Children Of A Lesser God

"They were brought out front." Arnold"s voice came through the walkie.

Laz walked towards the exit, noticing that the crowd seemed to not even know that anything had happened. Apparently, with loud enough music and enough drunk people, anything is just accepted. When Laz finally walked outside, he saw Ruby and Leona waiting for him. Out front of the entrance, laying down on the ground, were the 10 knocked out goons while police cars were pulling up. Anthony was standing around the with several of the security guards who looked like they had been beat up. When Laz shot a look at Anthony, he just smiled.

"These guys seem a bit too skilled at this," Laz thought while watching everything play out. By the time the police left with the thugs, it had been staged that all of them had been doped up and got into a fight with security and then knocked out as a result. Simple and clean, but Laz was feeling like things were anything but over.

"What"s wrong?" Leona asked, seeing Laz"s face.

"This isn"t done..." Laz responded while watching the police cars disappear down the street.

"But we won? Didn"t we?" Leona asked. She seemed a bit unsure seeing as how both Ruby and Laz still had a stern look on their faces. She couldn"t help but wonder if she was still feeling some side effects.

As it was, all three of them were now mostly sober, even after only twenty minutes having pa.s.sed. When Laz realized this, he quickly figured out that it had something to do with their unique bodies.

"Maybe. But for something like this, they will be back. For guys like this, respect means everything and so far, they haven"t been shown the slightest bit of it," Ruby answered. She then turned to look at Laz.

"What happened to the guy you chased?" Ruby asked.

"Gone," Laz"s reply was simple, but Leona seemed confused.

"He got away?" She asked.

"No." Laz responded while still in thought, making Leona even more confused.

"You are not going to let this go, are you?" Ruby asked Laz.

"What would you do?" Laz asked back.

"I would make sure it was a clean sweep. It"s obvious that if you hit them hard enough, they won"t bother fighting anymore, but that will leave them free in other ways," Ruby responded after a moment.

"So then?"

"Remove the weed from the roots. Make sure everything disappears at once. No loose ends," Ruby answered with a icy gaze in her eyes.

"Leona." Laz turned around and looked straight at Leona. He couldn"t help but smile at her questioning gaze. She was smart, but what he planned on doing was something so outside her scope of normal, Laz didn"t think she would be able to adapt. He would still leave the choice with her.

"Hmm?" she asked.

"Ruby and I are going to do something. Something both dangerous and wrong, but it needs to be done," Laz tried to explain.

"You don"t want me to go?" Leona immediately read Laz"s thoughts. No matter how many times it happened, Laz couldn"t help but be amazed by how quick witted the girls were around him.

"I don"t."

"Why not?"

"Because..." Laz didn"t know how to say it gently. Luckily for him, Ruby didn"t have any issues with it.

"Because we are going to go kill a bunch of people," she said, completely straight faced.

"You"re going to WHAT?" Leona was shocked and rightly so. Laz could only sigh and turn to Ruby.

"Wimp... Anyway. Look little sis. These guys have already proven that they aren"t backing down. So what does that leave? We just sit here and wait for them to attack again? Maybe they come up and shoot up the place one day not caring who they kill? No. And even then, one of them knows what Laz is and all of them know that Laz had a run in with their boss. Even if we just wanted to get rid of the leaders, it would somehow come back to Laz. So, whether we want to or not, we"ve got one choice; end this before it gets bigger." Ruby didn"t mesh words or hold things back for feelings. She said exactly what was up which left Leona speechless. She couldn"t help but look at Laz"s young face and see the resolve in his eyes. She knew that this was his plan, word for word.

"What does someone go through at his age to make them like this?" The question shot through Leona"s head and stayed there. It was only now that she really understood how little she knew about Laz.

"You"re going with him?" Leona asked of Ruby. Ruby"s position wasn"t explained in detail yet to Leona so she didn"t understand why she would be putting herself on the line for Laz. But now wasn"t the time to ask.

"Yes." The simple reply was all Ruby gave.

"Then I will go..." Leona said with conviction, causing both Laz and Leona to look at her.

"I don"t know anything about this world you too seem to be from. But I know that I will be a part of it not matter what I want. So isn"t it better to do so with others than try to survive alone?"

Ruby smiled and didn"t say anything. It was Laz"s decision.

"Are you sure?"

"Isn"t this what you"ve been training me for? How to survive? How to kill?"

"Killing another human isn"t easy."

"These guys aren"t human if they would so recklessly hurt and kill other people."

"No. That"s the wrong way to think about it. Look. They are people. They are human, just like you and me and Ruby and any number of the other people around us right now. You can"t see them as something less or as something different. Once that mindset gets to you, you will become a monster. That"s why you have to take the responsibility of what it is to take a life. As long as you don"t forget that, then you can still hold on to your own humanity," Laz explained, causing both girls to be a bit shocked. Leona knew how young Laz was because he told her. Ruby knew how young he was because Jade had told her. But neither of them had ever thought like this, much less expected to hear it come from this young man in front of them. It was truly a wake up call.

"Is that what you think of them as?" Ruby asked.

"Always," Laz replied firmly.

"And it doesn"t effect you?" Leona asked.

"It does. But I have seen what happens when you fail to be decisive enough. When you fail to be ruthless enough. Or even when you are too weak. I promised myself that I won"t take those sort of chances when it involves the people I care about. I won"t become a monster, but I also won"t stand by and watch other die." Although it was only briefly, the blood red light shown in Laz"s eyes at this moment, showing the girls just how serious he was being. Neither of them question him again. For Ruby, this was a chance to do a favor for someone their own boss had a high opinion of. For Leona, it was a chance to live in Laz"s world and feel the same things he has felt while being able to train herself. She knew that in the future, human lives would mean a whole lot less than they did right now.

"Do we know where to go?" Leona asked. Laz just turned to look at Ruby.

"Give me a few minutes." With that, she rushed inside.

"Didn"t you come with friends?" Laz asked Leona.

"OH! Right. be right back." Leona then dashed back inside, leaving Laz all alone. No one said anything to him as he looked across the packed parking lot.

Before long, both Leona and Ruby returned. Leona told her friends that she had met a guy she knew and they were going to hang out. Ruby had grabbed her purse, car keys and her phone and was currently making a call. Before long, she hung up.

"Got it. It"s a warehouse on the north end of the city," Ruby said while leading the way to her car. As everyone got in, Laz in the pa.s.senger seat while Leona sat in the back, they took off towards the warehouse that served as the gang"s base.

"Here. This is the warehouse layout." Ruby handed her phone to Laz who started studying it. Laz took a quick look and noticed there was a problem.

"There are too many exits..."

"Yep. So that means we have to cover the outside with at least two people," Ruby commented. For her, this was a pretty simple layout, but she knew Laz had other concerns.

"What does that mean?" Leona asked.

"It means that we will all have to split up," Ruby answered. Laz had wanted to keep Leona with Ruby. It was already a given that he would be going inside and that Ruby would cover the exits. But with so many different ways out of the warehouse, there was no way they could have Leona stick with Ruby. Although he hadn"t said this, Ruby knew that this was his original intention.

"Leona..."

"I... can do this. Please. Trust me!" Leona was insistent that she was up for this. Although Laz had his doubts, he decided to let it go. She would need to experience this sooner or later. At least if something went wrong this time, the opponents were rather easy ones.

Nothing else was said as they drove. When they finally arrived, Laz looked at the building in thought.

"Are you sure about this?" Ruby asked him one final time.

"There is no sure or unsure. We have to... I have to." Laz answered.

"There is a real difference between defending yourself and basically committing a ma.s.s murder. It may sound fine when you say it, but that"s going to be a lot of blood on your hands..." Ruby tried to argue. She didn"t know why she was saying this as she had understood his point. But this kind of action was new, even for her. She had eliminated many targets before due to her work, but she had never hit a place with so many people before with the intent of wiping them all out. Even for her, this wasn"t an easy situation. And she had many years more of practice than he did and she was older. She had no way of knowing what was going through Laz"s head right now. But when she had called to get the info, her supervisor wanted to know what was happening and she had told her. After that, she had asked her supervisor if she should be helping him? This was a good deal bigger than just target elimination and involved a lot more people. Although her supervisor hesitated for a moment, Ruby had heard a voice in the background saying that she should do whatever Laz asked. Ruby wasn"t sure, but she thought it was the voice of Jade who had said this. The call ended shortly afterwords.

Laz raised his hands up as though contemplating what she had said before he balled them into fists. Both Ruby and Leona were suddenly hit with a strange feeling of fear, as though they had encountered a monster. Laz turned his head to look at both of them and simply said,

"I would much rather have my enemies blood on my hands than my friends... or my lover"s."

Laz retrieved a mask from out of nowhere and put it on. It was the forged demon masked he had gotten from Kennedy a long time ago. Putting it on, his face became a blank slate, devoid of emotions. The girls could only see the red light glowing out of the eye sockets. Laz finally got out of the car and started walking for the front door while plumes of black flames surrounded his entire body. In the dark of night, he simply resembled a red eye demon from h.e.l.l, coming to reap the lives of the living.

It was only now that both girls saw him for what he was, a demon. Yet they felt no fear. Instead, it was though a heat had risen in them, causing their bodies to warm up as their legs went weak. Had they been in the right state of mind, they would have noticed their breathing had become sporadic as they began panting. Ruby had even subconsciously started grabbing herself, pinching her nipple tightly between her thumb and forefinger. It was only after his body had disappeared that they both regained their senses. Ruby and Leona both took deep breathes to calm themselves while Ruby grabbed out a few masks she had hidden in the car.

With a strange look of excitement, both girls ran to get into position. Tonight was going to be a night of hot blood and fresh corpses.