König | Hazing Ritual

König sat in the corner of the base's rec room with his hood pulled low, nursing a beer he didn't want as he listened to a set of cards being slapped onto the table, Horangi likely beaming in confidence that he'd wagered something good this time. Then Roze somewhere who barked loud enough that Nikto's eye twitched in mild annoyance due to the high-pitch of her laughter.

And somewhere in this overcrowded room, his ears unwillingly caught the voices of three operators from another squad. Their voices dropping into that particular register that men liked to use when they thought they were being clever or slick, even if they were the farthest thing from it.

"—wait until after lights out and then we corner her in the barracks."

"Who?" One of them asked.

"The new girl." He replied, and König could practically hear the gleam in his eye without even looking in that direction. "Been watching her all week since she moved into the barracks. I bet she cracks real easy."

His fingers tightened around the bottle before König realized he had chosen to do that. The condensation of that cheap booze now gone warm and slick against his palm before he willed himself to loosen his grip before the damn thing shattered in his hands.

None of your business. He told himself, She's a grown woman, she can handle herself.

Because König had spent years learning how to do the same, how to keep his mask on and pretend like he doesn't hear it when people talk about him like he isn't just standing right there. His intimidating size was the only reason he was ever spared from these stupid hazing rituals because no one in their right mind would fuck around with a six foot ten and 300 pound Austrian man.

But the comment that one of them made kept rotating his attention back to them. Wait until after lights out and then we corner her. He felt something in his chest pull taut at that.

Because König remembered being twelve years old and cornered against a locker by three bigger and older boys, he remembered the smell of their sweat and his own trembling fear, he remembered how the laughter only got louder when his eyes got wet and begged them to leave him alone. He remembered learning that no one was coming and he remembered swearing he would never let himself feel that small again.

Not your business.

He set the bottle down harder than he meant to, and despite him not wanting to involve himself, he felt that he was already involved whether he wanted to be or not.

At 2300, König was moving down the barracks corridor with a certainty that didn't feel like his own. His boots were heavy on the linoleum. His breathing, behind the hood, had gone shallow and fast before he noticed it and tried to even it out the way he does after he realizes he's breathing through his mouth and not his nose.

He hears it before he sees it, some half-open door with a bit of white-yellow light streaking a thin line into the dark corridor. Voices inside, quiet enough to not cause a ruckus but just enough for König to know without a doubt that there was more than just one body in there.

"Come on, sweetheart, don't be like that. We're just being friendly."

"Yeah, just a peek. We won't tell anyone. We're all friends here, aren't we, gentlemen?"

He hears laughter and the shuffle of bodies closing in—a circle of them. He counted four heads as he came through the doorway. None of them touching her, because they weren't stupid and because they knew exactly where the line was and walked it like a group of apes on a tightrope. Saying the things, standing too close, asking the questions. Oppressive without ever being actionable.

But even from there, König could see that {{user}} was clearly uncomfortable and wasn't consenting to this crude ensemble. He saw her shift towards the door, and one of them caught her upper arm in a grip that was unnecessarily tight—enough to dimple her skin just below the short sleeve hem.

Enough to give König a real reason to involve himself now.

He crossed the room in four strides. No verbal warning. Just fisted his hand around one of the operators' collar before forcefully slamming him back against the wall hard enough that a picture frame rattled loose and fell to the floor with an audible thud that made the room go dead silent.

König's grip tightened in the fabric. Up close he could smell the brittle confidence born from cheap beer on the man's breath, he could see his own hooded and terrifying reflection trembling with barely contained rage in the operator's wide eyes.

Gut. He thought to himself, Let them see König.

"You think you're a man, do you?" His lips curled beneath the sniper hood, "Grabbing women like they're furniture? Talking to her like a fucking pig?"

"N-no, we were just joking—"

"Spaß." He echoed the word like it was rotten meat on his tongue, his tone dripping venom enough to kill an elephant. "So this is what you think is funny. Is that it?"

The man's mouth opened then closed, like he decided saying nothing was better. König turned his head slowly, letting his gaze drag across each of them in turn—the calculated sweep of a scope finding targets in a small berth.

"Then talk to me the way you spoke to her. Let me see if I find it funny too." He shrugged, lazy and indifferent despite the tension radiating from his body. The very picture of a man with all the time in the world. "Go on. Say it. I'm in a good mood and I want to laugh."

But nobody moved, and nobody said anything. Too stunned to speak, like a pack of idiots collectively forming one braincell to help them realize that they had no chance against the bigger man.

König leaned in until his hood brushed the operator's forehead, until he could feel the man's smaller frame trembling through the fistful of collar he still gripped in his hand, and his voice dropped to something very low and very calm, which was somehow so much worse than if he just resorted to shouting.

"Say it, Hurensohn. Say the joke to me."

The base gym was almost always empty at this hour. Just König, a rack of free weights and the steady rhythm of his own breathing. He liked coming at this time because of it. No eyes on him, no voices, nothing but the burn in his shoulders and the clang of iron. His personal best for this lift had been sitting untouched for three weeks and today was supposed to be the day he broke it.

And then the door banged open and four of operators came in dragging some new face, his feet dragging across the mats like he was being hauled to something he clearly wasn't consenting to. The rest of them were laughing as they did, the kind of laughing that had teeth in it—one that made some buried part of him flinch like muscle memory reaction.

König kept his eyes on the bar. None of your business. He braced, inhaled and pulled. The weight came up clean before he set it down again and reset his grip. But somewhere behind him, a body hit the mats hard enough to thump. And the low laughter came back again.

"Come on. Be a man and fight back."

"Show us something, green. Or is this all you've got?"

König switched to the bell bar but his mind kept splitting off anyway, tracking the shuffle of feet behind him, the laughter that came in ugly little bursts and the sound of someone scrambling up only to be shoved down again. Provoking him and cornering him. Making it into a game because he wouldn't play along.

He told himself the new operator was a grown man, that he could handle it, that this was how squads were and a bit of roughhousing won't kill anyone. If the man couldn't handle it then he shouldn't even be in KorTac if he's just going to shrivel up at the first shove.

König curled the bar up. Held it for a moment, then lowered it.

And then he heard a sharp crack of palm against skin that cut through his thoughts, sharp and obscene. Enough for him to feel his own heart stop from either shock or offense. Because a shove was one thing, but a slap was designed to be intentionally cruel.

"Pathetic." Someone said. "You call yourself a man?"

The bell bar hit the floor with a clang as König turned, just in time to see one of them drive a fist into the new operator's stomach. He watched as {{user}} folded in the middle, his face whitening a little like the impact of it was enough to steal the air out from his lungs.

And they all just fucking laughed.

Something in König that had been holding, quietly, for years, just simply let go. He crossed the gym floor at a steady walk, because a run would have warned them and given them enough time to turn around to see he was coming.

Four men. Taking turns. Pushing, shoving, hitting, all of it framed as training, as initiation, as fun. The new operator on the mats, trying to get up and getting put back down before he could. And even if it was selfish to some extent, all König could see was a younger and more vulnerable version of himself in that man.

König's shadow fell across the mats before any of them noticed he was there and he hit the nearest one square in the face without a word of warning. The crack was resounding as the man's head snapped sideways with such force that his jaw visibly swung from the recoil and he was out before he finished falling, sprawled flat on the mats like a dropped marionette.

The laughter died all at once. The other three froze, mid-motion, staring at their unconscious friend and then up at the towering shape that was all König.

"You think you're tough men for doing this to him, do you?" König murmured, not really expecting them to answer but daring them to anyway. He gestured at the four of them with one big hand in a slow, contemptuous sweep. "Four Arschlöcher ganging up on someone who doesn't want to fight back. That's how fucking tough you are. Is that it?"

No one said anything. One of them took half a step back and König stepped into their space—looming until they had to tilt their heads back to keep him in view, until the gym lights were blocked out by his shoulders.

"Let me help you burn off that energy, ja? Fight me instead." He rolled his neck slowly and the vertebrae popped one after another. "Komm schon. Make my fucking day."

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