Pant.

Pant.

Pant.

You motherfuck—

Shring! Shlock!

Aack!

5 well-dressed assassins in an alleyway corner, each trained to hunt and to kill surrounded him from all sides while their comrade, the 6^th was lying in a fetal position with his face sliced open. Qualia was embedded hilt deep in his forehead, the blade sizzling the flesh while the smell of ginseng burned in a windowsill two stories above. Wilhelm was standing over the corpse, reloading Nona with bullets. One of the assassins reached into his pockets, and produced gold knuckles, spiked and dripping with corrosive acid in one hand, an M19 in the other. Wilhelm eyed him incredulously and huffed inamusement.

“Hmmm”, he hummed quietly.

He knew his poking around looking for the so-called the “Black Lotus” would lead to such a confrontation with the underbelly of Hong Kong. It was to be expectedas such, given this individual rarely made public appearance. In fact, as far as the underbelly was concerned, no one knew exactly who he was or what he looked like. Many information brokers clamored to find anything on the Lotus only to find themselves stumped, and then eventually slumped over dead from what authorities would deem “unfortunate circumstances”. It also didn’t help that the Lotus had a network of its own, the White Garden, that protected its leader as well as its members from incrimination of any kind. This level of security and protection was unheard of, even among the most elite organizationson the planet, which is why the Master had Wilhelm investigate them. From what he was able to gather, even as little as it was, the crumbs he found didn’t paint much of clear picture either.

According to his sources, this group showed up out of nowhere roughly 4 years ago in the obscurest, most shadowy parts of the already darkest portions of the black web and market. Originally, they were considered low level thugs and miscreants, dealing in money laundering and faking government documents for criminals inbed with officials. Then the Pandemic threw the world into chaos, and their movements shifted. Instead of just helping petty criminal charges get droppedor looked over for a few bucks, they were now taking on senators and prominent cabinet members—airing out their dirty secrets like they were laundry. The act that truly put them on the map in the underworld was the Swiss Panic. Overloading the country’s banking establishments, the Garden blanketed the financial markets with bloatware that crashed whole nodes of information and melted the infrastructure of several of Switzerland’s most prominent databases.

Within hours of the cyberattack, the economy of Switzerland was in state of panic as hundreds of millions of offshore accounts were emptied and their financial records plastered over major news outlets detailing the entire banking history of some of the biggest corporations. The country as a whole and its citizens were spared and left largely unaffected, but the rest of the world, however, was practically foaming at the mouth as the financial underbelly was ripped from under them. The only evidence of the Garden’s hand in this was their now signature call sign: a white tiger lotus with black spots on the tips of its petals, and striped leaves.

And this was just the first of their antics.

A shift in pace, as the 2^nd assassin widened his stance, silenced pistol in hand.

Wilhelm pretended not to notice him, and casually walked over to the corpse of the 6^thto retrieve Qualia. The bladed glowed green in the man’s forehead, the eyesockets smoking and charred, while the left side of the man’s face was completely cauterized to an unrecognizable degree.  The right side was bruised and bloody, with a black eye, but otherwise clean.

The man on the pavement was American.

Bill Katter his name was legally, the codename “Antebellum” was his moniker as Wilhelm knew him.             

Officially they’d met only once, when Wilhelm accompanied the Master to a gala in Vienna. Katter was tracking an Albanian arms dealer who was sponsoring a military coup in Tunisia. As far as assassins go, Katter wasn’t very unique. He was capable, obviously given his 3-star rating, but his brass attitude and chauvinistic ways made him unbearably contemptible to his peers. Personally Wilhelm never really liked him, more accurately he never cared to know him in any way; as such it was rather a shock to him when Katter openly declared him a rival—something Wilhelm never understood, given the difference in their professional directions.

“I’m not here to entertain, Mr. Katter”, he said a monotone voice, “I’m here on business under the service of my master.”

“Bullshit”, retorted a slightly drunk Katter, “you’re just a goddamn kook with a stick up his ass who thinks he’s better than everyone.”

Katter was on his 5^th drink of Austrian vodka, which he drank with no ice. He was boisterous, but clever, a combination that amused Wilhelm given his strong tolerance to alcohol.

“I’ve traveled around the world to as many shithole countries as there are shittier ones”, Katter chided, “and every single one of them offered me very little inthe way of a true challenge. Yet here you are, a walking litany of combat.”

He finished his drink, his view darting temporarily towards his target. The Albanian was busy laughing and drinking away his recent paycheck, a young and upcoming Italian supermodel glued to his arm. His window to kill the bastard was slowly approaching.

He went on, “I’ve heard about you, Mathos.”

At the sound of that name, Wilhelm’s brow beetled. Very few people knew that name, and ones who did were no longer among the living. He’s persistent, Wilhelm thought amused. Impertinent human.

Click, click, click.

Wilhelm had reloaded the 2^nd of the 3 chambers never once taking his eyesoff the corpse of Katter. Examining him much closer, he noted the Y-shaped scaron his right cheek and smirked. A souvenir he gave Katter in Libya, when the two encountered each other in the Sahara not long after the gala. Katter was defending a convoy on its way to Egypt, while Wilhelm was attacking. Using the Parcae, alongside a few other similar weapons, Wilhelm completely demolished the convoy, and single handedly picked off each member of the security detail assigned to it, leaving Katter the only survivor. That scar was a trade for the item being ferried: a relic of the Others discovered in a tomb in southern Libya.

Wilhelm had thought that Katter had died after their confrontation, and was surprised to to find out he’d been tracking him since that encounter.

“I knew I’d find you eventually you fucker”, he said in his usual haughty tone.

He thought he’d gotten the 1-up on Wilhelm by cornering him in the alleyway. Too bad his corpse a few minutes after showed just how foolish and incredibly outmatched he truly was.

The 2^nd assassin went first, lunging at him with a bladed tonfa. Having casually retrieved Qualia, Wilhelm bent down on knee and ducked his head forward, narrowly missing the serrated edge by a mere fraction of an inch. Using the man’s momentum against him, he quickly swiveled his ankle, and using a capoeira-style kick, caught the man by his neck trapping him between his thigh and calf in a headlock. The assassin grunted, gasping for air and struggled under the grip of his leg muscles, cursing in Mandarin. A sudden click broke his thoughts, and looking up his anger quickly turned to shock as the barrel of Nona was placed right on the center of his forehead. The sudden realization didn’t change matters, but the resulting blast was still powerful enough explode the back of his head as his brains were splattered about on the pavement behind in.

His shock frozen forever as his eyes rolled to the back of his head, the assassin convulsed, and then collapsed in a heap as Wilhelm loosened his leg to release the corpse between them. Taking in a deep breath, he turned towards the 3 other assassins, each one poised and waiting for their turn.

He sighed. This is gonna be a long night, he thought. He still needed to find the Black Lotus, and he’d already wasted precious time just dealing with these assholes. Sure enough confirming his thoughts, the 3^rd and 4^th moved in tandem to enact a pincer attack. He smirked as he jumped back, missing a punch to the gut and a swipe to his neck. They were most likely a team, given their coordination and support for the other as they fought, which amused and annoyed him at the sametime. They’re good, he thought. If these were under normal circumstances, Wilhelm would’ve bought them a drink and talked with them, maybe even offered them a place one of the many under the service of the Master. These weren’t, however, and as far as Wilhelm was concerned, they were nothing more than a hindrance. The 4^th, who used an electrically charged compact Billy club, swung at him against, this time aiming for his heart.

Wilhelm cursed, and using his sharp reflexes, brought Nona to his chest having activated its dagger mode after killing the 2^nd assassin. The resounding clang that reverberated caused his ears to pop and teeth to jar as electricity coursed through his body. He gritted his teeth in annoyance, huffing at the human’s futile attempt to disable him. Damn volts, he grunted internally. He’d been trained to be immune to elemental attacks such as this, but for the life of him, it still unnerved him how easy it was for human ingenuity to undercut him at times like this. Cursing under his breath, he parried the 3^rd assassin, who sought to capitalize on what he assumed was Wilhelm getting paralyzed by the jolts. He managed to graze his jaw when a rush of air knocked the assassin on his ass, a gaping hole burning in the pavement where his foot used to be. Before either one could respond, Wilhelm grabbed the wrist of the 3^rd assassin, twisting and snapping it like a twig, and using the adrenaline rush it gave him threw him into the 4^th, careening the two into a group of trash cans flip-flopping them like pancakes.

As he recovered his bearings, a hooded figure jumped down from a 3 story ledge onto a puddle right next to him. He was shorter than Wilhelm, about ‘5’7’. He wore a bomber with a gold dragon insignia on the back with and origin pants with Adidas. The ensemble itself was colored black and silver with gold imprints, the only white article on his body being his shoes. As Wilhelm beheld the newcomer, he realized he was surprisingly young, about 18, maybe 19.

“Took you long enough to show-up”, the teen said, cocking his head in a sly nature, “and here I was cooling my heels wondering where you’d run off to.”

As he speaks, he pulls out a baseball bat black and cracked at the handle. Wilhelm notices bandages on his knuckles, before coughing as the youth bends to downand stretches his hand to him. Not realizing he’s kneeling he grips the handand is swiftly pulled to his feet, where he’s brought face to face to the teen. He had lip ring on the right side of his lower lip, and thin rimmed glasses,while black lotus rings hung from his ears. Wilhelm was amused by how young he looked, noting way his cheeks were soft and flushed, but bruised, indicatingthat he’d fought, while a cut dripped small traces of blood from the left sideof his face above his left eyebrow. He was handsome as fuck, he knew that much, his velvet eyes were mesmerizing to say the least.

“You’re late”, Wilhelm managed to reply in a tired voice, “had you taken yoursweet time, they’d be dead by now.”

The young man smirked, “I doubt that’d be the case, seeing as how your main concern is extracting info from them.”

A rustle and crushing of glass interrupted their conversation as the 3^rdand 4^th assassins recollected themselves, and together with the 5^th, began moving in tandem to take the two of them out.

Stretching his arms out and yawning, the teen moved to stand perpendicular the 3 opposing assassins and laying his hands behind his neck, he eyed the 3 with indifference.

“Well, looks like we have ourselves a good old beatdown on our hands”, he said as Wilhelm saddled up beside him, “so tell me princess, how d’you want to proceed fromhere?”

Wilhelm pulled out Nona, and proceeded to load up the 2^nd and 3^rdchambers, priming the KFA while not once taking his eyes off the 3 assassins. “I’ll take the twins”, he said decidedly, “try to keep up.”

The young man chuckled, “whatever you say princess”. Motioning in a dramatic bow, the young flirtatiously batted his eyes.

"After you."