Cosmo Grimaldi

Cosmo wished this day would never end.

There was something indescribably pleasant about the afternoon breeze. The way it kissed off his skin, or tousled his hair as it snaked around his form, felt simply sublime. The wind sent a tingle down his body while he adjusted to the sudden, cool blast. As he toured further along the territory of the Golden Banner, Cosmo eventually found that he was completely alone, with no one in earshot of him. The stragglers who were in the vicinity either went about their daily lives, or wisely tried to avoid his attention—and that suited Cosmo just fine.

With a deep breath, he wafted the air into his nostrils, noticing the delicate scent of a thousand flavors mixing in the air. Many of the survivors would call the broken gas pipes, littered debris, rotting flesh, and old bombs a foul, odious odor, but Cosmo paid little heed to his contemporaries that chose to complain so incessantly. They, it seemed, lacked the ability to adapt and adjust to their new environment. Even the grungy smell of post-apocalyptia had its noticeably delightful days.

He lifted his head. The orange rays of the sun peered tentatively through a tiny crack in the clouds, and for the first time in days, Cosmo felt the earth bake with a golden hue—quite the change from the dreary gray. With the sun came a cacophony of colors that Cosmo had not seen in some weeks. He could have sworn, in the distance, a pale purple glint caught his eye, perhaps a flower growing out of the ruined pavement. With a brief but charming grin, Cosmo marveled over the quiet magnanimity of nature; sometimes its productive silence was so far superior to the boisterous ineptitude of the humans that still had the misfortune of occupying the planet.

Oh how he long lamented over their lack of subtlety and inventiveness, their deficiency in flexibility. They were so far stuck in their own old ways—their arbitrary mental expectations of where they should be—that they failed to see the viable alternatives. They could not help but to see the breathtaking beauty in the randomness of the destruction—the littered debris placed in a perfectly unsystematic pattern that too deserved their attention and praise just as much as their finest works of art and sculpture.

They failed to see the mysterious around the corner, that beautiful sensation of uncertainty that ensured that they were still amongst the living, that mystifying feeling of danger that ensured that nary a moment passed in boredom. They were too busy complaining about how terrible their lives are, or how they lack the skills and initiative to earn themselves a worthwhile meal. With a quaint sigh and a subtle shake of his head, Cosmo moved on, hands clasped behind his back, curious eyes alert and attentive, and lips ready to smile at the next tantalizing observation.

And that next remarkable happenstance came from the surprising hand—or foot, rather—of a clumsy intruder. Cosmo did not recognize the figure, and never felt his presence before. His eyes peered on him from around the rubble-strewn wall of what used to be an appliance store. The figure seemed more absorbed in ensuring that he didn’t trip over the debris than glancing ahead to see if there were any lurking dangers just outside of his view. Cosmo figured that he was either extremely overconfident in his own ability, or that he had never been to the cutthroat, dangerous world of Queens.

Even Cosmo would expect a fight whenever he came to Queens, and he had little to worry about from walkers, who seemed to treat him as a peculiar oddity before moving aside.

He had orders to strike with impunity. If anyone had given him reason, he could cut them down and ask questions later. With most people, Cosmo would have approached them broadly, openly asking them what they were doing stumbling around Queens with nothing on their mind. Instead, something told Cosmo that this particular individual was different. Cosmo could feel each of his clumsy steps leaving ripples in space-time, as if the debris that the intruder was kicking around was somehow connected to Cosmo’s senses. He could also sense the intruder's experience, his battle-tested history, and immediately Cosmo knew he had a curiosity on his hands.

That’s when he made his mind to test the stranger. A black rod seemed to snake out of his left sleeve, as if pushed from his forearm itself. The rod formed a sharp pike, longer than Cosmo was tall. When fully formed, the Golden Banner lieutenant casually skipped into the open, tossed the pike into the air, caught it with his right hand as he cocked it back, and in one fluid motion, launched the obsidian spear at the intruder. The pike, whistling as it sliced through the air, shot forward straight and true, and within a split second, gobbled up the hundred or so yards between them.

This beautiful day just got fun.