"Akuma. See if you can communicate with Anderson. Offer him the location of the statue creature Miyako found, and see if you can avoid conflict by providing a mutual enemy. We don't want to fight iscariot as well as Millennium right now." Renko told her over the radio. Miyako nodded in response, having received her orders. She looked up at the waiting Anderson.
"The Director has seen fit to offer you the possibility of an alliance. An impure creature that was formerly a bodhisattva was found within the city, and has attacked and defeated forces from all sides, including some who I assume are yours. If you agree to a pact of non-aggression, we can take steps together to kill it, seeing as both of us have reason to wish it deceased." Akuma states, the agent translating as she spoke. Anderson scratched at his chin as he thought about it.
"Well now, little heathen. That's an interesting offer…" He said, seeming to consider it.
Diplomacy Roll: 15
"...but ultimately, that just means I have another stop to make after I break every bone in your body and flay you alive in the name of God. Prepare to die, creature!" Anderson cackles, readying his bayonets with a mad grin. Silently, Akuma prepares herself while signalling for her troops to shift to a combat stance. There's silence for a moment, before Anderson lunges forward.
Anderson: 99 vs. Akuma: 38
Before she has a time to react, a bayonet is thrown right into her knee. Her leg crumples as it becomes unable to hold her weight, and she loses her footing. As Anderson gets into melee distance, she swings her club to knock him away. With her footing disrupted, she can't properly strike, and the mad priest knocks away that monstrous weapon with only moderate effort. With a sudden frenzy of movement, Anderson plunges his bayonets towards Akuma's torso. She manages to block one so that it only impales her arm, but the other strikes through, going through her stomach.
Akuma, for her part, is shocked. So many weapons she could bat away or ignore as the deflected off her skin, but these ones slid through her as if she was mortal. Using her wounded arm, she breaks the blade of the bayonet impaled in her arm with a sharp twist of the limb, and uses her other arm for leverage as she rips the other one out of her stomach. She's barely caught herself when Anderson is there with more bayonets in hand, breaking her teeth with a knee to her face.
She goes flying over the pavement, blood coating the ground as she flies over it. She feels teeth tumble from her mouth and her nose crunch as she flies through the air, and she's undeniably rattled. Then she sees Anderson right on her heels, and she prepares to defend herself.
Anderson: 88 vs. Akuma: 41
But she's injured, and she has barely seconds to recover before he's on her again. She manages a few pitiful blocks before she can't keep up, as her arm is captured between two bayonets and torn off, another bayonet is stuck in her other leg and three more end up in her chest. She chokes on her own blood as another bayonet slashes across her face and cuts her nose in half, ending as it punctures through her eye. Anderson ends his deluge of attacks by sticking a bayonet through her throat, pinning her to a wall.
"I'm disappointed, beast. You talked as if you were something powerful before. Then again, I can't say I'm surprised that the subordinate of the heretical witch whore cannot stand before the might of God and the Church. Do yourself a favor and stay there, and let yourself bleed out. It'll be a mercy for everyone, including yourself." With a sneer on his face, Anderson shakes his head, disgusted. He walks away without looking back, leaving Akuma hanging there, defeated.
It can't end like this. That was all that Akuma could think. To be beaten down so easily, when she was the best fighter of her mother's forces, it was disgraceful. And to do it here, before the grand battle came to a climax, pinned to a dirty fucking wall in a broken city having failed her men, her family. No.
It will not end like this.
Her remaining eye strayed to the club where it had fallen, a few steps away from where she was pinned. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, she pulled herself off the wall, taking the blade in her throat with her as she fell to the ground. The blades still impaled in her stabbed deeper, and if she was capable of speaking, she would have screamed. Instead, all that emerged was a low gurgle as the blood overflowed from her throat. With mangled limbs and a dying heart, Renko Akuma dragged herself across the grimy pavement to seize her weapon in a broken hand.
She promised herself that it wouldn't end like this, and she would make it so. Dying here, like this, was not something Renko Akuma would accept. She refused her fate, because this one was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong WRONGWRONGWRONGWRONG.
Chanting it like a mantra, Akuma seized the seal holding in the power of one of the three Great Youkai of Japan with her teeth, and ripped it off. And instead of rejecting the impurity that pumped into her veins and throughout her body, she took it all in. Embraced it like the old friend that it was.
And then Renko Akuma was no more, and the only thing left was a beast.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alexander Anderson laughed a little to himself as he walked back to the main fight between the Japanese and his forces. He wasn't lying when he said that he had thought the Japanese girl would be more of a challenge. He was disappointed, actually, that he couldn't warm up before he met Alucard, and inevitably killed him. Still, he was not one to question God's grace when the sinners fell like wheat before the farmer's scythe. It was just one more sign that his cause was just and right.
Then he heard the roar. It wasn't human, something like that, an uproarious noise that echoed throughout the streets and into the dark parts of the heart. It even made his heartbeat pick up a little, and he turned to see what had emerged. There, leaning against a building, was a monstrosity. It stood fifteen feet tall, with skin as black as coal and eyes that were as red as the fires of hell. Two pairs of horns erupted from the top of its head, surrounded by long, white, shaggy hair that hung down to the creature's waist. In one clawed hand, was a massive iron club that looked big enough to destroy anything it touched.
It's mouth roared again, the teeth all pointed and monstrous, resembeling the maw of a true monster. The only thing that hinted at the creature's identity was the torn remains of the armour it had worn. The torso section of it had been ruined, the plates covering it gone and only leaving the fabric underneath to somehow remain. The legs were still there, looking like the armor of a full plated samurai. Anderson grinned at the new arrival.
"Ah, I see you still had a few tricks left in you, heathen. Well, don't think that just because you got taller, that's enough to save you from the hand of the Lord." The priest grinned, readying a full hand of bayonets. With a dash, the priest threw himself at the thing formerly known as Renko Akuma.
Anderson: 38 vs. The True Demon: 135
Overflow Roll: 35+28=68
With a flash of his hands, all ten bayonets buried themselves into the beast's face, impaling its eyes, jaw and head. But the monster simply brushed away the blades with a careless swipe, and the blades tore themselves from her flesh, which regenerated almost immediately. Anderson managed two more steps before the club took him in the side. Instantly, his left arm and most of his torso disintegrated. The rest of his body was sent flying through a window, reduced to a bloody bag of broken bones and liquefied organs. The regenerator gasped in pain as his body knit itself together, ever so slowly.
Anderson: 17 vs. The True Demon: 58
The beast, on the other hand, chuckled aloud, walking towards the fallen crusader. Lazily, one taloned hand reached out and grabbed the foot of the priest, pulling him across the broken glass and out onto the street. Seeing that he was pulling himself back together, the monster raised its club and smashed Anderson into the ground again. And again, and again, and again. When he had been near demolished and was still moving, it grew annoyed.
It dug its talons deep into what remained of Anderson, and wrenched him up to eye level. Then it reeled back its arm, and threw Anderson like a pro pitcher delivers a fastball. The remains of his body hit the tile of a roof, skipped off of it like a stone on the surface of water, and hit another roof, before he crashed through the window of an office building. Alexander Anderson let out a groan of pain, and started dragging himself to the other half of his body where it had landed.
Back at the site of the battle, the agents had fought off the Iscariot forces with minimal injuries, and the militant priests had fled at the sight of their juggernaut leader being thrown over the skyline. Now, the agents were staring at their superior, who had seemed to turn into a giant rage monster and was now picking up and staring intensely at a random car. Slowly, one of the men approached it. With a quick bow, he shouted up to it.
"Squad leader Akuma! The Iscariot forces have been repelled, and we appear to be safe for now. Do you have any further orders?" The young man shouted. His fellows looked at him like he was insane, but he stood fast where he was. Slowly, the beast looked to him and then clutched its head in what looked like pain.
Akuma's Self Control: 88
As they watched, the beast shrunk down, its features reversing until Renko Akuma sat before them. She looked around, and then down to herself. Then she stared at the still bowing agent.
"Please find me a shirt."
AN: So, this is pretty short and doesn't include a vote. It's just a piece of the eleventh update that I thought I would upload just to give you all something to look at? Or something like that. Anyway, the second piece of the update will cover the epic chronicle of how Miyako does in her arduous task of going around the creepy freezing statue thing, and the minor side note of Kagutsuchi trying to get his toys back. Then you get another vote. Thanks again!
Why, Dice Gods? Why have you abandoned us so? 
