Banshee - The Origin

Mal must have been a soldier. The way he moved, low and looking around always, his pistol at the ready in his free hand while he held the girl’s unconscious mother. The girl, still dressed in her black leather, was leading the large man along the back paths, behind houses that were now on fire. The paths were hidden within bushes and trees, most of which were also on fire, but it was safer than risking the open streets. The ships still flew overhead, and those beams of death still shot down at whatever moved.

Eventually, she got them to the edge of the paths. It was some 2 miles from her house when the forested area ended, and the path continued in the open. She turned to Mal and looked up at the large man “Alright. We’re close.”

“Close to what, child?” he asked, with some annoyance in his voice. He’d been following the girl for over an hour, not saying anything, but she hadn’t volunteered any information, either.

She held up the keycard again “One of my gang mates gave me this a long while ago. It’s the keycard to one of the richest family’s private hanger. We were planning on stealing one of the ships, but we never got the chance. Nitro was the only one who knows how to pilot anything.” She was suddenly struck with worry for her gang mates. They were her friends, and she didn’t know if any of them were alright. Probably not… most of them had been out when the attack started, so it was more than likely they were caught in the attacks.

Mal nodded to the girl “Good plan. Let’s just hope that there’s still something there. Where is this place?” The girl gave him the directions, and fell in behind him, letting the man who obviously knew how to fight lead the way. They darted from cover to cover, hiding behind buildings, rubble, burning vehicles, and anything else that might hide them for a moment.

They went about doing this for near an hour, before finally they neared their destination. Unfortunately, it seems the invaders had some previous intel on the city. No less than 10 men stood around the entrance to the hanger. Humans, in medium and heavy armor, all painted some dark grayish-blue, some insignia emblazoned on the sleeves that looked to be a hawk’s talons. Mal recognized the symbol, and scoffed as he set the girl’s mother down. “Huh. Mercs, alright. It’s the Hawke Talons. They’re nothing, but it’s still 10 on one, so it could get tricky.”

The girl again narrowed her eyes “I can fight!”

Mal shook his head “No, you stay here and guard your mother. Here, use this if you have to.” He pulled the pistol from his belt and handed it to her. It was an old model Enforcer pistol that looked modified a bit. Heavy, but balanced, she found it was easier to hold than the old gun she’d been learning to shoot with.

By the time she looked up, Mal was already heading toward the group, staying low and hidden. In fact, if she didn’t know exactly where he was, she wouldn’t have been able to see him at all. He was good. She lost track of him after he slipped into a shadow. The next thing she knew, one of the men in blue was dead, a thrown knife in the side of his head. The others scrambled suddenly, shouting to each other, cursing, looking around for who had killed their comrade.

She spotted Mal again, for only a moment. He was running low, and ran past the body of the man he’d killed, grabbing the man’s dropped rifle. The men hadn’t noticed anything. They did notice, however, when a stream of bullets took down another of them. They also returned fire.

The girl watched, but suddenly heard the sound of movement behind her. She raised the gun and turned, but saw it was only her mother, rousing from her alcohol induced slumber, groaning slightly “What the…. Where am I?” The woman looked around, saw her daughter, and scowled at her “Beatrice, what have you done? Where are we?”

The woman was about to stand up, but the girl pulled her back down “Stay down, Mother!” she tried to yell and keep her voice as a whisper at the same time.

Her mother would have none of that, though, pulling her arm away from her daughter and standing up anyway. “Beatrice! What the devil’s gotten into you, child? You tell me where we are this instant!” She was shouting.

The girl grabbed her mother’s arm again, and again yanked her down to the ground, hard enough to actually pull the woman off balance and bring her to her knees. “Mother! Be quiet! I’ll explain everything later. Right now, you need to shut up, or those men over there will come over here and shoot us!” she pointed to the firefight going on a short distance away.

This seemed to get her mother’s attention “Oh my god! What the hell is going on?” After a moment, she gasped “Is that Mal?”

The girl sighed and looked back at the fight, then swore. Two of the men had apparently heard them. She told her mother to stay back, try and hide. She got the pistol ready, aimed at the closer of the two men, and pulled the trigger. The gun was definitely modified. The kickback nearly broke her arm, and sent her to the ground. Surprisingly, the blast wasn’t as she’d expected. She figured it probably had some kind of sound suppresser on it.

She was struggling to get back to her feet, to try and hit the second man, but before she could even get up, something hard and metallic struck her head, sending stars to her eyes, and knocking her back to the grass. She heard, though muffled from her dazed state, the shout of a male voice, directed at her “You little bitch! You nearly hit me!”

She’d missed. So much for all the practice she’d been doing. She shook her head to try and get her senses, but her head was suddenly filled with pain again, this time as the man reached down and grabbed her by the hair, lifting her up off the ground. She started to kick about, and let out a shriek of pain and rage, trying vainly to strike her captor.

The second man had struck the girl’s mother with the butt of his gun, much as she’d been hit, knocking the woman back into unconsciousness. “What should we do with these two, ya think?”

The first man, still holding the girl by the hair, laughed “We ‘ought to kill ‘em, but I say we take ‘em and rape ‘em first.”

They both had a hearty laugh at that, but shook his head “Nah, mate. We don’t have time. That big guy might come looking for these two.” He looked down at the unconscious woman, and shook his head “Shame to do this to a pretty woman, but we got a job to do.” He then brought up his gun and fired a burst into the woman’s body, which twitched under the heavy bullets.

The girl saw all of this as if it were in slow motion. She saw him aim the gun, pull the trigger, and could have sworn she saw the bullets move through the air before piercing her mother’s back. She watched the blood spray out of the wounds, counted as they struck, 2, 3, 4 hits, all through her lungs and heart. Her mother’s body twitched and convulsed after each hit, but didn’t move anymore after that.

Then time came back, and she screamed. It was shrill, high pitched, loud enough it tore at her throat. A scream filled with horror for what she just saw, and pure rage at the man before her that had done it. She struggled even more to get out of the man’s grasp, twisting and kicking back at him. The second man called to his friend “Fuck, mate! Silence that banshee child already before the big guy hears!”

Then came a voice behind the both of them, deep enough that it seemed the air vibrated with the sound. That deep voice said only two words. “Too late.” Before either man could say anything, Mal struck the second man hard enough to send him to the ground, dazed. The first man had to let go of the girl first before he could bring his gun up, so by the time he had raised it half way, Mal had already put a bullet between his eyes with the pistol the girl dropped earlier.

Mal walked up to the girl, who had been dropped to the ground. She was lying there, crying, and punching the ground. She then let out a scream of agony, the kind of emotional agony that no physical wound can compare to. When she realized that someone was standing next to her, she looked up. What she saw was a dark skinned hand, holding the handle of a pistol to her. She took the gun, then looked where Mal pointed. The man who had shot her mother was starting to come round, but still dazed on the ground. “He’s all yours.”

She couldn’t even think. Rage filled her in that moment, and she rose to her feet, walking over to the dazed man, kicking him in the head as he rolled onto his back, dazing him farther. “B-itch…” was the only word he managed to groan out at her. She then pulled the trigger, shooting him through the chest. She was ready for the recoil this time, so it didn’t knock her back. She then pulled the trigger again, and again, shooting the man over and over. She hear him yell in pain after the first few shots, but he was silent as she emptied the rest of the clip into his chest.

When the gun clicked in her hand, the clip empty, she threw it to the side. Her rage wasn’t gone, only stronger. She fell to her knees and started to pummel the now dead man’s face. She punched him over and over with all her strength, screaming again, the shriek filled with her rage.

Eventually, she became aware of the pain in her hands. She looked down at them through tear-filled eyes, and saw her hands were bloody and cut. She’d been beating the man’s skull, the broken bone having cut into her skin. There wasn’t much left of his face at this point. She sagged, her rage and energy spent, and looked about to fall over, but a large hand was rested on her shoulder. She looked up, and saw Mal. “Come on, girl. We need to go.”

She looked, then, at her mother’s body, blood staining her back. The woman’s head was turned so she couldn’t see the face. That was probably a good thing. She just stared at the woman who she’d despised most of her childhood life, and felt truly horrible for hating the woman who was her mother. She’d never have the chance to apologize, either. So she said a silent good bye to her, and stood up to follow Mal to the hanger.

The girl was in a haze as she walked, not seeing the bodies of the men Mal had killed. She didn’t remember entering the hanger, barely hearing Mal voicing his worry that the ships might not be fueled. She didn’t remember getting on the small scout ship that Mal had picked. She did remember leaving the hanger, though. The ship was small, with room enough for a crew of three at most, so she was strapped into the copilot’s seat. This gave her a front row view as Mal did twists and turns to avoid the ships that started firing at them, instead of the ground. He slipped past easily, and with some fancy flying, also managed to slip through the blockade in orbit. Soon, the little ship lurched with pseudo-movement as hyperspace engines kicked on, bending the laws of physics around them as they shot into hyperspace.

She remained silent for a long time, just staring out at the vortex of colors that was hyperspace. Blue, white, red, green, yellow and black swirled around the ship in a great tunnel of energy. Despite the fact this was the first time she’d ever seen the hyperspace vortex first hand, instead of in a text book, she wasn’t really paying much attention to it. Instead, she was trying to sort out the vortex of thoughts within her head. Questions, doubts, anger, sadness, confusion, and through it all, she kept seeing her mother being shot, over and over. Then the man she’d killed. She wasn’t horrified that she’d actually killed someone. It had actually felt good to her, and that thought scared her more than any other. She rationalized that it was because it was the man that killed her mother, but she knew there was a different feeling with it.

After hours of not talking, she finally voiced some of the questions that were swirling around in her head. “I’m never going to see my home again, am I?” Mal, who was reclining in the pilot’s seat, just shook his head. He knew that the Necris would convert the planet into one of death within weeks. By the time any force large enough to oppose them came, it’d be too late.

The girl looked down at her hands, which Mal had bandaged for her. They still hurt, and she saw a little blood seeping through the bandages, but she ignored the pain, thinking for a moment before asking “How- how well did you know my mother?”

Mal smiled then “I’ve known her for a long time, since before you were born. I knew your father, too. He was one of my first sponsors in The Tournament.” He said the last two words with enough importance that she knew it was a name, not just a title of a competition.

“The Tournament?” she asked. “What tournament?”

Mal looked at her with surprise. “You mean you didn’t know? I thought that’s what that shocked look was the first time you saw me. Thought you might have recognized me.” She shook her head, and it caused him to laugh lightly. The dark skinned man set about hitting some controls on the flight panel, and a picture box appeared on the front view screen. The box filled with static for a moment, then filled with the image of Mal, holding a trophy as tall as he was. Under him were the words “Unreal Tournament Grand Champion” and a date some 5 years prior.

Suddenly, something she heard a long time ago came to her. She’d heard of the Unreal Tournament in school. It was some kind of ultra-violent fighting match. It used portable instant cloning units called ‘Respawners’ to, in effect, keep the players alive after being killed. She didn’t know the details of how it worked, though. “You’re the Grand Champion?” she was impressed and amazed.

He laughed again “I was the Grand Champion. I’m retired now. Figured it was best I leave while I was on top.”

She was suddenly struck with an odd question “Wait… if you knew my mother when Dad was still alive, then why were you… um-?” She didn’t know quite how to ask the question tactfully.

Mal figured it out anyway “Why was I sleeping with her?” She nodded, blushing a little “Your mother did love your father, very much. When he died, something inside of her broke. It’s why she drank so much.” This was all information she’d figured out on her own. “He died a long time ago, though. And your mother was still a woman.” He smiled broadly then “And a great fuck, at that.”

“AH! Gross!” she shuddered, remembering all those sounds from her mother’s room. She did blush as she remembered the large man while he was naked; hugely muscled, well endowed, and exotically dark skinned. It was true she was young, but she wasn’t a virgin. She thought upon what it might feel like to have someone as large as he was fuck her, and decided that it would probably hurt, since he was so much larger than her.

It struck her as odd that she was thinking these lewd thoughts, so soon after what she’d just been through. Her mind was trying to avoid the despair and focus on something, anything else. It then also struck her that she’d been in the ship for hours and still didn’t know where they were going. “Mal, where are we going, anyway?”

The large man smiled. “We’re going to the planet Telmeron. I’ve an old friend there I’d like you to meet; woman by the name of Blaze. She runs one of the groups in The Tournament: Venom. An all-female group.”

The girl gave him an odd look “Why?”

Mal laughed “Because, as the former Grand Champion, I can see potential in people. And I’m something of a talent scout for new blood.” He smiled to her “And the way you were screaming when you shot and beat that man… Damn girl, you’re a real banshee. You keep that rage and you’ll have a shot at champion yourself. With training, that is. That’s where Blaze comes in.”

She thought about this for a while. “What… what if this Blaze won’t train me?”

“She will.” He said this with certainty. “She owes me more than one favor, so she’ll accept you.” Again the girl just thought for a while. She should have said no, should have been horrified at the idea of being in a tournament where the goal is to kill people, even if they don’t stay dead. Her thoughts were interrupted by Mal again. “Necris compete in The Tournament. I think Hawke, the guy in charge of Hawke’s Talons, is still gunning for the top, too. Might get your chance at gunning them back.”

The rage hit her again as she heard those names. Her eyes hardened, and she didn’t cry. “Yeah. Sounds good to me. I’ll do it.”