DreadnoughtDT
God of Hyperdeath
What was meant to be a short thingy turned into one of the longest single-chapter works I've ever written. It describes the average sort of mission for my cyborg assassin, Siro. This is the second one, the first is in the "quotes" thread.
Siro Ref Story 2
By
DreadnoughtDT
Rain fell heavily upon the seemingly abandoned building. Siro made his way out of the overgrowth surrounding it, glowing red eye set on a singular goal. He pulled out his sword, which morphed into a long blade over his left arm for him to wield. The building he had set his sights upon was not abandoned, and he knew it. He placed his free hand against the wall, sensing the heartbeats of those within.
"Six men." He said to himself. "Four leaning against the wall. Two guarding the door in the back. A fire in a barrel is lit. That could make for a useful distraction." He placed the tip of his blade against the wall and extended it at lightning speed, knocking over the barrel. He instantly heard shouts from within. The moment he sensed the group of men clustering around the barrel, he smashed through the wall and charged them.
"Wh-what the hell?!" One of the men shouted before he was sliced into pieces, along with the rest of his companions. A pile of meaty chunks fell to the floor where there were once... Five men?
"I missed one." Siro said, his arm morphing back into his normal black sword, which he grasped. The moment he did, he felt the barrel of a gun press against the back of his head.
"Hands up, you freak." The man said, voice shaking. He couldn't have been over twenty five. Shaggy black hair much like his. Scared out of his mind. For a moment, Siro sympathized. He reminded him of himself, back when he had first died.
"If you leave, I can guarantee your safety." Siro said after a moment. "The gun you have pressed against my head is a nine millimeter. My armor protects me from anything up to a 50 caliber anti-tank round. You have no chance of defeating me, and it would be wiser to run."
The man shivered as Siro turned, grasping the man's hand and placing the barrel of the gun squarely against his forehead. "But if you want to shoot me and forfeit your life, I will happily carve you into meatloaf like your friends." His red eye stared unflinchingly into the man's shaky eyes. "Will you do it?"
The man looked as though he was about to pull the trigger when Siro placed his blade against his neck. "I will up the stakes." He said after a moment. "Do you think that you can pull that trigger faster than I can slice your head off? I invite you to try."
It did not surprise Siro when the man turned tail and bolted out the hole in the wall he'd made. That was one less obstacle in his path to the target. It wasn't the most efficient way, but he doubted one survivor would tarnish his record that badly, not that he cared much. He exited the room into a hallway that looked as though it would have been well furnished at one point, now run down. "A hotel, perhaps." He mused. "What better place to hide a gang smuggling illegal weapons."
He had two choices. He could go upstairs, or downstairs. Upstairs almost assuredly led to the ringleader of this establishment, while downstairs most likely led to where they were keeping the weapons. He chose to go downstairs, and down again, and again, to the lowest basement floor. It was dark, but that meant nothing for him, he could see perfectly. The dust in the room, however, irritated him. It floated in front of him and clung to his eye, though it would be wiped off periodically by an automatic cleanser.
BANG!
"Hm?" Siro turned to the source of the sound, only to feel a rather hefty bullet bounce off his forehead. He didn't flinch even a nanometer, beginning to walk his way over to the source of the bullet. Two more hit him in the head, a third in the chest, another in the knee. He recognized his opponent attempting to kill, then slow him in some fashion, looking for weak points. He would find none.
As he approached, he could more clearly visualize his attacker. Or rather, attackers. Three men with large rifles, situated behind concrete cover. His blade morphed into a gun in his hand. Three shots was all he would need. He took careful aim even as more bullets crushed against and bounced off his armor. POP! POP! POP! And then three simultaneous thuds. He moved past his assailants into a well-lit room. What he saw was shocking to even him. Rifles, pistols, shotguns, melee weapons, they lined the walls, along with rockets, missiles and even powered armorsuits.
"This is not a mere weapon smuggling racket..." Siro mused to himself as he looked around the room.
Beep. A heartbeat he had not sensed until this very moment was now right behind him. He turned, eye wide with shock as a huge metal fist rammed into his gut, sending him flying up through the ceiling, then another ceiling, until he was back on the ground floor. He peeled himself off the third ceiling and hopped down onto his feet, uninjured as the glow of a rocket booster gave away his opponent's position. It busted up through the holes he'd already made, standing face to face with him.
A man in an armor much like his, though also much bulkier, stood before him. "Well well, I wasn't expecting you to get here so soon, but I guess my new armor is going to get a test run." A gruff voice taunted the assassin.
"So much for stealth." Siro said. The leader inside that armor must have sensed his heartbeat just like he could. Thinking quickly, he morphed his weapon into a sword once again, leaping at the armored leader. Another huge fist came at his side, which he barely blocked, sending him skidding through the wall into a room full of confused henchmen. They opened fire on him with assault rifles while he extended his blade and spun, the lengthened, unbreakable metal slicing through the men easily. He stood up straight and turned to the leader, clashing his sword against the leader's own blade as it was drawn.
He began to push the blade back, grunting with the effort before he was slammed by an open palm, sending him tumbling out the back wall and into the overgrown forest near the abandoned hotel, his back slamming against a tree. He slumped against it, panting. He hurt all over.
It felt amazing.
His heart was thudding in his chest, his head ached and he swore he could taste blood, even though he wasn't supposed to be able to taste at all. It began to rain, the cold liquid flowing over his equally cold metal body. His hot breath steaming up the air in front of him as the leader busted the hole he'd made open further, the armor's glowing blue eye staring straight at him.
Siro chuckled, that bitter chuckle crescendoing into a loud cackle before it stopped abruptly, his eye meeting the leader's. "I have to get serious with you." He said, his normally even tone breaking into one of excitement. His blade bifurcated into two, which morphed into a pair of blades over his arms. He charged the leader at a speed fast enough to make a sonic boom and decimate the tree he'd used as a backrest moments ago.
The leader looked around frantically, but he could not see Siro, he was too fast. The assassin sliced into the leader's armor again and again, sparks flying from the cuts. The leader cried out as he made a desperate grab for Siro only for the arm to be cut off, blood spurting from where his real arm was. He shouted in pain as he ejected from the armor, the unkempt, middle-aged man holding his stump as he ran for it. Siro grunted in dissatisfaction and appeared in front of him. The man could not stop in time and his neck ran into Siro's blade, causing him to decapitate himself.
"Unfortunate." Siro sighed. "I was hoping you'd last longer..." He turned to walk away, moving some of his black hair out of his eye. Why did his revivor even bother to give him hair? It did nothing but get in the way. He was soon pulled out of his instrospective thoughts by a shout from behind him.
"Boss!" A man yelled, then another, and then several. Siro whirled around as he heard the whir of a rocket engine and was barely able to pull his hands up in time to block a power-armor punch, sending him skidding back on his feet between several trees as the rain grew heavier, thunderbolts flashing across the sky.
One alone was strong enough to make him feel pain. Several was a tantalizing battle. His mission was to destroy all of their illegal munitions anyway... His sword morphed into a pair of hefty gauntlets over his arms, augmenting his already prodigious strength as he met fists with the one that had swung at him, the impact causing the rain around them to stop, then fall all at once.
Siro grunted with the effort, looking up at the power-armored man as he watched jet-boosters emerge from the armor's arm, starting to push Siro back. He had to think fast. His other arm morphed into a blade and stabbed into the armor's hand, extending up through the arm amidst the man's screams and splashes of blood. He pulled back, mangled arm dangling uselessly as he and several others' arms popped open into machine guns.
That was new. Why hadn't the leader used that? Siro mused as he hopped back and forth to dodge gunfire. He moved behind a tree, which was quickly chewed up even as he silently jumped up into the foliage. The tree fell, with him still up in its branches. The men continued to fire until they were sure they couldn't see him anymore. "Go check it out." One said, gesturing forward. Another man begrudgingly began to approach.
Siro jumped out of the branches lightning fast, over the man's head, and fired a bolt of electricity straight downward out of a morphed arm. The man cried out and fell over, his armor fried. He did this to a couple more as he approached at lightning speed, getting right up next to one. When he turned to fire at it, he felt a fist the size of a boulder smash him in the side of the head. He vaguely felt himself tumbling through the slickened dirt and mud before slamming against the wall of the building. He stood up shakily, blood streaming down his mask from the open top of his helmet. A crack ran down his mask, from the right side of his eye down to his mouthpiece.
"Heavy internal hemmorhaging and several broken bones detected." His suit reported. "Autorepair function initiated."
He grunted as the pain of his injuries subsided in only a few moments, the crack in his mask healing, the wound on his head sealing itself up. He simultaneously blessed and cursed the suit for healing him so quickly, bringing him back to a sensationless world. At this point, only two men were left, both of them having ran out of ammo. They charged him with bayonets, thinking him still injured as he feigned slumping against the wall. With a low chuckle he bolted between them and smashed their heads together with a kick to the back of each before grabbing them and slamming their heads into the wall hard enough to collapse it.
Before they could stand back up he had already morphed his gauntlets into a pair of lightning guns, which discharged at the armored men. They cried out, and were silenced. Siro took a deep breath and re-entered the building, heading back down to where the munitions and weapons were. His gauntlets turned back into his familiar black sword, which he sheathed. He thought for a moment. Setting fire to the building likely wouldn't work, as the rain would snuff it out. He scanned one of the walls for a power cable. Finding one, he yanked it out of the wall, cut it in two with a sharpened finger, and zapped one of the power armors with it. The electricity arced between them, and everything else in the room.
Siro fed his own power to the electric cable, such that the electricity grew so powerful that it fused together the joints of everything in the room besides his own grounded suit. He noted that the bullet boxes had also fused shut, and it was likely the ammunition within had melted to a useless point. "I suppose I should be lucky they didn't explode." He said to himself as he departed the ruined hotel, stepping over the corpses of the men he'd killed without a second thought. "I would hope I get premium pay for this mission."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was mid-morning when he returned to the city he'd taken the job from. Things were quiet, most people had not stirred from their beds yet. Siro envied them. He hadn't known what sleep felt like in ten years. The rain had not yet fully subsided, but the thunderstorm had gone down to a light drizzle. He pushed his way into an unassuming, small home. The inside was well furnished. His armor dripped along the carpet as he walked. He knocked on the door of the owner's room.
"Who is it waking me up at this hour?!" He heard the man inside shout. He opened the door, about to cuss Siro out, before his eyes met Siro's unblinking red gaze and his voice caught in his throat. The man was young, or at least looked young. He had told Siro he was really 80 years old, which the cyborg found hard to believe. He had black hair which draped over one of his eyes. He wore glasses, which further obscured his seafoam green eyes, and he was rather lanky and thin, though his face was somewhat attractive.
"Siro." He said calmly, a smile on his face. "You got it done?"
"The weapons are destroyed and mortality rate for enemies was 90%. They are decimated, Amon." Siro reported. The man grinned widely.
"Wonderful. I shall have your payment delivered posthaste." Amon replied.
"Where shall I wait to receive it?" Siro inquired.
"Right here is fine." Amon said. He gestured for Siro to sit in a chair in the hallway. The cyborg glanced over to it and shrugged, reclining in the rather plush chair.
A few hours passed. Amon left the house, and came back a half hour later with a large sack in his hand. "It is difficult to find your currency in the human world, you know." The man said, plopping the sack of gold coins down onto Siro's lap.
"I suppose I should appreciate you going the extra mile, then." Siro said, grabbing the bag and examining it. "You didn't short me this time, either. I guess you learned your lesson."
"Yes well, you're very convincing." Amon replied. "And I'd hate to lose your services."
"I'm sure you would." Siro said, standing up. He opened the door to leave, but stood in the doorframe, leaning against it. Without turning back to Amon, he spoke. "The next time you require my abilities for an altruistic mission like this, you may pay me in silver if you must. I understand gold is hard to acquire."
Amon gave the cyborg a half-smile, not that he could see it. "Yes, I see. Thank you."
Siro nodded solemnly and departed, closing the door politely behind him. Amon let out the breath he didn't even know he was holding. "That man is a handful, but his abilities are something else..."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Siro walked down the city street late at night, towards the tiny apartment he called home. True he could live in the demon world if he wished, and he made frequent trips there for missions, as well as to look for the people who had destroyed his village. His rationalization was that the human world was cheaper to live in, but in reality he just found it more aesthetically pleasing than the demon world. The rainfall had finally stopped, which he was somewhat upset over. The rain comforted him.
He spotted a man sitting underneath an awning, looking through a small cup of change he'd been given from random passersby. Siro looked at the sack of gold coins in his hand before approaching the man. When the man saw him, he attempted to get up and bolt, but Siro held his arm out and grasped the man's shoulder to stop him. Without breaking the man's gaze, he pulled out ten gold coins from the sack. "Each of these is worth ten thousand dollars." He said. "I am giving you ten. Do you know what this means? I am giving you a hundred thousand dollars. Roll up your hovel. Put away your change cup. These coins will change your life."
"Wh...Wh-why would you do this for me?" The scraggly, homeless man asked.
"I know what you have been through. I was once that way myself." Siro said. He dropped the coins in the man's cup. "Get an education. Get a job. Do what you've always wanted to do. Do not squander it, this is your only chance." He said in an even, but intimidating tone to make sure his words stuck. The man looked at his cup in awe, and by the time he'd looked back up, the black knight who had been so generous was gone.
"Who... Who was that guy?" The man said, scratching his head. He thought it was a hallucination until he looked down at the gleaming gold coins in his cup once again.
Siro opened the door to his apartment, the accoutrements woefully spartan. He sat down upon a half-broken chair and turned on the TV. He only used it to watch the news, as he used this to find out what kind of jobs he would take. He mused on the goings-on of the day. Of how he helped that homeless man. The men who's lives he'd cut short. The money he'd been paid, which he was almost sure he'd end up doling out to the weak and helpless like he had such a bad habit of doing.
"It wasn't a bad day, I suppose." He said to himself, reclining in the chair to await the coming of the next day.
The rain began to fall again, drowning out the sounds of the city. Morning would come, eventually.
It always did.
Siro Ref Story 2
By
DreadnoughtDT
Rain fell heavily upon the seemingly abandoned building. Siro made his way out of the overgrowth surrounding it, glowing red eye set on a singular goal. He pulled out his sword, which morphed into a long blade over his left arm for him to wield. The building he had set his sights upon was not abandoned, and he knew it. He placed his free hand against the wall, sensing the heartbeats of those within.
"Six men." He said to himself. "Four leaning against the wall. Two guarding the door in the back. A fire in a barrel is lit. That could make for a useful distraction." He placed the tip of his blade against the wall and extended it at lightning speed, knocking over the barrel. He instantly heard shouts from within. The moment he sensed the group of men clustering around the barrel, he smashed through the wall and charged them.
"Wh-what the hell?!" One of the men shouted before he was sliced into pieces, along with the rest of his companions. A pile of meaty chunks fell to the floor where there were once... Five men?
"I missed one." Siro said, his arm morphing back into his normal black sword, which he grasped. The moment he did, he felt the barrel of a gun press against the back of his head.
"Hands up, you freak." The man said, voice shaking. He couldn't have been over twenty five. Shaggy black hair much like his. Scared out of his mind. For a moment, Siro sympathized. He reminded him of himself, back when he had first died.
"If you leave, I can guarantee your safety." Siro said after a moment. "The gun you have pressed against my head is a nine millimeter. My armor protects me from anything up to a 50 caliber anti-tank round. You have no chance of defeating me, and it would be wiser to run."
The man shivered as Siro turned, grasping the man's hand and placing the barrel of the gun squarely against his forehead. "But if you want to shoot me and forfeit your life, I will happily carve you into meatloaf like your friends." His red eye stared unflinchingly into the man's shaky eyes. "Will you do it?"
The man looked as though he was about to pull the trigger when Siro placed his blade against his neck. "I will up the stakes." He said after a moment. "Do you think that you can pull that trigger faster than I can slice your head off? I invite you to try."
It did not surprise Siro when the man turned tail and bolted out the hole in the wall he'd made. That was one less obstacle in his path to the target. It wasn't the most efficient way, but he doubted one survivor would tarnish his record that badly, not that he cared much. He exited the room into a hallway that looked as though it would have been well furnished at one point, now run down. "A hotel, perhaps." He mused. "What better place to hide a gang smuggling illegal weapons."
He had two choices. He could go upstairs, or downstairs. Upstairs almost assuredly led to the ringleader of this establishment, while downstairs most likely led to where they were keeping the weapons. He chose to go downstairs, and down again, and again, to the lowest basement floor. It was dark, but that meant nothing for him, he could see perfectly. The dust in the room, however, irritated him. It floated in front of him and clung to his eye, though it would be wiped off periodically by an automatic cleanser.
BANG!
"Hm?" Siro turned to the source of the sound, only to feel a rather hefty bullet bounce off his forehead. He didn't flinch even a nanometer, beginning to walk his way over to the source of the bullet. Two more hit him in the head, a third in the chest, another in the knee. He recognized his opponent attempting to kill, then slow him in some fashion, looking for weak points. He would find none.
As he approached, he could more clearly visualize his attacker. Or rather, attackers. Three men with large rifles, situated behind concrete cover. His blade morphed into a gun in his hand. Three shots was all he would need. He took careful aim even as more bullets crushed against and bounced off his armor. POP! POP! POP! And then three simultaneous thuds. He moved past his assailants into a well-lit room. What he saw was shocking to even him. Rifles, pistols, shotguns, melee weapons, they lined the walls, along with rockets, missiles and even powered armorsuits.
"This is not a mere weapon smuggling racket..." Siro mused to himself as he looked around the room.
Beep. A heartbeat he had not sensed until this very moment was now right behind him. He turned, eye wide with shock as a huge metal fist rammed into his gut, sending him flying up through the ceiling, then another ceiling, until he was back on the ground floor. He peeled himself off the third ceiling and hopped down onto his feet, uninjured as the glow of a rocket booster gave away his opponent's position. It busted up through the holes he'd already made, standing face to face with him.
A man in an armor much like his, though also much bulkier, stood before him. "Well well, I wasn't expecting you to get here so soon, but I guess my new armor is going to get a test run." A gruff voice taunted the assassin.
"So much for stealth." Siro said. The leader inside that armor must have sensed his heartbeat just like he could. Thinking quickly, he morphed his weapon into a sword once again, leaping at the armored leader. Another huge fist came at his side, which he barely blocked, sending him skidding through the wall into a room full of confused henchmen. They opened fire on him with assault rifles while he extended his blade and spun, the lengthened, unbreakable metal slicing through the men easily. He stood up straight and turned to the leader, clashing his sword against the leader's own blade as it was drawn.
He began to push the blade back, grunting with the effort before he was slammed by an open palm, sending him tumbling out the back wall and into the overgrown forest near the abandoned hotel, his back slamming against a tree. He slumped against it, panting. He hurt all over.
It felt amazing.
His heart was thudding in his chest, his head ached and he swore he could taste blood, even though he wasn't supposed to be able to taste at all. It began to rain, the cold liquid flowing over his equally cold metal body. His hot breath steaming up the air in front of him as the leader busted the hole he'd made open further, the armor's glowing blue eye staring straight at him.
Siro chuckled, that bitter chuckle crescendoing into a loud cackle before it stopped abruptly, his eye meeting the leader's. "I have to get serious with you." He said, his normally even tone breaking into one of excitement. His blade bifurcated into two, which morphed into a pair of blades over his arms. He charged the leader at a speed fast enough to make a sonic boom and decimate the tree he'd used as a backrest moments ago.
The leader looked around frantically, but he could not see Siro, he was too fast. The assassin sliced into the leader's armor again and again, sparks flying from the cuts. The leader cried out as he made a desperate grab for Siro only for the arm to be cut off, blood spurting from where his real arm was. He shouted in pain as he ejected from the armor, the unkempt, middle-aged man holding his stump as he ran for it. Siro grunted in dissatisfaction and appeared in front of him. The man could not stop in time and his neck ran into Siro's blade, causing him to decapitate himself.
"Unfortunate." Siro sighed. "I was hoping you'd last longer..." He turned to walk away, moving some of his black hair out of his eye. Why did his revivor even bother to give him hair? It did nothing but get in the way. He was soon pulled out of his instrospective thoughts by a shout from behind him.
"Boss!" A man yelled, then another, and then several. Siro whirled around as he heard the whir of a rocket engine and was barely able to pull his hands up in time to block a power-armor punch, sending him skidding back on his feet between several trees as the rain grew heavier, thunderbolts flashing across the sky.
One alone was strong enough to make him feel pain. Several was a tantalizing battle. His mission was to destroy all of their illegal munitions anyway... His sword morphed into a pair of hefty gauntlets over his arms, augmenting his already prodigious strength as he met fists with the one that had swung at him, the impact causing the rain around them to stop, then fall all at once.
Siro grunted with the effort, looking up at the power-armored man as he watched jet-boosters emerge from the armor's arm, starting to push Siro back. He had to think fast. His other arm morphed into a blade and stabbed into the armor's hand, extending up through the arm amidst the man's screams and splashes of blood. He pulled back, mangled arm dangling uselessly as he and several others' arms popped open into machine guns.
That was new. Why hadn't the leader used that? Siro mused as he hopped back and forth to dodge gunfire. He moved behind a tree, which was quickly chewed up even as he silently jumped up into the foliage. The tree fell, with him still up in its branches. The men continued to fire until they were sure they couldn't see him anymore. "Go check it out." One said, gesturing forward. Another man begrudgingly began to approach.
Siro jumped out of the branches lightning fast, over the man's head, and fired a bolt of electricity straight downward out of a morphed arm. The man cried out and fell over, his armor fried. He did this to a couple more as he approached at lightning speed, getting right up next to one. When he turned to fire at it, he felt a fist the size of a boulder smash him in the side of the head. He vaguely felt himself tumbling through the slickened dirt and mud before slamming against the wall of the building. He stood up shakily, blood streaming down his mask from the open top of his helmet. A crack ran down his mask, from the right side of his eye down to his mouthpiece.
"Heavy internal hemmorhaging and several broken bones detected." His suit reported. "Autorepair function initiated."
He grunted as the pain of his injuries subsided in only a few moments, the crack in his mask healing, the wound on his head sealing itself up. He simultaneously blessed and cursed the suit for healing him so quickly, bringing him back to a sensationless world. At this point, only two men were left, both of them having ran out of ammo. They charged him with bayonets, thinking him still injured as he feigned slumping against the wall. With a low chuckle he bolted between them and smashed their heads together with a kick to the back of each before grabbing them and slamming their heads into the wall hard enough to collapse it.
Before they could stand back up he had already morphed his gauntlets into a pair of lightning guns, which discharged at the armored men. They cried out, and were silenced. Siro took a deep breath and re-entered the building, heading back down to where the munitions and weapons were. His gauntlets turned back into his familiar black sword, which he sheathed. He thought for a moment. Setting fire to the building likely wouldn't work, as the rain would snuff it out. He scanned one of the walls for a power cable. Finding one, he yanked it out of the wall, cut it in two with a sharpened finger, and zapped one of the power armors with it. The electricity arced between them, and everything else in the room.
Siro fed his own power to the electric cable, such that the electricity grew so powerful that it fused together the joints of everything in the room besides his own grounded suit. He noted that the bullet boxes had also fused shut, and it was likely the ammunition within had melted to a useless point. "I suppose I should be lucky they didn't explode." He said to himself as he departed the ruined hotel, stepping over the corpses of the men he'd killed without a second thought. "I would hope I get premium pay for this mission."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was mid-morning when he returned to the city he'd taken the job from. Things were quiet, most people had not stirred from their beds yet. Siro envied them. He hadn't known what sleep felt like in ten years. The rain had not yet fully subsided, but the thunderstorm had gone down to a light drizzle. He pushed his way into an unassuming, small home. The inside was well furnished. His armor dripped along the carpet as he walked. He knocked on the door of the owner's room.
"Who is it waking me up at this hour?!" He heard the man inside shout. He opened the door, about to cuss Siro out, before his eyes met Siro's unblinking red gaze and his voice caught in his throat. The man was young, or at least looked young. He had told Siro he was really 80 years old, which the cyborg found hard to believe. He had black hair which draped over one of his eyes. He wore glasses, which further obscured his seafoam green eyes, and he was rather lanky and thin, though his face was somewhat attractive.
"Siro." He said calmly, a smile on his face. "You got it done?"
"The weapons are destroyed and mortality rate for enemies was 90%. They are decimated, Amon." Siro reported. The man grinned widely.
"Wonderful. I shall have your payment delivered posthaste." Amon replied.
"Where shall I wait to receive it?" Siro inquired.
"Right here is fine." Amon said. He gestured for Siro to sit in a chair in the hallway. The cyborg glanced over to it and shrugged, reclining in the rather plush chair.
A few hours passed. Amon left the house, and came back a half hour later with a large sack in his hand. "It is difficult to find your currency in the human world, you know." The man said, plopping the sack of gold coins down onto Siro's lap.
"I suppose I should appreciate you going the extra mile, then." Siro said, grabbing the bag and examining it. "You didn't short me this time, either. I guess you learned your lesson."
"Yes well, you're very convincing." Amon replied. "And I'd hate to lose your services."
"I'm sure you would." Siro said, standing up. He opened the door to leave, but stood in the doorframe, leaning against it. Without turning back to Amon, he spoke. "The next time you require my abilities for an altruistic mission like this, you may pay me in silver if you must. I understand gold is hard to acquire."
Amon gave the cyborg a half-smile, not that he could see it. "Yes, I see. Thank you."
Siro nodded solemnly and departed, closing the door politely behind him. Amon let out the breath he didn't even know he was holding. "That man is a handful, but his abilities are something else..."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Siro walked down the city street late at night, towards the tiny apartment he called home. True he could live in the demon world if he wished, and he made frequent trips there for missions, as well as to look for the people who had destroyed his village. His rationalization was that the human world was cheaper to live in, but in reality he just found it more aesthetically pleasing than the demon world. The rainfall had finally stopped, which he was somewhat upset over. The rain comforted him.
He spotted a man sitting underneath an awning, looking through a small cup of change he'd been given from random passersby. Siro looked at the sack of gold coins in his hand before approaching the man. When the man saw him, he attempted to get up and bolt, but Siro held his arm out and grasped the man's shoulder to stop him. Without breaking the man's gaze, he pulled out ten gold coins from the sack. "Each of these is worth ten thousand dollars." He said. "I am giving you ten. Do you know what this means? I am giving you a hundred thousand dollars. Roll up your hovel. Put away your change cup. These coins will change your life."
"Wh...Wh-why would you do this for me?" The scraggly, homeless man asked.
"I know what you have been through. I was once that way myself." Siro said. He dropped the coins in the man's cup. "Get an education. Get a job. Do what you've always wanted to do. Do not squander it, this is your only chance." He said in an even, but intimidating tone to make sure his words stuck. The man looked at his cup in awe, and by the time he'd looked back up, the black knight who had been so generous was gone.
"Who... Who was that guy?" The man said, scratching his head. He thought it was a hallucination until he looked down at the gleaming gold coins in his cup once again.
Siro opened the door to his apartment, the accoutrements woefully spartan. He sat down upon a half-broken chair and turned on the TV. He only used it to watch the news, as he used this to find out what kind of jobs he would take. He mused on the goings-on of the day. Of how he helped that homeless man. The men who's lives he'd cut short. The money he'd been paid, which he was almost sure he'd end up doling out to the weak and helpless like he had such a bad habit of doing.
"It wasn't a bad day, I suppose." He said to himself, reclining in the chair to await the coming of the next day.
The rain began to fall again, drowning out the sounds of the city. Morning would come, eventually.
It always did.
