Vision fuzzy. Ears ringing. Taste blood. Is it mine? God, I hope so. I don’t think I could stand to be a vampire again. Those were a long few years. Never slept. Tried to eat my kids. Good thing I didn’t. Too bad they’re dead.
God, so many people dead. My kids. My wife. My friends. My team. Wait. My team. How many are dead? How many are unconscious? Whose blood do I taste? Why, why can’t I think straight?
Oh, right. This is a concussion. That’s what this feels like. Surprised this one didn’t kill me. It’ll probably be the next one. Right soldier. On your feet. You need to finish this fight. This is the last one. Then you can lay down and die.
My bones and muscles scream at me in frustration as I place one hand on the ground and start to stand. Roaring at me, telling me to stay down, give up. Screw that. I’ve done too much these past twenty years to give up because I’m a little sore. This body might be going on sixty, but my mind is going on thirty. Maybe fifty-five. What’s the difference?
As I find my footing in the sand, my left leg sliding on the shifting ground. I adjust my ball cap, tattered and torn, the green totally faded from when I first had it ordered back when I started this company. The word Seth’s Soldiers imprinted on the front. I pull my hat down to cover my eyes, helping to lower the glare of the flames in front of me.
Oh yeah. We lit stuff up, didn’t we?
A truck, our truck I realize, the big green jeep with the bed in the back, thrown on its side on the beach. Fire is licking out the windows, and I figure the insurance isn’t going to cover that one. The jungle is in front of me, I swear it was green and lush when we got here. Now it’s burning, only the ocean behind me will stop that trail of destruction. A plane, a water hopper, ripped in two along the sand. Right, that was our attempt at a surprise aerial result. I see the body of Frank lying still, motionless on the beach. He’s bloodier than me.
Crap, he’s dead. Another dead on my watch. His codename had been, what, what was it? Flight Freak. He was our eyes in the sky, our ace pilot. He was younger than me too. He had the most to lose by taking this job. He took it anyway. God, Frank. I’m sorry. You were better than me. Better than most of us. I’ll kill this freak for you. For everyone.
Where is this freak?
“You insignificant old maggot!”
The angry voice clues me in. I look up, and descending from the sky in front of me is a white man in a business suit, levitating towards the beach. His business suit is riddled with holes. Some of the holes have blood coming out of them. Oh good, we hurt him a little bit.
His comb-over is ruined, his hair frazzled and frayed from the battle. His normally smug, young face is twisted and contorted past his years in anger. His right hand is clenched, and a green glow is emanating from it. Those damn power blasts he can fire are a pain. I think that's how my jeep ended up on its side. It’s definitely how Frank died.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve cost me here today!? How long it’ll take me to rebuild it?!” he shouts as he descends closer and closer to me.
“How about you ask me if I care?” I spit back, my voice gravelly. The cigarettes can be blamed for that, but the smoke inhalation from explosions can’t help either.
He snorts.
“I’m going to kill you with my bare hands' old man,” he declares.
“Then come on,” I respond back. “Make my day.”
I reach into my holster and pull out my last remaining gun. All my other firearms are either spent or destroyed. My arsenal, oh baby my arsenal. I had shotguns, assault rifles, plasma cannons. All fully licensed and trained with. I got so good at one point I could carry up to eight guns at one time. And I didn’t need any damn superpowers to do it.
As I look at my pistol though, I remember it’s special. It was the first. Now it’s the last. My mind races back years and years ago. To when it started.
It was 1992. I was thirty-five years old. I had been a soldier and soldier of fortune for my entire adult life. It was finally time for me to start my own crew. Seth’s Soldiers. Cheesy name, but my wife at the time had thought of it. We were just standing around my supply warehouse, me and the boys who’d become my soldiers.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” I said as I grabbed a set of files off my desk. Just nestled off to the side of the warehouse where my desk and our meeting table. A round wooden table that had been hastily painted over upon arrival. I thought engraving the initials of the company would be a nice touch until I realized the other meaning of the initials of Seth’s Soldiers.
“Grab a seat,” I remarked, gesturing to the table as I toss the files onto it.
The five men all shared quick looks, some know each other, some don’t. It’s typical in this line of work. I sat down with my files and placed my cigar in my mouth. My casual demeanor obviously encouraged them to sit as they grabbed chairs.
Inhaling and then letting out a puff, I grabbed my first file.
“Alright, let’s see here. Trevor?” The picture in my file truly did not do this man justice. This man was molded from clay to look like a Greek God. Wearing just a combat best and showing off his absolutely rippling muscles, this large black man would inspire fear in the boldest of men. So his name was particularly fitting.
“You wanted to go by, The Terror? For you codename?” I ask.
He chuckled, a deep rumbling noise, and then nodded his head, never verbally responding.
“Jeez your mom made sure you ate your greens didn’t she?” asked one of the other men, similarly taking stock of Trevor like I had been. I looked at him, and see a beanstalk of a man in comparison. Patchy facial hair, red curls matted his head and a half slack grin on his face. I glanced down at his file for a moment and grabbed his name.
“Frank?” I ask him. “Flight Freak?”
He rubs his nose and responds,
“That would be me.”
“You sure want that to be your code name?” I ask incredulously. It just sounded weird.
“Yeah man. You hired me to be your pilot, and I’m,” he paused what he was saying to lean back in his chair.
Raising his hands and then wiggling his fingers he finished, “I’m freaky.”
I raised my eyebrows and then shrugged my shoulders. I moved to the next member.
“Sergei?” I look to see an older man, easily the oldest on the team, sitting with his arms crossed.
“Yes?” he asked back, his voice thick with a Russian accent.
“Snipeshow?” I asked.
“Yes,” he responds.
I let it go at that, having worked with him in the field before. He once hit a target that was three kilometers away, moving at seventy kilometers an hour, and was also partially cloaked. I knew he was good.
“Alright, Kane?”
A shorter Japanese man with green hair tied back into a short ponytail stood up. Everyone in the room looked at him for a moment, at which point he crossed an arm over his chest, and then sat back down.
“Um, okay. The Katana Master?”
As if magically on cue, a fly that had been zipping around suddenly fell to the table. I looked at it, and they fly’s wings had been cut off. Then there was a sharp metallic sound, and we looked to Kane as he sheathed his sword.
“Okay, that works,” I said.
“Lastly, George,” I mentioned, looking up to the last member of our group. Easily the smallest member of our group, he was short and skinny with glasses that were taped together at the bridge was George.
“Do you want to be called The Geek? It’s not very…” I started to ask.
“What? Masculine? Macho? Cool?” he asked.
“Well...yeah?” I responded.
“I picked it because I’m the smartest guy here and because well...it fits,” he said, the sentence a bit of a roller coaster in delivery.
“Alright,” I conceded.
Standing up, I took a look at the group. Reaching into my holster, I pulled out my pistol. My personal firearm, and the one I’d have on me at all times. There was nothing special about it, no unique design or fancy pattern on it. But I had bought it to use as a backup weapon had anything gone wrong in the field. It was always my guaranteed ticket home.
“As you all know, I’m Seth. My codename will be The Soldier. We will only address each other codenames when in the field,” I instruct.
“The goal of Seth’s Soldiers was to find mercs who are willing to fight battles other groups would shy away from. Because they’re dangerous. But that's why they pay better."
I paused for dramatic effect.
“Supervillains. Our primary target will be supervillains.I have deals in line with government organizations to hunt down supervillains who have escaped justice to make sure they don’t come back,” I said.
Some in the group bristled at this, but no one said anything.
“That’s why the code names are important. To protect our identities in case any of this ever comes back to bite us. But it shouldn’t. Because we’re professionals, and we will always finish the job,” I finished.
My speech seemed to instill a bit of confidence in them, and with that, I cleared my throat.
“Alright, let’s get down to business. There’s a cyber-terrorist acting out of the middle east some U.S. agents want taken care.”
A few months of busting down doors later, and we were at Blasmo’s base in the middle of the Afghan desert. Typical desert base, tents shoddily set up all over the place in a valley of sand dunes. We had run him down out all of his facilities, chasing him to his last outpost and his least defended. The freak had been augmenting regular soldiers, building giant robotic suits, and experimenting with superpowers. We had only been together a short while, but Seth’s Soldiers were a veritable force of nature and all the crap he could throw at us wasn’t enough.
I ducked behind cover, dodging a hail of bullets that razed the box I was hiding behind. I counted the gunshots. As soon as I could hear it calm down, I poked up with my assault rifle in hand. One, two, three, four shots later four super soldiers collapsed to the ground. I vaulted over the boxes and aimed down my sights, firing and executing a few more super goons. The whirr of hydraulics and metal had me jumping off to the side.
There was a hard crash off metal connecting with the ground as I barely avoided a giant set of power armor from stomping on me. Standing at about ten feet tall, the robot suit had a covered cockpit with the pilot visible inside, moving levers around as the metal monstrosity approached me.
Backstepping I fired at the cockpit. My bullets dented and scratched the glass, but they weren’t enough to penetrate. The pilot sneered at me. He thought I was an easy target. It’s a good thing I had an even better pilot.
A swarm of bullets from up high shattered the glass and hit the target inside. The sheer force of bullets knocked the suit over. I watched as overhead Frank flew past me, swerving to the left and taking out another target.
Off to the right, Trevor and Kane were doing their thing. Trevor rarely used guns, he’d often overpower everything in sight. Picking up one thug by the face, he threw him into the ground. One tried to sneak up behind him, but Trevor spun and shot an elbow into his nose. The goon stuttered, and then Trevor, the behemoth of a man, raised his foot and kicked the goon in the chest, sending him flying backward.
Kane meanwhile was surrounded by goons, but they were dropping one by one. Faster than the eye could follow, Kane would spin and there would be a blur of steel. Followed by a dead super thug. He always made it seem so effortless.
As we continued our fight through the base, we’d see goons drop left to right and center, and to the unassuming eye, they would have just died. But we knew it was Sergei off in the distance, taking key opportune shots to thin the herd.
Just as it looked like our work was done, there was a crashing sound that shook the ground. I rendezvoused with the other ground members in the middle of the camp, when the crashing sound came to a head with a shake so violent even Trevor almost fell over. We turned to see a thirty-foot tall mech round a giant sand dune just outside the camp.
“I’m going to need more bullets,” I commented.
“I’m going to need a bigger sword,” Kane whispered.
“I’m going to need bigger muscles,” Trevor added.
The mech neared us, and we all did our best to prepare ourselves. A speakerphone outside the mech then started to declare in Blasmo’s telltale voice.
“Foolish mercenaries! There are things here you could never understand! Things at work you will never uncover! Mostly because I’m about to kill you!”
Right as he finished saying that, he froze, and the mech began to start violently shaking. We exchanged looks with each other in confusion, when suddenly the mech raised an arm into the air.
“Wh-what!? Why are you- No!” Blasmo screamed from inside the mech.
Blasmo’s death cry suddenly cut off as the mech drove it’s fist straight through itself, right through where Blasmo had been sitting. The mech fizzled and vibrated on the spot, as we continued to stare on in disbelief. At this, George walked out from inside a tent. In his hands was large panel looking device with a weirdly shaped antenna coming out of it.
“Told you I was smarter than all of you,” George said with a grin.
I chuckled and then motioned with my head that it was time to leave. None of us looked at the mech suit exploded.
The next few years were a blur. We’d kill supervillains with extreme prejudice. Occasionally we’d add members to the team. Some of ours would leave, but the core six would always return. Some questioned our methods, but in the early years, it was never an issue. When my family was killed as an act of revenge, those were the darkest times of all. None of us ever thought to question our way of business again. It was killed or be killed.
But then as the years bled on, as we got older, superheroes made a comeback in a big way. Superheroes who tried to stand for something more. That started to hurt our business, and soon we were started to see the fossils we were. We were older, our ways rooted in the time we had come from. All we had known was violence and an extreme method of acting. We didn’t stop taking jobs, but they became fewer and far in-between.
We thought it was time to retire, the core six still intact. Until George was killed. Turns out Blasmo had a son he had experimented on, and the little boy had grown up to take over his father’s empire, taking the name Blasonmo. He murdered George in an act of vengeance for the death of his father, not knowing about the rest of us.
There was no bounty on Blasonmo. In fact, it may have been us killing his father that turned him to evil, we’ll never know. But we created this monster, and the remainder of Seth’s Soldiers decided it was up to us to rid the world of relics of a time since gone. Even if that meant we’d go with it.
So as I stand here, the jungle forest burning in front of me, the jeep and plane destroyed, and I’m waiting for Blasonmo to finish me off, I know that it did cost us everything else. Now it’s just up to me to kill Blasonmo, or we die for nothing. I have six bullets. I have to make them count. Blasonmo fires an energy blast at me. I roll to the side and take a shot. Five bullets.
Blasonmo raises a shield made of pure energy which the bullet bounces harmlessly off of. Okay. I’ll have to play it smart but I have an idea how to end this. More energy blasts hit the ground around me, launching me back off my feet, but I roll upon hitting the sand. I take two more shots. Again he sees them coming and stops them. Three bullets left.
“You know I was there right?” I shout.
This makes him pause.
“I led the group that killed dear old Dad!” I continue to shout.
Anger seethes in his eyes. He growls. And then with a roar, he charges at me.
This is going to hurt.
I take two more shots. In his fury energy is wrapping around him and the bullets burn up before hitting him. One bullet left.
I don’t move. I don’t try to dodge. I just wait.
And receive a fist through my chest.
I practically vomit blood. He keeps me suspended with his fist. We lock eyes as he grins that smug grin. Good. Smile.
Faster than he can expect I raise my gun to his chin. Try to see this coming at point blank range.
I fire.
He dies.
He reluctantly extracts his fist and falls into the sand. I stumble backward and fall down myself. As I bleed out, my world darkening, I have a few thoughts. I think of my wife, my kids.
But god help me, I think of Seth’s Soldiers. Maybe we were too much. Maybe we were too extreme. But I think we did some good. I think we made a difference.
I think the world changed because of us. Reacted to us. Maybe we caused this change to ‘better’ heroes. Maybe that’s too much credit.
I just know we had to mean something.
We had to.
We had to.