Reveal

    A gun... why was there a gun?
    Kaevin's senses are suddenly alert, his vision tunneled and his hearing isolated. He hears the shallow breathing of the man in front of him, the panicked cries of all the people who surround him. Slowly, cautiously, he turns around. There's a man in a dark trench coat, his face practically swallowed by the gas mask that covers his features. His hand is in the air, and in his hand, a gun. He's shouting something, but the crowd rushing for the door behind Kaevin suddenly muffles all sound. The mass of people, realizing that the door is locked, cower against the wall, leaving Kaevin the only one left standing. The man fires a few more shots, bullet casings falling onto the floor. Kaevin looks around. He's facing the assailant as if he's in an old Western, his hand over a pistol. But he doesn't have a pistol. He doesn't have a cowboy hat or a stalk of grain to chew on either, but most importantly, he doesn't have a pistol. He's unarmed, untrained, and facing someone who'd probably have murderous intent in his eyes if you could see them. So carefully, he raises his hands above his head and lowers himself to the ground. -BANG- There's another shot, and squeaks of fear run through the crowd behind him. A body slumps over, some unrecognizable face. The crowd collectively exhales a sigh of relief, driven by some sadistic, twisted feeling of safety. -BANG- -BANG- -BANG- Three more bodies plop onto the ground, their perfectly ironed suits crumpling on contact with the hardwood floors. The man finally stops shooting and shouts something about pockets and wallets, but Kaevin's not listening. He's staring at the four corpses on the ground, blood pooling around them. He's staring at their lifeless eyes. Something flashes deep within him, and suddenly he's running. Running towards the man, towards the gun, towards that damn mask and its pitch black little lenses. -BANG- Bullets ricochet off of Kaevin's skin, some of them bending around his body, others just hitting it altogether and turning into flat pancakes.  The man in the trench coat gapes at the dark blur racing towards him, the blur grabbing his wrist and snapping it to the ground, the pistol falling from his hand. The blur pushing him to the ground with a fury he's never seen. The blur as it raises a fist and delivers a blow too strong to be human. The blur's the last thing he sees before the world goes black.
    Kaevin looks up from the body, feels the fearful eyes boring into him. He stands up, brushes his hands off, tries to maintain some picture of dignity. But dignity must hate him, because some primal urge makes him lean down and grab the trench coat off the man, slip it onto his own shoulders. Dignity must that him, because he turns around and stares right back at the eyes trembling at the sight of him, glares as if there's nothing in the world that could stop him. Dignity must really hate him, because he picks up the man's gun and shoots a few more bullets into the air. Suddenly, everyone's up and running, scrambling for the exit, leaving him alone with a cowering Plainsberry and four cold bodies. He mutters some obscenities under his breath, cursing himself. He should have held it in, he could've. Those cursed eyes, all glassy and dark, as if the light had been sucked out of them. Curse them all! Two decades of building an image, thrown down the drain by some feverish impulse. Curse it all.
    
    A few minutes later, the police arrive. Ambulances and sirens and every manner of emergency response, far too late to do anything. They find five bodies, four prominent businessmen and a John Doe with far too many holes in him to identify anything. The back door is ever so slightly ajar, as if someone had just left and couldn't be bothered to close their exit. The cameras are wiped, static obscuring any useful evidence, and none of the wait staff are around to say anything. Later, some of the more loose-lipped of the attendees would gossip about the man who saved them. They'd gossip about the man who'd seemed like an angel from heaven, come to save their lives. About the man who'd seemed like a demon from hell, claiming their lives as his to reap, and his alone. About the man who everyone knew - but no one seemed to remember.

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