Hammer Smashed Face By EvilGate evilgate@hotmail.com Why, hello there. Bad? Oh, stop screaming, damn you, it's not that bad. You get used to it when you're here as long as me. So, where are you from? The Negaverse? Well, I'll be damned. A few thousand years ago I would have killed you. Yeah, well, deal with it, I'm not backing down. So what's your name? Malachite? Oh, yeah, the pretty boy general. I remember you. So what are you doing here? Well, yes, I know it's punishment, pretty boy, just how did you end up here? Sailor Moon? Really? I had an encounter with a Sailor Scout once. Stop screaming and you just might here it. Oh, relax. We've got all of eternity. Okay, let me get this straight across to you right now; I'm not a hero. I'm not a reincarnated warrior from gods-know-when, I'm not a champion of love and justice, I am a blacksmith and the son of a blacksmith and a reformed village whore. My father was a patient, loving man, my earliest memories of him being going to the forge to watch him bend the strongest steel to his will beneath skilled blows of his hammer. People came from all over the Moon for the tools he created, and, as he ruefully admitted, for the weapons. "Oknelim," he would say, bass voice rumbling from somewhere within his broad, muscled chest, "I make weapons because I have to, under the Edicts of the Moon Kingdom, but they are terrible, deadly things. Much rather would I make a plow or a spade than a sword whose sole purpose is to draw blood." But it was for his swords and pikes the people came, and as a father who had a family to feed, he gave them many of the weapons that later became legends of the Silver Millenium. Then, when the creatures of the Dark Kingdom began pouring from their twisted home, my father the patriot made ever more weapons, up until the day the letter arrived. I remember the day well. I was looking up in awe at the royal messanger, all decked out in black and silver, holded an official looking sealed scroll. People like him were a rarity in our backwater community, you understand. My father, covered with the sweat of the forge, came up to the messanger, offered him a meal and a place to sit, but the stoic messanger declined and handed my father the letter. My father opened it, and shook his head; he couldn't read. The messanger, taken aback for a moment, took the letter and read it aloud. I didn't understand what the words meant, because a blacksmith rarely has an education in fancy wording and I was no exception, and in truth don't remember them now, but my father did. His face tightened angrily for a fleeting moment as the last word rolled off the messanger's tongue and then passed, giving the messanger a curt nod. He turned around and retrieved his hammer from the forge, knelt down beside me, and said quietly, "Oknelim, I have to go off to war for our kingdom now; I've been drafted. I want you to go get your mother and tell her." Then he walked off with the messanger, toward whatever blood covered battlefield awaited him. I bit my lip so hard it bled profusely, then turned to find my mother. My mother was working in the garden out behind the house, and had seen none of the goings on. I sat down with her slowly, and her expression instantly became worried. I milled for a moment on how to tell her, then simply blurted the words out. "D-drafted," I rasped, then broke into sobs on her shoulder. Hers followed soon. We cried for a long time. My father, my father, who loved his Queen religiously, who hated war as much as he hated those that caused it, was forced to take up his hammer and wield it in the local militia, forced to go out and fight creatures that were horrendous on the surface under perfumed commanders who were horrendous on the inside. And the pretty boys sat in the palace and did nothing but throw their little balls and sigh about how the soldiers weren't performing correctly. Even now, I can barely stand it. Look at me! Eyes red, teeth barred because of the injustice visited on us. It was the proverbial "Rich man's war, poor man's fight," and my father had the misfortune to be on the poor side. I was sixteen when the war started, and sixteen when my father died. It wasn't a coincidence. I was called up to the palace, along with my mother, and given a medal for my father, the sword he was issued and the hammer he actually fought with, and a nice pretty speech about courage and saving an entire unit. What bullshit! I stood there for a moment while they handed me things that they obviously expected to replace my father, made their pretty-boy speeches, and spoke of war's hardships when they weren't the ones on the front lines, or the ones widowed or orphaned. I growled, and turned toward the envoy from earth, a dark haired fellow named...Darien? yes...who had presented me with the sword. "Fuck you all, you murderers!" I snarled and I slashed at him with the sword. I had no proficiency, of course, and the flat of the blade had been turned to him, but I already had a blacksmith's shoulders, and I knocked him out cold and snapped the cheap sword-obviously not my father's make!- at the hilt. His dazed expression, the rolling of his eyes back into his head and the thump as he hit the floor was drowned out by my terrible, wounded scream as I leapt upon the guard blocking my way to the door with the hammer in my brawny fist. He scrambled from his sword, but he must have been a pretty boy too because he couldn't get it out before I caved his face in with it. Have you ever seen a face caved in with a blacksmith's hammer? It almost folds in front, the top and bottom of the skull pulling downward as the skin stretches for a moment before it splits open brutally, sending a spray of blood foward. The eyes explode upon impact with a loud *pop*, dribbling down in a sticky, white, pus-like ooze across the gap and onto the stretched-back chin, and often the brains come squirting out of whatever hole is available-in this case, the ears. He couldn't even scream, the dumb fucker. I ran out into the night, screaming like the damned, hammer dripping with blood, brains and bits of hair, a dozen guardsmen in pursuit. They were obviously pretty boys, or maybe not everyone has a blacksmith's endurance. I lost them soon, bursting out of the gates at a pace unnmatched by any of them. It was so easy. I remember the cave. It was damned cold, but it was the only place I could hide. In hindsight, perhaps it was a bad idea to make two enemies- the Negaverse and the Crystal Palace-wat once, but I didn't give a damn. For three days I had been hiding, crushing pretty boys and Nega-horrors alike. Damn them. They were all responsible. I was hungry, having had no time for setting snares for food. Twice I had been forced to run from entire patrols of guardsmen searching for me. Me! As if I were the enemy for attempting to avenge my father's death! The bastards couldn't find me, though-they were terrified of the forest's unseen depths. I had just finished a rambling discourse to my distorted reflection in one of the crystals lying about, hammer held loosley in my grip, when I heard the shuffling of feet at the mouth of my cave. Instantly I ducked behind a stalagmite, teeth clenched as I watched a crystal I had cleverly placed so I could see the mouth of my cave without being seen. This girl was a SIGHT, even distorted as she was by the crytal's uneveness. She had blonde hair down to her waist, tied up with a nice red bow at the top, and big blue eyes. She looked around without a hint of fear- which didn't surprise me, she wore the mien of a Sailor Scout. Funny, I had always thought they were a legend. But I had always thought the kingdom kind and just as well. I rose, figuring I'd be gazing at her pretty face all smashed with a hammer before long. I took a few steps toward her, and she turned to me. "Stop!" she cried, voice putting the rest of her to shame. "Are you Oknelim?" I stopped, although I can't remember for the life of me why, and looked up at her menacingly. "Yeah," I said slowly, twirling the hammer between my thick fingers easily. "Who the hell are you and what the fuck do you want?" "I'm Sailor Venus, and I'm here to take you into the custody of the Moon Kingdom. You are charged with the following: Assault on the P-person of an Envoy from Earth, Resisting Arrest, Murdering an Im-im..." Her voice trailed off at the grim expression on my face as I moved forward, hammer in my hand. Dumb bitch, like I cared? "Don't make me use force!" she shouted clearly, and I had no doubt she'd back it up. She had the look of confidence about her, and I figured I should drop the intimidation scheme. "FUCK YOU!" I shouted instead. "Do you know what they did? Do you even know?" "Your father," she said cooly, "died in honorable combat, in service to the kingdom he loved. Don't dishonor him now." "Don't speak to me about honor, you stupid bitch! Don't you DARE! He fought monsters with dark forms for monsters with beautiful forms! My father was a blacksmith! He hated war! And you made him fight a war he didn't believe in!" I was sobbing by then, but still storming forward with the hammer in my hand. "By the laws of the land, he had to serve," she said cooly. It occured to me that my argument sounded much more flawless when said to the cracked reflections on the crystal walls, but I pressed forward anyway. "My father loved the Kingdom, and his reward was death!" I shouted through the wracking sobs. Her face showed sympathy for a fleeting instant before it turned to stone again. "Your father was rewarded for his courage with a medal and a place of highest honor within the kingdom, yet now his son dishonors him with treasonous, unlawful acts." "Unlawful acts against an unlawful world!" I screamed, drawing the hammer back to throw. It was a shame, I decided, that I couldn't get close enough to hit her, but if I gave her much more time she might be able to retaliate, and I was in no mood for retaliation. She shook her head as the hammer winged forward. "I"m sorry!" she cried before she moved her hands in a graceful semi-circle, forming a beam of light that blasted forward toward the spinning, whirring hammer that would soon turn her lovely face into a hammer smashed nightmare. I would probably cry, of course, because of that last 'I'm Sorry' that showed she could have been saved, but it had to have been done, and I would have to deal with the smear she would become. I would cry, and I would have to find the strength to deal with taking a life that could of been saved. Oh, yes, I would cry. Then I would get up and continue to fight. I would arise and destroy those who had destroyed my father, their faces hammered in with the same hammer my father wielded in battle. My father would be able to rest at last within his unmarked military grave somewhere in the middle of nowhere, the pretty boys lying in their pretty palace to rot, the monsters lying to rot in whatever twisted hell they lounged in during the day. And my mother, the woman he loved and who had given birth to his only son, would praise me and tell me that I had done a good job, that I had avenged my father against EVERYONE that had caused his death, and the world would be right again. It just had to be. Just as soon as that hammer made contact.... Then the beam of light slammed into the blacksmith's hammer with which my father had forged tools for his field, utensils for his wife, and toys for his son, and sent it spinning backwards toward me at an even more incredible pace. It occured to me just before the hammer hit me that it wasn't her hammer smashed face I would have to deal with in the near future.