The Sin Hunter: Double or Nothing

You can Always Fly Solo

Teardrops glistened on the lip of the rooftop, following a trail past the ventilators and exhaust pipes to the very edge, overlooking the clouded, foggy city skyline of Greed. There, with boots flirting along a drop into the cold, dark alleyways below, the younger of the Sin Hunters sat crouched, balled up in a bundle of browns, grays and blacks. Her fedora, matching the visage of her mentor's icon of death and despair, blew gently in the hot wind of the trembling dystopia ahead of her. This world, these people, it was all becoming too much for her to bear.

'I take it all back, I take everything back,' Jules whispered to herself, pinching her arms and her knees occasionally, 'this is all a dream, an illusion. I just want to wake up and be back home.' Jules raised her torn red eyes to the air, watching the sky above grow darker as Hell's equivalent of night began to set in. As wind blew a few stray leaves across the dark green rooftop, footsteps approached the girl. "I understand you want to go back home, kiddo. Fact is, you signed up for this in the first place." Jules didn't take her eyes off of the horizon. She knew who was speaking to her.

"Yes, I've been taking psych lessons from the ol' charmer in the district nearby. I know when somebody needs to vent." Jules shifted her eyes to her left, watching as the dark green, neon billboard blinding lights became blurred with the flash of silver and purple when Deck kicked his boots over the ledge, sitting beside her. His gauntlets draped over his knees when the shorter Demon spoke. "I was exactly like you not so long ago. A Demon who wanted to charge into the biggest battles and be the last man standing. I wanted fame, glory, a nice girl and the highest seat in Hell."

Jules felt her eyes clearing when he spoke, and Deck heaved before exhaling, removing a toothpick from his amethyst-fractured lips. "But times changed. I saw the value in stepping back and thinking before I threw the first punch. And I think you'd benefit from something like that." Jules slumped out of her balled posture, kicking her own boots over the edge and waving them back and forth, her heels tapping on the wall below. "I'm just sick and tired of waiting and waiting and not fixing this soon. I'm worried that every second we wait-"

"Somebody else has to pay the price," Deck cut in. "I get how you feel. I was your age when I realized what had happened to my sibling because I didn't pay back the mob. So what did I do?" He asked, turning to wrap a silver gauntlet around the younger Sin Hunter's shoulder. Jules turned her sniffling, teary-eyed face toward the Demon's starry, vertically arranged eyes. "I bided my time, trained and forced myself to be strong enough to stand up, and then I beat those guys to death when they came around again. Yeah, that's what I did."

Jules' heart began beating faster, but the Demon removed his hand from her shoulder, returning his palms to his sides on the ground. "I don't like what I do. But it's nature, not nurture, that inspires me to do these things." Jules shifted in her spot, turning to face Deck with a pained expression. "But you don't have to be. It doesn't have to be that way." Deck shifted his facial features like a proud hand in poker, chuckling softly before he replied, "You say that like it's a curse. I'm not upset with myself. And we've all had our guilty pleasures and our wrongs.

"What's important now, more than ever," Deck concluded, gently tapping a finger against Jules' tactical equipment, "is that you can bring yourself to admit you've got problems." Jules stood up slow, her boots trembling on the ledge of the building as she reached for her holster, extracting a miniature submachine gun from her belt. Twirling the rapid fire weapon around in her hands, Jules tilted her fedora down to a sitting Deck, hands in his lap and eyes waiting for a response. Her long, now cloaked black hair rustled in the wind, draping over her shoulders when she spoke.

"I'm going to find some help. Bile's done some bad things to these people, and there's bound to be someone who can side with us." As Deck sat forward, responding to an answer he was not expecting to hear, Jules stepped onto the ledge, breathing easily with cleared eyes and a sharp smile like her mentor's. "I'm off to go get some allies. I'm not asking you to come with me, stay as long as you'd like. But if you do come along, I'd appreciate it." As Deck reached a gauntlet out to grab her, Jules sprinted forward, her boots soaring across the alley to the rooftop over.

While the Sin Hunter's trench coat billowed out behind her, Deck rose to his hooded feet quickly, tucking his nails between his teeth as he twisted and turned back and forth, back and forth. He faced the door back downstairs, then the rooftops. Jules was almost out of sight now. At last he struck his forehead, his lonesome, pale yellow horn shaking in his sea of green hair as he groaned. "Ooh, they are not gonna be happy to see me after this," he muttered, turning into a cartwheel and side flipping across the ledge after Jules, disappearing in a matter of seconds.