Blue Something: prologue 1

She stood at the agreed point.

The back alley was the ideal place for their action, but it did not make her anymore happy.

The place stank with urine and decay. It was cold and it rained. The water soaked trough every inch of her clothing, the cold wind blew, robbing her of the last remains of body warmth. She would love to leave this place immediately, but she can\'t.

Not now. Not after all the effort. Not now when they are so close.



FLASHBACK!



After sending the video to the officials, things finally started moving. She was ordered to lead the investigation, much to her joy and commissioner\'s Vrozkrokkop\'s disappointment.

The police-lines remained dead concerning this cause, which either meant the witnesses were either too afraid to talk, or were fully supporting the killer for getting them rid of the menace the Ross actually were.



The investigation finally met some progress, after someone got the brilliant idea of investigating the area where the sketch of Random TV was shot.

They found out that before the shooting, the suspect was shopping at a local Discount market. After the shooting he went playing pingpong - the hall had exceptionally long opening-hours on that day .

After checking the records from the last month, they discovered that the suspect was visiting this part of the city on a almost regular basis.

The Discount Market, the pingpong hall, the library, the tea house, the gallery and various restaurants (Chinese, French, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Hungarian, even a Irish pub). That Discount Market seemed really out of character.



The investigators started questioning the employees.

They weren\'t very helpful.

The only information they could get was, that he was a very polite, alto a bit eccentric gentleman. No-one knew his name or other information about him. Either that or they didn\'t want to tell.



The public opinion on this matter was clear. The Ross did deserve it, ant the only thing they weren\'t happy about was that Jhonen Ross was only shot and tot slaughtered in the same way as his father was.

No one cared about some murdered witnesses.



The fact that Ross jr. got away with it rather easy compared to his father suggests that he was just a sideshow.

Ross sr. probably hired a assassin to get rid of all the witnesses confessing against his son. Than he probably refused to pay him. The assassin then probably shot Ross jr. in similar fashion as when a company takes away your car for not paying it off, and then made a example on Ross sr.

People either fear him or sympathize with him.



Finally they got some useful information from a librarian.

The librarian was a tall, bearded muscular man, who seemed really out of place on a job like that.

Tanya thought that he would fit much better in a forest, cutting down trees in the old-fashioned way, but no-one does that anymore after the drones took this sort of jobs.



The librarian looked on the picture, basically a screen-shot from the broad cast of Random TV.

"Have you seen this man?"

"Oh, thats Sekele, he comes here quite often."

"You know his name?"

"Of course I do, I\'m a librarian, I need to know the name of everyone who borrows a book, and he does it really often."

"Do you know anything more about him? Like his address, phone number or such like?"

"All this info is in the database."

"Can we see it?"

"Do you have a allowance from the court?"

"Do\'h!"



Ok, this was close. They of course can go to the court to get a allowance to go trough the library\'s database, but that would take a whole lot of precious time or a whole lot of spended money.

Luckily they had a clue. The name.

Sekele, just Sekele. Demons don\'t have second names. It wasn\'t that hard to find him. They knew he lived somewhere near this city, since the library doesn\'t allow people from outside the city to borrow books. There were around 230 deamons officially living in the city, a small minority. The police database featured all of them.

Only one of them was named Sekele.



He lived on the boarders of the city. Only one detached house in the middle of nowhere. The only thing near it was a single bus-stop.

At the first glance it seemed as a ordinary house.

On the second glance...

Walls made out of iron-baton, high level security doors, just the windows seemed normal.

"Damn" said officer Johnson to himself "I wouldn\'t be surprised if he had a minefield around that thing."

He came to the door and rang the bell. After a few moments a small, gray-haired, creamy-yellow-skinned, red-eyed man opened the door.

That wasn\'t the guy from the picture. Officer Johnson became worried that he might be at the wrong address.

"Hello sir, aren\'t you mr. Sekele?"

"NO!"

"Does mr. Sekele live here?"

"Yes."

"Can we speak with him?"

"NO!"

"Sir, this is the police you are talking to!"

"Do you have a allowance from the court to enter Mr. Sekele\'s property?"



And so they were where they started. They asked the court to give the police a allowance to enter Sekeles property.

They waited for a week, and nothing happened. When they asked the court again, they said that they are working on it, but it was apparent they had no interest in doing anything.

"Corrupted bastards!" said Tanya to herself.



The situation messed-up at best.

The investigation would probably die soon, if not for a unexpected, irrelevant and totally lame Deus-Ex Machina.



One day a lone scarred man came to the police and said he had important information considering the case.



"So let me get this straight mr. Sheen" detective Yun asked "you say that you know the motive of the murder of Jhonen Ross as well as the identity of his murderer and the murderer of the witnesses in the case Johnny Ross?"

"Yes" the man said, his voice shivering.

"And how do you know this things?"

"I was one of Ross employees, and I happened to be partially involved in the extermination of the witnesses."

"Aha, and why are you telling us this?"

"I need protection."

"Tell us everything you know, and we will see."

Knowing that this might be his last chance to save his sorry skin mr. Sheen started:

"The young mr. Ross got into some trouble again, his daddy never set any limits and this is what you get from it.

So jr. once again found a nice lady he liked. But she didn\'t like him. However jr. does not consider \'no\' a answer. What he wants, he gets. He does not ask, he takes.

And then of course he had to punish her for resisting, that is a serious crime against God to deny Johnny what rightfully belongs to him.

The problem is, that Johnny isn\'t too bright. He should not do this sort of things on a street full of people in the middle of the day, and stay there even after the police sirens could be clearly heard.

Johnny was in trouble, and daddy knew what to do.

He hired a skret, because skret assassins are believed to be one of the best. Not because other demons or even mortals couldn\'t do the job better, but because of their almost religious obsession to fulfill their mission.

We chose that Sekele guy, mostly because he was the only skret assassin in town and therefor we didn\'t need to pay him a hotel room.

He did as expected, this assassins can kill a person without leaving the smallest clue that would even suggest what might have happened.

But then he messed up, I don\'t know what went into him, but he simply killed that girl right in the courtroom where everyone could see him. And he got arrested.

And alto he managed to escape sooner than you could figure out anything important from him, he was too dangerous for us. You knew how he looked like, everyone saw it, and if someone would find him and make him talk we would be in the can.

So they sent me and a few boys to his house to silence him. We assumed ha was still injured and recovering, so he wouldn\'t be difficult to take care of.

However, we had to run into his monster of a housekeeper.

I was never so frightened in my whole life."

"And then?"

"He let me leave. Don\'t know why, but I was the only one he left alive and allowed me to go away.

I spent the last few weeks hiding, afraid he might change his mind. After I heard what happened to mr. Ross I just couldn\'t take the fear anymore and decided that the only way to be safe again would be to exchange my information for protection."



The information he gave were useful indeed.

In their current situation, the only chance the police had to arrest the murderer, was to catch him red-handed. And thats exactly what they are going to do.

Sheen gave them direct instructions ho to make contact with him. All they need to do is to pretend to be potential clients who are interested in his services. One team member will wait at the agreed place. When the suspect arrives, he will be offered a assassination contract. If he should accept, they have evidence enough and they can arrest him. For this task, they have prepared a team of snipers, heavy-armored policemen and swat members - you can never be to careful. All will be of course recorded, so they will have evidence before the court.



PRESENT



Detective Yun waited in the back ally.

"He is late!" she mumbled to herself.

She looked into the street, trough the fog and rain and saw just a few automobiles going by. She reminded herself of what dangerous individual is she facing.

The flawless assassinations of the witnesses in the Johnny Ross case, the storming of the Ross manor, the brutal and sadistic execution of Jhonen Ross, the shooting of Johnny Ross.

When she thought about it, the last thing didn\'t seem right. It was a bit crude, like if some random guy took a sniper rifle and went out to kill the bad-guy. She remembered the librarian who gave them the suspects name telling them his own opinion on this cause.

"The assassin tradition commands them to take revenge on thous who betray them or refuse to pay, thats their way of taking compensations. There is no reason for him to kill someone he just might have saved trough his mission, even if the saving of that person might have been the missions actual point. The client takes the responsibility for his actions, no-one else."

Even mr. Sheen showed his doubts about this. "If you try to fuck with these guys, they\'ll kill you. And also everyone who tries to stop them and everyone who has the god-damned luck to see it. However, Johnny was innocent, in a way."

Tanya was toying with this thought for a while. But then she decided that it would be best to ask the assassin himself after they arrest him. They will have enough time afterwards.







Suddenly she saw a figure walking towards her. It was a short man wearing a trench-coat and a hat. "Some Phil Marlow impersonator," she thought to herself and smirked.

He walked slowly towards her, his trench-coat was wet, she couldn\'t see his face, even thou it was cold enough his breath wasn\'t visible, he grinned, she knew he did even thou she didn\'t see his face.

Without even noticing, the man was standing in front of her, looking her streight in the eyes.

It was that face, the same face she saw in the court-room on that very day. He wore the same mask as he did during the assassination in the court-room. Was it a coincidence or was it some sort of a message? Did he know what was going on? Impossible. The whole operation was secret, except for her team, only a few high ranking officers knew about this, On the other hand, he was able to find all the witnesses, even thou the locations of some of them were held secret.

She quickly repulsed this thoughts from her head, he must not see that she is nervous.

"Sorry, I\'m late," the man said.

"Glad you came." Tanya quickly replied.

"Ok, lets lets get to business, shall we?"

"Yes."

"Who is the target?"

"Everything you need to know about him and further instructions were in this envelope," said Tanya, giving him the envelope.

The man took it, and examined it for a moment.

"Should I pay you in forward?" she asked.

"Lady, taking money for a job I haven\'t done would be a insult! I shall be payed after job is done."

"And the target?"

"It is as good as dead."

"Good," they both laughed and then shook hands. Then there was a sound, and another.

"You are under arrest for the crime of Contract killing."

The man looked on his left arm being handcuffed to the arm of the detective. He also saw a small metallic object being stabbed into his right arm, blocking its mechanism. The man smiled a very evil smile.



Things went dark and intensive pain struck her in the frontal part of her head. She felt as if she was thrown back by a powerful blow. She felt a warm liquid running down her face.

Suddenly she felt a strong pull on her right arm and she was pulled back. Her vision returned, only to see a knee kicking her in the stomach. "Something isn\'t right," she thought as a second kick landed a detonating blow on her kidney, "were is everyone?"

She was violently thrown against the wall, and again. She heard a cracking sound, she hoped it was the wall.



When she woke up, she found herself in a hospital. The doctors said that the garbageman discovered her in a dumpster, almost beaten to death and that it was almost a miracle that she survived.

Her colleagues later told her, that they all got a high priority order to cancel the whole operation at the last moment, but the order did not reach her. The recording device she was caring with her was probably taken away by the suspect. There were no witnesses. It was all just a waste of time.

While she was laying in hospital, the officials gave out a order to stop the investigation.







epilogue:



It was a nice warm afternoon and two people, one skřet and one hobbit, were sitting in front of a coffeehouse drinking coffee and talking.

"Thank you for your assistance commissioner, you made it allot easier for me."

"No problem dear friend, I just hope she wasn\'t a too big annoyance for you. I tried to stop her my self, but then she came with that video, it wasn\'t in my power to stop her anymore and it took some time to reach our contacts in higher places."

"Thats ok, I think she has learned her lesson, and I must say that canceling the operation without telling her anything was really mean."

"I do what I can, dear friend."

"Alto, I must say that if she wasn\'t so eager to arrest me, things could have gotten much more interesting. You know, the envelope contained your data, If she hadn\'t attempted to arrest me, the contract would have been valid and I would have to bring her your head. One little Salome."

"You would do that?"

"Assassin code, my friend. But honestly" he changed the theme "this is one good coffee, would you like to order some cake? They make wonderful cake here, especially fruit-cakes."

"Sorry, I have to go now. Unlike you, I have a working schedule."

"Ok, see yo later!"

"See ya!"



Commissioner Tomas Vrozkrokkop walked away, wondering about how he probably escaped death. You should really try to be friends with this guy, it is much better than being his enemy.



As he walked away, two people confronted him.

"Hello, we are from TV Random, the randomest exclamations ever, do you have a message for our viewers?"

"Justice is serious business!"





End of prologue 1