By Henry Vogel.
I'm not really sure what made me decide to train the kid. Maybe it was his brash confidence, damned closed to arrogance, really. Maybe it was wounded pride. You get where I am in life and little things like that shouldn't bother you. But they still do...
The doorbell rang. On a Saturday morning. Early. I wasn't expecting anyone. Besides, most people who come to my house don't bother to ring the doorbell. Those people prefer to announce their arrival by smashing through windows or with a spray of automatic gunfire. But ringing the doorbell? No way. Unless this was a clever trap. I grabbed my Glock and padded downstairs toward the door. On the way the bell rang again. And again, and again, and again. I decided I'd kill the impatient bastard even if it wasn't a trap!
I stopped at my peep hole - which is next to the door rather then in it. Those things can be traps in themselves. Some mook with a gun could be looking through from the outside, ready to blast you the minute the light changes through the peep hole. Seen it done. Hell, done it myself. What I saw was this kid, maybe twenty-three, twenty-four, leaning on my doorbell. Maybe he was selling something. Maybe he was lost. Maybe his car had broken down. Lots of maybes, no certainties. No way I was opening that door without some certainties. I've lived as long as I have because I gather information first and act second.
Ignoring the doorbell, which continued to ring, I slipped through the house to my surveillance room. The monitors were all on which was a good sign. Even the most foolish mook cuts out obvious surveillance equipment. Nothing in the monitors to indicate a trap. I flipped a switch to bring my inobvious surveillance equipment on line. Once again, the only person I could find was the kid at the door. That was all the assurance I had that the kid wasn't part of a trap. It would have to do, though, because that damned doorbell was about to drive me up the wall!
Seconds later I slipped out the backdoor and headed around the house to the front door. The kid didn't even know I was there until he felt the Glock against the back of his head. He got real still at that point. Smart boy. Still, he surprised me by speaking first.
"So you are home. Good. There's nothing I hate worse than a wasted trip!"
"A wasted trip is the least I'd worry about if I were you! What the Hell do you think you're doing?" I demanded.
"Ringing your doorbell, man. Thought that was pretty obvious!"
Great, a smartass. "My, how funny. One more answer like that and I'll be cleaning your brains off my front door! Understand?"
"Uh, yeah, man! Sorry!" Sounded a little nervous now. Good.
"Now, let's try again. What are doing here?"
"I want you to teach me," he said.
"Teach you? Teach you what?" I knew the answer, though.
"To kill, man! I mean, you're the Raven! You used to be the best in the business so -"
"Not used to be, kid. I am the best. Who's saying different?"
"Nobody, really. It's just, you know, you dropped out of sight., man! You haven't made a big hit in years! You can't stay on top if you're not working, you know!"
"I still work. I just work for a different reason."
"That's cool! So, you gonna teach me or not?"
I should have blown his brains out to protect myself. That's how I would have handled it a couple of years ago. But that Raven is gone. Gone with the fiery blast that took everyone I ever cared about away from me. Oh yeah, the new Raven is a lot different from the old one. So, the new Raven should have just told the kid to take a hike. But he'd gotten me with that "used to be the best" bit. And besides, he's managed to find me. No small feat, that! That meant he was persistent and patient enough to follow very small leads. It meant he was smart enough to recognize small leads when he saw them, too. Useful skills for an assassin. In other words, I took him on as a trainee. A fledgling, I liked to call him.
The first thing I tested was how well he could shoot. People won't believe it when you tell them, but that's not really the most important skill an assassin needs. I'd probably list it second. What's first? The ability to analyze, to respond quickly and appropriately to a rapidly changing situation. Another way to look at is this: it doesn't matter how good a shot you are if you never get in position to fire the shot in first place or if, after firing the shot, you get caught. Still, the kid had shown brains to me already. And not long afterwards he showed me he could shoot. He was really more like a talented amateur in that department but there was plenty to work with.
I won't bore you with all the details of his training. His shooting skills advanced quickly and surely. Within a few months he was skilled enough for me to consider taking him along on a job. The thing that held me back was how little interest he seemed to have in analysis. His answers to my theoretical problems always seemed to boil down to the same response...
"Okay, you've made your hit. But there's an unexpected problem - four cops were taking a break in the coffee shop across the street. They come charging out, guns drawn. What do you do?"
"Yank out my Uzi and blast 'em!"
"An assassin should never kill anyone other than his target!" I reminded him.
"Yeah, but an assassin should always get away, too!" he shot back.
"All right, say you blast the cops. They're wearing flak vests. What now?"
"Aim for their heads, of course!"
"While firing at full auto? I don't think so."
"I could do it! But, since you don't think so, how about I fire low, take out their legs? They drop, I run. I'm wearing a flak vest too so they'll have to be damned good shots to hit me while writhing in pain!"
That's the kind of crap he kept coming up with. Shoot first, think later - that is, if he thought at all. That's probably the most frustrating thing about teaching - the person you're teaching always thinks there are some things they just don't need to learn. With the fledgling, it was analyzing situations. Finally, I decided the only way to teach him the value of analysis was in a real life situation. I decided to take him with me on a job. An easy job, mind you.
Biggest damn mistake I ever made...
It was a pretty simple job. A bunch of mooks were supposed to picking up a shipment of guns. Normally I wouldn't even have bothered with a job this small, but I figured this job would be easy enough for the fledgling. Easy enough that he couldn't screw up more than I could fix. We headed out the next morning to case the area.
The pick up was supposed to go down at a big construction site in the middle of town. Twin towers of red steel, open spaces and long, long drops to the ground. The pick up was at midnight, twenty floors up in tower one.. Looked easy. We'd take the high ground, have a clear field of fire over the mooks. A couple of ropes would provide a quick get away if needed. Piece of cake.
We snuck in at 9:30 that night. Security at the site was pathetic. I took the fledgling up to the twenty-first floor of tower two. He bitched about that, wanted to be in the same tower with the mooks. I ignored him. Found him a good spot, concealed but with a wide field of fire. Got him set then told him to hold his fire until I began shooting. He bitched some more about that. I left, took up my place in tower one and waited.
At 11:45, the elevator in tower one started up. Good, the first bunch was here. They lugged a bunch of heavy boxes off the elevator then sent it back down. At midnight on the dot it started up again. Punctual - I like that in a target.
The elevator squealed to a stop below me and the second group got off. Normal looking bunch of mooks but something just didn't feel right. The mooks started discussing the deal but I paid no attention. I was scanning the floor below looking for trouble. Then I found it. One of the two groups below had brought in a big player - a ninja. Damn! I didn't recognize her but I didn't have to. Ninjas are a major pain in the ass! Tough to take out unless you're very good and have the drop on them. But I'm the best. And I did have the drop on her. I had her lined up nicely in my sights.
Then the kid opened up from the other tower. I didn't even see the ninja move but suddenly my sights were empty. Below me the mooks were yelling and cursing and trying to find some cover. There wasn't any and the kid was picking them apart. But he didn't know about the ninja - at least not yet. Ignoring the mooks, I started looking for the ninja. I found her about the same time the kid saw her. She was running across to the other tower, using the kid's stream of bullets as a bridge!
The kid panicked, of course. This was the kind of situation I had warned him about. And he responded the way he always did - he tried to shoot the ninja. It was, of course, a complete waste of time. He raised his aim but the ninja just climbed up the stream of bullets. He raised it again. She climbed again. By the time he figured out that he couldn't shoot her, she was leaping from the bullet bridge. He tried to run but that was futile, too. The ninja became a blur of motion and the fledgling was thrown from his nest. Like most fledglings pushed from the nest too soon, he couldn't fly. He screamed my name all the way down. Great - not only was my student dead but the ninja knew I was here.
There was no way I could sneak away - not from a ninja! I had to get rid of her somehow, though, and all I had was a gun. I couldn't shoot her - she was on her guard, now. But I didn't have anything else to do. You can guess what happened the second I opened up on her. Right, she began charging across my stream of bullets, probably planning to send me down after the kid. One thing she didn't count on - unlike the kid, I used my brains.
She was about a third of the way across my little bullet bridge when I stopped shooting. I wish I could have seen the look on her face right then. I like to think she looked a bit like the coyote in those old roadrunner cartoons. She fell silently.
Shadowfist and Feng Shui: The Shadowfist Roleplaying Game as well as all characters described therein are copyrights and trademarks of Daedalus Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.
Last modified: September 13, 1996;