People knew that Demitri never half-way did anything. They knew he thought things through very thoroughly, planned things out, and had plan B through Z ready if plan A didn’t go the way he anticipated it should. In the past, Demitri had robbed and shot some of the worse personalities in the city without them knowing it, and then turned around, got hired by the guy he robbed and shot, to go rob and shoot the same people that hired him to do the previous job on the last guy. 

He knew not to get close with those kinds of people because it would be the end of him. Demitri didn’t take partners or tag-a-long’s with him so that there would never be another person to snitch on him should he ever actually get caught. He did all of his dirt by himself, and it worked just fine that way. So when he met up with his Big Homie “Clutch” to get the birthday present, he knew about some of the work that Demitri had put in back in the past. He understood that Demetri already had plenty of reason to need a gun around him. But he never knew every reason.

Big Clutch was the one who helped shape a big part of Demitri’s principle system. Big Clutch is the one who gave him the game at around age 13, telling him; “Do not to ever trust anybody with your own life, cuz you will die.” One conversation yielded rules such as; “Make your moves in the peripheral eye of the law and your opponent, and always be able to see through people who wish to twist you up in some bullshit. If you can do that, hit them first and paralyze them when you do it so they can’t come back and get you later. He taught Demitri to think in 20 year terms of time because; “that’s how long the judge will give you, and that’s how long it takes for a son to grow up, get bold and wanna kill you back.”

It’s teachings like those that helped Demitri choose away from actually killing people, but he’s never been afraid to run right up to that edge and challenge the cliff.

Fifteen minutes left to make it to the store during their shift change so he was still on good time. He had loaded his gun when he was with Big Clutch so that wasn’t going to be something he needed to do in front of the store. There was no ambition to shoot anybody for this, at best, he’d scare whoever was behind the counter, take a big enough bag of groceries and the money they kept in the safe that was in the room behind the mirror-window that was behind the counter. All this and, Demitri didn’t actually like taking things from people, shooting people, or causing pain in general. But what was he supposed to do? The way this city is set up, it’s meant to keep people sleep and enslaved mentally, he thought as he picked up the pace on his way to finally see the store in front of him.

“Okay, put up or shut up, sink or swim, do it or don’t do it….DO IT” Something he says to himself as a measure of clearing his head of everything else that had happened before that moment. He needed to be focused and clean in thought before performing in this way.

Standing right up against the south wall of the outside of the store, he put a peculiar looking face-mask on that covered everywhere that would show his skin color and hair. It was warm outside but Demitri was weird in such a way that he was used to wearing pants and boots year around whenever he needed to. He pulls his gun out and walks calmly around the corner into the entrance of the store.

Everything is quiet.

There is no clerk at the counter right now, so Demitri takes that as them changing shifts, and without any advanced security system in the store, he could execute part of plan B. Use any extra time to fill up a bag with food. It works. The clerks were gone for at least one minute, giving him time to speed walk up and down a few isles to fill up about a bag and a half with some meats, and some starches. He counts one minute and 30 seconds.

Everything is still quiet, but right as his curiosity pushes him to walk back towards the front of the store, and turn out of an aisle to see the front counter; “Boom.” One shotgun blast goes off and blows that old Asian man’s head and part of his shoulder right off.

There were three men in the store with shotguns pointed at the old Asian man, and his wife, the old Asian lady. One was in that mirror-room probably trying to figure out the safe. The one who just killed the Asian guy looks over at Demitri covered up from head to toe and knows they didn’t come in the store together. He screams at the second shotgun-man to take his place in front of the woman and give chase. Demitri let’s off 3 rounds from his semi-auto to give the man chasing him pause, and to create space between him and that shotgun. It’s a horrible gunfight in a relatively small grocery store between Demitri’s handgun and 2 extra clips, and a pump-action shotgun.

It’s a losing battle for Demitri, but he hides, and then moves at each best moment. Hearing another shotgun round go off near him, Demitri dives to land at the back of the store near the freezers. While on the floor, he looks across in the direction of the winery to see one of the Asian sons crouched down behind the counter. Swift thinking influences Demitri to look and see where the Asian son could have come from. “They gotta take their garbage out back to the dumpster, where’s the door?” The back of the store behind the winery.

 What Demitri does next was the worst thing he’s ever had to do during one of these episodes. Since the Asian son was distraught about his father just being shot, and was paying so much attention to the front of the store, Demitri takes off his mask and waves a bag of chips to signal to the man that it was safe for him to make his move. He knew that once the man came out of that spot that he was going to get killed by the shotgun man, but if he didn’t move his ass out of the way, Demitri would not make it out alive.

Making his move, the man leaped out of the spot and dove to try and land in-between two of the aisles. As he fell, the shotgun man pulled the trigger, and blew a hole the size of a watermelon out of his chest. Demitri didn’t stay and watch him hit the floor, however. Once the son had set his move in motion, and he could hear the shotgun man scream in frustration as he tried to reload his pump-action, he got up and ran out of the backdoor, being careful not to slip or trip on any of the trash bags that had been piled up near the dumpsters.

“I’m out,” he said as he ran through the long back alleyway. But he knew that he wasn’t scot-free just yet. Bullets travel far enough distance to where, even his running head-start wasn’t far enough just yet. Sure enough, the shotgun man peeked out of the trash bay that Demitri had to jump down off of in order to get away. To which Demitri responded by blasting off a complete magazine at him to make sure he didn’t jump down and continue his chase.  By the time his clip was unloaded, he was almost at the end of the alleyway and turning the corner onto a moderately busy street.