<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/0/0c/Doomtown2-Recovered2.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Walter Sinnett<br/><strong>Date:</strong>May 4th, 1876<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Evening<br/><strong>Location:</strong>The Scene of the Crime<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Christian Specter, Nathan Hunter, Marguerite Tuerny, Elisabeth Boyle, Open<br/><hr/>Walter Sinnett hated to be late to a party.<br/><br/>Of course, Walter was never invited the parties. The sort of people Walter hung round with didn't throw parties and the sort of people who threw parties didn't hang round with Walter. And if by mistake someone who did throw parties happened to find themselves hanging around Walter there was no way in God's green earth that they'd invite Walter. But Walt still came to parties. Admittedly as an interloper and admittedly normally to shake down either the host or the guests for cash but he still made it to parties. And he hated to be late. Of course, as an interloper he ran to his own schedule but he still liked to be punctual. If he decided he was going to show up to some gathering, beat the hell out of whoever was on the door, stick his knife in the face of the first person to object, make an example out of whoever the second person to object was, cop a feel of the prettiest girl and then relieve the guests of their purses and valuables he was damn sure going to arrive at the time he thought he would.<br/><br/>And Walter was on the edge of being late to this party.<br/><br/>One didn't have to be a genius to work out where the scream had come from. A small crowd had already gathered, looking and gawping and shouting and occasionally screaming as crowds are want to do. Walter liked crowds like that. It meant you could stab a man in clear daylight and the crowd would be too bothered staring to bother to chase you down. Just slip away into a back alley even as people were still wondering what happened. Easy as pie. So Walter knew crowds, knew how they thought, knew how they reacted. Knew the sense of shock, the sense of outrage, the sense of fear, the sense of simply not knowing but all the time wanting to be closer, wanting to be on the edge. They would watch but not touch, observe but not interact, shout but not help.<br/><br/>Which made them pretty feckin' useless right now.<br/><br/>Of course there was a general hubbub as this went on, shouts, screams, whispers. Walter didn't claim to have the best of ears; some say too many shots to the head, others say too many shots of alcohol and yet more say he simply wasn't born with great hearing. But he could pick out details and who could miss a cut glass English aristocratic accent?<br/><br/>Let's be clear. Walter didn't like the aristocracy. Bunch of stuck-up, decadent tosspots. Most of them were feckin' inbred anyway, cousins marrying cousins and all that crap. Never did a real days work in their life, couldn't get their feckin' breeches on without a butler, never had to struggle, never had to fight, got everything handed to them on a plate. Now, Walter didn't like self-made men either... those bastards got ideas above their station, went walking around like they were a feckin' gentlemen themselves. The seeming hypocrisy of this position didn't bother Walt. He barely even knew what “hypocrisy” was. If one were to look a little deeper they'd realise it was Walt actually trying to apply some level of rationalisation to his world, not that he intended to. He just didn't like anyone... and only afterwards came up with reasons why he didn't like 'em. But regardless, he didn't like the feckin' English aristocracy and he didn't like anyone who had a bloody aristocratic English accent.<br/><br/>But if there's one thing he liked less than the English aristocracy it was not having whisky.<br/><br/>And if there was one thing he liked less than not having whisky it was the sheep-shaggin' Welsh.<br/><br/>And if there was one thing he liked less than the sheep-shaggin' Welsh it was the bloody Scots.<br/><br/>And if there was one thing he liked less than the bloody Scots it was the bloomin' Irish.<br/><br/>And if there was one thing he liked less than the blooming Irish it was the feckin' Yanks.<br/><br/>And if there was one thing he liked less than the feckin' Yanks it was those self-same feckin' Yanks takin' the piss out of a fellow Englander. Even if that Englander was an inbred cuntin' aristocrat.<br/><br/>So when Walter heard a brief shout from who he could only assume was a survivor of whatever the hell had happened he felt an instinctive kinship with her. Yet another stranger in a foreign land. Well, he didn't know if she was a stranger or this was even a foreign land to her but what he did know that she had an English accent and in the absence of anything else that probably meant she was already his fifth favourite thing in Gomorra, behind his donkey, whisky, whores and fightin'. Not necessarily in that order.<br/><br/>Being somewhat late to the party did mean Walter had the advantage of getting to see how other people reacted. The first thing to note was the lawman pushing through the crowd. He wasn't wearing a snazzy uniform like a rozzer did in London town but Walt could spot them all the same. The casual arrogance, they way they assumed they ran the bloody world, that everyone would snap into line. Walt could spot a law man at 100 paces and he was considerably less than 100 paces away from this bastard as he tried to take control of his situation. Walter didn't like lawmen. He didn't like them at the best of times and he certainly didn't like them now when it was because of some bloody lawman that he was in his shithole place in this shithole country. Walter Sinnett should be back in London but instead he was out here with whatever the hell had caused the commotion. And all because of a lawman. No, lawmen were yet another addition to the long and seemingly never-ending list of things Walter didn't like.<br/><br/>But then he saw something he rather did like following along behind the lawman. Pair had likely been on a nice romantic evening stroll by the looks of it.<br/><br/>Raven dark hair. Swan neck. Walter had actually seen a swan once. Poor bugger must have got lost and taken a wrong turn to get down into Millwall docks. Pretty little creature, all serene and regal looking. Walter hadn't been that interested in that though. He'd been interested in the big, chunky breasts and wings and how he could fill a cook pot with it. Standing on the side of the waterway, noose in hand, hoping the blasted thing would swim itself towards him, glancing up to see “Chuckling” Billy Brown and a couple of his mates on the other bank doing the same bloody thing. The swan, seemingly unaware of the commotion it was causing or the fate that awaited it had continued to glide around until it came just a bit too close to Brown's crew and then, with a squawk and an explosion of movement their noose was around its necks and fair to say Walter was right bloody miffed at it. There went his dinner plans.<br/><br/>Fair to say he shouldn't have been.<br/><br/>First the swans snapping and kicking ended up breaking Brown's arm. He wasn't chuckling so much after that. And he chuckled even less the next day when, gorged on Swan meat, he'd woken up to the bluebottles kicking down his door and dragging him out. And chuckled even less when they hung him till he was dead. Walter had chuckled at that. Not because he disliked Billy... the two got on well enough... or at least, as well as Walter got on with anyone... but because the thought was so ridiculous. Walter had killed, maimed, injured and assaulted his way across the London underworld and had never kicked up anything like this fuss, yet kill, cook and eat a bloody bird and it was off to get crapped, to get your bloody neck stretched. How was anyone meant to know that unmarked Swans were the bloody Queen's property and killing one of them was treason? What a bloody messed up world where Walter could leave a man with a hole in his guts, screaming out his painful last few minutes in some filthy back alley and the rozzers simply shrugged their shoulders and said “that's life” but getting your dinner meant the whole police force came hunting you?<br/><br/>Anyway, the point is Walter had seen a swan before and seen their long, sleek necks and this woman had a long, sleek neck that reminded him of a swan. Not that he wanted to catch and eat her. Well, not in that way. The dress she was wearing was lovely. Walter wasn't one for sartorial elegance but he was one for seeing curves and that dress showed them all off without being blatant, without being scandalous, without making her look like a strumpet. He hadn't even seen her face and already he wanted to wear her legs for earmuffs. Not seeing her face may be a positive. Hell, Walter had spent half his life trying to avoid having to look into his conquests' faces. Nothing worse than shaggin' some nice warm body only to look down and see a pockmarked face, crooked nose, half the teeth missing and the other half yellow and rotten, ratty hair and, often worst of all, utterly bored eyes. That was damn near certain to make Little Walter turn tail and tuck up. Nah, far better to either keep your eyes closed, look at the ceiling up or do the bitch from behind.<br/><br/>And then the lady turned her head and in the pale light Walter quickly came to the realisation that he  really wouldn't mind looking at that as he went about his business.<br/><br/>But Walter hadn't left the warm and secure Casino Morongo... apparently Sweetrock owned it now but they still wouldn't give him a bloody employee discount... to look at women, however pretty they may be. No, he'd come out because there had been a big scream and some nasties were about. So as enjoyable as it would have been to just keep admiring whoever the hell that woman was, Walter had bigger fish to fry. He could pick out bits and pieces through the crowd, could see the hint of blood on the floor and walls, see a flash of milky, uncovered flesh. What the bloody hell had gone on here?<br/><br/><strong>“Hey, let me through. I wanna see the English woman's tits. Let me through... let me... arg<span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 8pt;">hhhhhhh</span>...”</strong><br/><br/>The unfortunate owner of the voice which suddenly raised in pitch before trailing off was some young whippersnapper, in Walt's mind barely free from his mother's tits, stood beside the tattered man and clearly focusing on the most important thing in the current scene, the chance to stare at a naked bosom. Now Walt wouldn't have minded... he himself wasn't one to turn down the chance to stare at a nice pair of udders... but for the fact that his scrawny young man was some jumped up gobshite colonial and he was disrespecting an Englishwoman.<br/><br/>And if there was one thing he liked less than some jumped up gobshite colonial it was those self-same jumped up gobshite colonials takin' the piss out of a fellow Englander. Even if that Englander was an inbred cuntin' aristocrat.<br/><br/>The man's voice wouldn't have been heard by anyone stood more than a foot away in the general commotion and as it got higher and then quieter as Walter fixed a steely grip around the poor fool's cock and balls and gave a nasty little twist no-one else seemed to notice. And Walt made perfectly sure his own voice was quiet as he whispered into the young man's ear. Forceful, full of threat and the promise of impending pain yes... but quiet.<br/><br/><strong>“Listen you feckin' slag, that ain't some feckin' Judy for you to wank one off over. That's a proper feckin' Englishwoman and you will bloody respect her, not gawp over her feckin' teets. You give her the respect she bloody deserves or I will feckin' find you you scum. You get me?”</strong><br/><br/>There was a frantic nodding of the head and the hint of tears in the eyes as the young man implicitly agreed that he would not do such a thing again and with a last twist Walt let the matter stay that way before pushing through the crowd to finally get a sight of what exactly had gone on.<br/><br/>And what a bloody sight it was.<br/><br/>Walter wasn't exactly a man unused to blood. He's shed enough of it... his own and others. He wasn't a man unused to death... he'd killed enough men to be beyond that point. He wasn't a man unused to the stink of meat, to the iron smell that came from gore. He'd stabbed men, shot men, beat men to death, mutilated men, crippled men. He'd carried corpses to the Thames and dumped them in, he'd chopped up bodies to make them easier to dispose of, he'd even worked in a butchers in his youth, killing and cutting up animals. He was not a coward and he was afraid of rolling around in the filth.<br/><br/>Yet even he came very close to taking a step back as the saw exactly what had gone on.<br/><br/>He could feel his pulse increase. He could feel his heart start to pound. He could feel that shiver that runs up your spine. He could feel his fingers tense. He was... afraid? Yes, that was a good term. Afraid. Not that he was going to chuck up all over his boots or hoof it out of there but Walter was afraid. He could control it, manage it... but he was afraid. He quite liked it. Walt hadn't been afraid in a long bloody time and yet here he was, feeling that tension, feeling the heightening of his senses as adrenaline started to flow around his body. He hadn't had a chance to visit one of the whores at Morongo before this mess started but if he was to find one now he'd probably shag her so hard he'd leave a hole in here. His senses were aflame. And he quite liked it. He tried to think back to the last time he had been so affected. And his memories flickered back to years before to a scene much like this one (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=167460.msg8285486#msg8285486), to an alley littered with body parts, to death strewn across the ground.<br/><br/>Walter wasn't a tracker. Give him the trail left by a beast out in the wild and he'd have been lost within five minutes. Even in a city, his hunting grounds, he couldn't follow a man by looking for his footprints, disturbed cobwebs and all that shit. He found people by using people. He looked for the shortest and most direct way to get to someone and that way normally involved finding someone who knew where the bastard he needed to find was and giving them a beating till they told him. And the beating may have been the most important part of that but it also meant reading people. Reading what they looked at. And Walter could see the lawman looking at something on the wall. Could make out the prints pressed into the building, going up the side. Walter wouldn't have seen it without the lawman looking at it to guide his vision. But now he had. And then he saw the lawman take off. Following the beast he guessed. Brave, stupid, dutiful sod.<br/><br/>And then he saw something glittering in the light.<br/><br/>He didn't have a huge amount of time to focus on it because some other bastard had decided he was going to take charge and send the crowd home. Good luck with that son. Although the man did have a pair of rather nice looking shooters in his hands... and had a voice that made Walter's nerves jangle a little bit more. Walter knew him. Well, not him personally but he knew the type. Stony. Like ice. Killers. Some men called Walter that but Walter didn't think he was. Sure, he thought nothing of killing someone but he took a savage joy in it. He enjoyed his job, he enjoyed beating someone down or sliding a knife across their throat. Those men didn't. They'd gun a man down with no more thought or joy than they'd put into doing up their boot laces. At least Walt thought that. He wasn't bad at reading people but neither was he the best. But that man had to look about him. The chill look of the dead.<br/><br/>But Walt wasn't going to go home and lock his door so he focused on the glittering, shiny thing.<br/><br/>Whenever there is death there are those who feed on carrion. Vultures, crows... or humans. Not bloody cannibals, but scavengers, jackals. And Walter was the alpha-jackel. He'd spent years quickly appraising bodies, totalling up what the most valuable pieces were and then punching away the other looters as he made off with all he could carry. And once he was able to tear his eyes off the general blood and gore experience kicked in. Most of the stuff was either shit or ruined. Crappy boots, crappy clothes and even the good clothes were torn to pieces and covered in blood. It looked like at least one of the poor sods had been worth a bit... a man who had once been a thief became good at seeing what was worth a pretty penny... but whatever had done this had ripped them apart so much that most of it was bloody worthless. Good pair of boots though. Maybe some jewellery hidden in there. But Walter knew enough to know rummaging through the dead didn't go down too well, especially in the immediate aftermath. No, if he was going to give this site a doing over, he'd have to wait until the killer had scared most of the crowd off and hope he could sneak in before the other scavengers had got the rest.<br/><br/>But the shiny thing. That was a different matter.<br/><br/>Now he was at the front Walter could see it. A sword and by the looks of it a decent one. Probably worth a bob or two. Walter knew about the using of blades even if his technical swordsmanship was rudimentary but he knew pretty much sweet fuck all about the making of them. That said he knew enough to recognise a half-decent one and this one looked all the way decent. Not just because he could sell it but because it was long, probably sharp and he could use it to cut or stab something. Something large and nasty and that could climb up walls after slaughtering some poor bastards.<br/><br/>Did I forget to mention that? Walt was thinking about becoming a hero.<br/><br/>Not for the same reasons as that bloody lawman. Walt could imagine his internal monologue now.<em> “I've got to save everyone.”. “Protect and serve”. “I am the law”. "I'm a police officer and I'm very important".</em>. Self-righteous bloody twaddle. He could imagine the killers monologue too<em>“What am I going to have for breakfast tomorrow? Oh, I just shot someone. So, breakfast?”</em>Even that poor bastard he'd just abused.<em>“Ouch, my balls.”</em>Walter wasn't thinking any of that. He wasn't going to be a hero because it was the right thing to do or because he was brave or any of that shit. He was going to be a hero because he was rational. Well, sort of rational.<br/><br/>A beastie killing people was bad for business. Not all businesses... gunsmiths, whores and strong drink did well at a time when people needed something to comfort them and keep them safe... but for most businesses and Sweetrock was a business. And a business dependant on mining wouldn't do very well if all the miners were too scared to even bloody show up because of some nasty. And Walter worked for Sweetrock. And if he did a good job here he may get both a pay rise and to do something other than scare a few miners and kick in a few heads. And Walter was also a villain. And villains got a reputation. But so did heroes. And if Walt was a hero then it was going to be a damn sight harder for some lawman to pick a fight with him. And beyond that, Walt was a villain who relied on the fact he was the scariest, nastiest bastard in town. He was the top of the food chain, he was the worst thing that could happen to someone. If some beastie was tearing people apart all over town then frankly Walt and his knives weren't that terrifying any more. And Walt couldn't be having that. People might start standing up to him. So he was going to be a damn hero.<br/><br/>And heroes had swords.<br/><br/>Walter didn't act furtively or try to hide what he was doing. He just marched into the blood and the mess, knelt down by the arm with the sword, pried the fingers away from it and was about to take the damn thing before someone shouted out. Pretty voice but Walter wasn't concerned with that too much. What he was concerned with was what she was saying.<br/><br/><strong>"Hey! Hey there!  What do you think you're doing?  Are you robbing the dead?!"</strong><br/><br/>Bloody hell. Just what he bloody needed. Who bloody cared that he was taking a dead man's sword? The dead man certainly didn't. He was dead and didn't care about much of anything any more. Not that he was going to put that argument to whoever it was who had shouted out. People were much too sentimental about stuff like that to be rational. To be rational like Walter Sinnett. And fuck it, Walter was a hero now. Heroes didn't have others come and shout at them for getting ready to be a hero.<br/><br/>He turned his head to see who it was that had shouted out. It was the pretty one. Bloody hell, Walt really knew how to bloody pick them didn't he? The pretty lady appeared to be comforting another pretty lady, a blonde, who now had a sheet wrapped around her protecting her modesty, although it did nothing to hide the blood that shone through. He guessed that was the Brit. How had she survived? These other poor buggers hadn't. Someone scare the beast off? Unlikely... a beast that can rip people apart like this wasn't likely to be scared off easy. So what the hell had happened? A question for another day. The question for now was the damn woman shouting her head off. He focused on her across the gloom, one eye burning red, his stare locking on, looking deeply into her. His voice may not have had chill of the grave within it that Christian's had but it was no less forceful, no lesser powerful, not less dominant, driven by a primal ferocity. Walter's voice didn't promise swift death in the way Christian's did. His promised pain. Long, unbearable pain. He was Walter “Do Down” Sinnett, the tattered man, the man who stalked the night, the man who had murdered and fought his way across London, God's forgotten creature, his mistake, his one regret. Fight him if you could, survive if he let you. In parts of London hushed whispers from mothers told their children to be good or Walter Sinnett would come to get them. He did not have pulp novels about him, he did not have newspaper clippings telling his tale... instead you shall know him by the trail of the dead left. And this woman sought to challenge him?<br/><br/><strong>“Shut your bloody mouth woman! I'm taking this bloomin' sword so I can chase after that lawman you're clearly shaggin', save his arse and stab whatever nasty it was that feckin' did this. So get out of my bloody way and get off my blasted case”</strong><br/>That feckin' told her. It was good being a hero, even if for all the wrong reasons.<br/><br/>He pried away the last finger from the hilt, pulling the sword and scabbard free, it having been ripped clear of the belt that had once held it when whatever it was that had done this had shredded its previous owner. Walt stuffed it into his belt, wedging it so it wouldn't fall clear but trapped against him so it wouldn't dangle free and trip up his own legs. Didn't need that when a beastie was coming after him. Prepared... well, as prepared as he could be without a regiment of cavalry with artillery support at his back... he stood and set off after Nathan, hurdling the same fence and catching sight of his form as he rushed through the scattered buildings, following the man, his eyes flicking up to make sure that nothing was stalking him across the rooftops.<br/><br/><em>Something wicked this way comes.<br/><br/>I think you hear me knocking...<br/><br/>I think I'm coming in...</em><br/>