How may we darken your day?

The Art of Death - Another short story I wrote, a couple of years back, I had a sequel somewhere but I lost it, I need to get hold of it because it was quite good! Either way, this shows a bit more interpersonal play and perhaps a bit less cheese than Act of War, hopefully it'll be good to enjoy.

Joanne was losing her sense of self, very slowly but surely. Given a lifetime of education which she slowly but surely failed to benefit from it was determined by some physicians she had a mental fault a lot more serious than a simple lack of concentration.
One must remember though, that her biological parents she had never seen.
Found wrapped in sackcloth and woollen sheets, she had been left outside the house of Dr. Walts at the age of four, and the good Doctor had presumed for the “convenience” of the parents.
That mattered not, for Walts was kind and raised her as his own daughter, hoping she would be interested in the sciences.
This failed however, as her mind it seemed was not up to the challenge. She was mute, unable to use her vocal cords as most would; she had no control over the muscles and had no idea how to create the sounds.
So she spent most of her time learning about nature the natural way. Once she had learned names she learned to track and help animals, after finding her fathers cooking knives she read books about the martial arts and tried to imitate the moves she saw. Practicing constantly, her body was one thing she could train to exceed her mind.
After finishing a very important breakthrough experiment, the nature of which Joanna didn’t know, Dr. Walts prepared with her to move to the town of Christchurch along the south coast of England.

It was a long drive from the villages around Cambridge but this was to be expected, with Walts telling Joanne that he would be in danger shortly after his experiment was revealed but she should not fear, as he had a plan which involved the both of them moving to a “safe place” somewhere many miles from either their destination or their point of origin.
Once there the Doctor booked in to one of the B&B’s along a coastal path and made his way shortly after to his place of meeting, leaving Joanne details of his location.
She assimilated the information, now thinking of ways of ensuring her father’s safety (as Walts hadn’t told her how he came about her) and set out her clothing and chose fairly simple attire for walking on the sunny south coast. A red sleeveless top with a black fishnet overlay and black trousers with heeled slip-on shoes, not the wear of a superhero but then this narrative portrays her as she is rather than as people would often want to believe she was.
She stepped out of the building and made her way to the location her father left on the sheet of paper on the bedside table. It read:
I did not intend for you to find this yet, but my leaving you seems possibly eternal, as I fear for my life, find the place here as soon as you get this and come and collect me, I may need your help.
She did so; finding at the area specified nothing but a simple hut of dry stone and corrugated iron, rusted to the point of five inch holes.
She entered and found that in the corner the only thing of interest was a simple button.
She, being the curious type and seeing nothing else worth doing, pressed it and found that the floor beneath her descended into unknowns.

At the bottom she stepped off into a corridor of check plated steel and followed the signs to the main meeting room.
She saw on the floor a knife of a strange appearance to her. She had seen knives and though she was unable to say their name she knew about them, having practised their use well.
This one was about six inches long made of surgical steel; it had a black leather handle and a short hilt about three inches wide and one deep. It had several circular holes, a centimetre in diameter along the flat of the blade, keeping the weight to a comfortable minimum.
She practiced a few moves and then continued walking until she found a red double-door with “Main Meeting Room, No Smoking” in big letters.
She didn’t understand the smoking part but she did understand the location, giving her a place to start looking.
She slowly opened the door, seeing a large wooden table and some chairs. There was blood on the white brick walls and blue carpeted floor, with two or three men in beige chinos and blue shirts lying face down in their blood.
They appeared to have a single bullet hole through the side of their heads.
Joanne knew about guns, she had watched television and saw the destructive power, though with her brain as it was she was numbed to the panic most would have felt at the time of finding the bodies.
None appeared to have the grey and black of her father’s hair and so she looked around, seeing a door opposite to the one she entered through. Going through there she noticed a stairwell in grey brick heading downward again.
She continued and found at the bottom a man lying dead against the wall to her left. She examined him closely, seeing his black fatigues and black shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a flak vest over the top.
He had heavy boots on his feet and a pistol resting against his left shin, which Joanne picked up and inspected.
She searched, found the button to release the magazine and in the process send the clip falling to the floor. She picked it up and reinserted it, cocking the pistol as she had seen soldiers do in movies about wars and suchlike. She also picked up and put on the armoured vest the soldier was wearing for protection, knowing that those vests were seemingly sometimes bullet-proof.
Taking a left turn she found a small box with “ammo” written on it, looking inside she found another two clips like her current one so she put them in her flak vest pocket and carried on walking.
She came across several of the men she saw earlier, who started shooting at her. She ducked and then stood up again and shot back killing one and then firing at the other two, forcing them into cover. She seemed to adapt well to this and snuck round some boxes until she was behind one of them who was still waiting for her to come out of the original area of cover.
She slashed several times with the knife and the gunman fell, she quickly stashed his spare ammo in her pockets and moved on, taking down the final man with three shots to the head.
Thus began her descent from teenager to sociopath.
She found an elevator which she used to get upward to the surface, the only place her father could have been taken.

On reaching the surface she saw a matt black off-road vehicle escaping into the distance along a road heading away from the coast. She didn’t know how to drive but another Land Rover was being prepared and she crawled underneath it and when nobody was looking she snuck out and climbed the ladder to find a place on top where she could hide.
The vehicle drove north and reached the M1 motorway heading to the far northern areas of Britain. Traffic was fairly sparse due to a road accident behind them which blocked off part of the motorway.
Crossing under a junction bridge she saw an identical vehicle and a man in the familiar uniform looking down at her and calling into his radio as she lost sight of him as her vehicle went under.
Soon the vehicle sped up and caught up with the front vehicle, she saw the outline of a man whom she thought might possibly be her father.
He had the same hair and moustache as her father at the very least.
Two men were hanging from the sides, a foot rested them atop the wheel guard and in their hands were M16A2 assault rifles with under-slung grenade launchers.
The vehicles ran side by side and she drew her pistol, reloading with a fresh clip and in the spare time loading up two partially used clips into one almost full clip.
When the first man appeared on her right hand side she dropped him with three shots to the face before he had time to fire, though wasn’t quick enough for the other man to appear on her left and shot her stomach.
She screwed up her face in pain and fired randomly, missing with most shots but hitting the man in the chest twice.
He reloaded and stumbled onto the platform where she thrust her knife into his face and slashed him across the neck. He fell and lay still.
Picking up his weapon she saw the type of clip was different but the bullets were the same. It had no ammunition for the grenade launcher but the man had a two hand grenades on his person so she picked them up.
The vehicle her father was in still travelled along side so she stood at the front of the roof and jumped across, managing to land on the back plate of the other. She wasn’t afraid, she didn’t understand fear, she didn’t question death or pain, merely accepting it and carrying on.

The vehicles reached their point of destination, a train station which lay behind a visual shield of trees, walls and the fact it was sunk into the ground and there were no mountains in range.
No signs were present and so she made a guess based on the weather. It was sunny and so they weren’t very far north, the weather had said so, it must be concealed too, there were many hundreds of small hills and they had turned off the M1 a long time ago, plus there was a church in the background.
The midlands maybe, somewhere near Lincoln perhaps.
She hid atop the car until her father appeared from under it and started bellowing orders at the soldiers. He asked if any had seen a woman matching her description and confirmation came that one such woman had been killing members of the team.
‘Damn!’ he bawled and stormed into his office.
Later he returned and saw her standing by the vehicle, a dead troop at her feet that she had just knifed to death when he went to drive the vehicle away.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
I was looking for you. She signed back.
‘You found me, and I am safe, when the gangs arrived I had escaped with my bodyguard, these men here.
They attacked me so I had to strike back; I thought they had kidnapped you.
‘Worry not child, all will be okay, come with me, the gang is about to arrive and I would like you to do a task for me.’
She followed him into a building and he told his troops to not shoot her, introduced her and explained what had happened.
Most of the troops admired her strong frame, firm breasted torso and toned body; she looked very much like an athlete. She also had a kind and beautiful face, a strong jaw and dark blue eyes that seemed to shine brightly. She also had a smile that could disarm about any of the troops there. Her red hair flowed backward and down and when she turned to talk to her father he snapped at the troops for admiring her buttocks too intently.
She went to get changed into a kit which he had prepared for her and soon she returned wearing a black, skin tight neoprene bodyglove with sections of flexible dark grey carapace, keeping her body flexible yet protected.
She practised some moves and manoeuvres to get used to the suit, and her fine body and feline agility combined to make even the sternest of the troops want to demonstrate on her some of their own manoeuvres.
She carried two combat knives and a silenced pistol. She also had two spikes which at the touch of a button on her chest projected from the vambrace of her wrists.
She was as deadly as she was graceful and speaking to her father in sign she told him of her readiness.
The twenty troops in the room also were ready.
One was a medic, one an engineer and three others carried M249 light machine guns. One was a sniper and carried an M40. The rest had either M16s or SPAS 12 automatic shotguns.
They took their positions throughout the rail yard complex, ready for anything.

The enemy arrived.
Three large armoured land rovers painted a murky brown barged through the gate as two timed explosions demolished a portion of wall and a doorway. Troops in white, grey and black camouflage trousers and shirts with overlying flak vests emerged wielding MP5s or SPAS 12s.
The defenders opened fire when they saw troops, usually with gunfights being fast and favouring the defenders. Not that this mattered, it seemed, for the enemy had plenty more troops to expend.
The sniper targeted enemy shock troops with heavy weapons or sniper rifles. The medic healed minor wounds and the engineer welded himself a nice heavy close combat weapon, a pole with a sharp blade and spike on top, he had constructed himself a halberd.
He swung and decapitated, lunged and impaled, he was unstoppable. He used his blowtorch as a secondary weapon, expending his gas which made him vulnerable to exploding and blinding enemies, searing throats and destroying weapons.
Joanne snuck round behind a parked locomotive and fired her pistol at an enemy, taking him out quickly. She wasn’t here to fight troops she was here to rip out the heart from the enemy.
In a smaller vehicle behind she spotted a man wearing a business suit, black pinstripe with a white shirt and blue tie. He was surrounded by two dozen bodyguards with a wide variety of weapons.
Difficult, she thought.
Taking aim carefully she fired at the man in the car, the shot bounced off the glass easily and she realised that the glass was bullet-proof like on TV action films.
Okay, she thought, maybe I can go another way to get my chance.
With the sounds of battle fading into the background she crept up to the enemy, pulled the pin out of one of her five second grenades, waited two seconds and threw it.
It landed in the middle of the large mass of bodyguards and parts of them went flying, other parts hit the ground and some parts were thrown out sideways.
The men realised what was going on but it was too late, Joanne was among them and tearing them to shreds with her twin knives.
Men tried taking aim but she took cover using other men as human shields and shooting back, missing very rarely a single shot.
Her enemy had gotten out the car and ordered the entire bodyguard force to attack this obviously skilled assassin.
A shredding torrent of shots were fired and were it not for her seeing the men taking aim she wouldn’t have threw herself sideways at the ground and started returning fire. She killed three men and threw a grenade which scattered most of the others through fleeing and any who didn’t flee it scattered through detonation.
She was on them once again with her twin knives, slashing and stabbing left right and centre and taking lives with each couple of strokes.
When she ran out of bodyguards to kill she stood facing the target.

He was a tall man, at least six feet six and clean shaven, his suit perfectly fitting his slim body and gaunt and shallow face, his eyes were piercing and he reminded Joanne of some venomous snake.
He carried a briefcase but dropped it, unbuttoned his suit jacket, pulled two knives from his scabbards in his belt and redid his buttons.
Then he struck.
Moving impossibly fast it seemed, he was on her almost too fast for her to respond and she devoted her first minutes to defending, then she tried striking and he countered easily.
Twisting, turning and slashing, the two danced their dance of death and soon Joanne was tired.
She knew she was going to die from this man, it was impossible to keep up with him and she kept getting nearer to taking a slash to the shoulder or torso.
He forced her backward and she lost her balance, reaching down to stay upright and keeping her centre of gravity low to avoid it happening in future.
She fought back again and again and he started defending, then once he struck back, slashed across her torso and she fell to the ground, bleeding heavily and waited for her foe to kill her.
‘Child’ he said. ‘Why do you try to kill me, your enemy is Dr. Harry Walts, not me.’
She signalled that she couldn’t talk.
‘Ah, so you must be his daughter, yes I have heard of you, quite a nasty piece of work or so it seems, killing all those men in the name of your father. It is a pity that he ordered you to your death.’
He brought his arm back to stab the knife into her neck but before he could attack she had leapt upward, punched him and ran back.
He had dropped the knife and bent down to pick it up.
She was there again, stabbing him through she shoulder and then backflipping away from him.
He tried again and managed to get his knife back.
‘So that is how you wish to play then is it? Very well! I will kill you and there is nothing you will be able to do about it.’
They stood still for a moment, she still bled but it was slow now and it seemed it was not serious.
They ran toward each other, immense pace and agility, leaping upward, colliding in mid-air, landing, turning, striking, blocking, flipping and kicking.
They battled for as long as any of them dared before she made a fatal mistake, she had left her guard open just long enough that he stabbed her just below her right breast, going through lung but fortunately not heart.
She then discovered her voice box as she screamed as loud as possible for someone who had not known their vocal cords for nearly eighteen years.
He was alarmed, not realising what was happening as she twisted slightly, making it impossible for him to pull the knife out.
Disarmed of one of his knives he fought desperately as she struck with two, stabbing him in the chest in the same place as she had been stabbed, then slashed across the jugular and then finally ceasing his attack indefinitely with a final slash across his vocal cords, exchanging places with him as he tried to do the same.
He fell to the ground, dying.
‘Phuuur Mei Phaaafver’ she tried. Then she stabbed him in the heart.
She fell to the ground, nursing her wounds.
She was in a lot of pain and thought maybe she was dying, now she feared death, it was so close and she now had found she could talk, to an extent. She didn’t want to let the go.
She cried for life to last a lot longer, she wished so hard it would and she was still wishing as her father and his troops, having won the battle in the train yard, carried her into the bedroom, which became the medical facility, and treated her wounds.
Only when her father told her she would be fine did she allow herself to relax. She blacked out.

When she woke up again it was the next day, her wounds were sore and she had been dreaming of the battle and how it affected her. She was losing her sense of self, but it mattered not, she knew her father cared and maybe is would help her in the long term. She was a big girl after all.
Her father came in later and hugged and kissed her, tears in his eyes. ‘I thought you were going to die Joanne, I really did get scared I would lose you’
He considered for a moment what else he could say to her and then began; ‘anyway, I think it’s about time you learned about your parents…”