Post by thelightsworn on Jun 25, 2010 9:19:27 GMT -5
(WARNING: Some graphic content ahead.)
[Roughly two weeks before the events in the thread “A Beautiful Friendship”…]
Frederick walked through the town looking back and forth to the opposite sides of the street. It was a rare “off” day for him, meaning that, for the time being, there was no direct need for him to be present at the castle and there were no immediate military concerns that required action so severe as to employ the Knight of One. “Days off” were a rare thing these days, and only getting more precious and rare as the global tensions were building. Frederick treasured these days. They were the only time he got to get out of the castle and live how he wanted.
Though born to a noble family during the years that the nobility was being suppressed, he had never seen the point to reinstating the nobility. He had never known the life of luxury that his ancestors had lived and, quite frankly, didn’t care to know. He was happy with life as it was, living quietly in the small village his family had once resided over generations ago. When his father found out about his “peasant” friends he went into a rage. As a result, Frederick spent much of his childhood isolated.
Today, he had come to one of the many small suburbs just outside of Pendragon. He was walking in his civilian clothing. He wasn’t carrying much but a cell phone, a hand gun, and a knife with a six inch long by one and a half inch wide blade. Both the weapons were well concealed under his coat. Coming across a delivery man struggling to unload packages from his truck, Frederick stopped. ”Need some help?” Frederick asked, smiling. ”That would be great!” the man responded, looking up to Frederick and wiping the sweat from his brow. Walking over, Frederick picked up a few of the packages off the back lip of the truck and looked up to the delivery man. ”Where are we headed with these?” ”Just over to the café over here,” the delivery man responded, walking down the ramp out of the back of the truck with a hand truck full of boxes. Frederick shifted his hold on the boxes. ”Lead the way.” They walked over to the café the man had indicated earlier and dropped off the boxes at the door. The smiling café manager greeted them and signed for the packages. ”Quite a load we have for you today Glen,” the delivery man said to the café owner. ”I see that Brandon, must be the monthly coffee shipment coming a bit early.” ”Well, I’ve got more for you in the back of the truck. I’ll be back in a moment.” ”Got a helper today?” He eyed Frederick. ”Oh I just saw someone in need of help and had nothing better to do,” Frederick said smiling at the man over his shoulder as he walked back to the delivery truck to help with the next load of boxes. He helped move the boxes from the truck to the store over the course of the next few minutes, making multiple trips. Once all of them were unloaded he stood up and stretched his back. ”Well Glen, I’m off. Got other deliveries for today.” ”Alrighty Brandon, thanks for the delivery,” he said, waving to the delivery man. ”Well, looks like I lost my usefulness for the time being,” Frederick said, turning to Glen, the café owner. ”Need some help getting all of this inside?” ”Thanks, but no. That’s what I pay all of these waiters in here for,” he said laughing. ”Alright,” Frederick said turning and beginning to walk down the road. ”Have a good one,” he said, waving over his shoulder.
Frederick took to walking around the small town. After exploring a few side roads and finding nothing else of interest he decided to turn back and get a cup of coffee at the café he had helped deliver the shipment to earlier. Upon walking in he noticed just about everyone in the café turning to look at him as he walked in. Undeterred, he walked up to the bar and sat down. Glen greeted him. ”Oh hey, Frederick, wasn’t it? What can I get for you?” Frederick raised an eyebrow. ”Just a regular coffee.” ”Comin’ right up.” Glancing around, Frederick noticed that everyone still seemed to be rather interested in his presence there. His attention was drawn back to the bar by the sound of a mug and coaster being set down in front of him. ”There ya go Freddie.” Lifting the cup to his lips, but not drinking yet, Frederick counted the number of men in the restaurant. There were a few casual people who weren’t paying attention to him, whom he ignored, but about twelve men total, including the bartender, seemed to be following his every move, a few of which had gotten noticeably more tense when he put the cup to his lips. Setting the mug down, Frederick looked up to Glen. ”How long have you owned this shop here, Glen?” ”Actually, we just opened a few months ago. Moved up from a small village a few miles south of Yorktown,” Glenn responded, wiping out a cup with a rag. Frederick brought the cup up to his lips again, feigning sipping the coffee, again. As time passed, and with each fake sip, the men who had been watching him seemed tenser and somewhat perplexed. That was all Frederick needed. ”Glen, let me ask you something seriously.” With that Glen came over and leaned on the bar, also beginning to show signs of confusion. ”What’s up Freddy?” Frederick reached quietly into his coat and unbuttoned the holster on his gun and knife as he took another fake sip of the coffee in front of him. ”I’m just a little perplexed on when I told you my name.” Glen began to pull back, suddenly surprised. Before he could recoil entirely Frederick pulled out his knife and slammed it into the bartender’s hand, pinning it to the bar. In the same deft movement he hopped over the bar and got Glen in a one armed choke hold. As he had predicted, in the time it took him to do that, the eleven other men had pulled handguns and had them all aimed at Frederick. Frederick reacted in a fashion only befitting the Knight of One. With his free hand he drew his gun from his coat and quickly shot two of the men in the head dead center, before immediately ducking down and dragging the still struggling Glen down with him just in time to avoid the return fire. The knife in the bartender’s hand had been expertly placed between his carpals and with the blade facing the bar seats, so when Frederick pulled him down, his hand was split in two and he came free from his sudden and painful hold. This was all it took for Glen to begin screaming in earnest. A screaming dead weight was the last thing Frederick needed in a firefight so he swung the grip of his pistol into the bartenders head hard enough to knock the man unconscious. Leaving the unconscious man behind the bar, he began to crawl towards the door to the back in an attempt to get away from the assailants who currently had him outnumbered. Opening the door there were three men inside, all of whom had their guns drawn and at the ready aimed at the door. Frederick rolled inside, narrowly missing the sudden gunfire that filled the door that he had just crawled through. The second he came out of the roll, he fired three shots, hitting each man in the torso. For the moment, the gunfire outside in the restaurant proper had stopped. Not a good sign, that meant they knew that Frederick was no longer there. He quickly stood and finished off all three men in the back room with a shot to the head. He quickly changed out the magazine in his gun with one of the spare magazines he had with him and looked around. The room had a small kitchen area where the food for the café was prepared and otherwise was full of the boxes he had helped the delivery man deliver earlier. ”Somehow, I doubt these are coffee,” Frederick said to himself, finding a nearby box cutter and opening one of them. Sure enough, inside were a few military grade assault rifles and ammunition. Before he could continue his search, the door swung open. Frederick didn’t look to see who was coming in, he already knew it was going to be one of the assailants from the dining room. He turned and fired at the door, hitting one of the armed men squarely in the chest three times. As he fell backwards Frederick could already see the other men standing by the door, getting ready to run in. Without thinking Frederick holstered his gun and grabbed one of the assault rifles out of the box and slid in an already filled magazine from the box. He got in a flanking position beside the door just in time for three of the men to charge into the back room , guns at the ready. The second the three entered the room Frederick opened fire on their backs. Three bursts of lead and the men lay on the floor, their backs ripped open with bullet holes, no longer moving, no longer alive. Waiting a minute or two for the next blitz into the room, Frederick decided that the group had finally learned their lesson. There wasn’t a back door out of this room, he was trapped, so they could wait him out. Frederick began to use his time to cautiously probe the remaining boxes, still keeping his eyes on the door in case of a sudden attack. Most were full of more assault rifles and ammunition. He took the opportunity to let the clip from his commandeered rifle loose and snap in a fresh one, just to be safe. After a few boxes he came across what he was looking for. One of the boxes was full of small grenades, flash bangs to be exact. That was exactly what he needed. Taking one, he got in flanking position beside the door again. He used his foot and kicked the door open. Not surprisingly, the second the door moved, gunfire began to fill the doorway. Frederick used this as a chance to pull the pin and toss the flash bang out of the door. Once the flash went off he swung out and used the brief lapse in the men’s vision to take out the remaining five with controlled bursts from his rifle.
Taking a moment to confirm that the café was clear of hostiles, he returned to the bar. Lying behind it was the still unconscious, but breathing, Glen. He looked around and found a cloth napkin, which he tied around Glen’s wrist as a tourniquet to keep the blood loss from his hand from getting any worse. He retrieved his knife from the bar where he left it and kneeled down beside Glen’s unconscious body. Smacking him in the face a few times, Frederick concluded that he would have to break out the big guns to wake him back up. He took the knife and stabbed it into the bartender’s upper thigh. Sure enough, that woke the man who began screaming uncontrollably. This time a firm backhand and a knife pointed at his face quieted the man down, in spite of the no doubt searing pain in his hand and thigh. ”Alight ‘Glen’, I want to know a few things, do you understand?” The man responded with a slight nod and a swallow. ”First things first, was ‘Brandon’ aware of what he was delivering to you, or was he just a courier in all of this?” The bartender swallowed hard and said, ”He’s just a…” Frederick stabbed the knife into the man’s shoulder. The man let out another yell of pain but silenced quickly when he caught sight of Frederick’s cold stare. ”Answer carefully.” Frederick warned, twisting the knife slightly. Glen winced in pain. ”He’s just a gun smuggler! He’s not part of us!” ”Who, exactly, is ‘us’,” Frederick said removing the knife from the man’s shoulder and stood up. ”I can’t say, they’ll kill me!” Frederick sighed. It was the oldest cliché in the book, and he was tired of hearing it. These people had already ruined what was likely to be his only day off in quite a while and he was quite sick of it. He put his left foot on the man’s leg so that the arch of his boot was centered on the man’s shin and brought up his right foot. The pain from a full man’s weight on his already injured leg was already more than the man could bear. In between yells of pain he managed to get out, ”Alright! I’ll tell you! Please,” before he could finish, Frederick brought his foot down at an angle on the front of the man’s shoe as hard as he could, snapping the man’s ankle. Glen screamed at the top of his lungs and began to sob. Frederick stared at him intently until he managed to collect himself enough to talk. ”We’re a resistance group. Our aim is to get the nobility abolished again…”
As the man talked, Frederick heard a noise that made him look out the window to the town’s main street. It was a small, quiet town so, as soon as the gunfire started most people had gone in their homes and shops and barricaded themselves indoors. That’s why the sound of a truck coming up the road caught his attention. Looking down the street he saw the truck of the “delivery man” from earlier. Frederick ran outside leaving his prisoner to sit on the floor confused and in desperate need of medical attention.
Standing in the middle of the street, Frederick stared down the oncoming truck. The man inside looked surprised to see him. As he approached, he showed no signs of slowing. Frederick pulled his gun from his coat and with a single quickly aimed shot, put a round through the driver’s forehead. The former gun smuggler fell sideways in the seat, causing the truck to turn and crash into the front dining room of the café, where it came to a rest.
Walking back into the now completely ruined café, Frederick looked behind the counter of the bar. Luckily the truck had only damaged the booths on one side of the store and, aside from scattering glass throughout the entire café, had left the bar completely untouched. Hopping the bar, Frederick came to rest standing directly over the bartender, just where he had left him. ”Where is the base of operations for your insurgent cell located?” he asked in a forceful tone. ”South America. There’s data drive that has the coordinates for our next rendezvous with the mobile base hidden beneath the espresso machine.” the man replied weakly, getting ready to pass out. Frederick walked over to the espresso machine and looked it over, soon finding a switch that didn’t seem to belong. Upon hitting it, the sound of a lock being released came from underneath the machine. After a few moments more of inspection, Frederick found the hidden compartment, and the device. Frederick turned back to the man looked at him. ”I was having such a good day, too.” With that, Frederick put a single round into the man’s head.
Walking outside, the local authorities had finally arrived. One of the police approached. ”You! What happened here!?” he asked, pulling out his gun. Frederick presented him with his royal crest that identified him as the Knight of One. ”I am Frederick Di Lowenthal, the Knight of One. This café was a front for a terrorist cell. I uncovered and removed them. The man you’ll find dead in the truck is a gun smuggler that was aiding and abetting them. I’ll leave the clean-up to you.” With that Frederick walked past the officer, not waiting for a reply. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number for his closest personal friend since childhood, and his squire. ”Kristoph, our day off has been cancelled. Ready the Royal Britannia. We have a mission.”
[The End]
[Roughly two weeks before the events in the thread “A Beautiful Friendship”…]
Frederick walked through the town looking back and forth to the opposite sides of the street. It was a rare “off” day for him, meaning that, for the time being, there was no direct need for him to be present at the castle and there were no immediate military concerns that required action so severe as to employ the Knight of One. “Days off” were a rare thing these days, and only getting more precious and rare as the global tensions were building. Frederick treasured these days. They were the only time he got to get out of the castle and live how he wanted.
Though born to a noble family during the years that the nobility was being suppressed, he had never seen the point to reinstating the nobility. He had never known the life of luxury that his ancestors had lived and, quite frankly, didn’t care to know. He was happy with life as it was, living quietly in the small village his family had once resided over generations ago. When his father found out about his “peasant” friends he went into a rage. As a result, Frederick spent much of his childhood isolated.
Today, he had come to one of the many small suburbs just outside of Pendragon. He was walking in his civilian clothing. He wasn’t carrying much but a cell phone, a hand gun, and a knife with a six inch long by one and a half inch wide blade. Both the weapons were well concealed under his coat. Coming across a delivery man struggling to unload packages from his truck, Frederick stopped. ”Need some help?” Frederick asked, smiling. ”That would be great!” the man responded, looking up to Frederick and wiping the sweat from his brow. Walking over, Frederick picked up a few of the packages off the back lip of the truck and looked up to the delivery man. ”Where are we headed with these?” ”Just over to the café over here,” the delivery man responded, walking down the ramp out of the back of the truck with a hand truck full of boxes. Frederick shifted his hold on the boxes. ”Lead the way.” They walked over to the café the man had indicated earlier and dropped off the boxes at the door. The smiling café manager greeted them and signed for the packages. ”Quite a load we have for you today Glen,” the delivery man said to the café owner. ”I see that Brandon, must be the monthly coffee shipment coming a bit early.” ”Well, I’ve got more for you in the back of the truck. I’ll be back in a moment.” ”Got a helper today?” He eyed Frederick. ”Oh I just saw someone in need of help and had nothing better to do,” Frederick said smiling at the man over his shoulder as he walked back to the delivery truck to help with the next load of boxes. He helped move the boxes from the truck to the store over the course of the next few minutes, making multiple trips. Once all of them were unloaded he stood up and stretched his back. ”Well Glen, I’m off. Got other deliveries for today.” ”Alrighty Brandon, thanks for the delivery,” he said, waving to the delivery man. ”Well, looks like I lost my usefulness for the time being,” Frederick said, turning to Glen, the café owner. ”Need some help getting all of this inside?” ”Thanks, but no. That’s what I pay all of these waiters in here for,” he said laughing. ”Alright,” Frederick said turning and beginning to walk down the road. ”Have a good one,” he said, waving over his shoulder.
Frederick took to walking around the small town. After exploring a few side roads and finding nothing else of interest he decided to turn back and get a cup of coffee at the café he had helped deliver the shipment to earlier. Upon walking in he noticed just about everyone in the café turning to look at him as he walked in. Undeterred, he walked up to the bar and sat down. Glen greeted him. ”Oh hey, Frederick, wasn’t it? What can I get for you?” Frederick raised an eyebrow. ”Just a regular coffee.” ”Comin’ right up.” Glancing around, Frederick noticed that everyone still seemed to be rather interested in his presence there. His attention was drawn back to the bar by the sound of a mug and coaster being set down in front of him. ”There ya go Freddie.” Lifting the cup to his lips, but not drinking yet, Frederick counted the number of men in the restaurant. There were a few casual people who weren’t paying attention to him, whom he ignored, but about twelve men total, including the bartender, seemed to be following his every move, a few of which had gotten noticeably more tense when he put the cup to his lips. Setting the mug down, Frederick looked up to Glen. ”How long have you owned this shop here, Glen?” ”Actually, we just opened a few months ago. Moved up from a small village a few miles south of Yorktown,” Glenn responded, wiping out a cup with a rag. Frederick brought the cup up to his lips again, feigning sipping the coffee, again. As time passed, and with each fake sip, the men who had been watching him seemed tenser and somewhat perplexed. That was all Frederick needed. ”Glen, let me ask you something seriously.” With that Glen came over and leaned on the bar, also beginning to show signs of confusion. ”What’s up Freddy?” Frederick reached quietly into his coat and unbuttoned the holster on his gun and knife as he took another fake sip of the coffee in front of him. ”I’m just a little perplexed on when I told you my name.” Glen began to pull back, suddenly surprised. Before he could recoil entirely Frederick pulled out his knife and slammed it into the bartender’s hand, pinning it to the bar. In the same deft movement he hopped over the bar and got Glen in a one armed choke hold. As he had predicted, in the time it took him to do that, the eleven other men had pulled handguns and had them all aimed at Frederick. Frederick reacted in a fashion only befitting the Knight of One. With his free hand he drew his gun from his coat and quickly shot two of the men in the head dead center, before immediately ducking down and dragging the still struggling Glen down with him just in time to avoid the return fire. The knife in the bartender’s hand had been expertly placed between his carpals and with the blade facing the bar seats, so when Frederick pulled him down, his hand was split in two and he came free from his sudden and painful hold. This was all it took for Glen to begin screaming in earnest. A screaming dead weight was the last thing Frederick needed in a firefight so he swung the grip of his pistol into the bartenders head hard enough to knock the man unconscious. Leaving the unconscious man behind the bar, he began to crawl towards the door to the back in an attempt to get away from the assailants who currently had him outnumbered. Opening the door there were three men inside, all of whom had their guns drawn and at the ready aimed at the door. Frederick rolled inside, narrowly missing the sudden gunfire that filled the door that he had just crawled through. The second he came out of the roll, he fired three shots, hitting each man in the torso. For the moment, the gunfire outside in the restaurant proper had stopped. Not a good sign, that meant they knew that Frederick was no longer there. He quickly stood and finished off all three men in the back room with a shot to the head. He quickly changed out the magazine in his gun with one of the spare magazines he had with him and looked around. The room had a small kitchen area where the food for the café was prepared and otherwise was full of the boxes he had helped the delivery man deliver earlier. ”Somehow, I doubt these are coffee,” Frederick said to himself, finding a nearby box cutter and opening one of them. Sure enough, inside were a few military grade assault rifles and ammunition. Before he could continue his search, the door swung open. Frederick didn’t look to see who was coming in, he already knew it was going to be one of the assailants from the dining room. He turned and fired at the door, hitting one of the armed men squarely in the chest three times. As he fell backwards Frederick could already see the other men standing by the door, getting ready to run in. Without thinking Frederick holstered his gun and grabbed one of the assault rifles out of the box and slid in an already filled magazine from the box. He got in a flanking position beside the door just in time for three of the men to charge into the back room , guns at the ready. The second the three entered the room Frederick opened fire on their backs. Three bursts of lead and the men lay on the floor, their backs ripped open with bullet holes, no longer moving, no longer alive. Waiting a minute or two for the next blitz into the room, Frederick decided that the group had finally learned their lesson. There wasn’t a back door out of this room, he was trapped, so they could wait him out. Frederick began to use his time to cautiously probe the remaining boxes, still keeping his eyes on the door in case of a sudden attack. Most were full of more assault rifles and ammunition. He took the opportunity to let the clip from his commandeered rifle loose and snap in a fresh one, just to be safe. After a few boxes he came across what he was looking for. One of the boxes was full of small grenades, flash bangs to be exact. That was exactly what he needed. Taking one, he got in flanking position beside the door again. He used his foot and kicked the door open. Not surprisingly, the second the door moved, gunfire began to fill the doorway. Frederick used this as a chance to pull the pin and toss the flash bang out of the door. Once the flash went off he swung out and used the brief lapse in the men’s vision to take out the remaining five with controlled bursts from his rifle.
Taking a moment to confirm that the café was clear of hostiles, he returned to the bar. Lying behind it was the still unconscious, but breathing, Glen. He looked around and found a cloth napkin, which he tied around Glen’s wrist as a tourniquet to keep the blood loss from his hand from getting any worse. He retrieved his knife from the bar where he left it and kneeled down beside Glen’s unconscious body. Smacking him in the face a few times, Frederick concluded that he would have to break out the big guns to wake him back up. He took the knife and stabbed it into the bartender’s upper thigh. Sure enough, that woke the man who began screaming uncontrollably. This time a firm backhand and a knife pointed at his face quieted the man down, in spite of the no doubt searing pain in his hand and thigh. ”Alight ‘Glen’, I want to know a few things, do you understand?” The man responded with a slight nod and a swallow. ”First things first, was ‘Brandon’ aware of what he was delivering to you, or was he just a courier in all of this?” The bartender swallowed hard and said, ”He’s just a…” Frederick stabbed the knife into the man’s shoulder. The man let out another yell of pain but silenced quickly when he caught sight of Frederick’s cold stare. ”Answer carefully.” Frederick warned, twisting the knife slightly. Glen winced in pain. ”He’s just a gun smuggler! He’s not part of us!” ”Who, exactly, is ‘us’,” Frederick said removing the knife from the man’s shoulder and stood up. ”I can’t say, they’ll kill me!” Frederick sighed. It was the oldest cliché in the book, and he was tired of hearing it. These people had already ruined what was likely to be his only day off in quite a while and he was quite sick of it. He put his left foot on the man’s leg so that the arch of his boot was centered on the man’s shin and brought up his right foot. The pain from a full man’s weight on his already injured leg was already more than the man could bear. In between yells of pain he managed to get out, ”Alright! I’ll tell you! Please,” before he could finish, Frederick brought his foot down at an angle on the front of the man’s shoe as hard as he could, snapping the man’s ankle. Glen screamed at the top of his lungs and began to sob. Frederick stared at him intently until he managed to collect himself enough to talk. ”We’re a resistance group. Our aim is to get the nobility abolished again…”
As the man talked, Frederick heard a noise that made him look out the window to the town’s main street. It was a small, quiet town so, as soon as the gunfire started most people had gone in their homes and shops and barricaded themselves indoors. That’s why the sound of a truck coming up the road caught his attention. Looking down the street he saw the truck of the “delivery man” from earlier. Frederick ran outside leaving his prisoner to sit on the floor confused and in desperate need of medical attention.
Standing in the middle of the street, Frederick stared down the oncoming truck. The man inside looked surprised to see him. As he approached, he showed no signs of slowing. Frederick pulled his gun from his coat and with a single quickly aimed shot, put a round through the driver’s forehead. The former gun smuggler fell sideways in the seat, causing the truck to turn and crash into the front dining room of the café, where it came to a rest.
Walking back into the now completely ruined café, Frederick looked behind the counter of the bar. Luckily the truck had only damaged the booths on one side of the store and, aside from scattering glass throughout the entire café, had left the bar completely untouched. Hopping the bar, Frederick came to rest standing directly over the bartender, just where he had left him. ”Where is the base of operations for your insurgent cell located?” he asked in a forceful tone. ”South America. There’s data drive that has the coordinates for our next rendezvous with the mobile base hidden beneath the espresso machine.” the man replied weakly, getting ready to pass out. Frederick walked over to the espresso machine and looked it over, soon finding a switch that didn’t seem to belong. Upon hitting it, the sound of a lock being released came from underneath the machine. After a few moments more of inspection, Frederick found the hidden compartment, and the device. Frederick turned back to the man looked at him. ”I was having such a good day, too.” With that, Frederick put a single round into the man’s head.
Walking outside, the local authorities had finally arrived. One of the police approached. ”You! What happened here!?” he asked, pulling out his gun. Frederick presented him with his royal crest that identified him as the Knight of One. ”I am Frederick Di Lowenthal, the Knight of One. This café was a front for a terrorist cell. I uncovered and removed them. The man you’ll find dead in the truck is a gun smuggler that was aiding and abetting them. I’ll leave the clean-up to you.” With that Frederick walked past the officer, not waiting for a reply. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number for his closest personal friend since childhood, and his squire. ”Kristoph, our day off has been cancelled. Ready the Royal Britannia. We have a mission.”
[The End]