Spare Me Your Alpha Nonsense - 7. Chapter 7

So I kinda fucked the bathroom up a bit with that punch. The stall that was behind me was shattered into pieces. The toilet bowl that had been behind it had blown apart as well, which caused water to start spilling all over the cracked tiled floor. All this was going on as the lights sparked and flickered above me. The sink I had cracked earlier seemed to have crumbled apart in the aftermath of that punch as well.

‘What the hell even happened just now?’ you might be asking me, ‘Why would a punch from you cause this much damage? What does any of this have to do with non magical defense?’ What you are looking at is why I handle normal humans with kid gloves. If I had conventional super strength like a Denizen that would be one thing, however my family does not have conventional super strength. Our non magical defense is a much stranger and in some ways more volatile ability than that.

See, when we throw a legitimate punch at something, our non magical defense bursts outwards at the point of contact to aggressively protect the body from being harmed from the fist colliding with the object. The size of this invisible burst varies depending on how much damage would have actually been done to that part of the body should it have been allowed to hit. Considering I threw that punch at the devil with everything I had, the end result was it looked like someone had chucked a grenade into the bathroom.

Several Staff members came into the bathroom and looked at the damage that happened in there with some shock on their face. They did not seem to know how to process this situation.

Protip for getting yourself out of trouble for property damage like this; Exploit the collective unconscious and act really mad.

“What’s the big idea?!” I yelled at the two staff members, “I come in here to go to the bathroom and suddenly the stall just explodes on me! I could have died just now!”

“I am so sorry sir! Are you hurt? Please come out here and…”

Listen, don’t judge me alright? I cannot afford to remodel a restaurant bathroom! Of course, since they thought that an explosion happened inside of the restaurant bathroom, the waitstaff had to evacuate the building of its customers and employees while a bomb-squad went inside and checked everything out. Yep, because I decided to throw a punch in the bathroom, everyone had to stand outside in the parking lot while the authorities tried to figure out what happened.

There I was, sitting on the edge of an ambulance car while paramedics checked me over, thinking about how shit this day had been so far. It almost made me question why I had even left my family in the first place all those years ago. What had any of this been for at the end of the day? Why have I been subjecting myself to this purgatory all this time. Then I remember what my childhood was like before I had seen that fateful glimpse into the outside world.

I never actually saw another living person that wasn’t a Borisov until I was thirteen. Isn’t that wild? First thirteen years of my life I was completely sheltered from the outside world, shuffling around from one of our secluded compounds after another for my training. No television. No fast food. No public school. No movies. No neighbors. My entire existence was just the Borisov family and their mission to fight the denizens of the night.

You know what I did for my fifth birthday? I stood in a firing range with my arms outstretched, naked as the day I was born. My family, from my older siblings to even some of the elders trained fully automatic weapons on my tiny ass body and opened fire. I had to stand there, biting my lip and preventing myself from crying out in pain as each bullet bruised my flesh. I couldn’t tell you how many rounds they fired off at me in that firing range, but I know the floor was just littered with spent shells before it was all said and done. My ass had to slowly turn around and let them shoot fucking everywhere too. There wasn’t a spot on my flesh that didn’t have some kind of a bruise on it before it was all said and done.

It was so loud, I remember it like it was yesterday. So many flashing lights from the roaring muzzles. So many stinging sensations as the bullets just barely pushed through my non magical defense and crashed into me, rippling my skin with the impact. I couldn’t cry out though. I had to be strong and show that I could take the pain. I had to show I was a true Borisov. It was fuckin hard though. Let me tell you my eyes were watering something awful before it was done. Somehow my five year old ass managed to keep that shit together though.

This wasn’t even a punishment either. This was just their fucked version of welcoming you into the broader family. See, Only a Borisov could not only live through being shot at by a firing squad like that and not only live, but do so with your head held high and not yell out in pain. My elders were actually rather surprised because I had managed to get through my initiation without a single broken bone. It was normally common for a Borisov to at least get a broken finger or fractured rib or two from the bombardment since non magical defence can be overwhelmed. I was praised for being particularly strong. Hell, I even took pride in it!

See, My family was rather extreme with how they trained us kids. From five to thirteen I lived with my siblings and my cousins of similar ages all together in one large group. We ate, slept and trained together that whole time, and none of it in what you would consider a hospitable environment. I didn’t just have to learn how to do reading, writing, and arithmetic for example. I had to learn how to do those things while inside of a classroom that was heated to several hundred degrees fahrenheit, or set to such frigid temperatures that boiling water would freeze before it even left a bucket.

They always made sure we were stressing our non magical defense to the absolute limit at all times. We were never allowed to be comfortable. If we couldn’t recite every possible way to slay a vampire or some other obscure type of denizen on a moment's notice, we were quite viciously punished for it. The worst of it was the Rod of Correction. Fuck did I hate that goddamn thing. I’d rather have my bare ass shot repeatedly with a shotgun at point blank range than get caned with that damn Rod of Correction.

The Rod was a magic item designed for corporal punishment. It fucking hurt like crazy, triggering every fucking nerve in your body at the same damn time no matter where it struck you. That’s not to say it didn’t hurt worse where the rod did strike you, but I’m just trying to tell you that it didn’t leave the rest of you out of the equation. Usually when the Rod was used we’d have to hold our feet up and let the elder strike our soles with the fucking thing. Let me fucking tell you what, there is not a single kid I know who was able to get through a session with the Rod without shrieking out in pain.

I only had that hellish thing used on me a couple times in my youth, but it was usually for some exceptionally egregious disobedience or mistake on my part. Normally the punishments are administered via high caliber firearms against our bare back, buttocks, and legs, as they could do damage without actually leaving lasting injuries on our bodies.

You might think, Jesus Hunter, that sounds pretty fucked up! How did you get through such a childhood without serious emotional and psychological trauma?

Bold of you to assume I didn’t get traumatized!

No honey, you are talking with someone who’s been through a shit load of therapy since I made my break with my family. I had to, shall we say, obfiscate what I went through with more normal sounding abuse for the benefit of the therapist's suspension of disbelief, but yeah it took a long time to really adjust and come into my own out here.

When did I escape from my family? Why did I do that when all I knew was their side of the story? You know what, sure, fuck it, today’s been going shit anyway I might as well delve into the worst moment in my life on top of it.

It was fifteen years ago during an outing with my great uncle, Sir Cromwell Borisov. Yes, that’s a sir with a capital S. Sir Cromwell is a knight hailing from the medieval times and is one of the only Borisovs who actually have gray hair. If you want a mental image of this man, picture Santa Claus and Robin Hood fused together into an eight and a half foot tall muscle bound monstrosity of a man, and you almost have what he looks like on your average tuesday.

He always wore green, and he always wore tights that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. In fact he had this pouch section around the crotch that just accentuated his fucking junk for the world to see. Apparently Cod Pieces were all the rage back in the day and good ol Uncle Cromwell just never gave the style up. Though honestly if I was hung like the man I might want to show that shit off all the time as well.

Side tangent, but I’ve always been curious if Goliath from that old Bible story might be related to the Borisovs. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? The Dude was about the same size as my oldest living relatives, about nine feet tall, and his ass was taken down by a single, probably divinely enchanted pebble launched by a brat who was favored by a God. I don’t think that’s the case since we Borisov’s didn’t gain our powers till the middle ages, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Goliath’s bloodline didn’t have a similar ritual cast upon it as ours did. Hell, that might be where we got the damn spell from!

Shit, I might need to look into that later.

Back to uncle Cromwell; On my thirteenth Birthday I was selected by my Knighted Uncle to be his squire. Man was that an involved ceremony. I remember walking into that subterranean stronghold and thinking I had been taken right back into the middle ages with how it was set up. The main Borisov stronghold where my oldest Relatives live is actually dressed up like a castle from the time period. The hallways were filled with tapestries, the floor and arched walls and ceilings were all made with stone work. The walls were even lined with honest to god torches. It had such a mystical otherworldly quality to it that our other compounds just do not have.

We were never allowed into this central compound, not until we reached the age of thirteen and were chosen by someone to be a squire. The fact that I had been brought there on my birthday had drilled home that not only had someone picked me to be their squire, but they had done so well in advance. One of my older brothers had to wait two months after his birthday before he had been called to the central compound.

Everything about my thirteen birthday was dripping with ceremony. I mean you should have seen the getup they had me in at the time. I would have put a renaissance festival to shame with how authentic my look was. Between the tights I was wearing, those tiny ass cloth shoes that would not have seemed out of place on a ballet stage, and the truly ostentatious and frilled out tunic and sleeves I was wearing on top of that feathered cap; I was the spitting image of some squire boy right out of one of those old medieval paintings.

Now a boy with more modern sensibilities would not want to be caught dead in clothing like what I was wearing at the time, however for me it was like wearing a baptismal robe. Everything about that moment in my life just screamed of how important and grand it all was that I was going to present myself in front of the Elders and find out who my Knight that I would be squireing under would be.

At the time, I was wholesale bought into their propaganda. I knelt down before my elders like a good little lad, all bright eyed and full of wonder staring up at those men who were so huge and had lived for hundreds of years. It was like meeting King Arthurs knights of the round table in person. It had that same unearthly quality to it. It was there in that room, kneeling before them as the stained glass window behind them radiated magical light into the subterranean fortress that my great uncle Cromwell stood up and walked down, lifting me up off the ground onto my feet and declaring that I was to be his personal Squire from that point on.

I tell you what, I was starstruck. You have got to understand how big of a deal it was that it was Sir Cromwell out of everyone to have picked me. Sir Cromwell was one of the only Elders still active in the modern day and was still taking on Squires to train. Most of my oldest Relatives have taken to plotting and scheming behind closed doors and acting like Feudal Kings in the modern day. Cromwell was that cool Elder who still got his hands dirty and fought the good fight along with his much younger descendants.

Sure he dressed fucking weird, but he was basically a rock-star to us kids at the time. A rock-star who came down to us lowly kids and picked me out of everyone else to come join him on his adventures in the outside world. My older brothers and sisters just seethed with jealousy over me being picked by Cromwell. Picked by the guy purported to have slayed more denizens than damn near anyone else in the family.

There’s a reason why I compared him with your Santa Claus as well. My Uncle had an infectious booming laugh that was a lot like the Jolly Old Saint. So much in fact that I’m kinda curious if some enterprising fellow back in the day might have taken some notes off of my Uncle’s appearance. He’s certainly been around long enough to have inspired something like that. He also loved to hang out with us kids when we were taking a break from training and regale us with his adventures from way back when. If there was an Elder that everyone loved, it was Uncle Cromwell.

I hate Uncle Cromwell now. Probably more out of anyone else in my family. See, on that outing with Uncle Cromwell I got to learn what our family really had been doing all this time. Growing up I got the sanitized propagandized version of what we were training for. Werewolves, wraiths, witches, warlocks, vampires, any type of denizen you could think of was portrayed as irredeemable monsters that need to be put down to save all of humanity. The punishing environment we lived in as children was drilled into us as being necessary because we needed to be ready for anything when we came up against the enemy.

That first day we finally went out hunting for Denizens was something I will never be able to forget. I still have nightmares about it. Yet, I’m almost happy in a sick way that my great uncle chose that family as our first target, cause it served to really rip off the lifetime of propaganda I had been fed all at once.

We were out in the middle of nowhere in this scenic place that honestly could have been a national park if it wasn’t so separated from the rest of civilization. We were still far enough away from modern life that our activity wasn’t going to be readily noticed. It was also relatively near one of our base of operations in the upper midwest. You’d be surprised just how uninhabited a lot of the country actually is when you really break it down.

A shifter family had unwittingly got onto our territory for a picnic at the time. It was these young kids, no more than in their early twenties with this little scamp of a son running around on their picnic blanket. I remember my uncle pointing them out through a sniper scope to me from atop a waterfall cliff and the first thought that popped into my head was; this has got to be some kind of mistake right?

This had to be a mistake. Those three couldn’t possibly be what we were looking for. They were smiling and laughing and looking at each other with affection in their eyes. They laughed delightedly at their little boy stumbling over his legs on the safe picnic blanket and play tickled the little guy as he tried to get up. Not only did I not see any monsters that I had been so thoroughly warned about, I was actually envious of the kid and the life he had with his parents.

Then my uncle blew the boys brains out from on top of the cliff with a silver bullet.

I remember seeing it happen through my own sniper scope and just freezing in place. I couldn’t think. Neither could the boys parents. They were laughing and playing with their child just seconds earlier, and now their clothes were covered in his blood and graymatter.

The couple shifted at that point after they figured out where their attackers were perched. I can still remember their sorrow and rage filled faces as they shifted into some kind of Lion-like creatures. My uncle took down the woman next, laughing his jovial laugh at how ‘feisty’ the denizens had gotten after he splattered their ‘cub’s’ brains over their little picnic.

I couldn’t move, but I was getting steadily louder with my protests at what my great uncle was doing, my heart was thumping so wildly as I realized what was really happening. These shifters weren’t the monsters. We were. The Borisov family were the monsters. They weren’t hurting anybody. They were just having a picnic. I didn’t even know what a picnic was at the time, but I knew enough to know they weren’t doing any harm. They were just a loving family.

I finally snapped when my uncle was about to kill the father, who was getting closer to our spot. I grabbed my uncle's rifle and tried to yank it away from him. I managed to move my uncles aim just enough that he shot the werelion in the shoulder instead of the head, knocking him out of the sky mid jump and sending him into some trees. I don’t even remember what my uncle yelled at me at the time I was too busy being in fight or flight mode.

I punched my uncle in his stupid white bearded face so hard it sent him flying off into the sky and well off the waterfall cliff we were perched on. The concussive blast from the punch utterly destroyed the footing we had been standing on as well, and I fell straight into the water fall.

I would have drowned if it hadn’t been for Eduardo. He had seen that I was trying to stop my uncle, and he had seen me punch him like that before I fell into the water below. That man, that shifter dove into the water and fucking saved my worthless ass after I let my uncle kill his wife and kid. Even as the silver was killing him on the inside, as the damn stuff is like poison to shifters, he dove into the water and fucking saved my hide.

I never apologized so much in my life as I did to Eduardo as he died on that riverbank. I didn’t know about hospitals, I didn’t know about anything. All I had known was what my family had taught me those first thirteen years. They sure as shit didn’t teach me how to save a shifter from dying of Silver poisoning and a fatal gunshot wound.

So yeah. Fuck the Borisovs. I left that day and I never looked back. Every hardship and lesson I learned after that day was fucking nothing compared to the pain and suffering we put Eduardo and his family through on that day they thought was just going to be some fucking picnic.

“Are you doing alright Hunty Wunty?” Agatha asked me as she approached the ambulance. I realized a bit too late that I had started to let some tears flow thinking about that awful day. Fuck I’m being far too emotional today. Snap out of it Hunter, get yourself together. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve before I smiled up at my Aunt, trying to keep my hatred of our family off of my interactions with her.

“Yeah Auntie, I’m fine. Just been having a bad day is all…”

The worst thing about the ensuing years dealing with my family was trying to wrap my head around the fact that they simply do not understand why I left. My uncle wasn’t even mad at me. He thought about what happened similar to a boy being upset about seeing a bunny get killed on a hunting trip. It was normal and almost expected for some more sensitive lads to get upset about the act of killing, but ultimately it was just a sign of immaturity to my family. They thought my reaction was being childish and nothing more.

Hell whenever Cromwell talks about the event he spends more time talking about how impressive my right hook was than the fact that he killed a whole shifter family. That was just an incidental detail to him in the humorous tale of him getting slugged by his little nephew and squire. As far as my family was concerned I was still his Squire and I was just being a rebellious rascal playing hookie.

It was while I was thinking about the surreal mindset of my family members that I heard Felix in a heated argument with what looked like his manager. It was so heated in fact that he stripped off his apron and tossed it over to the other person.

“Gurl you must be out your damn mind if you think I’m going to keep working here! After our bathroom turned into a damn demilitarized zone? Bitch please miss me with your nonsense.” Felix swiveled his head and wagged his finger at his manager for emphasis, his other hand planted firmly on his hip. He always ramped up his sassy levels whenever he was aggravated like this.

“I don’t need your money boo, I only worked here for the tips. Tips we have to pool together with everyone else at the end of the night despite some of us raking in way more than others I might add. We done honey, I’m outa here.”

My heart leapt into my throat as the now former waiter sashayed over to me. My aunt flashed Felix a knowing smile and made herself scarce, and I realized from their non verbal exchange almost immediately that the two of them had talked about me while I had been in the bathroom. Oh shit. I knew those two would be a bad combination together.

“Well Hunter, here I am without a shift to go back too,” He gestured his head over to my aunt with a growing smirk, “Here you are with an Aunt who’s about to go on a night clubbing with yours truly. What do you say to your cute self about joining us on a night on the town? Or do you want to stay in this stuffy ambulance all night?”

Fuck my face was on fire with how Felix was leaning down and planting his hands on either side of the ambulance, one on the floor and the other on the door that was partially open. I couldn’t help it, I gulped like a goddamn cartoon character before I managed to squeak out a response.

“Y-yeah that sounds like a great idea! I haven’t b-been out in ages.” Fuck you voice! Why do you have to crack like an informational video about puberty! ‘Sometimes your body experiences chANGes,’ sounding ass over here making me squawk like a freshmen in high-school. Felix just giggled at my reaction and cracking voice and winked flirtatiously at me.

“See, I knew there was nothing to worry about.” Felix said in a more soothing tone, grinning like the goddamn Cheshire Cat as he leaned in closer to my blushing face. “The gurls thought I chased you off for good, but I knew in my gut your shy little tush just got cold feet about our date. It’s alright honey, I know you’re nervous and new to being around someone forward like me, but I’ll make sure to take it nice and slow for you.”

Shit I was harder than a diamond when Felix brushed his hand over my skinny jeans, feeling my hard on right there for the briefest of moments before he swiveled around and called over his shoulder to me, gesturing for me to follow him with a slight curl of his finger.

“Come on cutie, your aunt and I are going to tear the night up and I want you to come with us! But first we need to find you a look that suits you much better than this bumming it thing you got going on right now.”

Oh Jesus I shouldn’t be doing this right now. This is playing right into the Devil’s hands, but goddamn if I didn’t hop off from the ambulance and followed after Felix like a dog with his tail wagging a mile a minute behind him.

Fuck I’m in trouble.