WAR: WIIGF 21 (Patreon)

Kenny King folded his right leg over the other, new jeans still a little tight as he tried to get comfortable in them. Much like convincing vampires to go vegan, it was already starting to seem like a losing battle. After another minute of trying, Ken decided on surrender and just leaned back in his chair as he took in the room for what had to be the fifth time in almost twice as many minutes.

More a command center with a big-ass crucifix nailed to the wall, the air in the priest’s office smelled like lemon Pledge and gun oil all at the same time. Books lined the large wall-length shelf stacked halfway to the ceiling, dusty leather-back tombs of theology he expected alongside worn-out paperbacks that he was pretty sure had more to do with strategy and forensics than the word of God.

Whether it was about saving souls or dropping bodies, all of them were layered across one wall to Ken’s left. The one to his right was taken up completely by a massive, detailed map of Blüdhaven pinned to it, a spiderweb of red and black ink marking out territories.

While Ken had never been in here before, he could tell the place was almost always as silent as the confessionals not too far outside. Ken wasn’t sure why exactly, why the big man in charge was being so weird after he asked him to come 

Father Keane sat behind the massive wooden desk across from Ken, eyes down with the wired rims of his glasses focused entirely on a single manila folder sitting open on the surface. The man’s hands were steepled together, rosary clenched tight across one set of pale knuckles as the silence in the room stretched longer and further.

It pulled tight across the space between them but, being honest, Ken was fine with that.

Just fine.

He could wait. 

Whether it was a bus that was never on schedule, a paycheck always missing hours, or a fight you knew was coming the second some dickhead locked eyes with you, waiting was second nature in the Blud. 

Kenny sat there, just blinking back at the man who had him show up here for seemingly no reason. Blue Foamposites planted firm on the expensive rug, he crossed his arms over his chest and did his best to ignore the nylon of his windbreaker itching against his wrists. 

It only took maybe another sixty seconds, the tenth minute finally rounding up, before Father Keane looked up again. Green eyes met green and, this time, Ken was the first to blink.

Whoa, you good, priest-man? Ken kept the words inside where they belonged, the little bit of Catholic schoolboy he still had left in him knowing well enough not to say that inside the father’s office, of all places. Even still, he could tell the priest looked visibly worse than he had the day before, bags under his eyes and an exhausted look to him that was way more than just the usual tiredness he’d seen from the man of the cloth.

“The events at the clinic were… a success.”After an eternity of keeping him waiting, Father Keane decided to make himself heard, voice more like an academic — a professor at Blud U — than a guy running a hit squad out of his basement. “Six civilians saved, of course. Several dozen beasts of the night vanquished. By any objective metric, the mission was a victory.” Keane nodded, thumbs rubbing together in a slow circle. “The greatest single victory we’ve had in… years. And the majority of that, both intel and execution, laid at your feet.”

Vanquished. Ken bit back a snort. This duuuuude. 

He had respect for the father of St Judes but sometimes the man could really pull from the thesaurus with some of the words. We didn't 'vanquish' shit, man. We blew 'em to ash and slush on a dirty tile floor. 

But Ken didn’t say any of that, though.

It wasn’t the respect or anything that kept him silent this time.

No, it was something else and that something was as obvious as the glasses on the priest’s face. He didn’t need his Sharingan active to see that there was a ‘but’ coming, one tomoe or not. There was always a ‘but’ when people started out a long winding sentence by telling you how good of a job you did.“...okay?” 

Keane sighed in the silence after Kenny’s one-word question, the sound as soft and papery as the manila in front of him. “But it was also a failure. And one entirely on my part.”

The priest unsteepled his hands and placed them flat down atop said folder like he was holding it from flying away “Effective immediately, Kenneth, you are relieved of whatever obligations you believe you have with the Crosscutters. You are no longer to participate in any operations, sanctioned or otherwise.”

Green eyes blinked at the father as the words hit the air, hanging there like a string of nonsense syllables that his brain flat-out refused to process. Huh? Relieved of my obligations? Gears grinded against each other, brain stalling out as Ken tried to translate the calm academic bullshit. What that mean?

It echoed in the space between his eyes, bouncing around over and over in his skull.  The fuck does that even mean? It sounded like some corny line you’d say to a renegade cop in a movie right before the captain demanded his badge and his gun on the desk.

“What?” The word punched itself free from his throat, a sharp bark of pure Blüdhaven grit that shattered his silence like shitty drywall. “No disrespect, but the hell are you talkin' about? You're kickin' me out of Slayer club?”

“No one is ‘kicking you out,’ Kenneth.” Keane couldn’t have been smoother with the bullshit if it was soft-serve, still sounding like a librarian as one hand rose to adjust his glasses. “I am removing you from active combat. This is not a punishment or anything of the sort. I respect your ability and we respect your work, son.”Not a punishment… “Then why?”“It’s for your own protection.”

“My own protection?” He wanted to laugh but it just wasn’t funny. 

You… Kenneth took in a breath as he stood up, chair scraping loud on the polished wood floor beneath his feet. You… He shook his head, words failing him as he mouthed one syllable for a sentence that once again that went nowhere. “You can’t be… can’t be real right now.” 

“As my own father’s heart attack, Kenneth.”

Oh you… The heat in his gut flared up at the attempt of a joke, Sharingan burning green away to red as it came to life and spun in his skull. “Are you stupid? There’s a whole ass coven out there that wants my head on a stick!”

He took a half-step forward, the rubber of his soles squeaking harsh against the hardwood border of the rug. “The Butcher’s comin’ for my neck! Literally!” A finger jabbed up at his face, Ken breathing heavier with each word. “Bloodsuckers know what I look like, man! And you want me on my ass in my house, waitin’ for ‘em to kick my door in? That supposed to keep me and mine safe, father?”

“It is not a subject for deba-”

“The hell it isn’t!” 

The priest didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence before Ken closed the distance, one hand landing flat and loud on polished wood as he leaned heavy over the oak desk. The other hand met the table with a trembling fist, knuckles popping on impact. “I’m in this, Father Keane! You don’t get a choice anymore, too late for that! You brought me into this! I’m as much a part of this fight as anyone else in this creepy-ass church!”

Keane didn't flinch, dead eyes staring back at Ken with an edge of cold to it that felt no different than an icicle sharpened to a stiletto. “You are a child.”

Ken flinched back, teeth slamming together at the sentence that hit like a slap. “What?”

“A child.” Keane didn’t change up his words, the man just taking in a breath as one hand rose up to his white collar. 

“One I foolishly allowed to be drawn into this endless war I took up as pena… into this war of mine. My war. Mine, not yours, not if I'd had the sense God gave me.” Green eyes stared into the single tomoe of Kenny’s spinning red eyes, no fear or surprise at being on the other end of a stare that Luigi had called ‘terrifying, bro.’ “Blinded by your potential and the assistance your… all your gifts would bring to this war, I allowed myself to succumb to weakness, son. A moment I allowed to fester and a sin of pragmatism taken too far; one I will not allow to continue.”

A sin. Venom bubbled behind his teeth, a mouthful of hot spit Kenny wanted to launch across the desk. “Savin’ people a sin now? Those people would be dead without us, without me! What kinda backwards Bible you readin’?”

“Using a boy as a weapon is a sin.” The redheaded priest spoke each word like he was behind the pulpit, accent bleeding in despite his control. “Everyone else who carries this, man or woman, they’re of age, Kenneth. Grown, yes. Broken, terribly so. Stubborn, foolish, and desperate for a chance to live or a reason to die, each and everyone made a decision with open eyes and willing hands.”The father almost laughed again, a smile straining at his eyes even when it didn’t show anywhere below that. “Informed consent, the secular crowd would say. Son, you had no such choice. I could not give you that and I will not have you inherit an unlife of long nights.”

Broken. Ken fought the word even as it sank in; thoughts of the crew he ran with. of the other crews that filled the Crosscutters, and even some of the dead-eyed nuns he’d had the displeasure of meeting. Maria def used to sell ass. Lucky was trynna be a supervillain or whatever, and Tyke… 

Well, Kenny didn’t really know much about Tyke but he did know Marcus was on leave for excessive force and his wife took the kids. So, yeah…

Yeah. sure, they were all probably broken; smashed to pieces and glued back together with holy water and spite. And so the fuck am I. “I ain’t broken enough for you yet? That’s your problem with me?” Ken’s voice was climbing, the volume stripping the low, controlled register right out of his throat. “You want me to wait till I’m eighteen? That how this works? Or what, I gotta be drinking age to catch a body?”

“No, Kenneth…” Keane let out his name with a sigh, the sound less a breath and more the sound of a man setting down something heavy. “There is still life in your eyes, red or green. You don't want to die and you have no reason to want to.”“Don’t gimme that, man!”

“I wish you to have enough of a life worth wasting.” Keane raised his voice just the slightest bit as he lowered his gaze, green eyes losing some of their heat with the motion. “This war… even if you survive it, you don’t. Takes everything from you, everything you have and everything you might’ve. And when it’s finished with you, if you’re unlucky to survive even half a decade, you’ll wish you hadn’t. You think you’ve seen and done all there is to see and do in the dark but you haven’t. When you do…” 

Keane shook his head. “Lad, there’ll be nothing left of the one who started.”

“Little late for that, ain't it?” Ken shot back, face twisted up into a sneer as sarcasm dripped off his teeth. “Butcher already got it out for me, man. You think benchin’ me makes him forget? He gonna let it go cause the nice priest called a time-out?”

“The Butcher is my concer-”

“He’s my concern too!” Ken slammed his fist down on the desk a second time, wood jumping with the impact. Noise and heat burned in his chest, roaring pressure that wasn’t just the chakra spinning in his gut. “He’s in my city! Sent people to my house day one. My h-house, man." His voice cracked on the word as much as he hated it. "Cece sleeps there. You get that? My little sis, my moms, they’re in that house."

He was too loud now, Ken knew that. 

He knew he was shouting, sound bouncing off the books lining the walls but he couldn’t stop anymore than he could stop breathing“You don’t get to just decide that! This ain’t even about the huntin’ no more, is it? It’s that blood map, that ritual. That’s what this is. You just scared!”

“Of course I am scared!”

For the second time, Kenny jerked back as Keane’s voice cracked like a ruler on the desk, the priest leaning forward to meet him. “This is no simple predation of the kind you believe plagues this city. Whatever is moving here… it is something that has never moved like this even in the years before me. And what it’s building towards is so far past my understanding that even to venture a guess would be foolish of me. "Whatever gifts God saw fit to give you, Kenneth, they will not be enough for that. You are not equip-”

“So equip me, man!” Ken leaned in so close he could smell the stale coffee and bitter peppermint on the priest's breath.  "Teach me something. Don't just bench me ‘cause you got a guilty conscience all of a sudden! I can fight! You need me!”

“I will not have your blood on my hands!”

“You want my family’s?”

“That is not what I sai-”

“But that’s what’ll happen! They come for me, they go through mine to get to me. You know how that math works. I gotta be out there dropping 'em before they even clock my block!”

“Kenny!”

The sound was a roar that came with a slam, Keane’s open palm slamming down on the hard oak. The knuckles were stark white, trembling even as the priest's chest rose and fell. Ken and Keane stared eye-to-eye, the room filled with a ringing silence as the shout echoed in Ken’s ears loud as a gunshot in a closed alley.

“My apologies, my child...” Barely three seconds later, the holy man turned away. He pulled his hand back, fingers flexing slowly like he couldn’t quite believe they belonged to him. “I… I do not know what came over me.”

Ken stood there, fight draining out of his muscles with each breath. By the time a dozen had left his lungs, his limbs felt more heavy and useless than they had after a full night of hunting. He took a slow step backward, letting himself sink into the leather chair opposite the desk for the second time today.

"I never wanted children in this. It was a line I swore I would never cross again. I still don’t want to." The priest lifted his head again, weariness replacing anger again. "Go home, Kenneth. "For whatever time you have… just be a child."

Be a child. Like this was a shift at Big Belly Burger where he could just clock out. Ken stared at him, his Sharingan fading with a blink. "Just gimme a chance, Father.”

Keane reached out, hand moving slow as he picked up the newspaper clipping sitting in the manila folder in front of him. He dropped it flat on the space between them, the front facing Ken.

Beloved Soup Kitchen Operator Found Dead After Apparent Robbery.

The picture underneath the bold black text was a grainy, black-and-white photo of an old chubby woman holding an aluminum tray of food, a warm easy smile wide across her face. 

“...what?” The word slipped out as he blinked green eyes up at Keane.

“This was no robbery, my child.” Father Keane sighed again, eyes closing for all of a second as the last word left him. “Marcus was kind enough to share what the police did not give to the media. They drained this woman. And then they crucified her.”

The word crucified echoed in Ken's skull as he stared back down at the smiling face of the old lady. “Who…” Ken swallowed hard, tearing his eyes away from the grainy photo. “Who was she?”

“A former Crosscutter. Fighting the good fight long before I knew my verses.” Father Keane shook his head, barely a movement. “She'd been out of active work for years. But she kept her ear low and fed us with knowledge as she fed others in need.”

Keane leaned forward, shadows deepening the hollows of his cheeks. “This… this was a message, Kenneth. One delivered very deliberately.”

Ken blinked, mouth falling open slightly. “But…” 

His hands twitched on the armrests of the chair. “But I can help. I can track them. I…”

Father Keane just stared back.

A scoff broke from Ken’s lips as he shoved himself up from the chair.

"...Whatever."