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Twenty-two wasn't much of a birthday; 2013 hadn't been much of a year.

The time had slipped away from him, and for the first time in a while, Veer was out of the house on his birthday, wasn't huddled at his computer playing World of Warcraft and harassing people into wishing him a good day on IRC. He had no plains to dive into a bottle of something strong, nor to eat something heavy, greasy, and expensive.

This year, he was at work. The start of holiday season, and his request for the night off had been, quite literally, laughed off.

The room buzzed and hummed around him, the fluorescent lights vibrating loud enough to give him a headache, and the effect did nothing to improve his already-shot mood. Instead he stood sullen at the end of the DS games, watching customers sliding past. Across the room, he could see Mike with a customer: Mike with the million dollar smile, who managed to wink without it seeming creepy. Mormon Mike, who seemed to genuinely enjoy his job here, who vibrated with enthusiasm and kept to great the customers at the door. Mike who he wanted to punch in the nose.

Mike who'd been grabbed out back three times by a DMC senshi and drained so much that it was hard for him to get home. What a strange coincidence.

Mike who finished with the customer and, still grinning, approached Veer where he stood -- pressing two fingers into the corners of his mouth in demonstration, and opening his mouth to speak --

"I swear to God, if you tell me to smile, I will break you." It came out of Veer without thought; came with gritted teeth and fingers clenching in his pocket. The goal was to make that smile fall, to make Mike's vibrant good cheer melt away into something surprised or horrified. It didn't work. Instead his eyebrows just raised, a hand going over his mouth, teasing and probing and just joshing and Veer hated him so ******** much.

"Language, Tanvir. Someone's a grumpy guss today…" His mock-pout, his shake of his head, were like lemon juice on already singed skin. The topping on the cake. A pat on the shoulder that made Veer hiss in frustration, and look around for a manager. "What's the matter there mister?"

"I'm not joking fruitcake." Not close enough to overhear, so Veer said it with something like a smile, lips pulled back to show his teeth. Usually this was intimidating to shut up his coworkers but Mike was, for some reason, immune. "If you keep poking me on my ******** birthday --"

But this had been the wrong thing to say, because Mike's immediate reaction was a gasp, was genuine horror. "You never said! Happy birthday! Oh, gosh, you should have said --"

He was gone before Veer could say anything else. A relief, perhaps, until he stopped by his locker and close, to find a painfully cheerful card tucked into it, a Best Buy gift certificate inside, and Mike's too-cheerful words of encouragement.

He slammed his locker, growling, and stomped to the garbage can, where he hesitated, card in hand.

Sure. The guy was a jerk.

But no point throwing out free money.

He hesitated, sighed, and disappeared out the back. He'd find some other way to get out his frustrations.

This solo is current.

It wasn't a front page article and there was a not-so-small part of Veer that was annoyed by that -- pouring over the words of the story in search of some sign, some note, that would make it clearer exactly what had been happening in Destiny City by night. He read it the once, and then a second time, picking over the small clues and little comments, before taking a careful screencap to save in a folder on his desktop.

With the other two.

People dying in Destiny City wasn't exactly a new thing, wasn't a surprise. Only the fact that the young man had been strangled -- the third in six months, and all three left similarly, arms folded over their chests -- was enough to even get it a mention in the paper. Perhaps if Veer had more of a bloodthirsty streak in him, if he needed the deaths more often than once every couple months, the question of serial killer? would be a more prominent one, and would catch the fancy of the news networks. Perhaps, when the new year came, he'd start to think about it --

but, for now, he was happy with just the occasional drift a now and then delve into the sociopathic.

He read the article again and grinned, this time lingering over the young man's personal info. He took down the name, the age, and instead went hunting on the internet. Five or ten quick searches would come up with the guy's Facebook page, where Veer lingered. It was morbid, it was messed up, and he knew it -- but he wanted to delve into this dumb schmuck's life. He wanted to fill a text document with details about his name, his age, his next of kin; he wanted to look at his hobbies, his likes, his work. His friends.

He wanted to save all the information in that same folder, next to the files of the other two victims. He wanted to look for connections, for similarities, to keep an eye on their habits and their parties. Even Veer wasn't sure if he was doing it for the sake of research, or just because he wanted to indulge, and all in all, he wasn't sure if he cared. While everything else fell to pieces in his life, his dead-end job, his lack of apartment, his powerful hunger for a motorcycle [silly, but true], his lack of education, his waning coding skills, there was at least this one thing that he could simply look at and grin.

The power of it wouldn't linger for long, and Veer knew that. Another few weeks, the start of Christmas, and the feelings would come back twofold. But for now, he could breathe it in, and build his files....