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Sunder	By : tamasama Category: +G to L > Hetalia: Axis Powers Views: 4271 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Axis Powers: Hetalia. This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to the lives of any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. I make no profit from the writing of this work of fiction.

Chapter List
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CHAPTER EIGHT

"Did you hear?"

"On the news!"

"Yeah, Vick was talking about it."

Voices spreading the news in excited whispers. If it was a message, this could mean war. There hadn't been a real gang war in that area in years. Everyone was on edge; what had happened to the poor sap was unbelievable.

"Shot him..."

"...how would that work?"

"-straight into his brain!"

Black leather shoes, polished to a mirror shine, clicked over clean marble floor. Every few feet was lined by a pair of guards - tough men with stern expressions and guns strapped to their hips. The owner of the shoes, well-dressed in a Versace suit, his Zenith watch reminding him that he was actually early today and would be able to avoid a lecture on his punctuality, was heading toward the large redwood double doors on the other end of the hall at a leisurely pace. The well-behaved cut-throats and leg breakers at either side didn't bother him. He was smartly dressed , dark black shades perched on his head and a cigar held between his teeth. He had a weakness for sweet foods and it showed, but he wore his weight well enough. He was dark skinned with an extra tan on top of it and his dark brown hair was dreaded and pulled back into a pony tail. The man's name was Maximo but he preferred Max. "Maximo" sounded like a cheap super hero to him. Max kept his surname withheld to help protect himself in his relatively dangerous profession.

He reached the doors and knocked twice.

"Enter!" A voice called from inside.

Max pushed the heavy doors open and walked into the large office. "What did you need me for, sir?"

A man with brown hair was sitting behind the desk with an unhappy scowl on his face. He was attractive in a refined sense. The dark blue suit he wore was clean and pressed with precision, adding to his air of professionalism. His hair was parted off to the side and he looked up at Max through pristinely clean glasses. He rested his elbows on the desk, his nose and mouth hidden behind his threaded fingers. There was a mole on his chin just off of the corner of his lower lip that made him look like a men's fashion model. When he spoke his tone was calm and unwavering.

"I need you to find whoever did this." His name was Roderich Edelstein and he was the head of the Maletta crime family. The mafia didn't work like it used to, they were no more a family than the workers at a grocery store. Flanking him on his left and right was a man and a woman, twins Elizabeta and Elliot Héderváry. They were well known enforcers and personal security to Roderich.

"I haven't been keeping up with the happenings lately." Max admitted, taking a few puffs from his cigar and scratching his ear with his pinkie.

"One of my best men was killed. This isn't an ear-to-the-ground situation, Max. Get it together." Roderich pushed his glasses up higher onto his nose as he spoke.

"Wait, yeah. I heard about that Vargas kid-"

"Forget about him, he was just some two-bit punk. No, I'm talking about Antonio."

Max raised his eyebrows in surprise and blew out a thick cloud of fragrant smoke. "Fernández?"

Roderich nodded, his brow creasing. "I don't know who did it yet, but they mean business. They took him apart, Max. He was alive from most of it, our guy down in forensics tells me."

Mr. Edelstein had Family members working all over the city. Many police officers around the area were taking his bribes in return for acting as ears and eyes from the inside. He kept a constant finger in the pulse of his city and it had shaken him to have one of his best men assassinated without him having heard something about it first. His man in the city morgue explained the things that had been done to Antonio and he hated to need dirty his lips repeating the story.

"Sir, that is a god damned shame." Max sighed and dropped the butt of his cigar onto the polished floor then stomped it out. "Who's my target?"

Frowning a bit at the rude action, Roderich lifted his left hand and snapped his fingers. Elizabeta came up behind him and took a hold of the handles on his chair and maneuvered him out from behind his desk. "I want you to find whoever killed Antonio and make an example of them. We need to show every upstart little gang in the area what happens when they get too close to the sun."

The wheelchair-bound man took a moment to cough as regally as possible into a handkerchief. "Kill them and bring their heads to me. I want to mount them up where every little pissant in this city can see." He motioned with his hand and Elizabeta began to push him toward the door. Max tilted his head to watch the man roll past. Up this close he could see the little droplets of sweat beginning to bead at his forehead. His chapped lips, pallid color, tree-branch bones of his thin hands. Roderich was a sick man, always had been. As a child he was mostly bedridden and always ill. He had spent his time at home studying geography, math, fine arts, and history. He was a perfectionist of the highest caliber, and as such only allowed himself excellence in all fields. His stringent need for absolute rightness was both a blessing and a curse on the entire Family. Failure was never tolerated.

Max made a tiny salute with his fingers. "Can do, sir."

Max had places to go and things to do. He had been on vacation back home in Cuba for the past three weeks and as such had no idea what was going on in the area. He would need to meet up with some of his old acquaintances and ask them about the situation. This job was already proving to be a pain in his side. How exactly did Roderich expect him to find the people responsible for Antonio's death when he had no information at all as to who they might be? Mr. Edelstein seemed very sure that it had to have been the work of an opposing gang, but Max wasn't so sure. There were some well-known serial killers in the area.

"But Fernández wouldn't have let some nutjob idiots take him off guard..." He muttered in thought, rubbing his scruffy chin. Antonio was known for his killing ability and was a prized assassin. He was much more covert than Max was, opting to slip in unheard behind the target and slit their throat. Max was a 'Bullets and Ballistics' type of guy. There was a simple kind of joy in pulling a trigger from buildings away and watching a mark's head pop in the clear precision of his scope, or just tossing a few Molotov cocktails into their living space and burning them down to nothing.

There was the chance that it was over a personal grudge, but Max had a hard time thinking of anyone who would have hated the man, aside from some misguided vigilante working to avenge a loved one that Antonio had a hit on. As long as he wasn't killing you he was a very pleasant person to be around. Carefree, a little ditzy even, a man of simple pleasures who didn't go out of his way to make unnecessary enemies.

The portly man frowned. Maybe it was a message from an opposing gang. But why knock Antonio off, of all people? Like Max, he was a contracted killer, not actually inducted into the Family. It would have made more sense, presented a stronger message, to take out one of the inner Family members. Someone closer to Roderich. Max let out a harsh sigh; it felt like he was chasing his tail with all of this conjecture.

His phone buzzed and when he checked it he saw that it was a call from that drug addled little shit Arthur. The man was one of his best customers, sure, but he could be extremely irritating at times. He had a sour attitude and this undeserved "better than you" quality that rubbed Max the wrong way. He was rich, but he hadn't earned any of it. He was just a college dropout trust-fund baby that thought the world was at his beck and call.

When he wasn't sniping the targets Mr. Edelstein marked, Max made his money slinging drugs around the lower portion of the gang's territory. The Malettas, and by default Max himself, had an iron grip on the area's drug trade. Most people were too smart to try to cross them, and the people who were slower than most or new to the area found out about their mistake very quickly. The strikes ordered against rival gangs and independent manufacturers by Roderich were swift and brutal. Because of this, Max didn't worry about losing one of his regular high-volume sales. There just wasn't anywhere else to get his fix from, he would have to wait until Max's errands were complete.

He sent the call to voicemail and cycled through his contact list until he found who he was looking for. The man didn't even have a proper name, listed only as PICKUP. PICKUP was Max's main source on information on what was happening in the city. He never spoke face-to-face and didn't answer straight phone calls either. He was a shut-in who worked online and Max never cared to know much about him.

Pick, what do you know about this whole Fernández/Vargas deal?

A reply came almost immediately. Fernández - Killed in his apartment. According to the coroner he was tortured for some time, maybe hours. There appeared to be a single perpetrator. Torture methods include: burns, cuts, lacerations, stab wounds, sodomy with a sharp object (presumably a kitchen knife or something similar), removal of both eyes, left leg sawed off. "Krasivaya" (красивая) or "beauty" was written in his blood along the wall where his body had been positioned. A sunflower had been placed at the scene of the crime.

The second one followed so quickly that Max had to believe that the man had written the answers up ahead of time. Vargas - Hit by the Skin Brothers the night after Fernández. His brother was also killed, he had no ties to the Family outside of his relation to Lovino. It was the usual fare as it is with those two. Probably unrelated to Fernández' death.

The family is mobilizing for war and working to sniff out the perpetrators. The Calhouny family insists that they want no trouble, the East Bank Raiders are claiming the same. An envoy has been sent to speak with the Mensaurs up north but their leader just recently died and the group is weak right now so probably wouldn't risk a war. There are three fledgling gangs that popped up within the last year who are gaining steam fairly quickly but even combined their forces are less than a fourth of the Malettas.

Max nodded and sent PICKUP a quick thank you. Well, this definitely supported his idea that it hadn't been an organized hit. Of course he wouldn't tell that directly to the boss, he knew better than to try and argue with Roderich. He would just have to investigate this his own way and once the perpetrator was dead he could bring the boss their head in exchange for a hefty bounty.

It was sure that those serial killers had gotten to Vargas. Max wondered if he should go after them; after all, Mr. Edelstein hadn't seemed to care much about Lovino's death. Honestly, the assassin couldn't fault him on it. Lovino Vargas was a hot-headed little son of a bitch, but that was about all he was. He was hot air, ready to throw rude words around when he felt no one could call him out on it but when push came to shove he would slink away with his tail between his legs. The only reason he had even gotten a place in the Family at all was under Antonio's recommendation. Losing the Vargas kid meant all of jack-shit nothing at the end of the day, but leaving a Family member's killer on the loose would make them appear weak.

Well, the Skin guys were a good enough place to start as any. Max climbed behind the wheel of his sleek black Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4 (his occupation's pay grade allowed him some great luxuries) and pushed the key into the ignition and turned it over. The car purred to life and he took a moment to push his shades down over his eyes.

"H-h-hey Max, m-my man, I didn't expect you around so soon." A weedy junkie was saying, his gaze everywhere but the taller man who had kicked his front door open only moments ago. He stood there fidgeting in nothing but an old, sweat-stained pair of briefs, his greasy red hair sticking out every which way.

Max stepped further into the room of the apartment. The area was filthy and stifling. "Word on the playground has it you're cooking, Jack. I expected better of you. I thought you were smarter than that."

Jack let out a sharp whine of a laugh and started scratching his upper arm, shifting his weight from one foot to the next. "N-naw man, ain't no way I'd do that shit. You know me Max, you know I don't mess around."

Max plucked his sun glasses from his eyes and placed them into his breast pocket. "You calling me a liar?"

The man's brown eyes widened and he took a step back, still scratching. "You know me, I'd n-never say that about you."

"Sit down, Jack." Max commanded, softly shutting the door behind himself. The man stayed where we was, scratching and swaying with his mega-watt nerves screaming at him to run. "Sit down or I'll sit you down."

Jack squeaked and shuffled over to plop down on half-broken computer chair that was in the middle of the room. His left leg jiggled up and down and he finally seemed to notice that he was starting to scratch his arm raw. He pushed his hands under his skinny thighs and swallowed audibly, watching with intense, dinner-plate eyes as Max made his way slowly toward him.

"They say you're cooking, Jack."

"I would nev-"

"Don't lie to me." Max stopped a few feet away from the nervous man, scowling in distaste at the distinct cat-piss smell that permeated both Jack and his home. Max hoped it wouldn't stick to his suit, he liked this one.

Jack's eyes darted around the room a bit and Max thought he looked like a terrified rat trying to find a hole to dart down into and escape. "I-I-I m-might'a been cooking just a little bit but I ain't selling it. You know me, man. You know I wouldn't do that sh-shit to you man. You know I w-w-wouldn't c-cross the Malettas either man. You know me, man."

"That isn't what my man said, Jack." Max sighed, beginning to roll his sleeves up. "My man said he bought fifty bucks of shit from you only a few days ago. He said the quality was awful, by the way."

"You know me, man." Jack said again, his hand had wormed it's way from under his thigh and was once again clawing away at his arm. The crook of his elbow was deeply bruised and track lines ran across his pale flesh like polluted rivers.

"And you know me, Jack. You know I don't like being stolen from."

Jack's voice climbed into a shrill whine. "I'd never s-steal shit from you man, I'd n-n-never steal shit from you."

Max took a step forward and belted the man directly in the jaw, knocking him from his chair. Jack hit the floor with a harsh yelp and curled up into a fetal position. Max shook his hand a bit, the man's sharp jaw had hurt his knuckles, then landed a few hard kicks onto the man's back.

"You calling me a liar, Jack? You calling my man a liar?" He demanded, landing another kick onto the man's ribs.

Jack cried out in pain but didn't try to get away, only curling further into himself. "I'm sorry! I'm s-s-sorry Max! Tell Roderich I'll d-do anyth-thing, I'll give him m-my recipe and I'll never sell again!"

"No one wants your cloudy bottom of the barrel garbage, Jack." Max sneered, standing over the man and leaning down to snatch him by the hair. "Look at me."

The junkie let out yet another whine, his lower lip trembling, and slowly turned to look Max in the eyes. "I'm sorry Max, I-I'm so f-f-f-fucking sorry I'll never-"

"Your breath is disgusting." Max said, scrunching his nose against the blow of putrid air. "Roderich doesn't know. I didn't tell him yet.

"If you don't want to die I suggest you stop what you're doing right now. I suggest you go back to stealing car radios and sucking dick to make your drug money. I don't want you cooking to sell, I don't want you cooking for personal use. I don't want you cooking so much as a god damn hamburger for a good, long while. I don't want to hear a thing about you other than 'Jack's a great customer, he never tries to trade useless bullshit for his hits. He always pays upfront, in cash.' That's all I want to hear about you, do you understand me?" Max slammed Jack's head down onto the floor once and let him go.

The redheaded man scrambled away and pressed his back up against the wall, breathing heavily but still too pumped full of adrenalin to feel any real pain. He nodded vigorously and cracked half of a fright-induced smile. "Y-you wont tell Roderich, yeah? You wont tell him, right?"

"You're a lucky man, Jack. You're lucky I'm so nice." Max said, smoothing his sleeves back down. He had intended on going light on the man; he had known him since he was just an overworked college kid looking for something to keep him up through long study binges, and he was a little sentimental because of it. He had also just finished an amazing vacation, so he didn't have the pent up frustration to vent onto the man.

"Thank you," Jack's voice cracked and he began to cry fat tears of relief. "Th-thank you, thank you so much Max, I knew you wouldn't kill me. I knew we were still f-f-friends."

"Keep your head down, Jack." Max advised. "The Family's all worked up right now and if Roderich hears about this he'll send his twins. You don't want that, I don't want that, so don't make it happen."

The tweaker nodded his head and watched Max make his way toward the door. After a moment, just before the Max had gone, he finally found his voice. "M-Max, hey my man, d-d-do you think you could hook me up?"

Maximo shook his head with a sigh and dipped his fingers into his pocket. He produced a small bad of methamphetamine and threw it over his shoulder, uncaring to where it landed. He walked out of the apartment with the sound of Jack's boney knees scrambling over the hard floor toward where the drugs had landed and a long mantra of gratitude.

Max loved most of his job. He liked the flexible hours, the generally exciting work, the high pay. One thing he didn't like was the occasional bought of research it required. This was one of those times. He was in the library, his head resting against his palm as he flipped through old newspapers. He read up on every killing committed by the local murderers that he could find, hoping to find some sort of connection. There wasn't much of a pattern to work with. The victims always has some of their flesh stripped away, the attractive and young ones (with no preference to gender) were often sexually assaulted, they seemed to prefer knives and guns. They would be in their early twenties. Judging from their father's height, they wouldn't be the tallest guys. Not short, exactly, but nothing impressive. Blond, one with blue eyes and one with the oddest color that could only be explained as some shade of purple. They had been in the area for some times now, which was a little strange for them. They normally moved around more than this.

Max sighed harshly and let his head fall to the table, his forehead making a dull thump on the wooden surface. Nothing about this was useful, everyone knew this stuff. It wasn't helping him get any closer than the cops, and they were about as far as a country mile. He sighed again. They were presumably in the area. They couldn't keep jobs under their real names but that wouldn't stop them from just stealing an identity. There were two of them when they started but that didn't mean that they were still together. Anyone as inherently violent as them could have easily gotten into a fight and tried to kill one another. They could have just drifted apart. Evidence suggested that they were still together but it all just guesswork in the end.

It was all so god damned frustrating.

Their victims were found basically any old place. There didn't seem to be some deep-seeded physiological reason for them to do what they did. They weren't like the BTK, they weren't like Zodiac, they weren't similar to Delphine LaLaurie. They didn't seem to have any reason to do what they did outside of "it's fun." If this had been a movie there would be some deep, tortured-soul reasoning behind what they did that Max could exploit, but sadly he lived in the real world and things didn't just fall into place so easily.

"Okay, so Vargas was in an old hotel...." Max mumbled to himself, going over the most recent victims he had been reading about for the past hour. There had been a woman, a sexy little trophy wife to some lawyer. Three women before that, all of them young and virile. One was a hairdresser, one was a stripper, and the final was a collage student. Two men before that, a mechanic and a librarian. An old woman who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. All of them but the elder had been raped at some point, but that didn't explain much. Well, only one person's DNA was ever found in the semen so at least Max could assume one of them had a massive inferiority complex. "Rape is about power, not sex" and all of that.

Not that that information helped him any.

He sat there, thinking and wishing for a drink and a night on the... Suddenly his eyes flew wide and he rustled through some of the papers. He drug a map closer to himself and unrolled it. The trophy wife was found in her home on East Broadway. The hairdresser near Grand Street, the stripper in the alley behind her place of work the Cheetah Club on 43rd street, the college girl in Gramercy Park. The mechanic and the librarian had been found together on 42nd street. All of them had been dressed well, all of them had alcohol on their systems. He pulled out his phone and shot a text to PICKUP.

Was there anything similar on the skin bro victims? Not their personal features or jobs or anything, but a mark?

A few tense minutes passed before a reply came. When? Sorry, I was taking a shit.

The last six, not counting the old woman who was shot and robbed.

Five of them had a reddish-blue smear of ink on their hands, but it doesn't seem to mean anything.

Max grinned. He knew a place in lower Manhattan that marked it's patrons with a red and blue stamp. Suddenly his phone rang and he jumped. When he checked it, his grin widened.

"Hola?"

Arthur's voice came through the speaker. "Hey are you holding?"

Max paused, thinking for a moment how he was going to make this all work. "What are you looking for?"

"Everything."

A/N:

I do not own: Axis powers: Hetalia, Versace, Zenith, or Bugatti cars.
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