3rd person perspective:
A man's voice resounds throughout the room that no longer has anyone in it other than him. Well him and a corpse of what was once a girl. "Sir we've eliminated the target. Orders?" his voice is dispassionate. He just murdered a young girl and he's currently staring at her corpse.
Yet there's no pity there. No regret. Nothing. Only a silent determination. Only a willingness to obey. After having a conversation that only he and the man on the other end of the phone would understand he replies "Yes sir!" to some kind of order and then puts his phone away.
His men gather around him at the terrace of the woman's residence or former woman's residence and they all ask at once "Orders sir?" in the same dispassionate tone the man took. They too, see nothing wrong with the scenario in front of them. It's played out many times before after all.
It would appear however that the world disagrees with them on this point. This is proven just as the man is about to open his mouth and relay the orders he was given. There is suddenly a robotic voice that surrounds the men and the house of the residence they just murdered. They might be imagining it as they know this is the voice of an AI but…
"Initiating self-destruct protocol as per Mainframe subroutine" There's almost a palpable anger behinds the words. As though someone with a deep seated grudge is drudging up the depths of hell and springing it upon them. Yet behind the anger is also a deep sadness and regret. Human emotions. Or at least emotions most sentient beings would display.
Yet it's coming from an AI. This freezes them in place. That's all the time it needs however as the next second the men are no more and there's a massive BANG! As they all crumple into themselves in the event horizon of what is essentially a mini black hole.
Amelie's perspective:
A rather loud sound starts blaring right next to my head and hits them and, my mind soon after, like a tidal wave. Instantly it's as though a switch is flipped in my brain. A trained reaction. One I did not originally display. Or so I've been told. It's been so long since I've had this ingrained habit that I honestly can't remember the time before it was ingrained.
Regardless now that it's a habit my body responds as it should. Hearing the loud sound right next to my ear causes all my senses to go on high alert. The sleepiness in my brain is immediately removed and any vestiges of tiredness from waking up in the morning dissipate like wisps in the wind.
My eyes aren't as well trained however. Even though my brain woke up almost immediately it would appear my eyes have a little more issue accepting the abruptness of their switch from resting to working at full capacity.
My surroundings are blurry and every time I blink my vision changes. Sometimes my surroundings will be completely blurry but then I'll blink and suddenly only the left side is blurry. I'll blink again and it'll be the right side this time.
Annoyed that my eyes can't keep up I decide to simply ignore them in favour of my other senses. Being well aware that humans are probably the least impressive with their 'secondary' senses among the sentients means that I know I can't rely on my sense of smell and hearing as most people train to avoid the senses of beastkin who are far superior to my just biologically. Let alone the training they've done to enhance their already impressive senses.
Now that my period of waking up is over however I look over at my clock and find the time displayed as 6:00 o'clock sharp. Even my little contemplation about my senses and the time it took for my eyes to adjust took no more than 10 seconds. That's still far too much however.
10 seconds is more than enough time for someone to stab my throat with a dagger. I'll have to do better next time. With that resolve firmly in place I raise from my bed. The blaring sound is no longer needed so I carefully press the button on my alarm clock that stops it from making such a racket.
If my teachers saw my poor performance this morning they'd be so disappointed in me. I really must do better. Despite passing in every single subject I ever tried learning there were always certain things I was either biologically disadvantaged with or was just incapable of doing for some reason.
Waking up in a timely manner was one such skill. I was always on time. Military time mind you, so to be exact I would always show up 15 minutes early at the very least. This was fairly easy thanks to my time at the orphanage. Being one of the oldest or most mature there for most of the time I spent in the place I came to be relied on as the one who woke up everyone else and kept them in line.
As such, being punctual was a natural instinct and one I didn't have to train. In a similar manner, because I was trained in martial arts, sword combat, suit usage, ship piloting and other such skills from the age of 3, I was incredibly proficient at them by the time I trained with them earnestly under a teacher. Thus my grades were near perfect across the board.
Yet even with my supposedly perfect mind for absorbing skills. I still couldn't absorb the skills I just didn't have. I was always slow to wake and one of the first to be taken out when the instructors would occasionally have us practice being attacked during the night. This was also partially due to my disadvantages being born a human but I've long gotten over my envy of the other races by this point.
It's not as though humans don't have their advantages either. They live longer than most types of beastkin, they're sturdier than most elves and most of all they are capable of learning just about every skillset. Seduction for example was a subject only taught to humans and certain types of beastkin and obviously the races like succubi and incubi but they already knew this instinctively.
Well that was what I told myself but in truth it is rather difficult to be a human in just about every profession. Beastkin are stronger, elves live longer, demons might be specialised but they usually have longer lives and are very strong in their element. Humans are jack of all trades master of none I suppose.
Anyway enough about that depressing topic. I should train to get this all out of my mind. I could never relax without doing that. I guess I'm somewhat of a clutz in that regard. Or perhaps it could be considered a good thing that I require training. Makes it easier to do it I suppose.
I push myself off my bed and look around the room for my training gear and the place to wash my pyjamas. They look a little like one of those one piece swimsuits honestly and if I wasn't alone in my house I would surely murder anyone who saw me like this. Despite my line of work and all the things I have to do for it, that's work and this is entirely different.
I imagine my room would be considered bland to most people's eyes. The walls are grey bare rock. Most houses nowadays are made from bunker materials and mine is no exception. That said most people tend to decorate or do something to cover up the bareness of the walls such as have lots of furniture.
I however like the drab look. It helps me focus. Having bright colours all around me would perhaps be good training for a battlefield but training is often more about focus and repeating familiar motions than keeping your calm in a hostile environment. So I prefer something simple like this.
I mean I do have some furniture in a way. In the corner of my room is what looks to be a sort of wooden statue. It has poles coming out from it at various angles and looks a little like someone carved a human and then stuck a bunch of wooden poles into the sculpture to ruin it.
In actuality it's a training doll. An incredibly cheap one but I tend to break them pretty often so I have to buy the cheap ones. Sure the metal and bunker type training dolls would probably last longer but that'd just give me the courage to try something else and end up destroying it anyway.
Other than that there's the typical bed that I just got up from. The sheets are red and the mattress is black. The wood around the bed is also black though it's closer to a sort of burgundy red than black. But I say it's black because you have to look rather closely at it to tell it's burgundy.
The bedside table is also black with red accents. The accents are a little like vines or veins. Climbing all over the structure of the table and entangling it a little like prey. Other than the training doll my furniture does stand out quite a bit against my drab surroundings.
I'm not sure if you could call my destination furniture though. I head towards a part of the wall and place my palm there. Instantly the wall almost appears to split in half and slide away revealing a literal hole in the wall filled to the brim with clothes.
The general style is pretty obvious. It's the same as my furniture. Black and red. Perhaps a little unoriginal but I was never one for fashion. The only reason everything is black and red in the first place was that Soph wanted to give me a colour scheme. Apparently she thought it was really boring that I didn't have one and considering my colour scheme has done wonders for marketing and getting me clients I can't really complain.
The clothes themselves though are never two in the same. A leather jacket and pair of motorcycle gloves, a trenchcoat, a T-shirt, a combat suit, jogging trousers and even combinations of dresses and uniforms. There was no common thread between all the clothes. They're all just stuff I picked up over the years.
Since I'll only be training though this time I pick out a tracksuit. I do quick change, do up my hair and look at myself in the mirror. Reflected is a girl of late teens early twenties with pitch black hair tied into two pony tails. One for each side of her head.
I say my hair is pitch black but once again thanks to soph's intervention there are highlights of red mixed in there with the black. I complained quite a bit at first considering how much of a pain it is to maintain the dye and the fact that very few see my hair on a job. But she vehemently insisted that I have red highlights because 'You just have to look cool sis. If I can't be cool, I refuse to let anyone associated with me not be cool to the utmost!'
Her reasoning was so utterly bewildering and her passion so obvious that I just gave in and let her have her way. Perhaps not the best choice to just let her do what she wanted with something that was likely to affect my future in a major way but I just couldn't deny her.
There weren't many who could really. Not when she really wanted something. The thought sends me into a little bit of a giggle. I instinctively pull my hand up to my mouth and cover it as I giggle to myself while looking in the mirror.
Well perhaps she's rubbing off on me. I likely would've never thought about giggling to myself in the mirror had it not been for her. My face in the mirror breaks out into a little smile. According to Soph I give off 'big sister energy' in waves. Whatever that means.
I can't tell if she's a genius or a madwoman but the likely answer is both. More than half of what comes out of her mouth is nonsense and yet it makes me smile so. Regardless I should get back to the clothing, the tracksuit fit me rather well with this smile if I do say so myself.
It fit my body rather tightly which is always what I prefer. It reminds me of the time I spend in combat suits and that's usually my most comfortable so I always like to wear tight fitting clothing like this. Plus it allows me to move fast in most combat situations so this is best.
Done inspecting myself I turn to the dummy and begin my morning training. I left the closet open because I'll need to use it in a minute after I'm done training. I wouldn't want to spend the rest of the day in sweaty clothes and it would just be bad manners to show up to any sort of meeting smelling of hard work.
You have to make things look effortless as a professional apparently. One of the rules I was taught was that whatever you do, make it look effortless and you'll get plenty of clients even if you ARE just faking it.
Once in front of the training dummy I begin with the basic stances. Fists in front of my face and legs spread shoulder width apart. Then I move my fists I front of me with a slight distance between them and open them into knife hands. Then I spread my feet a little wider apart and turn my body slightly to the side.
I continue to cycle through the different stances of all the martial arts I learned occasionally using the dummy as a sort of mimic for a person facing me so I can adjust my stance according to what they would do next in my mind.
Once done cycling through stances for hand to hand combat I go over to my bedside table and pick up three different objects before placing them on the floor next to the dummy and cycling through their own respective stances.
First is my laser sword. Since this is designed to suck the energy from a personal shield rather than to cause any injuries the stances I learned mainly involved getting as many hits in as possible and keeping contact with the shield for as long as possible. Obviously I also learnt stances for combat involving a sword to cut down foes as it's still perfectly capable of cutting through people like butter.
It just isn't usually used like that as once someone's personal shield is down they're rather vulnerable to things such as hand to hand combat and railgun weaponry. Speaking of the next thing I practice with is the stance of holding a gun. In this case the dummy wasn't particularly useful as anything other than a target and even then I wouldn't ever actually shoot at it.
I simply stood holding the laser in one hand with my finger on the trigger. I also put the other hand under the laser to support it though technically I don't have to do that. But It's always good to keep the habit as you don't realistically need a gun in one hand and another free given that they are supposed to be used at a range where having a hand free would make very little difference.
Plus railgun type weapons do need a hand to support them so if you use the wrong weapon by accident and end up not being able to control the recoil that mistake could cost you your life. So I was taught that always putting your hand under the weapon to control recoil is the best course of action.
Next up and my final weapon the knife. It has uses similar to the sword except it is sometimes used to give a lethal edge to your hand to hand combat so it's used much more often when your opponents personal shield is down. The stance is actually very similar to the one for hand to hand combat only in stead of turning my hands into fists I hold the knife with one and the other is an open palm.
Once I'd run through all the stances for my martial arts I move on to practical applications. Starting with hand to hand combat. I throw the weapons back onto the floor and take up my stance again. This time I throw punches at the doll that make impact with various points on it's body.
I imagine the effect it would have if this was a person with their shield down. A hook to the face would knock them out cold. A punch to the gut would have them bent over and a knee to the face would be another knockout.
Similar scenarios play out as I continue to practice. In my mind the doll morphs itself into countless foes that I dodge, parry and counter before taking them out in some way using my fists. I remember specific fighting styles I've faced before and imagine the doll replicating them as I strike.
This lasts for around 30 minutes at which point I switch to the sword. This time I imagine scenarios such as cutting down someone's shield or cutting at the throat, arteries or stabbing through the torso before taking out my blade and making sure it doesn't get stuck in my opponent.
Repeating this with the knife as well I go over my movements in each scenario and how each foe would be dispatched. Once done I use the laser and run around my room keeping my aim at the training doll and then using the safety setting on the laser to make it into essentially a laser pointer. Showing me whether or not I hit the doll.
Once that was all done, I repeated these actions with combinations of all the previous training. I would cut through a shield with a sword then strike them down with martial arts. Or I would shoot them with my laser to get down the shield then throw my knife to strike at a distance.
Eventually it becomes 7:30 in the morning and I finish my training.