Red, White, and Blue Prologue and Chapter 1 by akhusky

Imagine a room, filled with everything spectacular and extravagant one would ever want. The room abounds with happiness and joy, explodes in vibrant color, and overflows with simply the essence of awesome. Do you have the image in your mind? Alright, take everything cool away from it so you have a blank white room with a big-ass screen on one wall. Welcome to the Watching Room. Some imagine Heaven as a place much like a big party filled with pleasantness, peace, and indescribable happiness. Some think it's just an empty space of inner peace. Some people like to believe if they 'splode themselves, it's full of hot chicks. Spoiler alert: They're all correct. Much like life, Heaven is what you make of it, and your own experiences in life create your afterlife. This is all well and good, unless you're some sort of immortal being, like me.

Oh. I probably just confused the McJesus out of you, didn't I? All this talk of white rooms, and heaven, and whatnot? For the sake of your sanity, and possibly mine as well, I'll back up a bit. My name is Lao Xi, and I can never die. Sick, huh? No. The answer is no. You see, I am what is called a "Watcher", and while I can never die, I can likewise never live. My job is to simply observe the happenings of earth, and make sure the forces of the universe are all balanced and junk. Not they ever aren't, which works out perfectly because I have no power over the physical world. To answer your inevitable question, yes, that makes my job utterly pointless and redundant. But hey, I'm immortal, what's God gonna do, sack me? Life as a Watcher is generally the most tedious and uninteresting occupation a short, fairly unathletic, not particularly dashing Shar-Pei could ever hold for eternity, but occasionally someone comes into existence that makes everything exciting.

I could totally go on describing my dull, useless life for hours more (mostly because I have literally NOTHING else to do), but I'll spare you that crap. See, I had the chance to observe the lives of a particular person and his group of friends. That sounds retarded now that I think about it. But, inabilities as a storyteller aside, this sucker's life was at times incredibly action-packed, emotional, and sometimes just damn confusing and implausible. Seriously, like Inception-level confusing and implausible. So, reader, let me take you on a journey, a crazy tale narrated by the (somewhat) opinionated and subjective yours truly. Let's embark upon our quest and see life through the red, white, and blue eyes of Alexei Pavlov.

Chapter 1: Trip the Darkness

Perched on a hilltop overlooking his target, a figure dressed head to toe in black waited impatiently for the right time to make his move. On this unusually chilly late September night, much was on the mind of the operative, as a drifting mind was the only thing keeping him from noticing the frigid temperatures outside. He thought about his mission at hand, how much he hated his fur-tight suit, and he triple-checked his equipment, making sure the bowie knife in his boot was secure and the two silenced 9mm Glock 19 pistols were loaded and ready in their holsters on his waist. He carried no spare ammunition, because if the situation arose where he would need more than 30 rounds to complete his objective, he was probably S.O.L. As for the shiny new handguns themselves, he had no idea where they came from. His boss gave them to him for his 17th birthday. This was two weeks ago. Strange, I know, but this will all be explicated later.

Unfortunately for our masked marauder, however, one item was overtaking his mind more than anything else, and he knew if he couldn't get this matter straightened out, the outcome of the operation was in dire jeopardy. He had to get that damn song out of his head. He closed his eyes, tried to clear his mind, but the same wandering daydream kept reoccurring. He would be playing a show somewhere, singing flawlessly into the microphone, guitar in hand (at this point the dream had already severed all ties with reality, as he attempted to sing before in front of his friends. Comparisons to dying cats and wailing lunatics were made). He would make eye contact with a voluptuous, gorgeous, deeply-red-haired, red furred vixen as he entered the chorus. As he sang the lines "I said I bet that you look good on the dance floor, don't know if you're looking for romance or, I don't know what you're looking for" and realized how horrifyingly unsexy they actually were, the vixen approached him regardless. Throwing away any regulations at the nameless venue, she stepped on stage, grabbed him mid sentence and... and apparently started beeping.

The sound of Alexei Pavlov's muffled watch alarm sent him careening out of his blissful reverie and caused him to crash so hard back to reality that the Arctic Monkeys seemed to dissipate into nothing inside his skull. "Alex, focus", he said to himself, "this is real. Don't act like a scrub right now." Alexei perked up his pointy, canine ears as he prepared to make his descent toward the supposedly abandoned warehouse below. He stealthily approached a chain link fence at the edge of the facility and deftly and silently climbed over it and hustled to a shadowy alcove made from the supports jutting out along the wall of the facility. He could hear the muttering of a hired guard about to pass on a patrol route Pavlov's "organization" had accurately mapped out before hand. As he waited for the guard to pass, Alex reviewed the key points of his hit: Step 1: Get inside the warehouse, which was easy enough, and Step 2: eliminate one Evgeni Trevelyan, a particularly unscrupulous wannabe drug/mafia lord in the greater Washington area. It did not appear to be a challenging mission.

Obscured by the darkness of his hiding spot, Alexei remained unseen by the guard, a fugly greyhound who was bitching about the cold to himself. The boss had said anyone armed at the compound was expendable, but it was up to Alexei to decide whether any certain member of the crew was scheduled for execution. After getting a good look at the thug, Alexei came to the conclusion that it would be good for society if this loser was removed from the gene pool, and grabbed the poor sap's collar and yanked him back to where he could cover his snout with one paw. With the other, he unsheathed the bowie knife from his boot and severed the goon's jugular. Before all of you start to hate the hero for what you might think is a wanton removal of life, consider the following: I took a peek at this guard's life, and he failed the second grade. He also wanted to start his own counterfeit business (don't even start with me on how that would work out) and liked kicking puppies. What I'm trying to say is that this guy wasn't exactly vying for Man of the Year. As the greyhound succumbed to death, Alexei muttered, "It's a good thing you don't like the cold, because it's gonna be a lot hotter where you're going. A HELL of a lot hotter." Alexei applauded himself on the excellent line as he hid the corpse in the alcove and moved towards the door of the warehouse.

Pavlov's point of entry on this fantastic evening was an access door on the side of the building. Slipping into the warehouse, he found cover behind a stack of vaguely suspicious boxes and waited for Trevelyan to arrive. Evgeni arrived, flanked by two hired guns, punctual as ever. Unfortunately for the "professional" criminal, his punctuality was to be the death of him.

Evgeni Trevelyan had reached his objective that night, looking over the manifest for the latest shipment to arrive at his facility. Evgeni had had a rough day. Actually, his day sucked pretty hard. He thought he was going pretty steady with this one girl, but she broke up with him this morning. By breaking up I mean she threw booze in his face and called him (and I quote) "by far the most disgusting elkhound I've ever met." His day worsened when he discovered that his supposed right-hand man jumped ship and joined the major mafia group in the city, which Pavlov was connected to. After heading to a *ahem* gentlemen's club earlier that night, and getting slapped in the face and bounced out of the joint (he couldn't remember why. He had been trying to drown his sorrows in vodka and women, or in a catchier manner booze and boobs, you see) Trevelyan was positively convinced his day could not possibly get any worse. At that point is when he heard two muffled thumps, and two not so muffled thumps when his goons hit the floor next to him, bleeding profusely from head wounds. He turned around shivering to see a black-clad, canid figure standing in front of him, akimbo Glocks poised to shoot.

Evgeni tried to stammer out pleas to save his life: "Please, please don't kill me! I'll join your group, I'll surrender my stash, I'll turn myself in, whatever you want!"

Alexei Pavlov simply shrugged his shoulders and said, "Eh, no. Sorry, bro," and put two bullets in Evgeni Trevelyan's brain. Alex didn't bother cleaning up the sizable mess he had made, as he knew the mafia had friends in high places in the police force, and he would never be incriminated for this incident. Holstering his twin handguns, Alexei left the way he came in, and returned to his vantage point on the hilltop above the compound. In a group of bushes he found his compact backpack which contained his street clothes, and he changed out of his suit. Once he no longer looked like a lame version of Batdog, he made the short hike back to the city and hopped on the subway to return to his apartment.

*****

When Alexei left the underground, he felt exhausted. Home was only a block or two away, but the walk felt like miles. As he made his sojourn to his place of residence, Pavlov took time to consider how much effort he had to put into even a weekend of everyday life. Last night had been a long road trip for his football team, and though the game was against the worst team in the district, that in addition to his "job" started to take a toll on the 6'1, 175 lb Siberian Husky. Alex was generally pleased with his performance on Friday night, recording 7 tackles (including one sack) from the middle linebacker position, but that didn't mean he couldn't wait for the week after next, his team's bye week. Finally reaching his apartment, Alexei fumbled with his keys, eventually unlocking the door and entering his home.

Inside the apartment, on a recliner, lounged a larger, older, grizzled husky. The elder husky simply asked with a heavy Russian accent, "So, how did it go?" Alexei responded with a grim smirk, "Trevelyan's brain and his skull are currently experiencing sort of a disconnect right now."

"Most excellent. How did the new guns work out?"

"They get the job done."

"Better still. Did you finish your homework today?"

"Yeah, we got off pretty easy this weekend as far as schoolwork goes."

"Nice game on Friday. Only one sack though? I'm a little disappointed."

"It was an option offense. They only tried to pass THREE TIMES."

"Whatever. Do you have date yet for your coming home dance?"

"Homecoming. And no, no I do not."

"Maybe if I did not send you on these contracts you would develop some way to get a damn girlfriend."

"Wow. THANKS, dad."

Anton Pavlov laughed loudly, as he loved messing with his son. The crime, the violence, the day-to-day struggles were incredibly difficult to get by in a family like the Pavlov's, which had only two members left since the car accident that took Alexei's mother when he was just 4 years old. Humor was a way that they could communicate and overlook how horrible some of the shit they dealt with really was. Anton himself was a veteran of the mafia ground wars both in Russia itself and the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. After moving to Washington D.C. in his twenties, Anton quickly rose to power in the local mafia circles and took control of the family business in America. He was not so much a criminal overlord as a Robin Hood-esque figure of vigilante philanthropism. Anton's group would remove other crime from the streets in the city, not forgetting the people that lived there. In a sense, the Washington police practiced a "live and let live" philosophy with the Pavlov mafia, considering they were more of a benefit than a parasite to the city.

Unfortunately, not everyone enjoys the, well, decent manner of the Pavlov group, and Anton has had to initiate a number of operatives to find and eliminate threats to the stability of the mafia and the community. Anton did not necessarily enjoy the fact that his own offspring was the most gifted and successful operative. He had personally trained Alexei from the time he was ten, fearing that Alexei might have to take the reins of the mafia at any time if anything was to happen to Anton. When Alexei turned 16, Anton allowed him to go on solo assignments, and he became the only operative with a 100% success rate. Anton hated putting Alexei into danger and stressing him out, but he was really the only person he had that could be counted on.

Continuing their conversation, Anton half-jokingly suggested, "How about you take Vladimir Romanova's daughter to your dance? What's her name again?"

"Her name's Natalya. And it's not like I haven't tried. I seem to be the only person she wouldn't go with," Alexei replied.

"Oh, she gets around then?"

"Let's just say I think she's giving out frequent flier points."

"Well in that case, I would suggest..." Anton paused and stroked his chin, "taking someone else."

"Funny," Alexei replied, "but I'm beat, and in a serious need of a shower right now."

Walking to the shower, Alex began to think about the whole "Natalya" situation. The two had known each other almost since birth, seeing as they were the same age and part of the same pseudo-criminal organization. They had been best of friends throughout childhood, but grew very far apart very fast upon entering high school. Alex chose to stick with his best friends that he accumulated through his early life and high school experience, a group of five guys who would stick together through anything, even forming a band together named Hawt Proxy, but that will come up later. Natalya, on the other hand, elected to join the generally accepted "popular" crowd, a term Alex never really fully understood, because at least at his school 90% of the student body wanted to punch those kids in the face, and he didn't quite see how that made one popular. Quite like Alex, Natalya also grew up without a mother, as hers disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Alexei never knew the whole story, and felt that he never would, but always felt a sneaking suspicion of Vladimir just about every time they met. Vladimir had little in common with Anton, and though he did not turn his child into a professional killer, Alex feared he had turned her into something worse, what with all the rumors about her.

Of course, Natalya's acceptance into the exclusive crowd was assured by her outward appearance. For those who need me to spell it out for you, she was attractive, stunning even. She was a fox, with light red fur and dark red hair, and for your average teenage loser, she looked perfect. I actually have to admit here that I've seen a lot of women, (my job is to watch people over thousands of years, I've seen more than you) and truthfully I'd seen better. But not that many, because holy shit she was hot.

Anyway, I'd like to depart from this awkward moment to another, as we return to our fearless protagonist...um... taking a shower. Right. Alex was in the process of washing out the grime from his white and black fur, occasionally looking into the mirror to see bright blue eyes and messy black hair that combed down and blended with the fur. Pavlov was muscular, years of training for football and assassination had toned and defined his figure. He was physically and mentally agile, trained from childhood in the brutal martial art of Sambo, and always ready to accept a challenge.

Upon stepping out of the shower, Alex got dressed, made the short trip to his room, and picked up his guitar, a solid-body Fender Telecaster. As cool as it may seem, playing Batdog and killing people professionally is taxing on the mind, and Alexei picked up playing guitar as a way to clear his mind after assignments. The bad news: Alex had a lot of assignments. The good news: He also got pretty good with the guitar, playing lead in his and his friends' band. On this particular night he decided not to play anything difficult, however, instead choosing to play one of his most favorite songs. He closed his eyes and picked the five simple chords of "House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals for a few minutes, then quickly tiredness hit him like a wrecking ball. Alex subconsciously drifted away from The Animals and played the opening chord of "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor". Realizing what he was doing, Alex shook his head and said, "Aw hell no! Not right now, I definitely need some sleep and..." Before he could finish his thought, sleep overcame him and he collapsed onto his bed.

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