Slumrat Rising

Truth started making his way towards the edge of Buran. He was wearily certain that there would be checkpoints on the roads, AGAIN, and doubly certain that the buses and trains would be filled primarily with plain clothed police officers and surveillance equipment. He morbidly wondered how there could be room for ordinary commuters under the circumstances. He’d take a damn boat at this point, but he was headed inland. As wondrous as his remarkable physique was, he was getting very tired of running everywhere and even more tired of playing suburban hopscotch.

Tired or not, he didn’t have a solution. So he sighed, looked beseechingly at the empty heavens, and got walking. The color, sex appeal, and wealth of Buran were concentrated in a dense pocket by the ocean’s edge, then radiated outwards. Like a lump of solid paint dissolving in clear water- it got progressively less colorful the further from the source you were.

He was jogging at a normal Level One pace, not wanting to strain his cosmic energy so soon after draining it in the church. Just a nice, easy pace, letting his body carry the load. Watching the families collect their groceries, looking stressed and tense. The commuters on buses looked more miserable than even Jeon’s buses should account for. The cram schools turning kids loose. Felt early for that. Maybe they were easing up. Can’t imagine the SAT was all that important these days. Or not. The kids looked pissed and miserable. Not that he ever had a hope in Hell of attending a cram school. Not for his kind of rat.

Incisive gave a tiny twitch. Very slight danger, or perhaps opportunity? Truth slowed and looked back at the school. It was one of the students. A boy, maybe seventeen. Nobody talked to him. He had a stuffed backpack slung over his school uniform. A little bigger than his schoolmates. There was a flatness to his face, a rigidity of expression, and a deadness of eye that made the hairs on Truth’s arms rise. He decided to follow the boy a little bit and see just what he was up to.

The boy stalked away from the cram school but didn’t head towards the bus stop with everyone else. Instead, he walked up the road. Nobody noticed or cared when he went off on his own. He trudged up the street a solid six blocks, then went up an alley. He found a side door to an apartment building that had been left propped open, presumably so the people in the apartments could get to and from the cage full of trash cans easily. The boy then walked up the fifteen flights of stairs to the allegedly locked and alarmed roof access door, opened the door without a hint of an alarm, and went out on the roof.

The boy walked to the ledge and looked out. And down. A jumper? He probably wouldn’t be the first in his class, Truth guessed, but it didn’t feel right. The boy was looking for something. Apparently, he found it. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a very familiar-looking case.

Where the HELL did this high school twerp get a goddam M-202A3 Heavy NEEDLER?! Is he even Level One?No, he isn’t. Praeger’s Filthy Prick, he can’t even lay a spell on the needles or guide them or… anything.

The boy quickly assembled the needler and stood rigid, eyes aligning with the targeting reticule. as the sun set behind him. Aiming at something or someone below. Truth couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Wait! Stop! Don’t do it!”

“Not like that, you won’t! You’re doing it all wrong!”

There was a momentary pause.

“What?”

“You are holding the needler wrong, your setup is wrong, your angle of attack is wrong, best case scenario you go to full auto and shoot into a crowd but aimed shooting with this setup? Your odds of scoring hits on target are way too low, and your odds of getting captured and killed shortly after contact are way too high. I applaud your initiative, it’s great to see the next generation stepping up like this. But just a little more care for the details will turn a botch job into a success story.”

The boy looked like he was having a hard time processing, but Truth pressed on regardless.

“Look, I’m only a few years older than you, so I can really remember what life was like prepping for the SAT.” Truth said, Incisive helped him settle into a “good” senior schoolmate identity. “I can also remember how incredibly homicidal I felt on a daily basis. Now, let your senior guide you. Who are you trying to murder here? Not your schoolmates or teachers, I see.”

“What? No! I’m not shooting any teachers!”

“Whoa, hey, easy. Who are you shooting? There is an office building next door, right?”

“The PTO.”

The what now?

“Help me out here.”

“The fucking PTO! Parent Teacher Organization, except it’s all the parents and they use it to bully the teachers. They are backed up by the Ministry of Education too, the teachers get no support, and they get blamed for every little thing.”

Truth did not have particularly fond memories of his teachers and the notion of a student taking up arms to defend them seemed… insane.

“Alright?”

“I mean EVERYTHING. One student get’s two sentences of praise and another gets three? It’s emotional abuse, a complaint filed with the Ministry, and the family bangs on the the teachers door in the middle of the night to scream at them and demand an apology. Reminders to bring homework, pens, notebooks when they keep forgetting them? Emotional abuse, should be kinder, complaints to the Ministry. Trying to stop bullying? Stop a beating? That’s physical abuse, discrimination, complaints filed, banging on doors, chasing them down on the street, making a huge scene, swearing at them and demanding they record an apology.”

The boy was ranting.

“And the Ministry always supports the parents. ALWAYS. They never take the teacher’s side. People get fired, lose promotions, kill themselves.” He stumbled there, panting.

“Oh. Mom? Dad?”

“Sister. She was twenty three and hung herself in her elementary school classroom. She had been teaching for less than a year.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.”

Their words were empty and formulaic. You had to say something, but really, what could you even say? And what could you say to the empty comfort? Truth tried to get the conversation back on track.

“So there is a PTO meeting in the office building over there?”

“Yes, one of the people in the PTO works there and they borrow a conference room for their meetings. I’m not sure where the conference room is, so I thought I would pick them off as they come in and out.”

“Makes sense, makes sense. Can you recognize them from the top, though? It’s a damn steep angle across the street.”

“Well enough.” The boy sounded defensive.

“Alright, looks like your Senior needs to give some guidance here. First of all, you are Level Zero. You don’t have spells, so you have to do everything by muscle, which actually means you need to brain first, muscle second. Let’s clear the easy stuff out of the way.” Truth pointed at the building.

“You can see through the windows of one whole side of the building. Most offices have conference rooms, especially a conference room big enough to hold an entire PTO meeting, in rooms with a lot of windows and, ideally, a view. This side of the building is the only side that doesn’t have another building three meters from it, so the odds are decent the conference room is going to be visible from this rooftop.”

The boy looked rocked but nodded along.

“So you have at least a decent shot of picking them off when they are nicely grouped together in a comparatively small area, with a much flatter attack angle. This is going to really increase your hit probability and make spray-and-pray a way more viable option. You probably aren’t going to get a second shot at this, right? So you want to maximize the results, and this lets you do that.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Now, we can also call that the best-case scenario. Might be a shitty office with a windowless conference room, right? Well, what you don’t do is fixate or get frustrated. You just wait. See, right now, you have the end-of-day crowd leaving the office while the night shift guys are going in. But if you just wait, they go in mixed with everyone else, but by the time the meeting ends, they will be some of the only people left in the building. When you see a big clump of people exiting all at once- bam. There’s your PTO.”

“Damn. Do you do this professionally or something?”

“I got into private security work after my national service, then went independent.” Truth agreed. Incisive was up and running, but really, this was taking no energy at all. It seemed the nation of Jeon had no problem with this identity whatsoever. The unsubtle nudges from the universe that he was born to be a gangster were getting depressing.

“And… you are okay with me shooting up a PTO meeting?”

“Okay is a strong word. I would prefer if you shot up a Starbrite building or something, but really, I spoke up because I couldn’t stand to see you doing it wrong. I mean, you are standing upright, silhouetted against the sky, and supporting the weight of the needler with your arms when the building ledge is right there. It gives you cover, breaks up your silhouette, AND gives you a steady platform to fire from. These are the kinds of basics you need to master, you know?”

“Why Starbrite?”

“Because they are why the parents are doing this. They are why the Ministry is acting like a bunch of little bitches. Think about it- it’s the SAT. Your whole life gets staked on one. Goddamn. Test. Your whole value as a person, as far as Jeon is concerned, is down to one COMPANY. Not the COUNTRY, a company. And those parents know it. They are freaking out, trying to make sure their kids succeed. So they act like assholes. They are a symptom. Starbrite is the disease.”

“I… uh. Huh.” This was clearly a lot to grasp. Truth could understand that. It was an emotional day for this kid, and this was a lot to process at once.

“Look, what would you say to a warm up? Look down that street there.” Truth pointed to a cross street on the other side of the building. “If you kind of squint, you should be able to see the bank?”

“Yeah?”

“Four Seas Bank. Starbrite owns a big chunk of it. Not an official Starbrite company, but come on. You really think any of the bosses there are going to argue with Starbrite?”

The boy shook his head.

“So let’s do a little proof of concept. It’s a much longer shot, but because you are shooting farther away, the angle is flatter. Easier to hit, hopefully.” And he would be cheating, but no need to mention that little detail. “Now, do you see the security guys out front? Grey hat guys.”

“Yeah?”

“You see the prick in the fancy suit next to them?”

“Yeah.”

“Bank manager or higher. Might even be some bigwig from Jeon come for an inspection.” He definitely was. There was one of those almost-invisible-watcher-things next to him. Watching. Plain Clothed PMC hitters around him too.

“Probably off for a nice meal, hot and cold running whores and a peaceful night’s sleep. He would be so mad if you told him he was part of the problem. That he was the person who killed your sister. They are all responsible for killing your sister.”

The boy started fixating, hyperventilating.

“Now, let's put it all together. Kneel behind the parapet. Just like that. Good. Rest the needler- you got it. Nice steady breath. I’ll help you line up the shot. There. Hold it right like that. When I say “Now,” shoot. Nice quiet needle from a long way off, plenty of time to get clear. Might even be able to come back and tidy up the PTO, if you still want to.”

“Yeah.”

“Here comes the carriage. Fancy limo! There goes security-” The watcher moved into line with the suit for a moment. “Now!”

The boy squeezed the trigger, the needle ripping through the air. Truth grinned. He had wanted to find out what happened when you killed one of those watcher-things for ages.

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