Chapter 4: Darius The Unfortunate

The life of Darius was one of continuous tragedy. His life first began 16 years ago when he was born into the dead mining town by the name of Coppervile. It was a pioneer town settled out in the Badlands 20 years before his birth.

From the name, it was pretty obvious what the town had been mining: copper, specifically a rare type of copper called black speckled copper.

This mineral has been valuable enough that, when it was discovered, hordes of people flooded out into the rocky wastes to find their fortune. 

It wasn't long before Coppervile was formed, and at its peak it had a population of around 50,000 people, but that all ended frighteningly fast. It turned out the mineral vein that had been discovered was much smaller than originally thought.

This vein was mined dry in less than 20 years, and from there it wasn't long before the people who originally rushed out to the area began to leave in droves.

In the end, only a little over 200 people remained. These were folks who couldn't afford to leave after settling and were forced to stay in the rotting husk of a town.

Coppervilr became a place of abject poverty where the people turned to drinking their sorrows away while spending what little money they had on prostitutes, and it was from a prostitute that Darius was born.

His first few years of childhood were spent being neglected by his mother, who would abandon Darius after he turned 6 years old, and from then on, he grew up on the streets doing whatever he could to feed himself.

This included various odd jobs and occasionally going outside of town to search for lizards or insects to eat.

It was these pathetic actions that labeled him a worthless bastard by the miserable townsfolk who constantly harassed and abused him for their own amusement.

He had been the last baby to be born before everything went to hell, and that meant he was the youngest person in Copperton, so it was easy for the older men in town to pick on him.

Unexpectedly, despite the abuse, Darius was a timid and cheerful young man who also tried to smile and see the bright side of things.

Unfortunately for him, a positive attitude didn't mean anything in Coppervile.

The day before Martin took over his body, Darius was approached by a prostitute named Valerie, who was the blonde woman from the previous chapter. 

She attempted to solicit him, but Darius flat out refused her offer, and Valerie felt very insulted by this and went to a man named Ethan. He was the strongest man in town and ended up becoming their de facto leader. 

Valerie was Ethan's favorite, so when he heard from her that Darius insulted her. He immediately sent his two goons, Daniel and Marcus, to go and ruff him up.

Which they happily did, and after they were done beating the crap out of him, they dumped him in a ditch outside of town.

What they didn't know was that during the beating they hit him a little too much in the head, and while his skull hadn't been cracked or broken, it still led to a cerebral edema, the pressure of which killed him.

It was not long after his death that Martin possessed the empty shell and proceeded to wander back to Coppervile, cut to the present.

...

"Hello Darius, I'm surprised to see that your back." Said one of the three men blocking his path.

Martin looked at them with an irritated scowl, practically the guy standing in between the two others who talked to him.

Whoever this man was, he looked incredibly handsome. His chiseled features were like those of a delicately crafted statue. He was tall, over 6 feet by the looks of it; fair-skinned with a mighty robust physique like that of a bodybuilder. 

He was dressed in denim pants and steel-toed brown leather boots, and he had a black leather sleeveless jacket that covered his bare upper body with some kind of copper necklace around his neck.

"You shouldn't have come back. Not very smart, not like you were smart to begin with." He said in a slightly aggravated tone while running his finger's through his short, spiky, dirty blonde hair as he stared at him with his piercing metallic grey eyes that seemed to bore straight into him.

"Who are...

"Silence I am speaking!" He shouted, cutting Martin's sentence short, and if there was one thing Martin really hated, it was being interrupted.

The veins in his forehead began to throb while the annoyingly attractive man continued speaking.

"Your a persistent insect, one I want to be squashed at once!" He loudly hinted to his two men before turning and calmly walking away.

Only after he was gone did his buddies begin to look at him, their eyes full of murderous intent.

"You heard Ethan Daniel, let's finally squash this bug for good." Said a very pale man of average height with medium-length wavy black hair and black eyes, his voice raspy and coarse.

"You know, I wanted to get rid of him before Marcus." Said a giant bronze-skinned man who had straight shoulder-length lavender-colored hair and bright emerald green eyes in a deep baritone voice.

'Okay so tweedledum and tweedledee are called Daniel and Marcus, and that soon to be dead blonde guy with the grey eyes is named Ethan that's nice to know.' Martin thought, his rage growing with each passing second.

His thoughts of vengeance, however, were halted when he saw that pale guy named Marcus pull out a large bowie knife from the sheath on his waist.

The man chuckled before lunging at him, aiming to stab him in the gut, a move that Martin saw coming from a mile away. He sidestepped immediately and almost effortlessly avoided it, the knife not even so much as grazing his tunic. 

Marcus was clearly caught off guard by Martin's dodge and was unable to avoid his counterattack.

He punched him in the nose, which made him lose focus long enough for him to sweep his legs with a low kick, knocking him onto his back, the back of his head hitting the ground, which left him stunned on the ground.

When he hit, he let go of his knife, so Martin quickly bent down and grabbed it. He held the blade in a reverse grip and was about to stab Marcus in the chest, but the other guy rushed at him.

This man called Daniel was huge, standing well over 6 feet, and although his build was slender, it was also very muscular. It wouldn't be good if he hit him, so Martin back away from Marcus and narrowly avoided his straight punch.

However, when he swung his arm, he left a pretty big opening, which was the lower right side of his chest, that he wasted no time in stabbing at. 

The knife pierced his flesh, going through his ribcage and into his liver, but Martin didn't stop there. He decided to imitate something he saw online and twisted the knife before forcefully ripping it out.

"Urrrrgggghhh!" Daniel grunted in pain, falling to his knees while clutching his bleeding chest.

"Y-You...stabbed me! Darius, you motherfucker!" Those were his final words before Martin took the knife and thrust it up through the bottom of his chin and into his soft palate, the curved tip of the blade entering the space in the back of his nostrils.

Blood leaked from his eyes as he twitched for a bit until going limp, his body slumping over, Martin letting go of the knife, which was now stuck in his skull, as he did.

"Dammit!" He swore, trying to pull the knife out fast before Marcus got back up.

In media, they made stabbing and slashing look so easy, but in reality, it was much more difficult. The flesh would resist being cut, and the blade would get stuck, requiring great effort and skill to do so efficiently.

Martin was already worn out from killing the first guy, and he still had another to take care of.

"What the fuck, Daniel, no!!!"

"God, dammit." Martin cursed seeing Marcus on his feet again, looking at him with utter terror.

He somehow got paler than before, and his black eyes looked like they were about to pop out.

"You actually killed him; how could you do that?" He said while slowly backing away.

Martin didn't respond to his stupid question; his only focus was on renching the knife out of the other guy's skull. He finally managed to get it out just as Marcus turned and ran.

This was a bad idea though; he was only a few steps away, so Martin caught up pretty fast and stabbed him in the back of the chest, piercing his heart and ending his life. He tried to scream, but no sound came out before falling over dead.

He wiped the bloody knife on Marcus's tunic, cleaning it off to prevent rust. He then took the sheath he previously held the knife in and wrapped it around his waist. 

Martin carefully put the knife away before taking a deep breath to calm his nerves; he then vomited.

"F-Fucking...hell!*blargh*" Martin shouted through gasping breaths before vomiting again.

It may have seemed simple for Martin to kill those guys, but things can never be simple, especially killing another human being.

'They attacked me first; I was merely protecting myself; besides, what's it matter, it's just a game.' Those were his thoughts as he shook off his residual feelings of guilt.

"I had no other choice." He said with a new chilling calmness.

He proceeded to drag off the bodies into a far alleyway, and he covered them in garbage to hide them. Martin then ran some distance away until he found a secluded building. He quietly entered it, deciding this would be his base of operations for the time being.

The building was empty with no furniture, so he took a wooden crate from outside and used it as a chair to sit on.

"Sigh, a lot of shit went down. I got some stuff to think about. Like that name, they kept calling me Darius. I like that. Think maybe I'll call myself that from now on." Darius said as a smile crept onto his face sitting alone in the dark, derelicted house.

(Author's note: From here on out Martin will be referred to as Darius.)