A Shot in the Dark

[Ithiel Malchiel]

A small, thin boy stood near a woman's corpse with silent tears rolling down his cheek. A few tears for the dead was all he would shed, as his mother had taught him. A slugthrower, still smoking where the boy had sought revenge on his mother's murderer, lay on the metal floor nearby, the sound of its blast still ringing in the boy's ears. The man who had killed the boy's mother lay face down in a pool of his own blood several feet away; the bullet had pierced right through the laser-resistant armor the man had been wearing. The boy's mother had hid the boy before she was killed and afterwards, the boy had crawled out of hiding and gotten something that the boy knew was sacred to his mother...his long-gone father's legacy, an antique slugthrower with a single bullet left in the clip. It had almost been too heavy for the boy and he had struggled with it and had not had any true kind of aim when he had pulled the trigger. But true aim or not, the single bullet had hit the man high in the back near the neck and gone straight through the armor, flesh, bone, and then flesh again as it passed straight through the man to flatten itself against the metal wall. The boy had dropped the gun as the man crumpled and blood began pool.
His mourning done, the boy picked up the gun and walked out of the place he had known as home for his entire life.

[Ithiel Malchiel]

A Couple Years Later

The boy, now barely a teenager, closed one eye and began the mental process of aiming. Immediately, he heard the click and felt the cold steel against his head. "No. You keep both eyes open. One eye aims at the current target, the other stops this," the Old Man nudged the boy with the gun, "from happening."
The boy wordlessly nodded and did as he was told. Keeping only one eye on the target, the boy went through the mental exercises the Old Man had taught him that allowed him to focus on something within his field of vision without actually looking at it. The boy kept his arm mostly straight and let off a single round at his target. At the same time, a bullet whizzed passed his own head. The Old Man casually set the gun beside himself. "Lesson two for today, don't flinch at the sound of a gunshot or else you might run into the following bullet."

The Old Man always had interesting ways of teaching him things, but the boy listened intently on the man's every word. Grudgingly, the boy admitted to himself that he was getting better. But that wasn't the main reason he enjoyed shooting. The sound, the sheer volume, was enough to make the pain go away. The gunshot, sounding so like the first time he had killed and the satisfaction that came with that kill, that revenge. All that mattered now was that sound. Over and over again, he fired slugs into the target until he could no longer perceive the world around him but could only see the target, a thin, hole-riddled sheet of durasteel. When the Old Man corrected him on a shot, he automatically adjusted to follow the advice, and when the Old Man congratulated him on perfect aims, though the praise was rare, the boy simply shrugged them off. The words were empty and both the boy and the Old Man knew it.

[Ithiel Malchiel]

The Old Man slapped the boy on the back of the head with a piece of metal. "Don't think. You've learned how to shoot a gun. That's good. You've learned how to aim a gun. That's good. You've learned how to empty your mind and focus on a target. That's good. Now, you must combine the three. You must shoot without thinking, leaving everything up to reflexes."

The boy didn't nod, didn't acknowledge that he had heard the Old Man at all. He had learned over the years that the Old Man took anything other than doing exactly as he was told as defiance...something that the Old Man said required thought, something that, according to the Old Man, a gunslinger must live without or he'd end up getting very dead, very quickly. So he did as he was told, and he didn't ask why or think he might should.

The Old Man stopped pacing and gave the boy a sharp look. "Follow me."

The boy followed the Old Man to a hotel room in a rundown part of town. Inside were three beings. One adult female Rodian, one adult male Human, and one male Human child. Each of them were bound and gagged. The Old Man's voice echoed in the small room. "Today I shall teach you morals, something every living being in the galaxy should have. You must be the exception. You must neither feel nor think. Your entire being must be about the shot and you must be able to see anything and anyone as a target."
The Old Man pulled the first, the female Rodian off the ground. He reached down and flipped a switch on his belt, activating a personal shield. "This female was convicted of murder and arson. She was sold into slavery and I bought her for today." He unbound the woman and handed her a blaster pistol. Immediately, she raised it and let off a shot at the Old Man but it bounced harmlessly off his shield. In slow motion, she turned the blaster upon the boy and in pure reflex, the boy raised his own gun and fired three shots into the Rodian. Time seemed to catch up with the boy as he realized he hadn't even thought about shooting--like he had been trained to do. The Rodian crumpled to the ground, three neat bullet holes through her skull.
"Nice grouping and quick reflexes. But that was the easy one. The next is a little harder." The Old Man kicked the female's body out of the way and grabbed the male Human adult. "This man has a wife and two children. Without him, his family will not have enough credits to survive and will either end up as slaves or dead." The Old Man unbound the man and gave the man the blaster pistol.
The man looked at the boy without raising the gun. In his eyes, the boy could read only the plead that followed from the man's lips. "Please."
The boy looked at the Old Man. The Old Man simply said, "Kill him."

The boy looked at the man again, hesitated, raised his gun, and placed a single shot through the man's heart. The body crumpled. In the next instant, the Old Man raised his own gun at the boy and fired a single shot into his shoulder. "You hestitated! Now you must continue with the pain and complete your task through your injury." He hefted the small child up and unbound him. "This child is totally innocent. If you kill him, his mother will continue through her life without him but will be heartbroken at losing her only remaining companion in this life." The Old Man gave the young child a blaster pistol that was too heavy for the child to really be able to lift. The boy looked at the child and saw himself standing over the body of his mother, slugthrower in hand.

"Kill him."

A single shot rang out, this time without hesitation. A gunslinger could not afford to have morals, thoughts, or memories that might stop them in that crucial moment. All there had to be was the shot and the target.

[Ithiel Malchiel]

The Old Man was gone. He disappeared one day, just walked out the door and never came back. A few hours before he left, he had turned to Ithiel and told him, "I have nothing left to teach you. You are a gunslinger."

Ithiel knew what he had to do. The Old Man had left him a single parting gift. Ithiel held up the datapad and read off the names of a few people the Old Man knew that would need his services. Ithiel walked out the door and never looked back either. He had learned what he needed to survive, now it was time to live.

[Ithiel Malchiel]

One Year Later

Ithiel walked into the smoke-filled main room of the bar, his finger twitching in irritation. His ears were assaulted by the noises of the bar. It definately was not one of those bars where you go to have a quiet drink, nor was it one where you went to do business that, despite a need for secrecy and the protection that noise gives you, could do with any amount of confusion on the part of either party. It had happened to Ithiel once. About half a year ago, during one of his opening acts, he had met a client in a noisy bar not unlike the one he was in at the moment and the client had asked that he exterminate everyone in an office building EXCEPT the receptionist at the front desk who the client believed to be innocent. Unfortunately for the receptionist and the client, the noise was such that Ithiel missed the exception. He had walked into the building and casually placed a bullet through the skull of the first being that moved...an unfortunate miscommunication for the receptionist.

While the noise was distinctly horrible for setting business up, it sometimes perfectly hid the sound of a slugshot if timed properly with the beat of the music. Ithiel stood in the middle of the dance floor, a single unmoving figure in a sea of moving bodies. He had already spotted his target, he was simply waiting for the beat that would give him an opening. He slipped slowly around his target. To Ithiel, there was no one else in the room, just him and his target. He came up behind the man, and in a single fluid motion grabbed the man's shoulder, placed his gun to the man's back and, precisely timed with the bass of the music, shot the man at point blank through the back.

Ithiel had learned a few things in the previous year that his mentor, the Old Man he barely remembered, hadn't taught him. First, bullets were messy and doubly so for things like point blank shots and headshots. For reasons Ithiel couldn't fathom, many kinds of beings seemed to become quite alarmed at the sight of another being whose head has just exploded. So, to counter this reaction, Ithiel had studied a little about the anatomy of several beings. It seemed that a rubber bullet, if shot point blank, possessed the force to go through any initial resistance, but failed to maintain that velocity once inside the beings organs. Thus, such a bullet could come out the other side only if it met no endo-skeletal resistance. The solution to the problem was to aim the shot in such a way that it would invariably bounce against a being's ribcage instead of creating the kind of exit wound that was messy and alarming to those around the target. To any casual observer who might have noticed, the target's eyes rolled up and he began to collapse, probably drunk, only to be caught by a tall man who was either a friend of the man or bar security. If someone had continued to watch, they might have noted that the target's friend/security escort was taking the man home, after all, he took him through the front door and hailed a cab.

Ithiel dumped the man into a relatively nearby sewage drain where the body would be dissolved by the accumalated wastes of nearly a million beings. At the very least, the body would be unidentifiably. Ithiel continued on towards a pre-designated spot where he dropped the target's left index finger into a small black box and set the box down underneath a specific advertisement sign. Ithiel would stay on-planet for one more day, just to make sure that he was paid. If he was paid properly, he would leave the planet and go on to the next one. If he was not paid properly, he would make a single, unpaid second kill.

[Ithiel Malchiel]

Three planets and four kills later, Ithiel sat in a bar near the outskirts of the galaxy. He took a sip of his drink and stared out at the stars. The station didn't really have a name, but it was one of the many outposts of civilization in the far reaches of space. It was quiet and the lights in the run down bar had been flickering on and off the entire time Ithiel had been there. A human waitress who would have caught the eye of most men stopped at his table and placed a new glass of his drink and took the other, Ithiel didn't notice the woman, he noticed the message. Underneath the drink was a single sabacc card, the Ace of Coins, indicating a high-paying client on the station. Ithiel didn't even touch the second glass before he stood and walked out of the bar.

[Ithiel Malchiel]

Ithiel walked into the room, registering targets without moving his eyes as he moved. Human male on the right, blaster rifle being held in standard stormtrooper fashion, probably ex-military...aim for headshot. Rodian male on left, blaster pistol in hand, grip professional, probably someone who knows what he's doing...aim for the hands. Massive Hutt in front, probably client, unarmed, and judging by the make and power of the repulsor platform, decidedly unable to move under its own power...aim for left eye with hide-piercing round. Raised control panel on Hutt repulsor lift, note trapdoors on either side. Best escape route...reverse path. Probability of survival in case of worst-case scenario...likely.

The Hutt was eating and continued to do so for a few minutes after Ithiel had been led in. It was insulting to say the least, and only the likelihood of a high payment kept Ithiel from turning around and leaving, regardless of whatever business it might cost him. Ithiel made no distinctions between clients or targets. One target for one client was the same as any other target for any other client. Even should he leave and the Hutt make it so that he would receive no more contracts on this planet or even in this system, Ithiel would simply move to another one. There were always people willing to pay for his services. People like Ithiel, those who extended the simple firing of a blaster rifle or pistol or even the slugthrowers that Ithiel employed into something more akin to a form of art, who did with guns what the Jedi of Old Republic days had done with lightsabers, were always perferred over the simpletons who waved guns around like they were the ultimate force in the galaxy and were just as likely to get themselves killed or botch a job as they were to actually manage by sheer luck to hit their target and get away without leaving any incriminating evidence for the local security force to find and trace back to both the hired killer and the client who would quickly learn the end-cost of cutting corners.

Finally, the Hutt slurped the last bit of food down loudly and motioned for a servant to come and take the rest away. As the servant moved away with the food, the Hutt turned and finally place its large, saucerous eyes on Ithiel. "Ah, the fearless Ithiel. I've heard so much about you from my cousin, Gurgo. He tells me he has finally found a human with the good sense to get rid of all of those pesky emotions and pay attention to the things in life that matter like greed, power, and profit." The part about Gurgo made the pieces fall together in Ithiel's mind. Gurgo hired Ithiel whenever word got around that Ithiel was paying a visit to one of the worlds that Gurgo oversaw. A powerful Hutt himself, if Ithiel was before a Hutt that was taking recommendations from Gurgo, then he was standing before a fairly powerful Hutt indeed...and a very wealthy one at that. With this new information, Ithiel reassessed his chances of survival should the situation turn badly from "likely" to "somewhat likely".

After a few moments of silence, the yet-unnamed Hutt continued, "I have heard about you often from my cousin and he speaks highly of you and your skills. I have a few...house-cleaning matters that require specifically the kind of skills you reportedly possess. Should you successfully...clean...each part of my association, I can promise you will be well-paid as well as guarentee you contracts in the future."

Ithiel waited a few moments before raising his hand and making the universal sign for money. The Hutt was intelligent enough to take the cue, something Ithiel appreciated only because not all of his clients understood anything that wasn't spelled out to them. "As for payment, I am prepared to offer 50000 credits per target as well as offer a considerable finder's fee on any information you can find linking any of the targets to anyone else outside my association. There are a total of 20 targets."

For a total of a million credits, the job was certainly lucrative. For 20 targets, it was certainly time-consuming. Ithiel nodded his agreement to the terms and the Hutt dismissed him. He turned and walked out the door. If the entire thing had been set up as a trap, then he had just given them an opportunity that would have been difficult to refuse.