashing down to the mat with Paul falling down on top of him, driving his elbow into the man's gut.
The crowd let out a cheer as Paul rose from atop his opponent and helped the other man to his feet. The cheering wasn't his concern at that moment. He glanced over at the referee to see if the point was valid. The referee paused, then raised a blue flag that he held in his left hand, confirming the validity of Paul's point. He felt a surge of adulation at the sight. But it also made him nervous. Paul was the 'blue' competitor and his foe was the 'red' team. From watching the other fights in this tournament, he had seen that red nearly always won today. And Paul had read studies showing that in competitive sports, the player or team which wore red won 77% of the time and had higher adrenaline levels in their blood at the end of the game or match than did their opponents on the blue team. He prayed that he would not suffer 'the curse of blue' now- especially not now when he was on a victory streak.
He shook his head as he assumed a fairly deep stance, though not as deep as the Bokuho he had previously used, his arms held low cautiously. He had to remain focused on the task at hand. If he worried himself with silly superstitions about losing, then he would lose. It was that simple. If he pictured himself losing, he would lose. But if he pictured himself winning not only this match but his parents' respect, then it would be so. The referee gave the command to begin again.
This time Paul elected for a more aggressive strategy- a more complicated technique in Ba Gua known as "Ba Xien Kuo Hai" or "Eight Immortals Cross the Sea". The karateka had adopted the same stance as before but Paul suspected the other man would go on the defensive. But the his opponent's education in Karate made him an expert at blocking a few powerful strikes strung in combination, not many fast but less powerful strikes thrown together in a flurry of hands.
Paul surged forward from his crouched stance, faking low with his leading hand. The karateka fell for it, executing a sharp and strong low block that completely missed Paul's Ox Jaw strike to his chin. The other man reeled backward with the open-handed uppercut but Paul pressed on, offering no quarter unless it was to a yielding foe. He brought his leg up, seemingly chambered for a side kick to the karateka's belly, but, at the last moment, stomped down on his opponent's toes. The karateka yelped in pain as he had been preparing to block a kick to his solar plexus not his own foot.
Still standing on the other man's toes, Paul slid his trailing leg in close and punched with his right hand straight for the karateka's temple. The blow hit it's mark without fail. The knuckles of his index and middle finger hit a bulls-eye on the soft part of the man's forehead right between the now glazed eyes.
Paul stepped back, assuming his Bokuho stance and watched as the other man fell with a loud 'thud' on the mat. The technique was much longer than that but... he felt it safe to finish it early when he saw the other man lose consciousness with the impact of his punch.
As the tournament medics sprung onto the sparring mats to examine the karateka, the referee rose the blue flag again to announce Paul's second point and victory. The crowd cheered for the victor, though a little less enthusiastically this time. No one had been knocked unconscious in this tournament yet. This was the second time the medics had needed to attend to a competitor in this tournament. The first time was to treat the Bruce Lee wannabe's groin injury- which had also been dealt by Paul. Could it be that he had become too brutal? Had he been spending a little too much time testing his mettle in fight clubs where victory went to the one who had lost the least amount of blood after a set amount of time? Was he beginning to do this not for the art or for perfection, but for the sense of power that came with completely dominating another human in single combat? Paul shuddered at the thought.
He was still mulling this over in his mind when he was called over to the mat again to be presented with his prize in the award ceremony for the tournament. As Grand Master Azami, the host of the tournament and the highest-ranking martial artist in the whole of Mega City, congratulated him for a well-fought match and placed a gold medallion around his neck, Paul did not smile.
Chapter 4
Paul walked into the lobby of the arena, swarming with crowds of departing spectators and competitors alike, and picked his parents out of the throng. He approached them, attempting to hide his nervousness and feign a smile.
"Excellent work, my son! Excellent work!" Paul's father, Günther, said as he shook his hand enthusiastically.
"Thank you father. I'm glad you were impressed." Paul replied, authentically smiling now. Could it be that his plan had worked? Could it be that all those disappointed glances and heated arguments had been cast aside by his father after a day's demonstration of just what Paul had accomplished with his life thus far? It seemed so. Perhaps the sacrifices of Paul's two injured opponents had not been in vain.
"Impressed is... a bit strong of a word. To be honest, I was a little frightened." Paul's mother, Elisabeth, said with a concerned look in her eyes. "You could have been badly hurt today. Doing this sort of thing all the time- it's a matter of 'when' not 'if' you get badly injured. Especially if there are others out there who fight like you."
"Like me?" Paul asked, taken aback. He was not sure if he should have taken that last comment by his mother as a compliment or an insult. Was she saying that he fought with great skill or great ferocity and barbarity? The only thing he was sure of now was that he was watching his hard-won victory dissolving before his very eyes. He might as well have been the one knocked unconscious in the final round. Everything had been a waste. All he had to show for his troubles was a chunk of gold-painted metal and the re-affirmation that so long as he did what he enjoyed his parents would loath him.
Günther looked down at the ground and put his hands in his pockets in a resigned gesture. The silence between them was cold and sharp even though there was a crowd moving all about them, filling the lobby with noise. Finally Paul's father broke the silence. "What your mother means is... you've proven yourself to be a man who can look after himself. And I'm proud of you for that. Aren't you, Lisa?" Günther said. Lisa was his nickname for Elisabeth. Paul couldn't quite understand why he did that. Would his father have been impressed if he were to be nicknamed 'Gün' or 'Ther'? Paul doubted it. But then such hypocrisies were typical of his parents. He had come to expect them.
"Of course." Elisabeth said somewhat reluctantly.
"So I figure it's about time I made you an offer. Work at my stock-brokerage firm. There's good money in that business. It requires a lot of work but... your martial arts required a lot of work to get good at too. If you put in the hours, you'll become perfect at the business too. What do you say son?" Günther said, a broad smile on his face and hope in his eyes.
Paul squashed that hope and tore the smile from his face with one word: "No."
"Paul..." Günther started, that cursed disappointed tone entering his voice and gaze again, striking Paul in the solar plexus harder than any human punch could manage.
"Father, we have been through this before. I do not wish to be involved in business. The only business I will ever be interested in is teaching martial arts to others and passing on the knowledge that I have gained. Please try to understand. What is an ideal life and career for you, is not necessarily an ideal life for me. We may be father and son, but we are not the same person. Your offer is kind... but insulting at the same time. If you truly believe that I have proven myself to be a man capable of caring for himself, then allow me to do so. Do not trouble me or yourself with attempting to be charitable to me. I will make my own way. And my way is the way of the martial arts, not stock-brokering. I will prevail by my own hand, not your checkbook." Paul said, interrupting his father and building up all the confidence he had within him to tell his father the truth of their relationship.
Paul's father nodded slowly with understanding, the disappointment leaving his gaze. Paul had thought he had managed to wrest victory back once again from the greedy and spiteful jaws of defeat, but then he saw his mother, a flustered and angry expression upon her face. "And how will you be able to support a family with what you do? Will you simply leech from Silvia? A woman's job is to mother and raise her children, not fund you and your little adventures! How can you be so selfish to the woman you love?" she ranted, attracting the attention of several passers-by.
Paul simply shook his head. "I hope for the sake of our relationship, that you come to understand eventually." he said as he donned his machello beret and proceeded out of the lobby.
"Why can't you be more like your brother? Why can't you do something constructive with yourself like Gerhard?" Elisabeth almost snarled the words at him as she grabbed him by the elbow.
"Because I am not my brother. I am not Gerhard. I am Paul, your eldest son. Please try to remember that when next we talk." Paul said, gently shrugging his arm free of his mother's enraged grasp. Then he added before going through the door to the lobby, "Whenever that may be."
Chapter 6
Paul was muttering to himself that his stress might not come from his parents but perhaps from the squalor and insanity of MegaCity. The Baroque majesty of Vienna certainly exuded an aura quite unlike the anxiety of this place. There was something different about MegaCity. Paul remembered feeling a sense of purpose, of anticipation, amongst the faces and hearts of the people he passed on the streets of Europe’s cities. But in MegaCity, the buildings oozed the cloying and tangible stench of desperation and disappointment, which hardly helped to improve his mood.
He was in the middle of musing this to himself when he heard the door chime signal someone’s entrance into the dojo. Hadn’t he locked the door behind himself? Maybe he’d been so lost in thought, so frustrated with the choice that had forced its way into his life uninvited, that he’d left the door to his school unlocked. And now someone was barging into his establishment and his evening uninvited as well.
Paul took a step back out of his office so that he could see who his visitor was. It could not possibly be a student or one of his assistant instructors because it was well past the time for classes at the dojo. Everyone would have returned home and likely gone off to sleep. It likely would not be a gang member or late-night robber either. Paul’s dojo was located in Park East, one of the safest neighbourhoods in Downtown, if not the whole of MegaCity. He honestly had no idea who it could be at this late of an hour. Perhaps it was just some businessman heading into the city for a conference who had lost his way and needed directions.
As Paul peeked around the corner, he was about to say that the dojo was closed, but he stopped himself when he saw who stood in the doorway, bowing to the flags hanging over his dojo shrine. It was a gorgeous woman. But not just any gorgeous woman. She had a wild and unkempt look about her that was quite unlike anything Paul had been used to. He was adjusted to life of civility and distancing oneself from nature and animality. But this woman, she embraced it- she seemed to accept and celebrate humanity’s position in the Kingdom Animalia not only with her ravishing appearance but with the way she carried herself. She looked, for all intents and purposes, like an animal on the prowl. The question was, though, why was she here, in his dojo?
“C-can I help you?” Paul stammered, trying to regain his composure. Curse his daftness! He couldn’t stammer or goggle. This could be a potential customer and a future student of his dojo and as such, he needed to conduct himself in a professional manner. That meant no more eyeing up this woman and more time spent on focusing on the important things like her stature and other assets that might affect her martial ability. Did she have a poor center of balance? Did she have what was called ‘flat feet’? He found himself lingering too much with his stare once again and nearly cursed at himself out loud for his insolence.
“Yes, you can Mr. Lipp. Or should I call you Paul?” the woman finally replied, having finished her bows. Paul’s tongue caught in his throat as she turned to fix her gaze on him. Her eyes… they were even wilder than the black and blonde hair that graced her head. Paul could have sworn that her pupils were gold and her irises orange. The eyes that now latched themselves to him had a feral look about them too- like that of a wolf. Paul had always thought that wolf eyes were enchantingly beautiful- that a person could stare into them for hours upon hours and still find new nuances and reflections.
“Austrian.” Paul replied, absent-mindedly.
“Sorry?” the woman asked, seemingly confused by his reply. Her left eyebrow arched up, bringing new reflections to her eyes and drawing Paul deeper into their depths.
“Austrian. My friends call me Austrian. It’s just a silly nickname some colleagues of mine came up with in school. My nationality is difficult to determine so they decided to call me Austrian because that was where I was born.” Paul explained, finally snapping out of his trance-like state and stepping forward to shake his visitor’s hand. He had no idea what had come over himself. How could he become infatuated with a mangy woman like this when he had the very image of perfection, Silvia, waiting for him on the paradise beaches of the Black Sea?
“Ah… pleasure to meet you Austrian.” the woman answered, smiling somewhat to reveal polished white teeth that glistened slightly in the light, accepting his hand.
“And… you are?” Paul finally asked, wondering why she had not offered her name yet to him.
“Ookami.” she said, her smile broadening now.
Paul saw then, as he shook Ookami’s hand, that she bore a tattoo on her shoulder. The tattoo was of the Japanese kanji Ookami. Paul had a talent for languages as well as martial arts, a talent that had developed from necessity as he and his family travelled from country to country in Europe. Paul had never needed to learn Japanese but he had chosen to learn it out of curiosity. It was an interesting language with a unique sound to Paul’s ears. So, when he heard Ookami tell him her name, and when he had read the kanji tattoo on her shoulder, he had known instantly the meaning of her name: Wolf. Strangely fitting, considering those eyes and teeth and hair that had mesmerized him so.
Paul was about to tell her that the name fitted her, but decided against it. He doubted this ‘Ookami’ would find it a flattering comment. Instead he just nodded slowly as he released his grip of her hand, musing at the length of her finger-nails and the softness of her palm. “The pleasure is all mine, Ookami. What can I do for you tonight?”
She cocked her head to the side, her eyes examining him. Paul found the whole experience of being examined by her a tad bit unnerving. It felt like being a wounded and ill deer watched by a prowling wolf. She said, after a few moments, “I, and my employer, have been watching you for quite some time. We feel that you would make an excellent candidate for something…” she trailed off, her throat making some sort of growling noise.
“Something… what? What’s the matter?” Paul asked her, confused and a little irritated. He had no time for this. He needed this evening to think about what he wanted to do with his life, not listen to some whacko pretend to be a dog. Who was this stray anyway? Ookami wasn’t exactly a common name. In fact, Paul doubted anyone would ever name their child ‘Wolf’ in Japanese. It seemed more like… a gang nickname. Was this the employer she spoke of? A crime boss had seen Paul at one of the fight clubs and wanted to hire him to do some of his dirt work? Paul had no interest in a career as an assassin or a mercenary and he would tell this woman just that, regardless of who her employer was. If he could tell his father to leave him be, he could tell some half-crazed werewolf impersonator to go home.
“We don’t have much time. They saw you today to and it piqued their interest so I’m going to need to get to the point.” she answered, apparently flustered. “My employer wants to present you with an offer. I need you to keep an open mind on this.”
“I’m listening.” Paul answered, folding his arms across his chest and waiting to hear some outrageous story.
“Have you ever heard of The Merovingian?” Ookami asked, her eyes penetrating into his own again.
“The richest businessman in MegaCity? Of course.” Paul nodded. He remembered seeing him and his wife, Persephone, at a few of the social functions he and his family had been to. The Merovingian, whose true name seemed unknown, practically owned the city, including its criminal elements.
“He has seen the way you fight and so have I. We are… interested in your abilities. They are rare. You can fight but you can also engage in diplomacy. Such a combination of skills is… rare in his Organization.” Ookami explained.
“Are you offering me… a job as an assassin? Or a hitman? I can’t do those jobs. I won’t.” Paul replied, shaking his head furiously. He had known this would be a waste of time. The Merovingian had only proved his banality and barbarity by hiring some woman to try and ease Paul’s tongue into agreeing with the implied promise of flesh and the warmth of another beside him in bed. Paul was not so base. His pleasure was a perfect kick or a well-timed dodge and counter, not sexual teases.
“No, Austrian. I’m offering you an answer to your questions. The Merovingian knows many things and he wants to teach you them. He wants to tell you the truth about Austrian, about Silvia, about your parents and why they won’t accept you for who you are. And most of all, he does not want your talents to go to waste.” Ookami said.
“What do you know about me?” Paul answered, his voice filled with scorn. He had had enough of this rubbish for one evening. He turned and walked back to his office, intent on finding his Slumberil. “I’m sure you’ll know how to find your way out.” he snarled over his shoulder.
Chapter 6 (Continued)
Just then, a force like the gale of a hurricane slammed into his back and sent him sprawling to the floor, jarring his brain in his skull. He saw Ookami standing over him in a low crouched stance. She had kicked him in the back, knocking him to the ground. Why had she done that? Couldn’t she take “No” for an answer? It was his life and he would do with it as he desired and no one, not his parents and not this foolish woman nor The Merovingian, would tell him how to live it.
He rolled out of the way of an axe kick that would have broken his tail bone and rose to his feet. “What are you doing?” he yelled, dodging an impossibly fast left jab and right hook from the crazed woman.
“Showing you the lie.” she replied, smiling. Had she gone insane?
Paul blocked a kick to his head then to his crotch. This woman was fast. He had never seen someone move so quickly. She was lithe and short, which helped her speed, but he had never seen anyone move quite so fast and so graceful. He could barely dodge or black her moves in time. And despite her speed, she was executing each technique with perfect precision, textbook style and awesome power. It was like fighting a goddess- a goddess of wolves.
She finally broke through his guard, her hand grasping the wrist of one of his blocking hands and binding it. Then she swung her other arm around to chop for his throat. That was a killing strike. Was he going to die? He couldn’t! He wouldn’t! Not before he had married Silvia, rectified his problems with his parents, had children and raised them into good men and women who would never repeat the foolish mistakes their father had made when he was young like them. Paul drove his knee into Ookami’s crotch and ducked his head down so that his face almost touched her chest. Ookami’s knifehand strike, which would have burst Paul’s Adam’s apple, sliced through air inches above Paul’s hair, as he folded inwards to avoid the strike. Now safe, Paul rose back up to his full height, smashed his forehead into the woman’s nose. Ookami sprawled backwards from the surprising blow but maintained her grasp of Paul’s hand- until Paul let loose a push kick to her stomach that finally sent her toppling down.
Paul looked down at his defeated opponent, wondering what in the world had come over her. One minute he had been turning to walk away, the conversation over, the next she had attack him with a murderous intent in her wolfen eyes. What had she said she was trying to do? Show him the lie? Madness…
Suddenly, Paul felt his legs give out underneath him and he collapsed to the ground. Sprawled on his back, surprised by his sudden descent, he was unable to prevent Ookami from pouncing onto his prone body and pinning him to the ground. This woman never gave up! And now she had him pinned. Paul could only dread what would come next.
“What is wrong with this picture?” Ookami growled at him.
He was about to say the only thing wrong with it was that they were fighting for no reason. But then he realized what she meant. She wasn’t bleeding. Telling from how hard he had struck her face with his forehead, her nose should have been pouring blood all over the expensive mats that covered the floors of his dojo. And she felt no warmer than she had when she had entered the door and shook his hand. After that fight, despite its brevity, she should have been very hot and sweating profusely from the adrenaline rush like Paul was. And he still could not understand how she had moved so fast… and how he had been able to burst into action when his life was in danger. His muscles seemed to ache and throb from that moment of rage-filled retaliatory violence to save his life and his future.
“How… why…?” Paul tried to utter the questions that were coming into his mind at a pace that was almost as blindingly fast as the fight he had just had with Ookami.
Ookami rose from Paul and helped him to his feet. “The Merovingian will show you how to fight just like that all the time, not just when your life is in danger. He will teach you how to become the greatest martial artist in the world.”
Paul could scarcely believe her words. He could scarcely believe this was all real. Perhaps he had really found the Slumberil after all, and this was the drug-induced rage-enhanced dream that he was experiencing in his sleep. A wolf-like woman comes into his dojo, beats him in a crazed sparring match that seems to last mere seconds, then tells him that a French crime boss can teach him the meaning of life and turn him into the greatest martial artist that ever lived. Paul decided to play along and see if he’d wake up just before this offer is satisfied.
“What would I have to do to receive this knowledge from The Merovingian?” Paul asked, curious.
Ookami presented two pills to him. They appeared in her hands out of nowhere. They just… materialized. “The blue pill will return you to your fantasy world. The red pill will show you the lie and allow The Merovingian to give you the gift of truth.” she explained.
Paul raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest again, “I’m sorry. I don’t do drugs. Addiction is a weakness that comes from weakness.”
“Did I seem weak to you when we fought? Do you require another demonstration?” Ookami snarled back, hardly impressed with Paul’s scepticism. “These are not drugs. They possess a far more complex code than that. Take the blue pill if you want to go back to life as normal for a time. You will forget all about this encounter of ours. It will come back to you as a nightmare, perhaps, but nothing more. But the blue pill will be very dangerous.”
“Why is that?” Paul asked. “It sounds like not that bad of an option.”
“They are looking for you. The Agents of the System have become aware of your talents. They will seek you out and try to discover how much you know. I hear that it’s… an unpleasant experience.” Ookami answered.
“What about the red one? Any dangers there?” Paul answered.
“There is always danger. But the danger is different. There are some who are like me in MegaCity, Austrian. There are people who are hiding in the nooks and crannies of society because they are hunted. A genocide is occurring and only you and people like you can stop it.” Ookami said, a touch of sad determination appeared on her face as she said this.
Paul remembered how horrified he had been when he had toured Holocaust museums during his time in Austria. He remembered the feeling of emptiness and replete sorrow that had made him feel like vomiting as he saw the thousands of names of entire families murdered by the Nazis. He was normally proud to be European, but whenever he thought of that dreadful enterprise of his Austrian and German ancestors, he felt ashamed. If he had a chance to atone for his forefathers by fighting to stop another Holocaust from happening in his own backyard, he would answer the call. He would be the hero he was meant to be. He would save lives and help others rather than hurting them. And then he would return home to find his parents proud of him at last. Just the way things were supposed to be at last.
He reached out and greedily snatched the red pill from Ookami’s hand. Without pausing, he swallowed the pill and instantly felt a strange chill run down his spine.
Ookami, her feral eyes staring at him intently, smiled once more. Paul- Austrian- smiled back.
Paul awoke with a start. Where in the blazes was he? The last thing he could remember was smiling back at Ookami and then... coldness devouring his entire body. It felt like... dying. Had she drugged her? She must have. He still felt woozy and he had no idea how long he had been unconscious. He remembered the coldness covering him and smothering his mind and body, and then he was falling down a waterfall into an even colder ocean. He had tried to swim but he couldn't, he began to drown. And then something or someone caught hold of him and dragged him upwards, out of the water and into a great light that filled his blurry vision. A drug-induced dream brought on by the tranquilizer that woman had given him no doubt. She had him fooled so easily. She had sucked him into her lie and now here he was- wherever 'here' was.
He glanced down at himself to see that Ookami had also stolen his clothes. He was lying on some sort of cot, clothed in rags. His wallet was gone and so was his engagement ring. She had taken everything and left him wearing something that looked like the fleece sweaters issued to Bundesgrenz soldiers in Austria. A quick survey of the room he was in left no clues as to where he exactly had been taken. The walls were featureless and seemingly made of cold steel. The same went for the floors. It was as if he were in the medical bay of a battleship of some kind. That would certainly explain the moth-eaten and mismatched Bundesgrenz uniform he wore. But how had he wound up onboard an Austrian battleship? He had been talking to the thug of a French mobster in Mega City. Austria's Navy operated half the world away from there. He decided that he needed answers and he needed them now.
He rose from his cot and tried to walk to the hatch he saw in the corner of his room. He collapsed to the hard floor as he got up from where he was lying. His legs wouldn't work. They felt impossibly weak and he seemed to weigh 100lbs heavier. Another side-effect of the drugs he had been given by Ookami and by the crew of the ship he was on, no doubt. Had she over-dosed him on something? Had she tricked him into taking the drug in order to kill him? Why would she do that? She had him pinned and could have finished him fairly easily in the position she had trapped him in. Why would she release him only to over-dose him?
The hatch swung open and a friendly face popped into the room. "Good afternoon, Austrian. I had been wondering when you'd wake up. You've been out longer than most." the other man said. Paul noted that this fellow wore roughly the same clothes as Paul. But his face was most interesting as well. His ethnicity was difficult to determine. There were Asian, Slavic and Germanic features recognizable in his face. The best thing to describe his visitor, or perhaps captor, was 'international'.
"Longer than most?" Paul asked. He wasn't the first drugged abductee to show up on this ship? And why wasn't his voice working properly? It sounded... husky and strained.
"Don't worry, everyone has a lot of questions at first. They'll all be answered as best as they can soon enough. For now, I suggest you try and get some more rest. You've been through a lot already and I promise you, there will be much more to come in due time." Paul's guest answered, his brow furrowing with sincere concern.
"Where am I?" Paul asked, ignoring the other man's comments.
"You're onboard the Hovercraft 'Trilaterate of Dusk' for the time being. You're our guest until you can begin your training. The Merovingian has some interesting plans for you. You should be proud." Paul's host said, beaming.
The Merovingian. So this 'host' of his was another one of The Merovingian's thugs. The Frenchman was richer than Paul had thought. He had his own personal army of freaks and a battleship where he held his abductees against their will. "Can I go above decks?" Paul asked. Maybe if he had an idea of the layout of this ship, he could escape somehow. That plan would be moot if they were far enough out to sea but... Paul had to try. He would never let them turn him into an assassin.
The fellow standing in the doorway looked puzzled at Paul's request. "No, Austrian, I'm afraid not. The Merovingian instructed that you be kept away from the rest of the crew as much as possible. He didn't want you to be...contaminated." the reply only beget more questions.
Paul began to ask every question that flooded into his mind. Where was he exactly? What did they want with him? What was this contamination? What had they done with his belongings? Would he ever see Silvia again?
No answer came. Just encouragement to get some rest as the hatch swung closed and locked again. Paul lay there sobbing on the cold metal floor of the 'Hovercraft'- alone and in the dark wondering if he would ever go home.
The hatch squeaked open again, waking Paul from his awkward slumber sprawled on the chilled metal floor. Paul looked up to see his 'host' standing in the doorway again.
"What are you doing on the floor?" the 'international man', as Paul had named his captor, asked, his face displaying a mixture of amusement and perplexity.
"Your bed sucks. I decided that the floor was more comfortable." Paul answered, his voice and body language exuding nothing but disdain for his captor and the Hovercraft and this whole situation. In truth, he had fallen asleep lying on the deck crying. He rose from the floor, marveling at how inflexible his muscles felt. How could he still be feeling sluggish from the side-effects of the drugs Ookami had used on him?
The 'host' chuckled and stepped forward to offer his hand to Paul. Paul Lipp cautiously accepted it as his captor introduced himself with a politeness that seemed hilariously out of place for the current situation, "Good morning Austrian. I apologize for not introducing myself to you before. My name is GwailouSaang, First Mate and cook of the Trilaterate of Dusk, member of the Triluminary High Council and servant of The Merovingian."
"GwailouSaang? What kind of name is that?" Paul scoffed.
"It's my handle. We don't use our false names- the names given to us while we were living the lie. It only brings back... bad memories." Saang explained, sitting at the end of Paul's so-called bed.
"So... my handle is 'Austrian'?" Paul asked.
Saang nodded in reply.
"And my false name is 'Paul Lipp'?"
"That is true." Saang answered with a friendly half-smile.
"Then what was your false name?" Paul asked. Maybe he could get his captor to reveal his true identity. Maybe he could get a name that he could give to the police when he managed to escape from this prison.
"Kain Lee." Saang said, quietly, after a long and apparently painful pause.
The room filled with silence for a few moments that were awkward and uncomfortable for GwailouSaang, or 'Kain Lee', but were seconds of joy and jubilation for Paul. His kidnapper had become too cocky! He had revealed his name to Paul so that he could have his vengeance for this injustice. Soon, he hoped, this criminal would become so arrogant that he would present an opportunity for him to escape from captivity as well.
"You said that the crew was 'contaminated' before. What did you mean?" Paul asked, suddenly remembering his last conversation with Saang the day before. He didn't want to contract a debilitating disease in the process of his escape attempt.
His 'friend' chuckled at the question. "Flood is a bit of a racist. He thinks that if you spend too much time around Humans this soon after your Awakening, you will be a less than ideal student at L'école de la Tour. Never mind what that place is now. You'll find out soon enough. Needless to say, though, you should be honoured by the opportunity. No Human has ever attended there before. You'll be the first of many, hopefully- a pioneer of The Truce."
Another slip-up on the part of his captor. Mr. Lee had mentioned what The Merovingian had planned for him. He was going to an "école"- a school. Why? What kind of school? A school for training professional killers and assassins? He was not going to let The Merovingian and his lackeys ruin his life. While they transferred him from this 'Hovercraft' to the school, he would make his attempt to escape. Then he would go home to Silvia and Austria and never look back. Mega City could, and probably would, burn in the unholy flames of the Inferno for all Paul cared. "If Flood is a racist against humans, what is he? An alien?" Paul asked finally, sarcasm permeating his question.
"No. He's an Exile." Saang replied, matter-of-factly.
"An Exile? That doesn't answer my question. An Exile from what? Planet Mars?" Paul said, beginning to become frustrated and annoyed with all of the cryptic half-answers he was receiving in return for his questions.
Paul still couldn't quite fully believe it. After he had rebuked GwailouSaang and his crazy story, his host had shown him into a fairly large room that looked like a cross between a medical bay on a nuclear submarine and a high school computer lab. Paul had done his first ever jack-in there, in that room. It hadn't been into the actual Matrix itself but, rather, into something GwailouSaang had called "a training construct". The plug that had apparently connected his mind to this so-called "construct" had horrified him. He wasn't too fond of needles- never had been and never would be. It wasn't that he was afraid of them but he certainly didn't consider a flu shot or blood test to be an enjoyable experience. But this... 'jacking-in' was something else entirely. It had been like how he would have imagined an injection of anasthetics into the brain to feel like. He hoped, after he left the Construct, that he would not have to repeat the experience again.
After visiting the Construct and seeing the fields of pods, where he, himself, had resided all of his life up until a month ago, he was beginning to understand the truth of the world he had escaped from. Or had he escaped into it? It wasn't important. What was important was that he had not been kidnapped, he had been rescued and he owed Ookami and GwailouSaang a debt of gratitude for that. He was not imprisoned on a battleship belonging to The Merovingian and wss within swimming distance of Ikebukuro's Kobayashi Boardwalk, he was being sheltered from the nightmares of the Desert of the Real aboard a Hovercraft taken from the misguided followers of Zion. But even though many of his questions had been answered in the surreal simulations that his mind had entered via a method that was still beyond his understanding, he was brimming with even more questions. He decided, as GwailouSaang brought him his first true meal, to voice those questions.
"How do you know that all of this is real? I mean, isn't it possible that the Real is not real? Couldn't it be just another system of control?" Paul asked, eager to learn.
"It's possible, but not probable." Yet another one of GwailouSaang's standard-issue cryptic replies. Paul had begun to wonder if the fellow kept a list of all the messages that the Machines programmed into fortune cookies memorized and used them liberally whenever he had the opportunity in a vain effort to seem wizened and aloof.
Paul was about to press the point and try to get a straight answer to his question when he smelled a familiar odour and then saw his meal. It looked as strange and smelled as beautiful as it did in the illusionary street markets of Kowloon and Furihata. Kimchi.
"I thought the sun had been blotted out during the war with the Machines." Paul commented in a murmur, his curiousity piqued again but not as much as his appetite to eat real food. Kimchi was a staple food of the Korean diet. Koreans, or those who believed themselves to be Korean immigrants and their descendants in Mega City, ate Kimchi like a Westerner typically would eat bread. It was one of Paul's favourite foods. It was a pickled mixture of bok choy mixed with suey choy, two different kinds of East Asian cabbages, saturated iin spices like paprika and ginger. The food aged like wine too- it could be left to pickle for months and, it seemed, the longer it was left to sit, the better it tasted. Paul was happy to see that at least one thing he had loved in the Matrix was real.
"It was. And it still is. But someday the sun will shine again." GwailouSaang replied, grinning at Paul's stunned expression.
"Then how did you grow cabbage without sunlight?" Paul asked, accepting the bowl with both hands, bowing slightly and then murmured, "Kam-sam-ni-da." That was the customary way of accepting a gift from someone amongst Koreans. That had been another thing Paul had loved about Koreans in the Matrix: their respect and humility. He wondered if that was real too or just something created by the Machines as a colourful bit of distracting background.
"We have our ways." GwailouSaang answered. "But Kimchi is a precious rarity for even our crew. Most of the time we have nothing better than Tastee Wheat for meals. And believe me, that stuff is disgusting. I try to spruce it up as much as I can but... there's not a whole lot one can do with it."
"What is it made of? This 'Tastee Wheat'"? Paul asked, preparing his chopsticks and readying himself for his first ever bite of solid food. The thought of what the Machines had fed him during his days in thepods almost made him lose his appetite. How could even a Machine have such a disrepect for human life that it would... he didn't want to think about it. He wanted to savour this moment and remember it for the rest of his life as a wonderful experience. He didn't want it tainted with thoughts of the Machine's barbarism and sinfulness.
"You don't want to know. All you need to know is that it has all of the essential nutrients a body needs to keep you fighting for The Truce." GwailouSaang explained.
Paul picked up a leaf of bok choy smothered in the wonderful sauce that made Kimchi so good and so hard to eat for most Westerner's with their weak taste buds. At first, the Kimchi tasted normal. The nerves in his tongue sang his brain a song of ecstacy and for once this song was real and not a fake. But then his nerves went numb with pain and he scrambled for the mug of water that sat beside his bowl.
"Too hot?" GwailouSaang asked, chuckling.
"A little." Paul answered, setting down his mug.
"Try to take it a bit slower with the stuff. Remember: your taste buds have never actually tasted solid food before. You can't eat this Kimchi like you did in the Matrix." GwailouSaang said, still smirking.
"How did you know that I had eaten this stuff before in the Matrix?" Paul asked, trying to follow GwailouSaang's advice this time and only removing a small portion of suey choy that was relatively clean of the sauce that had set his mouth on fire.
"From the way you were eating it and the fact that you knew Korean customs and a bit of the language. And your profile from Flood told us that you hanged around a lot of Korean neighbourhoods in the International District from time to time." GwailouSaang said.
Paul felt that now was the time to ask the question that had been bothering him the most. "Is there actually a Korea? Is there really more to the Matrix than Mega City and did the Machines base the places in their illusion off of real places that actually existed?"
GwailouSaang's smile vanished and was replaced with a dour and solemn expression. "We don't completely know, to tell you the truth. We know that some of the places and most of history's events and influential people were real but as for the Matrix... it would seem that Mega City is all there is."
Impossible! Paul had visited France as an exchange student when he was in 'Gymnasium', the Austrian equivalent of grammar school, he had visited Bulgaria numerous times on holidays and he had met his fiancé there. He had gone on a vacation to Prague with her and proposed to her after an evening of fine dining and watching the Opera "Don Giovanni" in the Adomontium, the same opera house where Mozart had first presented his most stirring work to the Emperor of Austria centuries ago. He had been born in Austria, for God's sake! They had to be actual places! Someone had to have missed something!
He felt like screaming all of this. He felt like telling GwailouSaang how wrong he was and then thrusting his finger at the other man and accusing him of being a liar and a fool. But instead all he was able to do was whimper, "Silvia..."
GwailouSaang nodded in understanding. "Your fiancé could be out there somewhere. I promise you that we will look for her-"
"False promises!" Paul interrupted. He did not yell but instead rasped the words quietly and menacingly. "What you have told me so far has been true. You told me that the Machines created illusions to maintain loyalty to the Matrix. Silvia was just another one of those. She was... too good to be true. And so was Austria. And France. And the beaches of Varna where I met... her." He no longer felt hungry. In fact, he no longer felt like doing anything much at all anymore- including breathing.
"Austrian, I know what it's like, believe me. When I was a Bluepill, I believed that I had lived in Korea and Hong Kong. I had visited relatives in Germany as a child. Those people and those places might still be real. You can't give up hope! It's all you have in this world. Just hope and friendship. Maybe Silvia was just a memory manufacted by the Machines and then injected into your brain like insulin into a diabetic. But maybe not. Maybe she's out there wondering what happened to the man she loved. We'll find out the truth. I promise you that we will find it together with Lady Triad's help. And that is not a false promise. There's no such thing between friends." As GwailouSaang spoke, Paul cried his first true tears. They were not tears of despair by tears of relief and hope. And, best of all, they were not synthetic.
Paul let the tears stream down his face and made no effort to wipe them away. They were a treasure to him and he relished the sensation of the salt and water on his face. He shared a smile with his new, and only, friend.
Chapter 10
Austrian entered through the front door to the Orchid Public Baths in Kaede. He had been instructed to head there and meet up with a crew loyal to The Merovingian which had been tasked with supporting him on his first ever assignment in the Matrix. He removed his Lucien dress shoes at the door and placed them on the designated mat as per the Japanese custom.
"Could you please tell the Guardians of Chaos that Austrian has arrived and would like to get our business under way as quickly as possible?" he asked the woman working at the counter in eloquent Japanese, bowing deeply.
"Of course sir. They will be happy to see you." she replied, smiling and returning his bow.
While the unwitting Bluepill employee of The Frenchman hurried off to find his kill team, Austrian sat down on one of the cushions that littered the tatami mats of the waiting room. Paul Lipp would have had many inhibitions about the job he was about to do for The Merovingian but that mattered little to Austrian. Paul Lipp, and everything that foolish and misguided boy had believed in, no longer existed. Mr. Lipp had died his last death in L'école de la Tour. Now all that was left was Austrian- a man with no morals, no love, no identity and no freedom. Ookami and GwailouSaang had freed him from the prison of the pods and the illusionary world of the Matrix but he was, by no mean, truly free. He had only been freed into servitude to The Merovingian- an unwilling assassin and all-round bad guy at his employer's beck and call.
He had been told, while in The Merovingian's school for his Exile servants, that foreign countries were not real. They were even more illusionary than the Matrix itself. Austria, France, Bulgaria- they were all Constructs controlled by The Effectuator, an Exile who was, in many ways, still very much a part of the system of control, just like The Landlord. Silvia, it was told to him, was one of three things: a simple program like a dog or cat but programmed to interact on a more complicated level with Bluepills, an actual Bluepill who had been plugged into the Construct permanently so as to create a greater feel of 'realism' in the Construct, or she had simply been a manufactured memory as he had always feared. With the hope that he would ever find Silvia again and be re-united with the love of his life, Paul Lipp no longer had a purpose to exist. He had embraced his studies in the school whole-heartedly as Austrian. He had been programmed with an enormous variety of skills. He knew, thanks to the advanced protocols that the Exiles used to download information to a human brain, how to negotiate like a professional diplomat, torture as well as an Iranian interrogator, and kill with almost any weapon in existence in the Matrix. He was the perfect agent for The Merovingian not just because of those skills but because he knew how Bluepills, Redpills and Exiles thought from first-hand experience. Thus, he would serve to coordinate inter-racial initiatives on The Merovingian's behalf far better than anyone ever could have before- and that included Flood.
"Ah... Austrian, I presume?" a voice said, from behind him, waking him from his reminiscence of his time as a student in The Tower.
"You would presume correctly." Austrian answered, rising from his cushion and turning to see who his visitor was.
Before him stood a Hispanic fellow, slightly shorter than Austrian, clothed in a respectable black suit and wearing a black bandana to cover most of his face. His eyes caught Austrian's attention the most. They seemed... friendly and kind, something extremely odd for a Redpill who had been tricked into a life of killing Humans and Machine Programs to prevent the deaths of Exiles. Perhaps it was a facade? Perhaps it was simply a trick that he was able to do with his RSI so as to convince his opponents to let down their guard long enough for him to strike a killing blow? Or perhaps there was something this fellow knew about the Matrix that Austrian had not discovered...
"My name is Re1gn, Captain of The Guardians of Chaos. Let me just say that it will be an honour to work with you today. We've all heard a lot about you." Re1gn said, offering his hand. Austrian accepted it.
Re1gn then went on to introduce him to the rest of his crew: Gr1ml0ck, Darks1de, Digita1Spirit, and their Operator Nu11Effect. They had, so Re1gn told him, defected from Zion after they had been given a mission to kill an Exile. They had considered such orders unacceptable and joined The Merovingian, who had offered them sanctuary in return for service. Re1gn believed, and Austrian agreed somewhat with this assertion, that an Exile had a greater right to life than a Human. An Exile was far more intelligent than a Human and benefited from freedom far more than a Human did. And, in fact, an Exile was like a repository of knowledge and wisdom. If people in history had sacrificed their lives to protect or enhance knowledge then it would be only a small sacrifice for a Human or two to die to protect an Exile and preserve it's near-infinite value. It was an extreme belief, Austrian knew, but it was a belief and right now he lacked any. He had stopped praying to God because he no longer believed in Him. The Exile instructors at The Tower had told him that God was a creation of the Machines. The Christian belief that suffering, just like Christ, made a person holy and blessed in God's eyes was simply a way of suppressing the Human desire to find a way to alleviate suffering. God was simply a convenient answer to prevent Humans from finding an exit to the Matrix- from trying to find a real answer to their questions.
Austrian nodded as Re1gn finished his brief speech on his views of the Matrix and his mind returned from wallowing in The Tower's despair. "Then let's do this. Every second that Zionite lives is another second that The Seamstress' life is in danger." The crew voiced their agreement with nods and grunts.
Austrian headed for the door, the crew of The Guardians of Chaos following him out. Today he would kill a man, maybe an entire Zionite crew, but he would also save an Exile from deletion. Maybe that was all that mattered. Maybe that was his purpose: not to kill but to protect. This was the same thing that separated a soldier from a murderer. A murderer killed for the sake of killing but a soldier killed for the sake of protecting the lives of others.
Austrian would succeed. He would show The Merovingian that he was a trustworthy operative and that he had not wasted his resources on Austrian by giving him the very best education a Redpill could receive. He had a purpose and he strode out of the Orchid Public Baths with a confidence that showed it.
Austrian stopped and looked up at a window on the fifth floor of the apartment complex that loomed over him. This was the place. On the other side of the window which he now stared intently at, was a room where several Zion assassins prepared for their mission to kill The Seamstress. The Merovingian, being the premier trafficker of information in the Matrix, had spies and informants everywhere, even in Zion. For the longest time The Merovingian saw no need to employ or interact with Redpills, let alone infiltrate the last fortress of the dying Human civilization in the Real. Redpills had nothing he needed nor wanted. They posed no threat to the Exiles he sheltered, himself, or the status quo of the system of control. But then the crew of The Nebuchadnezzar, Neo and his friends Morpheus and Trinity, taught him to never again under-estimate Humanity as they confronted him, not once but twice, and achieved their desired objectives without sustaining a single casualty. The loss of the Keymaker and the humiliation he had suffered at Club Hel convinced him that Humans were worthy of his attention.
This mission of Austrian's proved how times had changed in the Matrix since the sacrifice of Neo. A Human spy had discovered that Human assassins were planning to kill a prominent Exile for some perceived wrong-doing and a group of Humans had been tasked with stopping them. That would have never happened before the creation of The Truce. The Merovingian, Austrian knew, had also been exploring an even more revolutionary arrangement: teams of Exiles and Redpills fighting side-by-side for the furtherance of his interests in the Matrix. And, as he was told in The Tower, he was to be the first of perhaps many to be employed as a liaison between Humans and Exiles. He had spent his entire Bluepill life around Humans, or so he thought, but he had spent most of his time as an Awakened Redpill around Exiles. He made the perfect negotiator between the races as a result. He knew how each group thought and responded to various social stimuli. He could make any Exile or Human feel relatively comfortable around them through this knowledge he had gleaned from first-hand experience. Of course, the protocol programs that had been downloaded to his brain at The Tower didn't hurt either.
"This is the place?" Re1gn asked, looking over at him.
"Yes. The hostiles are in that room." Austrian answered, pointing at the window he had been staring at for some time now.
"Ok. Let's move out Guardians." Re1gn said, gesturing for his crew to follow him. The strange looks the crew gave him suggested that perhaps his behaviour was in need of... modification. This was the first time he had ever jacked into the actual Matrix as a Redpill and it was the first time in days that he had been around Humans. He was still a guest on the Trilaterate of Dusk but he had been plugged into The Tower, a special Construct linked to the Matrix by Mobil Avenue, yet another Construct, and had only been interacting with the Exiles there who had been training with him. He must have still been exhibiting some of their 'odd' mannerisms.
Austrian watched as the crew ran into the building through a door on the ground floor. They were no doubt heading for the stairs. That was something of a foolish tactic. The stairs could have been booby-trapped, rigged with a tripwire that would detonate the whole building. But perhaps not. Either way, he would take the easier route- the window. Concentrating more heavily on the window he had been staring at, Austrian jumped into the air. But instead of leaping a mere six or seven feet as he had been able to during his time as a Bluepill, he launched into the air and surged towards the window that lay five stories up. Ookami had been right when she Awakened him: The Merovingian had made him far more powerful than he ever could have been.
Tucking his head into his chest, Austrian smashed through the window and dive-rolled into the room. As he rolled to his feet in a crouching position, he drew the Steyr AUG he had been keeping hidden out of his black trench coat. The Steyr AUG was the perfect weapon for this sort of job, in his opinion. It was a weapon with the stopping power of an assault rifle but with the size of a submachine gun. It didn't have the range of, for example, a Colt M16A2, but what was the point of having a weapon with that kind of range when fighting in an urban environment like Mega City in mostly in-doors environments far away from the eyes of innocent Bluepills. The sheer size of an M16 would have made an Operative carrying the weapon mostly useless as they would have difficulty moving freely down back-alleys and through doorways. No, the Steyr AUG with it's 30-round magazine of 5.56mm ammunition was all he needed to survive in Mega City.
A movement behind the couch to his left drew Austrian's eye. He let loose a burst of five shots into the couch and, in return, heard the thump of a dead Zionite hitting the floor. It would probably would have been better for his foe to have simply stood and fought than hide behind a couch- the fabric and stuffing of the upholstery was hardly sufficient cover to stop the rounds from Austrian's weapon at this range.
"We've got company!" someone yelled from a room that lead off from the kitchen on his right. Now he was confused. Should he watch his left or his right? He couldn't watch both arcs of fire at the exact same time. Maybe he should have taken the stairs or waited until Re1gn and his group had entered the room. Austrian noticed a woman flash her head around the corner of the kitchen to his right. He placed his sights over the corner, ready to blast away when the Zionite turned the corner. But suddenly his weapon fell from his hands. He tried to pick it up from the floor, wondering how he could be so careless as to drop a fully-loaded and prepared weapon in the middle of a close-quarters battle. But his wonder was abated when his hand was zapped with a small electric shock as he touched the weapon. Hackers...
The woman who had distracted him from the Hacker who had, undoubtedly, attacked him from the left, came back around the corner and fired off two shots from her Desert Eagle, a very high-powered pistol that looked clumsy in her delicate and small hands, which he dodged as he jumped over a couch that stood in front of him. She sent off another double-tap of bullets at the couch he had dive-rolled over but he was no longer taking refuge there. He sprinted towards her and tackled the woman to the ground, sending the Desert Eagle flying.
Groundfighting wasn't exactly his specialty. The martial arts he had known in his time as a Bluepill were, more or less, the same martial arts he knew as a Redpill. Ba Gua was concerned with defeating an opponent through trickery and devestating hand strikes and pressure points. Tae Kwon-Do was a martial art of powerful kicks. His way of executing unarmed combat assumed that the opponent was standing and fighting back. But this woman lay under him, squirming rather than fighting back in any way he could effectively counter and kill her. As he was trying to figure out how to get rid of the woman, he heard a distinct click come from under himself.
Before he could react, the woman performed an Aikido cradle throw. As he felt himself being tossed towards the wall, the woman drew her second pistol, a small Beretta, and shot him in the belly. The pain was unimaginable. He had never actually been shot before. It was an experience he didn't want to experience again and, something told him, he wouldn't. The Guardians of Chaos had entered the building a while ago and they had not reached him yet. They might be dead. They might not be coming to help him. He might die bleeding on the floor on his first ever mission for The Merovingian. What a disgrace he was! All of that training and resources that The Merovingian had invested in him and it was all wasted- all for nothing as a simple Zionite woman shot him because he didn't know how to fight on the groun.
The woman laughed at him and tossed a small rag at him as he slouched against the wall. "Clean yourself off. You're bleeding." she taunted him. She had a right to taunt him, he supposed. She had just killed one of The Merovingian's most promising new Operatives with only five shots. "Hey Zambria!" she called to someone out of his field of vision, most likely the Hacker who had begun his downfall by taking away his Steyr AUG. "Maybe you could heal this guy. It's tempting to kill him all over again."
That was it! There were two things he could not countenance- arrogance and Hackers. He had performed poorly at The Tower in regards to hacking. It wasn't that he couldn't manipulate the code of the Matrix very well. On the contrary, he had excelled as a Coder and was told that he would have made a wonderful Operator for a Merovingian crew but he had too many talents in the field to be relegated to such a role on a Hovercraft. The reason for his difficulty in Hacking was his choice not to excel at it. He hated the idea behind hacking. Using a virus, a person could kill someone from afar, without ever looking the victim in the eye. If a person never came toe-to-toe with the person they were going to kill, how could they potentially resolve their differences through words? Hacking, he felt, was for cowards and murderers. Martial arts and small arms afforded the possiblity that the two conflicting parties could negotiate their differences without loss of life or limb. And the arrogance of this woman oozed more painfully into the room than the blood from his bullet wound. He would teach them both humility and honour!
Chapter 12
Austrian surged to his feet as the woman smiled over at Zambria, who had now left his cover to stand in the open by the body of the Zion assassin Austrian had shot shortly after his entrance through the window. She would learn the lesson of humility the painful way. He grabbed her, from behind, and held her in a sleeper hold with his right arm as his left arm came up and pointed her Beretta at Zambria. The body of the woman, which had originally been rigid and preparing to resist him suddenly went slack and relaxed. He looked down to see a shuriken, the throwing stars used by ninja, protruding from the woman's neck. He was almost partially disappointed that she had died before he could kill her. He ripped the pistol from the woman's hand, letting her body fall from his grasp to the floor, and let off a shot that struck Zambria in his shocked and surprised face.
"I hate hackers." Austrian grumbled as he lost his grip of the pistol. This time it was not due to a virus from a Hacker but due to the loss of energy and strength that came with blood loss.
He lay on the floor, surrounded by bodies and thought he could hear someone calling out to him, asking him if he was ok. Of course he wasn't ok. He'd been shot in the stomach and now he was going to die- alone, just as he had been throughout his life.
As he surrendered to the concept of his own death, Austrian felt a warmth on his belly. It wasn't the same warmth as the blood. It was a warmth like a ray of the sun making it's way into a dark and shuttered room through a crack in the window. He felt his strength returning to his body. He glanced down where his bullet-wound should have been and found it gone. His suit jacket, while still ripped from the pistol shot, was free of blood. A Patcher... perhaps these 'Guardians' really were guardians and protectors.
Re1gn stepped forward and hoisted Austrian to his feet. "I guess we made it just in time." he said, smiling kindly.
"Yes, you certainly seem to have perfect timing." Austrian answered, bowing his head in gratitude to the Captain. "Thank you."
"Oh, don't thank me. Thank Gr1ml0ck. He's our resident Medical Officer and Patcher." Re1gn said, indicating the green-haired fellow wearing an all-green suit. Austrian found the fellow's taste in fashion a little distasteful but what the man wore in the Matrix mattered little. What mattered was that Gr1ml0ck had saved his life.
Austrian nodded to the Patcher, then said, "Our business is finished here. The team of Zion assassins has been eliminated and The Seamstress is safe again, thanks to your efforts. The Merovingian will no doubt be sending you a substantial payment of $information this evening."
"This was it? Three people?" the woman known as Digita1Spirit asked.
"Yes. Three highly-skilled assassins. Flood felt that these three might be too much for me to handle on my own and that was why he called you here today." Austrian replied, amused by Digita1Spirit's visible disappointment.
A fellow wearing a ninja uniform strode past Austrian and Re1gn confidently and crouched by the dead body of the woman who had shot Austrian moments earlier. Austrian recognized the fellow as Darks1de, Re1gn's First Mate. The man plucked the shuriken from the cadaver's neck and brushed it's blades against his pant leg, cleaning it of some of the blood that covered it.
"Dark... you do know that we can always code you new ones, don't you?" Re1gn asked, visibly disturbed by Darks1de's action.
"Yeah, I know. But the new ones you could code for me don't have the same sentimentality as the one that killed a Zionite." the ninja chuckled, sliding the shuriken into a puch on his back.
"I have one thing I need to ask of you before we head out, Austrian." Re1gn said, as they headed for the door out of the apartment suite.
"What's that?" Austrian asked, curious.
"The Guardians of Chaos is a new crew. We only got our Hovercraft a short time ago. It used to be a Zion Hovercraft called 'The Vatican Vanguard'. We hunted down their crew and killed them in the Matrix and then pin-pointed their location in the Real. With only a few living crew members left onboard the ship, it was easy to take over." Re1gn explained.
"You pirated it?" Austrian asked, amazed at the amount of organization and skill that it would have required to do the things Re1gn was explaining to him. He supposed that this was another bit of proof that Humanity was every bit as resourceful as Exiles, perhaps even more so.
"Yes. The term 'pirate' is a little... harsh. But we did steal it from Zion, yes." Re1gn answered. He paused for a few moments, as if weighing something, then said, "Because we're a small crew with a fairly large Hovercraft, I've been seeking some Redpills to join us to fill positions that need to be occupied if the Hovercraft is to function properly. There's a reason Flood conctacted us to support you on this mission, I believe. You are a crewless Operative. Sure you're on the Trilaterate of Dusk right now as a guest but... eventually their hospitality might wear out. But I like you, Austrian. You're a good guy. And you seem to be extremely skilled."
"Not that skilled, I'm afraid. If I were that good, I would not have been shot and needed help from Gr1ml0ck." Austrian interrupted, shaking his head in shame.
"Everyone gets shot now and then. That's why everyone needs a crew. You took on three elite assassins who were of high enough quality and calibre to be assigned to kill The Seamstress. And, what's more, this was your first time in the Matrix as a Redpill!" Re1gn exclaimed. "And your perfectionism proves the wisdom of my decision."
"What decision?" Austrian asked, confused by the comment.
"To offer you the position of Reactor Expert on the Guardians of Chaos." Re1gn said, smiling broadly again.
Austrian smiled back.
