This was still for the greater good. This, my journey, was still for the greater good of the universe. Everything would be better off without such minds that stray from what god had intended. They defied death and raped worlds without a second thought. I must help balance the cycle.
Those thoughts ran through my head, a logical step from a stable base into a bloody spiral of vengence. Regrets? I questioned myself, none I responded. It was safe to open this door and see those who got here before me and invited me to take my journey one step ahead.
The door flew inwards without me touching it and a maroon, scaly, and unmeticulous turtle-paw grabbed out at my neck and pulled me in. "What the hell were you waiting for?" he scolded me. The turtle had his other arm 'mummified' and dressed like the invisible man, except without the invisibility. I stared at his right arm which looked like it had been stuck in an oven. Curiousity overcame me and "What happened to yo-" "Why don't you get creative and think of the worst things that could happen?" he immediately turned and started to walk down the corridor.
This was headquarters. I have no clue how long it was occupied, or what it used to be, but it was located somewhere down an alley in the ghetto part of town. The place where the street-lights glowed orange becuase the bulb was cheaper. Of course, the white lights have a history of being stolen and resold to the company that made them.
The inside of headquarters kept the queerness of the outside in the lighting. The same dark tangerine spread throughout the hallways, too far spread out that you only knew where you were going in the darkness because it seemed like a willow wisp was guiding you. The walls were made of wood, so this place was ancient. I could imagine it being a office of some kind, and for a small fracton of a second a party that would be held here. But the lights dimmed the idea of bright colors ever existing here.
I kept walking, only catching a glimpse of the burnt-turtle's coat every five steps. The doors we passed by on the sides were probably locked and I wondered what they'd keep in there, and what they would hide from me when I resided in one of these rooms. We stopped at the end of the dim corridor. This last room, this must have been where they kept their leader, who I would have taken down without thought several years ago. "Come in" muffled from the inside, a raspy voice. Age had taken it's toll on him already and it would have been an easy task... that several years ago.
This room showed more age than anything else I had seen. It even seemed like dust made up the wood, and some of this guy. This guy resembled a rabbit in some aspects, but I wasn't sure. If he was, that would explain the long ears missing that looked like they were cut off and the other one ripped. Maybe he was deaf. The same dust that blanketed the tables and shelves blanketed this guy as well. I wondered how much of his time he spent in here and noticed a box that seemed new marked with a cockroach symbol and a joker's hat. I tried to remember that the joker hat meant when it was on shipping boxes. He noticed my attention on the package and explained "That there is an insanity inducer, I like to think of it as a catalyst of what's to come."
"How do you believe that's what's at the end?" I already asked halfway once he said catalyst.
"I'm deaf in my left ear, you'll have to speak up." I wasn't sure if he ignored me becuase it was a question that was 'obviously beyond my grasp' or he really was deaf. I didn't ask again and waited for him to answer. He reached under his desk and pulled out what looked like an ant-farm, except with cockroaches, and a special breed that had what seemed like large fangs. "These are a special Muckamo breed of venom-scythes. They work like ants would, except they're much more territorial." he pulled out another farm with browner... hah, roaches. "These two colonies are different, though they probably act and work the same." He cracked open the door of the case and slid in long tweezers to grab one. It was about 5 centimeters long. I watched it, it seemed really active now just to break free. Maybe it knew what would happen in a minute. The boss closed the case almost showing a hint of fear. "Are they pois-" "These beasts," he already started lecturing again, "are very poisonus, and would probably have outlived rabbits." He opened the blackers' case. All of them simultaneously stopped, waving their antennae in the air sensing something. Then he dropped the single browner one in. It seemed to fall in slow motion, and then once it hit the ground. It only took three seconds. 1...2...3 and all the blacker ones scurried over to the browner one. It was defeneless and had landed on its back. I watched as the blacker ones rushed, hellbent on eliminating the intruder. "These things..." one bit into the browner one and it stopped squirming, "would outlive us," a second one bit and they started to tear at the shell, "except..." he reached into the box with the joker hat on it and pulled out a black spray can. It didn't have any labels on it. They would have grown resistant already to a pesticide. I thought it over and wondered if he was stupid and deaf. The black ones were almost finished until he cracked open the door on the top again of the glass death-farm. They all paused and stood still again. He sprayed it towards the left of the container. Agh! It smelled, but I couldn't exactly tell of what. So he had an air sanitizer as a roach killer? "They identify eachother by smell, and like people, they prosecute anybody different." I watched as what could be the two colonies paused, like they were still thinking. Maybe they were shocked to find the enemy so close. That was it, one on the left side moved only a centimeter before there on the right side rushed to mutilate it, and then four on the left side to fightg back.
They were even sides, both of them fought and it seemed to be only a mass of black legs and bodies and fangs. I looked closer to see that the majority were already dead, in ten seconds?! Only about five were fighting now. Two versus three, and I don't think they knew which side had started it either. The three ganged up on one and it was gone, simple as that, but two of them seemed to die in the process. The last one, the last one of the three I saw sunk it's fangs deep into the other last survivor's head. At least it looked like a head. I waited to see it remove itself and claim victory as the survivor and the winner of the war. "They're all dead..." I realized and thought outloud. It dawned on me there was no winner, the last one had died of war despite no enemy. "They're all doomed to fight eachother and die, but at least this way, we're stopping them before they consume everything. Haha, we're just accelerating the inevitable." Boss grabbed my attention by chuckling. "This is how they got rid of their pest problem," he put the spray back in the box, "and this is how we will get rid of ours."
---
Burnt turtle? It turned out he was a hacker of some sort, but was caught one day and... as the famous saying goes "if you play with fire, you're going to get burned." So now he taught other people how to do his bidding. Boss explained to me that there were two gangs after eachother in Diamondus that just needed to sparked against eachother, and the organizations that secretly back them up to do their dirty work, would also have sparked. With those organizations would come the governments, and you'd have a whole civil war. Strike one person in these long hierarchies, and blame it on the other. "Which are these gangs?" I wanted to verify for myself. It was a large jump to go from eliminating cockroaches to populations, but he was right. Stop them now, kill the pests. My faith in him was shaken again when he responded "Speak up, boy! I'm deaf in my right ear." instead of giving me a straight answer.
That one person we needed to strike turned out to be ten, and the blame involved planting jade dawn as the poison used. Burnt already hacked the order logs to falsify a large order of the stuff, but it actually wouldn't be compiled. We needed to physically steal the JD. "Which organization did you put the order into?" I asked. Boss didn't tell me, maybe he knew. "It doesn't matter." he scolded back again. I hated that "screw everybody" tone. It would hit the underground that such a large order of JD went through, even though it didn't, but everybody claimed they knew who it was going to.
---

I scolded myself for not asking for Burnt's name at the beginning. It felt like he'd be ****ed if I asked him now and I'd never get rid of the reputation of an idiot. Just wait until somebody else says it. I said to myself earlier, too bad it was just the two of us to retrieve the Jade Dawn and then the two of us to dump it into a water supply.
I asked earlier "And that'll provoke the gang against another?"
"No, you're going to dump it into one of the organization's gang members."
"But they're allies."
"They'll bite The Big Guys' necks once you do this, alliances will be broken and new ones will be formed. This will shatter any permanent alliance that have standed so far and could stand afterwards," he responded. Boss must have thought me as naive as I found this rather twisted, but fitting.
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