Chapter 21 - Two words

Day 17

Evening

A scream could be heard from outside, but Hawthorne ignored it. Standing and leaning over the table, he examined the back of Erin's head with a clinical gaze, "No exit wound. Impressive, but bad for the brain."

Standing to his full height, Hawthorne grabbed a small piece of food with his fingers, popped it in his mouth, and headed to the front door. Stepping outside, he could see Billings wrestling to keep Eun-ha on the ground. She was screaming something at Hawthorne that took a moment for his brain to register, as his Korean was pretty rusty.

"...Gae-saekki! Where's my daughter you gae-saekki!"

He chuckled at that. Son of a dog, basically the Korean equivalent to son of a bitch. Walking up to Eun-ha's prone form, he said, "It seems the apple didn't fall as far from the tree as I had first thought." Kneeling in front of her he looked her directly in the eyes, "Your daughter was unwilling to serve her government, so her government eliminated a threat."

Eun-ha stopped screaming and just closed her eyes, tears slipping free and running down her cheeks. "My Ttarai, you can be at peace now. Tell your father I love him."

"Oh, don't worry, you'll be able to tell him yourself." That comment got the rest of the prisoners squirming. To the soldiers Hawthorne waved a hand and said, "We don't need them anymore."

Four of the soldiers readied their rifles, leveling them at the prisoners and preparing to fire, when police sirens blasted from the end of the street. *WOOP, WOOP* A police SUV was taking the corner aggressively, all four doors open, protecting soldiers hanging off of them and ready to dismount. Hawthorne's team redirected their attention to the incoming SUV, guns raising just short of pointing at the newcomers.

As the SUV came to a stop on an angle at the curb, Brown, Cohen, and Johnson stepped off the door frames and raised their weapons at Hawthorne and his team from the cover of the SUV, one of them yelling, "Drop your weapons and get on the fucking ground you traitorous pieces of shit!"

That got a response from Kim, her defiant voice also carrying some of her fear, "Eat me, Cohen! We're following orders!"

The General didn't remain behind the door, stepping out to stand in front of the SUV's grill, his hands out to the sides to indicate he wasn't a threat. "What do you think you're doing, Hawthorne?"

Glancing past Anderson, Hawthorne saw Logan setting up behind the driver's door, "Oh, yay, you brought the hillbilly cop. Where's his bitch? She should be here as well. We can make it an official Changing of the Guard."

"Answer my question, Lieutenant! That's an order!"

Hawthorne sneered at his supposed commanding officer, "My job, Sir!" There was a lot of derision in the last word, "The same orders you received. Recruit or kill. They join or they die."

"Your father's orders." Anderson let his disapproval show in those three words.

"He's in the chain of command." Hawthorne smiled like that was the ultimate trump card.

"He's a corrupt piece of shit, just like you son, and he's the only reason you're on this mission."

"I'm on this mission because he knew you wouldn't be able to do your damn job." Hawthorne's derision was joined by anger and arrogance now, "And don't call me son." He raised his Exalted pistol, finger outside the trigger guard, and pointed it at the General.

The discussion between the two officers was interrupted by a loud crashing sound from inside the house, followed by dishes and silverware clattering on the floor. Everyone's attention turned that way.

A booming, angry, but distinctly female voice yelled a word from inside, "THAT…!"

Then Erin was standing in front of Hawthorne. A burst of air following in her wake that pushed everyone in the area without good cover back a step, and carrying another word, "...FUCKING…!" As Erin stood before Hawthorne, having travelled so fast that the second word hadn't reached him before she did. Now that it had, she finished the sentence, "...hurt!"

Erin's eyes had a bluish glow in them, a slitted shape like the pupils of a fox, and a red glowing border around them. Her Ki flowed around her body with a faint blue tint and formed a single tail behind her that stood still, indicative of her anger.

Hawthorne tried to raise his pistol at her, despite the close range. Erin caught his hand, and the pistol in it. His skin sizzled from contact with the energy flowing out of her, flaring her Ki as she started to squeeze. His bones were the first to break, shattering with a cascade of cracking and popping sounds. A scream built in his throat, then escaped his lips, as Hawthorne found himself collapsing to his knees with the pain. Erin stared him in the eyes the whole time, her anger a seething, roiling, destructive force burning her visage into his mind's eye.

Erin didn't stop squeezing as he fell, though. She kept releasing Ki, kept squeezing. As she did, thin cracks started to form on the pistol, white light spilling out. The energy punched holes through Hawthorne's broken fingers wherever it touched, but Erin just snarled at the sensation. Squeezing harder, the cracks expanded.

Barely able to focus, Hawthorne managed to turn his eyes towards the pistol as it lost integrity. "H…h-how?" He barely got the single syllable out above a whisper.

"I warned you." Erin's grip tightened, "Not to." Even tighter, "Fuck with." Almost there, "ME!" The pistol shattered, and the subsequent release of energy took what was left of Hawthorne's hand with it.

Erin stared down at the man who tried to murder her over the bridge of her nose, certain to drive home her implied meaning. I'm better than you. She took no solace in that thought, as he set a truly low bar for that measurement.

Pulling the stub where his right hand had been up to his chest, Hawthorne's face contorted from anguish to rage. From his kneeling position, he lunged to throw a punch with his offhand at the woman he now despised to his very core.

Erin, having seen the attack coming, chose to release her Ki and slap the hand away the same way an adult might push away the wandering hand of an infant.

He lunged at her again, "How DARE you look down on me!"

She smacked him across the face just hard enough to ring his bell.

As he shook his head, trying to regain focus, he mumbled, "Stupid bitch. I'm a Hawthorne."

From the sidelines, General Anderson tried to talk Hawthorne down, though his punchdrunk brain probably couldn't fully register the words, "Stand down, Hawthorne. Don't make this worse for yourself."

"Hang..hang you for…treason…Anderson." It was slurred somewhat, but the meaning was there. "Wh-where's the...mother…bullet…in…in her…myself."

That was exactly the wrong words for Hawthorne, as it set something off inside Erin.

Grabbing her prey by the front of his uniform jacket and lifting him off the ground, Erin glanced at the General with pure rage in her eyes, the red border of her slitted pupils almost overpowering the blue, "If his five soldiers are still alive when I get back, I'll consider you all complicit." Her voice brooked no argument.

Turning to see her mom, still lying on the ground, lines of tears down her face, Erin softened her voice and said, "I'll always protect you Eomma. Promise." She smiled, then flared her Ki and launched straight up, pushing foot-shaped divots into the ground.

On The Ground

Hawthorne's men turned to the General, varying levels of fear and defiance showing in their faces. Anderson's face reflected disappointment and resignation. As he raised his hand to give the word, the head of Hawthorne's number two, Billings, exploded in a spray of viscera and bone, followed by the distant crack of a rifle.

Anderson ducked under Logan's line of fire to get cover, pulling his pistol as he moved.

The firefight was short, bloody, and incredibly one-sided.

As Cohen stepped from cover, ready to do a dead-check, Anderson intercepted him with a forced smile of compassion and a hint of sadness, "Not this time, son. I'll take this burden." Cohen hesitated, but nodded appreciatively in response, relief in his eyes, and joined the others in helping the prisoners.

Only one soldier still drew breath, Kim, but she was coughing up a pink, frothing fluid. Sure sign of a punctured lung. "We..*cough*..." Anderson leaned in to hear Kim's last words, "...should..*cough, cough*...have killed…you…" She gurgled from the blood, "...when we killed the Sergeant…*cough*."

Anderson pulled away, his eyes darker now, harder. He stared straight into her eyes as he said, "You've caused enough trauma to these poor people for one night, so I won't be using a bullet." Pinching her nose and covering her mouth, Anderson used his knee to put pressure on her chest at the same time. It didn't take many more breaths for her eyes to go blank, all signs of life gone.

High Altitude, Heading For Low Earth Orbit

Erin had two hands on Hawthorne now, under his arms, making sure he couldn't get out of his punishment. The burning from her Ki probably hurt, but it wasn't the worst thing he was about to experience.

He was talking to her, or trying to anyway, but it was hard to hear through the air speed they were achieving, and he was still slurring. Something about "Father…make…pay…" Erin mentally shrugged

As they rose through the sky, passing clouds, the blue slowly transitioning to a pure black, Erin could understand intellectually that the air was thinning, but it didn't seem to bother her. By the time they closed on a piece of space junk, Hawthorne had passed out from the low oxygen. He was still alive, at least. She presumed his level, now 39, gave him enough resiliency to not die right away.

When she kicked off the junk, launching them back towards the surface, Erin expected to have to slap Hawthorne to wake him, but as they pushed back into the denser atmosphere, his back started to burn up from the air friction, destroying most of his clothing and doing significant damage to his skin.

Falling through the atmosphere, Erin roughly targeted the forest outside the east side of Middletown, and directed as much Ki as she could to propel them faster and faster. Terminal velocity wasn't good enough for what she wanted. When they were still several kilometers up, she spun him around so that he could see his impending demise on the surface of the planet.

At one kilometer above the surface, Erin shifted so that she was standing on Hawthorne's back like she was surfing. At roughlying one second to impact Erin screamed, "FUCK! OFF!" and shoved straight down, adding to Hawthorne's final speed and countering much of her own, then further reducing her speed by focusing Ki downward.

As Erin watched Hawthorne impact the surface of the forest between some trees, even she had to acknowledge the gruesome result. The initial impact created a shallow crater in the dirt while simultaneously liquifying every part of Hawthorne's body. Skin, organs, bones, everything. Some of the liquified remains shot out in random directions with enough force to take chunks out of trees. The remainder sloshed in the crater, or spilled out the sides before settling into the bowl where it could soak into the earth.

For Erin's part, this all happened as her trajectory took her towards the edge of town, slowly losing altitude. Finally landing just outside of town, Erin found herself drawn north to a landmark she glimpsed in the air. A short distance away she found another crater, this one with a divot leading away from it, like something was dragged. Mentally marking the rough area of this find, Erin turned towards town and launched herself for home.