beware the serpent // val&seb&nacho

[Deleted]

v a l e n t i n o   s a l a z a r

It wasn't his first time being shot at, but he never expected it to be his last. 

The final day of Valentino Izan Salazar's life started as any other, he presumed, as he woke up to another empty house. His children had grown up without him ever giving them permission to: Jacinta, far and away out of his life, Lucrezia and Violetta both burned and buried, too weak to survive in this world, Sebastien, the prodigal son he always imagined he would be, and Elena, hiding from monsters just as she always did. Even his wife, Marina, avoided him these days - since his first affair, with Talon Irvine. 

A mistake he didn't regret, he lived without love just as he was always meant to. Valentino could never remember a couple throughout history who's love actually lasted; it died, long, long before they did. 

When the first bullet comes, he suspects she had been the one- Marina. She had threatened to kill him before, and today seemed as green a day as ever to fulfill an old promise. He ducked in his grandiose kitchen, the stained glass bursting on impact with chartreuse shards scattering across the onyx tile floor. Valentino shudders with the shattering, but doesn't hesitate, scuttering his way to the staircase. 

One might think to run out of the house, out of the fire rather than deeper into, but Valentino realized as a second, third, forth- shot rang into his manor, this was no attack of passion. He thought, perhaps, a Captiol assassin? Maybe even political, the Zodiia's making a revenge attack on his life for his slaughter of half their clan. He remembered the day with the taste of gunpowder in the air, how he shot down seven of twelve siblings all with one round of an assault rifle. He would do the same today, with just a pistol in his underwear if he had to. 

He'd done worse with less. 

The shoot off takes place in the master bedroom, a massive room with a curtained bed larger than the kitchen in some people's homes. It's he, Valentino, with a Winchester pistol, decades years old with tens of bodies slain with its bullets, against that of his own son, Sebastien, with what he recognizes to be his own shotgun, a serpent etched into the wooden body. 

"Il figlio," he says, with a fat cigar between his teeth, "it was always going to be you, eh?" 

[Deleted]

s e b a s t i e n   s a l a z a r 

Basilisk. A mythical reptile with a lethal gaze or breath, hatched by a serpent from a cock's egg.

He was always something different from his siblings, something better. Unlike the other 4, his sisters, Sebastien was ever devoted to his parents' expectations, doing everything he could to catch their attention. Jacinta was the first heir, who gave it all away after she got her blood crown. Violetta, the second, who got murdered with everyone to watch how weak she was. Then Lucrezia, bitter as she was, they thought she died to turf wars, autopsy showing two bullet wounds: one in the gut, one in the skull.

They suspect Vito Ababannado.

Lucky for Sebastien, it was him all along. 

Sebastien hatched slowly, a shadow to his older sisters, doomed to the background until he made his own way. He clawed towards his own light, never missing an opportunity to get ahead or cut someone out. He kept knives in his sleeves incase of loose threads - his father was getting in the way. Word of Valentino's affair with Isobel Krigel didn't die away in District 4, it followed him. 

Brought it back home with them, tinting the air around them a sickly pale green. In a way, Sebastien saw it as the cardinal sin: turning against your own. He hid his better than his father's, skeletons in the closet all starting to blend together into an empire of bones and bloody bits. 

And soon, soon it would all be his. 

He had the motive, he had an alibi, and he had his mother's blessing. Kill Valentino, an objective 26 years in the making, the day of he found himself in a sense of peace. Euphoria beholds him, he brings two men with him for back up, but he holds them with tight leashes - the kill is mine. A testament to the man he will become, the slayer of Valentino Salazar, redeeming the family name of his decade of incompetence. 

The three of them come through the kitchen window, attempting to catch him in the light. He wastes no time chasing after, hiking himself up and through the splintered glass, his boots crunching shards and tile alike. Sebastien wields a shotgun, keeping his head low as he trails his father's blood stains. There's a sense of guilt that spreads from hit gut as he corners the man who birthed him, molded him into the man Sebastien became. 

It's nothing compared to the satisfaction that'll be his legacy. 

"Who else would waste the bullets," Sebastien leaves his father with one last question, the answer finding Valentino in the stomach in the form of a shotgun spray. He takes a second before marching over, gun hot in hand, to find his father gargling on his own blood, a pool of crimson leaking from below his ribs. Sebastien begins dialing his father's- no, his right hand man as he unloads a second shot into the cranium of his father. 

"Hey, Tio? This is Baz," he says, disposable phone to his ear, "I've got a mess I need your help cleaning up." Nacho was like an uncle to him, apart of his life since he was a kid and, if his father never got him involved, Sebastien would have never guessed the things that man has seen in his life. When there's dirty work, Nacho's hands are always the dirtiest, "and look, I'm in charge now." 

Code for I killed him. 

"So let's make this quick, kapeche?"

 

[rook]

ignacio moya

You can feel his voice seeping like poison into your ear from your cellphone receiver. Sebastian's tone is smooth and confident, but there's an underlying darkness that turns even your cold blood colder.

"-and look, I'm in charge now. So let's make this quick, kapeche?"

The line cuts abruptly before you can even consider a reply, a hollow drone filling the silence. You pause, listening to it for some time, considering the weight of the words spoken to you, before eventually hanging up yourself.

So. Valentino is dead. The man you've worked with for nearly fifteen years. The list of things you did for that man stretch further than maybe they should have. You tortured, got tortured, torched houses, housed murderers, murdered peacekeepers, kept the peace, broke the peace, broke bones, broke trust. All in the name of Valentino Salazar, and family - and in the end it was family that caught up with him. So busy taking out the competition that he was too naive to notice he raised a den of vipers beneath him. You suppose it's poetic, in a way.

You can't afford to get sentimental here - but how can you not be, when the last two decades of your life have been in service to such a man? It will take time to adjust now that Sebastian is calling the shots. Young people and their young ideas will be the death of us all. You watched this boy grow up, his innocence now been corrupted with ambition, his boyish charms laced with venom. He was waiting for the right time to strike. He knows his potential is limitless now.

You have two choices.

You can carry on, business as usual, except you are now answering to the usurper to the Salazar throne - a boy, yes a boy, who's aspiration and greed will no doubt outrun his practicality and judgement. He will need guidence, he will need experience - he will need you, that's why he rang you. You can continue to serve the family that you consider your own, make good money, and live the good life. You will however have to bury Valentino and everything you built together, and start down a new path that is likely a very new and different direction.

Alternatively, you can leave Seven. They'll hunt you down, and maybe they won't find you for a good four or five years, and you can live a good life with the money you've made without having to do any more dark deeds - but eventually, one day, there will be a score of bullets in your chest and a Salazar standing over your body.

So, really, you have one choice.

The morning air is thick and oppressive, clinging to your shirt. You raise a forearm to wipe away the first beads of sweat that begin to perspire, as you make your way through the urban streets of Seven. The pavement before you shimmers. The sun, a boiling white, hangs above you; a merciless god. You make your way up the stone pavement to the mansions doors - left open - and find your way to Valentino's office.

The corner of the room is painted a terrible scarlet, a decolourised lump of a near-naked corpse sat decomposing in the puddle of blood. Flies buzz around his open mouth and try to crawl into the open bullet wounds. The stench invades your nostrils. You are overfamilar with the scent of death.

He looks oddly at peace, his jaw agape and eyes loosely staring somewhere at your knees. He had been holding a gun, but it now lies useless on the ground, his fingers desperately reaching for it like it can bring him back.

These streets are always red with someone's blood - today it just so happens to be his.

You stand in the middle of the room, drinking in the silence.

"Well. This is some mess, kid."

[Deleted]

s e b a s t i e n   s a l a z a r 

A dastardly serpent only has to strike once- now that it's done, Sebastien hardly knows what to do with himself. It's an exciting title, usurper, to have the forbidden fruit waved in front of you for so long and finally take the bite. Finally claim what's rightfully your's, it's almost addicting, a high unlike one he's felt before. And he's a chaser of it, in a way it's almost melancholic that it's over. A scheme he's been putting together since he realized how disposable his father made him, he would've never been in charge if Valentino had it his way. 

Well, he surely ate his words didn't he? 

Sebastien waves his hand in front of his father's limp head mockingly, checking for a sign of life that he knows isn't there. The first sign that Valentino Salazar was finally dead was that he didn't have anything to say - that man's most reliable weapon was a sharp tongue. There's a bit of pride knowing that Baz is the only person to hear his last words, that he gets that moment alone, father to son. He taps his father on the cheek, his jaw agape, rigor mortis setting in. 

"K, enough of that," he says to the corpse before straightening up, growing bored with the scene of his latest crime. It happened, onto the next, his agenda never ending. Valentino's dead- when's lunch? Sebastien spends the next few minutes on his parent's balcony, legs propped on the railing once he takes his seat on a cushy chair. He dials his mother's number and erases it, and dials it once more before backing out entirely - not yet, not yet. 

There's still work to do, but a boy never stops craving the attention of his mother. He wants to gloat, to hear his mother's congratulations or her sneers towards the man that is no longer; he wants the validation of knowing he did the right thing, killing the cheat that was Valentino. Instead, he sits and waits for his father's his right hand man to appear. 

"Oiii, Nacho!" He calls from the balcony at the sight of him, slightly delirious from the high of murder. Sebastien pulls himself to and fro the railing, pivoting on the heels of his boots as he waits for his Tio to make it up the stairs. 

Sebastien doesn't even notice when Nacho's finally made it into the room until he breaks the silence, greeting his "well. This is some mess, kid," with nothing but a laugh at first. You can say that again, killing's the easy part, cleaning up after is the tricky part. "Good thing I've got the best man for the job, eh?" He says, patting the family's heirloom on the shoulder as he takes in the view of his dead father once again. 

Yeesh, that's bad. 

There's a stench settling in the room that Sebastien hadn't noticed until coming back in from the balcony. Unavoidable once you notice it; he looks from his father's corpse to the splatter of blood and bile that takes over the east side of the room. "He looked like shit before I got here," he looks Nacho in the eyes as he speaks, what next? Nacho'd probably have a better idea on how to dispose of a body, Sebastien's plan was a bit silly. 

"I was thinking we cut him up and put him in a wood chipper. Can't be that hard, right?"