IV The Hawk

It won’t be long now. Malcolm picked up the empty gun. Based on the purchase records, his quarry should have two more left, perhaps a third if he picked up a black market surprise. The man’s groupings were poor, firing wildly as he ran away. When it came to bullets, it was quality over quantity. You only needed one. As the man frantically ran, Malcolm followed with a brisk, determined stride. He had memorized the layout of these streets in preparation. The quarry would be out of room soon. One wrong turn more, and the man would be cornered. The armored boots the man wore might protect his feet, but they also broadcast his location. Not that Malcolm needed it. The man had taken another right, wrong move.

There he was, after a year, Jacob Booling. Finding his location and getting him to trap himself had been simpler than Malcolm had hoped, but perhaps the cornered prey would at least manage a decent fight. Malcolm methodically buttoned his spidersilk coat before peering around the corner into the alley. The man was standing head to toe in heavy armor, gun in each hand pointed directly forward. He must have felt protected in his armor as he did not even bother to use the dumpster in the back right corner as cover. Upon seeing the flash of Malcolm, he fired, striking nothing but wall. The armor was good, but not that good. An armor-piercing round would go right through, but why rush things? Malcolm counted to three in his head and then moved out of cover, rolling a smoke grenade into the alley. Booling’s eyes would be burning, but not overly so. He would seek cover behind the dumpster so he could remove his helmet and wipe them. He would keep watch from the side of the dumpster, waiting to take more pot shots. Malcolm silently climbed up a maintenance ladder on an adjoining building and crept on the rooftops until he was behind and on top of the unaware man.

The wind whistled through the tenements, it had already dispersed most of the chemical smoke. Jumping down, Malcolm kicked his prey in the back. He used the back wall to brace himself from the Newtonian eventualities. The man’s unarmored head hit the dumpster, and he fell clumsily forward onto the ground. Kicking the guns away from the Booling, Malcolm tried to remember exactly how much the contract had cost him. Now that he was closer, he could clearly see his quarry was practically squeezed into his body armor. Either he bought it second hand or before he had gorged himself.

“Up,” Malcolm commanded.

His prey was sweating profusely, panting while making noises of submissive complaint. He got on his knees, his back towards Malcolm. He moved his right arm to the area around his waist. He could be readjusting, or it could be a weapon. Malcolm moved his gloved right hand and grabbed the opposite sleeve of his coat. As the man spun around, his hand was gracefully separated by his arm’s own momentum. The hand landed a few feet away from him, still clasping the gun. Malcolm let go, the translucent monofilament cable returned to the sleeve of his spidersilk coat. The gun was a single shot 50 caliber black market special, not a bad play. No accuracy but enough firepower to pierce Malcolm’s defenses. The man screamed in pain. It was loud and unpleasant. Malcolm observed him cooly.

His screams had subsided to whimpers.

“Face me,” Malcolm commanded. The man slowly and reluctantly shifted his knees until he was face to face with the hunter.

“Do you have any last words?” Malcolm asked sternly.

“Please don’t…” The man pleaded. Sitting there on his knees in the dirt, holding the stump where his right hand had been with his left. Malcolm could make out his own outline in the man’s wet weeping eyes. Disgusting. He raised Esmerlda, his revolver.

Bang.

It only takes one.

Malcolm holstered his gun. The alley smelt of gun smoke and warm leather mingled with the metallic tang of freshly split blood.

Malcolm turned away from the mass decaying organic tissue. He removed a monogramed handkerchief wiping away the errant blood splatter and dropping it on the ground.

Malcolm looked up at the moon giving a rueful laugh, his black Paradisian oxfords kicking up dust; his off-white spidersilk overcoat trailed behind him. Garish displays were one thing. He hated painted nobles. But quality, quality was something very different. He would kill for a cigarette after all that his brain fuzzed with annoyance, but he was quit, at least for a week.

The night was still sedate. Perhaps this time he had avoided his own hunters. He sighed in relief, knowing at the same time it would also somewhat defeat the purpose of this mediocre hunt. Edgeworth must be losing his touch if he hadn’t shown up on the scene yet with a mob of fans. Still it just meant the author would barge into his office for the details. Not that the man really needed them. As the hunts became more and more anemic the man had begun weaving his tales using narrative embellishment more as cloth than glue.

As he walked to the Bureau of Contracts and Acquisitions, confident he would not be bothered he took out Esmerlda dropping the remaining ammo into his pocket and taking out a presoaked burr brush and polishing cloth. To a true hunter, his gun was more than a mere tool. Most modern hunters left maintenance to their servants, barely knowing anything about their weapons. Malcolm had designed Esmeralda himself and had her forged by the best gunsmith of the age. He looked upon her, an ebony grip, silver-plated steel barrel with an intricate ML carved in flowing floral script, and at the end of the barrel, an emerald sight. Such a revolver deserved better quarry. He gently holstered the freshly cleaned revolver placing the cleaning kit back in his pocket.

The last three or so contracts he had bought blew through almost all their money early, fattening themselves up, fully prepared to be slaughtered. Putting up a lackluster defense, some body armor, a few guns, maybe a trap of two if they were really clever. He hadn’t had to face so much as a skilled mercenary in years. Any sense of thrill had abandoned him for years. It was all just an extravagant waste of money. But then, for a man of his position extravagant wastes of money were expected. It was just another cost of doing business.

“Come on!” Malcolm heard in the distance, “Everyone knows you are all-goers, shiny little penny like you, just give me the price, but mind not to cheat me on the fare.”

“I told ya, mister, I got a beau an’ evernthin’ jus please leave me alone.” A female voice protested. An all too common sight in the midlands. As Malcolm approached, his suspicions were confirmed. A copper ingénue coquettishly ornamented by her employer was handing out flyers. The man was silver, his clothes a colorful hodgepodge attempting at the gaudiness of a gold but with material so coarse a blind man could easily tell the difference just by brushing up against him.

Malcolm’s gloved hand padded the man’s shoulder firmly.

“Just who in the hell do you think…”

Malcolm said nothing, merely letting his eyes shift into a cloudy storm.

“Oh umm…sorry, is there something I can help you with, sir?”

Malcolm thought about an old primatology book he had read about baboons. Specifically about how mid-ranked baboons would beat and terrorize those lower in the hierarchy but cower if they drew the attention of a male higher ranking than them.

“I was just thinking what a lovely vista this might be without you to impede it,” Malcolm said.

“Yes, sir…” said the mid-ranked primate, looking a little bewildered as he moved aside on the wide and relatively empty road.

A man not well-versed in subtext. Malcolm thought, looking at the man coldly.

With a pained swallow that seemed to contain all of his pride, the pragmatically pliant primate said, “Yes…yes, sir.” He hesitated at first and then, with haste, moved out of Malcolm’s sight.

The predator defanged in front of the girl; her face became filled with a heady mix of emotions, gratitude, confusion, and fear. But Malcolm did not deign to give her a second glance. Altruism was not a vice Malcolm possessed. He had no interest in collecting strays.

Turning in the hunt, he reported the location for the cleanup crew to do its job and perused the contracts on offer. Almost all of them were either pitiful specimens, less promising than the mark he had just so easily polished off, or no-fight contracts. His reputation wouldn’t be in danger anytime soon, he could wait, focusing on his expansion plans.

Sometimes a contract would be worth it, would energize Malcolm to slog through the tedium of life for a few weeks. One contract he always remembered had taken him over a month to complete. The mark had been hiding in a small fishing village, changed his appearance, even gotten himself a local wife. Malcolm tracked his ID to a hub city near the ocean and managed to follow leads from there to track him to the village. Being a fisherman was a clever turn since they were not required to register. He knew he had the right place, but finding him would be like finding a needle in a haystack—that is, it would have been had it not been for the fact that his ID was used in the hub city to load up on weapons. He simply had to do reconnaissance to find out who was too well-armed for a simple fisherman. It is relatively easy to find a needle in a haystack with a metal detector. The irony of being given away by one’s own defenses had not escaped Malcolm. He had wondered if it had escaped the faux fisherman but didn’t get the chance to ask.

He still remembered the sense of accomplishment when he had finally reached the denouement. That had been his second contract. Since then, quite a few had instead opted for the fortress-of-goons strategy, which could be fun and made for a god tale but lacked the subtlety of tracking elusive prey.

Someone had gifted him a justice contract once. They were the worst. With thirty minutes preparation and no ability to fight back, you might as well shoot a chained and sedated animal—not that most hunters wouldn’t prefer that. The market for hunting contracts was more geared towards the appearance of challenge rather than any actual challenge itself.

Malcom’s own motivation behind hunting was a fastly fading echo. Yet, he persisted. He was the fabled Hawk after all and still too young to retire without murmurs. At one point, he even decided to spare a mark to experiment with how that felt. He had been told a story about providing medicine for a sick wife and education for his children. It hadn’t been a good chase to begin with, and the final pull of the trigger would have just left him sad.  Letting the man go didn’t make him feel anything either.

His next contract simply came to him. The mark fell to his knees, having blown all the money and sought Malcolm out to beg for his life. He had heard the Hawk had become merciful. After wiping the blood splatter from his shoes, Malcolm hunted down the man he had spared. Finding him in a brothel bragging, he quickly righted his reputation and was never again tempted by mercy.

There were, of course, hunters that got off on being merciful. They would corner their prey, wait for them to beg, loudly, publicly. Then, in magnanimity, the whitehats decide to holster their guns. Maybe say some nonsense, maybe a pouch of coin. One thing was sure: if the mark had a pretty sister, they would probably pay her a visit after the fanfare died down.

If they actually wanted to help, they could just give the money for a contract away to some slum orphanage. A lot less of that would be spent on booze and whoring—but no, whitehats show mercy in the most impractical and public way possible. Anyone who considered the matter for more than a few seconds would realize this, which meant precious few did.

As he left the Bureau he saw his hunters, the swarm of fans chittering excitedly. Edgeworth was in the center wry smile and notebook in hand. Ready to pen up the latest issue of The Adventures of The Hawk. Besides the author he noticed a young woman in a fine dress somewhat dirty and wrinkled from an obvious scuffle. She was waving at him with a bloody handkerchief the initials ML on the edge. Likely she would want her grim trophy autographed. Altruism wasn’t a vice of Malcolm’s because Malcolm had no interest in playing pretend that humans were anything other than what they were.