Post by 42zombies on Sept 27, 2009 16:59:00 GMT -5
So, I've been working on this story for a little while. I think it's decent, but before I put it up I want to get some people to read through and point out any spelling or grammar mistakes I've made.
Thanks for your help!
Kit’s Job
Author’s Notes: I do not own any of the various franchises or characters that appear in this story. They are the property of their creators. I do, however, own any original characters, including Kit. Please enjoy!
Scientists have long theorized the existence of alternate realities parallel to our own. Every event that has taken place since the dawn of time could have stemmed any number of ways. These forgotten choices build upon each other to create worlds that are either completely different or eerily similar to our own.
In the 50’s, a scientist theorized that one could travel between these universes if a steady enough dose of microwaves were doused on a subject. When he tested this hypothesis on his pet cat, he grew ecstatic when it disappeared in an explosion of blood and fur. Only years later, on his deathbed, did he realize his mistake.
Regardless of their failures, numerous scientists have made attempts to travel between worlds by a variety of methods. For example, one scientist believed that, as reality is how we perceive it, a bullet to the brain could transport one to another reality. He tested this theory once, on himself.
Perhaps in one of the infinite other universes this kind of travel is possible. Perhaps there is a dimension full of hyper-intelligent beings who wander the multiverse in search of inner peace. Who can honestly say? Travel between dimensions was unheard of before one dreary day in March…
HIS NAME WAS KIT. He’d forgotten his last name years ago—wiped clean by the brutality of his job. Kit was a stone-cold loner and nihilist, traveling from city to city with no need for a family to tie him down. A thirty-year-old like Kit, in the prime of his life, didn’t need a family, anyway. All he needed was money, food, booze, and money.
Right now, he was in need of the last thing. As Kit had just violently learned, buses didn’t accept IOU’s. The bus-driver (“Pretty strong for a fatty,” Kit thought as he dusted himself off) had tossed Kit and his briefcase onto the street.
Hardly surprising; Kit was an assassin, a hired gun among the cold concrete of Del Pas City. Assassins were a fairly popular career choice in Kit’s world (Second only to garbage-men) and the profession was typically treated with respect…
… Typically.
“Damn bus-driver,” Kit mumbled as he straightened his hair and picked up his leather briefcase. Tucked neatly inside were two .44 Magnum Revolvers and enough ammo to turn an elephant into Swiss cheese. If Kit had had time to take them out, or to even reach for the Derringer he had on his belt, he would have shown that bus-driver a thing or two.
No time for regret, though. Kit had a job to do; or, rather, a job to take. Kit had been contacted several days ago that a client was interested in hiring him. This had come as a great surprise to Kit, considering he never did much in the way of advertising.
He looked up at his rendezvous spot—an office building with an outside as filthy as the piles of garbage that surrounded it. The front-door was the only thing about the building that looked new. The color-scheme of it, white with blue vertical stripes, told Kit that the employees within would have something to do with computers.
The inside was nicer than the outside, and as soon as Kit stepped inside he was assaulted by a pleasant smell of lilacs. Plaster walls surrounded the hired gun, and old motivational posters dating back to the sixties hung everywhere the eye could see. Out of all the desks in the small office, only one had a person in it. Calmly, Kit sat at the desk and stared down the man in front of him.
He smiled at Kit as pleasantly as he could. Around his arm, the stranger wore a purple arm band with a red checkered design. (The symbol of psychology. Or, if it was actually red with purple checkers, the symbol of a prostitute. The man didn’t exactly seem like he could carry that career.)
To his left and right were two huge, muscular men with yellow armbands and black circles—bodyguards. This promised to be interesting.
“Mr. Kit!” The psychologist declared as if he and Kit were old friends. They weren’t. In fact, Kit already hated this guy. His head was too square.
“I’m very glad you could come, Mr. Kit,” the psychologist grinned from square cheek to square cheek. “My employers—your employers, as well—specifically chose you out of thousands of other assassins in a way that was no completely by chance!”
“Nifty,” Kit mused. That head was just so square…
“It is! Indeed, it is! Yes!” The psychologist opened a drawer at the desk he sat in, pulling out a manila envelope while he repeated everything he said.
“This is an important job! Very, very important, Mr. Kit! Now, I have your target right here—your target is in this envelope, you see—and…”
It was then that the psychologist saw something: Kit had no armband.
Pointing at Kit’s sleeve, the psychologist gave him a questioning look. Kit groaned angrily. “Yeah, I never applied to become a licensed assassin,” he admitted. “I’m just a freelancer. So, am I good enough or do you want to be an ass and hire someone else?”
The psychologist, being happy enough to simply get an answer, smiled and leaned back in his office-chair. “Oh, no need; you probably won’t survive your job, anyway. So long as you’re willing to kill for money, my superiors are more than happy to let you work for them!”
How polite!
“Now,” the psychologist leaned forward in his desk excitedly, “my employers would like you to act as their enforcer. Pull of jobs whenever they need them; travel to exotic locales; that sort of thing. They’re willing to pay very generously if you do well.”
“Okay,” Kit muttered, leaning back in his own chair, “who exactly am I going to be working for?” “I don’t know; the NBA?” “Good enough.” Kit decided after half-a-second of rigorous thinking.
After that, there was some technical jargon, some contract-signing, and some other boring stuff. But you don’t want to hear about that; you just want to get straight to the violence in the next chapter, like when Kit shoots a guy in the foot for stealing his cookies. So you’ll get to skip through this because you’re a bunch of spoiled brats who don’t care about the romantics of bureaucracy.
They were in the basement, two days later. Kit still had the psychologist’s roller-skates on, both of the bodyguards were lying on the ground dead, and the psychologist still didn’t have any pants.
See what you miss when you don’t want to read the boring stuff? That was probably all really interesting.
There was too much complex machinery for Kit to make sense of. That was probably because he was lying in what looked like a pimped-out MRI. The psychologist had told him that it was to immunize him against any hostile bacteria he would encounter on the job. That was half-true.
“Okay,” the psychologist rubbed his hands together, perky as ever. Kit couldn’t see this—he could only hear the psychologist’s annoying voice. “I’m going to have to put you asleep for the process. If you were awake it would be like a living Hell!”
“Neat!” Kit mused.
An IV drip had been hooked up to Kit’s arm. Already, some calming fluid was pouring into the hired gun’s veins. Inside the MRI machine, Kit saw dark, fluorescent lights turn on all around him. They circled him in a dance of shadows while his eyes slowly dripped shut. He was vaguely aware of a beeping noise and the sound of what might have been a drill, but he was too tired to make any sense of it.
Finally, as the entire interior of the MRI lit up in blue light, Kit fell asleep.
WHEN KIT would wake up, he would find himself in a strange world and with his suitcase at his bedside. He would be confused, frightened, and in pain—but he would do his job; partly because of honor, mostly because of the bomb strapped to his wrist.
TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR… Someone Set Me Up The Bomb!
Thanks for your help!
Kit’s Job
Author’s Notes: I do not own any of the various franchises or characters that appear in this story. They are the property of their creators. I do, however, own any original characters, including Kit. Please enjoy!
Scientists have long theorized the existence of alternate realities parallel to our own. Every event that has taken place since the dawn of time could have stemmed any number of ways. These forgotten choices build upon each other to create worlds that are either completely different or eerily similar to our own.
In the 50’s, a scientist theorized that one could travel between these universes if a steady enough dose of microwaves were doused on a subject. When he tested this hypothesis on his pet cat, he grew ecstatic when it disappeared in an explosion of blood and fur. Only years later, on his deathbed, did he realize his mistake.
Regardless of their failures, numerous scientists have made attempts to travel between worlds by a variety of methods. For example, one scientist believed that, as reality is how we perceive it, a bullet to the brain could transport one to another reality. He tested this theory once, on himself.
Perhaps in one of the infinite other universes this kind of travel is possible. Perhaps there is a dimension full of hyper-intelligent beings who wander the multiverse in search of inner peace. Who can honestly say? Travel between dimensions was unheard of before one dreary day in March…
HIS NAME WAS KIT. He’d forgotten his last name years ago—wiped clean by the brutality of his job. Kit was a stone-cold loner and nihilist, traveling from city to city with no need for a family to tie him down. A thirty-year-old like Kit, in the prime of his life, didn’t need a family, anyway. All he needed was money, food, booze, and money.
Right now, he was in need of the last thing. As Kit had just violently learned, buses didn’t accept IOU’s. The bus-driver (“Pretty strong for a fatty,” Kit thought as he dusted himself off) had tossed Kit and his briefcase onto the street.
Hardly surprising; Kit was an assassin, a hired gun among the cold concrete of Del Pas City. Assassins were a fairly popular career choice in Kit’s world (Second only to garbage-men) and the profession was typically treated with respect…
… Typically.
“Damn bus-driver,” Kit mumbled as he straightened his hair and picked up his leather briefcase. Tucked neatly inside were two .44 Magnum Revolvers and enough ammo to turn an elephant into Swiss cheese. If Kit had had time to take them out, or to even reach for the Derringer he had on his belt, he would have shown that bus-driver a thing or two.
No time for regret, though. Kit had a job to do; or, rather, a job to take. Kit had been contacted several days ago that a client was interested in hiring him. This had come as a great surprise to Kit, considering he never did much in the way of advertising.
He looked up at his rendezvous spot—an office building with an outside as filthy as the piles of garbage that surrounded it. The front-door was the only thing about the building that looked new. The color-scheme of it, white with blue vertical stripes, told Kit that the employees within would have something to do with computers.
The inside was nicer than the outside, and as soon as Kit stepped inside he was assaulted by a pleasant smell of lilacs. Plaster walls surrounded the hired gun, and old motivational posters dating back to the sixties hung everywhere the eye could see. Out of all the desks in the small office, only one had a person in it. Calmly, Kit sat at the desk and stared down the man in front of him.
He smiled at Kit as pleasantly as he could. Around his arm, the stranger wore a purple arm band with a red checkered design. (The symbol of psychology. Or, if it was actually red with purple checkers, the symbol of a prostitute. The man didn’t exactly seem like he could carry that career.)
To his left and right were two huge, muscular men with yellow armbands and black circles—bodyguards. This promised to be interesting.
“Mr. Kit!” The psychologist declared as if he and Kit were old friends. They weren’t. In fact, Kit already hated this guy. His head was too square.
“I’m very glad you could come, Mr. Kit,” the psychologist grinned from square cheek to square cheek. “My employers—your employers, as well—specifically chose you out of thousands of other assassins in a way that was no completely by chance!”
“Nifty,” Kit mused. That head was just so square…
“It is! Indeed, it is! Yes!” The psychologist opened a drawer at the desk he sat in, pulling out a manila envelope while he repeated everything he said.
“This is an important job! Very, very important, Mr. Kit! Now, I have your target right here—your target is in this envelope, you see—and…”
It was then that the psychologist saw something: Kit had no armband.
Pointing at Kit’s sleeve, the psychologist gave him a questioning look. Kit groaned angrily. “Yeah, I never applied to become a licensed assassin,” he admitted. “I’m just a freelancer. So, am I good enough or do you want to be an ass and hire someone else?”
The psychologist, being happy enough to simply get an answer, smiled and leaned back in his office-chair. “Oh, no need; you probably won’t survive your job, anyway. So long as you’re willing to kill for money, my superiors are more than happy to let you work for them!”
How polite!
“Now,” the psychologist leaned forward in his desk excitedly, “my employers would like you to act as their enforcer. Pull of jobs whenever they need them; travel to exotic locales; that sort of thing. They’re willing to pay very generously if you do well.”
“Okay,” Kit muttered, leaning back in his own chair, “who exactly am I going to be working for?” “I don’t know; the NBA?” “Good enough.” Kit decided after half-a-second of rigorous thinking.
After that, there was some technical jargon, some contract-signing, and some other boring stuff. But you don’t want to hear about that; you just want to get straight to the violence in the next chapter, like when Kit shoots a guy in the foot for stealing his cookies. So you’ll get to skip through this because you’re a bunch of spoiled brats who don’t care about the romantics of bureaucracy.
They were in the basement, two days later. Kit still had the psychologist’s roller-skates on, both of the bodyguards were lying on the ground dead, and the psychologist still didn’t have any pants.
See what you miss when you don’t want to read the boring stuff? That was probably all really interesting.
There was too much complex machinery for Kit to make sense of. That was probably because he was lying in what looked like a pimped-out MRI. The psychologist had told him that it was to immunize him against any hostile bacteria he would encounter on the job. That was half-true.
“Okay,” the psychologist rubbed his hands together, perky as ever. Kit couldn’t see this—he could only hear the psychologist’s annoying voice. “I’m going to have to put you asleep for the process. If you were awake it would be like a living Hell!”
“Neat!” Kit mused.
An IV drip had been hooked up to Kit’s arm. Already, some calming fluid was pouring into the hired gun’s veins. Inside the MRI machine, Kit saw dark, fluorescent lights turn on all around him. They circled him in a dance of shadows while his eyes slowly dripped shut. He was vaguely aware of a beeping noise and the sound of what might have been a drill, but he was too tired to make any sense of it.
Finally, as the entire interior of the MRI lit up in blue light, Kit fell asleep.
WHEN KIT would wake up, he would find himself in a strange world and with his suitcase at his bedside. He would be confused, frightened, and in pain—but he would do his job; partly because of honor, mostly because of the bomb strapped to his wrist.
TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR… Someone Set Me Up The Bomb!
