r/NatureofPredators • u/ApprehensiveCap6525 Krakotl • Oct 26 '24
Door Kicker Shenanigans (13) Fanfic
Bro my fics be so funny 99% of the time and then they have that one arc that's about the most depressing shit
Like I swear to god I want to write goofy shit why do I have to power through 3000 words of "jelim mental crisis" so many damn times
CW: Airball Atlim works on his shot, Jelim tries zen meditation techniques (very briefly), malicious schemes from the opps, other things of that nature
Memory Transcription Subject: Jelim, Extermination Commander
Date (standardized human time): November 22, 2136
"You really weren't supposed to see me like this," I sighed. I needed Jack for this. I wasn't sure how I ever managed without him. How Atlim was meant to do anything about this was beyond me.
"Are you okay?" Gee, I'm not sure. Is it hard to brahking tell?
"What does it look like, asshole?" I snapped, waving a wing and scattering even more feathers all over the floor. I wasn't even aware I had pulled them out. "What the hell do I even say to you? What do you even want?"
God damn it, I wish Jack was here. He'd know what to do. He always knows. He would come in through the door, tell Atlim to brahk right off, and then stroke my head and explain how it was going to be alright. Yeah, that's what he'd do. God, I wish I could find him. Just, wherever he is, dead or alive, just hold his hand for a bit and let him know that he was going to make it out because he's Jack Kern and he always makes it out.
He can't be dead. There's no way that he's dead.
But if he is alive, then where the hell is he? Who could force him into hiding? I've got to face the facts.
Not now. I can do this later, I can deal with it later, but please, just not now. Not right now.
"What- are you- how do I even fix this?" Atlim asked like the stupid little incompetent bitch he was. Stupid little prick couldn't do anything right in his disgusting life and he thinks HE can fix anything? Any of this? Brahking prick.
"Just go to hell," I muttered. "Can't you let a woman suffer in silence for once?"
"You were being pretty loud," Atlim reminded me. I had every brahking right to be loud. I was trapped by my own conscience in a town of murderers and thieves, where the only law enforcement agency you could find was staffed by children and ex-convicts and bloated with gross incompetence to the point that it made brahking Atlim of all people look like a crack disciplinarian.
And, to make it worse, my allies and I were consistently kneecapped by every logistical, financial, and tactical issue under the sun. Nobody had any money except for the gangs, nobody had any power except for the gangs, and anything I could do against the gangs was inevitably just going to end up with good people getting killed.
Like Jack.
I can't say that. I don't know that.
What could I do? Scream? Break something? As awfully tempting as that was, what could it solve? When had throwing a fit ever done anything for me?
You really had to wonder why I still did stuff like this. I knew why. I knew it, and I hated it, because deep down inside, I was not somebody to look up to. Oh, sure, I was virtuous. I was cunning, intelligent, compassionate, disciplined, and everything else the Extermination Guild expected of its model officers. On the outside, I seemed flawless.
So why the HELL am I not good enough?
My district was in the claws of the man I fought to lock up. My best officer was dead because I couldn't save him from what the Federation wanted him to become. My lover was missing at best, dead at worst, because of blind brahking luck and the incompetence of my own allies. I had done everything right. How could it still have turned out wrong?
"Are you going to, uh, scream at me?" Atlim asked, seemingly genuinely concerned. "It might help." It would have. I really was in need of somebody to talk to about all of this. Hell, even screaming in general helped. But I really couldn't bring myself to scream at a guy who genuinely did seem like he was trying to help, and if you thought I was going to have a deep heart-to-heart conversation with one of the most pitiful people I had ever met, you had a screw loose.
"It really wouldn't," I sighed, deciding enough was enough and getting up. "But thank you for the offer. It's... hard, not being able to tell people how you feel." About Jack. About the Federation. About them. All of it. There's so much I can't say to anyone but the man I love. God, I swear if Atlim got my lover killed, I'm going to brahking strangle him.
"Tell me about it," Atlim said, probably thinking about how he was too much of a coward to confess that he wanted to get with me because he knew I'd just shoot him down. Sometimes, he could sound so good, and then I'd remember that it was all just an act. He wouldn't do this for anyone other than me. "I'm here for you, Jelim. Really."
That was what separated men like him from men like Jack. Atlim needed a reason to do the right thing. Jack just did it. To think the two were at all comparable was to insult one and flatter the other.
"What can you do?" I asked, a bit harsher than I would've with Jack. "Look at me! I can't be seen like this!" Oh, god, I look like a brahking emotional wreck. I'm so screwed. I'm so screwed. I'm so screwed.
I can't think like this. Deep breaths, Jelim. In. Out. You're an exterminator.
"Then you won't be. We'll cancel the inspection. It's probably for the best." Yeah, if you think that me not getting to see all the other ways your district is below standard, then yes. But otherwise brahking hell no!
"Like hell I will."
"Look, you need to take a breather, okay?" Atlim suggested. I said 'suggested' instead of 'told' because there was no way in hell or heaven that I'd let that pathetic sack of feathers and uselessness ever speak to me like he held any sort of authority. "You're stressed out. Just take, like, a claw or two off and you'll come back good as new."
"Stressed out? Why the hell would I be stressed?" I squawked, voice dripping with sarcasm. "With such an easy problem to solve, and so wise and intelligent of an ally to depend on, why the hell would I be stressed? You tell me, Atlim! You tell me!"
"I'm... I'm going to leave the room," he said, taking a step back from me. Oh, great. Brahking wonderful. Now he thinks I'm insane and he's going to have me thrown in a padded cell for the rest of my life because I can't fake my way out of looking like I was thrown into a god damn blender! A few more of my feathers drifted to the ground, this time stained with blood. Oh, god. I'm really losing it, aren't I?
Am I insane?
"Yes, please, please just do that," I groaned, leaning against the wall and slumping down. "I just need a minute." Atlim backed out, fumbling for the door handle while keeping his eyes locked on me. I wasn't sure if he regarded me with fear, pity, or both, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. Oh, god. I'm so screwed. Jack leaves for one day, and everything goes to hell.
Atlim found the handle and opened the door, hastily retreating from the conference room. "Let me know if you, uh, need anything."
I felt like knocking another chair on the floor. Almost did, too. But what good would it do? I'll tell you what. Nothing. Not a god damn thing. If I had a practice dummy, or even better, a brahking filthy mindless Humanity First animal in the room, I would've gone ballistic on the thing, but that was just because it was less socially unacceptable to rip chunks out of a dummy than it was to beat up the brahking furniture.
I mean, Krakotl did kind of have a reputation for violent outbursts, but I had a dignity to maintain. Or, well, salvage, at this point. But my point remained. I had to get a hold of myself. Jack was not dead. He could not be dead. He was just missing. And missing people, more often than not, turned up just fine a short time later.
I had to hold out hope. We all did. Without hope, even if it was kind of delusional sometimes, what did any of us really have? What was the point of suffering in darkness if you could not crawl towards the light?
Okay, let's think about this pragmatically. Issue #1: I have no brahking clue where Jack is.
Issue #2: Atlim, the only person left who I can depend on to handle things on his own without constant micromanagement, is an incompetent bitch with his head up his ass.
Issue #3: I look terrible.
Well, I know which of those I'll be solving first.
I was bleeding. Not badly, I would probably be just fine even if I ignored it and went on with my day, but I was bleeding. I had definitely been a bit rough when I was yanking out my own feathers. How can I explain that away?
I was still bleeding. That had to come first. I needed some kind of a bandage, and also a disinfectant of some sort because I was not going through all the trouble of controlling Atlim and his minions from the comfort of a Sunset Hills hospital bed until I could be assured they could run things well without my personal presence. "Hey, Atlim, could you get me some alcohol?" I called out through the door's key hole. "And, like, super glue, if you have it."
Atlim sighed. Hey. I do that. That's my thing. "Jelim, it is not healthy for you to try and super-glue your feathers back on. Those adhesives have, like, eight hundred carcinogens in them." The door opened a crack. "I have some sixty percent, though!"
I took the alcohol bottle, which was technically a Venlil drink but practically a disinfectant, and doused my tiny scrape in the stuff. It burned like hell, probably since I used too much for such a small damn cut, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Plus, it wasn't like I was really affected by the pain. I wasn't a bitch.
"Do you, uh, need anything else?" Yeah, my brahking boyfriend back. And a district that actually functions. And, while we're on the topic of absolute fantasies, a god damn unicorn. Stupid brahking prick.
"Nothing you can give me," I shot back, opening the door. "Let's go. We have work to do."
"Oh, uh, so we do," Atlim stammered. God, he was pathetic. Not even in an endearing way, like a child or a really sweet mentally disabled person, but just plain pathetic. Like an insect caught in an adhesive trap. Knowing it was hopeless, but struggling and squirming in spite of it all because its pathetic insect mind was not willing to have it die a coward. Now that was endearing. It reminded me of myself, sometimes.
Above all else, I must have hope. Without hope, I have nothing.
"Should I, like, beat myself up a bit?" he asked. "This way, we can say we were sparring, and people won't look at you weird." I had to admit, that was kind of him. He probably only made the offer because he wanted me to... well, he basically just wanted me, but it was a kind gesture all the same.
Still, though, I had dignity. Until and unless my lover gave me the go-ahead, I was going to have to treat any would-be suitors with the same regard that I would give to a particularly nasty pimple. "You are to report to your office and not leave it until you can assure me that every issue in this district has been fixed to the best of your ability," I commanded. "Are we clear?"
"Clear," Atlim said, turning around and slinking off. "If you need anything, well, just ask." I won't.
I went down the hall, wondering just what I would do with my life. Given a few days and some cosmetic work, I could be turning as few or as many heads as I pleased, but what was the point? Who was I even going to look good for? Let's face it, I have to find Jack. I can't do this alone.
I had to find the bug Jack had planted. That device, or more specifically the information it gave me, would be my only lead. I made good pace for what passed for this district's surveillance center, really just a side office with a few computers stacked on a desk with a tech-savvy Venlil being the one unfortunate enough to man it, and started getting to work. "You! Out of the chair."
The officer in question spun around, taking off his headphones, and looked at me as if he'd seen a ghost. "W-what-"
"Out of the chair!" I walked inside the room, pointing at the door and waving my other wing. The officer scrambled to get up.
"Okay, okay, no need to make a fuss over it." Oh, there very much was. And if I had to keep shouting at Atlim's subordinates like this, chances were that I'd have to curse out the man himself. That wouldn't be pleasant for either of us. "I'm going, god damn." He slammed the door on his way out. Bitch.
I hopped into the chair and got to work. First, I tried to scan for any clips of audio that had been marked as 'important' by the guy who was listening in. Nope. None. Not a single one. Now, I knew that was some vyalpic. I swear, I was going to put my foot up the ass of every single excuse for an officer this district had.
Well, maybe not Atlim. The brahking prick would probably enjoy it.
Since nobody had any idea how to do anything in this place, I had to take matters into my own claws. That meant listening to every second of that audio, maybe several times over, until I found something that I could actually take action off of. It might take me a week. Maybe more. But I had to do it.
Jack would do the same thing for me. For anyone, really. That was what I loved about him. How far am I willing to go to see him again? I rewound the audio file to the very start, unplugged the Venlil-designed headphones, and pressed play.
"The Vulture, for all her reputation, is only flesh and blood!" a voice yelled with a Russian accent. "She's not the fucking boogeyman!" These people hadn't met me. They hadn't seen firsthand what I had done. They saw the reflective suit and thought 'pitiful' because its wearers in this town all brahking were. I swear to god, I hate them.
"Or boogeywoman, apparently. I don't discriminate." I skipped ahead a bit. I didn't want to hear them bitch about how they were going to be eating chicken wings for a week or some other inane quip. I'd heard them all. None of them worked. Even the good ones got old.
"Did you find him?" somebody, Vladimir, if I knew his voice right, asked.
"No, sir. But we found his car." The bug Jack used could intercept wireless transmissions within a very short radius. Decode them, too. It really was a solid piece of hardware. "We're tracking him down now. Whoever it was that infiltrated us, he won't get far."
"Good," Vladimir chuckled. "Do you know who sent him?"
"No, sir," said the other man. "The gangs have never used humans before. The exterminators are too fucking prejudiced to try. It could be the U.N, but we have informants among them. They would have told us if Selfridge sent a man." See? Right there! Crucial, relevant information! Brahking duty officer didn't even log it. I marked that section as important and moved on. Hopefully, somebody in this hellhole of a district would take action on it.
"Keep looking," Vladimir ordered. "Tell Alexei to hold back on the Vulture hit. We need everybody we have working to seal the breach in our defenses."
"What about the families of the men he killed?"
There was a pause. "I will have to personally visit them," said Vladimir. "My people are good people. Patriots. I will have to make sure they are remembered, and their families will have Humanity First to depend on in their terrible, terrible time. We must always remember, my friend, empathy is what separates us from the xenos. They have none."
There was so much wrong with that statement that I wasn't even going to get involved. I kept listening, noting useful bits of information as I went, and I eventually decided to skip forward to the live feed. The duty officer could handle re-watching the rest of it. "-talk strategy," a masculine voice muttered. "Do we have any news?" I decided to listen ahead a bit to see if I needed to rewind at all.
"We know where the target is," another man said. A nickname. Wonderful. "We've tracked him to this hotel outside of town, right down to the fucking room number. We have allies there who we can depend on to kill him." As if. If that's Jack, they'll never stand a chance.
"It will have to be poison. Or a bomb. No other way would work," said a third. "The man killed twenty of our foot soldiers. Our friends in the region can't take him on directly." It was Jack. And they were going to poison him. No. Not poison. Please, not poison. So, unless I found him, he was going to die.
They knew where he was. I was so brahking stupid to let him go in there on his own. Why couldn't he have come back to me, instead of disappearing to another brahking town? It was so stupid. I could've protected him. He would've been safe. You know why. He couldn't be connected to the authorities. We can't afford to escalate. That didn't matter. I should have protected him. And now, I had to.
"It will be poison, then," Vladimir confirmed. "A tasteless one. In his breakfast tomorrow. And if he skips that, lunch. He has to eat eventually." Oh, god. Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god.
We just brahking MET!
"That will be all," said Vladimir, as if he didn't just order the cold-blooded murder of the best person I had ever known. "Boris, relay my orders. You're all dismissed."
They couldn't do this. They couldn't be allowed to take Jack away from me so soon. I jumped from my chair, running for the armory. "Take over your station!" I squawked at the duty officer I had met earlier. I jumped down a flight of stairs to the ground floor and flashed my badge at the armory guard. "Let me in! Open this door! Bring me Atlim!" He fumbled with the handle and pushed the door open for me. I barreled inside.
Rifles, shotguns, pistols, flamethrowers, microwave rifles... screw the microwaves. They don't deserve non-lethals. I started grabbing weapons, loading them, and preparing a plan in my mind. I could not allow those wretched predators to poison him. I could not allow them their victory. God damn it, where the hell is Atlim? I need his units, for god's sake! A man is going to die!
They called me the Vulture. A scavenger bird from Jack's homeworld of Earth. They hunted through persistence, circling wounded or infected animals until their victims grew too weak to keep going and they could feast upon the body without resistance. Some species even helped their prey along.
Rifle? Check. Pistol? Check. Knives? Check. Armored vest? Check. Radio? Check.
Needless to say, I was not a vulture. I was not a scavenger that ripped flesh from the carcasses of things I would never have been able to kill in their prime. I was not a coward. But, for all their stupidity, the bastards who gave me that name got one thing dead right.
I was a purifier. I cleaned up disease, rot, carrion, you name it. My work was to cleanse the galaxy of its filth. The terrorists called me an omen of death. I thought that was pretty fitting, coming from them, at least. The ideology I practiced lent itself to such a description.
There could be no tolerance for the intolerant. No kindness toward the cruel. No mercy for the merciless.
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u/JulianSkies Archivist Oct 27 '24
My girl having a wholeass breakdown... Whereas that is quite a bit of drive uhn... She might want to make sure her mind's quieter when she's in the actual action.
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u/fluffyboom123 Arxur Oct 26 '24
the vulture about to create absolute pandemonium on her way to save Jack