Merc

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I made sure everyone in close proximity saw me climbing up my suit and disappearing into the cockpit. I timed my move with the movements of the others. One good push off the open hatch door and I was diving over the shoulder of my suit. I followed the line of the suit’s leg down to the ground and crouched at its feet. The suit was in between the camp and me. One look to ensure no one saw, and I sprinted the ten feet to the tree line and disappeared into the jungle.

I only stayed on the ground for a few moments. The brush was too thick and my shirt kept catching on the growth. The roots of massive trees reached up to catch my feet, and the local wildlife scattered before me. I knew there were many venomous creatures in the area and the sun would be going down shortly.

So I took to the trees. The moon would be full, and there would be plenty of light, but the odds of it filtering through the canopy and illuminating the forest floor were slim.

I felt safer in the trees. I felt like I was being watched from above while on the ground. In the trees, I could do the watching if that’s what I wanted.

It took some getting used to, but within ten minutes, I was walking along the knobby branches as easily as walking on a gravel road. My eyes adjusted to the setting sun quickly, and I picked up speed, knowing the town was several miles away.

There was a learning curve, but I couldn’t afford to let it slow me down. I learned very quickly how far and high I could jump, how thick a branch had to be to support my weight without bowing so far it would throw off my balance. I learned how long a vine would support my weight until I had to find another limb to land on.

I learned to use every surface of my foot as a weightbearing surface. When I was jumping from my suit, I learned to land on the balls of my feet, activate the muscles in my calf to cushion through my ankles, then cushion through my knees and hips with my thighs to avoid jarring my chest and head upon landing.

It didn’t quite work like that in the trees. On a rounded surface, landing on the balls of your feet is fine as long as you land just right, otherwise your feet are sliding off the rounded side, and you are in trouble.

Because of that, I learned that if I landed off center, I had to realign my body over that portion of my foot so that it wasn’t off center. Oftentimes, I landed off center because of the baggy attire I wore caught on a stray branch. I shed the shirt I was wearing and was left with overlarge fatigues, but there was little I was willing to do about that because I was about to walk into a village full of people. Walking around naked is not a way to remain unnoticed.

By the time I made it to the town, the muscles in my calf and ankles were screaming their frustration at me, but I could land on my heels, the outside, or the arch of my foot and be just as steady as landing on my forefoot.

I felt pride in my accomplishment, but I was extremely glad I was walking on a flat surface again.

I hadn’t been in this part of the world enough to be fluent in the language of this province, but I caught enough to know two things: something was causing the locals a lot of anxiety about ten blocks over, which was exactly where the building I had destroyed was, and that a young boy walking around without a shirt after sunset on was more noticeable than I expected.

I left the more populated streets and found the lesser traveled alleys. It didn’t take long before I was being followed; I knew the probability of being targeted because of the setting I was in and my age, but it still caused irritation to rise up within me. I was in too much of a hurry to get to my target to be slowed by others.

Without being obvious about it, I started scanning my surroundings. I couldn’t tell how many were behind me, but there were none in front of me. The alley I was in was very narrow. There were second story windows with clothes lines strung between the two walls.

I was well aware of what a ‘victim’ looked like, and I took this time to look like one. I let my eyes go wide, shifting quickly from side to side, scared. I hunched my shoulders to make myself look smaller than I was, and quickened my pace like I was running away. I paused and feigned indecision in where to go as a corner came up. I wanted to be taken there where the lines still ran above me.

Sure enough, I felt a forearm across my shoulders trying to pin my body face first into the wall next to me. I faked stumbling with the man’s force and let my body slip beneath his elbow and sidestepped to get out of the path of his momentum which carried him into the wall.

He used the wall to push off and spin around, facing me. His skin and eyes were dark; his frame was thick with long arms. I didn’t expect him to be as fast as he was, but it didn’t matter. I had been fighting opponents bigger, stronger, faster than me for years.

Not knowing the nuances of the local dialect did not keep me from interpreting his words from his tone and the switchblade he pulled from his pocket, but I had shed the victim’s act and stood there unmoved, waiting.

He lunged at slashed at me with the knife as I jumped high enough to grasp the line above me. My legs were tired from my trip here, and I almost missed it. I would have to be more conservative with my energy. The man below me looked up right as my foot connected with the side of his head.

Thrown off balance, he reached for my leg to steady himself. My leg was no longer there, but he was fast enough to catch my loose fatigues. His thick body had more weight than I could hold while gripping a clothes line. I held for a second, the wire cutting into my flesh, before my fingers gave way.

He fell backwards, swinging the knife wildly and still gripping my pants, pulling my leg and lower body out from under my falling weight, and I fell flat on my back. Not a good position to be in.

The air was knocked out of me, but I sat up anyways, knowing how bad the situation just became. The man was coming to sit as well and he was aiming his knife to stab the leg trapped by his grip on my fatigues. I swung my free leg at his hand and caused him to miss the body of muscles at my calf. His knife almost missed my leg, slicing along the bone and skin of the front of my leg.

But it also cut the fabric of my pants and embedded itself in the dirt. Ripping my leg backwards slashed a big hole in the pants, so when he tried to pull my leg back into position with the grip he had and I continued to pull backwards, the bottom that he held ripped off.

I landed another kick to his head then rolled backwards out of his range. From my knee down, my fatigues were shredded or gone, and the front of my leg was a mess of blood. I couldn’t tell how deep or shallow the cut was until I inspected it, and if it was deep, I needed to wrap this up before I felt faint.

He came at me again, but I knew his style by now. I knew exactly what he was going to do. I brought up both hands to stop the progression of the knife then threw the elbow nearest him into his stomach, brought the hand back to steady the knife, kneed him in the groin, and when his body slumped in response, forced the palm of my hand into his nose, shattering the fragile cartilage structure and forcing it through the sinus cavity and into his brain. He dropped, instantly dead.

I wiped the blood on my palm off on his shirt, took the scrap of fabric from his hand, and sat down to survey the damage of my leg. There’s only a layer of skin covering the bone there, and it was as I feared; he cut into the bone.

Bones can bleed just like skin; the only difference is pressure to the wound doesn’t stop the flow. I cut two strips of fabric with the man’s knife. He wouldn’t need it anymore. One over the wound, and one just above my knee to slow the flow of blood until it clot on its own. The slice wasn’t as shallow as I had hoped, but it could have been much worse. He missed the muscle, which meant I could still walk fine, there was pain when I put weight through the bone, but I’ve dealt with worse.

I just had to keep an eye on how much blood I was losing until it stopped. And I needed to make a serious alteration in my regular attire after this was over.

Despite the fact that my hands were cut to hell from the wire, I used it to fling myself up onto the roof. I would stay above the people to avoid any similar confrontations.

I made my way to the center of the city and looked down from above. There were people milling about, crying, mourning the loss of something important. I was afraid I knew exactly what that important something was.

Dropping from the roof, I saw that the people had dug the rubble of the building out enough to look for any survivors.

Not far from where I stood, the people had created a miniature shrine near the rubble. Flowers, lit candles, food, colored sashes, handmade jewelry, and other gifts to the dead were scattered across the area surrounding a body covered by a sheet. I knew exactly what the man looked like because along with the other gifts were pictures of him smiling and alive, others that had him speaking to others looking very determined and strong. It was the man I had seen as I destroyed the building, the mourning people muttering prayers for the dead man confirmed what I feared: it was Espinoza. If he was in that building, so was the rest of the merc contingent.

Scanning the rubble confirmed it.

Auldi had been forced to take up arms and fill in for the many that died in the last battle. He always wore a metal band around his wrist with his name, date of birth, and a few other facts etched into a flattened band.

And there was an arm exposed from the elbow down, with that band around the wrist.

Other bodies were being pulled from the rubble, but I had seen all I needed to. Now I had some decisions to make.

What now?

I was almost sad.

The men I had known, traveled, and fought with were dead by my hand. I wasn’t particularly fond of any of them. Their deaths caused only regret that I hadn’t seen what was happening before it was too late to stop and a vague sense of loss at the knowledge that my previous way of life was going to change.

It didn’t need to; I could easily feign ignorance to Cauldwell and join his group, but I wouldn’t.

I was angry.

Cauldwell and his men changed the route of escape of the escort group then used me as their executioner. They would die as punishment. They chose to make me the dealer of death yesterday, and I would continue to be so today. I was very good at bringing death to others.

They would all die, or I would die trying.

As I wandered aimlessly across the rooftops, angry thoughts assaulted me. The others had formed their own group, leaving me with Cauldwell’s men because they didn’t trust me. They thought I was the reason so many of our group died that we were forced to join with another group.

I had known them to be wrong at first, but after the latest events, I began to doubt. Maybe they were right. They were right not to trust me. Ignorant or not, I had killed them.

True, I was manipulated, but that’s no excuse. That just meant Richard knew I was weak enough to be manipulated. I was the weak one…

Too much pride in my suit and my abilities made me his target, and he chose correctly. I did exactly what he wanted me to do.

That would change. My weaknesses would be removed in one counterattack. And they would die.
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Some have expressed excitement/curiosity as to Trowa meeting the other pilots, it'll get there, I promise, I just wanted to make sure I established a feasible explanation to some of Trowa's talents and skills. Not all of them, mind you, but most.

I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll check in again soon. Drop me a line and let me know how I'm doing if you have the time.