Fenris Chains - Leyding
#4 of Supers, Heroes and Villains
It's been awhile since my last upload, eh? Almost a year. Good googalymoogaly.
So anyway I was writing a story where the main character of this story is a side character but then I got side-tracked by this guy. So here we are. As you might infer from the title and the tags, this is going to be a trilogy. Unless it isn't. Only time will tell, but that's currently the goal. ^^
The main character is one of them rascally Fins, so I put in a few Finnish words here and there. My thanks to Gruffy for helping with some of those.
So here we go. I hope you enjoy it.
How are you doing tonight? It may seem pointless to ask, but my mummo always taught me that it's important to be polite.
I feel the need to tell my story, you know get it off my chest. And since alot of it isn't stuff I want getting out, like my real name, I can't really tell anyone that might be able to tell anyone else, and as luck would have it you're the best person available to listen. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you're going to die.
My name is Leyding. I'm a super-criminal, part of a trio called the Fenris Chains. Fenris Kahleet if you're being picky.
I've got super-strength and super-durability rated in the top twenty for the Registration's records, which I don't need to tell you are the most comprehensive database of Post-Normal individuals in the world.
I'm sure you think I'm a bad man, and maybe I am. Me and my brothers primarily work as enforcers, though sometimes we're called in to make sure certain people pay what they owe to our employer. People like yourself. And if they don't pay, like you haven't...well like I said. Once the boss gets here you've got a one way trip to...I don't even know. Whatever's on the other side, I guess.
But before I was super-criminal extraordinaire Leyding, I was Kaarlo Karkea.
A couple of years ago - gotta be going on ten years now. Doesn't time just pass you by? - I applied for an international exchange student program, and through some twist or turn in the red tape ended up in a small town somewhere in Texas in the United States. They didn't exactly have state of the art educational system there but it was good enough and besides I met a bunch of good friends. Other furs, though no rats. We were the only furs in the school, and most of us didn't have much in common. Mainly we stuck together because it beat hanging out with humans. Not that I'm racist or anything, but it's a basic fact that people feel safer around their own kind and will instinctively group together. If there were any other rats in town I'd have hung out with them, but even a morph is better than a human (okay, maybe a teensy bit racist, but no one's perfect).
There was Jamie (James, but hardly anyone used that), a cheetah, Jimmy and Mike, both hyenas. Rourke, he's a tiger...and Joseph, a wolf...Joe was a bit more than a friend. There was an attraction between us the instant we met. I wouldn't exactly call it true love, but my feelings for him were the most intense I'd ever experienced in my admittedly short life.
We spent alot of time together, alone and as part of the group. He's good with languages so he picked up Finnish quickly, and he coached me to improve my English. Things were going well, or so I thought.
I remember it like it was yesterday. Joe and I were supposed to have a study session that day. I had completed my chores for my host-parents early for once and decided to surprise Joe. But when I arrived at his house, before I could knock on the door, I looked though the window and saw Joe on the couch, making out with another guy.
If you've ever felt betrayed by someone you thought you loved you probably know how it feels. Like my heart had stopped. I felt dizzy. Like I couldn't breathe. I didn't bother them. I just turned and ran home. I locked myself in my room and cried myself to sleep. I skipped school the next day. And the day after that. I just lay in bed and felt miserable. Joe called my cellphone a few times, which I ignored. He tried to come over to visit, but my host-parents sent him away after I told him I didn't want visitors. They were worried about me but respected my wishes. I also got calls from the others. Three calls from Jamie. Four from Jimmy. Even one from Rourke.
Then on the third day something inside me clicked and I went from miserable to so incredibly pissed off I could barely see straight. I don't know what I would have done if Rourke hadn't come by to find out why I hadn't been at school.
Rourke was always a very practical sort of guy. Didn't like complicating things that didn't need to be complicated, he would say. He already knew that I'd turned away Joe, and that I would probably have turned him away too, so he didn't bother coming to the door. He climbed the outside of my house, to the second floor where the window to my bedroom was, and just came in through there. Problem --> Solution. Everything else is just details.
My anger fled at the sight of him and the sadness returned. I hugged him, clutching at his chest, and poured my heart out to him.
Now don't go getting any ideas about Rourke. He's the straightest guy I've ever met. I was under no illusion that he harbored any romantic feelings for me. He cared about me as a friend and nothing more. I'd never really spent any time with him, aside from in our little group. Like I said, none of us ever really had much in common and he was on the baseball team so I just sort of assumed he was a dumb jock.
I kind of feel bad for that now. I know he wouldn't hold it against me, but if I ever get the opportunity I'm going to apologize to him one day.
But we're getting off track. After I told him about Joe he was angry. He said he was going to go talk to Joe and see what the deal was. He managed to extract himself from my arms and climbed back out the window, promising to visit again in a few days.
I never did see Rourke again. I left later that week; came back home to Finland to stay with my brothers. I know what you're thinking. How the hell could I throw away an education over a guy? What a dumbo I must be. Well, I don't disagree. It was a stupid mistake, but honestly, if I had to do it over again I wouldn't change a thing, because my brothers really rely on me and I just ran away to America without even thinking about them. I'm supposed to be the responsible one. The one that keeps those two tyhmät from screwing up too badly. Lauri's older than me by a few years, but it doesn't stop him from being a tyhmä. He'd probably be in prison if I wasn't around to keep him from making any particularly dumb mistakes. Belvedere in all likelihood, you know that place they built for the big leagues. Super-villains like Daystar and the Witch of Endor went there and haven't seen the light of day since.
And who knows what trouble Pehr would have got himself into. He's younger than me, and just as much a tyhmä as Lauri. He'd probably sleep with every girl from here to Helsinki. He's got a real way with women. I have no idea what they see in the little fairy, but then again I never really cared about them in the first place so either way.
When push comes to shove family's got to stick together, you know?
About six months after I left America and came back home Lauri got the idea to "re-invent" ourselves as super-criminals. Lauri and Pehr also have the same powers as me. Lauri is stronger than me though, and Pehr is stronger than both of us. There are so few heroes in the world these days and few of those that remain can leave their designated protectorate without causing all sorts of trouble with the Registration. (what is it about government institutions that are always at their best when they're actively obstructing the efforts of others to get anything done?) Only Bruja had the authority to autonomously travel as a capital-H Hero and she was in Mexico when we pulled our first job.
You might not believe me, but I never really wanted to be a criminal; couldn't see much point in it, but Lauri insisted. He did a bit of time in prison, met some guys who knew some guys. Pehr, he had always gone whatever way the wind blew, so he would be easy to convince one way or the other. Eventually I agreed, if only to make sure the two of them didn't get in over their heads, and anyway after Joe...well, I was looking for a change.
Pehr's always been into nerdy stuff like mythology and poems and humpuuki like that, he was the one that came up with our names. Since there are three of us, all super-strong, with different strengths and sizes, he suggested that we call ourselves after the chains that bound Fenrisulfr in Norse mythology: Leyding (Me), Dromi (Lauri) and Gleipnir (Pehr). I must admit Leyding is a pretty cool name.
Gleipnir wanted us to have costumes, but Dromi and I both shot him down. Even so, he couldn't be stopped from adding a bit of color to the festivities. He wore a red speedo on that first job. Like I said, he's stronger than us, so it was either we let him wear the speedo or he could go nude. Speedo it was.
I was just wearing blue jeans and dad's old leather jacket. Dromi, ever the showman, intentionally wore a shirt that was a few sizes too small that day. As soon as he flexed his shirt was torn to shreds, leaving him in nothing but his pants. It was quite a spectacle. He'd got his nipples pierced at some point, though I have no idea how; there isn't a piercing place in a hundred miles that has the equipment necessary to break Dromi's skin.
Anyway, Dromi wanted to pull a classic heist for our first job: He wanted us to rob a bank. Most banks these days handle money electronically so there's not as much cash to be gained from bank robbery, but like I said, it was a classic.
Since Dromi was the big dumb one and Gleipnir would never crack open a book that wasn't about poetry or whatever humpuuki he's into, I did the planning. I went in to scope out exactly where the vault was, then sent a text to Dromi and Gleipnir. Dromi busted through the wall and grabbed the vault and just walked away with it.
Since the whole fiasco was his idea in the first place, Dromi had to do all the heavy lifting. Gleipnir sat on top of the vault with his legs crossed, looking fay as always (and I'm the gay one. Go figure), while I walked beside Dromi, occasionally going a bit ahead to clear out any barricades the poliisi tried to set up.
Dromi took the vault down main street, making a show of it. He took it to the nearest subway entrance and we just broke it open, took everything we could get out hands on and then went underground, losing ourselves in the trains.
Of course the plan worked like a charm (notwithstanding the difficulty for a shirtless 206 centimeter rat to blend in with a crowd. Ditto for a 164 centimeter rat in nothing but a red speedo) and we were officially labelled super-criminals.
You'd actually be surprised how difficult super-crime really is. They make it seem so easy in the comics. For one thing, you can't just wake up one day and say "I'm going to steal a bunch of shit!" Shit isn't the same as money. Shit doesn't pay the bills. So you have to know a guy who will buy that shit off you. There are only so many pawn shops in Espoo.
Being super-criminals doesn't mean we don't have to worry about the police. Just because they were caught flat-footed the first time doesn't mean they won't be ready for us the second time. We don't have to worry about bullets, but we still need to breathe, so a few well-placed gas canisters of whatever they use for crowd control. We go down and the next thing we know we're being carted off to London where the Registration's main prison is wearing a fancy new set of restraints specially designed to hold super strength users. And in the unlikely event that the gas doesn't work, it would be trivially easy to call up the Registration and get them to send in Skyline.
Commonly considered the strongest super in the world, Skyline has super strength and durability like me and my brothers. He's also super fast and can fly. Has a bunch of other powers according to rumor but those are the ones everyone knows about. He's stronger than Gleipnir, which means he's stronger than me and Dromi put together.
So you got your fence. You got your secret hide-out.
Then there's the problem of scale. Super-criminals have to think big. Steal a painting from a museum. Steal a bank vault. You can't rob a liquor store. Can't steal some woman's purse. That's beneath you.
If you had a superhero maybe you can wreck stuff up and have a tumble when the guy shows up. But then you run the risk of civilian casualties and let me tell you, from there it's a VERY slippery slope from super-criminal to super-villain. Guys like Ether or Apex. You don't cross that line lightly.
So the fence, the base, the opportunity. That's for independent super-criminals. Getting into organized crime is even harder because even if you knew where one was, you can't just walk up to a crime boss and say "I wanna work for you." These guys make a living out of being the guy with the brass balls who orders around the uber-tough street thugs. They have to feel like they're in control of you, which means they have to be the one to offer you a job.
Long story short, what Dromi didn't tell us before was that the heist had actually been a demonstration. He'd already been contacted by the local mob and he wanted to show them what they were getting.
So that's how the Fenris Chains got into crime. After all that we mostly act as a sort of nuclear deterrent. We stand around looking intimidating and no one messes with the boss, because he's just looking for an excuse to send us in, and once we go in all bets are off. There aren't very many other Post-Normals in the business and none of them are on the same level as any of us, so we're basically untouchable. As long as we don't rock any boats, don't do anything too flashy like use our powers to kill people, the boss can grease a few palms and no one calls the Registration, which means no Skyline or Bruja or Ring Jet and everything is peachy. Well, aside from the whole "organized crime" thing, but beggars can't be choosers.
Ah, there's the door. Well, it's been nice knowing you You're a very good listener. I'm sure we could have been friends if, you know, you weren't about to be murdered. Goodbye.