Recent DJ Posts

06/16/2010

The problem with world-class assassins is that everyone wants to kill each other.



An old woman hums tunelessly, pushing her squeaking cart along the grey-flecked tiles. Her nails tap tap tap against the stainless steel handle, along with a beat only she can hear. She slows the cart down, the wheels shrieking their protest, and smiles at the young man behind the desk, pointing to the ID clipped to her shoulder. He glances up, looking bored, and barely glances at the ID before waving her along.

The hospital room is single-occupancy, dim and empty except for the bedridden patient. He wakes up from a doze, looks at the woman in scrubs as she enters the room. She slides a platter off of the food cart and slides it onto the tray sitting across his bed.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Burke?" The woman smiles.

"Horrible," he manages, glancing up blearily as she injects something into his IV. "Anything good to eat?"

"Of course, dear. There's tuna sandwiches, if you like those."

He perks up a bit, and nibbles at the sandwich. It's decent for hospital food, he decides. He'll be glad to get back to his normal life, with four-course dinners and world-class chefs.

The woman is still there when he finishes the sandwich. "That was actually pretty good," he tells her.

"Well, it is my own special recipe."

His mouth is dry, and he can feel his heart beating faster. Burke frowns. He's sweating. "Excuse me," he says, "But could you get a doctor? I think the symptoms are coming back."

The woman is unhooking the machines monitoring his vital status.

"Don't worry," she says. "It has nothing to do with your heart attack, Mr. Burke." She smiles kindly at him. "My special recipe is called Chalk Tuna. The compounds I've used in your sandwich are reacting with the drugs in your IV. It's untraceable, almost completely undetectable during an autopsy... rather brilliant, if I do say so myself."

Burke's fingers twitch. He wants to reach for the button, to call a nurse, call anyone, but he can't move. He tries to shout, but his mouth won't open, his voice won't work. An icy sensation begins to crawl in from his extremities, cold and burning at the same time.

"It's also a paralyzing substance," the woman muses, "and it's an incredibly painful way to die."

She smiles fondly down at the man seizing on the bed. "Have a nice day, Mr. Burke."

The cart begins its squeaking journey back to the elevator. Burke shuts his eyes and tries to scream.

---

Matilda has approximately four minutes to return the cart and exit the hospital. After that time, the real nurse will make her rounds and find Mr. Burke dead, the machines having shorted out due to faulty wiring. The doctors will attempt to resuscitate him, but the poison in his veins will prevent this from taking effect. There will be questions for the young man at the desk in front of the elevator, but Matilda plans to disappear long before any suspicion can fall on her.

Without a suspect or a murder weapon, the incident will be written off as a simple heart attack, and Mr. Burke's son will inherit his company.

Stepping out into the sunlight of the alley, Mathilda allows herself a moment to bask in the enjoyment of a job well done. She feels a shift in the air, a chill, and a blade burrowing into her skull.

I sheathe the wrist-blade and let the body fall, watching impassively as the infamous assassin kicks up dust on the dry ground. She twitches slightly, extending a hand in a clawing motion before going still.

I leave the body where it is. There's sure to be a complicated frame-up job involving several people who want to take power, but I've done my part. As long as Matilda is dead, I can get out of here and -

I'm throwing myself to the side. A line of throwing knives hit the brick behind me. I take cover, diving behind a dumpster, throwing a fireball in the direction of my attacker.



He's on the roof across from me, I reason. I came down from the hospital fire escape, but he was hidden by shadows - damn! I don't have an escape route, and we need to get out of here before they start looking for Burke's killer. Unfortunately, the owner of those throwing knives is not someone to be reasoned with.

"Simon?" I shout, stepping out from my hiding place. He's on the roof. "I didn't know you were in town."

"Everyone's in town, Sam!" That's Simon, all right. He looks giddy, sounds like he's on a sugar high. The man's more of a sociopath than I am. "Haven't you heard?"

"Yes." Goddamned council didn't even ask before invading my city.

"And you got Matilda first! I've been wanting to take her down for ages."

"Creepy?" I ask.

"Creepy." He confirms.

My fingers twitch, ready to call up another fireball. Simon tracks the movement, and I change my mind. "Simon," I say, "Would you like to play a game?"

His face splits into a grin. "First to a hundred?" He asks.

"I was thinking the whole conference."

Simon laughs. "I like the way you think," his smile widens even further. "Shame I'm gonna have to kill you."

He lifts up a hand and I'm running before he presses the button. I round the corner and the alley explodes.

I love my job.

---



I'm on top of a mountain, looking down on the valley. The city is sprawled out below. I take a breath, feel the cool mountain breeze drifting through my lair.

Some days, it pays to be evil.

I turn around to where my mom and dad are sitting at a stone table, looking around and seeming confused. My brother is there, too, but he just looks hungover.

I go to sit across from them at the table. My mom's eyes narrow as she gets her bearings, and I can feel her light-based aura sparking unpleasantly. I try not to flinch.

"It's in our best interests," I say carefully, "to wipe out all of the assassins as quickly as possible. They'll be gathering at the convention centre. Now, we can't all go in -"

"Why is that, exactly?" my mom snaps.

I roll my eyes. "You're a Reader. They'll spot Your Holiness from a mile away."

"How exactly did you get into this mess?" asks my dad.

I paint a look of surprise onto my face. "You mean you don't know?" I ask incredulously. "Our family - your side of the family - have been Assassins going back hundreds of years! Well," I trail off, "The last one was in the sixteenth century." Good times, as I recall. Reincarnation can be so much fun.

My mom's aura is sparking angrily. I try to ignore it.

"Look, we need to wipe as many people out in one swoop as we can." I have a thought.

"Mom... isn't your cousin doing the catering?" I ask.

She looks at me suspiciously. "He is. Why?"

I let a smile form. "Have you ever heard of Chalk Tuna?"

Conferences. Scare Factor: 4.

So ends the 100th post special edition of Things to Run Away From Really Fast! I've been meaning to write this up for ages...

The only thing I can remember from last night's dream is that I had an extra pair of running shoes. They were orange.

Note: Tonight I was successful in my WILD for the second night in a row! I send a big out to Mzzkc from the Dreamviews lucid dreaming site! One more in a row, and I think I can officially call my dry spell over! So my goals today started out with stopping into MoSh's inner world and seeing how Asuka is doing, MoSh has said she was still sick. The level of light energy may be too high and could be negatively affecting Asuka. So the goal there was to restore balance… I meditated with my light / sound machine and slipped into a WILD…

I was inside MoSh's inner world. It was very bright and sunny there. It seemed a bit too bright… I went over to the house and knocked, MoSh let me in. I went inside and looked around. It was almost as bright inside as it had been outside. I wondered where Asuka was. I asked MoSh how she was doing. MoSh said she was not feeling well, so she was in bed… resting. He said she didn't seem to be able to sleep, but she was resting. I followed MoSh to find Asuka in a bedroom on the second floor.

Asuka was lying in bed, looking a bit ill. She was quite pale, and she also looked like she wanted to get up. She said she had to get up and do something. MoSh asked how she was feeling. She seemed to get angry suddenly and said she was fine, it was positive energy and thus you can never have too much of it, so MoSh should stop giving her a hard time about it. She picked up a light energy shard off of the table beside her bed. She said there was no way anyone who used dark energy was going to get anywhere near her now, or anywhere near MoSh's inner world for that matter. She looked over and saw me. She told me to get out of there before that shit I've been trying to use gets out and contaminates MoSh's inner world. She said if I am going to play with shit, I should do it somewhere that is not in MoSh's inner world. I wanted to get her to be rational… but that wasn't looking likely…

Ok… the entire place was over-saturated with light energy. I wondered what to do about that… most of my spells are focused on eliminating excess dark energy, not to eliminate excess light energy… since that's not an issue I have come across as far as I remember… Well, the first thing seemed to be to remove some of the sources of light energy. And there were lots of those. I went around MoSh's house and gathered up a lot of the sources of light energy. I was thinking I had taken a lot of them out previously, and now there were so many more… I wondered if Asuka was still collecting them or if she'd had a stash hidden away somewhere in MoSh's inner world… I wasn't sure. I collected most of the sources of light energy and telepathically contacted Q to take them back to where they were needed. Not only did Asuka gathering so many light energy sources cause there to be too much light energy in MoSh's inner world, it could be setting the locations she took the energy sources from out of balance. Q appeared, and he took the sources of light energy and disappeared.

Now I looked around and there was still an excessive amount of light energy in there. It would take quite a while for all of that to disperse… I thought one of the quickest ways to lower the level of light energy would be to neutralize some of it… and that could be done with a bit of dark energy? Letting the two mix in a controlled manner, the two should neutralize each other… I didn't want to let a bunch of dark energy out into MoSh's inner world, though… I ran a small test. I created a small ball of dark energy in my hand and held it out. It disappeared as quickly as an ice cube melting in the July sun in southern Arizona… it just melted away. So the neutralizing could work… and as long as I was careful about it… so I created some more of the energy balls and let them melt away in the brightness of the excessive light energy… slowly it started to have an effect, making the overly brightness of the area fade back towards normal. I kept doing that until the lighting in the area both outside and inside the house was just slightly brighter than I am used to seeing it. A little extra light energy wouldn't hurt anything.

I went back to where Asuka was. She seemed to be glowing with light energy. I did a scan of her energy. Her energy aura was practically blinding… It looked like an energy level more appropriate for Q, who is a being made entirely of light energy. This was not natural for Asuka. Asuka had calmed down and was sitting on the couch in the living room now. I asked how she was feeling. She said not too great… she said she kind of felt like she was on fire. I said it might help if she was to expend some of her light energy… use it on something. Anything. She said she couldn't. She said she couldn't focus it, none of it wanted to cooperate. There had to be some way to get rid of it… The same way as I had neutralized the excess light energy in the surrounding environment? Maybe… but I didn't want to hurt Asuka by accident… But how else? I told Asuka I was going to try to help her. She said ok. I took hold of her hand and let a small amount of dark energy go into her… She immediately got upset at that, trying to pull away and throwing out a few choice words at me… MoSh was looking at me, seeming unsure of what to do… Asuka was still fighting me, struggling to get away, yelling at MoSh to help her, I had clearly gone mad… I kept a close watch on her energy, constantly scanning… the dark energy wasn't getting very far… it was being neutralized almost instantly as it went in… Asuka slowly began to resist less, she seemed tired. I kept scanning and adding tiny amounts of dark energy until her aura was about the brightness it was supposed to be, perhaps a bit brighter.

In spite of having plenty of energy, Asuka looked really tired. I figured it was basically a crash after having been wired on light energy. I scanned her very closely and saw no sign of dark energy inside her… she was clean. MoSh asked if Asuka was ok… he asked what I had done to her… I said I had just neutralized the excess light energy in her, and she would probably rest for a while since there had been a sudden decrease in her energy level. I told him she would need a bit of time to re-adjust to having her normal energy level, sort of like when a person feels neutral, gets high, then comes back down to neutral, after coming back down to neutral that can feel kind of crappy until they get re-adjusted. I said to say Asuka had been high was an understatement… she had been so high she would have been floating in some other galaxy… but she looked like she would be ok now.

MoSh helped Asuka back upstairs to the bedroom and into bed. He came back down shortly. He seemed a bit annoyed. He said Asuka had told him I had been infecting her with dark energy. He asked if I might have been doing that by accident while trying to stabilize her energy, because he had been under the impression I was in control of that. I hesitated, then just told the truth about how I had neutralized the excess light energy in her… He did not seem too thrilled about that… he asked if there was any chance she would be infected with the stuff… I said no, she had been so high on light energy that any dark energy had been immediately neutralized. I said I had scanned her when I was done, and there had not been any trace of dark energy left in her, only light, and her light energy was just slightly above what it normally was because I didn't want to take a chance on leaving it too low. MoSh stood there looking at me for a couple more minutes. He didn't seem to know what to think of that method of healing… Apparently he finally decided to accept it, because he changed the subject.

MoSh now said that we could go view a section of a Carlos Castaneda book where Carlos was talking to don Juan… we had agreed to that as a goal on the night before… but I felt the dream was going to end soon. I told MoSh that. MoSh said it was a good chance to use time dilation. I wondered what type to use… I wondered what would happen if both of us used it… what if we dilated time in different ways… like he set it to 4 dream hours for each hour IWL and I did it for 2 dream hours.. that seemed like it could cause a problem… but what if one of use used it and the other didn't… would it work for both of us? Or would he be going at 4 dream hours for each hour IWL while I was still on a one to one relation… I was confusing myself… MoSh was already using time dilation… He had his hand on the ground and was focusing on that at the same time as he was counting, he was apparently using Walms' method. I would just have to see what happened…

Note: I am sure the dream continued after here, but it continued with a high degree of disorientation on my part, maybe partly due to the difference in time dilation… so I'm sure the dream continued, but all of my memories from that point on were too vague to post.