Hunting For Purpose

Wearing her usual attire, Diana was sitting at the bar in the VIP section of Boomslang and watching people dance on a dance floor that always seemed to be packed. She had taken advantage of a Ladies Night special to get half-off entry into the club and paid a little extra to get access to the VIP section so that she did not have to deal with so many people. She hoped above all else that she did not have to deal with Francesca Corlone just yet because she did not want to deal with that bimbo. The encounter with Francesca on her first visit to Boomslang and the meeting on board the Bon Vivant for DJ Krill's birthday party were enough to last Diana the rest of her life.

Sipping on a glass of filtered water of a brand that was supposedly imported from Iceberg, Diana watched the action on the crowded dance floor with a birds-eye view. Both genuinely good dancers and people who were drunk and only thought that they were good dancers vied for space on the dance floor. The blonde was glad that she was not among them because she had no dancing ability whatsoever. Her only real ability was to bring death wherever she went. That realization made her rather unhappy.

A few months ago Diana would not have nearly so introspective, but after being aboard the Bon Vivant and experiencing what normal young adults did, the blonde was starting to reexamine her life. She was still a slave to her deceased parents and what they wanted for her. She had never really thought about what she wanted to do because that choice had never been hers to make. Now it was her choice to make. What was she going to do?

Diana's only real job skill was knowing how to kill others. Whether it was animal or human, she knew how to kill it with a minimum of fuss and effort. If she really wanted to, she could just move to Hunting Village and become a hunter... no one would bat an eye at her killing prowess there. In fact, she would be lauded for it. That was an option, but Diana was not ready to give up city life and live in the boondocks just yet.

"Would you like more Glacial Water, Miss?" A young female bartender with green hair asked Diana. The green-haired girl had blue eyes and pointed ears. Diana had never seen anything like it before... she tended to meet new and interesting people, then kill them. She seldom got a chance to interact with them without using violence.

"Yes, please." Diana replied, handing her the nearly empty glass to be refilled with imported water that supposedly came from an Iceberg glacier. It made a nice advertising point, but she was not sure if it really was melted glacier water or just cheap filtered water poured into a fancy bottle. She did not really care either. As long as it was not alcohol and it was not poisoned, Diana would drink it. She took the refilled glass into her right hand.

"Thank you." Diana thanked the bartender, who nodded and moved on to serve other customers. She took another measured sip and listened to the music. The music was generic loud dubstep that sounded more like noise than actual dance music, but to drunk people anything was dance music. They were welcome to flail and stumble around to it.

[Word Count: 580]
[Total Word Count: 580/1,000]

Diana sat at the bar and listened to the generic dubstep noise wind down. When it finally ended, the silence was almost deafening as her ears tried to adjust to the brief period of silence before yet more music played. She wondered how the staff of Boomslang handled having to hear loud music night in and night out without losing their minds. The paycheck was certainly a reason, but maybe some of them actually liked the music. To them it would be like getting paid to constantly attend a party, which was some people's idea of a dream job.

Diana listened to crowd noise through the brief silence before her thoughts turned back to what she wanted to do with herself. She kind of liked being a mage, which was convenient because that was all she really could do. Her magic was geared towards killing things anyway, so why change careers when she could just change its focus?

There were plenty of wild animals that needed to be killed because of the threat they posed to people. There were people who needed protection from those who wanted to kill them. There were also people who needed killing, like crime lords and bandit kings and other threats to the people of Earthland. Hunting Jacob Goodnight was both profitable for Diana and beneficial for the people of Hargeon Town, who were glad to see a serial killer taken off the streets for good. She did not even need to sneak about on that hunt since she had legal sanction from Hargeon Town authorities to kill him.

Maybe Diana should focus on those three kinds of job instead. She would still get to kill things, but now she was protecting people and only killing people who really deserved it as opposed to killing anyone who stood in the way of her greedy parents. She might take the occasional questionable contract if money was tight, but on the whole she would use her skills for the benefit of Earthland's people while also enriching herself. If she killed enough of the right people, she might even be able to earn a small measure of redemption for herself for all the murders she had committed for her greedy parents. Diana could live with that plan.

Suddenly some actually good music came on. It was an electronic music track with drums and a percussion instrument in the background mixed with some kind of electronic noise that faded in and out. After the loud and aggressive thumping and screeching of the dubstep, the electronic music was a relief. It was oddly calming to listen to because it had a decent tempo without being too fast. The good instrumentation also helped make the music easy to listen to.

Diana drank the second glass of Glacial Water and thought of requesting a third but decided against it. She did not need to spend too much money because she had to pay for a hotel room. Lavish spending also tended to draw the wrong sort of attention, and she had already pushed it with buying a VIP pass for the night. The blonde would quit while she was ahead. She gave the empty glass to the bartender, tipped the young woman, and got up to sit in a seat overlooking the dance floor... for once Diana felt in control of her own life, and that was a feeling that she had not experienced in a long time.

Electronic Music Track:

[Word Count: 576]
[Total Word Count: 1,156/1,000]